My final pledge count for the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association stands at approximately $335 CAD (factoring in some $USD contributions as well), thanks to all my sponsors.

(Update: My audiologist, Dr Victoria Lee from my local area branch of Island Hearing Services who was on vacation just found out about the blogathon, thanked me for campaigning for hearing loss awareness in my blog, and has sponsored my cause as well. Thank you Dr Lee! )

But more importantly, I would consider my blogathon effort a success if:

• Someone who knew a hard of hearing person read this and encouraged them to connect with a local hard of hearing  community in their area (for instance, the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association and Hearing Loss Association of America) where they can find the support they need.

• The awareness of hard of hearing people and their needs is increased even if by a little bit. For example, that:
  

  	- Not all fire-alarms may be audible to all hearing aid users, as I once discovered a few years ago.
  	- Just because one wears hearing aids doesn’t mean that they can hear everything being said, unlike with glasses that restore 20/20 vision.
  	- That not all hard of hearing or deaf people wear hearing aids visible for everyone to see. Not knowing that I was hard of hearing and assuming that I wasn’t paying attention, I’ve been asked, although without any ill-intention, “Are you deaf?  “No, but I’m hard of hearing”.
  	- If you’re hard of hearing, you’re not alone. About 13% of the people suffer from a certain degree of hearing loss. However, that should not in any way prevent you from realizing your potential as seen from the stories of a number of CHHA and HLAA members.

• Reading some of my posts has piqued interest in the IT Business Analysis profession and certification to anyone, or simply encouraged some thought-provoking discussions.

• And finally, if I have been able to forge connections (I know I have), and if it helped some amazing people I have interacted with connect with each other as well.

A number of my online connections including writers, bloggers, IT professionals, members of CHHA, HLAA and so on have happened through networking sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Ning, Protagonize, Meetup etc.

I’ve only recently started blogging and intend to continue the momentum gained through blogathon and use my blog as a medium to share what I’ve learned, write in an attempt to raise awareness for what I believe in, and learn in the process.

Blogathon 2009 may be over, but my blogging has just begun.

Happy blogging and reading everyone!

A big thank you to all my sponsors and supporters! You kept me going till the end!

That’s it! The Home Stretch! The Finish Line! The Summit!

So why did I do it? This answer still holds true.

Will I do it next year? Yes!

I hope I have been able to increase awareness of, and raise pledges for the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association as a result of this.

BTW, pledging is still open till July 31st, if you’re interested in sponsoring me!

I hear there is also a 72-hour novel writing event.. maybe next year

As I planned for this blogathon, I decided to go with a theme. Since I was also preparing for a certification, I started out with the theme of business analysis and certification topics. But that by itself, I found, would end up being boring, and would appeal to very few.

Meanwhile, when I chose to blog for the Canadian Hard of Hearing Association and contacted them as well as some members of the Hearing Loss Association of America, they were very supportive of the idea and offered to help me with it as well with guest posts, information etc. Seeing the interest received from them and given that part of my blogging effort is also to raise awareness of the needs of hard of hearing, I had decided that the topics should be divided between the two.

The last stretch has been the hardest to focus on a theme, especially when it came to some dry areas. So I decided to simply have fun, and write about things that came to my mind during this last leg.

Fundraising:

I didn’t really set myself any goals this year with respect to fund raising as I wasn’t sure.

Connections:
One of the biggest gains from this exercise was the connections I was able to make. The local Vancouver Bloggers were awesome as usual, but what was amazing was the connections I made and the support I received from people I haven’t met in person yet, but who have been awfully kind to do features and guest posts for me. More about the guest posts in my next post.

As of 4:30 AM July 26th, I’ve completed 24 hours without sleep. I woke up at 4-ish on Saturday morning. I didn’t sleep much on Friday night either.

Raul is walking to everyone’s workstation with a friendly smile and his trademark “How you doing?” He has been doing it for three years now and so has Rebecca. I see that Barbara has done for four. Blogathoners in other parts of North America must have been doing it for a few years as well.

My monitor, Tina has been encouraging me along the way, checking in on me. I wonder how she was able to blog as well as monitor & cheer other participants. So thank you, Tina!

It’s almost daybreak now. Three more posts to go for 49. 1 hour left.

Will I do it again next year? Why not?

Rebecca just gave me a Make Good Certificate. I didn’t know what Make Good was, so I did some quick reading about them on their website.

MakeGood seems like a way to promote the corporate social responsibility of the company, connecting them with charities – like a trust mark of charitable behaviour of the company. They’ve partnered with United Way as well.

Just another rambling.. Are the aptitude tests like GRE, GMAT and a slew of other IQ tests really relevant? Shouldn’t they be revamped to something else, to test for participants creative abilities as much as logical reasoning?

Even IQ tests for instance, measures reasoning and patterns and so on – requiring you to follow critical thinking. Which makes me wonder what a creative person’s IQ would be.

Is there way to measure the Creativity Quotient? Is creativity not part of intelligence?

I recently read a blog post by fellow Vancouver blogger David Morton. His blog titled the Inspiratorium has some great posts including some of his works on a novel set in a medieval period.

This blog post interested me because it was about a news article from Vancouver Sun featuring a miracle where a dying man for whom all hope was lost was miraculously cured by a priest using a relic belonging to a monk.

The debate between science and religion was interesting, and I told David that I enjoyed the article and that it would be an interesting topic to discuss. So I’ve decided to use that as the topic for this post.

While I’m not anti-religious, I’m not very religious either. However, the topic of religion and faith has always interested me. So, do I accept the miracle theory or reject it? That a dying man was cured by a cloth from a priest is in itself a miracle.

But the rationalist in me says that there has to be an explanation for everything. An explanation that, science, at the moment cannot answer. Until then, it would remain a miracle. I don’t think it is the arrogance of science though, in trying to solve the mysteries, and trying to find answers.

Sages have been trying to do the same, in trying to solve the mysteries of the universe. Who says scientists can’t believe in God or religion?

It’s just that at some point in time probably in the middle ages, science and religion parted ways, each attempting to seek the truth in their own way. Will science help find God? That would make for good science fiction!

Hope these ramblings at 3:30 AM make sense!

A company I was working at in the East Coast US a few years ago had a fire-drill. The fire-alarm which while piercing and loud to the normal ear, wasn’t audible to me because my digital hearing aids which were programmed to my hearing needs and to filter background noise didn’t detect the fire-alarm.

As a result, most of my colleagues had stepped out of the building while I was hunched in my cubicle typing in my computer, oblivious to what was going on! Fortunately, it was nothing more than a fire-drill.

Most fire-alarms are usually audible through the hearing aid these days. However, it doesn’t hurt to be careful and be more cognizant of the surroundings.

Since I hadn’t heard about Carpathia before, this Carpathia rescue story gave me an idea.

Why is that we tend to remember disasters more than heroic efforts? Villains more than heroes?

Why is it that we recognize and reward people more for solving a problem than for preventing the problem from happening in the first place?