Lokee

 

The worm went up

Sita sings the blues

Chanced upon this on Roger Ebert's blog . Was intrigued.


Though the trailer was kinda cute, I was disappointed that the trailer didn't have any jazz music. But luckily chanced upon this other clip.... Now I badly wanna watch it...

Minister of 'Duh'

Ever since the Mumbai incident, the papers have been carrying one  statement a day from Mr. Pranab Mukherji, who has been giving us tidbits from his pool of infinite wisdom. Some of my favourites have been...

"We have to deal with this on our own."
"Mumbai attack was well planned"
"We have to take necessary measures...."
"Nobody is talking about military action"
"Time will tell..."
"What we are telling the government of Pakistan is to act"


Sources have leaked that the next week's papers are going to carry the following quotes
"We have a large population"
"I have to pee thrice every night..."
"Killing is bad,..and wrong..Weeoh!"
"Nation must stand strong"

Maybe someone can come up with a Pranab Mukherji statement generator and put this man out of his misery,

Let’s get this straight…

A person who has 'put mala' with the intention of going to Sabarimalai is called a 'swami'. I get it.

A sadist who flouts traffic rules, shows general disregard for people, spits ghutka liberally on the streets , and knowingly uses his BO as a means to make people's live miserable is an asshole.

And if the asshole is wearing a black shirt and intends to go to Sabari malai…he is an asshole swami.

There are no two ways about it.

Pending lists

I have barely even finished my 'balti list ' and I realized that the new year is coming up. Which means time for resolutions..... as most of you know, I prefer Birthday resolutions, since they give me an extra week. (Hint: Birthday coming up)

So I gotta get to work on both lists....

Predict the worm

Forget about what this line graph is depicting..... using nothing but your ugly gut, can you let me know how you think this line will go in the future?

And while you are at it, let me know what you think this line represents..... mail me a mvikram dot 79 at gmail.com

Nerd in the iron mask

Sometime during the final year of my graduation, I resolved to have a makeover. I was tired of being known as the computer geek and wanted a 'cooler' image. Moreover it was getting tiring as every friend, and friend's friend called me for PC fixing. And my dream of having a buxom babe call me over on the pretext of a computer incident remained.


So out went the mustachioed geek, and vikram 2.0 (uh oh!) was born. But as I found out eventually, (and you realized when i mentioned the version number) the geek was  far from gone. He makes his appearance every now and then...thankfully without the mouche....


The latest example was my obsession over my latest gimmick. So please indulge me and let me narrate how I logged into my laptop now.


1) I turned it on.
2) I looked at the screen


.....


That's it. I installed a face recognition software. For the uninitiated, its the same thing that Saif Ali Khan talks about in the Lenovo ad.


After several unsuccessful attempts, and then finally babysitting my laptop while it downloaded the entire 83 MB of it, i managed to set up a system which logs into my PC. Something I have ....uh..been doing for ages at a much faster pace.  But at least the evildoers who take away my laptop would not be able to break in and steal my downloaded songs..unless they type in 'abc' as my password....


The geek made quite a few appearances more this week. He made me spend (waste?) nearly 1 thousand bucks for a software for the mobile which will turn it into a universal remote control. 


I wanna watch the Hulk movie again since I have a newfound sympathy for Bruce Banner. 

Mad Sad Glad Lad

Strangely enough, my first reaction to the Mumbai terror attack was not shock, or sadness or gloom. It was anger... And I wasn't angry at the terrorists...nothing better is expected from them. I was...am mad at the government. And the face of the most incompetent home minister... person since the dawn of time keeps cropping up in my mind and driving me angrier. I mean what the fuck!!! This M@*** F##*3r is still in office? Why the fuck can't these numbnuts in the terrorist outfits get someone like him in the cross-fire at least. At least George Bush reacted after finishing 'My Pet Goat'... I don't see the press even barely mentioning any statement from him, leave alone grilling him about his performance or highlighting it to the public.

I am mad at the media too... and describing their coverage during and after would only make me madder. You know how its been,

When the anger abated, the sadness crept in. I was afraid we were getting numb to these. Kinda like how we 'see through' the poverty, the bad roads, and are learning to 'kindly adjust' with terrorism. The TV flashes 'War by terrorism'... not a 'War on Terrorism' that we are used to seeing on CNN or any American network.

And the weather isn't helping either. Its been cloudy and drizzling past two days.

But there were things I am glad for. And all of them for purely selfish reasons.
I am glad I am safe.
I am glad people I know are safe.
I am glad it didn't happen in my city.
I am glad that this brings hope that terrorism might be a higher priority than inflation among people. *
I am glad my TV remote was working
I am glad because I finally got the new SixPence album...and gladder that its amazing.


Peace.


* In a recent survey...as recent as last week, the top concern among middle class in India was Price Rise....I forgot the 2nd concern...but terrorism was 3rd.

Belated Birthday Post

Jus realized that among other birthdays, I also missed a milestone... Vixdom's 5th birthday...

Thats right... the blog is now over 5 years old.... that makes it one of the oldest surviving (but barely, some of you might say). But it does feel nice that it still lives.... and as I rummage through old posts, I realized I have had long periods of 'bunking' before... but eventually, a post forces its way through and opens the floodgates again...

Anyways, herz to vixdom.

p.s. Think I can weasel out a 'best of' as a post by itself?

Oi! Ow! Yaaargh!

I demand double credit for this post. Thats cauz I am doing it in-spite of a bad muscle pull in my leg. I look like a question mark while walking....

So make sure you give me a  'chu chu chu' for this one.... (or a paavam from Ms. Iyer)

P.S. This muscle pull too was for a 'good' reason.

Note to self

Now that mom has bookmarked the blog, I should remember to keep them as 'clean' as possible. 

Book calling

As you might have heard more times than you would care to, the typical every weekend consisted of going to The Forum and spending time in Landmark. While Nimish would browse music and chicks, I would read/read books, music and of course chicks. We still refer to the Landmark at Forum mall as 'Mothership'.


One of the books I semi-read there was 'Holy Cow ' by Sarah Macdonald. Regardless of what conventional wisdom says, I always judge a book by its cover. This one had a striking one. Sky blue with Shiva on it. (Why does my memory dig up an image of Shiva wearing shades?) I had read it in bits and pieces across weekends but only managed to finish the first couple of chapters. Finally I decided to go ahead and buy it. But on several occasions dropped it from my pile of books and CDs in an 'impulse non-purchase' .... (!!!! sorry about that. Couldn't think of a better phrase. )


One a couple of occasions when I decided to buy it come what may, the book wouldn't be available. Last visit to Bangalore, I picked it up, but dropped it since the checkout line was long. Deciding that fate was against the book, I decided that it was not to be.


Last week, while browsing at Odyssey at the comics section, I found it. Some shopper must have dropped it off at the last minute like me in the past. This was a sign from above if ever there was one,.


Been re-reading the first two chapters. I hope this book marks my grand comeback to reading. Its been a year since I read a new book.


p.s. My memory serves me right,. The copy  in amazon shows Shiva with shades. They probably dropped it in subsequent prints in fear of the hindutva brigade.

Dear Wren and Martin

What the frick is wrong with the dodos in ad agencies now. They apparently decided to trash their primary school grammar lessons. Bad grammar is cool now...apparently.

Case in point. Samsung with 'Next is what?'. Who exactly is doing the copyrighting these days? Master Yoda?

When Apple started out with 'Think Different' eons ago, it was cool.(How could it not?) Microsoft perverted the idea with Zune's 'Welcome to the social'. (Huh???). Adidas has 'Impossible is nothing'....

Bat droppings are  their ideas.

Balti List

Straight off, I am going to write just another normal blog post. None of the 'I am bach..' stuff...  A one month break has happened in the past.. and knowing me, will surely happen in the future. So let's behave as if nothing is abnormal. Vokay????

Saw 'Dasvidaniya' on Friday. Certainly one of the best movies I saw of late. Ok. ok. The theme is borrowed, but give me Vinay Pathak (with complementary Ranvir Shorey) over Morgan Freeman anyday.  You probably saw this  coming a mile away, but anyway. The movie made me think about what are the 10 things  I would want to do before I die...

I am still thinking through the list... and will be  posting it on vixlist soon enough. And as usual, feel free to send in your Balti List too.

Another off the list...

My wishlist from this year is going great guns. I finally managed to strike a biggie off it.

I am composing this post from my new laptop. :-) More details later.

Am back home....apparently

Fikar not! I am still nestled away in distant Cairo....Giza actually. But my body seems to think that I am back home. 


For the past few days, I have been feeling very, very sleepy by 7:30 or 8PM here. Last Saturday, I woke up at 5AM and today, sharp at 4:15.


If you add 3.5 hours to these timings, viola! They don't sound weird at all. Anyways, the body has to wait for 3 whole days before the rest of me catches up and actually moves back home. 

Wishlist 2008 - 09

Wishlist for 2008 - 2009 is now up on vixlist.blogspot.com


If you want your wishlist to be published, send it over.

Where do I go with this?

Whenever I don't have much to post about, I root through the huge mounds of unfinished posts, hoping I can find one that's destined to be completed. This morning I found this old draft, which seems to be one of the many unfinished….or rather barely started stories I was working on. Usually when I see an old draft, especially that of a story, I immediately remember the entire story, or at least the idea behind it. But with this one I have no clue where this 2 paragraph story was leading to. I am racking my brains hoping to remember what this one was about. In the meantime, if anyone has any suggestion on how I can take this forward, let me know. (Bhaalu, Khaasi,
HelloKitty,
Ms. Iyer, Poo, I am looking at you folks). This story draft was dated December 5^th 2005.

 

The loud clanging of the school bell was the sweetest sound to his ears, followed closely by the other bell…this from the ice-candy vendor. Sitting in the last bench as always, he would rush out upon hearing his favorite bell towards his second favorite one. Rohan would spend his daily pocket money, a princely sum of five rupees buying two grape flavored ice-candies. By the time, the rest of the crowd reached the beaming ice-candy vendor, they would have to see Rohan's purple stained tongue taunting them.

 

Today as he was rushing over to the ice-candy cart, he could see that someone had already beaten him to it. A girl, wearing a rather weathered uniform of the nearby school was fishing out money from her skirt pocket. Rohan reached the push-cart and gave the girl a glare, admonishing her. He was angry that his glare wasn't recognized and that the miscreant calmly took her purchase and walked contentedly away. Rohan's ice-candy seemed to lack a certain flavor that afternoon.

Finally

After thinking, re-thinking, and thinking some more about it... I finally decided to go for a paid FlickR account. And over the last week, there has not yet been a moment of post purchase dissonance.... I should have done this much earlier...

Unlimited storage for all my pics, and a web service which actually is as good..naw! better than its desktop options...

in other news, I was in Hyd over the weekend, WAS. I am now back in Cairo.... and will be here till the 12th.. which means, both me and Sanz will pretty much be spending our 1st anniversary without each other.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Maalish

That's arabic for sorry.

I know my usual excuse for not blogging has always been 'There isn't anything going on to blog about.'

And a few of you (very few, the rest are happy that am not cluttering up the web apparently) have ribbed me that now that am in Cairo, and travellin to Dubai and wherever, I should have lots to talk about. So what explains my not posting for so long? Believe it or not, its because I have actually been busy. Busy working.

I have managed to post a few pix to Orkut though. And if you are a facebook user.... bite me...or bite yourself.

Fun Fact of the Day:
Did you know that the men in Cairo can be roughly categorized into two....categories.

1. Ahmeds
2. Mohammeds

and the way you call either of them is by yelling out "Hamma" (like how an Australian would pronounce a Hummer")

My Hotel - Pyramisa in Dokki

Finally

I got the comments system to work again. This had been bothering me for quite sometime and I must have gone through about a bazillion changes in templates and layout hoping that it will bring the comments back on my blog.

But what spurred me to *DO* something about it and fix it was that the indomitable Mr. Nerlekar himself left a comment on the blog. Now this was something I believe that even Divya's blog has not been graced with. The world had to see it to believe it. 

A asked blogger to 'reset all changes' and hoped that this process would apply only to the blog and not the space-time continuum. 

Ta Dah! The comments are back, and the world will be able to give their two cents (Or. 0.02 Egptian Piastres).

Modern Egyptian Architecture

Boy! This has got to be the most boring post title I have ever come up with.

Anyways, The place I am working in, in Cairo is called 'Smart Village' (or Akara Zakaiya locally). Think of it as the Egyptian equivalent of our own Hi-Tec City or Electronic City. Its just about the same, located a bit away from the city with leading brands displayed in impressive buildings. 

Except....

Unlike us, the Egyptians seem to have realized that they have a rich architectural style which can be reflected even in their modern buildings. We on the other hand, have chosen to blindly ape the American glass boxes. Granted, a few of our new buildings do look impressive, but are they Indian?

The Western buildings are probably designed to minimize heating costs by using a lot of glass. But our major cost is not heating, but cooling. And these mammoth greenhouses we are building for our software houses are certainly not helping keep the electricity bill low.

Coming back to the point,take a look at some of the buildings here at the Smart Village. I loved the way they have fused classical Egyptian architecture into these buildings. 

 

 

  

 

 

 

H2 Who?

What's the deal here? Are Indians the only people who still drink water?

The last time I saw a public place having access to drinking water was Hyderabad International Airport.  The folks here offer any beverage for hospitality, but water. Even the restaurants do not serve water. 

 I had to spend a day with a Pakistani in Bahrain (more on this later). Even he was surprized when I asked him where I could get water and pointed out that the fridge had loads of Diet Pepsi.


Whats wrong with everyone?

Cairo Chronicles

Y'know what the darndest thing about Cairo is? Everywhere you look around, the people you see are..... locals. That's right, the denizens of God's own country don't seem to have invaded Egypt yet.

In any case the sphinx has waited for 4000 years, it can wait for a little while more for the first Nayar sets up his chai stall.

5000 words

 

  

  

  

 

Otherchucker!

Location: Hyderabad International Airport

It's about 3 AM and I was very, very sleep till about 4 minutes ago.

I was routinely going through security procedures and had put my laptop bag through the security scanner and was being groped by a mustachioed Ben Kingsley lookalike security guy who 

looked like he was enjoying his job.

All through, I waited for my bag to emerge from the grotto. The bag gave a sneak peak, when the Conveyor Belt Guy said 'Peeche lo!, Peeche lo!' (His previous job was as an RTC conductor).They pulled my bag back in, a few beeps and whistles ensue.

The My bag is fished out, and Mr. ex-conductor guy opens the front zipper of the bag, and takes out two screwdrivers and a knife.

This was the moment, 5 minutes ago when my sleep disappeared like India's hopes of winning not badly losing the test series in Sri Lanka.

Epilogue:

I was told that they were merely testing the security equipment and had planted the screw drivers themselves.

And in their glee, they missed the fact that they had not planted a knife my bag.

Much worse, the security test was a failure. It didn't detect my automatic Kalashnikov near the laptop power adapter. Mu ha ha ha ha!

In the land of the pharaohs

Location: Taxi on the way to Hyderabad International Airport

Well, at long last I am publishing retro-dated posts of my travel diaries.

I had avoided visiting Shamshabad all along. Hordes of people thronged to see the airport when it opened a few months earlier. I of course, refusing to be part of a horde waiting steadfastly maintaining that I would see the airport only as an air-traveler…and hopefully an international air-traveler (Insha Allah?)

All along the way to the airport, I was depressed in the taxi that I was more excited about seeing my city airport than the pyramids and the Sphinx.

And I was impressed…to say the least.

Let's leave it at that for now. Meet you at the turn near the temple of Isis.

P.S. Sorry for the very very shoddy photoshop MS Paint job

My Rules

Any similarity to 'new rules' is purely intentional.

1. Can the dabbawallah talk - Next time someone talks about innovation in India, no mention should be made of bombay dabbawallahs and their six sigma ratings. Oh and while you are at it, stop talking about the surd who converted a washing machine into a lassi maker. If out of a crowd of 1,20,00,000+ people we need to harp on the same two innovations, let's face it. We are NOT.

2. No Cheese at Mac - Anyone caught taking a photograph at a McDonalds, at the bench with their hand around Ronald McDonald should be shot on the spot and hung from a stake as an example to others. And as an addendum, anyone taking touristy photographs at lame locations like the local mall, multiplex, public toilet etc. can be shot as well.

3. Diss the B - Next time the Big B appears in a Big C grade movie, bitch about his performance, his role  and his choice. Don't diss the entire movie and single out the Big B for being 'the saving grace'. No he isn't. The worst thing about Aag was the Big B. And the movie had Nisha Kothari if you remember.

4. Hose the host - And the politician and the movie producer who says 'The Indian public is smart. Give them credit.' No we aren't. We watch K serials, hug movie stars and buy them expensive gifts when we appear on their show, use our clothes as a substitute for tissues, vote for career criminals,  and listen to bhangra.

5. Forget 1983 - I am told that we won the world cup in 1983. I had no clue since we pretty much suck at cricket and especially during the world cup. The only people who had a right to celebrate the anniversary of winning the cup are the people who actually won it. (Which they did). The morons across India who celebrated that day can be shot along with the Dabbawala talkers and McDonald posers.

6. No dotcom ads - What are the top websites that come to your mind? Google. Yahoo. Rediff. Amazon. etc. What don't? BigAdda.  iBibo. BharatStudent.  I don't want the owners of these websites shot. Not even the broadcasters. Not even the pimply teen who *has* to register at every new social networking site that crops up. Shoot the VCs who fund these supposed 'next google' dotcom idea.


7. Show the door to these endorsements - Shahrukh telling me he loves his pepsi is one thing. Shahrukh telling me he loves driving his Santro? AB (and now) SRK askin me to use Navratan oil? A few years back we had Sachin Tendulkar riding a TVS bike. Are these guys kiddin me? Shoot the next MBA passout ad agency executive who comes up with the idea of using Shahrukh to endorse whisper ultra. And while they are at it... shoot the next creative director who portrays a church wedding for an ad. Last I checked, we are still a hindu major nation and yet all our ads and movies show people getting out of churches ( Race  and Tata Indicom ad anyone?)

8.  Cricket bashers - Next time some hockey or tennis or football nut says that Indian public should support other games and not be obsessed with cricket... don't shoot em. Ask em to go to Brazil and propogate test cricket.

9. Hindi fanatics - The next moron who tells me that I need to know Hindi numbers (and hindi in general) because 'afterall its our national language', should first name every member of the Indian Hockey team. After all its our national game.

10. Shoot anyone named Ekta Kapoor. - Do I need to elaborate why?

The kind of @$$hole I am

People often ask me, "Vik! You say you are an asshole, pray tell what makes you think so?" (People talk that way!! I swear!!)

Let me explain why I am an asshole.

About 5 years ago, I was working at my first job. I commuted by bus regularly. I got off, when the bus slowed down after the Begumpet bridge, right outside Lifestyle. My office was behind the Lifestyle building and I had to take a short walk around the back.

On the first day of work, I noticed a beggar woman sitting on the pavement. Not one of those wretched creatures with an eye missing or a limb protruding from the backside. (You probably have decided by now that no further evidence of my being an asshole is needed, but I am not sleepy yet, and there is nothing good on TV.) The only noticeable handicap she seemed to have was an acute gingivitis and receding hairline. If this was reason enough to beg, my ex-boss would not have to crib about commuting to work. Anyway, normally I wouldn't even remotely consider prying my tight fist and tossing a coin her way (or in the words of Charlton Heston "From my cold dead hands"). But this day, probably because it being my first day at work, I figured I need all the 'good karma' that I can get. So I rooted through my change, and the smallest change was a Two Rupee coin. With a heavy heart, I watched as I tossed it at the squatting beggar woman.

In the days that followed, I passed by that beggar every morning but having had enough good karma in my satchel, never even remotely considered giving her any money. But encouraged by my generous alms on the first day, she put on a grand show of begging each time I passed by. Her best 'hungry for 4 days' expression was reserved for me. But no luck!

After a couple of weeks, she probably realized that day one was an aberration and I was a cheapskate. So one fine day, when I passed her by, she IGNORED me. That's right, no miserable expressions, no anti-grin, no groans of intense gum pain. No show! I was offended. How could she not think of me as a prospective alms giver? I tossed a 1 Rupee coin at her and walked on.

This became a regular cycle for the next two years. The encouraged beggar, would employ her best beggar-marketing skills for days on end with no fruitful results, and just when she gave up, I tossed her a coin to get her revved up for a week more.

What can I say? I told you I was an asshole.

The fine art of gifting

Earlier this week, a friend of mine asked me for help in deciding on a gift for his 'lady friend' (a term which is as weird as him). Now, normally I steer clear of anything which might even give the slightest indication that I feel i know what women want.  But faced with sheer  mind numbing boredom at office, I venture to give him a few nuggets of vixdom.

I have given below excerpts from our chat.

Friend: What do women like being gifted on their bday?

Me: well.... I will go out on a limb and actually claim a little experience in this area

Friend: u don't know? Do you?

Me: "something which gives them a glimpse of the future they wish to see", I have chosen my words carefully.

Friend: hmm
(Probably realizing he is going to get way more advice than he bargained for, and thinking of ways to end the conversation ASAP. But hez not goin to escape that easily)

Me: this birthday i actually opened my fist and bought sandhya a few gifts
        and here is my scorecard

Friend: hmm
(Picturing himself sinking in a quagmire, a slow certain death)

Vikram_Mohan [03:34]:

Gift #1 - Mobile
Result: Flop. Since at the end of the, it was transactional. quid-pro-quo. She bought me mine, so I bought her hers. no big deal.  In fact, since I went on to lose my mobile, she bought me another.
... and due to certain things, she will end up paying for HER mobile too. This might be the Ramgopal Varma ki Aag of gifts...

Gift #2: loads of clothes at Westside
Result: Ho Hum! No big deal. Just another thing to wear. no 'wow' factor.

Gift #3. Bean Bags
Result: Flop! She felt that i was spending too much money and insisted I stop. (Note: When women ask you to stop spending, never, ever take this seriously. Ever! Learn from my mistakes)


Friend: hmm  (Not sure if he was actually copy pasting his 'hmm' by now. Or even paying a bencher to do it for him)

 

Me:

Gift #4: Surprize birthday cake.

Result: Semi-hit. We had a bad fight earlier and this helped thaw things a bit. But the fight took its toll on the gift's brownie point collections.

 

Gift #5: Got 'glow-in-dark' stars painted on bedroom ceiling.

 

Friend:wow! (Realizing that he can actually move this left ear with a great deal of concentration, and a mere flick of his fingers)

Me:
Result: Mega bumper super hit.

Which leads me to my second 'thumb rule'

 

Friend: CTRL + V -> hmmmm

 

Me:
if u have the first rule, can you copy paste it plz

Me:
i prefer having these things one after the other. also it will help me collect my thoughts

Friend:
nope i don't (Big surprise!!!)

 

Me:

ok.... i figure the reason this worked is....
women think (or is it know?) that we don't listen to them when they yap on and on. But if you give a gift which borrows an idea from some obscure thing she mentioned sometime while waiting for a double chocolate mousse on a rainy Wednesday... it shows them that you were..in fact... listening.

By now , my friend probably realized that he wasn't in fact chained to his desk as he erroneously thought and bolted for the cafeteria.

Epilogue:

Gift #6: Making veggie burgers (since she mentioned a craving sometime back), chilled cut mangoes (the way she used to get back home), Getting a horror movie (wifey loves the scary flicks) and also a backup movie (Enchanted, she adores it). And to top it off, Chocolate Mousse (Bought it, but it still counts)

 

Result: Well. Take a guess. (Hint: This whole thing happened about half hour back, and here I am blogging…and eating my chocolate mousse.) L

SET MAX Sucks

http://www.petitiononline.com/savecric/petition.html

Click the link. And sign the petition. Pretty Please.

Go Chargers

There is a chargers game on today. We play the Rajasthan Royals. And by saying 'we' I hope I leave no doubt on which team I am rooting for :-)

Yes, to say that the DC have been disappointing so far would be even more of an understatement than Laloo saying he has a some hair growth in his ear. But that still doesn't mean that its all over, and we go into collective mourning (which in Hyderabad means drinking 1/2 chai and muttering things like "c#00*!ye logaaa...inku to na...")

The Royals are a team I really like. And for the wrong reasons. Apart from Shane Warne I am not overly fond of anyone in the team but I love their logo. Very elegant and understated. Suits the team name. And I love their mascot. Moochu Singh.

And the fact that I like them is going to make today all the more tough when we beat the pulp off them.

Go Chargers!

My Film Festival

 

Over the past month, I have been seeing movies almost every weekend... no no! Make that every weekend... hold on! in fact, make that two..or maybe three every weekend.

The ones which come to mind first of course, are the ones which stand out for whatever reasons.

There was Jodhaa Akbar, which I am told is an amazing movie and I should be privileged to even be born in the same era when it was made (honest to god, thats what Rajeev Masand said). Me and Sanz saw the movie on the IMAX screen ( the local IMAX theatre screens regular movies on the giant screen now and then)... and we saw it sitting in the 4th row from the front. Of course, we divided the screen between us, and had team meetings to discuss what was happening in our part of the screen.

When the movie started, I felt uneasy and felt it might be boring and unimpressive.... half hour into the movie, my doubts were laid to rest. The movie was indeed boring and unimpressive. The lead pair were of course, looking like a million bucks. But thats about that.

I did realize what my dream job would be though, working as an editor for Mr. Gowarikar. Maybe I could learn to yodel, yo-yo while working for him. At one point I was fairly sure, that the movie was being still shot somewhere backstage and they were handing out more reels for screening. We were woken up every 20 minutes or so when the lead pair would yell out "Ekaanth!" to the attendants around. I assume this was ancient Indian speech for "Fuck Off Morons!"

Then last Saturday, we had to sit through another doozy. 10,000 B.C. If Spider-Man 3 was directed by Karan Johar, this was Subhash Ghai for sure. I was about to say Manmohan Desai...but let's give credit where its due. I love Manmohan Desai flicks!

Of course, I did happen to watch a few good flicks too... good.. no? great!

Across the universe, is without doubt one of the greatest musicals ever. I mean, how could it be anything else, with music from the Beatles blended together into a story.... Very highly recommended. Even if you are not a Beatles fan...especially if you are not a Beatles fan!

Last night again, I finally saw Darjeeling Limited. Wes Anderson  hasn't let me down yet. And seeing India through his eyes...this one was a privilege for sure.

Hookey!!!

Now that the Indian Hockey Team has proved that it's just as bad..as good.. just like the Indian Cricket team (don't think just in terms of the recent win down-under) I wonder why the media isn't asking that the Indian public treat the hockey team the same way the Indian cricket team was treated after their return from the World Cup...

After all, Hockey is our national sport, and so should be given as much..in fact more importance than cricket...blah blah! I don't even see any of the hockey players begging for their houses to be stoned like it happened  happens for the cricketers.

Perhaps its during times like these that our hockey team would be thankful for the gross neglect the game gets in our country.

Ten in Draft

That's right, the count of unfinished posts in my Blogger drafts folder has touched double digits.....This is one of the worst bouts of writer's block i have ever been afflicted with.

But I do feel like writing about Jodhaa Akbar (a movie review at long last..)

So you might want to check back that the blog sometime on Monday, since I have a hunch this weekend I just might force myself to finish one of those drafts...

Lots to say...

but precious little time.

Twenty Nine...and counting!!

Yep! Just turned 29 about an hour ago.... and the surest sign that I am getting older is that it didn't matter to me one bit.

Anyways, first of all a Very Happy New Year and all that jazz!!! Glad to see you back here...no no! I mean it.

I never take New Year Resolutions, I prefer Birthday Resolutions, since it gives me that one extra week to 'be bad'. Think of it like a 'snooze' button. You do enjoy and treasure that five glorious minutes of sleep during the alarm snooze don't you?

Not only do I make birthday resolutions, but I think I have been fairly successful at keeping them... (50% is a good success rate by my standards). Anyway my resolutions are usually kept to myself, but this time I thought I will let the whole world know...or the single digit readers of this blog to be precise. I do have these two 'special resolutions' this year, which I will not be writing about for personal reasons, but I might report on them next year if I do manage to keep them (Whoopty do!! something to look forward to..) Anyway without further ado (what's an ado?)...

1. Lose weight (Fat chance??? Pun unintended)
1.a - Reduce non-veg diet - Currently it stands at 'something everyday'. I am thinking along the lines of thrice a week max. And white meat only.

2. Blog Regularly - Satyam has the most pathetic internet speeds... my mobile GPRS is faster. Honest!! I actually timed it. Besides, blogger is blocked, so I will have to wait to get home and do it

2.a - Write stories too... I didn't write one the whole of 2007...and probably even 2006.

3. Drink More - Wha??? Don't people usually resolve to cut down? Well, I haven't been having as much fun as I should be. And drinking is fun...or at least leads to fun. Maybe at least twice a month. Currently this is more like once in two months. Pathetic!

3.a) Drink with Nimish - It just struck me that I haven't done this in ages...and I kinda miss it! Dude!!! Let's get smashed sometime.

4. Cook more. More often and newer dishes. One new dish a week would be impressive. But no promises here.

5. Read more. A book a month would help getting back on track. Problem is now that I am driving to work, I can't read during my commute. On the flip-side I am listening to a whole lot more of music in the car.

Oooh!! I had one more...which i forgot. Will add it if I remember.