Thoughts on a lonely afternoon

Time Out

2007-05-28T01:08:00.000-07:00

Just like my life, this blog too has become directionless. Give me some time and hopefully, I would be able to resurrect this almost dead blog into the lively, joyous blog I think it once was.

The Wiki Tag

2007-04-25T23:05:00.000-07:00

Abigail tagged me with the wikipedia tag a while ago. So here it is:

(My comments are in brackets)

The steps of the tag:

1. Go to Wikipedia and type in the month and day you were born:

That's December 7 for me.

2. List three events that occurred that day:

1941 - World War II: Attack On Pearl Harbor - The Imperial Japanese Navy attacks the US Pacific Fleet and its defending Army Air Forces and Marine air forces at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. (Probably the most well-remembered event that occured on my Birthday)

1972 - Apollo 17, the last Apollo moon mission, is launched. The crew take the photograph known as "The Blue Marble" as they leave the Earth. (Hmm, good!)

1987 - PSA Flight 1771 crashes near Paso Robles, California, killing all 43 on board, after a disgruntled passenger shoots his ex-boss on the flight, then shoots both pilots and himself. (Is that weird or what?)

3. List two important birthdays:

1973 - Damien Rice, Irish musician (I like his music, especially the song "Amie".)

1978 - Shiri Appleby, American actress (She's the girl from Roswell. She's beautiful!)

4. List one death:

1254 - Pope Innocent IV

5. Tag five friends to do the same:

Well, anyone who wants to do it should feel tagged!

The Comeback

2007-04-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

The best way to return to blogging after almost three months would be to recap for all of you the major events that happened during this period that I was away. So here it is in my favorite unordered list format:

I was feeling low for few weeks in Jan-Feb and I reached the conclusion that I was going through a quarter-life crisis. I don't exactly know what caused it but without wasting too much time, I decided to do what I generally suggest people to do in such situations. Yeah, I decided to get over it and the best way was to do something that would make me feel good about myself and keep me busy.
This brings me to the second significant event - I joined the gym! Yes, after contemplating doing it for years, I finally did it! And I like working out. I don't understand why I didn't do it earlier. Its been over a month since I started working out and I've already moved to a bigger, better gym. And I do feel better now than I used to around two months back.
One of the major developments is also something I consider to be a significant achievement of mine. After months of fighting a losing battle with Tata Indicom broadband, I finally won the war. They replaced their copper wiring with optical fiber cable in my area just for my connection. Now isn't that something! Of course, I showed my gratitude by upgrading my plan.
After using Wikipedia extensively for a long time, I finally decided to give something back to it and have since become an active contributor. I generally stick to what I'm good at - Television and Movies - and looking at the low standard of most India related articles of these fields, there's a serious need of more contributors like me (If I may say so!). And being somebody who is a good follower of rules, I am good at finding, tagging and sometimes fixing violations of policies.
Once my broadband connection started working properly, I realized the power of torrents. I started downloading lots of movies that I wanted to watch and soon I was addicted. I now download at least 4-5 movies a week and since its really hot during the daytime nowadays, my weekends are spent watching these movies rather than going out. I've seen dozens of movies in the last few months and I will start writing a new kind of posts in which I would review three movies with some similarity. I think such posts would keep the blog alive in case I do not wish to write anything personal for some reason so that the blog doesn't run the risk of being abandoned again.
Last but not the least, I completed one year at my new (don't think I can call it that anymore!) job. The going's been good so far. Hoping it would be even better in the second year.

And I'm sure I must have already left a comment or two on the blogs I used to read. If not, expect one very soon.

Twenty Two

2007-01-22T08:25:00.000-08:00

22 days of the new year passed without no new posts but this time I would like to put the blame on the worst Broadband service provider ever - Tata Indicom. Seriously!!

The week before last was a really bad week in terms of customer service for me. Other than Tata Indicom (of course!), I had some really bad experiences with INOX and Pizza Hut. In case of INOX, it was not just bad but also very weird and inadvertently funny. It took them 10 minutes to note down my address on phone and I was asked questions like "Is there a society in your area?" and "Do you stay behind Krishna's house?" making me ask "What does that mean?" and "Who is Krishna?" in return. I didn't get any answers.

Last week, the Celebrity Big Brother controversy was all over the place. And for me, the best part about it was that I was following the show from Day 1 and so I saw the controversy being born in the discussion forums right in front of me. It feels good to be part of something from the beginning. No matter what it is! As far as the racism debate goes, being someone who has never faced it, I think its very subjective and very difficult to prove most of the times. I do find it funny though that the three (non-)celebs in question - Jade, Jo and Danielle, or the "Witches of Eastwick" as they are referred to in the forums, must have never imagined in their dreams that participating in a reality show would ruin their careers. Danielle, who I think said the nastiest things, doesn't even know that she has already lost one contract and might lose 2 more and has been dumped by her footballer boyfriend (for now, at least!). Now that's reality TV!

In other news, work on the new blog template is almost over but I have not decided on the domain name I want yet. I would have asked for help but after last time's suggestions to the tune of "Raj's laptop" for my laptop, I think there's no use. But you could still help if you want. If I can't find a better name, I would have to settle for www.rajshome.com.

I attended one of my friends' wedding yesterday. It is the first I've attended in 2 and a half years and the first in Bangalore. It was fun! Its the season of weddings. 8 people I know are getting married in 1 months' time.

Update: Two people asked about my bad experience with Pizza Hut so here's what happened. I called them up and placed an order for home delivery. I was promised that my order would reach me in 30-40 mins like always. But instead I got a call after 40 mins from the delivery guy asking for directions. I gave him all the directions and also mentioned the landmark (which he claimed to know) that was written on the slip as part of my address. He called me again after 10 mins saying that he still could not find the place. I told him everything very clearly. 7 more mins passed and I was very angry now. I went out and stood near the gate. I saw this guy asking people on the road for the house number and waved my hand and told him that this was the house. He finally came in, gave me everything and then I noticed that the bottle of Pepsi was missing. He then promised to come back in two minutes but actually came back after 7-8 minutes with the Pepsi that he must have bought from somewhere. It was not even chilled. I asked him what the problem was and he had the audacity to tell me that my house was "off the grid" and that they are not supposed to deliver there. I was furious now. I told him that he wasn't the first guy to deliver to my place and then sarcastically asked him if that's why he forgot to bring Pepsi too. I immediately called up Pizza Hut again and told them everything that happened. The woman on the line heard me out patiently, pretended to care and thanked me for letting her know about it.

Also, it looks like blogger found out that I'm going to leave it soon. Its been giving me a hard time for the past two days.

2006: Year Ender

2006-12-30T08:58:00.000-08:00

This being my last post of the year, I've decided to write a really long one.

The end of the year also means that shows with the best/worst/top/bottom and everything are on TV. And I like such shows. I especially like the ones done by VH1. They're almost always funny and entertaining.
I don't think I've ever told you how much I like the US version of The Office. Oddly enough, I like it more than the original UK version. Speaking of which, I am now hooked to podcasts. Two podcasts that I like the most are Never Not Funny by Jimmy Pardo and The Ricky Gervais Show which stars Ricky Gervais who played the lead in the UK version of The Office. But most laughs on his podcast don't come from him but from a really out-of-the-world funny guy, Karl Pilkington. He has apparently become a cult figure because of this podcast and I am left to wonder where I was when all of this was happening. Anyways, you all should give these two podcasts a try. You'll like it.
Another show that I watch religiously these days is Bigg Boss, the Indian version of Big Brother. Well, its a reality show and has people making fools of themselves all day long so of course, I like it. I used to hate Rakhi Sawant before the show but this show changed that and I consider that a big achievement for the show.
Alright, enough about TV. Lets talk about something else. I don't really make new year resolutions but I have decided to do few things differently in 2007. I have decided to eat healthier, start exercising regularly to stay fit and maybe even (finally!) join a gym. Lets see how much I actually do next year.
2007 would also bring lots of changes for the blog. If things go as planned, the blog would soon move to its new permanent home and its own domain. So wait for it.

Finally, I wish the blog and all my blog readers a very happy new year 2007. See you all next year.

Show off and Much More

2006-12-23T00:37:00.000-08:00

First things first. Presenting before you, my totally new laptop, an HP Pavilion dv6114tx. I need a name for it. So please suggest a name. It should obviously be a heroic name like Merlin or something.

Looks sexy, doesn't it? (The pic has been deliberately cropped to ensure that you don't see the wire clutter.)

And now, the second showcasing of the post. Yes, its my brand new iPod 80 GB.

Please note that my palm just made its second appearance on this blog.

And I know that its not a very good picture but its difficult to take pics of gadgets for me so I can't help it.

Now that we're done with the aforementioned show off, lets talk about something else. Like how crazy I am about Tropicana's Lychee Twirl. I drink it like water. Thank god I don't drink alcohol. Otherwise, I would have been an alcoholic. I have absolutely no self-restraint.

Also, I've luckily found some awesome DVDs to add to my collection. I now own Airplane! which is like the funniest movie ever. Hey, its not just me. American Film Institute thinks so too. Plus, I have its sequel, the Police Academy series, The Naked Gun series and Hot Shots and its sequel. I've seen quite a few other movies and would recommend Finding Nemo and Khosla Ka Ghosla to everyone.

This post was written by me four days ago but thanks to the unbelievably excellent service from my broadband provider, Tata Indicom, it got delayed. Its only been 23 days since I first came in touch with Tata Indicom people and I already hate them so much. I never knew I was capable of so much hatred. I want them to be wiped off the planet. But lets not talk about them in this post. They deserve an entire post. Actually, they deserve much more but that's okay.

It's that time of the year again!

2006-12-06T10:41:00.000-08:00

Yes, its officially 7th December now which makes it my 25th birthday!

And I got a really long-awaited gift just hours ago, broadband connection at home for my new laptop!! And I'm very excited!!!

So continuing the tradition I started last year, I wish myself a happy birthday and a great year ahead (full of blogging?!) .

Can't believe I'm in my mid 20s now!

I Don't Like It

2006-11-12T00:16:00.000-08:00

It’s never easy to accept the truth especially when the truth is that one is losing interest in blogging. Add to that the fact that one's swamped with work and what you get is no post for exactly a month!! But lets not talk about it.

So my trip to Lucknow on Diwali went well. I spent 2 days in Delhi and just 9 days at home. Diwali night was fun though a little too windy. I took lots of photos out of which 14 pictures are posted on flickr for all of you. Most of those are of Gurgaon (a city I visited for the first time and what a disappointment it was!)

I also met some really old school friends back home, thanks to Orkut. For some reason, some of these friends felt really concerned about me because of my last post and suggested that I should obviously get married so that there's someone to take care of me. The fact that I don't want to get married anytime soon did not go down very well with them which is weird cos its one thing for such things to come from your parents but from your school friends? It’s totally weird!! And the best part is that my parents don't even care about me getting married. Few relatives do but my dad knows how to get each and everyone of them to shut it. And my mom doesn't encourage them as well. That’s why i love my parents! They are non-interfering. Just the kind i like.

After the heavy rains last week, I finally decided to buy an umbrella. And know what - it hasn't rained ever since!!

And to end with some good news - if things go as planned, I will finally have my own personal laptop in a little over a week.

Home Sick

2006-10-12T00:56:00.000-07:00

Last Wednesday, after being confined to my home on the bandh day, I swore to myself that I would not stay at home the whole day ever. And I spent the whole of Thursday and Friday very much at home because I was down with viral fever. Oh, the irony of life! But those two days and two long nights were horrible. I constantly ran a fever of 103.5 degrees and hence couldn't sleep. To make things worse, this was the first time I fell ill since I started living alone and so I had no medicines other than few homeopathic ones from my dad.

On Wednesday night, when the illness started, I employed my mp3 player to help me sleep and it worked for sometime. I was starting to feel really sad about the whole situation cos I was sick and all alone but Frou Frou helped me get over it by singing "There's beauty in the breakdown" in my ear. And so at 3:15 am, I called up my landlady and asked for medicines.

I am much better now. The motivation for getting better, of course, is that I'm going to Lucknow tomorrow for Diwali. And its been a year since I went home. I last went on last Diwali. The difference this time would be that my parents now have broadband at home so I will keep posting and keep reading other blogs. In fact, I may be able to post more than I do now.

And even though I don't write too many posts these days, its good to know once in a while that my blog can keep people occupied for hour(s) and even make them come back as is evident in screenshot 1, screenshot 2 and screenshot 3. (The third visit was longer than the screenshot). I think that's enough reason to feel good about. What do you think?

Update: In a major offence, I forgot to tell you all about my new pictures from my trip to Nagarahole in which I saw crocodiles, elephants, dears, birds, a fox and a will boar. The pictures can be found on flickr, as always.

Update 2 This is a small clip from one of the funniest episodes of Family Guy. Take a look. It's just too funny!! Watch it, please!

Movie Mania

2006-09-29T05:49:00.000-07:00

I have seen few new and few not-so-new movies recently (I had to make up for the 1 month I lost) so here's my short review of each:

United 93: Its the first American movie I've seen about 9/11 and it is pretty good. The fact that the cast is relatively unknown makes the movie more credible. There are lots of characters and yet you feel connected to all of them. I think that's one of the movie's main strengths.
Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna: I had heard, seen and read so many bad reviews of the movie that I was expecting a disaster and thus was kinda surprised to find that it wasn't all that bad. I would still like to challenge KJ to make a movie in which no one (and especially SRK) has to cry.
The Killer: I've been told that its a copy of Collateral but since I haven't seen the original (cos it had Tom Cruise), I found the movie to be okay. Also, I saw it while cleaning up my closet so it served as the perfect movie for multitasking.
Krrish: I and Lucio watched it cos we wanted to know how some people actually liked it. Even though we didn't get the answer to our question, we had a great time laughing and ripping the movie apart.
Lage Raho Munnabhai: Again, I had heard so many positive reviews that I was sure it would fall short of my expectations but it actually surpassed it. I really enjoyed the movie. It brought a wide smile on the faces of everyone in the theatre. I liked it a li'l more than the original Munnabhai.
Scary Movie 4: What can I say about it? Just like its predecessors, Its also hilariously funny. Especially the scenes from The Village. Also, there's a great scene where two characters pretend to talk in Japanese when they are actually just naming Japanese brands. Oh, and there's a spoof of Tom Cruise's infamous appearance on Oprah at the end which is a must watch.
Omkara: Simply fabulous! Vishal Bharadwaj has done a great job in creating the feel of Rural western UP. Konkona Sen Sharma and Saif Ali Khan are superb. Even Kareena Kapoor makes her character very believable. I really liked the track "Namak" too. However, I laughed really hard when Bipasha Basu spoke her first line. I had to rewind twice to understand what she was saying. What I liked about the DVD was that the English subtitles weren't literal translations which can be laughable at times.

A long weekend starts today and there's Bangalore bandh next week which means that I'll be watching more movies. So watch out for more mini-reviews.

And wish you all a Happy Dussehra and Gandhi Jayanti!

Digital Dreams

2006-09-19T02:12:00.000-07:00

I wanted a change in my life and given the limited control I actually have on things, I decided to make my life a little more fun by buying a brand new TV, a new DVD player and to top it all, I got digital cable. Basically, few things I wanted for a long time now. The result is that I can now watch Family Guy whenever I want to and I don't have to worry about bad cable reception.
I strongly believe that it should be illegal to talk on the cellphone while in the toilet. Seriously, do these people who talk on the phone while on the toilet tell the caller about where they are? And how do they explain the flush sound to the caller? And believe me, the other people in the bathroom don't need to hear someone in the toilet stalls talking on the phone either. And unless there's a law against it, people will continue doing it. So it must be made illegal. Now!
I was a little surprised to see John Mayer's new album, Continuum, in the new releases section at Planet M last Sunday. I didn't expect it to be released in India so soon. Needless to say, I bought it. I can completely relate to the opening song, "Waiting on the World to Change". Take a look at the lyrics. I think most of us would agree with the viewpoint of the song. Its a nice song. And the rest of the album is good too.
I've seen quite a few movies recently but I think I will save my short reviews for the next post. The post frequency has been dropping rather drastically as it is.
Oh, and this post has been written using Windows Live Writer. Its a great tool. A must for all bloggers.

Back Home

2006-09-07T01:52:00.000-07:00

It’s been close to two weeks since I returned back home and things have been mostly okay. I didn’t blog partly because I was busy and partly because I just didn’t feel like.

On my first day to work after coming back, my cell phone’s alarm stuck to following the German time zone (even though I had changed the time zone) and went off at 9:00 am which meant I had to go through a harrowing experience of getting from the centre of the city to Whitefield during the peak traffic hour.

Last Sunday, Sonia Gandhi decided to visit Bangalore and since her rally took place near my home, the traffic situation was horrible. No, not everyday-Bangalore horrible, this was at a totally new level. I’ve never really liked her but now, I hate her. It now seems like Congress might be fined for all the posters they put up all over the city. But don’t we all know that its not really going to happen.

It’s good to be back home and watch Indian television after a month. I missed it. Last Sunday. I turned on the TV and saw the headline “Salman ke ghar Ganesh” (Ganesh in Salman’s home) and it felt so familiar and good.

Paris

2006-08-24T05:25:00.000-07:00

On my last weekend in Germany, I, along with two colleagues, decided to go to Paris. But this time, we booked tickets for a tour which included bus trip to Paris and back, hotel stay in Paris and few sightseeing tours.

Our bus left for Paris on Friday night and I woke up to find myself in a new place. But Let me tell you what I thought of Paris before I continue. It’s fantastic! The best place I’ve ever been to! It’s artistic & beautiful, lively & colorful & yet modern & organized.

There’s just so much to see in Paris, it’s unbelievable. There’s art on every corner. So I obviously took 500 photos and videos. I would have taken more if my camera'S !GB memory card didn't run out of space. I had to buy a Pro account on flickr to post the 218 better ones out of those. So please head over to Flickr and take a look. You must take a look at my pictures. You all owe me that much. I’ve put in hard work into it.

We went to lots of places and saw lots of things plus posting pictures from Flickr here is a pain so I would only show you few pictures here and for the rest, you will need to visit my flickr page and look for a set called "Paris". I know I am being repetitive but you must do that.

And here are few pictures and their description:

Tour Montparnasse is the tallest skyscraper in Paris and we went up to the 56th floor for a fabulous view of Paris.

I took this from the top of Tour Montparnasse. The dome in the middle is St Peter's Basilica of Les Invalides which houses the tomb of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Looking North West from Tour Montparnasse. Tour Eiffel and the La Défense skyline can be clearly seen.

It was cloudy and hence not the best day for taking pictures of Eiffel Tower. But I had to do it anyway. I took this one from Tracadero garden.

Looking North West towards Trocadero from the top of Eiffel Tower.

That's Basilique du Sacré-Cœur on Montmarte. The sunlight was playing hide and seek and working as a natural limelight.

In the evening, we went for a very scenic boatride on the river Seine. I saw the sunset around 8:55 pm while on the boatride. (I really like this picture.) At the end of the boatrode, we saw the glittering Eiffel Tower.

And that's L'Arc de Triomphe at night. We walked down from there through Avenue des Champs-Élysées like everyone who visits Paris is supposed to. We had diner at one of the restaurants there, saw the glittering Eiffel Tower from the obelisk one more time and then went back to the hotel.

Next morning, we went to Musée du Louvre and just like everything else, it was spectacular too.

The amount of art displayed here itself is overwhelming.

The Pyramid only adds to the beauty contrary to what few people suggest.

Two days is too small a time to see a city like Paris. But thats okay because I will definitely visit Paris again and with more time on my hand.

And finally, don't forget to take a look at all my pictures.

Rome, Pisa, Florence in 2 days

2006-08-17T06:15:00.000-07:00

Last weekend our group of three set out on our first major weeekend trip, to Italy. We left for Frankfurt in the wee hours of Saturday morning and took a flight for Rome at 7.40 am. Reached Rome in about 1 and a half hour, checked in to our hostel (which was very near to Termini Station) and then started our tour of the city. Italy seemed far more foreign than Germany did to me.

I'll let the pictures do the talking from now on.

We walked for 10 minutes through the streets and saw huge roman buildings and ruins.

It was amazing how there was so much to see in just a small compound.

The Colosseum was also conviniently located right next door. There were hundreds of people there and very few of them were Italians. Atleast 60% of tourists were Americans. There was a fairly large number of Indian tourists everywhere we went.

After having a pizza in one of the famous roman roadside restaurants, we headed towards the Spanish steps (the only place in our trip that I didn't care much about) which were extremely crowded and then to the Vatican. Needless to say, The Vatican was truly amazing. The Piazza was huge. We tasted our first Gelati there as well.

Our last stop for the day was Trevi Fountain which was swarming with people. We managed to find a place near the fountain to throw the customary coin though.

Day two of our journey started with a train ride to Pisa. The whole track ran parallel to the beach and if you remember this post, this was the closest I've ever been to a beach.

Our first and only stop in Pisa was Piazza del Duomo because all the attractions are inside one walled area. Somebody must have thought of tourists while constructing these buildings. The only low point of my trip was when I got to know that we could only go up the Leaning Tower at 4.40 pm as only few people are allowed at a time and that wasn't an option for us as we had a flight back to Frankfurt at 7pm from Florence.

The cathedral (Duomo) is spectacular on the inside but since it was dark, I couldn't get too many great pictures out of it. Outside, hundreds of people kept taking pictures in the cliched pose and we went to the base of the leaning tower to atleast see it properly from the outside.

A 1 hour train journey took us to Florence but we didn't have much time left to see the city properly. We just went aroud the station which is pretty close to the famous Duomo and quickly caught the shuttle to the airport. From whatever I saw in the 2 hours that I was there, Florence seemed like a really great place, very modern and clean and the only place in Italy I can imagine leading a normal life in. Others are just worth a short visit, in my opinion.

We soon got into a really small plane and left for Frankfurt. The view from the flight window was beautiful though. After an hour and a half, we reached Frankfurt and all of us felt relieved to be back home.

In the end, it was a really successful trip and I was doubly happy since I was the one who planned it and made all the arrangements.

I took a total of 338 pictures in 2 days out of which I've uploaded 85 on flickr. So if the pictures posted here look good to you, go take a look at my flickr page.

Trip to Heidelberg n More

2006-08-08T05:20:00.000-07:00

There are lots of things to write about but I don’t have much time so I will only list down the important ones.

• My colleagues from India who are accompanying me have a tough time with the lunch served in the office even though vegetarisch (i.e. vegetarian) main course is served. But I like the food here and have totally no problem at all. So all of them complain about the food and all I can do is sit and sympathize with them even though I enjoy the food.

• We didn’t do much over the weekend. The only noteworthy place we visited was Heidelberg. It’s a beautiful city. It looks like a typical European city one sees on those postcards. Mannheim, my host city, on the other hand, is very modern. We basically just went to two of the biggest attractions in Heidelberg, the castle (Schloss) and the main street (HauptStrasse). The place was full with tourists even though all the shops were closed cos it was a Sunday (which seemed a little strange). I mean, why would they not want all the business from the tourists? I have uploaded lots of pictures of the place as well as few others of Mannheim (More pictures will come soon). So go take a look at my "Trip to Germany" set on flickr. There are some 50 photos right now.

The first pic you see right here are of the view of the city from the castle.

The second pic is of one of the walls of the castle.

• We passed through an area outside Mannheim called Kafertal Wald where there was a huge US army base. The place was full of Americans, American military vehicles and most of all, American flags. There was a Wal-Mart nearby as well. It was weird.

• The weather here right now is just like the weather in Bangalore. Complete with the wind and unexpected rains. So its very comfortable for me.

• As you might have noticed, I have picked up quite a few German words. Not sentences, just few common words and names of places. It can be helpful at times even though most people here do understand English. I haven’t faced any major language problem yet. Lets hope things stay that way.

Graffiti

2006-08-01T08:10:00.000-07:00

Its just been two days since I landed at the Frankfurt Airport and I think I'm already used to the routine here. Things have been great so far. People had really scared me before coming here that its too hot and it was hot when I reached but it started raining on Sunday evening and the weather has been pleasant since then. I have not taken too many pictures yet either.

This is the first time I'm visiting a foreign country but what's weird is that I don't feel like I'm in a foreign place at all. I feel like I feel when I visit any Indian city for the first time. This in spite of the fact that Germans are all around me. Is that weird or normal? Whatever!

I have seen quite a few new things here though. Graffiti being one of them, pin drop silence on the streets being another and most surprising of all, cars stopping for the pedestrians to cross the road. Plus it was a li'l difficult to adjust to the fact that it gets dark only after 9:30 pm.

I know this isn't a long post but I wrote it using a German keyboard which, I tell you, is not easy to use.

Gearing Up!

2006-07-28T03:59:00.000-07:00

I’ve always liked the idea of business travel cos one basically gets to visit new places without applying for leaves. Now it’s time to find out what it’s actually like cos I have finally got an opportunity to travel for work. And it’s a long trip. I’ll be gone for almost a month. I hope to see lots of new places, meet new people, and takes lots of pictures. Basically, have fun (besides working, of course). Right now, last minute preparations are on and I am yet to start packing. But I have whole of tomorrow for that so I am not really worried. I’ll try to write a post as often as possible and try to post pictures too.

Look Around You

2006-07-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

Its only been few days since I bought my new camera and since I don't get time to go to some picturesque locations for a shoot during the week, I had to limit my experimentation around the office and home. I still have to learn a lot of tricks because the camera offers a lot of choices and it takes time to figure out when to use what.

Edit: I posted the pic of my dirty shoes I talked about in the last post on the request of two people but then decided to just give a link to that pic on flickr. Go watch it there and if you find it gross, don't complain.

Anyhow, here are some of the pictures I have taken with my new digicam.

Some small different colored flowers in the office campus.

Some plants in the office campus.

A giant cloud as seen from the office terrace.

Hope you like them. You can see these and few other new pics on my flickr page as always.

Note: I do not plan to turn this blog into a photoblog so I won't be posting pictures here unless there's some special reason. You can always find all my pics on flickr.

Instant Happiness

2006-07-17T01:09:00.000-07:00

16th July, 2004 was when I came to Bangalore and yesterday I completed 2 years in the city. The city has been really nice to me in these two years. I have grown really attached to the city. I consider it my second home. And I feel good about Bangalore these days. After a development drought of several months, the city is getting some share of development. Roads are being rebuilt and repaired; long delayed flyovers are finally getting ready, new sidewalks are being made. Things are looking up.

As one might have noticed, I didn’t write a post in the last 10 days or so and since it’s important that I blame someone, I would like to place the entire blame on some people in my blog neighborhood who also happen to be my blog’s loyal readers (at least three of them) for not reading my blog and commenting on the posts in the past couple of weeks. The only consolation is that they are genuinely busy which can be proved from the fact they’ve not been updating their blogs. So it’s not like they are just ignoring my blog.

Last Saturday, amidst all the rain and the accompanying madness, I bought a new digicam. It’s a Canon Powershot S2 IS. It’s absolutely fabulous. What this means is that you’ll soon get to see lots of pictures on this blog. None today though cos I haven’t taken any worthwhile pictures yet except for a pretty neat picture of my dirty rain-soaked shoes.

Here We Go Again

2006-07-06T23:24:00.000-07:00

In my last post, I mentioned my life’s rules and just yesterday, I received a forward from a friend titled “Life's Little Instruction Book”. Now, I don’t know how popular this forward is or if everyone knows about it but I thought I would share some of the points. My comments are in italics.

Points that I agree with and practice:

Always accept an outstretched hand.
Be brave. Even if you're not, pretend to be. No one can tell the difference.
Give people a second chance, but not a third.
Don't allow the phone to interrupt important moments. It's there for your convenience, not the caller's.
Think twice before burdening a friend with a secret.
When someone hugs you, let them be the first to let go. – Of course, otherwise it gets awkward.
Take charge of your attitude. Don't let someone else choose it for you. - Absolutely
Once in a while, take the scenic route. – I do this as often as possible.
Remember that 80 per cent of the success in any job is based on your ability to deal with people.
Wave at the children on a school bus.

Points that I don’t agree with or can’t practice:

Whistle. – I’ve tried, I can’t.
Avoid sarcastic remarks. – Oh come on, I might as well stop talking altogether.
Never deprive someone of hope; it might be all that they have. – I think false hope is just not worth it.
When playing games with children, let them win. – Why? Nobody let me win when I was a kid.
Be modest. A lot was accomplished before you were born. – Not gonna happen.
Never waste an opportunity to tell someone you love them. – Its difficult for some people.

Points that are very interesting or I might want to try:

Make it a habit to do nice things for people who will never find out.
Become the most positive and enthusiastic person you know. – I think I might be that already.
Begin each day with some of your favorite music. – I try to.
Show respect for everyone who works for a living, regardless of how trivial their job.- I know I should but some people themselves make it hard to respect them
Become someone's hero. – Who knows, I might already be someone’s hero.

Moving on, I’m sure everyone must have heard those people on TV going all nuts about the new superman movie. Apparently, they would explode into thousand pieces of Kryptonite if they see anyone other than Christopher Reeve playing the title role. I mean, it’s been a long time since then and I didn’t see any of those movies so who cares! I saw Superman Returns last Saturday and it was pretty good. I honestly never expected it to be that good given all the okayish reviews. Brandon Routh is excellent as Superman. There’s James Marsden aka Cyclops in the movie too. Kate Bosworth though is not very good. She looks more like an overworked mother than a fiery journalist. Or maybe I’m too used to watching Teri Hatcher play Lois Lane. But the movie was awesome. It made me take a superhero seriously for the first time and that’s not a joke even though I am laughing and it sounds totally ridiculous.

The Blue Dot

2006-06-30T03:55:00.000-07:00

Few hundred thousand minutes ago, Sayesha wrote a post about her life’s formula and in my comment, I gave a small list of the rules I follow in my life. I still live by those rules. So I thought it would be a good idea to post those on my blog. So here are the rules:

Do what you feel is right.
If people are bad to you, be worse to them.
If people are nice, be nice to them.
If people are too nice, be rude to them until they r nice or rude to you.
Once you realize you did something stupid, try apologizing. If it doesn’t work, forget about it.
Create a new rule when needed.

And I like the way I live my life, so the rules must be working for me.

Moving on, have I ever mentioned how much I love Pandora? It’s simply fantastic. In case you haven’t tried it yet, do so now. It creates a radio station based on your favorite artists and the sound quality is excellent. Lately, I’ve had a chance to listen to lots of new music and my current favorite is “Crazy” by Gnarls Barkley. Even its video is superb. I’ve recently discovered Frou Frou too. I love their electronic sound. The tracks “Flicks” and “Breathe in” by them are truly addictive. It’s sad that they disbanded. Speaking of music, I woke up today with the song “SOS” by Rihanna stuck in my head. I have no idea why but it was. I tried hard to get it out of my head but failed. As a result, random people on the streets I passed by got a sample of the song cos I kept humming it and every time I hummed the line “Someone help me, Its not healthy”, I thought to myself that this isn’t healthy either.

I was talking to a close college friend on ym yesterday when I told her that it’s very easy for me to hate someone. And it’s true. I’m a man of strong feelings. The smallest of faults in others can make me dislike or even hate them. Then she asked me why it is so and I thought for a little while and said that that’s just who I am. But after thinking a little more, I’ve decided that it’s because finding faults and shortcomings (in mostly others n sometimes myself too) is the very basis of my existence. And that’s what I’m best at (besides my work, of course). And it’s not like that people don’t deserve my hatred. I mean some guy who’s a friend of my colleague used my system last weekend and left a blue pen mark on my monitor. Now, I don’t know the guy but I know that he a freak. I mean who uses a pen to point to a TFT monitor. Now all I can notice on my monitor is the blue dot. And there’s nothing I can do about it. I can’t ask for a new monitor cos this one has a small blue dot on it, can I?

The Wait is Over

2006-06-23T04:18:00.000-07:00

I once expressed my love for Google Earth and I still love it but I always missed having hi-res images of Lucknow. It’s my hometown after all and a truly amazing city. I even felt hurt when Google added images of Bhopal and Indore cos Lucknow is bigger (and may I say better even though I’ve not been to any of those cities). So imagine my surprise when I installed Google Earth on my new system yesterday morning and noticed that the map of India had a lot of new strips on it, you know, the ones that represent high-res images. Turns out Google did the biggest update ever on 8th June. A lot of Indian cities even the small ones are now available in hi-res.

I was extremely thrilled to finally see Lucknow. I quickly located my home, my school, my college and a lot of other places. I was also surprised to see that the ariel view of Lucknow is a lot better than most Indian cities. There are no big slums or anything and most of the city especially the trans-gomti area (where I live) looks beautiful. It’s heartening to see that large parts of Lucknow are not congested like in big cities. A lot of other cities in UP such as Kanpur, Agra, Bareli, Varanasi, Allahabad, Gorakhpur etc. are also available in high-res. I could even see Mangalore and parts of Mysore.

Coming back to Lucknow, I immediately searched Keyhole Community to see if somebody had uploaded placemarks for Lucknow and I did found one large folder there. But a lot of important places were missing so I decided to do something I had never done. Create a folder of placemarks and upload it. It took me two hours to finally do it. And will take even longer to write a list of all the placemarks and post the KMZ file on the boards.

But all of you can download the KMZ file here. Now I know that most of you may not be interested in it but download the file and watch the places if you have time. Do it for me. You’ll like what you see, I think.

For people who do not use Google Earth, here are a few screenshots of Lucknow.

Finally...

2006-06-19T02:18:00.000-07:00

It’s been a long time since I wrote my favorite kind of post, the one with an unordered list. So here it is.

I used to get a lot of spam 2-3 years back when hotmail didn’t have a spam detection engine. Most of these mails claimed that I had pre-approved credit cards and loans waiting for me. Of course, it was a lie. But last week, I got a real mail from Citibank telling me that I had a gold credit card waiting for me and I just had to login to their site, click on a button and it would be delivered to me. Now, I know it’s no big deal and I already have the card they are offering me so I won’t even be taking it but still it felt really good to be “pre-approved”.

Last weekend, I watched The Omen and Chup Chup Ke. The Omen was supposed to be a horror movie but it wasn’t too scary. Of course, there were scenes when the women in the audience got scared and shouted and I laughed but the movie was just okay. Also, I could clearly see the boom in at least three scenes. Chup Chup Ke was supposed to be a comedy, on the other hand, which it was in the first half but in the second half it became a cheap family melodrama where both the main actresses (Kareena Kapoor and Sushma Reddy) wanted the actor to marry the other one and the actor (Shahid Kapoor) just moved from side to side like a puppet. It was difficult to sit in the theatre for the last 30 minutes of the movie. On the whole, it was an average movie.

My training is finally over. It feels so good to sit in a cubicle again instead of a training room. And it’s a pretty nice and big cubicle so I like it here.

I Did it!

2006-06-02T03:43:00.000-07:00

Last Sunday, I decided it was high time that I finished reading the fifth novel of my life that I started reading few months and gave up on after the fourth chapter. So I got dressed and went to INOX to watch “The Da Vinci Code”. Unfortunately, it was completely sold out so I decided to go try my luck at PVR even though it is a little too far. I reached the ticket window at 12.54 pm and the next show was at 1 pm so I had very slim chance of getting a ticket but just then a guy stepped in front of me and said something to the ticket window guy who then picked up a mic and made an announcement that there was 1 last ticket available for the 1 pm show. Cud I’ve been any luckier? I quickly gestured that I wanted it. The ticket window guy pointed towards the other guy and I bought the ticket from him. Turns out that he was supposed to watch the movie with his girlfriend but she couldn’t. He wanted to sell both the tickets but she wanted him to watch the movie and then tell her all about it. So anyhow, I finally got in.

Just fifteen minutes into the movie, I realized that I had stopped reading the book just before it got interesting. How sad!

Now the movie is long, even longer than most Bollywood movies. But its okay. Neither good nor bad. Since I’d not read the book, I didn’t know what was going to happen next so it was a little fun. And I’ve been a fan of Audrey Tautou even since I saw Le Fabuleux destin d'Amélie Poulain a.k.a. Amelie. But Tom Hanks looked bored and boring. And I think the movie was easy enough for even the people who haven’t read the book to understand.

Once I got home, I quickly took the book out of the cupboard and turned over to the last page and read it. There, that’s how I finished reading my fifth book.

Fun..aa (now includes Fanaa - Movie Review)

2006-05-27T03:41:00.000-07:00

I worked (Well, more like went to the office) on last two Saturdays so I had made up my mind not to work today and thus began my fun Saturday.

I had booked my ticket for the morning show of "Fanaa" but I needed to eat something before that so I went to this nice, little joint called "Fresh n Natural" and ordered a juice and a sandwich. Now I don't know about everyone but to me a sandwich means two slices of bread cut into two halves but to my surprise (or rather shock), the guy got me four slices of bread. Who eats that much? I could ate half the sandwich (2 slices, that is) and left the rest.

Coming to the movie now, ~~I'm not gonna write a review cos I am too tired but it was nice.~~ I'm not tired now and I accidentally wrote that the movie was nice so I must write a review now.

So here it is:

The moive is good in parts. The first half is really dull and too heavy on ghisi-piti shaayari that completely bores and irritates. The song "Des Rangeela" is awful. Apart from that, the music is okay. Aamir looks old in his guide getup. Tho I did like the fact that they cast ex-channel V VJ and Indian Sabrina Shruti Seth to play Kajol's friend cos I really like her.

*review pause*

I must say that even tho I don't believe that people have types as in "She's not my type" but Shruti Seth is definitely the type of girl I like. Let me define the type for you - Beautiful and cute but very unsexy.

*review pause over*

I liked the second half far better. Atleast it didn't have too much poetry. Both Aamir and Kajol look better in the second half. Tabu tries to lend some credibility to the terror threat plot and fails miserably. You never feel like something of (inter)national importance is going on. In fact, I laughed really hard when Tabu announced that the terrorists stole different parts of a missile from Russia, India and Pakistan and they now have a whole missile. How ridiculous is that! The special effects are particularly bad and make you laugh. There's also a photo of Rishi Kapoor from the days of "Bobby" which looks out of place.

Update2: I forgot to mention Kajol's really hot friend called Bobo. She looks like a softer version of Suzanne Khan Roshan (whatever she's called). Also, when Kajol's "Dil Kya Kare" (a terrible movie) released, Kunal Kohli mocked it on his show "Chalo Cinema" bcos Kajol got pregnant after having sex just once with Ajay Devgan in the movie.....and yet!

So the movie sure has a few flaws but it is so insipid that I didn't dislike it.And yes, really far, far better than what I expected. Altho I must confess that my expectations from movies have taken a serious hit ever since I watched "Humko Deewana Kar Gaye".

My rating *changed after Lucio's comment*: 6.25 / 10

And yes, I kept my promise of 1 post per week.

PS: I forgot to tell you about the second shocker of the day. I have seen cars and bikes with a "L" sign but for the first time, I saw a BMTC bus with a giant red "L" painted on its back. What's that about?

Quickie!

2006-05-20T03:15:00.000-07:00

If you happen to be one of the few people who still visit my blog once in a while, you might have noticed that its almost one month since I wrote my last post. So I guess it can't passed off as venial sin this time.

I've also realized that I forgot to celebrate the one-year anniversary of my home in April. I didn't do much to spruce up the place in this one year cos I always thought that I might have to move soon but now that I know I'll stay there for atleast one more year, I'm thinking of finally doing something about it.

I attended another Time Management session recently in which I was told that I should do things that I like doing (like blogging) in my off-peak hours (like immediately after lunch) so that's what I am doing right now. And I promise to write atleast a post every week from now on.

Also, I want all of you to forget all the good things I said about ICICI Bank. I don't like it much now. Why? Well, I applied for a Gold Credit Card some time back and after months of processing (during which I got 3 other gold cards), they sent me a mini card, a Mini Card!! If like me, you don't know what that is, it is an embarrassingly tiny card which I would never use even if it were the only card I had. It even comes with a hole so that I could put it in a key ring. Like, how out of touch from reality could these people be? Who would want to show off that ugly card by putting it in one's key ring. Which reminds me that I need to get it cancelled soon.

In reality TV news, the current season of "The Amazing Race" came to an end this week. Unfortunately, my favorite team of this season, Monica and Joseph (Mojo, as they call themselves), got eliminated last week so I had no one to root for in the finals. But I would have been happier if the fake hippies didn't win it. Losers!

A Different World

2006-04-21T20:57:00.000-07:00

Its now more than a week since I joined the new company and I still have two months of training left.

But in just one week, my life has changed a lot.

My old office was quite centrally located on Infantry Road which is just 4 km from my home and one could easily walk to Cunningham Road, Commercial Street and MG Road from there. My new office is in Whitefield, completely outside the city. There is nowhere to go from there. There are big office campuses there and nothing else.

Also, since my home is far from my office, I need to take the office shuttle. The shuttle comes to my stop at 7.15 am in the morning which means I have to get up at 5.30 am. Tragic! I even had to run half the distance yesterday (I woke up late) with people on the road looking at me all funny.

Anyhow, the first day I went to catch the office shuttle, I saw something completely new. A world I never knew existed. There were only buses and cabs belonging to software companies on the road apart from a few private vehicles. And there were atleast 20 people waiting for their respective buses/cabs. It was surprisinig.

I've almost got used to the new routine and all the commuting somehow makes me feel more like a part of Bangalore's IT brigade.

Update: Forgot to add a funny incident. One evening I was sitting in the bus as were 4-5 other people. The driver came in and held up a book which said, "Know Your Limits". Within a second, it was clear that he had found it in the bus and wanted to return it to the owner but I wondered how funny it would have been if he had actually bought it and wanted everyone to read it and then stay within their limits. Maybe its one of those things where you have to be there for it to be funny bcos it was really funny and I couldn't control my laughter, which I finally had to bcos there were other people there (who I don't speak to) and they would have assumed that I'm nuts.

Caught Up!

2006-04-15T02:23:00.000-07:00

Its been a hectic week or rather a hectic first half and too relaxed second half.

I got relieved from my first company on Tuesday and joined the new one on Wednesday which was great because I didn't take a single day's break. But my first day in my new company was shortened because a huge (not in size!) film star had died. Coincidentally, my first day at the new job also turned out to be the first day I saw burning tires in the middle of the road. Exciting!

I got a long 4-day holiday and was able to eat lunch on Thursday only because an Army-run supermarket in my neighborhood was open.

I don't know what to say about the shameless things that happened in the city. I am just mad at the police for not firing on the low-lives. I mean they lost a constable and only 5 morons died! This is so unfair. They had a tremendous opportunity. The scum of Bangalore was gathered together in front of them, which happens rarely, and the police could have easily wiped them out. The death toll could have easily been 5000 and I would have been a happy man.

Coming back to the job change, people in my (now previous) company were very helpful and I felt really bad about leaving the job. I felt equally sad about saying goodbye to my office PC. I did transfer my personal files to pen drives before leaving though.

In other news, I made my first "real" trip to a bank this week. It was a nice experience. ICICI bank is far better than I expected it to be.

I haven't been able to read blogs but I'll try to catch up on all of them now.

Something to talk about

2006-04-05T00:40:00.000-07:00

I am really impressed by the overall packaging and presentation of Sahara’s new Hindi movie channel, Filmy. All the more because technical finesse is something you don’t really expect from Sahara. The channel truly has a very filmy style. Everything from the logo to the promos and all things in between are all very filmy. Plus they also show recap of the movie after each break.

STAR News and the likes have finally done it. The way they made what was clearly a real wardrobe malfunction incident look like a cheap publicity stunt is truly appalling. In fact, most of the Indian media is to blame for making a big deal out of the thing as well as leaking out the video clip in the form of an MMS. What’s even more disturbing is that people are making all kinds of comments regarding Carol Gracias, who in my opinion, must be praised for dealing with the whole thing so gracefully on the ramp. I think that’s what irks some people. They would have loved it had she panicked and left the stage immediately. Moreover, what the numbskulls masquerading as news journalist don’t get is why on earth would a popular and established model like her do such a thing on purpose? And that too not just for TV but also in front of live audience. Oh, I get it. Because she’s a model. Models don’t care about going nude in public and being objectified, do they?

Staying with the same story, the Maharashtra govt. has ordered a probe to find if the two malfunctions in the LFW were staged because apparently, “the incident has hurt the sensibilities of people, especially women”. Now who exactly could these people be? Its definitely not the people who were at the fashion show cos they seemed unfazed by it in the clip and clapped for Carol later in the day. Could it be the people who would really never see a fashion show but saw it on the news? But how could have the blurred out version hurt their sensibilities? Maybe it’s the people who downloaded the video clip off the Internet. Not! So that leaves us with just one option – Shiv Sainiks. It’s been a while since Valentine’s Day. They need something to do.I agree that the designers should be careful about these things and should own up instead of saying that these things keep happening but a probe into it is completely ridiculous especially when there are laughable things like this (via India Uncut) going on in the country which actually require a probe.

The twO-in-One tag

2006-03-31T03:28:00.000-08:00

I looked around and didn’t see too much activity on any of the blogs I usually visit so I decided to take matters into my hands and I came up with a small two-in-one tag to get things going.

The first step in this two-step meme is to find your Japanese name using the Japanese Name Generator (via Blog Reader and his Blog). It’s completely random and doesn’t take too much time which is why its fun. Also, my name turned out to be Shou Ito, which is really small compared to other Japanese names and I really like it. I won’t mind it if you call me by that name at all.

The second and a little longer step is to dig into your blog’s archives and find the one post, which you think (remember this. its important!), is the worst post you’ve ever written. It could be a post you wanted to delete before anybody could read it – maybe you even did that. Or a post you wished nobody would read, or maybe it was so bad that you wrote another post soon to ensure it wasn’t at the top of your blog.

Here on Thoughts on a lonely afternoon, my worst post has to be “Why Do It Yourself?”. It’s really very dumb. Almost mind numbing.

I want everyone to do this. Cos if you do this, I’ll mention your name and post your post’s permalink here. (How tempting is that?)

So start working on it. Now!

Well, here are the posts that were written in response to this tag:

Sher-e-Jalandhar - Only For Raj's Tag
Akanksha - Untitled
Abigail did the tag in this post's comments section so here's the link to her worst post.

"I'm Real!"

2006-03-27T03:54:00.000-08:00

That’s the post talking in the title because the last two posts were too short to be called real posts.

I’ve noticed that it’s not just me whose post frequency has gone down but a lot of other bloggers I know have slowed down as well. I’d like to believe that it’s because of me. (Cue for people to say, “Yes, I miss your posts so much that I can’t get myself to write anything!)

That I haven’t written too many posts is no reason to believe that there’s nothing interesting happening in my life.

Just last weekend, I was looking for a particular “Main” and “Cross” in the godforsaken place called HSR Layout. And yes, it’s called so because nobody in the department, which names areas, was smart enough to come up with something better than Hosur-Sarjapur Road Layout.

In any case, I saw an aged man sitting outside his huge mansion and I assumed that he might know about this place but he only spoke Telugu or so he said. He directed me towards his neighbor’s daughter (or maybe granddaughter) who was playing with a football. She must have been 9-10 yrs old. So I thought to myself, “What does she know? She’s a kid!”

But I didn’t want to insult the old man so I went ahead and asked her the address. And guess what she said! “I don’t know. I’m just a kid!” It’s difficult to believe, right? She had the exact same thoughts as me. I smiled and said, “Its okay. I’ll ask someone else.” and got out of there.

In blog news, something huge happened on 11th March when somebody (from IIIT, Allahabad, according to Statcounter) wrote the longest comment on this blog and then few minutes later topped it up with a far bigger comment. Sure, most of it has been copy-pasted but so what? I would like to encourage others to write such long comments too in the future.

Changes

2006-03-20T04:54:00.000-08:00

My life's headed for a big change and I think I'm ready for it.

I apologize for not reading your blogs regularly. I had my hands full. I didn't write the customary Friday post so you know I'm being honest.

Uncertain

2006-03-10T01:15:00.000-08:00

There was a time when I used to write a post everyday or at least once in two days no matter how busy I might be. But these days even if I have some free time at hand, I can’t write a thing. I seem to have lost the will to blog. And it’s just the blog either, I don’t want to sound dramatic but I think I’m losing interest in everything I liked doing.

Maybe except driving myself crazy with thinking too much.
I hope this is a passing phase.

If only I knew what I want, things would be so much easier.

Much Ado About Something

2006-03-02T20:27:00.000-08:00

I think that delaying my long impending post on the “mystery” weekend trip would be wrong so here it is.

Last Friday, we were told that we’d be leaving “towards” Mysore by train on Saturday afternoon. This was the first time I was going out of Bangalore by train so I was excited cos I love watching cities from a train. Plus trains are much more comfortable and enjoyable than buses.

But before all this, we all were sent a mail informing us that all of us had been divided into four teams and we all had to participate in a theme-based group dance event. So rehearsals began on Thursday. As you all probably know by now, I hate dancing but am open to choreographed dancing so I happily joined the rehearsals. Now, it sometimes bothers my colleagues (especially Lucio) and me that all of us are divided into teams every time we go out which makes everything competitive and takes the fun away but the truth is that I’ve been on three company outings so far and I’ve always had lots of fun. The reason lies in the fact that I’m extremely over competitive and had it not been for the sake of winning an event, I would have never even talked to half the people on the trip. So I kind of, secretly, like it.

So anyhow, we even had to come early on Saturday for the dance rehearsals. I had to dance on one Punjabi and one Kannada song. Ya, we were going for the clichéd ‘Unity in Diversity’ theme. The train journey was okay. We had one full coach to ourselves and Bangalore did not look too good from the train. Also, there was lots of noise pollution because of numerous people singing at the top of their voices and calling it playing Antakshari. We reached Mysore on time and were directed to exit the station though a side gate and then made to board a bus after some wait. Oh, and Mysore looked much better from the train.

The bus ride lasted for about 20 minutes and we soon found ourselves outside a water-cum-theme park. My first thought was “They brought us so far for this!” but since we were already there, I decided to let it go. The first event after we rested for 15 minutes was Treasure Hunt and since it was already dark and we were new to the place, it was difficult. Our team found five of the eight clues. After everybody was tired after running in the dark, we were told that e had to come back in 20 minutes for the dance competition. My team again did great. I forgot one step in the dance routine but since everybody used to follow me, they all did what I did and so a tragedy was averted.

After the dance competition, dinner and drinks were served and dance floor was thrown open for everyone. This meant that it was my turn to sit and watch all the drunken people make fools of themselves.

The next day in the morning, there was a tug of war in the pool. And guess what, my team won!! But before everyone woke up, Lucio and I went for a walk and I took two snaps with my phone cam. (Not having a digicam sucks!)

The first picture is of few birds sleeping on the pathway:

The second picture is of a fising scene from an embossed mural (if you know a better term, let me know) on the wall:

After that, everyone was free to try out all the slides. The most fun was to make a colleague go on a particular slide she was afraid of. Then we moved to wave pool and spent some time there. After that everyone was invited to the pool for free for all dancing and I thought that fun was over for me. But then something miraculous happened. One of the teams had hired a professional choreographer and then had brought her along on the trip so she was asked to stand out of the pool and give us some great steps and we just had to follow her. A godsend. So I danced to all the latest songs.

After all that, we ate lunch, went on the remaining rides and then we left for the station. We were booked on a passenger train this time and it stopped at almost every station. And then it stopped at a station for 45 minutes because of the supernatural house that Lucio wanted for himself. We finally reached Bangalore more than an hour late.

The aftereffects of the trip were that my body was badly aching on Monday and I am severely suntanned even now.

So what do you think of this “mystery” weekend outing. Not bad, huh?

Update: I forgot to tell you all that my team won the whole thing. We would soon be going out for a victory lunch.

Save The Best For Last

2006-02-27T21:52:00.000-08:00

Varun tagged me and the rule of the tag is:

If u were to see 5 countries (your home country excluded) and then never get to see anything else, which countries would these be?

For me, it would have to be:

France – Italy – Germany – Luxembourg – Greece (EU is almost one country, right?)
South Korea
Russia
Canada
Israel

I tag all my regular readers. No compulsion, as always.

The Lull before the Storm

2006-02-22T01:31:00.000-08:00

I feel a little bad that some of you come here everyday expecting a new post and they find nothing! Anyhow, this sadness is short-lived cos I have devised a cunning plan which would allow me to blog more often. So just bear with me for few more weeks!

In the meanwhile, here are some new developments:

The new blog toy, cocomment, is really cool. Its definitely one of the “in” things right now. It allows you to keep track of all the comments you make on others’ blogs and also allow you to share your comments on your blog with help of a blog box, which can be seen on the sidebar of my blog too. You can customize it so suit your template but I haven’t done that because of paucity of time. Its still in beta but then so is Flickr and even Gmail so it’s okay.

I met Sher-e-Jalandhar last weekend and for some reason he thinks that I am very serious which I don’t think I am. I’m only a little serious but don’t mind being called “brooding types”. He seemed like a fun and easygoing guy. (Sorry SeJ, I don’t do compliments very well. I am far better at criticizing.)

I also met an old friend from school after 14 years (the one I mentioned in this post). It was fun to meet her after such a long gap. Also, NamesDatabase has now linked to that post and I am getting a lot more hits than usual. But what makes me really happy is when someone they refer checks out some of my other posts too.

Our company is taking us for an outing this weekend and since the location is top secret and we are all supposed to have loads of fun there, if I don’t blog for next few weeks, it would be safe to assume that I died bcos of all the fun.

Update: I always wanted to apply for The Amazing Race. But now that they are actually allowing Asian people to apply for an Asian version, I realized I couldn’t apply. Firstly, I don’t have a teammate and secondly, I can’t take a leave of 30-40 days if I get selected. Actually, I don’t have a passport either but it is expected any day now. So looks like I’ll just have to be content with watching TAR.

Valentine's Day Files

2006-02-14T21:19:00.000-08:00

Since yesterday was supposedly the most appropriate day to express ones’ love, that’s what I did. I confessed my undying love for myself.

One of the earliest posts on this blog was about short stories that I read quite some time ago. One of those stories that I really liked was The Man Who Married Himself. I was quite fascinated with it. I think that it’s quite possible that I might do such a thing. Okay, may be not, but you get the point.

Our office has this tradition on Valentine’s Day where anyone can buy a rose; write the name of the person he/she wishes to send it to and put it in a box. At the end of the day, the guy and gal who get the most number of roses are crowned the “King” and “Queen” of hearts.

I ended up with 3 roses, just one less than the guy who was crowned “King”. If only I had sent a rose to myself. I let myself down.

Also, apparently, I remind girls of their younger brothers. Last year, my batch mates told me this in unison and yesterday my new teammate told me the same. I don’t think I told you all but four newbies have joined my team and I’m not the youngest in my team anymore. But even they find me to be the most immature so things aren’t all that bad.

Celebrity Sighting

2006-02-12T23:55:00.000-08:00

A chance visit to MG Road on Friday evening turned eventful when I saw a tall girl standing near a corn stall. She looked familiar. I thought about it for few seconds and then I realized that it was Deepika Padukone, the upcoming model and actress and daughter of famous Badminton champion, Prakash Padukone. She was with another girl and on old lady. But I wasn’t sure if it really was her. I then walked till Cauvery Emporium and was waiting for my friends to catch up. But Deepika caught up before they could and she stood right next to me near the entrance of Cauvery when the old lady shouted “Deepika” and she looked back so I was sure of who it was. She looked beautiful, I must say.

Vanilla Sky

2006-02-10T01:44:00.000-08:00

I finally saw “Eternal Sunshine of Spotless Mind” on HBO last Saturday. It was really good. This was the first time Jim Carrey looked like a normal man to me rather than looking like someone whose teeth are too keen on breaking free from his mouth. For some reason, the movie reminded me of “Vanilla Sky”.

Things are getting pretty ugly on Indian Idol 2. Sonu Nigam is upset that the contestants are giving too much time to publicity events and makeovers rather than singing and he’s right to a large extent. But he has that unique quality that makes him look like a jerk no matter how right he might be. He makes even Anu Malik good.

You may or may not have seen Indian Idol 2 so let me catch you up on the 9 remaining contestants.

Panna Gill: Everyone on the show thinks he looks good which is a lie. He can barely sing but survives bcos apparently teenage girls think he looks good too.

Monali Thakur: She looks good, has big eyes. Sings well too. She should have lasted till the final five but is sadly out now.

NC Karunya: Great singer. Looks like a case of Abhishek Bachchan-cloning gone awry. Would probably make it to the final three.

Ravi Tripathi: The biggest f**ktard ever on the show. Terrible singer. All contestants hate him, as do the judges. Makes a fool of himself every time he is saved (no thanks to the retarded people who vote for him).

Sandeep Acharya: Udit Narayan’s rajasthani cousin. Looks okay. Sings fine. But we don’t need another Udit Narayan, do we?

Amey Date: Most deserving but slightly dumb. People don’t seem to like him much so he may lose which would be sad.

Meenal Jain: Simple yet efficient. Judges love her, people don’t. Why? Because people suck. She is good but not too good. Final four probably if the Indian public somehow remembers that they vote for the best not the worst.

Anuj Sharma: He’s just got in when Jolly Das had to quit bcos of chicken pox. Heh. What luck. Looks lost. Don’t know much about him yet except that he has a girlfriend.

Antara Mitra: The village belle. She thanks people in Bengali every week and why does she think people should vote for her? Because she is from a small village and if she wins, it would send a message to all girls in small villages. And what exactly would that message be? That as long as you are from a remote village, we will make you win no matter how bad you sing.

You might have heard about model and actress Kuljeet Randhawa’s suicide. Read about it here. Now, everybody may not have known her but being the big TV buff that I am, I did. In fact, I really liked her. The news of her suicide was all over the news channels yesterday. The spooky thing is that she was a friend of Nafisa Joseph, who committed suicide one and a half year ago. They even acted together in CATS, a bad Hindi version of Charlie’s Angels. Sad!

No Comments

2006-02-06T04:59:00.000-08:00

I’ve always felt that comments are the biggest reward for a blogger (dumb awards, notwithstanding). And as a blog reader, I’m very generous with comments. Whenever I visit a blog that I like, I never forget to leave a comment. And whenever I visit a friend’s blog, I leave a comment irrespective of whether or not I have something to say. That’s because I know how much comments mean to a blogger.

There was a time when I didn’t get a single comment, though I always had a regular reader in Akanksha (who never commented on the blog in the beginning but directly told me what she thought of the posts). And I was kind of okay with it. But if a post doesn’t get a single comment now, I would probably go crazy.

An important aspect of commenting is the reply you get from the bloggers. I always check for replies to the comments I make and I’m mostly happy with the way people have replied to my comments till date. There are few bloggers, however, who simply refuse to reply to a comment, which is rude. If they don’t care about comments then they should simply turn comments off. In the past few months, I’ve commented on countless blogs but two bloggers who deserve a mention for being the best comment-repliers (in the order in which I discovered their blogs) are:

Megha & Sayesha

They get an average of 50-60 comments on each post and yet they manage to reply to all the comments in detail and without much delay. And I think their promptness in replying to the comments is one of the many reasons why they get so many comments in the first place. Needless to say, I’m a big fan of their blogs.

I try my best to reply to all the comments here ASAP but if I’ve ever forgotten to reply to your comment or not given it due attention then this is your one chance to let me know.

Speak now, or forever hold your peace.

Venial Sin

2006-02-05T21:13:00.000-08:00

One. That’s the number of posts I wrote last week, which is a shame.

I wanted to write a post on Friday but since Kamasutra worm was supposed to manifest itself that day, our infra guys decided to shut down the proxies completely.

Now, you need to know that Internet is an energy source for me so without it, I felt extremely weak. I was unable to work properly. I did have some fun though. I watched two episodes of Family Guy that I downloaded some time back.

So anyhow, I promise to be regular now. In the meanwhile, please read this post by one of India’s most elite bloggers, TTG, who is in Melbourne now. I share his views on the topic of the post and if I could write better, I would have written something like this.

Triple Treat

2006-02-01T04:38:00.000-08:00

I rarely watch 3 movies in 2 days but since I did and that too, good movies which I wanted to watch for a long time, I decided to share my views with everyone here.

Requiem for a Dream

The film depicts the lives of four different people living in Brooklyn on their quest for satisfaction in life. It shows the direct and indirect effects that drugs and various addictions have on each of the individuals, and then portrays their downward spirals from the hopes of blossoming dreams into the helpless state of moral and physical decay. – From IMDB

The first time I watched it was back in 2001. I had to look for it in 3 video shops before I finally got the VCD and the print was really bad. I remember liking it back then but it never had the effect it had this time. The movie is absolutely brilliant. It has an award- worthy performance by Ellen Burstyn. Other cast members - Jared Leto, Jennifer Connelly and Marlon Wayans (first time I see him in a non-comedy) are good too. The maker succeeds in making you feel as helpless as Ellen’s friends by the time the movie ends. The scariest thing about the movie is that the main characters are happiest right before their fall starts. In spite of being a serious movie, it is very slick and stylish. It’s a must watch for everyone. But remember, it’s a downer.

Paheli

A folk tale - supernatural love story about a ghost who falls in love with a newlywed woman. – From IMDB

I couldn’t see it last year cos I had other movies (Bunty aur Bubli and Parineeta) on my must watch list and couldn’t watch it after that because my DVD player doesn’t work with my TV (which is such a sad part of my life that it deserves a post!). So Star Gold, of all channels, gave me the opportunity of finally watching it. I expected it to be bad given all the negative comments it got after it was sent for Oscars but it was surprisingly good and not boring at all. The movie is entertaining and has good performances by Rani Mukherjee (who’s my current favorite). She looks hot even in traditional clothes. The fact that such movies aren’t made anymore works to the movie’s advantage. The movie never gets too serious or melodramatic either. Plus it has some scintillating songs.

The song, “Dheere Jalna” is one of my favorite songs from last year. It just doesn’t have great music and good singing but awesome lyrics too. All credit goes to Gulzar, of course.

Hazaaron Khwaishein Aisi

The film reflects the intensity and fate of three young characters, who start out on the same platform but board different trains and reach a destination of their own making. – From Rediff

I wanted to see it ever since the Indian blogosphere went crazy over the movie last year but got the change only this Monday, thanks to Star Gold again. (I guess, they are finally tired of showing dubbed English movies.) It’s again a great watch. The movie has got me interested in the late 60s and early 70s’ India – something I don’t know much about. The movie is very real. All actors too give a real performance. Kay Kay is good and Chitrangada Singh both looks good and acts well too but its Shiney Ahuja who steals the show. He is very natural. The movie is a little amateurish but still makes an impact. The surprise ending totally caught me unawares. It was great to see a good film by Sudhir Mishra after Chameli.

Incidentally, this film too has a song that I love. I loved “Bavraa Mann” the moment I hear it the first time in 2003. The song has great music (Shantanu Moitra), has been sung well (Swanand Kirkire) and has fantastic lyrics (Swanand Kirkire).

Since I’m in the mood, here are few lines from the song:

Bavre se is jahaan mein bavraa ek saath ho
Is sayaani bheed main bas haanthon mea tera haath ho
Bavri si dun ho koi bavra ek raag ho
Bavri si dun ho koi bavra ek raag ho
Bavre si pair chaahne, Bavre taraano pe
Bavre se bol pe thirakna

Public Demand

2006-01-27T04:36:00.000-08:00

There have been few requests for posts about TV and I wanted to write something about music for quite some time so I’ll put it all together.

But not before some ranting. Recently, few colleagues when asked for their opinion on me said that I seemed to be little arrogant at first but once they got to know me, I turned out to be a pretty easygoing person. Now, this is something I refuse to accept. As far as I know myself, I am arrogant and an easygoing person as well. So the correct thing to say would be that I am just a little arrogant but an easygoing person. ~~What do you all think?~~

Update: When I asked "What do you all think?", I did not ask for your opinion about me, okay. I meant to ask, Can't a person be both arrogant and easygoing? After being loyal readers of my blog, you really think I care about what people think of me? Well, I do but never show it so answer the correct question, please!

Moving on, Idol fever is on with both Indian Idol and American Idol being aired at the same time. Indian Idol is already in the Gala round where all the contestants seem to be well trained in crying and begging for votes. American Idol has just started so auditions are what we’ve got to see so far. Somehow AI auditions are more fun to watch. They have more weird characters than II does. The freaks in India want to act more than they want to sing, I think.

The songs I’m listening to these days are “Heard 'Em Say” by Kanye West feat. Adam Levine, “Check On It” by Beyonce Knowles, “Khwaahishon Se” by Shreya Ghosal and Kunal Ganjawala from Holiday and a better quality version of “Naina Neer Bahaye” by Sadhna Sargam from Water. It truly is a great song.

I change the channel ASAP whenever the song “Aapka Suroor” by Himesh Reshammiya is on. Why must he always howl like a dog? And his other song, “Jhalak Dikhla Jaa” from Aksar, in all probability, is the most nasal song to be released ever. And both of these songs are hits, apparently. What’s wrong with everyone?

Rang De Basanti - Movie Review

2006-01-26T02:43:00.000-08:00

Warning: Contains few spoilers and "my" views

This is the first time I saw the fist day, first show of a movie and I'm happy that I did.

Storyline:

Rang De Basanti tells the story of Sue (Alice Payton) who comes to India to make a documentary on Indian freedom struggle as mentioned in her grandfather's diary. She meets Sonia (Soha Ali Khan), DJ (Aamir Khan), Karan (Siddharth), Aslam (Kunal Kapoor), Sukhi (Sharman Joshi) and Laxman Pandey (Atul Kulkarni) who are all college students and work as actors for her documentary but due to some twists and turns, she finally ends up amidst another revolution in the making.

Pluses:

The movie is well directed. I was really hoping that it doesn't turn out to be a disaster like "Aks". But Raykesh Omprakash Mehra didn't disappoint me. It has a fresh storyline, good screenplay, fantastic cinematography and efficient editing. The film is technically very good.

The film has a great cast and the fact that most of them are relatively new helps. All performances are commendable. Aamir Khan is good, as expected. Kunal Kapoor and Sharman Joshi are impressive. Soha Ali Khan is surprisingly good. Atul Kulkarni is always efficient so that's no surprise. Alice acts well and speaks great Hindi. The best performance, however, belongs to Siddharth. It is his character that is "awakened" by the happenings the most and he is remarkable in his role. Thats good casting at work.

The dynamics of the group has been well-developed. Even the relationships within the group, like the Aamir - Sharman duo and the closeness between Siddharth and Soha have been developed effectively.

The dialogues are different from the normal fare and all the songs are of course superb. The placement of most songs is good too. In fact, "Rubaroo" gets the best place a song can ask for in a movie.

The film tries to present the freedom fighters in a new light. Sepia tone, special effects and bike chases make them look very cool.

The film touches a very contemporary issue of MIG accidents.

The movie never gets too dull or boring. Its entertaining throughout. It also has a certain freshness about it.

The message of the movie has been put across well.

Minuses:

Aamir Khan looks old. I know he is a great actor (though overrated) but if the director could find so many young actors for other roles, he could have very well found someone to play Aamir's role. Bollywood really needs younger actors.

The mixing of scenes from the freedom struggle with the present scenario works most of the time but not always. Some people in the audi even laughed when the five heroes were shown as freedom fighters just before they enter the AIR.

The Jalianwala Bagh sequence is not effective. Its a little shoddy. Though the satirical replacement of General Dwyer with the Defence Minister as part of a dream is funny.

Even though the songs are good, the film could have done with lesser number of songs.

My Rating: 8/10

My Verdict: A well-made movie definitely worth a watch.

I'm really thankful to INOX for starting SMS booking. No, I don't buy my tickets though it but others do and then they don't turn up to collect them on time and so I get a ticket to "sold out" shows at the last moment and that too in the second row from the top. This has happened thrice till now.

Related Posts: Rang De Basanti - Music Review

What I like about me

2006-01-25T04:31:00.000-08:00

I haven’t been explicitly asked to do this tag but I’m doing it cos I want to.

The tag requires me to “list five weird things about myself”. I already mentioned two very weird things about me in this post.

Before going any further, I would like to say that I like all the little subtle weirdness in people. I think it contributes towards one’s individuality.

On with the list:

I can’t use the T9 dictionary for writing text messages and given that I’m a very tech-savvy guy otherwise, this is very weird and almost embarrassing for me. I have to make do with multitap.

I always fear that my signature at important places like on a bank cheque won’t match the sample signature although that has never really happened. I somehow find my signatures taken at different times very different. (A friend who wanted me to write a cheque today somehow reminded me of this weirdness.)

I can’t use bad words or shout profanities at anyone. I’ve never in my life used bad language. I occasionally use the f word on this blog but never in person. Anyone who I’ve ever met will vouch for it. I read once somewhere that the inability to curse is a result of lack of self-confidence but I am very confident perhaps over-confident so I don’t think that’s the reason.

My shoelaces are almost always untied or loose. No matter which shoe or which laces I use, if it’s mine, it’s always like that. I don’t like slip-ons so that’s not an option. Thanks to this, I can walk for miles with long, untied shoelaces without stumbling or falling.

Can’t think of a fifth point and that too after lecturing freeze about it. Now that’s weird!

Time Management

2006-01-23T06:27:00.000-08:00

I attended a session on “Time Management” today.

It was fun and I have decided to maintain a prioritized to-do list from now on.

With the help of one of the questionnaires, I also discovered that I have a “Strong Urgency Mindset”.

I haven’t been able to blog and read blogs in the past few days. Maybe I will manage time better in future and such problems will be reduced.

Update: I forgot to add that one of our HR guys is a major dodo. He laughed himself to tears when a guy was discussing his problems and used the word "delivery" and was later seen smiling when somebody used the word "homogenous".

Yet! Another!! Tag!!!

2006-01-20T06:48:00.000-08:00

Here are the rules of this one:

The tagged victim has to come up with 8 different points of their perfect lover.

Need to mention the sex of the target.

Tag 8 victims to join this game & leave a comment on their comments saying they’ve been tagged.

If tagged the 2nd time, there’s no need to post again.

Target: Female

She should not be funnier than me and must laugh at most of my jokes.

She must either teach me to dance properly or must not force me to dance.

She must listen to my ranting about the smallest nonsensical things.

She must be into music, movie and above all television.

She must not be messy in any way. It would help if she were a cleanliness freak like me.

She must not be secretly insane, must not be suicidal and definitely not a murderer. Additionally, she must promise not to kill me no matter how much she may want.

She must not embarrass me in front of her friends by telling them stories about me like my mom.

She must be smart enough to not let me find out if she is cheating on me.

I tag 8 people who accidentally stumble upon my blog, whatever their names might be.

Pom Pom

2006-01-18T05:19:00.000-08:00

Work is again coming in the way of my blogging. The post frequency would be low for a couple of weeks.

I went to my cousin’s place on Makar Sankranti and somehow the discussion moved to songs that became huge hits but seem very dumb and laughable now. Here are a few examples:

Saath mere aaogi- kahaan, ice cream khaoogi- haan haan - 2
saath bulate ho ice cream khilate ho, bolo irada hain kya
apana yeh wada hain nek iraada hain, waah waah
tumko ghumaunga main duniya dikhaunga main aayega tumko mazza
taram param pam param pam taram param pam - 2

And this one’s even better:

pom pom - 2, hey mama miya mama miya
pyar ki gaadi tez chalaon, accelerator aur dabaaon
prem gali mein mode bahut hain, dekho dil ke tod bahut hain
rasta mudd jaane wala hain, main road aane wala hain
stop, love, love (mama miya pom pom - 2)

These were the lyrics of a popular song from Justice Chaudhury starring Jeetendra and Sridevi. I myself was a big fan of this song. In fact, I had a compilation cassette of this movie with Himmatwala and I listened to it all day. I loved all songs of Sridevi.

Then there was a song from Dance Dance that I absolutely loved:

Aa gaya aa gaya
halwawala aa gaya
aa gaya aa gaya
halwawala aa gaya
rang jamaane aa gaya
roop dikhaane aa gaya
aa gaya aa gaya
halwawala aa gaya

Then, back in the mid 90s, Bali Brahmbhatt became very popular because of:

Amma dekh, aa dekh, tera munda bigda jayee,
Bebe dekh, aa dekh, tera munda bigda jayee.

The song is from a flop movie starring Jackie Shroff called Stuntman.

There are lots of such songs but I don’t have the time to find the lyrics and I’m too lazy to write the lyrics myself.

PS: All the non-Hindi-speaking readers are requested to forgive me for this very Hindi post. I would have loved to translate these songs but there’s no time. *very sad face*

Epsilon

2006-01-16T05:11:00.000-08:00

A - Age you got your first Kiss: Right, I should put that on my blog!!

B - Band listening to right now: My random playlist is on “Lamhay” by Jal right now.

C- Crush: I love to crush cockroaches and spiders. Oh, and cans too.

D- Drink of Choice: Water

E - Easiest person [people]: Me, myself and I

F - Favorite band at the moment: At the moment? Black Eyed Peas cos I am listening to “My Humps”.

G - Gummy worms or gummy bears?: What is this supposed to mean?

H – Holiday: I really want to go for a long holiday in Italy sometime

I - Instruments: My cell phone doubles up as a calculator.

J - Juice: Mostly all fruit juices but my favorites are pineapple juice and Tropicana’s Tropical Fruit Fusion.

K-Kids: I’m pretty good with kids. I have 4 nieces and 1 nephew and they all are fond of me.

L - Longest car ride ever: From Adampur near Jalandhar to Wagah Border and from there till Kurukshetra.

M - Major: Information Technology

N - Nicknames: Raj, Lichpicha Pichpicha Chipchipa Kechhua (In short, LPC Earthworm)

O - One wish: In another tag that I did few months ago, I was asked Thing You Want To Do Before You Die and I answered: Say to myself, “I’ve done everything I always wanted to do”. This would be my one wish.

P - Phobia[s]: Darkness (only if I don’t know the place well)

Q - Quote: I don’t have one. Okay. For the sake of it, “This is my world. You just live here.” I don’t know where I got it from but its good.

R - Reason to smile: People being dumb and funny sitcoms.

S - Song you sang last: “Sunday Morning” by Maroon 5

T - Time you woke up [today]: 7.00am. It was tough cos I was getting up at 7:30 during the weekend.

U - Unknown fact about me: I’m a very good singer.

V - Vegetable you hate: Jackfruit, Beetroot, Tinda (I don’t know what its called in English) etc. The list is long.

W - Worst thing to have happened to you: I bumped into a moving truck when I was 7.

X-rays you've had: Immediately after I bumped into the truck, when my liver decided to go on strike. Total 5-6 times.

Y - Yummy food: Noodles, Pizzas, Banana chips etc.

Z - Zodiac sign: Sagittarius.

I'm not tagging anyone. Anybody who wants to do it is welcome (That includes you, Xohra.)

Or maybe the fifth time's the charm?

2006-01-13T00:41:00.000-08:00

I don’t read. I don’t know why but I don’t.

And I don’t mind accepting this at all. Although some people find it surprising which again, I have no clue why.

I have read four novels in my life.

The First was Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë. It was part of my class 12th curriculum. So I was kind of forced to read it. But it is a great book. I can very well read it again.

The second was Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. It was also a part of my class 12th curriculum. I found it to be pretty great. More so because I could relate with the hero, Pip. I also saw a god-awful movie based on the book after I read the book. They butchered the book completely.

The third was The Old Man and The Sea by Ernest Hemingway. It was part of my B.Tech. Second semester curriculum and it was so boring that I never read the whole thing. I left it midway and just read the synopsis.

The fourth was The Bachelor Of Arts by R K Narayan. This was the first book I read by choice. I saw it with one of my friends one day and just thought I might like it. The name really appealed to me. She also had The God Of Small Things with her and I almost thought of reading that instead (Thank god, I didn’t) but since this book was thinner and Arundhati Roy is a big jerky, the choice was easy.

Now, after years of not having read any other book other than those related to my field, I bought this book last Sunday.

It’s The Da Vinci Code. Yes, people, I finally succumbed to all the hoopla surrounding this book. I have managed to read only 4 chapters till now and I don’t know how long it will take me to complete all the 67 chapters. It’s just okay till now. It better be good and worth all the trouble.

Wish me luck!!

Fourth time's the charm

2006-01-12T01:09:00.000-08:00

This is my fourth tag and coincidentally, it is about four things.

FOUR JOBS YOU'VE HAD IN YOUR LIFE:
1) Software Engineer
2) ---
3) ---
4) ---

FOUR MOVIES YOU WOULD WATCH OVER AND OVER:
1) Andaz Apna Apna
2) The Lord of The Rings: The Return of The King
3) Jaane Bhi Do Yaaron
4) Independence Day

FOUR PLACES YOU HAVE LIVED:
1) Kanpur
2) Lucknow
3) North-West Bangalore (On the outskirts of the city)
4) North-Central Bangalore

FOUR TV SHOWS YOU LOVE TO WATCH:
1) Seinfeld
2) The Simpsons
3) The Amazing Race
4) Lost

There are a lot more. I’m addicted to TV and can watch just about anything

FOUR PLACES YOU HAVE BEEN ON VACATION:
1) Jammu
2) Punjab (Adampur, Amritsar, Wagah Border)
3) Kurukshetra, Haryana
4) Kodaikanal, Tamil Nadu

FOUR OF YOUR FAVORITE FOODS:
1) Noodles
2) Pizzas
3) Ice Creams
4) Rajma Chawal

FOUR PLACES YOU WOULD RATHER BE RIGHT NOW:
1) Lucknow (It’s been a while since I visited my parents :( plus I miss the cold)
2) Wandering the streets after calling in sick at work
3) ---
4) ---

FOUR BLOGGERS YOU ARE TAGGING:
1) Sher-e-Jalandhar
2) Atif
3) Becky / Abigail (You guys complain about common answers so I grouped you as one. I hope u don’t mind)
4) Freeze (Whenever she’s back)

No compulsion, of course. Do it if you want to.

Movie mania and the place I called home

2006-01-09T22:32:00.000-08:00

Even though I’ve always been a movie enthusiast, for the past few years, the number of movies I watched reduced dramatically. But ever since I started living alone, away from family, the number of movies I watch has again gone up.

So 2005 started off well. I saw Swades on 1st Jan 2005 and it was pretty good. I saw 30-35 movies in the year gone by and the best among them were Sin City, Parineeta, Black, My Wife’s Murder, King Kong and Yahaan. The worst were Jo Bole So Nihaal, Cursed and Lucky. The biggest disappointments were Mangal Pandey – The Rising and War of the Worlds.

Lets see how this year’s movies fare.

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The house with the red dot on it is where I used to live till February last year. Since I don’t live there anymore, I think its safe to publish the pic here. What you can’t make out from the pic is that the houses are located on a hill and we had a fabulous view from the balcony. Also, the round white structure that you see is a chimney from World War II which gives this place its name, Chimney Hills.

Arrested Development

2006-01-06T03:47:00.000-08:00

And now the story of a wealthy family who lost everything and the one son who had no choice but to keep them all together… It's Arrested Development.

In case, you’ve never heard about it, which is a sad possibility, Arrested Development is an award winning comedy show. In just two and a half years of existence, it has won 6 Emmys and countless other awards. In my opinion, it is one of the best comedy shows ever and this opinion is shared by millions of fans across the world. But since most people in the world and hence the US are used to watching mediocre, half-baked comedies, they have somehow not been able to recognize its worth.

Fox, the network on which it airs in the US, is trying hard to keep the show on but consistently low ratings are forcing them to cancel the show. It’s not official yet but it is bound to happen. Talks are also on with some other networks to support the show.

Since Fox brought back Family Guy after being cancelled due to the fans’ request, fans are hoping the same happens, this time even before the show is cancelled.

Being a huge fan of the show, I request everyone to visit Save Our Bluths and see how you can help. Also start watching the show if you don’t already. You’ll love it.

Few links:

Arrested Development official site

Arrested Development TV.com page

Arrested Development Wikipedia Entry

The post that inspired this post:

Turbanhead - Save Our Bluths

As You Like It

2006-01-05T02:00:00.000-08:00

I used to think that I’m not a very good friend in that I never stay in touch with old friends. Whenever I move to a new place, I make new friends and forget the old ones but maybe I’ve changed with time. Whatever. These days I often wonder where my school friends might be. In the past two months, I have managed to get in touch with four old friends. I found three of them on Orkut and one found me through NamesDatabase. And it feels good to know how much has happened in their lives. I last met one of them 14 years ago (which means I was only 10 then). And the best part is that she lives close by in Chennai and might visit Bangalore soon.

I haven’t written anything about Bangalore’s roads recently but that doesn’t mean that nothing’s happening. So first the high court appointed an expert committee that inspected the roads and reached the conclusion that the roads were of poor quality. Well, duh? Even a child can tell you that. Later, BMP (Bangalore Mahanagar Palike) decided to paint the lane marks on the roads with a high quality expensive paint that shines at night, which is good. But then they went ahead and claimed that the paint will last for 2 years. Now! If only they could explain how this could ever be possible given that the roads these are being painted on won’t last even 2 months. What a waste!

I have finally found a good gym near my home. Its large, has all the modern equipment, it’s new so not too crowded, the rates are reasonable and it even has lockers. In short, it’s perfect. But I haven’t made up my mind yet and I can’t think of an excuse for not joining it. So help me out.

I think a girl who has recently joined the company likes me. She has given me “the smile” and “the look” several times in the cafeteria. Now I may be wrong. Maybe she smiles and “looks” at everyone. Who knows? I didn’t really like her at first but the fact that she may like me has made me start liking her little bit. Once I was waiting for the elevator to go to the first floor and when its door opened, she was the only one inside it. I thought she’ll get off (cos I work at the topmost floor of the building) and when she didn’t, I tried to ask her the reason by a brow pop (great start!). She said “ahh…actually…” and pointed down with her hand and by this time I was in the elevator, its door had closed and it was obvious that she wanted to go down as well so she just stopped explaining. For the next 20 or so seconds, there was awkwardness and silence and then I got off on the first floor. Heh. So what should I do now? I think I’ll do what I always do. Ignore the signs till they go away.

A First

2006-01-02T23:23:00.000-08:00

I’m used to doing nothing special on New Year’s Eve and I planned on doing the same this year too but it turned out to be surprisingly different. My cousin and bro-in-law called me up on 30th night and told me that we were going to go to Wonder La, a new amusement-n-water park just outside the city, the next day. Now I remember going to Appu Ghar in Delhi as a kid some ten years ago and loving it but I wasn’t sure if I’ll like it now. And I’ve never been to a water park in my life cos I somehow considered then a waste of time. So I was apprehensive about the whole thing but then something is better than nothing so I went.

And I’m happy that I did. Cos I had a blast there. It’s really a fun place. The most fun that I had was in the wave pool where artificial waves are created. Now if you remember, I have never been to a beach so this was as a first for me. I also discovered that I could be a really fun person when taken out of my natural habitat.

There was dancing in the evening which was thankfully cut short by the New Year fireworks at 7pm cos the park closes down by 8pm. I could take very few pics cos my digicam’s cells went dead. You can see few more photos on my flickr page.

We came back to the city and went to a nice restaurant for dinner, which was also the first time I went to Koramangala. Reached home at 11.40pm in time to usher in the New Year. Mom called me at 11.50pm anticipating the cell phone network jam at midnight. And the networks did get clogged up. The first call I got after midnight was at 12.34pm from my sister. And a few minutes later, I got my first SMS of the year from my bank that my salary had been credited to my account. Great start!

01/01

2006-01-01T00:33:00.000-08:00

Wish you all a Very Happy and Prosperous New Year.

Random

2005-12-26T04:03:00.000-08:00

Note: This post was supposed to be published yesterday but since my boss's boss has finally figured out that maybe I come to the office to work, I have almost no time left for blogging.

Here are a few pictures I took this weekend.

The Bell

No, I didn't buy this bell! It came with my room. It was hanging from the drapery rod. On Christmas, I cleaned it, took this picture and put it back up. This is also the first time most of my blog readers can see me. Sure, its just a hand but still.

The Thing hanging from the ceiling

This is the weirdest thing that came with the room. I think one is supposed to place a bulb inside it. I never did. In fact, I've never cleaned it. You can see the cobwebs if you look closely.

City Map

I bought a new map of Bangalore on christmas eve. I am a mapfreak. I already have 4 different maps of the city but this is the most detailed and i guess the last.

In other news, a hawker on MG Road asked me if I wanted to exchange money. I was surprised. I stuck around for a while to see if he asks others but he only asked a caucasian couple. It made me wonder if he thought I was a BOF (i.e. opposite of FOB. BOF is an intelligent term coined by me for all the indians who have just returned from a foreign country after a long stay.) I don't look like a BOF, do I? Not that there's anything wrong with being a BOF but I don't want to counted as somebody I'm not.

The Letter

2005-12-22T21:30:00.000-08:00

Since I was always a disciplined student, I never had to go see my school’s principal in her office for doing something wrong. I wanted to sail through college with the same unblemished record but as luck would have it, I did have to go see the director of my institute once. And it happened because of a dumb letter I wrote. This is a not-so-long, not-properly-told-cos-I-cant-write-well tale of the letter that haunted me for quite some time.

There was this girl in my class who didn’t speak to anyone in the class and nobody spoke to her cos she was kind of timid (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Lets call her Gehu. She was a weirdo. The legend had it that in a viva in first year, she didn’t answer a single question and later proudly told everyone that the examiners tried a lot but she didn’t open her mouth.

Now one day, in the third semester, during a very boring class of Electrical Measurements, my boredom mixed with my dumbness (dangerous combination, that) caused me to write this letter:

To you,

I hate you.

-From Me.

Dumb, huh?

And thanks to two of my friends, Sameer and Sonal, it made its way to Gehu.

They thought it would be funny. I had my doubts. And I was right.

She cried later that day in her bus (as reported by our bus news bureau chief, Ritu), got her section changed and complained against all three of us to the director. But we only came to know about it a week later when the three of us were asked to go see the director.

Since we figured out why we had been called, we cornered Gehu first and asked her about it. She said that she was really hurt by the letter. We feigned apology and got her to go with us to see the director.

Fortunately for us, the director found this whole thing as dumb as it was and we almost convinced him that she made a big issue out of it cos she wanted to get her section changed (she had tried to do that once before too with no success). Basically, the three of us said that it was just a joke, that we were passing that note to all our friends and we didn’t mean to hurt anyone. We were a little worried though that Gehu might say something in front of the director but guess what she said. C’mon, take a guess? No? Okay. She said nothing!! So the legend must have been true.

So we got off easily with just a small speech about we shouldn’t do something that might hurt someone. But the most important thing in all this was that even though I wrote the letter, in the list of names that Gehu gave to the director, my name was the last. Yes!!

P.S.: I just realized that this post shows my friends and me in a very bad light but we’re really not that bad, especially not me.

Sledgehammer

2005-12-21T03:27:00.000-08:00

My work is keeping me away from my blog. I feel really bad about not being able to write anything but the funny part is that when I finally had some time on my hands, my mind went completely blank and I didn’t know what to write. So I just took a short break and when I came back, I had been assigned another task. Images of an old grumpy guy who we shall call Fr’s head being smashed with a giant sledgehammer ran through my mind. It felt good.

I have so much to write about but no time.

In the meanwhile, How do you commit such an error?

“…A trader of Mizuho Securities mistakenly placed a sell order for 610,000 shares of J- Com at one yen each, instead of the intended one share for 610,000 yen….”

Read how it resulted in Nikkei chief’s resignation.

Bow to The King

2005-12-19T00:06:00.000-08:00

King Kong – Movie Review

Warning: Might contain spoilers and infantile views.

So I finally saw “King Kong” on Saturday evening.

And, to say its great or fantastic would be an understatement. I’ll just say that it’s an experience worth having and that Peter Jackson has done it again.

The movie makes Jurassic Park, Godzilla and the likes look like b-grade sci-fi flicks.

The CGI is of course out-of-the-world. Not that you expect anything less from Jackson.

The story in a line if you don’t already know it: A film crew sets out on a voyage in search of a mythical “Skull Island” and finds a lot more than it bargained for. The crew comprises of the moviemaker, Carl Denham (Jack Black), the lead actress, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), the scriptwriter, Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) and few other not-too-important people.

The movie starts off slowly and the build up takes a little too long although it does provide a very good contrast to what you are about to witness but once the real action begins you forget all about it cos there is simply no time to think.
The screen is soon bombarded with one sequence after another and the excitement never ends. Some commendable examples are the ship hitting the rocks, the first interaction between the film crew and the inhabitants of Skull Island, the subsequent kidnap of Ann and the dinosaur stampede.
It’s difficult to not think of Kong (played by Andy Serkis), the giant ape, as a quintessential bollywood hero who fights off baddies for his girl in the long one-dinosaur-after-another sequence.

The director is also successful in lending a somber tone to the worms-n-crustaceans-attack-humans sequence.

The relationship between Kong and Ann has been developed beautifully. Ann moving closer to Kong when the last dinosaur approaches and Kong showing off his anger when Ann refuses to perform have been executed well.

The capture of Kong, “The King Kong Show” and the Kong-in-Manhattan destruction sequences are again brilliant. I especially loved the way Kong picks up random blondes and throws them when they don’t turn out to be Ann. The ice-skating sequence also deserves a special mention.
And the climax, set against New York skyline, is spectacular and heartbreaking.

All the actors are good in whatever role they have cos we all know that the main hero here is Kong. Naomi Watts is already one of my favorites and she is brilliant here as the beauty who captures the heart of the beast. You can feel the pain in her eyes when Kong slips from the top of Empire State building. She looks very beautiful in the movie. But I couldn’t help noticing how with every movie, she’s starting to look more and more like Nicole Kidman.

Andy Serkis is great too. First Gollum and now Kong, he surely knows how to play CGI generated characters. Adrien Brody plays second fiddle to an ape so it won’t be wrong to say that he’s totally wasted here. I was apprehensive about Jack Black playing the role of a ruthless, unredeemable showman but he manages to do a fine job.

But the biggest winners here are Peter Jackson, CGI and the audience.

Go watch it for the kid in you!!

Rating: 10/10

Dilemma

2005-12-16T01:34:00.000-08:00

Things have been pretty hectic at work for the past one week and it got me thinking if I should get a PC for home so that I can keep blogging and read all the blogs even if there’s too much work. But the dilemma is that I’m not sure if I should buy a desktop or a laptop. Desktop is cheaper but is big n bulky and if I move, I’ll have to take care of it. Laptop is costlier, doesn’t really serve any purpose cos I don’t have to travel much but its lightweight and I do want to own one eventually. I don’t know what to do.

I wanted to see King Kong tomorrow but it looks like I’ll have to come to office tomorrow. I’ll somehow find away to watch it.

My previous post was linked by someone on a yahoo group of AR Rahman Fans and my blog has been experiencing unusually high traffic since then.

Rang De Basanti - Music Review

2005-12-14T00:25:00.000-08:00

A R Rahman's much awaited album, Rang De Basanti, is finally out and I decided to let you know what I think of it. I must warn you though that I am a huge fan of Rahman and hence the review might be a little biased.

Ik Onkar: ARR can always be trusted with religious songs and this is a perfect example. He doesn’t meddle too much with it and hence the album starts off beautifully.

Rang De Basanti: Daler Mehendi is still around? Who knew? Anyways, in spite of being a Punjabi song, it doesn’t sound like a typical Punjabi song and that’s what’s great about it. The song has a great beat to it. Daler sounds different from his usual self (which is a relief) and Chitra has been wisely used to add a unique flavor to it. A great title song that efficiently conveys the mood of the film. 8.5/10

Paathshala: A peppy song with great youth centric lyrics and great music. ARR has used new voices for the song and it helps. Naresh Iyer and Mohammad Aslam give a young n fresh feel to it. The only bad thing about the song is that it is picturized on a 40-year-old Aamir Khan trying to pass off as being in his early twenties. 9/10

Tu Bin Bataye: A slow, romantic song (the only romantic song in the album). Sadly it’s just an average song with a strong typical ARR stamp on it. Madhushree sounds sweet, perhaps too sweet. She should try a little less honey laden sometime. Naresh Iyer is good. 7/10

Khalbali: Probably the weakest song of the album, it has an Arabic tune and even Arabic vocals. ARR sings himself with Nasim and Aslam. Starts off slow but gets better towards the end. It’s a situational song and will (hopefully) make more sense in the movie. 6/10

Khoon Chala: A slow but fantastic song. I just found out that Mohit Chauhan who has sung this song brilliantly is actually the lead singer of Silk Route. No wonder then. The orchestration is commendable too. But what really give the song an edge are the lyrics. Easily, my favorite track of the album. 9.5/10

Paathshala (Be A Rebel): A slightly modified version of Paathshala, it somehow reminds me of the song “Dating” from Boys. I guess Blaaze is the common link. A great song, nevertheless. I like this version more than the first one. 9/10

Luka Chuppi: A rather strange song between a mother and a son. Once again, great lyrics and good music. ARR sings himself, this time with Lata Mangeshkar, who is great as usual. The tabla is sure to make you like the song. 8/10

Lalkaar: Its wrong to call it a song. It’s more like Aamir Khan reciting a verse accompanied by chorus. It’s obviously a situational song. 7/10

Roobaroo: An easy going, mid tempo, upbeat song. A great way to end the album. Its sung well by Naresh Iyer with help from ARR. 8/10

In totality, it’s a great album and even the not-so-good songs are better than your average Himesh Reshammiya and Anu Malik songs so it is a must buy for ARR fans/ non-fans alike.

Overall Rating: 8/10

Update (Friday, 16th December): It been two and a half days since I wrote the review and after repeated listening (with continuous looping), “Rang De Basanti” has become a favorite with the standout line being “Dheemi aanch pe tu zara ishq chadaa”. “Roobaroo” too. Love the line “Dhuan chhata, khula gagan mera”. But the most favorite is still “Khoon Chala”.

Related Posts: Rang De Basanti - Movie Review

A Series Of Accidents

2005-12-12T22:13:00.000-08:00

I went to the Airtel shop on Cunningham Road on Sunday and only 2 of the 7-8 desks had representatives. One of the two was talking on the phone so I went to the other one. Now, this girl was chewing something. I told her that I wanted to migrate from prepaid to postpaid. She told me to come the next day. I was not happy with her response so I asked if she could at least give me some info. Now she opened her mouth to answer me but then …she started choking on whatever she was eating and she suddenly got up and started coughing. I was standing still all this while thinking if I should do something. After she gained control a few seconds later, she looked at me with her watery eyes and said, “Sorry, Sir”. I smiled. (I didn’t know what else to do) She told me that the guy who manages migrations hadn’t come which is why I must come the next day. Not in a state to trouble her more, I said thanks and got out of the shop.
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A female colleague of mine came back from a trip to Goa (her hometown) yesterday and I being a gadget freak noticed almost instantly that she had a new cell phone. So I’m checking out her phone and then I landed up in the videos folder. I asked her if it was okay if I saw the videos. She told me to go ahead. And guess what the first video had in it. It was her dancing away on some song. But what was funny was that it was apparently taken without her knowledge and showed her backside. It was absolutely hilarious. I kept watching it for sometime, trying my best to hide the laughter but I gave in soon and then she figured it out and took the phone away from me. This thing kept me smiling the whole day.

Know More Vol. 2

2005-12-08T21:55:00.000-08:00

It’s been a while since I last told you some unknown facts about me, so here are a couple of more things about me.

I am a left-hander. I write, eat, hold the phone and basically do everything with my left hand.

I do not dance. People often ask me to dance and I say no. I don’t like passing off moving my hands and legs at irregular intervals as dancing. I don’t mind dancing if it’s choreographed but otherwise, it’s a no. I have danced in front of a large audience on few occasions but most of the times it was choreographed and when I danced during my ragging session in my office, I had already prepared a choreographed piece and the result, people actually thought I was a good dancer. I always think about joining a dance class but since never do it bcos of lack of company.

I’ve never seen real snow or snowfall in my life. Even though I used to live close to hilly areas, I never went there. I hope I get a chance to see snowfall soon.

I‘ve never been to a beach or seashore either. Guess I’m not much of a traveler. But Chennai is only six hours away, so who knows, I might just go there sometime.

Weekly Tele-Roundup

2005-12-08T03:58:00.000-08:00

Indian Idol is back and it got its share of very good, good, okay and bad singers this time around too. They even went to Lucknow this time (Go Lucknow!!) The good news is that the 28 finalists chosen are pretty good except for a young girl from Delhi called Neha who might pull off a Jasmine Trias or Ravinder Ravi. Much better than the last time but the bad news is that Anu Malik is very irritating to watch. He and his poems must die.

On Aaki’s request, I tried watching India Calling and I am amazed at the kind of crap the channels can come up with these days. The whole big city-small city cliché, a call center being run as a family business, a new employee being allowed to make telemarketing calls without training – it’s all very ridiculous.

Coupling is being re-aired and I’m watching it again cos it is that good. Seriously, that’s one series that’s not to be missed.

After three seasons, MTV has only been able to make Roadies just a tad interesting. They mostly rely on the oldest trick of reality shows, unexpected twists and turns.

Also, Channel 7 in its continuing effort to keep its viewers abreast of the most important news from all over the world broadcasted a 30-minute special show at 9pm (that’s primetime, people) on a Rs. 4 Crores (40 million) wedding of an NRI couple in Jaipur. I know how dumb it sounds but it was actually very funny to watch. The couple made their friends from The US dance to completely choreographed bollywood songs. Why? Cos they have too much money. That’s why.

Happy Birthday To Me

2005-12-06T20:42:00.000-08:00

24 years ago, on this very day, I descended upon this earth and there was much rejoicing everywhere. Since then I have been trying my best to spread joy and happiness everywhere I go and damn, it’s not an easy job. I foresee another busy year ahead of me cos war and hatred is raising its ugly head everywhere and my other job (the one I get paid for) is taking up too much of my time.

In the meanwhile, join me in wishing myself a VERY HAPPY BIRTHDAY and a fantastic year ahead. Oh, and also wish that my sense of humor gets better so that you are not subjected to such unfunny posts.

Cake, anyone?

You be the Judge

2005-12-05T03:52:00.000-08:00

I am still trying my hand at photography and I don’t think I’m very good at it YET but since most of you (which means two people) said they would like to see my photos, I present before you few of my pictures.

But before you see these, I want you all to remember that I'm an amateur photographer so no criticism will be tolerated.

The photo you see here was taken at Ulsoor Lake last Saturday.

Click here to see all my photos on flickr.
Let me know what you think of my photos.

So I’ve been exploring flickr for the past one week and since it provides a nifty “blog this” feature, I’ve created a photo-blog to share my favorite photos with all of you. Its called "Creazione Artistica" (name - courtesy Akanksha). Visit it now. It has some really cool pictures. And bookmark or syndicate it so you never miss all the great pics i post there.

Quick Update

2005-12-02T06:18:00.000-08:00

My new department’s head loves to say “I don’t want you all to reinvent the wheel” and he breathes heavily. I think he has breathing problem.

I have to go out for dinner with my colleagues cos one of the guys is getting married soon and tonight’s his bachelor party (except that there won’t be a stripper).

As far as playing the host is concerned, its been more than a week since my nephew came to stay with me and things have been great till now. It turns out that I am a great host. Even I am surprised at the way I’ve been managing everything. Of course, he’s isn’t a bad guest either. So I think I got a little lucky this time.

Addicted

2005-12-01T02:50:00.000-08:00

I’m trying my hand at photography these days and it lead me to flickr, where I registered and posted few of my pics. [I’ll give you all the URL of my photos once I post nice ones - the prospects of which don’t seem too bright.]

I started to look around on flickr for other photos and I was awestruck by the beauty of all the photos. I am addicted to flickr now. So many great new photos are posted on it everyday, its difficult to stop oneself from all the flickring.

In other news, I have been shifted from the ground floor to the third floor because I’m part of a different internal group now. The new cubicle is small and the chair too has a different design so I am trying to make myself feel comfortable here.

Road Rage Vol. 2

2005-11-29T20:57:00.000-08:00

You are stuck in traffic. You are wondering who should you kill first. The guy in the red car who just changed his lane the fifth time, the cyclist who believes he is faster than you or the guy on the motorbike who’s been yapping away on his cell phone for the past five minutes and then the light goes green and the hope of getting out of this mess rekindles but not for too long because by the time you reach the white line, the signal turns red again.

Disappointed, you stop, curse your luck and try to relax and then this guy on a motorbike comes from behind, dodging all the cars and auto rickshaws, stops right next to you and then after few secs, starts his bike again and crosses all kinds of lines and happily positions his bike in front of you. No freaking, kidding. Right in front of you. Waay ahead of the white line. Making you look like a fool for following the rules.

Now you are sure that you want to kill him but then decide to be the bigger person and let it go. The light turns green and you feel relieved and are ready to go but you can’t. Why? Because the f**ker in front to you can’t start his bike. People behind you are honking, everyone around you is moving and you are sitting helplessly and then when its too much, you start honking too and then what does he do, he looks at you, gives a broad smile and makes a gesture, as if to say. “Well, it’s not my fault. It can happen to anybody, right?”

Then you finally reach home, almost forget about it and the next day morning, the whole thing comes back to you on your way to office and to vent your anger, you write a post about it on your blog.

TV Time

2005-11-28T00:36:00.000-08:00

You may or may not know this but I’m a big TV buff.
I watch at least 4hrs of TV everyday and I basically watch anything and everything. Here’s what I’ve been watching for the past few days.

Pogo is airing Malgudi Days, which is one of my favorite shows ever. I’ve never read the book cos, well, I don’t read but I loved the show when I saw it the first time, loved it when I saw its reruns and love it even now. Incidentally, after I came to Bangalore last year, I got to know that the name “Malgudi” was formed by adding up the names of two of Bangalore’s old neighborhoods, Malleshwaram and Basavangudi. In case you are interested in watching it, it’s on weeknights at 8.30pm.

Toon Disney airs Ducktales, which is another favorite of mine. You have to love Uncle Scrooge, Huey, Dewey and Louie. It’s on weekdays at 8.30am. Watch it.

There’s this new primetime soap called “Ek Ladki Anjaani Si”(which translates into “an unknown (stranger) girl”) on Sony. Now, I don’t watch any of the crappy soaps being aired on various channels but since the channel was promoting the first episode with “Something that has never happened to anyone ever before will happen today to this girl”, I decided I should see what the fuss is all about. Do you want to know what it was about? Well, I’ll tell you anyways.

Here it goes. Brace yourself for it. So the male protagonist a.k.a. our hero, is a successful businessman who once suffered from cancer but was cured through chemotherapy and in the process became sterile but not before the clever doctor had put aside few of his “samples”. Now that he is cured, he wants to have a child but his wife is somehow incompatible with his swimmers so he finds a woman who is compatible with him to get her artificially inseminated with his sample. Now, cut to the female protagonist a.k.a. our heroine, who has just got an admission into New York University, that too with full scholarship. She must go though a routine medical checkup and she ends up going to the only hospital in the town where the afore- mentioned artificially insemination is supposed to happen. Now, there’s a stupid rookie nurse in the hospital who mixes up the two files and yes, you guessed it right, our heroine gets inseminated with our hero’s sample. Fascinating!
Honestly, that’s one of the dumbest soap plots ever.

Those Were The Days

2005-11-25T01:36:00.000-08:00

From mid 2001 right up to mid 2003, I was pretty much addicted to PC gaming.

I played all kinds of games but the genre that I liked the most was RTS (Real time strategy) closely followed by FPS (First Person Shooting) and Racing.

Whenever I got a new game, I used to play the game for days. (Yes, I had to go to college but I bunked it once in a while). Of course, it wasn’t easy to play the whole day without being disturbed. Mom used to call (read “shout at”) me at regular intervals because tea/breakfast/lunch/snacks/dinner/something was ready. Of course, even her shouting couldn’t get me away from the game so most of the times I ended up eating in front of my comp.
The urge of finish a game never let me stop before I finished the whole game. I remember playing Max Payne for two and a half days continuously or playing The Age Of Empires in the whole Christmas vacations, campaigns of which lasted for hours and time seemed to just fly by.

Some games were more difficult than others. Delta Force was impossible to win and it took me quite some time to learn to control a car let alone win a race in Need For Speed 5.

And even sleeping couldn’t keep me away from thinking about games. I often dreamed about how I could kill a particular guy in Quake 3 before he killed me or how to win a “Capture the Flag” in Unreal Tournament.

But then as time passed by, my love for games started fading which was partly due to the fact that new games needed a Pentium 4 machine with 32MB graphics card when I just had a Pentium 3/850Mhz machine with a 16MB graphics card. I was sane enough to not upgrade my system just for playing games although I was quite disheartened when I got to know that I wont be able to play Unreal 2. I bought Age of Mythology to help me get over that.

My penchant for games is not dead yet. I plan on buying either a playstation very soon. But this was one phase of my life that I will always cherish.

Some more skyline love

2005-11-23T04:56:00.000-08:00

As you all might remember, I love skyscrapers and skylines. I also frequent a very popular urban centric forum called skyscrapercity.

Now, I started visiting this forum way back in 2003. At that time, there were hardly any Indian forumers but as time passed, more and more Indian forumers joined in and now there's even an Indian subforum there. So it seems like more Indians are interested in skyscrapers. Also, till some time ago, there was a dearth of good high quality pictures of indian cityscapes and skylines but that seems to be changing too.

The following are few new images of Mumbai (India's best skyline) taken from the forum. These show some new areas of Mumbai and few old ones from new perspective. Please click the images for a larger, better view. The third picture is the best of the lot, in my opinion.

All images are copyrighted by their respective owners.

Time To Play The Host

2005-11-23T00:57:00.000-08:00

I have a guest coming over to stay with me for sometime (at least a week or two). He’s my nephew but is actually my age. He’s just out of college and has few interviews to attend here.

Now, this is the first time somebody is coming to stay with me in my room. (Actually, I like calling it a studio apartment. Does that make it sound better or worse?)

Also, I feel a little weird about being somebody’s only contact in a city. Don’t know why but I just do.

I am also a very difficult person to live with cos I basically have few rules and like things done in a certain way. If you don’t follow my rules, you must bear the brunt of my anger.

I’m a cleanliness freak too so if you dirty the place, you will be shouted at and ridiculed by sarcastic comments.

I also love to argue over stupid things and will go to any lengths to win the argument.

For the past ten months, I have been living alone and do whatever I want whenever I want. Having someone else living with me might make me feel tied down. My mom knows me too well. The first thing she said when I gave this news to her was “Tumhari azaadi mein khalal” which literally translates into “hindrance in your freedom”. [To people who understand Hindi/Urdu - No, my family doesn’t always speak in such shuddh Urdu. Only sometimes when they feel like it.]

Of course, all my apprehensions could be wrong and I might actually enjoy having some company and it could turn out to be fun. Lets see how it goes.

In the meanwhile, ever the perfectionist, I decided to tidy up my place in order to garner few more praiseful words from my nephew and since the room and bathroom are already clean, I turned my attention to the cupboard and cleaned it from top to bottom. Thorough cleaning is one of the best pastimes ever.

Century

2005-11-20T22:08:00.000-08:00

It has happened, people.

You are currently reading my 100th post.

Calls for a celebration, doesn’t it?

In just 4 months of regular blogging, I have become pretty attached to my blog.

Checking the visitor stats, waiting for comments, reading the comments and replying to comments - I enjoy all of it.

And the credit goes to all the loyal readers of my blog. Thank you, all.

Something's Missing

2005-11-17T03:47:00.000-08:00

Sorry about not keeping my promise of writing a real post yesterday. I did have time but just couldn’t get myself to write anything.

Don’t have much to say even today. Just that I feel a little odd right now. I don’t know why, but I just do.

I can’t help reminiscing about the happier times when I stayed with my sister, bro-in-law and niece here in Bangalore. Good times!! I had to commute 20km everyday to my office cos we lived on the outskirts of the city but I never complained (okay, maybe a little cos the roads were bad, but still not much).

Then my bro-in-law got transferred to Delhi and I started living alone. It’s not very common for people my age to stay alone. Generally, 2-3 people share an apartment but since I didn’t have any friends I could share an apartment with, this was the only option I had.

But I have got used to staying alone now. I actually enjoy living alone.

But for the past two days though, something seems to be wrong. I can’t really put a finger on it, so I’ll employ a few lines of a song to express my current feeling.

“I can't be sure that this state of mind
Is not of my own design
I wish there was an over-the-counter test for loneliness
For loneliness like this

Something's missing
And I don't know how to fix it
Something's missing
And I don't know what it is
No I don't know what it is”

--- Taken from Something’s Missing by John Mayer.

[Now, I don’t generally quote songs or poems on this blog and don’t really read them when others do but since these few lines describe my current mood appropriately, I couldn’t help but use them.]

Random Seinfeld Quote #3

2005-11-16T02:03:00.000-08:00

From the episode, “The Finale (2)”

Chiles: I am shocked and chagrined, mortified and stupefied. This trial is outrageous! It is a waste of the taxpayers' time and money. It is a travesty of justice that these four people have been incarcerated while the real perpetrator is walking around laughing - lying and laughing, laughing and lying. You know what these four people were? They were innocent bystanders. Now, you just think about that term. Innocent. Bystanders. Because that's exactly what they were. We know they were bystanders, nobody's disputing that. So how can a bystander be guilty? No such thing. Have you ever heard of a guilty bystander? No, because you cannot be a bystander and be guilty. Bystanders are by definition, innocent. That is the nature of bystanding. But no, they want to change nature here. They want to create a whole new animal - the guilty bystander. Don't you let them do it. Only you can stop them.

Too Much

2005-11-15T05:30:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was a horrible day.

Spent the whole day trying to do something that we had no clue about. It was frustrating and exhausting but we were somehow able to do it by the end of the day which was relieving.

Today wasn’t that bad though. It was hectic but fun.

I feel bad about not being able to write anything here so I’ll definitely write a real post (unlike this one) tomorrow.

A Monster in my Bathroom

2005-11-10T21:33:00.000-08:00

Just when I was about to go to bed last night, I saw something moving in my (unused) bathtub. I moved closer and it was this thing.

Now, I had no idea what this thing was. I had never seen anything like this ever before in my life. I assume its some species of centipede.

I thought I will wash it down the drain but soon I realized that it could swim very well. So I thought I’d push it down the drain forcefully with the help of a bucket full of water and my bathroom mop but every time I pushed it in the drain, it reappeared after a few secs just like those nasty ghosts in the horror movies who just don’t die and resurface to scare you. The thing moved so quickly in the water, it was scary

So I was left with no other option. I had to kill it cos no way in hell was I going to sleep with this monster moving around in my bathroom so I employed my mop as a weapon and soon it was dead. But it didn’t go down without a fight. It took more than 15 seconds to kill it. Well, all's well that ends well!

EDIT: oops, I forgot to mention the inspiration for this post. Atif has had several run-ins with intruders in the past including this recent one. We are together in this fight against intrusion of all kinds.

Can't think of a title

2005-11-09T02:26:00.000-08:00

Since my room was locked for almost two weeks and Bangalore didn’t see any decent sunlight during that time, it had become really damp. You could actually smell the dampness. But I think I have managed to make it livable again in the little time I had.

It’s difficult to adjust to my life after a not-so-long vacation but I am trying. I went grocery shopping yesterday. Its always fun since it mostly consists of ready-to-eat food, juices, drinks, other eatables and few other stuff. But I bought the wrong deodorant by mistake. I was standing right in front of the one I wanted and then I got a call and then I took the one kept right next to it and since they are different fragrances from the same company, its difficult to distinguish between them. I sprayed it today morning and it smelled horrible. Then I read the name on the bottle and it was the wrong one. What do I do now? I can’t return it. I can’t use it. It’s basically useless. But I don’t get why the deodorant company came out with a product with such a horrible fragrance. It's so bad that it makes me puke.

John Mayer has done it again. He left adult contemporary, which was considered his forte and formed a Blues band called John Mayer Trio (called JM3). Few people even called it a career suicide. Gutsy, huh? But their first single. “Who Did You Think It Was?” and its b-side, “Come When I Call” are both fabulous. The video for the single is very weird though. It features a record player playing their CD and shows the view from the window nearby the whole time, while moving closer to the CD slowly. I was just listening to their song so thought of including this in the post.

I need...

2005-11-07T22:53:00.000-08:00

Atif tagged me.

Rule: Go to Google and write, "Your name needs" (i.e. "Raj needs") and paste the freaky results.

So here are the results:

Raj needs some encouragement.

Raj needs a wake up call.

Raj needs the money urgently.

Raj needs a job.

Raj needs to submit his timetable to Rachel.

Raj needs to let this one drop.

Raj needs someone to get his life back in order.

Raj needs a playmate.

Raj needs no introduction in Indian cinema.

Raj needs a 7 to double up and survive.

Raj needs babysitting.

It’s a fun tag so I want everyone to do it but since I already tagged everyone just a while back, I am not forcing anyone to do it. So if you are reading this and you want to do it, do it.

I'm Back

2005-11-07T21:49:00.000-08:00

I’m back.

I had a really great time at home and in Delhi at my sister’s place and as always, didn’t feel like coming back.

I missed blogging and reading all the blogs a lot though.

Happy Diwali

2005-11-01T21:41:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was diwali and it was great fun. The lights, the fireworks, the sweets - everything.

In another development, I weighed myself on our home scale and I now weigh just 58kg, down from 61 kg back in April.
That’s a loss of 3kg in 6 months.
So I guess thinking about joining a gym helps.
I'm so happy.

Anyways, I don’t think its too late to say HAPPY DIWALI.

Home

2005-10-28T20:14:00.000-07:00

So I am finally in Lucknow.

A MIG-21 crashed at the Bangalore Airport on Wednesday and hence my flight got delayed by a couple of hours but its all water under the bridge now cos I am here and am just very happy to be home after six months.

Rant: *dialup sucks*

Holidays

2005-10-25T22:52:00.000-07:00

I’m going home for Diwali today. It’s been more than 6 months since I went home in April. We only have a dialup connection there but I’ll try my best to post something as often as possible and also to convince my parents to get a broadband connection.

A lot of my college friends are coming to Lucknow in the Diwali holidays so we are planning to have a meet. That should be fun.

C y’all later.

The Longest Tag

2005-10-25T06:32:00.000-07:00

Jonybr tagged me so here it goes.

10 Favorites:

Favorite Season: North Indian Winter (Lucknow’s winter to be more specific)
Favorite Sport: Cricket
Favorite Time: Morning (represents countless possibilities).
Favorite Month: December cos my birthday is in Dec plus the weather is fantastic.
Favorite Actor: I don’t know. Umm… Ed Norton, Eric Bana.
Favorite Actress: Naomi Watts, Jessica Alba and Erika Christensen
Favorite Ice Cream: Butterscotch and Fig n honey
Favorite Food: Pizzas, Chow mein, Roasted Chicken
Favorite Drink: Apple/Pineapple Juice, Fanta, Chilled Water
Favorite Place: Home

9 Currents:

Current Feeling: Confused (because I couldn’t figure out my current feeling)
Current O/S: Windows XP.
Current Windows Open: Microsoft Word (where I’m typing this), Outlook Express, SQL Navigator, SSH (Secure Shell), Opera
Current Drink: Nothing
Current Time: 6:22 PM
Current Mobile(s) Used: Sony Ericsson K700i
Current Show on TV: I’m not home but “The Simpsons” must be on.
Current Thought: When will it stop raining so I can go home?
Current Cloths: Some light colored (I don’t know what this color is called) cotton shirt and dark blue trousers.

8 Firsts:

First Nick: Raj
First Kiss: No comments.
First Crush: Some girl I met at a wedding when I was 10.
First Computer: My assembled home PC.
First Vehicle I drove: Daewoo Matiz
First Job: My current Job as a software engineer.
First Movie I watched on Pulse Global’s print (I don’t know what Pulse Global is so I’ll just make it the first movie I watched): I don’t remember.
First Pet: my sister’s Pomeranians, Dhruva and Wega, that we were forced to take care of
First Shave: A day before my 18th birthday. (i.e. 6th December, 1999)

7 Lasts:

Last Chai (Tea) : Today morning.
Last Movie: Veer Zaara
Last Time I Drove: Today morning
Last Time Shaved: Yesterday morning.
Last Web Site Visited: http://www.reference.com/browse/wiki/Pulse_Global to see what pulse global meant
Last Software Installed: YStatus Plug-in
Last Pill I Had: Few weeks ago for acne

6 Have You Evers:

Have You Ever Broken the Law: I’ll just say I’ve never been caught.
Have You Ever Been Drunk: I just had few sips of beer once.
Have You Ever Climbed a Tree: Yes, once for a snap.
Have You Ever Kissed Someone You Didn't Know: No, not yet.
Have You Ever Been in the Middle/Close to Gunfire or Bomb Blast: Fortunately, no.
Have You Ever Broken Anyone’s Heart: Of course, I do it a lot (always unknowingly)

5 Things:

Things You Can Hear Right Now: A group of women colleagues talking and laughing.
Things on Your Computer Table: I’ll tell you about my cubicle. My Workstation, a phone and a bottle of Kinley.
Things on Your Bed: When I left home this morning, 2 pillows, my quilt, today’s newspaper, TV remote control and a book called “Professional Java Server Programming J2EE Edition”
Things You Ate Today: horrible lunch as usual and a sandwich half an hour ago.
Things in Mind: When will it stop raining? Will I be able to pack my stuff for my trip properly?

4 Places You Have Been Today:

Parking,
My office,
Cafeteria,
Bathroom?

3 People You Can Tell Anything To:

None.

2. Choices:
Black or White: White
Hot or Cold: Cold

1 Thing You Want To Do Before You Die:

Say to myself, “I’ve done everything I always wanted to do”.

Now, I’d like to tag:

Abigail
Akanksha (Her first Tag).
Becky
Jive
Lucio
Varun
Vinaya (Since you didn’t do the last one, you must do this)

In case anyone has already done this, they are excused.

Weekend Adventures

2005-10-24T03:25:00.000-07:00

I had fun this weekend.

- I bought a strolley bag. Now, this may not seem very important but it was. You see, this was the first time I bought something that involved making a choice and bargaining all by myself.
I think I did well.

- I also started devising a plan on how to make Bangalore a better place, basically getting rid of all the small problems. So far, I’ve come up with just one step:

Kill Deve Gowda. (If only everyone had paid attention to the perfect solution I suggested two months ago, this day would not have come)

I’ll think of rest of the steps later.

- Anyways, also saw Lucky – No Time For Love on Saturday till it bored me to sleep.
Veer Zaara was also on yesterday and it was boring too. It’s one the most overrated movies of all times. But the worst part is that now is that now the TV channels have started showing interviews with the stars and makers before and in between the movie. Why?? I don’t need to see that. If I wanted to see that, I would have bought the DVD.

- CNBC TV18 featured the whole Bloggers vs. IIPM story on “The Tech Show” this weekend. It mentioned Desipundit and even featured a small interview with Rashmi Bansal. But instead of taking sides, they discussed how the few regulations that do exist in India do not apply to blogs.

Inside Out

2005-10-21T06:29:00.000-07:00

The first loyal reader of my blog was my friend Akanksha and now she has taken to blogging too. Please visit her blog, Inside Out. I’m sure you’ll like it.

Great Expectations

2005-10-20T04:45:00.000-07:00

I expected a lot from Kingfisher Airlines but they have already started disappointing me even though I am yet to fly with them. I booked my tickets for Bangalore – Delhi round trip for October end on 22nd August for Rs.9040 both sides and happily carried by ticket printout home.

Now, the day before yesterday, I just thought of checking my status for fun and what do I see? Both my flights have been rescheduled. The Bangalore-Delhi flight that was supposed to depart at1310 hrs and land at 1540 hrs will now depart at 1720 and arrive at 1950 hrs. That’s a difference of 4 hours. The Delhi- Bangalore flight will arrive at 2310 hrs in Bangalore, a full 2 hours later than it was supposed to. I wonder when they were planning to tell me about this rescheduling. At the airport, I guess.

Fortunately, I saw all this and called them up. They checked it all up and said that indeed my flight had been rescheduled. I then asked them to shift me to a morning flight on the Bangalore – Delhi sector and they said they can do it but I will have to pay the difference between what I paid for the ticket and what it costs now. In this case, it was Rs. 1500. My question is- why should I pay more? They changed the schedule after I booked my tickets. If the new schedule doesn’t suit me, I should be allowed to change my flight.

What’s makes me fume even more is that the flight I’m on is sold out and a ticket on it will cost Rs.11000 now while the flight I want to switch to does have seats available at Rs. 6000. So if I switch, a seat will become available on the costlier flight. So why should pay?

I cant even cancel the booking cos they will only give me a credit note which I can use within one years time. So I am stuck with them.

Skyline Love n More

2005-10-18T03:46:00.000-07:00

I don’t know if I’ve already told you all but I am fascinated with Skyscrapers and Skylines. Some people find it strange. I find those people strange because take a look at these pics of Tokyo.

How can anyone not like it?
----
I’ve been listening to a lot of new songs lately and I love:

“Road To Rouen” by Supergrass
All the songs from Deepa Mehta’s Water especially “Naina Neer” and “Piya Ho”
“Push The Button” by Sugababes
“You're Beautiful” by James Blunt

I also like the song “Hum Bade Hue” from The Film cos it makes me feel nostalgic though it would have been better if they hadn’t included nursery rhymes in the song.

Let Me Help You

2005-10-17T03:47:00.000-07:00

If you have a relative or an acquaintance that you hate and want to get rid of and the person happens to work for BWSSB (Bangalore Water Supply & Sewerage Board), you are in luck. Just send me the details and I’ll kill that person for you. For free. Those morons have once again dug up Nandidurg Road, which has resulted in huge traffic jams.

I read in the paper today that they have dug up St Marks Road too, which means more traffic jams in the CBD.

There’s only one befitting reply to this nonsense, murder. They all are anyways so stupid that they don’t deserve to live.

So accept my offer of help and let me help you get rid of that stupid BWSSB official for you.

Really, really bored

2005-10-13T06:08:00.000-07:00

I am bored.

I have no work.

I am tired of even net surfing so you can understand how bored I must be plus me mind is going numb too.

My biggest achievement for the day was finding out the factorial of some number with the help pf Lucio. Why? Don’t ask. No, really, don’t.

I was bored the whole day yesterday too cos it was a holiday and I had nothing to do and nowhere to go.

I have no idea what to write so c ya later…

Ageless

2005-10-11T01:43:00.000-07:00

My life is becoming a little boring n mundane these days. Nothing interesting happens ever.
So I thought of writing about an interesting incident that happened in the past.

This happened when I was coming back from Lucknow to Bangalore. I happened to have the window seat next to the emergency exit on the flight. One of the airhostesses came to me and asked if I was okay with being seated there. I replied in affirmative. Then she started telling me about the procedure I’ll need to follow in case of an emergency and I listened carefully, hoping at the back of my mind that I don’t actually have to do it, but then she stopped all of a sudden and turned her face to look at me and asked me, “Are you over 16?” I was shocked, surprised, amused, appalled all at the same time and couldn’t control my smile when I told her that I was actually 23. She seemed to be a little taken aback by my reply cos she immediately replied, “Oh, but you don’t look that old.”

Now, I know I do look younger than most other people my age and can easily pass off as a 20-21 year old (in fact, some college students look far older than me) but 16 yrs old? That’s just ridiculous.

Freaky Friday

2005-10-07T04:10:00.000-07:00

When you make a list of things you would do when stay alone someday in your childhood, it doesn’t include looking for a plumber to fix the leaking stopcock in the bathroom, does it?
But that’s exactly what I had to do today.
Sucks.

In other news, I would like to confess that I am a Fanta addict. I have to drink it everyday. I finish off the 2l bottle in three days. Is there a rehabilitation program that I can join?

Also, I wrote my first post for Naachgaana today. Can’t believe how difficult it is to write for something other than your personal blog. I mean, I can write absolutely anything I want here but to write for some other website, it’s a lot of pressure. I hope I did a good job.

Senseless

2005-10-06T04:23:00.000-07:00

Why don’t people listen something and just stick to it?

I was attending a presentation be a very senior official who is known to be quite strict about keeping the no cell phones on silent mode. So obviously most of the crowd (the ones with some amount of brains in them) did that but as it turns out few guys did not and not surprisingly they were the ones who started getting calls or messages during the presentation and all of us were forced to listen to all kinds of jazzy ringtones. The official looked a little distracted but didn’t say anything. But one guy kept getting one call after another and finally the official had to ask everyone to turn the phones off.

Incidents like these are not common which brings me to my other question? Why can’t these goddamnit people put their phones on vibrator? Is it because:

They are so dumb that they don’t know that cell phones have a silent mode.

They want everyone in the room to know that they get a lot of calls.

They have no sense of touch and hence wouldn’t be able to make use of the vibrator.

They are f*ckers with no concern for anybody else.

Take your pick.

Why do people drink beer?

2005-10-04T22:58:00.000-07:00

I used to wonder what beer must taste like when I was a teenager. I knew it must taste great cos everyone loves beer but how great exactly. My curiosity only grew with time but I never tried drinking beer cos I just didn’t want to try any form of alcohol cos I didn’t want to lose control over myself which is something that alcohol does.

But few months back, one of my friends decided that I should try beer after all and I also decided that there was no harm in doing so. I mean, I was with a friend who I could trust to take care of me if I get drunk (I know you cant get drunk by drinking beer but it was my first time so I was scared).

So my friend got me a bottle of Kingfisher, which I then poured into a glass (I couldn’t possibly have drank directly from the bottle). But even before I could take my first sip, a strange smell hit me …and it was the beer. God, it smelled awful. So I was expected to drink that smelly thing? My friend and his friend started laughing and said it smelled great. I thought they were completely crazy but decided to drink it anyways. I almost vomited after I took it in. It tasted like soap water, but worse. I tried drinking it again thinking I might have missed something the first time but no, it really did taste like soap water gone bad the second time too.

I never tried drinking beer ever again and have not been able to stop wondering why then people drink beer.

Laugh a Little

2005-10-04T06:06:00.000-07:00

I couldn’t post anything new today so here’s some of my favorite Stewie Griffin quotes.
Taken from various episodes of Family Guy:

Stewie Griffin: [after Lois tries to feed Stewie his broccoli "airplane style"] Damn you, damn the broccoli, and damn the Wright Brothers.
---
Stewie: Well, I'd love to stay and chat, but you're a total bitch.
---
Stewie: Let me guess, you picked out yet another colorful box with a crank that I'm expected to turn and turn until OOPS! Big shock, a jack pops out and you laugh and the kids laugh and the dog laughs and I die a little inside.

---
Stewie: I was under the impression the name of the show was "Kids Say the Darndest Things," not "Old Black Comedians Never Shut the Hell Up."

Godlike

2005-10-03T03:23:00.000-07:00

I neither completely believe in Gandhian philosophy nor have any idea what relevance it has in today’s world but I really like the song, “Vaishnav Jan To”, that was a favorite of Gandhi too.
You can download various versions of the song here. The lyrics taken from the same site are:

Vaishnav Jan to tene kahiye
Jay peerh paraaye janneyray
Par dukkhey upkar karey teeyey, man abhiman na anney ray
Sakal lokma Sahuney bandhey,
Ninda Na karye kainee ray
Baach kaachh, Man nischal Raakhey, dhan-dhan jananee tainee ray
Samdrishi nay trishna tyagee, par-stree jaynay mat ray
Vivihva thaki asatya na bolay, par-dhan nav jhaley haath ray
Moh maaya vyaayey nahin Jeynay, dridth vairagya jana manma ray
Ram-nam-shoom taalee laagee,
Sakal teerth seyna tanma ray
Vanloohee nay kapat rahit chhay,
Kaam, Krodh nivarya ray
Bhane Narsinhyo tainoo darshan karta kul ekotair taarya re.

English Translation:

Speak only as godlike of the man who feels another's pain
Who shares another's sorrow and pride does disdain
Who regards himself lowliest of the low
Speaks not a word of evil against anyone
Blessed is the mother who gave birth to such a son
Who looks upon everyone as his equal,
Lust he has renounced
Who honors women like he honors his mother
Whose tongue knows not the taste of falsehood
Nor covets another's worldly goods
Who longs not for worldly wealth (or fame)
For he treads the path of renunciation
Ever on his lips is Ram's holy name
All places of pilgrimage are within him
He has conquered greed, is free of deceit, lust and anger
Through him Narsinh has godly vision
And his generation to come will attain salvation.

Recipe For Disaster

2005-10-03T01:31:00.000-07:00

Watching the Paolo family on TAR: Family Edition last week, I realized what a nightmare it would be to go on a reality show with my mom. I would totally come across as a jerk like the Paolo boys. The thing is that I have an inbuilt zero tolerance policy towards any questions that my mom might ask or any suggestions she might give. So I usually bark at her immediately for asking a stupid/irrelevant question or giving unnecessary suggestions and then she randomly chooses to either start crying and complaining that I never listen to her or shouts back at me and then we start arguing which ends with she stopping to talk to me. Now that we live about 1900 km away, we still have such arguments on the phone and the only difference is that now it’s easier for my mom to stop talking to me. She just hangs up on me.

Tagged Again!

2005-09-30T04:14:00.000-07:00

I’ve been tagged again. This time it’s by Abigail S.

The rules are:
1. Go into your archive.
2. Find your 23rd post.
3. Find the fifth sentence (or closest to).
4. Post the text of the sentence in your blog along with these instructions.
5. Tag 5 other people to do the same.

So the 5th line of the 23rd post of mine is:

So, in short, I hate policemen.

And now, I tag:

Lucio

Ritesh

Vinaya

Atif

Bhaskar S

Incidentally, this is my 75th post.