Flying in a blue dream...

Smack 'em hard

2008-09-24T05:06:00.000-07:00

The kind of people whom I hate to share a film theatre with :

1. Mr I-hate-the-movie-and-so-should-everyone-else - typically seen asking for a "nayee pikture ki ticket" at the box office. Doesn't give a fuck what movie he is watching as long as he gets to sit in a movie theatre for 2-3 hours and watch some TnA action. True form of this creature emerges when he realises that instead of a Salman Khan/Rajnikanth/K-Jo flick, he has got a ticket to a Rituparno Ghosh or a Sweeney Todd kinda movie. Proceeds to lament his fate for the "bundle/bogus/bakwaas movie" to all and sundry and in the loudest possible voice. Repeats the phrase every 2-5 mins addressing it to everyone around him looking for approval. Usually finds support from another creature of his species who is sitting 5-6 rows away. They then proceed to have a conversation across their rows with a lot of "madarchod/behenchods" thrown in for effect.

2. Mr How-can-i-put-my-phone-on-vibrate: Thinks that vibrate mode on cell phones is only for desperate ladies. Wants to also find a lay for the night by playing his latest Himesh Reshammiya ring tone. Ergo, has his phone on the loudest possible volume so that even the heroine of the movie can hear it. Typically will get atleast 25 phone calls during the course of the movie. And being the extremely important person that he is, Mr. How-can-i-put-my-phone-on-vibrate will take atleast 60 seconds to pick up a phone call. Upon picking up the phone, will proceed to explain the exact location of the theatre that he is currently in, so as that he can be traced in case Mr George W Bush wants to call on him. Alternately uses this phone call to also explain to his assistant how important his 2 crore consignment is. Can be easily spotted in the crowd sporting atleast one or more of the following:

1. Tight Armani Exchange t-shirt over a big fat paunch

2. White snake skin shoes with pointy toes that are from the nether regions of the Texan Wild West

3. Gold chains around the neck and the wrist ala Bappi-da

4. A fat potbellied aunty wearing a tight kurti which was featured in the latest K-Jo movie.

3.Mr Trivia-freak-from-Hell: Knows anything and everything that has ever been written/blogged/insinuated about the actors/director/producer/make-up man of the movie. Will proceed to inform his companion of the same with extremely irritating alacrity at regular intervals and ensure that everyone around him also knows how well informed he is. Prime candidate to be featured in the next episode MTV's "One Tight Slap".

Uggghhhhhhh!

Current Music: Jane's Addiction - Jane Says.

The verdict....

2008-06-09T02:18:00.000-07:00

Aamir gives me hope for Hindi cinema.

Watch it before it disappears from movie screens. I sure am watching it again.

The life force of our people

2008-02-29T02:14:00.000-08:00

Ok so I am not quite as dead as this blog might make you thing. Life's just been a lil' hectic of late y'know. Work life has been gnawing into the remnants of my personal life and its not such a pretty picture I tell you. But I am back. Atleast for now.

Anyone following the NBA season would have heard of the big trades. Pau Gasol to LA to perform the perfunctory Robin act next to Kobe's Batman. I predict a championship ring for both next year. Kobe is getting his brains back in place and with his prodigious talent all he needed was a wingman to get him the through. And the 7-foot, free flowing, 18 feet jumper hitting Gasol is what Dirk Nowitzki was 3 years back. A European novice biding his time to prove his mettle. With Kevin Garnett moving to Celtics, these 2 teams have really put their hands up to be counted as contenders for the title.

On the flip side was the entire Jason Kidd to Dallas fiasco. Read a really funny take on it while the deal was going through the not-happening phase here. Pretty funny stuff.

So a quiz at KCircle is being done by me this Saturday. Have not had the most time to set a quiz but nonetheless, fundae would be unleashed. The KQA Music Quiz done by Thejaswi Udupa( which we narrowly came 2nd in, damn that WALTWO) was a super quiz which has set me up in the unleash mode. The question of the quiz( ..and the crack of the quiz by yours truly ;) ) was this funda about how the song got its name. Dont we all love the decadence of 80s hair metal.

Now onto the obligatory video that would go with this post. If you haven't heard KillSwitch Engage then do it NOW!! Their 4th studio album As Daylight Dies is currently ruling my Ipod right now( along with Eagles' Long Road out of Eden) . This is their second video that album which incidentally is for my favourite song of the album titled " Arms of Sorrow".

Current Music: KSE- Fixation on the Darkness

Time to emancipate....

2007-11-02T07:03:00.000-07:00

Ok so software folks are typically not the kinda people who you would really want to meet up for dinner and with and have an engaging conversation with. Most of the folks that i have spent time with, and maybe thats been my misfortune, have been the kinds who haven't really gone beyond pink floyd, "nothing else matters", "so cool yaar", coffee day,nose hair, butter chicken, tight tshirts over paunches, nokia n70s,robin cook, karan johar and template classes. There are a few who I have met, but not that many.

And then there is Mr I. M. Wright. To any Microsoft guy who doesn't know him...get the hell away from my blog. This guy is the funniest guy to ever write about very serious software. Frankly, I am not the kinda guy who would really go out looking for tech blogs unless my job depended on it. But this guy is one guy whose columns I would really search for on our internal newsletters. He was the guy who would compare triage meetings to blood thirsty wars. Who compared his 40 year old life to Microsoft's evolution. Who wrote about important stuff in the way that you could actually read about it and remember.

And now, this guy has his own MSDN blog. Hallelujah! Eric Brechner aka I.M. Wright, welcome to the net.Its about time the outside world read you. Read his blog at http://blogs.msdn.com/eric_brechner/ . It has about a microcosm of the stuff that he writes for internal MS consumption, but it is appetising enough.

Now onto the video for today. Well, this one is a special one. Its a song that made me fall in love with Pearl Jam. Watch this video and you will know why. They were so 90s, so raw and so fucking angry with the world. And this song is my favouritest car song ever. It made scribble song lyrics in text books, carve Pearl Jam on the classroom desks. It makes me wanna jump in my cube right now as I listen to it. The energy of this song is just something else. If you ever wanna catch me in a crowded place, you just need to play this song. I cannot not start headbanging!

Current song: Pearl Jam - Rearviewmirror

An endless journey into the morbid

2007-10-22T03:21:00.000-07:00

The search for the arcane is killing quizzing. Some of the recent quizzes that I have been to, have simply been mind numbingly boring. In their bid to set uncrackable questions, QMs are getting questions from the arbitest levels of obscurity. Blame wikipedia for it, if you will, it has made fundaes too readily available for easy consumption. A small piece of advice to wannabe quizmasters. Read BOOKS!! They provide some really good fundaes if you can put in some effort.

Which brings me to the other point of this entry. Some voucher's won in some quizzes funded some really nice reading material. The first was "The Man who knew Infinity" , a biography of the Ramanujan. Excellent reading, a tad too impersonal though. And from an engineer's perspective, would have loved to see more in depth mathematical explanations in it. But nevertheless, this gave me some impetus to get the rust of my brain and search the net for some good reading material on the same. This is what I found. Read it at leisure for it will keep you absorbed for days if you are caught unawares.

The next book that caught my fancy was "Celebrating the best of Urdu Poetry". I have managed to read quite a few vernacular writings, but unfortunately never had a chance to lay my hands on real urdu poetry. Nay, probably my lack of understanding of the Urdu language has been the reason behind this hesitancy to pick up Urdu text. But this book turned out to be a nice surprise. Urdu poetry in Hindi for a change and with English translations. I am sure it hardly reflects the best of Urdu Poetry since 300 odd couplets can hardly do justice to such a genre but what the hell, its good for a start. Zauq,Meer, Ghalib, Iqbal all the doyens are suitably represented here. A nice read through and through.

Which brings us to the video accompanying this post. Some people have questioned the fact that there haven't been any good metal vids put up as yet. So here's the fix. Archenemy- My Apocalypse

Every dog has its day, every day has its way

2007-09-12T02:32:00.000-07:00

It is a truth universally acknowledged that an information worker stuck in his cube must be in want of a holiday. No,no ... its not that we be a Darcy wannabe, but a vacation does entice us tremendously at the moment. However the conditions for the same are not quite conducive (dont ask us why...its a road that we have been down too many times in the recent past) ...so we shan't be doing that for a bit. Lovely word eh, that shan't. Heard Eddie Vedder use it once in a concert at Wembley. Always wanted to use it since. One more thing to cross of our list of things to do before we die. Damn where did we keep that list. Must find it and update it with recent occurences. But we digress. Since we cannot go on vacations for a bit, we shall instead compile a list of places that we want to see before we die. Due thought of precisely 30-oh-so-precious seconds has been given to this list, so expect major lacunae/omissions. A worthy commission for us nevertheless. So here goes.

1. Scotland : After duly watching tons of British serials/movies set in this wonderous part of the world, we are just in awe of the majestic beauty of this place. Plus, we have always wanted to pretend to have a Scottish accent after watching this and talk to the MacGregors, the MacLaughlins and the MacLeods and figure out the mystery behind their cool surnames. Someday...

2. New Zealand : Yes,we be might ashamed of admitting this one. The inspiration to visit this place came primarily after watching this which is only because this hadn't come out by that time. But a country that has so much beauty and so few people is definitely worth visiting.

3. Egypt: When we be of impressionable age, we happened to come across this book titled "River God" by Wilbur Smith . And the young impressionable us developed such an impression of the Egyptian way of life, that it has been a dream to visit this land for long. Agreed, the Pharaoh's are dead but from what we understand they left a lot worth seeing, behind.

4. Alaska: Blame the fascination for this on a number Husky stories that we read when we were young. Always wanted to go on a sled pulled by dogs with nothing but the color white all around.

5. Brazil : Primarily want to see the Amazonian rain forest, if such a thing still exists. The things that we could do their in no particular order of importance are:
a. Fight an anaconda
b. Say hi to a jaguar
c. Get a specialised private treatment from a true-blue shaman
d. Find our own WonderWoman

The number 5 looks appealing enough to stop our visions of fancy for the moment. Our ever-vigilant reader must have noticed the absence of any places desi in this post. Well we shall keep stories for such places for another day. Till such time enjoy this fine example of the art of remixing as demonstrated by the Maestro Eric Prydz in his wonderful rendition of the song "Another Brick in the Wall" which had been originally conceptualised by Messrs. Waters, Gilmour,Wright and Mason who went by the moniker of "Pink Floyd" at one point of time. The video depicts certain uncouth young children supposedly commiting vandalism and other such despicable acts, which children of their age are wont to do, only to later reveal that they were actually trying to put forth a very important social message. Jolly good show, lads, we say to them!

Heard it through the grapevine...

2007-08-31T05:21:00.000-07:00

Ok so I am a recent convert to the Ipod family...my excuse is that I got it as a gift and that means quite a bit to me. And the one thing that i cant seem to get enough are Podcasts!!

I mean think about it, what is so unique about it as a product in itself. Its just a glorified mp3 file after all aint it. But Apple must get a lot of credit for promoting it the way that they have, which in turn has almost made Podcasts a fashion statement. I am still quite a bit of a newbie to this world of podcasts but here are a few of my faves( I am still figuring out all the podcasts available for free via Itunes so all of these are available via Itunes)

1. Best of YouTube - no need for a plug for this one. Really what more can you ask for then somebody sorting out all the good stuff from youtube and sending it out to you

2. Tiesto's Club Life - One hour mixes by Tiesto. Whoopeee!

3. NPR Jazz Profiles- Full hour specials on Charlie "Bird" Parker, Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis. From the best radio channel in the US.

4. The Ungodly Hour - a weekly show featuring some really nice Goth and Industrial Music. Plus the hosts have this habit of making of fun of all things religious so it makes the really very funny.

Something new for the blog today. Posting a video of a song that i really like from Youtube. Hoping to make that more of regular feature from now on, on this blog. Song from the Claire Danes starrer Brokedown Palace called Damaged by some band called Plummet. This song became quite a rage when it was remixed by Andain sometime last year or the year before that. But i really love the original though.

The kombuja mushroom people sitting around all day

2007-06-22T04:03:00.000-07:00

Ok as a patron of all kinds of non mainstream indian music, nothing warmed by heart more than when i saw this:

www.radioverve.com

A online radio service that has multiple channels that play independent indian music from all the non-mainstream genres. Dont go there if you want to listen to Himesh Reshammiya or anything from Bollywood. But go there if you want to listen all that is good and not available at Music World and Planet M. Zero, TAAQ,Skinny Alley,Demonic Resurrection, Bhayanak Maut i found them all during my 30 min surf of the Rock and Metal stations. A welcome relief for someone who has Pentagram and Colorblind *tapes* bought from obscure music shops. If only they would also play such classic indian stuff. But atleast its a start, so junta please go there and make them feel wanted :)

Well typically i dont have any techie posts on my blog, but this one deserves a mention so here goes. http://radio.mundu.com a client that lets you play online radio on your mobile phone via GPRS. I know, i know there are some other clients out there which do pretty much the same thing, but hey this one's an Indian company and how can i not mention them when they have a name like "mundu" :) More power to them,

Current Music : Level 9 -All that Jazz

Spiders on drugs..

2007-06-01T05:41:00.000-07:00

Watch this and savor!!

Maybe this is what they should have done to poor old Spidey in Spidey - 3!!

:)

Current Music: 40 Below Summer - Falling Down

Arrey mian, mein boltu na....

2007-05-14T04:01:00.000-07:00

So i have been asked by Adi to comment on my favourite eating joints in Hyderabad. Quite a tough task cuz i believe that Hyderabad sorely lacks variety in its cuisine and it has a long way to go before it can catch cities like Delhi,Bangalore, Bombay or Goa when it comes to dishing good food. Note since this is an ask to rate restaurants, i will try and stick to places that specialise in food only and stay away from waterholes that also happen to serve food.
For me a restaurant is good only if it tries to stay away from being one of the regular run of the mill kinda places. It has to have its own SOUL, y'know. It might come from the ambience but in more cases than not, in my case, it comes from the good food that it offers. Every good restaurant has some kind of food that it absolutely specialises in and thats what i am going to highlight here. I dont believe that any of those multi-cuisine restaurants can work cuz i just dont understand how you can have a cook that happens to specialise in North Indian,Chinese and Andhra fare for eg. Also, i have a slight bias i guess, cuz i love trying out different cuisines, so if a restaurant has a dish that is not served in most other restaurants, it automatically goes higher in my opinion for just trying something else. Also, i dont mind paying good money for good food so value for money may not exactly figure high here, but its not like as if i dont eat in street side joints also, so i guess that makes up for it. Also did i mention that i am veggie, so that might also create an inherrent bias :). Enough said, here's my list, in the order of my recollection:

1. Roll Call - simply the best rolls and mughlai paranthas in town sold in a nondescript tiny hole in Nagarjuna Circle.Extremely popular with the ICFAI crowd around i hear. Their pudina paneer tikka roll is to die for and from what i hear from the people who go there with me, so is the chicken tikka roll. The fish rolls are good to, however they always seem to be not in stock. And the best part is that its not to heavy on the pocket too. Only wish is that if they were to move to a more clean area and provide better seating.

2. Tewari Bros - a heaven for northie street food lovers like me that masquerades as a sweet shop located bang at the Khairatabad junction. Their gatta subji ranks second only to what my mom makes and their chaats are simply amazing. The real surprises on their menu though is their lassi and their tawa pulao, since i never thought that the pulao could be made this exciting. Go there on sunday evenings to see the gujju and maaru crowd hog the pure veg fare.

3. Four seasons - well the first thing that anyone ever does when they get to Hyderabad is try and find out what the fuss about Hyderabadi biryani is all about. I sampled the fare at all possible places Paradise( sucks), Hyderabad House( okayish), Bawarchi(not that great), Ohris(way too heavy), etc etc. And I had made up mind that Biryani is way too overrated. Then somebody took me to this place in tolichowki called 4 Seasons. Boy, the biryani there is something to be sampled. The smell itself is bloody intoxicating. Am yet to sample Shadab which people tell me is better, but as far as the places that i have tried this is the place in Hyderabad for good biryani.

4. Bombay Vihar - a relatively new addition to my list of nice hyd restaurants simply for the fact that it serves different food. Good Gujarati, Marwari and Maharashtrian thalis. Much like the Rajdhanis and Mayurs of bbay and pune. Besides that they have some delicacies from Marwar and Gujju cuisines too. Nice ambience, efficient service and good quality food. Try out their Bajre ki Khichdi which absolutely rocks!

5. Dadu's - well again a sweet shop that serves some food, their pani puri and kulfi are the best in town in my opinion. Thronged by the Secunderabadi hordes the only downside is that its too crowded and serves food only at certain timings.

6. Dosa Plaza - 100 + varieties of dosas...what more can i say. I never have had the same thing there twice and each time i am absolutely amazed by what all they can do with a dosa. Mexican beans in dosa, chopseuy dosa, schezwan uttapam, you name it they got it. Surprisingly, it is always empty and i have a strange feeling that they are going to close down soon :(

7. Kafulok - best chinese food in town. Period. Their weekend brunch is a treat if there ever was one. And the best part is that each dish on the menu actually tastes different which is surefire sign of a good chinese place

8. Fusion 9/Grill room - above average continental and grilled food and laid back interiors. Nice place to lounge with a meal that will surely delight you.Thanks to ashanka for reminding me of this one :)

Honorable Mentions

1. Mainland China - decent chinese food. Very predictable, safe tasting fare though.Could do with more variety.
2. Friday night buffet at Taj Krishna - an all you can eat Italian and sea food buffet for 800 bucks!! The desserts itself make it worth the money in my opinion. But just one day in a week :(
3. Ohris Jiva - best veggie buffet for its price. Everyday seems to have the same menu and you quickly get bored of the place though.
4. Angeethi - good north indian place. Too bloody crowded in my opinion.
5. Jeet's Dhaba - a quaint place in Trimulgherry with awesome Anda Tadka Daal. Service leaves a lot to be desired though :(
6. Little penang - good chinese and continental food but the place feels absolutely dead with no ambience and mood to speak of. I actually get depressed when i go there.
7. Koyla/Our place - decent food, but outdoor restaurants just cannot work in a hot city like Hyderabad
8. Dine Hill - supposed to be the best Grilled Chicken place in town,located in Masab Tank. But is strictly non-veg so haven't had the good fortune of going there.
9.Sahib, Sindh, Sultan - their paneer dishes are the best in town and their karara palak chaat is so good that i can almost make love to it. A new entrant to hyderabad so lets hope that it can maintain its quality and service.
Addendum- sigh sahib,singh,sultan could not keep up...see the ps below :(

Most overrated places in Hyderabad

1. Ohri's Banjara - could they please design a buffet that is actually worth the 250 bucks that they charge from a veggie. I am not gonna pay that much money and eat roti dal. And their service is the worst ever. I just cannot understand why Hyderabadi's love ohri's so much !!
2. Zafraan Exotica - a good ambience alone does not a good restaurant make. You cannot have 5 dishes on the menu and expect me to choose from that.
3. Al Fresco, Taj Krishna -ditto as Zafraan Exotica
4. Terrace Bay - ditto as Al Fresco. Could somebody please actually taste the food that their chefs make..it tastes of only chillies!!
5.Bombay Blue/Copper Chimney/Noodle Bar - just need to go to these places to see how bad a restaurant's service can get!
6. Chutneys - Have they heard of telephonic reservation ...i am not waiting 1 hour outside a restaurant no matter how good it is. 60 bucks for a dosa - i dont give a shit if Chiranjeevi gave them its recipe, maybe they should ask him to pay for it also then!
7. Mocha - food is again manageable, but could a place get anymore pretentious. The bright pink and blue make me puke the food that i manage to ingest there.
8. Ofen - Man, can somebody please make them understand that cheese alone does not make a good pasta. And no, their portions aren't worth the money they charge. You cant charge money for being cool.And could they please hire more people to serve ...
9. The buffet at Novotel - Rs.1000 for a 10 dish buffet - are you kidding me??

Where are they now??

1. Chawla's Chik Inn - i got the most pleasant surprise of my life when i saw a franchise of this famed Delhi based chain in Somajigudda. They had the best butter paneer,dal maakhni, tikkas and from what i heard, butter chicken,in town. I didnt speak for full 15 mins when i was told that it had closed shop.
2. Indian Harvest - a precursor to Bombay vihar and used to serve really nice Gujarati thalis. Was a little ahead of the hyderabadi palate i guess.
3. What's Kooking? - used to serve nice Sindhi food. Their service was pathetic though and their end was nigh..

Sigh, it doesn't take rocket science to figure out that i am quite a foodie now does it :-). Also did anyone notice the absence of any Andhra joints in the list...well that's primarly because i frankly have been hughely disappointed by the Telugu food places in Hyderabad, none of them can match the Bangalore andhra joints in food,taste,variety or value for money. Surprising,eh??
Hmm...and who do i tag now..well i leave it for my discerning readers to do as they please. Anyone willing to do this can pick up the gauntlet...just drop a line in the comments so that i took can learn about some more restaurants.
Some day i will write a similar one on my favs in Delhi and Bangalore. And include watering holes too :)

PS. Just heard that Saheb, Sindh Sultan has stopped taking telephonic reservation...i had a fight with their manager and his manager for over 20 mins on the phone trying to make them understand how it made more sense to have an organised system where in you give preference to telephonic reservations and reduce the rush outside their joints. But no...they just would not listen ...those numbskulls!! So they are being bumped to being an also ran...

Current Music: Stone Temple Pilots - Plush

Just like the pied piper led rats through the streets..

2007-04-12T04:54:00.001-07:00

The farce that is known as Indian cricket has hopefully been exposed. We can all hopefully let our collective breath out and stop giving a shit about the game of cricket. There are other sports out there too, y'know!!
Sometimes it makes me wonder how people like Mel Gibson and Manoj N Shymalan ever get money to make movies. Anybody who has seen Apocalypto would like to shove a Jaguar's Paw up Gibson's ass for giving them a migraine that just wont go away. And the less said about Lady In Water the better. Seriously, i pity the IQ of Shymalan's children; if this movie was actually inspired by a bedtime story that Mr Shymalan told them then I am sure they are having quite a traumatic childhood. Isn't this so symptomatic of all the one hit wonders that this world has seen? They give you such a rush when they burst on to the scene with their flash-in-the-pan talent, but then give you nothing but migraines after that. Maybe their should be a worldwide body to govern their infiltration of popular culture. Once classified as a one hit wonder you should officially be forced to retire so that the people can remember you for all the good stuff that you did and not the shit that you will come up with in the future. I hope Mr Dhoni is listening cuz he's the next one that i would want to ban and soon...

Current Music: Metallica - Master of Puppets

Kanha,Bandhavgarh,Pachmarhi

2007-04-10T04:15:00.000-07:00

Photos and videos from the trip are up at http://picasaweb.google.com/nkhadiya .

Kanha

Bandhavgarh

Pachmarhi

Tiger, tiger burning bright...

2007-04-03T08:40:00.000-07:00

There is nothing better than a 10 day long vacation in tigerland i.e. the sanctuaries of Kanha and Bandhavgarh for worldly weary souls. I must make it my yearly pilgrimage destination. Almost 2000 pics need to be sorted from but here are a few samples.

Watch out for more pics in the coming few days.

Musings!!

2007-02-23T00:36:00.000-08:00

Rage against the machine reuniting....that could be the best news that i have heard in centuries!! Yes, there are rumours abounding of a comeback after a band reunited for a one time show. Yesterday i also got the news of a possible Genesis reunion happening - minus Peter Gabriel but atleast the rest will be there. This world seems like a better place to live in after all :)
Bullet for My Valentine, AlexisonFire, KillSwitch Engage and Pink Floyd's Animals( for some vague reason) have been pounding my ear drums of late. And to think that Roger Waters performed Sheep and the entire Dark Side of the Moon during his show in bombay. And I missed it. This trip to bangalore this weekend better be worth it.

Current Music - Tool - H.

An epidemic of mannequins

2006-11-29T01:29:00.000-08:00

Ok so its been a long time since i rock and rolled but then life's been kinda hectic. And then you really dont feel like doing much else when you have 2 adorable nephews around to play with also now do you :)
Last few weeks included a nice looong trip to Delhi, in which i had hoped that i would get to taste the Delhi winter after ages...but alas it was not to be. Damn that global warming, i think i better put in my lot with Al Gore after all this.
Coming back to Hyderabad is always a pain given the nature of the city, but coming back to the prospect of 10 hour workdays, shitty food and zero social life after a vacation where you literally got breakfast in the bed was a little painful. The bright sparks in Hyderabad are few and far between but when some of them come up you outta grab em with both hands. I was unfortunate enough to miss a Zero show in Hyderabad( for the unintiated Zero is one of the better Indian bands, for any doubts listen to an instrumental of theirs called "Christmas in July", i had the good fortune of catching them live a few times in Delhi,Bangalore and Bombay and man they rock) but when i heard that there was a nice play about to be staged in Hyderabad i decided that that was an opportunity not to be missed. The play was titled " Hamlet - an original spoof" done by this group of people from Chennai called evam. A little apprehension crept in since I dont know squat about Hamlet, but then i said to myself "why not" and decided to go and watch this play. So the plan was rolled out, a saturday evening it was to be, spent in an auditorium and i was to come out all the more wiser about some Shakespeare fundaes.
So i reached the audi and grabbed some nice seats and was kicking myself for not having attended some more plays in Hyderabad, cuz the female population was actually overwhelming. The play started just about in time and these guys started off with some nice covers ( is that a word that you can use in the context of a play??) of some Monty Python episodes. They didn't cover my favourite MP episode( "The ministry of funny walks" :-) ) But they did do the petshop owner and the dead parrot one and they did do it quite well so i was more than happy. Post interval they informed, would be the actual Hamlet spoof so i was left wondering as to how they can do a Shakespearean play in 45 mins, but then bigger things have happened in lesser time so i laid my mind to rest and watched as the post interval session began. And what a session it was. Those guys transformed the usual boring Shakespeare stuff into an interactive in house spoof, where they got in people from the audience to come up on stage and do some theatrics and it turned out to be a whole lot of fun. The 3 guys had quite a wacky stage presence and it kept the audience more than enthralled and more importantly laughing their collective ass off, so all in all it was an evening well spent.
On the music front here's a list of songs of the top of my head for the moment, that you should give a listen to:
1. Madonna - get together ( off her new album....sooooper track)
2. Stone Sour - Through the glass( this is Corey Taylor of Slipknot's side project. An awesome power ballad of sorts. The whol album is worth a listen actually.)
3. Atif Aslam - Tere Bin ( of the OST of "Bas Ek Pal"....a very hummable ditty)

Current Music: Messhugah - Organic Shadows

I believe in the kingdom come

2006-09-19T07:47:00.000-07:00

You really start feeling old"er" when:

1. You start paying taxes and abuse the govt for not utilising them properly.
2. You realise that you joined college 7 years back.
3. People ask you whether you still follow metal at your age.
4. Kids around the street start calling you "uncle" instead of "bhaiya".
5. You subtract a 2 digit number from your age and are still left with a two digit number.
6. You realise that there is nothing else that you can be, other than your present occupation, when you "grow up". And believe me, that sucks.
7. The bands that you grew up listening to or which burst upon the scene in front of you, start releasing "best of" albums.
8. You actually have to stay at home, because the carpenter is going to come to fix the door.
9. You realise that Roger Federer is "actually" your age and has already won so many titles.
10. You talk about old TV shows, which nobody, other than a couple of people can seem to recall. 11. People are actually talking about Sachin Tendulkar's retirement. It always seemed so far away :(
12. You are the seniormost guy in your team in terms of experience. ( ...whoa!!)
13. Your father is no longer the superhero he seemed to be.
14. You start paying back for something that you bought, via monthly installments.
15. You actually start repaying your debts to your friends :)
16. When people your age are busy buying land and houses and other such stuff...(and you dont know head nor tail of what's going on :-D )
17.People who care about you actually want to know what you plan to do with your life....
18. ..... and when " I dont know" is not a good enough answer to that.

Current Music: Byzantine - Ancestory of the Anti-Christ

Of Unrelated Geometry

2006-09-04T06:41:00.000-07:00

This seems like a familiar place. Reminds me of my blog somewhat? Wonder what happened to it? Maybe it too fell on bad days ...poor thing...i can only sympathise with its author who must be busy earning his daily bread much like me. Trying to get more and more work squeezed out of his fatigued body, nay soul maybe.
Ok enough of the oblique excuses, the last day has seen me stumble upon somethings that are worth propagating. First is a wonderful book of short stories titled "The Red Carpet" by Lavanya Sankaran. I have read just 2 of the stories in the book so far, but have been smitten by this lady's subtle wit and immaculate picturisation of the Bangalore youth and spirit. Lets hope the remaining stories too match up. The book was actually a worthy recommendation from a friend of mine, who we call Bib as a tribute to his clumsiness, when we got around to discussing why there werent too many books that had ever tried to capture the feel of living in Bangalore. Yup, i agree that not many would want to write about living in Bangalore today with its traffic and other monstrosities but there are a bunch of things that do give that city a whole lotta soul. The second would be these awesome radio shows that go by the name of Global DJ broadcasts that any self respecting trance fan should listen to. Just checkout the roster for the guest DJs on the show and you would know. Look up http://www.globaldjbroadcast.com/ for more details.

On an absolutely unrelated and tangential note, did anyone see this ( http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/columns/content/story/258516.html) . No no, forget the stories, just scroll down to the 2 nd pic and well ...ya ..pick your jaw back up. And yes that is Vinod Kambli with one of the hottest chics that i have seen in a long long time. Man, how the hell is it possible i have no clue, but that guy must have done something right in his lifetime.

And then you get to hear news like this (http://www.lse.co.uk/ShowbizNews.asp?Code=ZK44187L&headline=steve_irwin_killed_in_diving_tragedy) . The Crocodile Hunter is no more. Struck rather ironically by a sting ray and not a croc as would have been much more poetic. RIP steve. Animal Planet would not be the same without you.

Current Music: Bonham - Wait for You

Drawing pictures of mountain tops...

2006-07-31T12:40:00.000-07:00

Thoughts and patterns have been alternating between the story of Rama and the nature of karma. Rama, primarily cuz I have been devouring the Ramayana series byAshok Banker. And karma, well, cuz somehow I seem to be associated with it :).
The sale at Walden gave me the opportunity to pick up 31 songs by Nick Hornby. The same guy who wrote High Fidelity and About a Boy. Imagine telling the story of your life through songs. A song for a year. A song for every incident perhaps. Happy songs and sad songs. Angry songs and mellow songs. Songs that I jumped up and down to when i was a kid. Songs that I turned to in the darkness of the night.Which one would it be for now? "Shimmer" by Fuel ? "Epiphany" by Staind? Ahh...where are my Pearl Jam cds.....

Current Music : Immortality - Pearl Jam

And there it goes...

2006-07-16T02:40:00.000-07:00

Wednesday 12/07/2006 5:45 pm

Normal boring office day. Some plans to play basketball in the evening and then maybe go off to catch some late dinner. Was thinking about what to do over the weekend. There was Superman to watch, and my new Megadeth and Silverchair DVDs to watch. And then there was basketball to play and some books to read. All in all a weekend that I could look forward too.

Wednesday 12/07/2006 6:30 pm

On the basketball court. The whole MS team has met up after a long time. A few jokes shared, some warmup and then we get into a game. A make a clean swish with the first shot i make :) It feels good. Then I again get the ball and make a clean break.A team mate is running to my right. Somebody comes over to guard me so i think about a pass to my open teammate.He has a good open shot . All it requires is a nice fake and then a swivel on my right leg. Fake comes of well. Then i swivel. But my knee refuses to hold me up. And i crumple to the ground,writhing in pain. I dont know what went wrong. It was meant to be a nice move.

Wednesday 12/07/2006 7:30 pm

My roommate is rushing me to Apollo Hospital's Emergency room. I am on a wheelchair. My knee feels as if its been crushed by a hammer. "Oh god! Not again! Not again! Anything but that pain..."

Friday 14/07/2006 10:00 am

I wake up all groggy and can barely see around me.I am in a delhi hospital. My knee is all bandaged up and i know that i am just coming out of anaesthesia. My mum's in one corner giving me a reassuring smile. The doctor tells me that I have torn a cartilage and a ligament in my knee and they cleaned that up during the operation. I was lucky to have not ruptured the ACL ligament that he had reconstructed in 2002 in the same knee. However it does have a 20% tear. I ask him what I can do to give it strength again . He says " Nothing...just dont fall again." He says that no sports for me ever again . No basketball, football, badminton or squash. If i tear the remaining 80% then there isnt much that they can do. Its only treadmills, weights and swimming from here on for me.

Life sucks...and how!!

Joga Bonito???

2006-06-26T02:22:00.000-07:00

I was a witness to the farce that they called a World Cup football match between Portugal and the Netherlands. And i can safely say that i feel ashamed to have witnessed such a deprecation of football.
The game seemed to be more of a celebration of the might of the elbow and the beauty of theatre than what it was billed to be; a meeting of 2 teams that have a lot to prove given their perenial underachiever's tags. In Scolari and Van Basten, the game had in it 2 unbeaten coaches, who were supposed to be at the top of their arts. However the game would have sadly reminded Van Basten of the kind of injuries and tackles that cruely cut short his career, a career that would have made Cryuff seem like a pretender. And from Scolari, i expected an amalgamation of the Brazillian magic, Iberian flair and Europena grit which Portugal had presented to the world in Euro 04 and their first round matches.
And what a disappointment it turned out to be!!! Figo, Robben and Van Bommel, it seems have been perfecting their thespian skills in the past few months and decided that this was the best opportunity to show case their skills. Where were the cutting runs that Robben had shown in Euro 04? Is this what Mourinho's Chelsea has done to this prodigiously talented winger?? And was it a deliberate plan to put Ronaldo out of the game so early? Surely, the tackle by Boulharouz seemed to suggest nothing else but that. And the head butt by Figo or the hand ball by Costinha? I mean what the hell were these guys really thinking!!!!!!
But first things first, I find it hard to imagine how Van Basten could leave out people like Roy Makaay and Klaas Jan Huntelaar out of this squad, especially since its known that Ruud Van Nistlerooy is going through a really lean patch. And the effect of this was for all to see in the 2nd half of the match when Holland missed chances a plenty in the 18 yard box. And even when all this was going on, was Van Basten really justified in putting his ego before the interests of the nation and not bringing on Nistelrooy?? I mean come on are you really telling that that Vesellink of whatever is a better striker than either of the 3 aforementioned gentlemen. Mr Marcel Van Basten, i think you quite lost the plot there.
And then there was the Portugese team which seemed to have collectively let their brains go to graze in the nearby meadows( ..with due apologies to the Hindi language). Why the hell did Costinha handle the ball? Did Figo really need to head butt Van Bommel? Why, oh why in god's name did Deco not give the ball to Cocu? If ever there was a classic case of a pyrrhic victory then this was it, cuz i see no chance in hell of Portugal going any further given that they have lost 2, possibly 3 players if Ronaldo is unable to recover before the England match and half their remaining squad are sitting pretty with their deck of Yellow Cards.
And after all this both the coaches had the audacity to actually put the blame on the Russian referee and say that he messed up the game for the 2 teams. And how he did that, i dont know cuz maybe, maybe Messrs. Van Basten and Scolari think that it would have been better if the referee had turned a blind eye to the things that either Bouhlarouz or Costinha or Deco did. In my opinion, Costinha should have been out much earlier and Figo deserved a red card for what he did, but nah.. the 2 coaches think the referee screwed it up for them. Convenient, I say very convenient. And what do you think we should do to Bouhlarouz for kicking Ronaldo in the thigh and effectivly ending his match, Mr Van Basten? Garland him and put up his posters shall we??

And that brings me to the other point that has been constantly pricking me throughout this WC. Is it just me or has anybody else noticed the clearly below par level of football that most of the top teams have displayed? It seems shades inferior to the club level football that most of us see in the Champions league or the national leagues. Ok i agree there have been certain exceptions like Brazil's second half against Japan or England's first half against Sweden or most of Argentina's playing minutes but somehow its not been what i expected. And i would pin the blame sorely on the club football cuz the clubs nowadays are so reluctant to release their star players for national duties that these players hardly get a chance to play each other. And as you all would know, throwing in a few stars does not make a great team. They have to play with each other to understand each other's game. Take Ronaldinho for example. His passing has been way short of what we have seen him do for Barca cuz he's not able to predict where Ronaldo or Adriano would be in a few moments simply because that they havent played enough together. Germany on the other hand have been revelation cuz they seem to have a played a lot more football together, since quite a few of the players are drawn from the handful of the big German clubs and hence have that natural cohesion that comes from playing together. And its a real pity that its come to this cuz club football is one thing, but it should not be at the expense of international football. A case in point to have Champions league once evey 4 years and World Cup every year maybe ?

Current Music: Sepultura - Roots Bloody Roots

Punch

2006-05-17T02:48:00.000-07:00

Really nice interview with the jinxed Anurag Kashyap.

http://www.naachgaana.com/2006/5/2/naachgaana-s-exclusive-anurag-kashyap-interview

"Somebody just asked me, is your ultimate dream to win an Oscar? No, my dream is to sit across from Scorsese and serve him tea."

Cant believe that this guy has not been able to get even one film released as yet? What a pity!

Current Music: Scum of the Earth - Get your dead on

In too deep

2006-05-16T02:02:00.000-07:00

One of the most difficult things that people can ask of me is to tell them my list of favourite musicians. I mean, i find it really tough, nay excruciating, to come up with a list of favourite anything. And musicians....man that's the pits!! If somebody really wants me to come up with a list of my favourite artists then they probably will have to lock me up in a room and leave me there with some food and water for a month or so, cuz thats what it will take for me to go through all the artists that i have heard in my lifetime and figure which ones will make the cut. And even that might not be enough cuz seriously they are so many variables involved. And so many questions. How can i compare different genres of music? How do i rate a one-hit wonder whose single masterpiece might have overshadowed all the other below par stuff that he might have produced over a nondescript career ? Or for that matter how much credit is due to an artist whose been on the verge of my tolerance list because of a ton of consistently average music that they might have produced over a long career? And how, and this is the toughest one, how do i get over the biases that might come from the music that is currently in my playlist and hence those artists are number one on my recall list. Hence, if you ever walk up to me and ask me for a favourites list, then either arrange for an all-expenses paid trip to a lonely island for me or expect to hear a random from-the-top-of-my-head kinda answer.

But there is one band that i will put down without any hesitation on to this list.And they would be Pearl Jam.

They have been close to my heart for a long long time. What is it that I like about them? Well, for one, they have a strong sense of melody attached with their music and their initial albums had the 90s sound in them which initially drew me to them. Eddie's lyrics for the early albums, were just too compelling to ignore and they have provided solace time'n' again. I had not been too impressed with their last album, Riot Act, but there's no denying the fact that they are destined for musical immortality more along the lines of bands like CSNY or Rush or The Who rather than say an Ozzy or an Aerosmith. The last of the Seattle bands left standing, while the Grunge movement fell to the wayside, they are probably the only band that truly understood what endeared the Grunge movement to an entire generation and have carried it through their music. It was not the flannel and boots look, nor the dreadlocks or the low tuned guitars, nor was it the improbable mix of the 70's punk's brashness along with the lyrics of say the Classic Rock movement that these guys mixed, that drew the hordes. It wasnt even the fact that most of these guys came from broken American families that the masses could identify with, which made them popular. For me, the 90s music was all about one thing - sincerity. Here was a bunch of guys who came in as a breath of fresh air in an era which had grown sick and tired of the over the top 80s pop and hair metal bands, the rockstars' excessive debaucheries, the filthy materialism and senselessness of the pop acts. These guys were exactly the opposite of that. They sung about everyday issues and they kept it real. Their music was unprententious, raw, edgy and unapologetic. For once, they were even willing to sing about the one thing that nobody really wanted to stare at - politics.
But then somehow somewhere, the plot was lost. Cobain went and shot himself. Chris Cornell got an ego the size of Mt Everest and Scott Weiland discovered cocaine. Layle Staley, well lets just not think about him, its too depressing . And the music executives of the world discovered the market potential of the 12-16 year olds and gave them the mannequins that prentended to sing - Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears. The lone rangers of the era past, Pearl Jam went to surf the farthest oceans and decided to stick with what the held closes to their heart - the issues that plagued the society around them. They kept churning out albums that were nothing short of fuckin' brilliant ( Vitalogy, No Code, Yield, Binaural) and were also happy and content that could still walk down the street without being mobbed. Their music matured, they got married and sobered themselves down, Eddie got a new haircut and Mike McCready a new disease, Stone got a look of a software geek that went well with his Seattle neighbourhood, Jeff went back to Montana. Their drummer problem was solved with the arrival of Matt Cameron, the best thing that probably resulted out of the dissolution of SoundGarden. They were happy with what they had. The shouted out to the world to throw out Bush and threw their lot in with Ralph Nader, sung for kids at the Bridge School benefits, jammed to free Tibet and fought( and lost to) corporate leeches like Ticketmaster.
But then their record label, Epic, realised that their multi-million dollar deal for the what they hoped would be their multi-platinum rock act for the new millienium was going sour, so they decided to dump them. Nothing could have been better for PJ who now discovered that without the commercial pressures they could be more forthright with their activism and signed up with the granddaddy of folk rock management Clive Davis' J Records. And have now come out with their latest album, which is self titled. Critics have called it the heaviest PJ album in years, which makes rub my hands in anticipation, but what i am really looking forward from them is their brand of sincere rock. Soft or heavy, old or young, blues, folk or grunge, nothing can take away the sincerity from Pearl Jam. And thank god for that.
I haven't heard the album myself as yet as i am awaiting my own copy which should be with me soon.

Current Music : Papa Roach - Getting Away with Murder

Hear my name, take a good look, this could be the day....

2006-05-02T04:22:00.000-07:00

So did you miss me while I was gone, dear reader? Did you ? Did you?

Ok, you dont have to answer that, its kinda rhetorical anyway. A new first on this blog. I got my first abusive comment on this blog, wherein somebody bothered to take the post i put up personally and use harsh words to respond back. But then the respondant was actually Konga, so his abuses dont really count. So my score is still love-all in that regard :)

The last trip to Bangalore turned out strengthen my resolution to never settle down in that city, a thought which i had deeply pondered at one point of time in the past. Why did i do that, don't ask me, because its quite true that i dont know where in the world I will be in the next few years, but its always one of those thoughts that you tend to have when you have nothing better to think of. Maybe I just got up that day and decided, " Hey today seems like a good day to ponder about which city i want to settle down in the future"? Maybe my list consisted of cities like New York, Amsterdam, Madrid, Zurich, Prague and Sydney but for some reason, which seem absolutely valid to me at that point of time, i decided to go in favor of Bangalore. However, the recent trip made me realise that such decisions should never be taken in haste or while under the influence of hallucination causing substances or while suffering from their after effects, 'cuz a city is as fluid as your average river, and your decision about the future can never be based on what you perceive at the moment. What has mde me strike Bangalore of my list, dear reader, you must wonder?
Well, for one, its the god forsaken traffic that the city is being subjected too. It took me 45 whole minutes to go from the New Shanti Sagar in Domlur to TGIF opposite Diamond District. This was while I was stupid enough to sit in the company cab. Next day, i was struck by a brilliant brain wave, and i decided to try and make the same journey on foot. I think i must have clocked somewhere between 1 minute 45 secs to 2 minutes.
Secondly, whatever happened to the city? A trip down MG Road on a late weekday night and i saw the streetwalkers openly peddling their wares and propostioning their customers. All this while the cops were standing right around the corner. A little too creepy for my comfort.
Thirdly, the north Indian confrontationist attitude is all to clearly visible. Something which i refuse to digest and would love to stay away from all my life.

However, there are somethings that refuse to change. It took some effort, but i did manage to convince some of my colleagues to miss a bit of the conference and go DVD trawling with me through National Market and I managed to pick up around 20 odd DVDs which included:

1. Nagisa Oshima's "In the Realm of the senses"
2. Lots of Wong kar Wai - 2046, In the mood for love and Chung King Express
3. Chris Nolan's pre "Memento" epic - "Following"
4. Robert Altman's version of Raymond Carver's short stories titled "Short Cuts"
5. A Goo Goo Dolls live in concert DVD

and some other stuff that I dont remember now.

Well, i have been listening to a lot of Meshuggah of late and for me they have come to represent the true heirs to the legacy of the music that was Atheist and Cynic. Their songs have some amazing drumming, mostly sticking to the tempos that are so typical of this genre. Chaosphere, a album they released a while back has been my favourite of theirs for quite a while and i cant get enough of this band for the moment. Another band that seems to have caught my fancy of late has been this melodic death metal band from the US called KillSwitch Engage . Their last 2 albums namely, "Alive or Just Breathing" and "The End of Heartache" have been just fabulous and the songs from them that i recommend are :
1 . Fixation on the Darkness
2. My Last Serenade
3. Life to Lifeless
4. Rose of Sharyn
5. A Bid Farewell
6. Declaration

Amazing tracks, that any self respecting metal fan must listen to.

On an unrelated note, I read about something called "National Delurking Week" that the blogosphere celebrated sometime back and me being the uninformed- hiding-in-his-own-little-cocoon me, did not hear about it till recently. But the gist of the whole thing being that there are a bunch of people who are regulars on your blog, but never comment nor say anything and would it be really nice for the blogger to hear from them. And then it struck me that my blog has a decent reader base and has clocked almost 5,500 visitors in the last few months but i never hear from anyone besides the usual suspects. ( No, all you usual suspects, i am not trying to undermine your value, i really do care about you all......alot!!!) And i know for a fact that there are a bunch of regulars here, from whom i have never heard on this blog. So to all such people, "Do drop in a line in the comments section sometime...it wont hurt ya!!".

Current Music : Powerman 5000 - Free

Elevated elevator music

2006-04-17T11:59:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I have this distressing urge to live life like a song. Its mostly a Massive Attack kinda song with its slow intoxicating beats , that would always have to be shot in black and white with lots of smoke in the video. It would have to have a woman jiving slowly while mouthing into a lone mic -stand on an empty dark stage with a half burnt cigarette in her hand. It would have tons of disconnectd visuals in it which would hardly make any sense on the first glance. The melody would have to be mesmerising almost,drawing you into it at the first listen, not because you really understood whats its all about, but because somehow the music that you heard gave you an impression that it possibly best represented your life at the moment.

Or how about the living life like one of those scenes from a movie wherein the guy is meeting the girl for the first time outside a club that they both were in. Its slightly dark and you can hear the muted beats from the club in the background. Just loud enough to break the silence but soft enough to allow for meaningful conversation along the sidewalk. An invitation for a coffee perhaps? Or maybe just curious "hi" with raindrops in the hair.

Even living a 90s alternate video would be nice wherein i would be somewhere in the background while the girl from the Blind Melon's "No Rain" video would be doing her thing. Or being one of the circus extras in the RedHotChilliPeppers " Soul to Squeeze" video. A tramp travelling with a circus, watching the freaks put on their show every night. Or sitting along the beach watching Eddie and the boys surf while they did the "Oceans" video. Black and white and water.
Now that would be a life wouldn't it...

Current Music: The Killers - Mr. Brightside

Dissecting Cyrus

2006-03-28T01:29:00.000-08:00

Key things that make Being Cyrus different from most other movies around:

1. The director actually spent more time in coming up with the script than in making the movie
2. The movie, for once, trusts the intelligence of the audience and lets them answer a few questions on their own.
3. There is no apology nor rationale given for the extra-marital affairs in the movie. Dimple is no sati-savitri. She has relations with Cyrus and Farookh Sethna, while still caring for Dinshaw. She is in love with the dreamer in Dinshaw( as seen in the scene where he climbs down the well to get some flowers) but she realises that living with him is a totally different proposition. She obviously manipulates Cyrus to do her bidding, but what about her love for Farookh...is it because she wants his property or is it simple cause she is fascinated by him?
4. The ending is not your typical ending. Cyrus/Xerxes does not run away because he is trying to atone for his sins or whatever, he runs away because he wants his freedom and nothing else. Its not about morality, its about being free from all relations and being comfortable with it.
5. First indian movie to use monochrome shots to depict something more than rape scenes :)

There - I have said some of what i wanted to say. The movie is definitely not the best movie that i have seen, nor is it something that remains with me for much after the movie, but the good thing about this movie is that there are no glaring faults with it which make you turn your face away from it in sheer disgust. Nor is it "hatke" or "alag" or "different" just for the sake of being so.
You know how it makes me feel. Like when Arundhati Roy wrote "The God of Small Things". This is a story which when thought of by the storyteller compelled him to tell it to the world. Homi Adajania did not make the movie for the sake of making a movie, he did not create a sappy love story, nor did he rehash a Hollywood also-ran, he made the movie because he had a story to tell. Now, thats what i call refreshing and different in the Indian movie scene. We probably wont hear of Homi Adajania for quite sometime or we might hear of him publishing a book, but thats ok because he made his movie and now wants to tell another story using a different medium. Its his experiment not his profession.

And yes, its unbelievable but i have read reviews for this movie criticising it exactly for the aforementioned reason. Taran Adarsh at indiafm.com says that this movie should be avoided for the very reason that its different. What shit!! Man i cant believe how these people are allowed to guide the views and opinion of a nation of 1 billion. What a pity!

On an unrelated note, i will be making my first real presentation for MS in a couple of days. I will be giving a teeny weeny demo during the keynote speech at the India edition of the Mobile and Embedded Developer Conference( www.medcindia.com) never thought such a day would come but it has... at MS' peril though :). I am sincerely praying to god to keep Mr. Murphy and his laws away from my code. But what this also means is that i will be visiting Bangalore after a helluva long time. Got a ton of people to meet and lots to catch up on.

Current Music : Life to Lifeless - KillSwitch Engage

Its not going to stop...till you wise up

2006-03-20T02:04:00.000-08:00

Her voice is sounds like she's carrying the worlds burden on her fragile shoulders. The piano in the back ground paints a picture as stark as a desert's landscape.

This is the kind of song that makes you put off all the lights in your room and shrink in your mood and just savor....

Listen to it here

Current Music : Aimee Mann- Wise Up

Feel like more..

2006-03-15T12:26:00.000-08:00

Songs that define emotions for me

Lost Love: 1. Black - Pearl Jam
2. Wicked Game - Chris Isaak

Exultation- Intro to Arcane Lifeforce Mysteria - Dimmu Borgir

Ecstasy - Insomnia - Faithless

Euphoria - Song 2 - Blur

Evocative - 2000 & Gone - Anathema

Hope: Flying in a blue dream - Joe Satriani

Love: 1. Fleetwood Mac - Everywhere
2. Love Thing - Joe Satriani

Anger: Before I Forget - Slipknot

Current Music: Unas Slayer of the Gods - Nile

Perpetual War

2006-03-14T04:24:00.000-08:00

There is very little that is perfect in this world. Very little that is black or white. Its always a constant struggle to decide whats right and wrong, especially so if the final outcome has a direct bearing on us. Its tough to be all principled and proper at those times and those are times that most often we give in to social prejudices. Crash is a movie that captures this to the hilt and portrays to great effect. Intertwined lives of the suburban culture wherein people "crash" into each other for just a few seconds and yet manage to alter the pysche of the people whom they interact with. And i myself have seen it manifest so many times in my life that there was no way in which i could not sympathise with the characters. The cop who saves a black man from a racially triggered incident, and yet, when faced with a situation where he fears for his own life, he goes ahead and gives into this very prejudice that he had fought for. How does he live with his own conscience after that? Paul Haggis gives no answers, he just poses questions for us to decipher and reflect on. None of the incidents that are featured in the movie were important enough to ever make the headlines and therein lies the irony of the entire situation, that in all probability all these small incidents are the worst manifestations of these prejudices since the people who live with them, in all probability would go ahead and condemn a racially motivated massacre, but would not know that there is some part of them which probably has the same instincts. The performances are adept without taking away the sheen from the theme of the movie which is the core of the film.
This movie could so easily have been made in the Indian context, given the fact that while US is still coming to terms with these issues, the Indian culture has been facing them since time immemorial. And still suffering because of it too, I might add. A movie definitely worth watching.

Current Music: Bolt Thrower - Those once loyal - Anti Tank(Dead Armour)

Where do we go from here?

2006-03-10T00:28:00.000-08:00

Hyderabad is a weird city to live in. Somehow as a city it seems to lack something, i dont know if character is the word I am looking for but its more like a lack of patronage for arts. No I dont care too much that it does not have too many discs or pubs(...though i would definitely wish for a lot more of them) but what it lacks is that strong sense of culture and the desire to understand the world around you that Bangalore or Delhi posses. The people here it seems are more content to live in their own little wells of existence or shift to the other cities when the yearning for that something more hits them. Its really weird because its not like Hyderabad does not have its share of cultural or hobby groups but whats really amazing is the kind of inactivity or inertia that i have witnessed in whatever i have been a part of. Its almost that these sets have been stuck in the infancy stages of their development for aeons and they have gone on to influence people as much as lets say Janagraaha has influenced Bangalore. They are happy in limiting their scopes of influence to the bare minimum. The film clubs are busy organising their Satyajit Ray retrospectives for their groups of 30 people. And doesnt this city have anything that can remotely pass of as theatre? And the quizzing is limited to the motley group at KC where pan Hyderabad events are still a statistical dream. And where, pray, where are the local musicians who could atleast be seen once in a while in the small scale concerts. Some people might say that that's quite alrite given that being small for these hobby or cultural groups means that these organisations have no hangups, will be have no political wranglings affecting their organisational structure and will be nimble enough to do a lot more. Unfortunately i dont see that happening at all. Its almost as if there is no commitment to the cause for these groups or a lack of leadership and vision . All i can hope for is that it they realise that they can do so much more and get so many people with like minded tastes together if they got their act together. It would take whatever activities they do, be it social, political, cultural or whatever, to the next level.
Its so weird because i can so clearly see how this affects the life of this city. I mean i really fail to understand what the people do in their spare time cuz there are just so few things to do in this city. The cinema halls that screen shit for movies cuz thats what people's tastes have got attuned to. They dont get to see good movies, so they have slowly grown accustomed to not demand for them. Unimpressive video libraries, no sports facilities to speak of. The people in the Old City are too busy maintaing or provoking communal sensibilities, depending on which side of the fence they are on. Secunderabad is too busy trying to get into page 3 while the Software guys at Hi tec city are too busy trying to make more money and they couldn't care enough for a city through which they are just passing by till they get the next better paying job. I sometimes wonder how the people of the city get through the weekends. I mean if a bunch of friends wanna go and just sit and banter, where do they go here ? Cuz all i can see are the big restaurants which obviously do not make for general hangouts. There are a couple of coffee joints but they are just too crowded for my liking. Then you obviously have the colossal human meeting grounds in the form of Hussain Sagar and the malls- Central, Shoppers Stop, Prasadz which have atleast 3 humans fighting for every square inch of footspace.
See when I was a teen in high school, a day with the gang would be basketball in the morning, movie in the afternoon and cricket in the evenings. However, given the lack of public spaces in Hyd and the cinema theaters that show only crap for movies, what to do the kids do here on weekends . I see so many of them at the malls that we sometimes visit, hanging around in groups aimlessly. What the hell do they do there? Dont they get bored? I am quite sure that they arent there for shopping unless their parents are rolling in money or something? Is this the story of all the newly-urban submetro cities that we have in India, where kids and people are clearly lacking in social meeting grounds? No wonder, the kids nowadays seem to be growing up so fast, cuz all they see are those adult models in the malls and in their urge to emulate them they seem to overlook all that which was dear to us as kids. Weird state of affairs right?

Current Music - ATB - Believe in Me.

Are-you-kidding-me-dept

2006-02-28T00:17:00.000-08:00

Hahahaha!
Click on the image to read the actual strip.
This one is going to be fun.

Current Music: Satyricon - Dark Medieval Times

(the) English, March?

2006-02-27T02:18:00.000-08:00

This is the kind of shit that makes me sick.
http://content-usa.cricinfo.com/indveng/content/story/238833.html

Some useless long-forgotten English excuse-for-a-cricketer presenting the rants that teams visiting India have long presented about how they were treated unfairly by the umpires when they came to India. How the conditions were too oppressive. How the food was too spicy. How the cities were too unclean and polluted. How the prawn curries in the roadside restaurants by the local sewer, which only the rickshawallas from the bus-stand inhabit, gave them food poisioning. How the crowds were too loud. How the pitches are always dustbowls which cause the innocous Indian slow bowlers to suddenly breathe fire, while there own super talented slow bowlers are as ineffectual as ever( a team which has Ashley Giles as their front line bowler is like a hunter who tries to shoot a tiger with his slingshot). How God was biased against them.
The Australians realised the folly of their actions and instead learnt to embrace the change. And look what that brought for them, a series win in India after 30 years. But the English refuse to change. For them its still this third world protectorate-dominion, a win in which holds no value. For them, the Ashes victory is the be-all and end-all of the cricketing world. They won that right? So nothing else matters right? So Duncan Fletcher starts giving us the news as to how half the team is suffering from gastric influenza( i mean dont these fuckers ever learn what to eat and what to avoid). Marcus Trescothick leaves the team midway for "personal reasons" which I am sure would have been easily sacrificed had it been the Ashes or a home series at stake.

And the Indians, well, we never crib about how the tours to England are always organised at the awkward time when their cricket season is just starting, when the winter has not completely thawed off and it freezes your bones just to be out in an open space. We never cribbed about how tough it is to play a sport in light that seems more suitable for a cinema hall during a show. Or how tough it is to bat or bowl when you have 6 layers of clothing on your body( anyone whose played cricket in delhi in the winters with sweaters on will know what i am talking about...you have a ton of clothing on you cuz you will freeze without it, but you will still be sweating underneath it all because of all the running around...its the weirdest feeling) . Naah, we Indians dont crib, we just fight amongst ourselves a little, crib about how Dada is playing/not playing( depending on which side of the fence you are), crib about how Dalmiya is making his millions( well atleast he made us a cricketing superpower in terms of sheer clout, the freaking Congress politicians siphoned off 10 times that amount and left India wallowing in penury and famine- whose taken them to court for that). Well after all for us its stilll all about Karma right?? And also about the readiness to hammer an opposition reeling under their psychological issues and to catapult to second place in the ICC Test rankings. Hallelujah, the Pakis are gone and the English are here.

Current Music: Naer Mataron - The day is breaking

Are you kidding me??

2006-02-21T01:09:00.000-08:00

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2006/02/14/DDG33H7MSO9.DTL

Batman will fight Al Qaeda in a novel by Frank Miller??

What shit!

Current Music: Holotype - Shadowbox

Ohh those cliches....

2006-02-14T06:05:00.000-08:00

What do you get when you put 5 women together in a Railway Compartment? You get Anita Nair's Ladies Coupe a book which just reeks of the sort of bohemian pseudo feminism that your mother warned you not to read when you were kids. I obviously was too busy reading my Hardy Boys when my mum was doing her job, or otherwise I would have stayed away from this book. Somehow, it gives me the impression that Eminem would have read books like this one, to turn him into the kind of misogynist that he is. Well, you get the hint about the book right?

No?? Ok. The roles that the 5 women portray are your stereotypical Indian women roles, those of the wives with the lost identities, women who have lost their innocence cuz of evil men, women who have silently born the burden of running their households, while their families have all but forgotten their needs. The men in this book have as much gumption or use as Bollywood film heroines and they do quite bit of justice to their ilk. Ohh man, and the misplaced sexuality...the women in the book end up making love with the men that you would least expect them to make love with. What a freaking ordeal!!

I also happened to catch "Mixed Doubles" over the weekend. Will somebody in this country please make a Multiplex movie which will be the anti-thesis of the expected multiplex movie...which means, for one, it wont have Koel Purie playing her standard vulnerable-tormented-hence-turned-into-a-bitch kinda roles. She is getting absolutely unbearable. And will somebody please please puhleeze let Anurag Kashyap write more movie scripts and hopefully direct a movie that wont be banned! His script for this movie is just awesome. The double entendres are superbly subtle and Ranvir Sheorey has the perfect dead pan expression to carry them off. Konkona Sen is nuanced and apt though her penchant for sarongs does get a little irritating. The build up to the climax is a little slow but bearable since there are couple of good laughs on the way, but why the hell does the movie end where it ended? Either the movie should have ended 10 mins before or after it ended cuz it left me scratching my head a little. Sigh, why did i expect so much more Rajat Kapoor? Superb actors do not superb directors make.

Current Music: Iron Maiden - Hallowed Be Thy Name

Give dance a chance....

2006-02-06T02:30:00.000-08:00

Its been a long time but I am back. Well kinda. My left shoulder aint what it used to be but i guess i will have to live with that. The last weekend was spent in a quick trip to Delhi to get an MRI done and to meet some doctors who told me that i have chipped some bones and partially torn my left shoulder ligament. Ah well. Shit happens. Atleast we came third in the Corporate Basketball tournament. But the downside is that the docs told me to stay of sports for 6 months...as if i am gonna listen to all that they say :)

Well, it seems travelling is well and truly in my stars for the time being. The 26th January weekend saw me spending 4 days in Pune. And that city absolutely blew me away. It reminded me so much of what Bangalore used to be around 5-6 years back, when it was still pristine and not as over burdened as today. I was hosted by my good friend Konga who finally managed to be of some use. Well most people who know Konga will be wondering how the hell that is possible with him being the guy that he is. Let me explain. He, being an alumnus of XLRI, managed to wriggle his way through the interview of ITC. And ITC being the behemoth that it is, weilds quite a bit of influence when it comes to pubs and nightclubs and somehow this "genius" has managed to learn the fine art of using his clout. Konga having his clout. Pisses me off :)
Well, we went to a couple of places in Pune, the first being this wonderful pub called 1000 Oaks which played exactly the kind of music that you can sing along too. The crowd and atmosphere was quite nice and it seemed that the regulars at that place knew their music. The other place which is also really recommended is Sheesha cafe at ABC Farms. ABC Farms is like this gallery of restaurants/pubs and has this nice hookah bar called Sheesha. We were fortunate enough to be there when a live band consisting of some Swedes and Italians was playing some amazing reggae. The place was the perfect lounge without being the too brightly lit. More importantly, the people who run the place had paid more attention to being comfortable than being wacky and chic, so that was a relief. Most of the seating consisted of good old diwans and ottomans, a perfect place to lounge and listen to good music. The place was situated on a terrace with an amazingly green view, and with the night temperatures in Pune being really really pleasant it provided the perfect setting for some nice music. The musicians were quite adept and more importantly, were not too obtrusive and blended nicely into the place. The crowd was quite knowledgeable and very international. Thats one thing that hits you when you are Pune, the number of foreigners that you see around, the reason obviously being the fame that good ol' Osho had brought to this city. And his ashram was also definitely on my list for places to see for obvious reasons. The overbearingly high walls proved to be let down considering all the hopes that i had of catching some "action" at the ashram. But I did catch sight of some really really HOT women who were part of the ashram and seemed to be living there. Couldn't help wondering what had driven such HOT women to live in an Ashram though....hmm.....could it be...hmmm....ah well.
Konga also took me to a some nightclubs namely Nirvana and Xion but their wasnt much i could do with my arm and all. But these places were just like any other night club in India playing exactly the same tracks that you could find in any club in India. Kinda weird how at any point of time the whole country or the world might be dancing to the same set of tracks in most of the night clubs....
We were too lazy to go to Lonavala and too hungover to go to a quiz there but in all in all it turned out to be quite a fun trip. Also managed to catch Rang De Basanti there. Hmmm what can i say about RDB that hasnt been said already. Watch the movie once atleast for its freshness if nothing else.Most of the actors are quite adept though i really cudnt swallow Aamir Khan as a 25 year old guy. And how i wish AR Rahman would leave the singing to someone else. His music is getting a little to repetetive for my taste. "Lose Control" and "Khalbali" are way to cliched, but the clincher for me is "Roobaroo" -the guitar being the saving grace for that song.

Ok time for me to go and trip on the latest album that i bought. "Faithless -Forever: Greatest Hits". For all those who care, this IS the seminal house act for me. An absolutely wonderful album.

Current Music: Why Go? - Faithless

Silence....

2006-01-31T05:29:00.000-08:00

Thats what happens to a blog when the blogger gets a dislocated shoulder and it becames an effort to type out all those words that come to your head.

Darn that game of basketball :(

Current Music: Six Feet Under - DeathKlaat

Nothing remains...

2006-01-10T02:57:00.000-08:00

During my vacation to the northern regions, i was kept company by this wonderful book by Khushwant Singh titled "Delhi". Why was i reading this book? Well, for one thing, i have spent 17 good years of my life in the city. And despite what anyone might tell you, Delhi is one of the better Indian cities to live in, the only other pretender to the throne of the top Indian city being Mumbai i think. Cant comment too much on Mumbai though, cuz i havent been fortunate enough to spend too much time there. Obviously, Bangalore cannot even come close to being a pretender cuz its infrastructure has gone to the dogs now. Ok will reserve my take on Indian cities for some other day. For the moment back to the book and why i was reading it. Well, Delhi has a wonderful sense of history associated with it and i had always wanted to read up on that. And this book by Khushwant Singh came well recommended too. Plus, KQA had given me 500 bucks to blow up on books so i thought "why not".
And it turned out to be a really good buy. Frankly, Khushwant Singh is easily one of the most reviled authors on the critics list for the simple reason that he makes being a wily old lech his foremost raison-d'etre and that tends to take the sheen of his writing. I tend to not believe too much in Indian literary criticism cuz most of the critics tend to be a from a bunch of pretentious writers and hence i decided to make up my mind on my own as far as Mr. Singh is concerned. And to cut a long story short, Mr Singh did live upto his reputation. Some portions of the book which deal with his womanising are downright tedious and are kinda tough to swallow. But the portions of this book which deal with Delhi itself are very very insightful. They are mostly written as first person accounts of people like Taimur, Aurangzeb,Mir etc who have had a tremendous impact on the history of Delhi. And the way the story has been woven around these historical characters is quite unique and if nothing else, manages to keep the reader attentive. Its quite obvious the Khushwant Singh is in love with the city and that adds its own sense of melodrama to the story.
There was this one portion of the book that really made me laugh and cringe at the same time. At one place Mir Taqi Mir, the famous poet, is describing the city during his time period and he talks about the time after the fall of the Mughal empire when the city of Delhi was being ravaged by the Afghans. He then goes on to describe the Sikh hordes who came in from Punjab and writes about them:

"These Sikhs grow their hair and beards long and have a fierce aspect. Sometimes they let their long hair down before they fall on the Afghans and make them fly in terror. They fill the nights with their weird cries.
The Sikh armies pressed on toppling the crowns and thrones on their way. They chased Afghans right upto the Attock river. Then they returned to the Punjab, slew the Hindu governor of Lahore appointed by Abdali and became the rulers of Punjab. Now they have turned their bloodshot eyes on Delhi. What worse fate could befall a beautiful city than it become the abode of savages."

I couldnt believe this portion when i read it. Mir had actually forseen the takeover of Delhi and consequently, of entire India by the Punjus almost 2 centuries before it actually happened. Yes they have made all the humans fly in terror. They have filled the nights with their weird cries of "Ballee Balle" and "Chak De Phatte" and made even the lives of the most sane Delhites miserable. The beautiful city has been takenover by the savages, people and the alcohol drenched, bloodshot eyes of the Punjus are know looking at the whole world for complete domination/damnation.

Current Music : Arch Enemy - Saints and Sinner

Blooms around the bend...

2006-01-04T04:02:00.000-08:00

Chance readings in the midst of a boring day. Went and read this on Adi's blog the other day. The gist of it being pretty much where to draw the line as to how much you can take in a relationship.

Then i go to TableMannered's blog and read this . In specific the lines that appeal to me the most being:

What we call 'love' has a short life-span. It is a day in which you allow yourself to touch somebody's body and soul simultaneouisly. Rarely, the day turns into the habit of a lifetime. But often, all you have is a small collection of such magic-days.
Our days are slipping past and I am helpless against them. I am afraid I may lose him to his own indecision. That by the time he decides that he is ready for love, I will be too worn out. Or that I will just have fallen off the edge of the world.

And I used to think that if you find the person you love, the whole haze of confusion would melt into nothingness. Is everybody in love always so confused???

The answers all come, i guess, depending on how much faith you have in your relationship. Thats the only thing that helps you weather the thunderstorms that come in between these magic days. The day you lose faith, is when it all becomes meaningless i guess. The rest is all bullshit, that you shouldn't give too much attention to .

Current Music: Opeth - Blackwater Park

I am alive....

2005-12-27T02:15:00.000-08:00

Been reading lots of late. A friend of mine introduced me to the "Star Wars" books and I was pleasantly intrigued by what i saw. Here were books that traced many of the characters from their pre- and post- Episode 1-6 days and a discussion with this fellow Star Wars fan-friend of mine led to a discovery that there actually exists a whole series of books ( a trilogy- well what else did u expect in the Star Wars world!! :) ) about Han Solo's pre Episode days. I begged,pleaded and cajoled my friend to give me these books and were they worth it or what! These books describe Han's life right from his childhood till the day that he meets Ben and Luke on Tatooine and complete the story behind all those vague references in Episode 4-6. For eg, why was jabba behind Han, whats the thing between Bobba Fett and Lando and yes it also details things like how Han won the Millenium Falcon and also how Chewie and Han met. To tell you the truth, when i first picked up the books, i was a little sceptical cuz all such efforts are nothing but means of minting money off obessesed fans. However, the first book left me pleasantly surprised as it really dwelled deep into Han's psyche and was quite well written. The whole trilogy turned out to be un-put-downable. It detailed an important part of the lovable rogue's life really well. Han Solo is one of my favourite on screen characters and i just loved the impish way in which Harrison Ford had portrayed him on screen. These books are a must for any self respecting Star Wars fan out there.

Keeping in mind the holiday mood, my musical tastes too seem to have graduated in that direction. Have been listening to a lot of club tracks and have been pleasantly surprised that there are quite a few new interesting tracks that escaped my attention and are really really good. And the DJs in the places around are actually putting them through some heavy rotation which is a pleasant change from the days when all you could expect in the name of Bollywood at most clubs is Kishore/Asha numbers remixed with some jarring results most of the times. Dont get me wrong they were nice, but they got a little too repetetive, if you know what i mean.
Here is my list of the some songs that any self respecting Indian club should play at the yearend:

1. Right Here, Right now - OST Bluffmaster( watta video!!! - Priyanka looks like a million bucks and music has a really nice vibe to it and doesn't sound "too" wannabe)

2. Zinda Hoon Main (Fun da mental mix) - OST Zinda ( this is my pick for the soundtrack of the season, i love the sound of the songs on this album, the mixes have a really professional house/trance edge and sound like as if they have been done by Tiesto or Paul Van Dyk and not by Harry Anand from Chandigarh. And from what i heard some of the mixes have actually been done by Nikhil Chinappa!! Will write more about this film and its music in a later post)

3. Kaala Chashma - Amar Arshi ( an old UK hit which has finally percolated to the indian shores. Features samples from LLCoolJ's epic "Phenomenon" which i couldn't locate on Kazaa or Torrents for ages. )

4. Woh Lamhay - Zeher ( Cmon how can you NOT play this one)

5. As the Rush Comes - Motorcycle( My club song of the year...BY MILES!!)

Current Music : Zinda Hoon Main(Fun Da Mental Mix) - OST Zinda

A Message from the creators

2005-12-22T07:42:00.000-08:00

Dear Patrons,

This is just to inform you that the previous 2 vainglorious posts from the creator were not part of the original schedule.
We shall resume with our regular programming shortly.

Thanks.

Current Music: The Killers - Mr Brightside

Woo Hoo 2!

2005-12-19T22:39:00.000-08:00

Look whose been featured on a film for the Channel 9 India website:

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=143591

Yes that would be me!
We have a small demo on all that i worked on last year :)

Am i on the way to attain celebrity status? :-D

Current Music: Chimaira - Lazarus

Woo Hoo!

2005-12-14T23:48:00.000-08:00

See what a few hours on a Sunday night, cranking up the ol' grey cells earned me :)

http://poseidon2005.blogsome.com/2005/12/13/labyrinth-results-announced/

Yup, the person in the second placed team is me :). Not bad right? All those crosswords done during the Computer Architecture classes finally came in handy!

Ohh, BTW, did I post about the DVD player that i won in a quiz hosted by Harsha Bhogle at the beginning of the month? Well, it was a quiz based on sports and Hyderabad and I, somehow, by the skin of my teeth, managed to squeeze into the second place.
Well, this was the second quiz that i had attended which was hosted by Harsha Bhogle( the first one being the NIIT JAM quiz....more on that some other time) and like last time also, this guy just blew me away with his amazing anecdotes from the remotest corners of the cricket field. The guy is really, really witty, making some of the most sarcastic comments, which his job on TV doesnt really allow him to express that much. He had a view on almost everything under the sun ranging from Sourav Ganguly to Jagmohan Dalmiya to KPS Gill to George W Bush. Seriously, it was quite a welcome change from attending one of those Biz Quizzes where Derek/Siddharth/PigBrain go on cracking their oh-so-jarringly-below the belt jokes or one of the random quizzes done by a frustrated QM who puts fundaes that sometime give me nothing more than a headache. The questions for this quiz were provided by Quizeratti consisting of old KC hands like Bhargava, Srinivas and Satyaki and were really really workoutable, thus allowing me , an observant non-Hyderabadi to do well. Again so much better than sitting in a poorly ventilated hall having somebody lecture me on the sexual relations between Kim Philby and Graham Greene which has been allegorically represented by Lucian Freud in some godforsaken painting.

Quite a productive month i must admit! :)

Current Music: - KillSwitch Engage - My Last Serenade

Heat and some box sets!

2005-12-06T23:54:00.000-08:00

Its been a busy week with an even nicer weekend. I finally saw a great movie after ages, and that was Michael Mann's amazing crime thriller "Heat" which starred Robert De Niro and Al Pacino and was publicised as the first movie that had both of them sharing the screen for the first time( GF2 had both of them, but never together!) . To tell you the truth, their on screen time together is limited, with some of it limited to some serious violence without dialogues at all. But the movie is simply superb with its tight storyline and some amazing acting. It had 2 great actors at the top of their crafts and it takes the movie to a different level. I had seen the movie earlier too in 1995 when it was just released, but I was obviously too young to remember too much of it. But seeing it now, made me realised that there was so much more to the movie than the simple tale of the hunter( Al) and the hunted( DeNiro). It also subtly shows the complicated lives that these 2 powerful professionals have to lead and eventually their confrontation although helps them achieve something professionally, their personal lives have degenerated to a point of no return because of it. And probably, that is what causes subtle empathy between these 2 seemingly polemic individuals. There are some powerhouse actors in support ( Val Kilmer, Tom Sizemore, Amy Brenneman, Hank Azaria) but the movie well and truly belongs to the 2 thoroughbreds. Plus, the action in the movie is really well orchestrated, and not in the Hong Kong, John Woo kinda way, which is quite a relief since i have had an overload of the same. The scene in which DeNiro, Kilmer and Sizemore manufacture a getaway after their ill-fated bank heist is really well done. But my favourite scene in the movie has to be the scene where Al Pacino discovers that his wife is cheating on him. Typical Al Pacino stuff!
Well next on my must watch list is "Aparahan", about which i have been hearing a ton of good things. I have a great amount of respect for Prakash Jha ( well "Rahul" notwithstanding) and i cant wait to see Nana Patekar and Ajay Devgan on screen together.
Well the other highlights of the weekend was basketball! Well after my knee injury and subsequent operations in 2002 I had never thought that i would be able to resume playing basketball like in the early days. However, when the new court opened up in the office i was drawn to it like a moth to a flame, and nowadays it has become a regular pastime that i really enjoy for a change. Plus over the weekends, we have been playing some early morning games with a bunch of really good players from some other companies and it has been really good fun. Cant wait for the weekend to come for some more action!
Well, it had been sometime since i bought some new music so i decided to make amends for it over the weekend and visited some music shops in the city. And boy did i get a good haul or what. I was lucky enough to pick up some really,really good stuff which included:

1. John Coltrane and The Classic Quartet: Complete Impulse! Studio Recordings [BOX SET] - a set of 8 cds that includes everything that Coltrane ever recorded for the Impulse! studio. It was a buy that was way over my budget, but what the hell you get to see such things in a store only once in a life time and I wasnt gonna let it go.

2. Fear Factory: Digital Connectivity [DVD]- which features all their promo videos and live footage as well interviews with the whole band. Awesome buy this! Plus it all features 8 unreleased songs and a complete story of the band written by the lead singer. hehehe~!!

3. The Cure - Greatest Hits[BOX SET] - features The Cure's Greatest Hits on a cd, as well as all the videos on a DVD! Plus it also has another CD with acoustic versions of quite a few of their songs. I have been tripping on "Lullaby" and "Pictures of You" ever since. One of the most underrated bands ever!

Well a metal,jazz and pop box set over one weekend! Simply delicious!!!

Current Music: Fear Factory - Archetype

Future's above, but in the past he's slow and sinking...

2005-11-23T02:27:00.000-08:00

Something happened recently, which hasn't happened in a long long time. Since i left Bangalore actually. Or maybe even before that. I dont know. But it was something that brought back a host of memories.
I went to a rock show after a loooong time. And no I am not talking about a Roger Waters/Joe Satriani/Mark Knopfler kinda professional concert. What i am talking about is one of the regular college band kinda concerts where you are witness to the regular antics. Man, it was sooo good to be back at a show after aeons. And the best part was that not much has changed. See, if you go to a such a show, then there are few things that you would expect to see. These are things that "complete" the experience and make you feel really at home. Without these sights and sounds, no show is complete. Let me elaborate:

1. Ok, 80% of the people at such a show have to wear Slayer/Nirvana/Cannibal Corpse t-shirts. It doesn't matter if they cant differentiate between "Smells Like Teen Spirit" or "Reign in Blood" but they have to armed with their T-shirts which they pretend have been part of their skin since their birth. Come to think most of the time it smells like that too. These are the bunch, who would much rather be sitting at home and watching India beat the shit out of Zimbabwe at the cricket, but what the hell, there is a concert happening in the city and they "have" to be there.

2. Then there are those who land at a concert right out of a Gujarati wedding. Miniscule in their numbers, they are easily recognized by their tight pants, orange shirts, big leather shoes and pepsi bandanas. They came to the show hoping to hear some "Bryans Adam" or "Michael Learning to Rock" or "to check out some babes" but when the bands start playing the Sepultura covers, these guys are generally seen heading for some cover wondering what hit them. The initial wincing at the loud noise is generally followed by a quick glance around to see what the crowd around them is doing. This is then followed by quick short bursts of head banging, but one look at the mosh pit, leaves them scurrying back to their mummies or worse still to the neighbourhood clothing store for the Slayer/Nirvana/Cannibal Corpse t-shirt.

3. Another category of people seen at a concert are the next higher grade in the rock fandom heirarchy. These are the people who have by now figured out their Metallica from their Korn. These people are easily recognized by their loud cheers when some lousy wankers on stage want to play covers of Creed's "With Arms wide open". They have realised that Slayer/Nirvana/Cannibal Corpse t-shirts are generally looked down on upon by the high priests of the metal fandom and have graduated to a Dimmu Borgir/Burzum/Dream Theater or Slipknot t-shirts. But come the time when some band actually plays a DT or Slipknot cover, these guys are generally seen asking the high priests of the metal fandom, "This one sounds really familiar. Which song is this?"

4. The guys who have come with their fragile damsels to the concert, obviously because they have to be seen at all the happening dos in the city. Irrespective of which category they individually belong to, these guys are more often than not seen
a. Getting pepsi for their girls
b. Making space for their girls so that the girl can get a better view of the stage
c. Lighting a fag and then proceeding to show the girl how to take her first few drags.
d. Accompanying the girl back out during the middle of the show, when she gets a headache because of all the smoke,dust,loud music or when she's plain bored.

These guys are generally looked upon with great envy by the other categories of the concert goers because they have the women with them. However, they are also the most obvious choice to be the butt of all jokes because they have the women with them.

5. Next are the high priests of the metal fandom. These are the guys who are generally seen helping the big bands carry their gear or adjusting the bass pedals for the big band's drummer. Their are more often not the best source for weed in a concert, but you have to be in their clique to source it from them. Long hair are an absolute must to join this entourage as is the ability to be able to know some, if not all, of the following guys:
a. Count Grishnack
b. Abaddon
c. Mortiis
d. Lord Ahriman
e. Satyr

What will really get you there is if you can get a wicked grin every time you here these names, get your devil's horns finger salute up and go "yeeaaaaahhh" ever so slowly.
These guys are more often seen scowling cuz they dont like one inch of the commercial shit they are hearing on stage at the moment. However, they are also known to indulge in moments of extreme physical activity the moment they hear one of their fav songs and indulge in a variant of the good old game called "Dodgeball" wherein one of the Guju wedding newbie mentioned in point 2 becomes the ball.

6. Rarely seen are the ex-high priests of metal fandom who have now had their fair share of the use/abuse by the big bands and grace only the big shows in their city where there are people who still remember them. They talk to most of the lead singers on a first name basis but come to listen to only a particular band and disappear the moment the band has finished playing only to be found at the closest watering hole gulping down their day's dosage of alcohol.

7. Obviously you also see a lot of band members at such concerts. But there are 2 types of bands at such concerts. One are the big bands and the other are bigger bands cuz none of the bands are obviously small time. Now the bigger bands are easily recognized by the fact that they are generally the last bands to play at any concert and more often than not their soundcheck outlasts their actually setlist. These guys are the masters of the sudden appearance act. Right from the beginning of the concert you will be hearing rumours of how so-and-so band's gonna be playing at the concert and how they are already here. But nobody, and i mean nobody will ever see them, till right before their timeslot when they will calmly step up on stage and do their thing. The big bands on the other hands are generally seen headbanging their ass off when one of the bigger bands comes on stage, typically on the side of the stage and never among the general masses. This big bands are also more often than not the ones who are seen swearing at the sound engineers ( well i cant quite get the right word for these guys cuz i have never seen a sound engineer at an indian concert look like a sound engineer . He more often than not, looks illiterate to me.) and perenially asking for some monitor or the other to be turned up.

8. The last bunch of people are the old fogies who land up there after they find out about such shows and actually manage to find company to land up at such dos. They are also known to write satires about the people they saw at the concert when they themselves have been, at some point or the other, a part of one or more of the above mentioned categories.

Ok now to the actual concert. Like I said, since it had been a long time since i had been to one, it actually took me some time to figure out where i was cuz i had never seen soooo many women at a shady rock concert ever. I dont think i have seen so many women in Hyderabad ever also, but lets leave that to some other post someday. It was a different matter that most of them had their smokes out and were wearing pink/green/light blue ( who the fuck wears those colors to a rock show!!) and were busy looking here and there to see who was looking at them. The music was quite bad frankly, i mean i have heard better shows in Manipal for chrissakes. Most the vocalists were just soooooo one-dimensional. I mean come on, if your covering Metallica or Megadeth, then you obviously cannot have Chris Barnes like growls in the song now can you. Most of the rhythms were louder than the lead guitars for some strange reason. And man i must have heard atleast 4 covers of Sepultura's "Territory" each one worse than the other. And where the hell were the college rock fests anthems that i grew up on. No "Paranoid". No RATM. No "Sweet Child o' mine". Though there was one band that made my entire trip worthwhile. These guys were called Cynapse and where from Bangalore( where else!!) and played some tight ass Slipknot and Korn covers. They had a kickass drummer who specialised in Lars Ulrich type facial contortions. And more importantly, they had a great sound setup wherein each instrument could be heard clearly. And man their entire act had sooooo much energy!! The last time i saw so much energy on stage must have been at a PDV show. Their lead singer was a livewire and got the whole crowd really involved in the show. They'll go places i am sure, well the places being all those places that all the bigger bands in India land up after sometime. Really sometimes i soooo miss attending some of these college rock shows that i used to attend earlier. I dont think i missed too many of them during college and man i have seen some good shows. I mean there are good bands but they dont always peform at their best at all their dos. But then there will be one night when everything will come together for them and they will give a kickass performance. Here are some that come to my mind:

1. Bangalore Institute of Technology, 99-00 sometime. That was the first time i saw Kryptos on stage and man that day they rocked. What a fucking show they put on with Ganesh at his absolute best. "Forgotten land of ice" , "Mark of Cain", "Descension" and their cover of "Riders on the storm" . Woo fucking hoo!

2. NLS, 99. That was the first time i saw Siddharth Naidu on stage with his band Threnody. Kreator's "Golden Age", "Disembodiment", Metallica's " Sad but True". I was in awe of the guy for days. Especially after he gave some dope to Saigo after the show *wink*

3. Mood Indigo, 2000. Late night show after the prelims got delayed and had to be moved to some lawn infront of some god forsaken hostel. At around 12 am came this band called "Mother's of F". One casually dressed guy with a sweatshirt and a baseball cap called Jatin introduced the band and then launched into RATM covers doing both, yes both, the guitars as well as the vocals. "Killing in the name of", "People of the sun", " Bulls on Parade". Never seen better RATM covers. Ever.

4. Palace Grounds, 2002 maybe. That was the first time i saw the Vedic metallers "Rudra" live. The tightest set i have seen till date. One really small show with less than 100 people and the menacing band at its absolute best. I remember the show ended with some Sanskrit chants at the end. I had goosebumps for the next 2 hours i think.

5. Manipal, 2001-2 i think. Saigo and Akshay Rao's band( were they called Schwarzchild's radius then??) played "Stairway to Heaven" and "Comfortably Numb" i think. Both the guys were in their elements that day and that was a dreamy show.( Brokentooth, dude remember that night ?? :-) )

6. Freedom Jam,2003. That show will be in my mind for totally dubious reasons, but that was also the time i saw the last performance(i think!) of a really gifted guy. Sajid covered "Flying in a Blue Dream" to the hilt and i remember thinking that it would be the best live performance that i would ever see of that song. Well it turned out to be quite the case, cuz i missed the Joe Satriani show. Sajid was such a humble stud.

Man, those were some of the best days.

Current Music: Godsmack - Bad Religion

Speechless!

2005-11-14T03:42:00.000-08:00

Ok now that i am over my post-Himalaya-partum depression(..well almost!) maybe i can write about it a little. My trip was a 4 day affair wherein i visited 2 places, Binsar and Chaukauri. Binsar and Chaukauri are at approximately the same height of almost 2300 mts above sea level ( just as a frame of reference, Mt. Everest is at 8800 mts.), the only difference between the 2 places being that Chaukauri is 25km from Nanda Devi, the 4th highest peak in the world while Binsar is 35 km away. However, Binsar, which is situated in the midst of the Binsar wildlife sanctuary is atleast 4-5 degrees cooler then Chaukauri because of the heavy vegetation around the place.
The whole area is blessed with a panoramic view of 400 km of the Himalayan mountain range with the major visible peaks being Nanda Devi, Trishul and the Panchachuli peaks. But, its tough to define the feeling when you see this majestic range standing right in front of you with awning acres of snow on them. The best season to go to this area is late October and early November where in the weather is the clearest and the mountains have a substantial ice cover.
Travelling through the region is restricted to taxis on primarily potholes masquerading as roads. However, what gives you the will to get through the drives are the awesome views that you come across while on these drives. The roads have been carved out of these mountain peaks and more often the not, one side of the road while be a steep rock face atleast 50 feet high covered with foliage. Its a sight that one has to see to believe. The sun's game of hide and seek with the plantlife is aided by these rock walls, with some regions of the road never ever seeing sunshine and being permanently covered by mist and fog as a result.
What hits you first when you reach Binsar is the desolation! There is hardly a human in sight for miles. The trails and paths of Binsar are a veritable treasure trove for nature lovers like myself with abundant birds and views to keep you engrossed for hours. This region also posses some quaint little houses which make our concrete laden monstrosities pale in comparison. Binsar also possess the highest view point in the entire Kumaon region which is called, quite ironically, Zero Point which situated at a height of 8000 feet above sea level. The 50 feet high iron tower situated here is not for the faint hearted but the views from it are simply fabulous. This is easily the best point in the entire region to catch the sunrise , the extremely low temperatures at the apex notwithstanding. The sunrise is the philosopher's gold of the mountains, no visit to the mountains being complete without it. Seeing the sky change its colors as the sun continues its dance behind the mountains is something that will remain with me forever. I tried to capture some of it on camera, but what i got was a fraction compared to the real thing. The 4:30 am trek for the sunrise view from Zero Point with Raju Guide(!!!) was made a whole lot more exciting by a scampering visit by a leopard(there are 16 of them in the Binsar region). It was too quick for me to capture on camera but i think if the leopard wants to remain incognito then the least i could do was to respect that. One of my afternoons, was spent with a cowherd who took me along a trail along with his 17 cows to a quaint temple by a brook and a field. No! I am not making this up. And at the end of this small excursion, all i had give him was a warm smile and a polite " Thank you". He parted ways by telling me how i seemed a little different from all the other city people he had seen cuz firstly, i had the courage to go up and down a trail which i obviously didnt know and secondly, because i wasnt drunk and abusive like the last bunch of city youths he had given directions to. I dont think my "apologies" for my ilk would have made a difference.
The nights in Binsar, brought with them darkness.....cuz there's no electricity in the entire region. I dont know why, but it also spread a blanket of tranquility which enveloped the resort, lulling the place to sleep by 8 pm. The night brought with it, the cold which penetrates to your very bones and makes any physical activity, other than chattering teeth, virtually impossible.
Chaukauri on the other hand presents you with plains full of lush fields wherein you can lie and gaze at the peaks. The place is full of all the modern amenities like cable and electricity so i wont talk about it much, but it does offer some wonderful treks which are worth considering.

In this post I am also providing a link to some of the photos that i took while in Binsar. My digicam conked out after 2 days and i had to subsist on film rolls after that so posting them would take some time, so for the time being i can only tempt you with some sunrises, some sunsets, a few clouds and a whole bunch of colors. The sunrise, wherein the sun's rays slowly bathe the peaks from head to toe, are also something that i have tried to capture, but its incomparable to the real scene.

The pics are located here .

Current Music : The Dark Aeons - Plan 9

Can i hide beside you, maybe for a while...

2005-11-11T00:21:00.000-08:00

I come back from heaven back to reality to realise that nothing much ever changes. You still have to see people be the jerks that they always are. Life still treats you like her foster child with nothing but a pillow made of concrete for comfort.
You know its a trip like this that makes me realise, what a useless concept this whole "rat race" is? Sometimes i wonder how would you explain the concept of this "rat race" to the people of the Himalayan villages, ensconced in their own little world, the fundamentals of which are pretty much limited to being content with what you have. I think they'll just laugh in your face and ask you to join them for a cup of tea.
Sometimes, i would like to find the philosopher you gave us the concept of wanting beyond our needs and rip him apart with my bare hands. But then thats not the solution now is it?

Current Music : Dream Theater - The Root of All Evil

Breathe on sister,breathe on..

2005-11-01T23:53:00.000-08:00

My earliest memories of Paharganj are of a hustling, bustling marketplace, choc-a-bloc with people round the year which my father and i visited once in the distant past to purchase crackers for Diwali. It remains in my mind as some sort of legendary marketplace, like how Da Gama would have described India to his people, a place where one could purchase almost anything and come back home satisfied with a good bargain.
Sarojini Nagar on the other hand was a true middle class market where me and my extended family would often shop looking for great value for money deals. I remember the Diwali crackers that i bought from there when some of my fathers friends had put up a shop, i remember coming home loaded with bags and bags of those goodies. It was my last minute college shopping haven, the place where i could get all the trendy stuff for 1/4th the price. It is the place where my mother purchases all her Diwali diyas and candles to this day. You couldnt beat Sarojini Nagar for the deals that it gave you.
And now I will also remember these two places for these god forsaken blasts. The blasts which killed 50 people, most of whom were the poor peasants who had come from places as far as Mathura, to earn the extra Diwali money, by setting up roadside stalls in these markets. The blasts which shook up a city for whom Diwali is so much more than a festival. The blasts which broke the spirit of the people at a time when they give up all their worries to truly immerse themselves in a spirit that is all about light, warmth and togetherness.
It surprises me how much resilience this city has, how much this city can take. Its been raped, pilaged and mutilated by a multitude of looters right throughout history. Timur and Nadir Shah treated her as her most defiled whore, taking from her all that she had to offer. The British put her in chains and made her their puppet. Sanjay and Indira treated her as their own guinea pig where they unleashed all their vile designs in the name of national emergency. The terrorists, who came in many a garb, be it the Khalistanis or the Kashmiris, have continued to try and take the life out of this city. And now this. It just makes me wonder, isn't our land really cursed ?
Its a pity that when i was leaving for Delhi, last Friday, i had thought that from there i would put up a post that would try and put in to words all that Dilli and Diwali means to me. This is all i can come up with at the moment.
Why?

Current Music : Portishead - Melody

Back to being a teenager

2005-10-27T02:32:00.000-07:00

In precisely 2 days time i will go back to being a teenager. No wondering where i will be having my next meal. No laundry to do myself. No haggling with the maid to get menial jobs done. No status reports to the manager. All i have to go is sit in a room, watch tv, keep coming up with gourmet requests and bask in my parents affection. Absolute bliss if you ask me! Obviously somethings will have to be sacrificed for the same like booze and late night roundezvous for a few days,but what the heck, that aint too big a price to pay for a holiday in the real sense of the word.
By the way, for the uninitiated, it means that i will be going home. And home is in Delhi. And Delhi is *the* city to be in during the Diwali season. Its almost as if you can sense it in the atmosphere, that the festival is approaching. And to add to it my parents and i have also planned a nice vacation to this place called Binsar which is a located in the foothills of the Himalayas in the Kumaon region of Uttaranchal. Its an idyllic vacation spot with no tourists to speak off, only a well preserved nature park to boast off, which houses quite a few leopards, panthers and is supposed to be a bird watchers haven. I will be staying in one of those bhoot-bangla type government guest house with only the chowkidar to keep us company and regale us with his stories. This place apparently has no direct electricity connection and subsists only on a generator which is switched off at 7pm everyday. The rest house is located on the edge of a lake which is the only watering hole in miles, so hopefully i should be able to see quite a bit of wildlife. Also the Himalayas will be just an arm's distance away so i hope to keep my camera quite busy. Going with my parents means that i will be pretty much left on my own which is a wonderful thing if you're in the midst of such natural beauty. Man i can hardly wait to get on my jet plane!!

Current Music : Atreyu - Bleeding Mascara

PS. If you want more info on Binsar, try this link
http://travels.ndtv.com/xtopspot.asp?topspot=Binsar&id=21

Outlook Traveller had a very nice article on places to stay in while you're in the Kumaon region of Uttranchal which is here . Makes for a very nice read.

Contain,repress ...

2005-10-20T13:34:00.000-07:00

Think and think hard.
Try and come up with the last day in your life when somebody didn’t try and con you out of your or your dad’s ( ..or your mum’s for that matter, let’s not be chauvinistic here) hard earned money.
Umm, ok ok take 5 more seconds..
….
…
….
When was it…adolescence, kindergarden probably, right?
Not a fucking day goes by when I try and live my life and I don’t have to fight a battle, a real battle, to hold on to the money that rightfully belongs to me. Be it the cop trying to book you for some bullshit, or that sniveling autodriver who perennially will have to return empty from the destination that you’re going to, like you’re taking them to Mars or something. Hell, the worst are those freaking Credit Card salesmen who call up 5 times a day and offer a free Credit Card to you. Boy do I get scared when I here the word “free” nowadays. Its almost as if a shiver runs down my spine when they say they’re giving it to me for free. Wasn’t my last number change enough to throw them off my tracks?Where’s the catch? What am I missing? Which part of their gory connivance am I falling for? What in god’s name did I do to deserve this? Where’s the hidden charge, which will spring up on me, like Hobbes does so often on Calvin, on one bright sunny morning when I get a CC bill of some astronomical figure which will be neatly masqueraded as “Club Membership Fees”? What fucking club did I now become a member of…”The-nincompoops-who-fell-for-the-ol’-free-credit-card-trick Club” ?

You know, I somehow get this feeling that this will be stuff that people will be making Bollywood movies about in the year 2010 . In the 80s it was all about the loathsome Zamindaar who would eat bony, dhoti clad kisaans for breakfast,lunch and dinner while also trying his willy machinations on the village belle. Then came the 90s when the hero had to wage his epic battles against the corrupt, drug dealing, palm greasing, Mafiosi who always had the item girl by his side. Today is ruled by the RGV school of underworld concoctions with everybody double-crossing everybody and whoever else is left. The next big new idea is definitely going to be AB jr fighting the archetypical broken-english-speaking, back-of-the-neck-scratching, feet-shifting, dirty-jacket-wearing salesman who is trying to control his mind by selling him a free credit card. I can see it all. How AB jr will arrive from some nondescript town and make it big in Bangalore as a Software Engineer and make his cancer-stricken,bed-ridden, kyunki-saas-bhi-watching mother proud of her IIT educated son. Life will be a bed of roses till the day he gets the dreaded phone call and makes the life altering decision which will break his very soul and make him a slave of the big corporation out to achieve their goal of world dominance by enslaving the world with their “free” credit cards. The movie will obviously end with AB jr blowing up each every building of this corporation with Kareena Kapoor’s help. But after the soggy popcorn is over at the end of the movie , we simpletons will obviously go back to our conmen infested haven, knowing fully well that the autos we are traveling in have meters that show 1 and a half times the actual fare, that the cop at the corner, views us as nothing more than a wad of notes, that tomorrow when we get back to work, we will get a call again from the CC company offering us one more of their devilish schemes and that we, the spineless, can do nothing about it.

Current Music: SilverChair - Steam will Rise

My empire of dirt!

2005-10-18T04:26:00.000-07:00

So we are in the midst of the great American consumer euphoria once again. Apple has unveiled what they are calling a "revolutionary" new product in the form of their 30 and 60 GB Video IPod. And the media is "all hail" again for the Apple product predicting heavy festival season buying for it. Just goes to show how the consumer is so easily misled by some great advertising and gaudy jingoism.
Dont get me wrong. I love the fundamentals of Apple as a company. They know how to catch the pulse of the market with some great products which though they never get right at the first attempt. Look at their erstwhile Newton handheld or how they have managed to prevent the Mac from being the superstar which it could have been. They have a great design division which regularly has pushed the boundarys of product design. They had caught the fancy of the market with a really super cool new idea in the form of the Ipod. But their steadfast refusal to listen to their consumers might just help other also-rans in the current race to turn the tables on them.

The V Ipod definitely marks a move into the right direction for this company. Infact what i cannot understand is why it took so long for them to get a video version out when in fact such PVPs( Personal Video Players) as this genre of products is called have already been in existence for over 4 years now( I bet you didn't know that now did you!! Yup blame it on the myopic vision of the so called tech gurus who have never dared to look beyond the Ipod). The V Ipod does not still address the major grouse that all the Ipod owners have had since the beginning viz.
the fact that you cannot change the battery on the Ipod without effectively destroying the product. And feature-wise the Video IPod is not even in the same class as this beauty, the Archos AV700 DVR, which is a true portable video player. I have owned an older version of this genre the Archos JukeBox Multimedia for about 2 years now and am quite a satisfied user. Yup and you can throw the Itunes software out of the window cuz after you have this baby with you you dont need to pay and download any music vids from anywhere cuz this player allows you to hook up to any TV/VCR/VCD Player/Comp/DVD player and directly record content of it onto its harddrive.Plus whats more is that it actually acts like the TIVO that we hear so much about in the sense that you can actually set a timer and connect it to your TV and this will automatically record content at the defined time slot. Plus no need of having specific software to connect to a comp for unlike the Ipod, the Archos will hook upto your machine as easily as a simple USB hard disk. Plus this device also comes in a monstrous 100 GB version. What century is the Video Ipod coming from!!
Infact, come to think of it, Apple might actually help companies like Archos and Samsung Yepp (which uses the MS Portable Media Centre platform) by turning the customer attention towards this hitherto neglected market. But lets see whether the American consumer, for once, can go beyond the coolness factor and get the really revolutionary product!

Current Music: Strapping Yound Lad - Shitstorm

A dead issue, don't wrestle with it, deaf ears are sleeping

2005-10-13T01:21:00.000-07:00

Songs that should only be heard when the lights of the room are out and there is absolutely no other sound that you can hear. Full concentration is a must. A drink/smoke is an optional indulgence.

1. Staind -Epiphany
2. Pink Floyd - Us and Them
3. Pantera - Floods ( The second solo of this song just kills me. RIP Dimebag)
4. Joe Satriani - Flying in a Blue Dream
5. Queensryche - Silent Lucidity
6. Pearl Jam - I'm Open
7. Chris Isaak - Wicked Game
8. Alice in Chains - Nutshell
9. Them Clones - Awaken
10. SilverChair - Steam will Rise
11. Fuel - Shimmer
12*. Massive Attack - Protection

* Thanks to SamuraiJack for making me realise my omissions.

Current Music: Drowning Pool - Think

Who knows which is which...

2005-10-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

Some posts at Adi's and SamuraiJack's blog made me go back to my Inbox and pick up this. Not that i get too many worthwhile things in my inbox, but this made a good read.

They call it the "Quarter-life Crisis." It is when you stop going along with the crowd and start realizing that there are many things about yourself that you didn't know and may not like. You start feeling insecure and wonder where you will be in a year or two, but then get scared because you barely know where you are now.
You start realizing that people are selfish and that, maybe, those friends that you thought you were so close to aren't exactly the greatest people you have ever met, and the people you have lost touch with are some of the most important ones. What you don't recognize is that they are realizing that too, and aren't really cold, catty, mean or insincere, but that they are as confused as you.
You look at your job... and it is not even close to what you thought you would be doing, or maybe you are looking for a job and realizing that you are going to have to start at the bottom and that scares you.
Your opinions have gotten stronger. You see what others are doing and find yourself judging more than usual because suddenly you realize that you have certain boundaries in your life and are constantly adding things to your list of what is acceptable and what isn't. One minute, you are insecure and then the next, secure. You laugh and cry with the greatest force of your life. You feel alone and scared and confused. Suddenly, change is the enemy and you try and cling on to the past with dear life, but soon realize that the past is drifting further and further away, and there is nothing to do but stay where you are or move forward.
You get your heart broken and wonder how someone you loved could do such damage to you. Or you lie in bed and wonder why you can't meet anyone decent enough that you want to get to know better. Or maybe you love someone but love someone else too and cannot figure out why you are doing this because you know that you aren't a bad person.
One night stands and random hook ups start to look cheap.
Getting wasted and acting like an idiot starts to look pathetic.
You go through the same emotions and questions over and over, and talk with your friends about the same topics because you cannot seem to make a decision. You worry about loans, money, the future and making a life for yourself... and while winning the race would be great, right now you'd just like to be a contender!

Current Music : Il Nino - Te Amo

Acknowledgements

2005-10-05T03:55:00.000-07:00

Found this nice collection of angst-ridden photos at Otep's official site. Has some nice pics if you're in that kinda mood.
http://www.otep.com/iami/index.asp?gal=added%206-19-2005&pic=8

Current Music: Slipknot - Duality

No Getting Away

2005-10-04T02:55:00.000-07:00

Back to work after a long weekend. The powers-that-be at my company had been generous enough to give us Monday off, in keeping with their Amreekan philosophy of trying to choose strategic enough dates in the year as holidays so that we get 3 day weekends. I love these Amreekan philosophies i tell you, they are a smart bunch of people.
And what did i do during these 3 days, you ask...well nothing much really, stayed at home for a long weekend after ages i think. No vacations to sunny, beachy places or green,enchanting forests, just lazing at home, sleeping my ass off on most days and splurging on things that i had been wanting for a long time. Paid a visit to the "music" stores in the city and managed to get a decent haul. Picked up 2 Drowning Pools albums namely " Desensitized" and "Sinner" both of which turned out to be surprisingly decent albums. The vocals on both their albums are really good, considering that this band at one point of time had lost its vocalist in some accident during Ozzfest.
I also picked up Machine Head's latest album "Through the Ashes of Empires" which has a bunch of blistering tracks on it like "Imperium" and "Bite the Bullet". Machine Head is a band that I have liked for a long long time primarily cuz of their unique industrial edged sound. This band, along with Fear Factory and Coal Chamber to an extent, have pioneered this sound/genre . While Coal Chamber has now disintegrated and Fear Factory are getting back up on their feet after a few disappointing albums, Machine Head has stayed true to its sound and has been forging industrial beauties, one after the other. I am hoping that this album can match the heights of "The Burning Red" ....high expectations i know but lets hope.
Sometime back i had also purchased this album titled "The Best of Mercyful Fate". It was my last ditch attempt at trying to appreciate Mercyful Fate and King Diamond. Many consider this guy, King Diamond, to be a god among vocalists, but frankly i have never liked him too much. He has a great vocal range, i agree, i mean he can really squeal like a banshee in heat, but that itself is not enough to make a great band. I have found their songs to be quite average on the whole and King Diamond's vocals to be very very repetetive. And this album has re-iterated this fact. No more experiments with Mercyful Fate. James Hetfield can go and preach about them to the world, but they arent for me.

More about my other weekend acquisitions in due course of time.

Current Music: Pantera - Strength Beyond Strength

Do i still have my 21 grams?

2005-09-27T03:46:00.000-07:00

Saw 3 movies over the weekend. The first one was "Flatliners" , an over-the-top attempt looking at death by the god of over-the-top movies, Mr. Joel Schumacher himself. I can never forgive him for what he did to the Batman franchise ( Batman:forever and Batman and Robin) till it was rescued by Chris Nolan. This movie was one of his earlier forays and starred a virtual who's who of todays movie stardom - Keifer Sutherland, Julia Roberts, Kevin Bacon, Oliver Platt, Billy Baldwin. It was about this bunch of med school students played by the aforementioned who try and experiment with near death experiences. Consequently all hell breaks loose. While it might sound like one of the present day Sean William Scott, Sarah Michelle Gellar kinda movies, let me tell you straight up that its NOT! It handles the whole subject a little more cleverly, though the story could have been made a whole lot more gripping. BTW, why the hell dont we see more of Kevin Bacon and Keifer Sutherland on screen nowadays. They are such good actors !

The next movie that i saw was the one that absolutely blew me away. This was "21 grams" directed by this hotshot Mexican director Alejandro Innaritu. This is the same guy who directed "Amores Perros". 21 grams starred Sean Penn, Naomi Watts and Benecio Del Torro. Its one of the better non linear story depictions that i have seen with the flow criss crossing between the past and present. But the beauty of the entire movie lies in the fact that this criss crossing leaves you curious and engrossed in the story. The movie is basically about how 3 totally unrelated people meet together because of a freak accident. Benecio Del Torro shows why he's regarded as such a fine actor and his performance as the born again ex-con towers over Penn and Watts' performances. Penn and Watts have this Macbethian relationship in the movie and its amazing to witness the subtle manner in which Watts increases her grasp over Penn. Penn though has some amazing dialogues to his credit in the movie, the poem that i had mentioned in my previous post being one of them. Penn kinda reprises one of his underdog-loser kinda roles that he has portrayed to perfection in the past, but his acting in the movie is terrific. Watts, is a little to shrewish for my liking, but man does she look stunning in the movie or what! This is a must must watch movie for everybody.

The other movie that i saw was The English Patient for the nth time. Hell, what can i say about this movie which already hasnt been said before. Is there any director better than Minghella when it comes to adapting love-tragedies for the screen? I wish i could have seen this movie on the big screen. The desert would have looked even more alluring and beautiful than on my little 21" TV. The last few sequences in the movie where Almassy leaves Katherine in the cave and goes looking for help, often leave me with a lump in my throat. Its just too beautiful.

BTW, why the hell have i not heard of Devin Townsend in the past? I have been listening to this album of his called "Infinity" and cant get over the song " Unity". The guitar intro is just amazing. This guy, i read, is the guy behind Strapping Young Lad, though this music of his sounds like Enya meets Metal. Quite nice. Apparently, this album of his inspired by Broadway Musicals and somehow you get that feel from the album because of its grandeur-ish sounds and orchestra.

Current Music - Devin Townsend - Unity

The silence of your seclusion brings night into all you say

2005-09-25T05:43:00.000-07:00

It took me 15 minutes of power failure with a solitary candle in a dark room of an empty house with a raging storm outside to understand why humans have worshipped fire since their existence.

I am not too much the poetry kinds but i heard this in a movie starring Sean Penn and it was quite beautiful:

The earth turned to bring us closer
it turned on itself and within us
until it finally brought us together in this dream

Nights passed by, snowfalls and solstices
time passed in minutes and millennia.

The earth was spinning with its music
carrying us on board
it didn't stop turning a single moment
as if so much love, so much that is beautiful
was only an adagio written long ago.

Current Music: Opeth - The grand conjuration

Stapled shut - inside an outside world

2005-09-22T07:35:00.000-07:00

It’s the same story every month. Month after month. Ceaseless. Painful. Temptation walks into my life, thinly veiled as information, news, updates, call it what you want. Temptation that just fans my fire for the unknown, for the wild, for the unbridled, for the uncharted. Its gets tougher and tougher to control when months go by and I don’t pander to its lascivious needs, it eats me from within, calling out to me like the devil sought out Eve on that fateful day. And I succumb……. yes more often that not I succumb.

What is this temptation you ask? It comes in an innocuous enough form, I’ll give it that much…those slick, glossy pages are nothing compared to what has led most other men astray, but to feed my wanderlust, those pages filled with their descriptions of wondrous lands are more than sufficient. They with their mesmerizing words, breathtaking sceneries are enough to leave me sleepless, …..ok …maybe not sleepless, but at least breathless for a few minutes. But that Outlook Traveler is nothing but pure evil in its most primitive form, I tell you. And I seek it like a moth seeks a flame, month after month, to see places far and beyond, places that are far too numerous to be covered in one normal lifetime. They even give advice on how to get there, which are the cheapest places to stay and which are the best months to visit. Hell, there is only so much a man can do to resist, ok?!!!

God, I implore you, beseech you, help me, help me to be strong enough to withstand its vile machinations, its wily games. And if you can’t do that, at least give me enough money to do its bindings.

PS.maybe I had a little too much free time at office today, but what the hell this is still my blog,ok!!. And I mean every word I wrote.

Current Music: Slipknot - Before I Forget

Waking up in a breakdown..

2005-09-20T09:39:00.000-07:00

The quiz went alright, people did clap their hands for some of the questions, some even drew a few "oohs" and "aaahs" and one....yes one even got raised eyebrows of appreciation from the gods themselves. Mission pretty much accomplished, it would seem to me. Though the audio system of Canara Union did screw up some of my audio questions a bit, but those things can be forgotten. The quiz was won by QED ( the Chennai team) with WONLY coming second. Cant forget Anustup Dutta listening to Damageplan and then going...."How can you listen to this....this NOISE!!!" .....hahahahahahah!

The weekend in Bangalore as always was a nice getaway. Went to college on Saturday on a stupid whim. It was too weird, there are a bunch of new buildings around, nobody sits in the museum anymore, they have signboards for everything, damn they even have a freaking working checkpost of some sort. Though somethings never change. Dreamland, Old sports complex, the cows in the fields, the sleepy hostellites, the guys with their gals in front of Princi's office..... :)

Heard about this new store in Bangalore called Magazines, though didnt quite get time to check it out. Its supposed to stock only magazines and has the biggest collection in the country or so it claims. And the best part is that its right next to Blossom's so that always is an added bonus. Will check it out next time when i am there.

Though the sad part is always getting back to work on the Monday morning. That freaking never changes. I need my revitalizers pronto!!

Current Music: Dillinger Escape Plan- Baby's First Coffin

Alrite....

2005-09-13T12:37:00.000-07:00

Whew!! Watta week....been setting questions like crazy. I am doing the next KQA open for the month of September. Setting questions for a quiz is not tough, but setting questions for a KQA open is a different ball game altogether. I have been racking my brains, burning the midnight oil so to speak to get everything in shape. I have got a decent set of fundaes prepared, could say that some of my best till date. Lets see how it goes!!
By the way if anybody wants to drop in here are the details:

Date: 18th September, Sunday
Venue: Canara Union, 8th cross,malleswaram, bangalore
Time : 2:00 pm

Current Music: Pantera - Goddamn Electric

So intense, so glorious....

2005-09-09T02:29:00.000-07:00

Been rediscovering the joy of reading a good book. Just been introducing to the world of Asian literature by a friend who gave me a copy of Khalid Hossieni's " The Kite Runner". Prior to this the only other non-indian Asian writer that i had read was probably Yukiko Ishima, whose writings are probably a genre in their own. His style of writing is more like poetry in paragraphs with minimalism and brutual starkness bringing in a beauty of their own. Never has Japan looked as beautiful through somebody's words to me.
Khalid Hossieni's writings bring out a face of Afghanistan which is impossible for me to digest. A world where children actually play without guns, where they weep not for their parents lost to war, but because of bullies who treat them harshly. Once in the past Afghanistan was like that, as normal as any other country and Hossieni's painted a very surreal picture of that. Its almost as if you're waiting for the match to strike, for the lightening to come down and burn this unbelievable Afghanistan to ashes and create out of it the Afghanistan that we know today. Its gonna happen in the coming few pages. Cant believe I am eagerly awaiting it to see how it actually happened!

Just heard some glimpses of the new Arch Enemy album titled "Doomsday Machine". Well what do i say about this band? They have one of the better metal guitarists in their ranks in Michael Amott( ex- Carcass) who regularly comes up with some of the better licks in the business. Plus they have one of the most unique vocalists in Angela Gossow. She looks like a barbie doll but growls like Alexi Laiho on speed. Her joining the band have added that extra something that separates them from other bands of their genre. The song which has impressed me the most is Nemesis which stands out for its ferocity. Awesome track and quite a cool video too.
On the video front have found this awesome site for video downloads. It offers some really cool videos and provides very good download speeds. The rips are generally of good quality.
Check out the video of Slipknot's " Before I Forget" which features them without their masks. The intensity of those 9 freaks is just mindblowing. Another mindblowing song that i came across on one of the tapes that i bought was Satyricon's "Fuel for Hatred". Now Satyricon was one of those bands who i had heard in college days but they fell way short of my expectations with their album "Nemesis Divina". Much had been written about them after their debut EP " The forest is my throne" which was quite decent, but frankly the album was just about there and nothing more. However i have heard 2 tracks of their other album titled "Volcano". One was "Fuel for hatred" and the other was "Repine Bastard Nation" both of which stood out. "Fuel for hatred" is actually quite awesome in the sense that it sounds so much like the metal that Venom and Bathory had envisioned. The vibe of the song is eerily like Metallica's "Seek and Destroy" and Venom's "Black Metal". Plus i also happened to get the video which is directed by Jonas Akerlund. Search for it on google and you will find it. This is quite like old school metal and to some even extent even harks back to the days of Black Sabbath especially the interlude in "Fuel for Hatred" which sounds like something out of "Iron Man". The only things that make it better are Satyr's vocals and the drummer's double bass. The difference that a double bass pedal makes to the heaviness of a song is no more evident than in "Fuel for Hatred" which kicks to the next gear only because of the use of the double bass.

Another song that's got me hooked is Sentenced's "Ever Frost". Apparently Sentenced have just released a new album called "Funeral". Why "Funeral"? Because they are breaking up after this tour :-( . Another one bites the dust. RIP Sentenced.

PS BTW the site for the video downloads is http://www.hdpvidz.com/download.html.

Current Music: Sentenced - Ever Frost.

Askance

2005-08-30T23:37:00.000-07:00

Try this out

Just too funny!!

I am rainbow too....

2005-08-30T08:12:00.000-07:00

Have finished critically examining all the photos that i took in Devbagh. Have reached the conclusion that i might have an alternate career as a landscape photographer but *absolutely* none as a model. Thats quite tough to admit believe me.....

Have been particularly enamored by this photo i took of our neighbours. Quite cliched I must admit but brings a smile to my face for some reason :)

The sun, the kiss, the funk for a bliss

2005-08-29T08:15:00.000-07:00

The prodigal is back...from a vacation that would make most green with envy. Imagine I had forests, hills, cool breezes, chirping crickets, sun kissed sands and a wonderfully desolate beach for company. Besides that there was almost no electricity, no cable, no oily food and certainlyno fat screeching tourists with their runny nosed kids. Just a bunch of people like us who had come into soak the pristine beauty. What more could a guy ask for.
Sigghh! How long would it last. Then i get back to office. See mails from a gazillion people. Have review( aka appraisal) discussions with my boss. Read about India being blown to smithreens by Shane Bond. SEE india get almost embarassed by Zimbabwe.
Cant I just send a "working from home" mail from Devbagh and stay there for the rest of my life.... : -D
Above is a pic of this heaven on earth. A MUST go for any nature lover. More info here

Current Music: Digable Planets - Nickel Bag of Funk

Tricks

2005-07-27T07:06:00.000-07:00

So our boy in the US has added to his bag of tricks is it!!

A really nice pic on Ragure's blog here

Current Music: Scum of the earth - get your dead on

Sky high, with a heartache of stone...

2005-07-26T13:01:00.000-07:00

Just noticed that the header of my blog also mentions something called Books. Yup my reading appetite currently seems to be a little low, mostly due to the fact that I haven't liked most of what I have read of late and no I dont give a shit about Harry Potter. Also, I have noticed that generally my reading tends to follow a pattern of crests and troughs, wherein a great read will enthuse me enough to go after many more authors only to be reminded all kinds of trash that goes around in the name of books. Kinda like people these books are you know. Find a good one and they reaffirm your faith in mankind, whereas a bad one makes you wanna bolt away from them.

The last good book i read was The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh. As always, his evocative prose and his "presentation" of the Sunderbans absolutely blew me away. Am currently reading "The Hiram Key: Pharaohs, Freemasonry, and the Discovery of the Secret Scrolls of Jesus", a book that was recommended to me by my current quizzing partner, Pratyush. Deals with a lot of investigations into Freemasonry and Knights Templar. Been okay so fay. Kinda like reading a National Geographic article. Only much longer. I know what you must be thinking. Freemasons, Knights Templar, Jesus ----> DA VINCI CODE!! And all i can say to that is NOOOOOOOOOOOO I havent read that damn book as yet. Will do so after all the hype dies down.
Hmm, that reminds me, at some point in life i was having this rather animated conversation with a friend of mine about how much a person's opinion about a book betrays his or her character. Maybe thats why I haven't written too much about the books that i have been reading on this blog. But then so does musical taste also.....

Current Music: Pilgrimz - Farby Barfly

Listen, damn it, we will win.....

2005-07-25T08:27:00.000-07:00

Got this great opportunity to go para sailing in the last few days. My office team had one of its morale outings wherein we are taken to do something fun (which if you are in Hyderabad, either revolves around Prasad's or means just gorging on food). However, some guys took it upon themselves to change the state of affairs and decided that we would go and do para sailing over hussainsagar. The idea literally shocked me out of my own little reverie (..my previous few posts have given you a good idea as to what the state of affairs have been over the past few days). I was, after days, actually feeling a little excited about going out. Seemed like a little sunshine had finally given me its warmth.

Alas, it was not to be :( Turns out that the equipment that these people have can support only people who are less than 70 kgs. And the last time I fell into that category was well....to put it mildly...a long time ago. So I sat there in the corner looking at some of my collegues who actually managed to make it through the weight limit, staring at them, like a child looking at his lost balloons flying into the sky. Damn!! These parasailing-organising-schmucks will go to the dogs i tell you.

After that got to see Sarkar. That movie is worth every penny i tell you, a nice contemporary version of Godfather. To me, that has perhaps puts this movie even higher in my faves list, well over Coppola's Godfather, cuz I like the fact that i can so associate with it. Its not Coppola's GF which is set in a world that i can hardly recognize. Its set in a urban dystopia, that is so instrinisic to our life as urban indians. RGV's new found love for extreme closeups is quite appreciated (...well dont know what the Gandhi class dudes have to say about that though!)...it reminds me of some of these weird japanese hentai cartoons, which nearly always focuses on the characters eyes to bring about the emotion. Lets see if its something that we would come to expect of Varma, or whether its a passing fad.

It was my roommate's( or flatmate's...is that even a word??) birthday over the weekend which presented me an opportunity to finally try out my precious bottle of EverClear that i had purchased from the US of A. Man that drink is STRONG!! And it hits you like a rocket...its like pouring burning petrol down your throat...couldnt manage more than a 60 this time....will continue my experiments with the "brew" in the future.

Current Music: Tool - Eulogy

It aint easy to be me..

2005-07-18T11:57:00.000-07:00

Today i feel like i have the weight of the world on my shoulders. and my knees are just about ready to buckle..

It wasnt meant to be so damn hard to get through this life. sometimes i feel that i have let go of so much for all that is so little.

when will it all end...

current music: the pain and the blaring horns

Cold and freezing...

2005-07-17T08:57:00.000-07:00

There was a once a storyteller who was famed for his storytelling abilities. People travelled from far and beyond to listen to his stories because he had a wonderful way with words. His imagination knew no bounds, he could conjure up fascinating stories about ruthless aliens,ghoulish demons, hideous monsters, kind fairies and heroic humans at the drop of a hat. His stories had touches of all kinds of human emotions - drama,passion, tragedy, love, valour.

Then he grew up and became a software engineer.

*The End*

Current Music: mastodon - blood and thunder

Now there's nothing left for me to do...

2005-07-15T04:31:00.000-07:00

Here's what I have been wasting my office bandwidth on..

Daysend - Born is the enemy ( video)

Aussie melodic DM(??) band. Sounds more like conventional nu-metal to me with some good solos....especially the haunting background chords. Awesome song this.

Bonus: Found the video of Testament - Return To Serenity at launchcast. Man do i love the net or what.
Testament - Return to Serenity (video)

Current mood: Focused
Current music: Daysend - Born is the enemy

Stand o'er and deliver or the devil he may take ya!

2005-07-13T01:55:00.000-07:00

Confession time! Those kids at the ESPN Sports Quiz have been freaking me out! Compared to them I was a dweeb when I was their age. They are just too good, most of the kids that is, and if they continue this way, India will have a whole generation of stud sports quizzers to watch out for.
But it's so disheartening to see how ESPN has so effectively managed to mainpulate the sporting taste of an entire generation in India. Here are a bunch of kids, who are passionately devoted to a bunch of sports and its probably because they are not getting an opportunity to watch other sports cuz the biggest sports channels in the country are not showing them. And the worst part is that, these kids at ESPN school quiz are endorsing this cause and creating a certain "coolness" factor about knowing the intricacies of EPL. Hell, I have seen it happen in college with people doing it with certain bands that they liked..i.e creating the certain "cool"aura about it. And here we have a whole generation which is mugging up EPL, cuz they see a bunch of super achiever kids doing the same thing.It's quite pathetic if you ask me, when we have a bunch of kids who can identify somebody like Lomana Lualua, but start making faces when they are asked to identify the pic of Hicham El Guerrouj. You can see it so effectively happen on the sports that are being broadcast on ESPN Star itself. How many kids know indepth Basketball fundae, which is broadcast at odd hours( much to the chagrin of yours truly)...probably 5. How many kids known indepth EPL fundae....you could probably fill a football field with those numbers. And the point is that in this ESPN Sports quiz by not asking questions on the other popular but not-so-frequently-broadcasted sporting events, these guys are very effectively undermining the value of these other sports in the eyes of an entire generation and ensuring that they have a whole generation of kids who will grow up and watch only ESPN cuz they have grown up watching a bunch of sports that only ESPN shows. Another instance of Corporate greed manipulating human thought patterns if you ask me.
Call it good or bad, but it was so different when i was growing up. DD did telecast F1 Grand Prix races on Sundays with much better commentary than what we see on Star today. Hell, I can claim to be the very few who saw Michael Schumacher's debut race. But they also telecast TWI's The World of Sport where we got to see the exploits of Carlos Sainz ( the World Rally Car champ), Wayne Rainey( the MotoGP champ) and Alberto Tomba ( the skiing super stud). It was the only thing that told you about AC Milan's title truimphs, Sergei Bubka's nth world record. But sadly, how many kids watch that today. Not too many i presume.
Though to give credit to the guys at ESPN, the quiz is well researched and the questions are darn good! Its doing wonders in popularising quizzing among the schoolkids. But......... you get what i mean right?

Current Music: The Cult- Fire Woman

Music Videos...

2005-07-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

List of top music videos that I saw once or twice on television and fell in love with. Why this inane list....cuz its my freakin blog ok? Here it goes in no particular order:

1. Testament - Return to Serenity

Saw this video when i was probably in my tweens and didnt know head or tail about Testament. Here was this really fascinating black and white video with Indian looking guys ( Chuck Billy looks very much like an Indian) with REALLY long hair. Left my 13-year old mind mighty confused, but I remember the video very distinctly and have been kneeling in front of my television with my hands folded in prayer for this video to appear again, but alas all i get is 50 cents and his butt-clenched troupe.

2. Strings - Sar Kiye yeh pahaad

Before all the hype and hoopla, before people liked Pakistani bands just because they were Pakistani, before MTV started vomiting out remix videos, there was a time when all was pure and holy, when GNR's "Use You Illusion 1" was number 1 on the MTV US Countdown for 9 straight weeks, when you would actually catch Ozzy video premiers on MTV, when they were still murmuring about a new band called "Nirvana" in the suburbs of Seattle. At that time a 4 pieced outfit singing a refreshingly melodic Hindi song made an amateurish video featuring some birds, a lake and them staring up at the cameras and doing a ridiculous dance that looked very similat to an African jhinga-la-la type dance.
But what caught my fancy, was this really melodic song and all I ever hoped for was this video to come or for me to be able to get the song on tape so that atleast i could listen to it. The first was never realised, however i did manage to get the song on tape when it was re-released on their "Door" album. But nothing beats this song by Strings!!

3. Pearl Jam - Ocean

Another killer black and white video. Has Eddie and the boys surfing and just jumping around. The waves look breathtakingly beautiful and the song has Eddie going through all the octaves in the chorus. Heaven!!

4. Temple of the Dog - Hunger Strike

Caught this video once again in the early 90s. ( Now you know why i love the 90s!) Didnt realise the significance of the band....simply loved the song. All i noticed then was these 2 really good singers...one with a shril high pitched voice and other with a different baritone singing something about stealing bread. The video had a typical 90s feel to it...a sombre set which was later set on fire in the video. Awesome stuff!

Thats all I can come up with at the moment.

PS. Anthrax has done this brilliant cover of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath. Must lay my hands on it somehow

Current Music: Razed in Black - Hells Bells (Covered in Black)

Open your eyes, open your mind, proud like a god but dont act as if your blind!

2005-06-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

Quizzing for me has been more than a hobby. It would be fair enough to say that in some sense it has given me a strong sense of identity and no doubt, the numerous quizzing victories have given me a great sense of belief in my abilities. Time and time again though, I have received numerous jibes from people who have never indulged in this mindsport ( yes thats the term i like to use for it ..mindsport!) ..."ohh man! quizzing is for those who dont have a life...just mug up some facts and vomit it out....whats the difference between quizzing and a university exams....ohh him!! I am sure he has no personality.After all he's a QUIZZER!" Obviously, being the person that I am I have rarely ever bothered to return those jibes, those fools obviosuly dont know what they are talking about. I guess those who speak like that, haven't obviously experienced the sheer ecstasy of cracking connect! Or recalling so many little bits of inane information that you might have just observed in your day to day life and putting them all together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle to come up with a deductive answer which would have done good old sherlock holmes proud! For me quizzing has been nothing more than just observing the world around me a little more keenly, understanding and absorbing before cramming, calculating and taking a minute to think rather leaping to a conclusion.

Was pointed to this really good post on a blog here and it continues here. Really well written articles. They really give a great perspective on quizzing.

One thing however that this quy has missed pointing out is the role that bad quizmasters and the so called "Business " quizzes play in giving this erroneous notion about quizzing. One classic example is Mr Pig-Fucking -Brain Giri Balasubramaniam. Man, I do not know how anyone can tolerate his quizzes. They are nothing but arbit collections of useless trivia and the questions are framed so badly that it does not give anybody the least chance of actually working out the question. And his quizzes follow such a predictable pattern. One question on some business "gurus" book, one question showing some management mugshot and the question would be identify. As if Edward de Bono is my fucking neighbour that i'll know what he looks like. Hell, what has he done, won the Noble Prize? Sorry boss, he aint even a good looking girl that i might spend some time looking on the web for his pics. Attend an Arul Mani quiz, which is nothing put sheer entertainment for both the spectators as well as the participants. Its like watching a match, hell you ARE watching competing teams battling out for just pride more often than not. So spare me the money, would rather go for Arul's quiz then get a freakin headache at the Pig Brain Circus. Frankly, I have no respect for those guys who win these so called Business Quizzes. They aren't the real thing for me.

Current Music: - AudioSlave - Show me how to live

All i've got ....all i've got is insane!

2005-06-29T03:30:00.000-07:00

Shitty freakin week at office. Been languishing under the ever piling load of work. Schedules, deadlines, meetings....uggh!
When I was in college, everyone around me told me that I was cut out for management. And i truly believed it, always thinking that management is all about managing resources. I mean, how tough could it be, juggle with your numbers, cut a few things here, add a few things there and voila....it should be done. However, work has been an eye opener. The word resources has been so misleading, never really thought that managing resources in a company like mine actually meant that i was managing "people" and not some inanimate object like a pencil or a printer or some such thing. Resources for us are a bunch of people who have their own constraints, who have to leave office early to attend to their families, who have to go and search for a house while you're discussing life and death situations with them... and more importantly people screw up !! Thats reality and you have to learn to live with that....come to think of it managing things boils down to managing your screw ups. Optimize your screw ups and you have the perfect project accomplished. Whoa!! Thats enough learning in 1.6 years of work!

Current Music: Stone Sour - Inhale

Sights far from the concrete jungle

2005-06-21T08:47:00.000-07:00

Peek a boo

Can you believe that this is just 5 mins away from my office. As RKP calls it, its quite a "happy place" :-)

Sights far from the concrete jungle II

2005-06-21T08:46:00.000-07:00

Sienna

Sights far from the concrete jungle III

2005-06-21T08:45:00.000-07:00

Sights from the concrete jungle

There's something wrong with the world today, I dont know what it is, something wrong with our eyes..

2005-06-17T01:07:00.000-07:00

Update on life. I am back doing what i love the most, quizzing with a vengence. The last few weeks have been quite productive I must admit. The 15k(woo hoo!!) that i won at the ACE Corporate Quiz, came in very handy at this "taxing" time of the year. As always, quizzing helping me cut some slack in life.
Have started attending K Circle meetings regularly and have come 2nd in both the meetings I attended. Must admit, that the standards of K Circle are not quite there as compared to RV QuizCorp or KQA but still it aint too bad. Keeps me nicely occupied for one evening in the week and also gives me a chance to "unrust" this mind of mine a little. I have been asked by the K Circle guys to do a quiz there, this evening and i guess I am a bit overprepared. 50 dry questions, 10 audios, 10 videos, 15 visuals should suffice for one complete quiz in most places. Its almost like that this kinda hiatus from aggressive quizzing has left me teeming with fundaes. So today will be an unleash after a long time. Hope the KCircle guys are ready( **evil smirk**)!

On the musical front have got the Athiest albums that i had been so dying for thanks to satej . Though, I am currently tripping on the brilliant, brilliant Cynic album from 1993 called Focus. Those have to some of the best time shifts that have been seen in a long long time. And the transitions are so smooth, with each movement blending seemlessly into the next. Never imagined that the bass licks interspersed between the clean tone guitars could have such a captivating effect. Plus, the vocals which keep shifting between the Chuck Schuldiner/Chuck Billy kinda mature, anguished growls and the Cyborg-on-helium kinda synthesised voice box effects are a real treat. Awesome stuff this !
Other acquisitions include Coldplay's new offering "X&Y", Audioslave's "Out of Exile" and the critically acclaimed "Hot Fuss" by The Killers. Am still chewing on these, so my thoughts on them in sometime.
Going to watch "Batman Begins" also tomorrow. I have been following the progress of this movie since August last year, so i cant wait to watch the final product. The initial reviews have been very positive. I am hoping that Chris Nolan( Memento, Insomnia) has finally given my superhero the treatment/respect that he deserves.

Current Music: Cynic - Sentiment

Watta crack!

2005-06-08T07:00:00.000-07:00

Read this on a blog

"RV College of Engineering is more like a quiz club that does engineering for timepass. "

LOL. Man somebody finally cracked it!! Thats what we guys used to do while we were in college. Even sems were the time when the Bangalore college circuit was buzzing with activity. There was a fest every 2 weeks...oooof there was hardly any time to attend classes ;-) After all, there was lotsa money to be won. Man, if it hadnt been for those quizzes, i would have rotted away in penury with a miserable jungle life for memory. Thankfully the money that i made was more than enough to finance my "extra-curricular" adventures. Then there was also my bike which i won in a quiz...which thankfully relieved me from the agony of 222A, the godforsaken,rickety 4 wheeled monstrosity that carried the scum of the earth in its belly, from majestic to RV. Sigh...what would i have done without my bike :) . I know a lotta people who would be nodding their heads in quite approval a that statement.
The quizzing season waned around January after which the quizzes were few and far between. However, most of these quizzes were out station and that gave us an opportunity to travel to pretty much all the well-known colleges of south and west india. How were the trips financed?...From the money that we won in the quizzes there of course. So you see, the quizzing was not just about college pride or for the love of it all, it was also a very important means of livelihood.
Jokes apart, the wins in those quizzes were a high that i will never forget. I was fortunate enough to be a part of one of the best college teams in India. Man those were some good days!

Mood - Nostalgic!!
Current Music: A Perfect Circle - The Outsider

Every day is exactly the same..

2005-06-08T03:46:00.000-07:00

Cant believe I am hearing this song right now. What a perfectly apt description of life in a cube!

Hmm....havent heard this song before. The artist is Nine Inch Nails btw...guess the song must be from their new album "In Teeth". Have been hearing good things about this album. I think the first single from this album "The Hand that feeds" came out while I was in Las Vegas and it was creating quite a buzz there. Must buy this album when it comes here, which will be god knows when.

My new music purchases include the amazing Dave Matthews' solo album called "Some Devil". That dude is one talented bugger i must admit. Beautiful album with some really catchy ditties. The ones that stand out are the first 4 songs on the tape. "Dodo" has this really melodious chorus which goes something like "Why would you play by the rules?Who did, you did, you !You say who did, well you did, you" A little intriguing i must admit, but it sounds a whole lot better when Mr Matthews sings it in his smokey voice. The other track that really stands out is "Gravedigger". A very minimal song but one that almost killed me the first time i heard it. Sample these lyrics

Grave digger
When you dig my grave
could you make it shallow
so that I can feel the rain

People nowadays say that poetry is dead. You really think so??

Ahh well....there's my manager calling me for a meeting. Bye bye Dave Matthews :-(

Current Music: King Karma - Breathe

Walking on water...

2005-06-07T21:43:00.000-07:00

Ganj gingerly checks out the waters for his plunge....

Was really nice to meet him after ages in Charlotte. This photo was taken when both of us were at Lake Norman. A whole set of interesting pics. Probably will post some more later.

In office at 9 freakin am

2005-06-07T21:29:00.000-07:00

Office politics! Hate that shit....nobody notices your work only the amount noise that you generate. Disgusting, grovelling at other people's feet for attention

Current Music: keyboard clicks

Travelling somewhere,could be anywhere!

2005-06-03T02:04:00.000-07:00

At the outset, I have a confession to make. I tend to give positive comments even for movies which later, upon contemplation, i realise are quite crappy. Sometimes, upon viewing the movie again, i actually wonder how i could give such a good rating to such a pathetic movie. Now you must wondering, if i have this in mind then how could i continue with it....well out of a sub-conscious habit i guess. Maybe i am just a real nice person who says only good things about people :-)

Ok back to what i originally intended to write about. Saw this nice movie yesterday called "Hazaron Khwaishein Aisi". Well, the movie had a real good storyline( for once in an Indian movie)...however the weak link in the movie seemed to be the insistence of the actors in the movie to converse in English. It seemed a little to contrived and not at all natural. This movie is basically a love story set in the times of the 1970's when Socialist Revolution and Emergency were the hot burning topics and Student Politics was the cool,in thing. Must admit Chitrangada Singh is quite simply STUNNING, but in the league of Smita Patil she aint! A very pronounced American accent, she has. She must lose this asap is she is to stand a chance of succeeding in Indian movies. Hmm...actually come to think of it, the wannabe types might actually be impressed by it, but she'll never rank high in my books if she cant get an accent to suit a role. The fact, that in the movie, she has an American accent even though she hasn't ever visited the US is quite ridiculous. Overall, the acting and editing in the movie leave a little to be desired. Moreover i was a little disappointed by Sudhir Mishra's story telling abilities, the film overall seemed a little confused and ambled from one point to the other. The saving grace of the film though is Shiny Ahuja, who is the "shiny"-est(hehehe) star on the rookie acting horizon, i must admit. Watch him in "Sins" and you'll know why I say this.

On the musical front, i have decided to go back to the basics kinda. I am currently listening to Steely Dan's Grammy winning "2 Against Nature" and "The Best of Joan Baez". I had always wanted to listen to Steely Dan and when i heard them again in a friend's car in Bangalore recently, i decided that I must get some of their music. And its quite trippy! They seem to make very sincere, understated music which is very strong on melody. Must admit, at first i had this impression that their music would be much harder that it actaully turned out to be, not that i mind now. Nice stuff in all. And i am also currently tripping on Joan Baez's "Diamonds & Rust". This songs talks about her failed relationship with Bob Dylan. People have often complimented me on my knowledge of music, but when i "discover" artists like Joan Baez, i realise there's so little that i actually know about music. I mean, here is this prodigious musical talent, with a voice, smooth as silk, with lyrics that will make even the insane wanna understand life, and i haven't heard ANY song by her till now. Man, i have a life full of music to discover.
Coming back to the song, it has some of the most wonderful lyrics, wherein a woman wistfully recalls her failed relationship. Sometimes i wonder, after all the immediate acrimony has been lost in time, do people recall only the joyous moments of their past relationships? If they do, then why cant they do that whilst they are in that relationship...i guess anger is always the instinctive emotion.

Current Music: - Tool - Schism

Where was i all these days...well life was calling!!

2005-05-26T09:15:00.000-07:00

Hehehe....sorry couldnt resist the pun on the Smirnoff ad (which i think is an absolute knockout BTW). Ok, where had i been in the last few days....roaming around in las vegas, lost money, had a decent time, met my adorable nephew...and my bro and sis-in-law...and ganj.

More on all this some other time....

Current Music: Shinedown - 45 ( hehehe still at it.........)

Staring down the barrel of a 45.....

2005-05-26T09:01:00.000-07:00

Man, has anyone heard the song "45" by this band called "Shinedown".........i heard this song after about a year again today and have been blown by it.....yes,AGAIN!! It has that wonderful quality of painful mellow angst that makes it so unignorable. Just calls out to you to like it. More songs that have this quality that i can think of:

1. Tears of the dragon - Bruce Dickinson
2. Seven- Revis
3. Shimmer- Fuel

Ok, let me get into this a little more know that i am really into it. I somehow have this weird affinity for music which have guys with reasonable baritones doing the stretch bit....wherein they stretch the words of their song out....something like what the lead singer of Shinedown does near the end of the song. Though there are/were a bunch of baritoned guys who suck at it...who just killed the song when they did it....Scott Stapp of Creed for example. Hate that guy! HATE THAT GUY! For the way he stole Eddie Vedder's look, i think he's the one responsible for introducing satin clothes into Rock. I mean how fucking blasphemous can you get........the only people who deserved to wear satin are people who wore long flowing robes made out of them....gods/high priests/buffoons like Jim Morrison, Ozzy or Mick Jagger. Not dickheads like Scott Stapp.

Man, is it tough or what to find this song on the net anywhere. I tried Kazaa for it desperately, couldnt get a decent copy of it anywhere....no luck with any decent band sites also. Finally managed to find the VIDEO!! on the Winamp videos list that you get with Winamp 5.01 i think. Hell Yeah!!

Current Music - Shinedown -45 ( well what else did u think it would be!!!)

Frisbee

2005-04-28T07:42:00.000-07:00

Have discovered this new game called Ultimate Frisbee....and i am hooked!!

Current Music: Fear Factory - Cyberwaste

Consideration

2005-04-27T00:44:00.000-07:00

I really do not have too much knowledge about too many world cultures. I have spent a reasonable amount of time in only 2 countries viz. US and India. But there is one crystal clear conclusion that i have made about our nation or rather about Indians as a race. We are a bunch of incosiderate people. We do not care what the person to the left or right of us has to go through because of our actions, we just believe that we must do what is immediately of value to us and those who are near and dear to us. The person who might indirectly be affected by our actions be damned!
I mean just look at something as simple as the way we drive. Aren't the driving ethics of city/group of people/person/nation are a clear reflection of their thinking, the kind of people that they are? Driving is nothing more than following a simple set of rules! Yet how many of us can do it right? And more importantly how many of us CRIB about it and yet go out on the roads and drive like a bunch of shitheads. I have seen the most educated, the most "civilised" amongst us go out there and cut through lanes, drive on the opposite sides, take u turns on a chock-a-block full road so that the entire traffic is sent to the dogs, just because somebody wants to save on a few measly bucks of petrol and not drive up to the next roundabout. Hell, I have even seen people driving the swankiest, most expensive cars do this kinda shit, giving a damn to these beautiful pieces of machinery for which they must have paid bucketfuls of money. And again it all boils to consideration doesn't it? Granted that all of us want to get to wherever we want to go in the shortest possible time AND using the shortest possible route but do we ever consider whether we are causing trouble to those around us.
Same thing is sooo applicable to us even as listeners. I dont know whether its me but I have almost given up arguing with most people i am around with. I know since they will never try and listen to what i am trying to say and always try and prove that what they are saying is right, it makes no sense to argue with them. I do not believe in shouting matches and if you cant have an intelligent argument with me then screw u ! and dont bother wasting my time. I am not gonna listen to you even if you make statements that go radically against my thought. After all what do i have to gain by making you see the way i see things which *might* be right. After all, its your loss, not mine.

Current Music: SwitchFoot - Dare you to move

Songs buzzing in my head at the moment

2005-04-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

If I were to write a CD right now then it would contain:

1. Death - Zero Tolerance (Chuck Schuldiner is nothing but a GOD!!)
2. Radha Ramana - Tulku( feat. Jai Uttal) - heard Crispian Mills aka lead singer of Kula Shaker sing "Govinda Jaya Jaya, gopal jaya jaya..." in "Govinda". Well this is the original bhajan sung in that ISKCON kinda manner with some nice mellifluous mixes at the back. Perfect mood balancing song.
3. Akele Hum Nadiya Kinare - Shubha Mudgal - simplicity at its best. I wish i was a painter, cuz this song makes me wanna paint a picture, a picture of a sunset by a river, with somebody waiting by the shore for her beloved
4. SwitchFoot - Dare You to Move - its like creating an illusion out of sound. This atmosphere music..its almost as if it makes your world expand right before your eyes

Current Music: Solid Sessions - Janeiro

Magneto

2005-04-19T01:22:00.000-07:00

BTW, this is kinda what I work on :)

http://www.informationweek.com/story/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=160402215

Codenames

2005-04-19T00:49:00.000-07:00

This is one Microsoft fixation that has kept me constantly intrigued. I must say that it takes some amount of creativity to come up with the kind of uber cool codenames that guys at Microsoft come up with. Some of them have been in public memory for sometime, while some others are still catching up. Here's my list of super cool Microsoft Codenames:

1. The Pocket PC OS/Windows Mobile series - Rapier,Merlin, Stinger, Magneto,Photon. For those who haven't yet realised it as yet, these are some of the X Men ( duh!)

2. The Visual Studio Series - Rainier,Everett, Whidbey, Orcas - all towns in increasing order of distance from Redmond in the Northwest direction

3. Visual J++ - Jakarta. Insider joke. Jakarta is the capital of Indonesia, located on the island of java

4 . Exchange 2003-Titanium. While the name sounds very mundane, the funda behind it is quite cool. Titanium is twice as strong as steel while half its weight. So exchange was intended to be twice as secure as 2002 but half its size, etc

5. Windows CE .NET - Talisker - the only whisky distillery on the Island of Skye. ( The rest of them are for Skye Vodka)

6. The SQL CE series of codenames - Daytona,Laguna, Kahuna - beaches in the US

7. Layer for Unicode - Godot- perfectly apt name. From the play "Waiting for Godot". Godot is the central character of this play based on the endless wait for him. Get the drift .. :)

8. Obvisously nothing can beat Whistler, Longhorn and Blackcomb...

Current Music: Lillian Axe- Letters in the Rain

Do you wanna know about David Lynch?

2005-04-11T05:42:00.000-07:00

Had a mini David Lynch festival over the weekend. Saw "Mulholland Dr." and "Lost Highway". Man, what is that guy? Absolutely psychotic movies...there are actaully websites dedicated to explaining his movies. Seems like a dope trip of the weirdest degree.

www.davidlynch.com

More about the other movie I saw over the weekend. Just one word for it right now--"kickass"! :)

Current music: Nirvana- Smells like....

2005-04-07T12:07:00.000-07:00

I really think that the concept of having time to oneself is overrated. who really wants to know more about themselves. all of us have those skeletons waiting to tumble out of our closets given a chance. and they love to tumble out on us don't they. no more time for myself. I hate having time to myself . gives me too much time to think. I mean wouldn't it be better if we just acted in the spur of the moment instead of having to wait for the consequences, wait for coming up with those politically correct comments. I would rather wait for the dust to settle after I have acted. but alas, I know its only foolish bravado and nothing more.

current music: my ceiling fan's whirr

White Noise

2005-03-29T01:14:00.000-08:00

Saw this movie called White Noise over the weekend before i left for Coorg. Somehow I always expect a Rahul Bose movie to blow me away, but its always his co-stars who seem to let me down. In Mr. & Mrs. Iyer, it was Konkona who i think was quite overrated. In Chameli, it was Kareena who deserved to be tightly slapped for being....well, Kareena. Rahul Bose brings a kind of intensity to his movies, his roles which remind of perhaps Gregory Peck...its the same kind of solidity that many of todays actors so clearly lack.
BTW, one thing that definitely deserves a mention about this movie is its soundtrack. Incidentally it was one of the very few cases where i purchased the soundtrack for an Indian movie well before i saw the movie. And the singular reason for that was that Dhruv Ghanekar has composed all the songs on this album. Dhruv is one dude whom i am a big big fan of. For those of you (.......who you...there aint anybody listening to me out there now is there...) who dont know about Dhuv Ghanekar, well he is an absolute DUDE! He was one of the people behind Rock Machine/Indus Creed and makes some amazing music. And atleast he hasn't disappointed me. The songs are so cool...an amazing mix of Guitars, percussion and indian rhythms. I am not a big fan of fusion music, but this album is just ....MUSIC, without deliberately trying to stress on the fusion part of it. Quite cool i must say ! Standout songs are Resonate and In the Air.

On the subject of White Noise, well i had seen another movie called White Noise a while back. It starred Michael Keaton(.....remember him....yup he's still very much alive.. and not acting in Tim Burton movies...). Dealt with some ghostly shit called ELP or ENP or something. About how ghosts can communicate through the static( White Noise!!) of your TV and all. Quite a crappy movie.

Current Music: COF- III. Sewer Side Up: Presents from the Poison Hearted

Vacation...

2005-03-28T05:50:00.000-08:00

Just got back from a heavenly vacation in Coorg...still cant get over the fact that I am actually back. I think those cottages there have made me hate my cubicle even more....but you dont need to be a rocket scientist to figure cottages rock while cubicles suck, now do you !!

Memories from Coorg

1. Sleeping on the bus
2. Spending the afternoon playing cards in the verandah..while a cool breeze was blowing...absolute bliss
3. A's burst over the mountain trail to Raja Seat...that surprised a few people!
4. Tempo the Rottweiler....and the charge ....and the shriek...and the bemused look on the dogs face...and the laughs after that over dinner
5. S getting smashed and taking her gazillion long exposure photos
6. Me getting smashed the next day and doing exactly the same thing next day
7. All of us feeling "just a little.....buzzy"
8. Chewing gum in the hair....lol
9. Mysore bus stand and the absolute chaos there...oooffff!!
10. Firangi in the bus stand who kept following us like a lost puppy

:)