Amaz(ing)on(e)

This fortune article makes some predictions on the tech industry for next year. I think the second one will more than come true in the course of the next few years. Amazon has been doing some really cool stuff with AWS, Mechanical turk, their recommender systems, Alexa (recently). sigh! I think I would have really liked to work there. Not that I am complaining. GSC is nice too.

Forced marriages

A story I read recently about about a woman who escaped a forced marriage.

Kalvanin Kadhali

So I have been listening to the songs from this movie for the past few days. 'Eno Kangal' is a very catchy number especially the bit which Yuvan sings. 'Tajmahal Oviyakaadhal' has beats reminiscent of the 'Everything but the girl' version of 'Missing'. 'Ivan Kattil Nattu Mannan Than' has portions which sounds like 'Wont you take me to funky town'. I really liked this song though I found these bits quite funny. 'Kudakkooli Koduthachu'- skip. 'Uyir Piriyum Valiyai' - okay. Totally I would say a decent album. For someone starved of nice but new Tamil music (Come on, Sivakasi and Majaa have terrible songs), what else did you expect me to say? :-)

Oh no!

Blackberry facing shutdown. And I have had my 7100t for less than a month! :-(

Rotten eggs and tomotoes

I didn't think it still happened. "The DPI and PMK cadres, who had been raising slogans against Ms. Kushboo all through the court proceedings, threw footwear, rotten eggs and tomatoes at her car when she came out of the court hall." - From the Hindu (Link). I wish Khushboo woud have stuck to her guns and stood by her statement. At this point I am not even sure what exactly she said. Whatever it was, she has a right to say that. I agree with what she said, or what I think she said which is "men should not expect their wives to be virgins". Anyway, I wish they would throw rotten eggs and tomatoes at Vijay(and his scriptwriter, director and everyone else involved) for his stupid dialogues in Sivakasi, which I think is actually demeaning to Tamil women.

Num TV

It was one of those days when I wanted to hear some Tamil (apart from music). And though I have a live cable connection, I do not a television yet. I decided to watch some Num TV but I was not sure of the quality of the broadcast, so I just got the $2 deal where you can watch for 8 hours. Raj Tv was playing Marumalarchi with Mammooty and Devayani. Mammooty is an absolute do-gooder and a highly respected person in his village and you can fill in the rest_of_the_story and odds are you'll be right. The movie turned out to be a nice soporific and I went to sleep soon after. After a while, when I wanted to watch Raj Musix (thats what the channel is called), none of the channels would open. BAD BAD Num TV! It's too much of effort to call customer service....maybe I should, considering the fact I just saw Anniyan yesterday !

I was listening to Oru Nadhi from Samurai on one of the Shoutcast channels and I love the way Nityshree has sung that. This is the first time I heard this song and I thought it sounded like Yuvan SR. It turned out to be Harris J. (I should have guessed that, considering the humming_of_undecipherable_words in the beginning. :-) )

St. Louis, Work, Car

I have not posted for a while, not because I did not have access to the internet but because I forgot, yes thats right, forgot my username to my blogger account....And I had also forgotten which email address the account is tied to. I eventually ended up having to try all my email accounts.
Most of you know by now that I moved to St Louis recently. Its been 2 weeks now and I like it here (so far atleast). I live near the Forest Park area which is , well, this big forest/park :-) and its very pretty. My apartment has a hard-wood floor and is a little creaky. The first thought which entered my head was "hmm..guess there'll be no dance parties here" ;-).
Work has been fun so far. I was quite apprehensive during the first week because I have been lazing around for the past few months, turned in to a complete internet junkie (though I guess I already was one to begin with) and also used to sleeping really looong hours [which reminds me of the daily lobo question i answered about how many hours i sleep. googling for my name actually brings up that link! Yikes!]. But work has been interesting so far and hope it stays that way.
It really sucks not having a car. Thankfully, there were some folks here with whom I share some mutual friends and they have been more than helpful. If any of you have any good/useful suggestions for cars, please send me email :-).

an MIT professor

I had attended an industry conference last year in Boston on RNAi interference. One of the star speakers was an MIT professor - Luk Van Parijs. I remember thinking how cool it must be to have a lab of your own in MIT. Well, apparently it is not too easy http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/mit_professor_dismissed_for_research_misconduct_9180.

Ghajini

The movie started an hour late but I was quite looking forward to watching a Tamil movie in a movie hall after almost 18 months, so I didn't mind it that much.
Now the story - even though no evidence_he takes revenge_all for one reason_love (No, I did not make that up; thats from the trailer).

Okay, I did not like the movie. I thought it was kind_of_stupid. The direction was unremarkable. Asin acted really well and Suriya was good too but Nayantara and the villains were annoying.

Whats up with Harris Jayaraj and the high-pitched humming along with stupid nonsensical words ? oh-moho-ziya waa-hi-aala sounded good in Kaakha kaakha but in this movie, he totally overdoes it with zolo, bozo, mahiya , and other unintelligible words and it gets on your nerves after a few seconds. The director, Murugadoss, does not seem to have ever heard of the word subtlety or what it means. There are some hilarious sequences where people state the most obvious things (like "the door is open, she must have gone this way" or the "thats a 10 digit number, it must be a cell phone number"). Nayantara seriously needs to shed LOTS of pounds or in the very least stop wearing clothes which make her look like a cow. And what was the whole deal with the twin vilains? It was totally stupid and unnecessary. 4/10.

&^%##*

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/10_october/06/bush.shtml

Apophenia and the human brain

Somewhat in line with the the theme of my earlier post, here is an excellent article -
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/gilbert05/gilbert05_index.html.

God fearing societies worse-off?

Yes, according to this article. The article does not have a link to the original paper(come on, how long will that take ? atleast the title would have sufficed) and I could not find the author, Gregory Paul's homepage either. I think Indians are more religious than people in the US. I could be wrong about that but I wish they had included India in the study.

Smart Pill

Scientific American Mind: Smarter on Drugs

We seem to be making astounding breakthroughs in our understanding of the our brains. We are very far from knowing everything but we know enough to start manipulating the brain. If there was a smart drug available, will I take it ? YES. If there was a pill that made people happy, should we take it ? Sure, why not ? There may, no there will, be trade-offs to make. It might make other parts of our body less useful. We might be able to guide evolution towards a particular path(how exciting and terrifying at the same time!). There was another study which , if I remember correctly, laid forward the hypothesis that evolution has been/and_is optimizing the brain. I am not sure I believe this though.

So in addition to becoming smarter,inventive and intelligent, somehow our brains(well, most of our brains) have evolved to hope, have faith and most of all believe in a supernatural force(God) that guides us?Hmm...something to think about...

YSR

Have been listening to Kanda naal mudhal and the songs are really good except for the 'Spin that shit up' bit! I am not sure what Yuvan Shankar Raja's first movie was but I started liking his music after listening to Thulluvatho Elamai. I also like 7G, Arindhum Ariyamalum, Kadhal Kondein, Punnagai Poove and Nandha.
It is known that he has been/is heavily 'inspired'/'influenced' by other musicians, most notably his father Illayaraja. You only have to listen to the theme from 7G and the theme from Johny or the song 'theendi theendi' from Bala and Illayaaja's 'rhim jhim' to know what I am talking about. Recently I was listening to 'Oru Kallooriyin Kadhai' and there is this line in kadhal yenbadhu which sounds exactly like a line in vayadhe vaa vaa from Thulluvadho Elamai. What, he is being inspired by his own songs now? I like his music and I think he is talented enough to make original music. So, why? Why Yuvan?

Useful questions?

You all know that I have been interviewing with different companies for the past few weeks. After attending a few, I found that they all ask some similar questions. All of these fall in the category of "personality/leadership" questions like - tell me about an instance where you displayed leadership qualities, tell me what you would do if you faced a problem, what strategy do you use to overcome issues, etc... Now, of course, there is no one right answer. So I suppose their intention is to see if you can answer questions and if you speak well? Whatever it is, I am sure it has a purpose but I truly dislike answering such questions. Unfortunately, I do not have much of a choice.

95% of thoroughbreds linked to one superstud

I just saw this article and since it is somewhat related to my previous post, decided to post it. I guess it is probably a good idea to start a link blog but I think its too much of an effort.

Updated: Another very interesting article.

Genetic Horoscopes

Progress in the field of genetics is just astounding. Scientists sequenced the chimpanzee genome recently and I believe its only a matter of time(and resources) before genome maps become available for most of the species. The possiblity of access to personalized medicine is extremely exciting. I wonder how soon we will be able to sequence individual human genomes fast (like in a few hours). Then we could compare our genetic maps (or what I call genetic horoscopes) with that of potential partners (specifically those we want to have children with) and assess risks of genetic diseases or predisposition to diseases/illnesses that we may pass on to our children. There are, of course, other factors which influence this but it is atleast a first cut in increasing the probablity of having children free of genetic diseases. One of my cousin died of cystic fibrosis, which is a genetic disease, around 13 years back. I remember at that time there was no treatment for CF and if you had it, you were going to die soon. But now, scientists have identified the gene that causes this and have ways to prolong your lifespan though I don't think the disease can be gotten rid of completely just yet.

I feel like God

Its been a while since I posted anything. Its not for lack of things to post about but I have just been plain lazy. The title of the post refers to the Bajaj Avenger tv ad. It realy caught my attention the first time and i have enjoyed watching it every time its on. This guy is riding a Bajaj avenger; first flashback is an older man slapping him - I forgive my father; a girl getting married - I forgive my girlfriend; a man throwing a bunch of papers at his face - I forgive my boss; a barber with a knife - I forgive my barber; he passes a guy trying to start his bike (not a Bajaj avenger) - I forgive my past; a farmer streching his back by bending - I feel like God. Awesome !

Uniforms for Chennai

I read this article a few weeks back and it got me thinking about school uniforms in Chennai and how most of them do not make sense considering Chennai's weather. The school I went to had a pink(yes! but it wasnt bright pink) pinafore worn with a white shirt. (Can you believe that even our school bus was painted pink? ). The rest of the uniform consisted of white canvas shoes, divided skirts for sports(yes, pink!), black ribbons, and hair plaited in to two separate braids. I used to dislike plaiting my hair this way because I used to think I looked stupid (later I came to realize i looked stupid in whatever hairstyle. Okay I am kidding :-) or maybe not). Anyways, each strand of my hair is really thin and I do not have too much of hair on my head. Its alright for those girls with thick hair to have two plaits but on me, it looked liked two black wires hanging on either side. Okay, I am exaggerating but you get the picture. Even wearing a collared shirt in Madras is an ordeal thanks to the humidity, now imagine a thick pinafore on top. Our was not the only school which had the pinafore as its uniform. There were also some schools which had the half-saree. Now in my opinion, the half-saree is an extremely sexy dress and I am not sure why its considered appropriate by the moral police. I do not have anything against it but only against those in power who seem to have decided that sleeveless tops and low waisted pants should not be worn. If you ask me, the best kind of uniform would be soft cotton pants or shorts and soft cotton sleeveless tops :-). Salwar kameezes would be nice too.
It will happen soon, when I start my own school!

p.s: My write-up (i can hardly call it a review) on Ah Aah did not show up on technorati. hmm..I wonder why? I need to start tagging my posts soon.

Geetha

A few weeks back, I came across this article and it was sad reading about it and had me wondering what could have prompted this girl to jump to death, and that too with an infant. How could she kill her own child? What kind of person was this woman? What was she thinking when she jumped? Did she make her decision at that instant or had she been planning it for a while?
You can imagine my surprise then, when I found out recently that this girl, Geetha, was my classmate when I was an undergraduate student in an engineering college. She used to mail the class mailing list occassionally and her last mail to the group was when her daughter was born. We were acquainted just enough to exchange a half-yearly email. Its very sad and unfortunate that she decided to end her own life. But what bothers and saddens me more is, how could she murder a child ?
On a related note, female infanticide is still practised in some regions of Tamil Nadu and I suspect in other places in India too. The problem is deep-rooted and has underpinnings in culture and traditions. When even some educated parents view their daughters as deserving less than their sons, its going to be a while for this practise to stop completely. (I understand that the problem is not solely one of education and I was generalizing in my previous statement).

Ah Aah

I watched the music release function of Ah Aah (Anbae Aaruyire) recently on Sun TV. In case you are wondering if I have become that jobless, please remember I am jobless. :-). Each and every song from this movie is awesome. SPB has sung 'Thazhuvudhu' so well (as they say in Chennai "Summa edhuthu saapittu erukkar"). The lyrics of Anbae Aaruyire would have suited Rajni better but its a great song. And singing the same tune and lyrics - once with techno beats ('maramkothiye') and the other a more traditional version ('mayiliragae') - is fantastic. I am really enjoying this album. Long live ARR!

p.s: A more in-depth review here.

Kaal

They have a nicely designed website to promote the movie, complete with a game no less. So I watched this movie last night. It was oddly quite entertaining. Picture this - a huge python; the camera zooming in on its movements in one shot and the bare back of a man running in the next shot; alternate these two shots for a few seconds with a bgm that goes something like "come to me". Ooooooh.....hehe. The bare back belonged to John Abraham (of course!). The next sequence has JA falling on the snake and capturing it with his ...um...bare hands.
The photography and music were highly entertaining, to me atleast! So the story. Strange incidents involving man-eating tigers are reported in the Orbit national park. So National Geographic(that's right!) sends JA to find out more. Vivek Oberoi and his friends arrive at the park for a vacation. One of his friends wants to go hunting and once you hear that you know that he won't survive till the end of the movie. So JA + wife (played by Isha Deol) and VO + friends meet and try to get out of the forest before they are killed by the man-eating tigers. There are no song sequences in the movie itself, except for one, featuring Shahrukh Khan and Malaika Arora which is played during the intro credits, that has no connection whatsoever to the movie or tigers! Watch the movie, I say!

Dude where's the party?

Another boring ABCD movie. All the characters were too stereotyped, no storyline and just not funny enough. I think there is a good audience for American desi movies (me, for example..hehe) but why are all these movies so lame (Hollyood Bollywood, ABCD). In this genre (yeah, it is one), American Desi was quite alright, elevated by some good music :-). I havent seen Flavors but according to a friend of mine, that was no good too. Oh!, the only exciting part of 'Dude, where's..' was when I recognised almost all of the Punjabi songs played at the parties!!

Greyhound

I went on my first ever greyhound trip recently and hopefully, its my last. The journey itself wasn't too bad but the stations were pretty dismal. People would assemble each time they sensed a line forming and everyone seemed equally clueless. I must have looked like I knew what was going on because atleast 3 people asked me "¿Habla español?". And all the tranfers were late by more than half an hour. The buses themselves were quite comfortable and a short journey without transfers is probably a good deal.

Lazy Lazarus

G is blogging! For those of you who do not live in Albuquerque, she is one of my crazy friends, who is great fun to hang out with and whose boredom threshold is similar to mine( Extremely low).

Underverse

Happy Birthday P! How do I see you 10 years from now ? With this. Hehe.

For the underverse-themed party this Friday, it will be cool to have a set-up like this but unfortunately, we'll have to settle for something less. For those of who who are still wondering what underverse is, watch Chronicles of Riddick. Why we chose to have this theme for the party ? Answer. Okay, I am only kidding. :-).

This study says that around one third of research studies do not hold up. Cecilia's blog asks - Does this hold up ?

Side Note: I still keep playing punjabi music endlessly. My current favorite - Nahin Tera Jeha Hor Disda .
Nai tere jeya hore disda
Kiwein mukhre ton nazran hatawan
Nai tere jeya hore disda
Jee karda mein tenu vekhi jawan
Jee karda mein tenu vekhi jawan
Nai tere jeya hore disda
Nai tere jeya hore disda

Tere nal zindagi di wasdi bahar veh
Tohiyo channa sukh mera, tuhiyo channa pyar veh
Cheti aja hon takniyan rawan
Cheti aja hon takniyan rawan
Nai tere jeya hore disda
Cheti aja hon takniyan rawan
Nai tere jeya hore disda
Jee karda mein tenu vekhi jawan
Nai tere jeya hore disda
Nai tere jeya hore disda

Other favorites- Botallan sharab diyan, Bheer and Dil Lutiya. (I can almost hear Gani laughing incontrollably :-) )

Expressing yourself to yourself

I wonder why someone is considered loony, wacky or crazy if they smile to themselves or even talk to themselves. There are times when I have felt like smiling (when I am just happy for no reason or when I remember something funny or happy) but social conditioning makes me look around to make sure no one's watching me. However, when someone is frowning to themselves, we think that they are either just grumpy people or they just had a bad day. I think it's kind of sad. I'd rather have people smile to themselves than frown to themselves. Of course, its an entirely different post to discuss why we associate smiling to positive emotions which has more to do with biology than social conditioning.
p.s: In case you are wondering ( hehe..no i am sure you are), the smile belongs to my 7 year old niece.

Kingdom of heaven & After the sunset

Kingdom of heaven - Fictional tale based on real people during the crusades. First half of the movie is kinda slow and you wonder where the story is going but it keeps getting better. Orlando Bloom was pretty good. The war sequences were awesome(kind_of_LOTRish). The movie ends with a chilling 'And after a 1000 years, peace still remains elusive in the region'. Oh I forgot to mention, Sybilla's eye make-up was excellent. :-)

After the sunset - I don't know if the movie seemed desi because we watched it after a dosa party(hehe). Pierce Brosnan looked old. Salma Hayek in minimum clothing. Most of the time you are wondering 'what the ...'. Overall, a stupid movie .

Chief Vasily

When I was a kid, my mother used to get me these Russian children's books (which were books for children featuring Russian children, btw). At that point I think they were the Soviet Union; which is beside the point anyway. 'Chief Vasily' was one of my favorite books then. Me being jobless and all these days, I decided to track down this book and see if I can buy it. Sadly for me, the only reference I could find through the mighty Goog was this . (And no, its not available on Amazon too). There were also a few sponsored links when I included the word book. But unfortuantely, these are in Russian. Oh wait a second, I found it. Yipee ! I found it through a bookstore called Campusi . I don't recognize the author though- Tatyana Efimchenko-Evlakhova . I also used to love reading Nikolai Nosov's books - Rat-a-tat-tat! stories, Eleven Stories for Boys and Girls, Visiting grandpa, Mishka's porridge... Apparently, there is a series called Dunno and his adventures, which I seem to have totally missed then. There is a story (in 11 stories for boys and girls, i think) where these 2 boys incubate eggs using a home-made contraption. The reason I mention this story is because it really got me interested in science and experiments.

Coming back to Chief Vasily, its the story of two friends, one of whom is Vasily. Oher than friendship, I can't remember what else the story was about. Unless my memory is completely failing me, I remember reading this phrase/adage/whatever in this book - 'He who laughs last, laughs best' and it made a huge impression on me when i was a kid and it got rolled in to my philosophy of life then and along with 'every dog has its day', it had the impact of making me nicer to others, or so I would like to think. :-) .

Update: Found Dunno online. Lots of others here.

Helicopter crash in my canal

On sunday night, I was reading a book just before I went to bed. I shut the book and turned off the light and then closed my eyes. All of a sudden, there was a buzzing noise in my ear and before I knew it, this damned little fly went inside my ear! So I shook my head a couple of times and decided to sleep. Unfortuately for my sleep, the fly was still lodged in my ear. How do I know that? It started intermittently flapping its wings which sounded like a noisy helopter was tring to take off but was not succeeding. How does one sleep when there is a helicopter base next to your home? Tough, right. Now imagine that inside your ear.
It was like the tranlating babel fish (from Hitchhiker's... ) only that it could only translate in to an annoying "zzzzz...zzzzzzz.....zzzzzzzzzz". I tried to get it out - ear buds, tweezers and so on... I knew it didnt go too far inside my ear canal because i couldnt feel any pain. Nothing worked. By then, it was almost an hour past my bedtime and there was no way I could sleep with that sound. Lack of sleep always makes me mad and cranky. I went to the kitchen, took some hot water and I poured it inside my ear. I heard "ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ...ZZZZZZ....Z...zzz...zz..z..."..then silence. YES, I drowned it !!!!! And then I went to sleep.

Its Tuesday morning now and I am still alive.

Nayakan

Sarkar, the new Ramgopal Verma movie based on Godfather was pretty decent. I did not get bored watching it and Amitabh and Abhishek, both have very impressive screen presence. But my favorite movie of this genre is undoubtedly Nayakan. I have so many favorite scenes from this movie -- Kamal's first meeting with Saranya, the children imitating velu nayakan, Nizhal Ravi's funeral, Karthika's confrontation with Kamal, Kamal meeting Karthika when he goes to meet Nasser....and many many more....The songs and BGM are simply excellent. Coming back to Sarkar, there is this track, "Govinda Govinda" which is begging to be remixed...Will someone please do it?

Perils of blogging?

I just read this article about how blogging can have a unpleasant impact on your professional and private lives if you are not careful. Yeah, its definitely a weird/undesirable thing to have complete strangers being privy to your inner-most feelings or details of your friends/family. Well, as far as this blog is concerned, though it is meant for my friends, I try not to write anything too personal; you never know who is reading, right?
And so far, this experiment is going quite well..

Terrace and Tea

I was enjoying a cup of tea a few hours back, sitting on the porch, looking up at the sky and listening to 'Ninnai charan adaindhen'. Ah ! heaven (well, I know there is no such thing but you know what I mean). Between 1995-96 (oh my! that is a long time back!), I used to live in Nungambakkam. My favorite part of the day was running off to the terrace in the evenings with a cup of tea and think about life (hehe). We lived on the third floor of an apartment building that was real close to Nugambakkam High Road(fondly referred to henceforth as NH). I could see Valluvar Kottam, Loyola college, a lot of tall buildings, kites, birds, clothes hanging in neighboring terraces, planes taking off and landing at a distance..... Later, when we moved to the AWHO colony in Vadapalani/Saligramam , my terrace and tea pleasures continued. Here, in addition, I would also see many people in the neighboring terraces and vadams/vathals/appalams being dried and lots of kids....And by this time, I had also moved up in life to be able to afford a walkman. It was usually Enigma/Deep Forest/Robert Miles because back then I had not learnt to appreciate Maestro Illayaraja's (older) music yet.
Fast forwarding back to the present, I had to do without the terrace and so, there was/is no unobstructed view of the sky. But it wasn't bad, not bad at all.

ARR live

I have always wanted to hear Hariharan singing live. So when I heard that AR Rahman is planning a tour to the US and Hariharan was going to be singing too, that got me really excited. Unfortunately its not going to be until Feb/March next year. At least thats what the website says. But all my lucky friends in the UK (Kala, i want to come too!!!) are getting to hear/see ARR/Hariharan the 31st of this month. Not fair! but then, what is...

The end of faith

Just after learning that London is the host of the 2012 Olympics, the next news about London was the subway blasts. what can I say?
I am reading a book by Sam Harris -
The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason.
I am only through the first few chapters and they have mostly been about the atrocities that have been perpetuated in the past few centuries in the name of religion. But most of the book focuses specifically on Islamic fundamentalism keeping in line with current terrorist events. While the book has not thrown any flashing pieces of insight (yet), its definitely worth reading for its direct attack on the need for religion itself.

Meenu's off to NY

I am really gonna miss her. Vetti mokkai, awesome arattai, oor kadhai, ulaga kadhai, vambu kadhai, oothal kadhai, oothaadha kadhai, soga kadhai, santhosha kadhai, NPK (Ninaippu pulappai kedukkum) kadhai, vazhiyal , azhugai, sirippu ............ Will miss everything.

Its kinda sad to move away from a place. There are so many people you see everyday and say hello to-a janitor, a person behind the counter at a store, a librarian, a teacher, a student, a person on the street... And then poof , they are all gone .. no longer part of your world...dead to your vision...not just gone but replaced by others .... till you move again....

I have tried to be in touch with most of my friends. It is true, because you are reading this. But mailing or calling someone is not the same as visiting/spending time with them. So, New York can expect to see me in the near future.

Anniyan & Arindhum Ariyamalum

Anniyan was just okay. The story was a mash-up of Gentleman, Indian and Sidney Sheldon's 'Tell me your dreams". Lots of inspiration from Matrix, Kill Bill, Crouching tiger hidden dragon and the Darth Vaderishque hoodie outfit from Star Wars (sorry, i couldn't resist this one :-) ). The music was average and sometimes the 'remo' bgm was annoying.. 5/10 maybe and out of the 5, 3 points are for Vivek. Kalaimamamani and calling Kamal Sir....priceless...
Arindhum Ariyamalum was kind-of funny at times and the music was good. The thing with concluding if you liked a movie or not depends on when you watched it, if you were in a happy state before watching the movie or who you watched it with; so its difficult to be objective. Navdeep looked cute; Prakash Raj's role was similar to an earlier role but it was entertaining; Arya's Tamil was funny. The songs could have been picturized better. 6/10.

Punjabi/remix

I have been listening to more and more Punjabi music in the recent past and this is a bit worrying, as its unusual for me. We all have these times when a certain tune gets stuck in our heads which is normal . When a new AR Rahman's movie is released, its quite normal -atleast in my world- to play it on repeat mode for a few days or a few weeks. But this Punjabi thing has been dragging on for almost 2 months. I think its time I got over it. In case any of you are wondering exactly what kind of music I am talking about, there is Bobby Friction, MacG-Ambersariya, Rishi Rich, etc...Was looking out to buy this but apparently its only available in Amazon UK. If any of you folks there in the UK planning to visit US, you know what to get me :-) !

Online shopping

Just bought a gift for a friend on Amazon. Man, you gotta love online shopping. I really like Amazon's UI and the cool features like storing the list of things you recently looked at, your recent orders, their recommender engine, etc.
I also frequently use their movie database (imdb) too, especially the user comments. Now I am not one of those people who try not to read the storyline or the ending before watching the movie. I usually don't like wasting my time on boring movies (well, except for those lazy weekends when I watch all the gory/absolutely bad/ alien/insect movies on the sc-fi channel where you can predict who is going to die next based on their characterizations). So I usually have to check out the movie reviews on imdb before i watch anything. And this has worked very well so far. Is there anything similar for Tamil movies where it is easier to search and read comments and reviews? Imdb does have non-English movies but the list is quite limited. I occassionally read reviews on teakada.com. Gotta love to their name.

(sidenote: I made some thakkali chutney a few days back and it tasted awesome. The trick, I am guessing, was to blanch the tomatoes ? )

Of Tunics and Kurtas

I went to the outlet mall in Park City, UT and observed the same trend that I had seen in other malls. There are Indian clothes (I dont mean clothes made in India but actual desi clothes) everywhere .... In Express and in Gap -- 2 of my favorite stores. And they are so expensive. Beautiful embroidered short kurtas, Rajasthani prints, zari/chumki work, soft printed cotton tops --all going by the name - tunics. I may be biased but I think the colors, patterns and textures that Indian clothes (especially sarees and salwar kurtas) come in are absolutely fantastic and also unmatched. If I had some money, it seems like a good time to open a store featuring desi clothes. One of my fave stores in Chennai is Surang. They have a good selection of salwar kameezes (Is that the right spelling?) and ghaghra cholis but the prices are a little towards the higher end. There are 2 branches, one in Kasi Arcade (side note: I am surprised that Kasi Arcade is still open. I half expected it to be demolished and see an apartment complex springing up when I went there last summer, considering that most of the stores there have closed) and one on Cathedral road.
I used to get some of my clothes tailored at a store called Aesthetica in Spencer Plaza. It was owned by a lady called Shubha (don't know her last name). Imagine my surprise when I read an article that claimed that she was on her way to the Guiness book of records for producing the most number of films in a year or something like that ! Neat .

Moab

Monday morning, um.., afternoon i mean. After all the fun in past few days, its boring to sit in front of my computer. And for once, I did not get restless without the internet. And I did not feel like the world stopped because I did not check email. Yeah..whats the point..Its not like everyone is sending me offer letters or anything, right ? Coming back to the trip, we went river rafting, went to the Mormon miracle pageant in Manti (very impressive), camped for 2 nights and hung out in SLC downtown (Temple square). I also managed to get pulled over for speeding (I was only a few miles over the 35 mph limit !! ) but got off with a verbal warning. More pictures later on flickr.

SLC

I am off on a 4 day road trip to Salt Lake City. Will write about my trip on Monday.

Only food on my mind

I am sure most people go through these times when they crave for some particular kind of food. Only in my case, its very often. Too often in fact ! I visited the bay area last month to meet with some old friends from India and you can guess where I took them first -- ofcourse, Saravana Bhavan ! Beautiful soft white idlis with tasty coconut chutney that melt in your mouth, crispy dosai made with a touch of ghee, the smell of coriander-laden Sambar and divine pongal dotted with whole pepper.
Now before anyone starts accusing me of being plain lazy and saying that its possible to make all these at home, well, I try. So when I make idlis, they look off-white (reminds me of some toothpaste ad) and never quite as soft and they never taste that nice. The dosais are not too bad but something is sure missing. I am quite happy with the pongal i make but i could be happier.
So what I am saying is, I dont have a choice but to move close to Saravana Bhavan. And at this time in my life, I am not keen on moving to Chennai, which leaves me with ....... the Bay area.

Anniyan

Right now, I wish I was living in a city filled with enough desis to warrant playing Anniyan in theatres. What a pity Albuquerque only has a miniscule Tamil speaking population . I just read the Anniyan review from Teakada. I must admit that I have never been too impressed by any of Shankar's movies as they fail to satisfy one criteria of mine for great movies - repeat_watchability (is that a word?). I have watched all his earlier movies but cant really say I want to watch them over and over again unlike Maniratnam's movies. But I still want to watch Anniyan for 2 reasons - I havent watched a good Tamil movie for a long time (the last one that I liked was Kadhal, for its realism) and of course, for Vikram. Ah, What fun it would be to watch the movie in Sathyam or Devi .....hmm....maybe not.....I watched Ayutha Ezhuthu in Sathyam last Summer. My friend Kala and I were desperate to see the movie as we were both leaving India in the next few days. We got the ticket in black (black tickets?!)(which btw, was very very tough). Our seats were among the first 10 rows near the screen and my neighboring seat was occupied by this guy who was watching the movie for the nth time. How do I know? he kept saying out the dialogs aloud a few seconds before they were uttered on screen, throughout the movie. Then his phone rang. He picks it up and goes " hey , naan theatrele erukken da...Trisha azharaa keekuriya? " and then extends his hand with his cell phone towards the screen !!! whatever !

Kandukondein Kandukondein

I was watching this movie last night (for the third time) and I could not help but notice Aishwarya's not_too_great acting. She looks absolutely gorgeous no doubt but maybe that takes away from her acting, no? She was okay as long as she was in love with Srikanth. But once she starts falling in love with Major Bala, her expressions are really fake and its very very unconvincing. Maybe it had to do with the voice , with whoever dubbed for her. If you get a chance, listen to the line " intha pacha kan devadhaiya paarthupingala" or words to that effect... I thought there was so much scope for romance in this scene but no..its ends up being stupid and fake. Agree?

Job hunting

As most of you all know, I just graduated and am now looking for a job. I find it really boring but not having much of a choice, I plough through pages of hypertext in search of the things I would like to do most while making money (at the same time, of course). The sad part is I do not like most of the things I see. I wonder how many people actually like their current jobs ? Are staying employed and money motivation enough ?

Spencer plaza

As any Madrasi worth his/her salt will tell you, Spencer plaza (SP) is one of the earliest malls in Madras and, thanks to its location, plays an important role among all of Chennai's malls. After graduating with an undergraduate degree 5 years back (its been that long ?? ) I started working in a firm which is a stone's throw away from SP. As anyone can imagine, a large part of the week was spent walking inside SP, browsing through new music releases in Music World, buying softie icecream, looking for deals in Westside, looking wistfully inside the Levi's showroom and wondering when I could afford their jeans (which i found out later didnt really fit me very well) and of course just looking (whatever else u want to call it) at the hordes of other young people there.
So last year, when I visited Chennai, I chose SP for a rendezvous with another friend who was visiting from the UK. Both of us had fond memories associated with SP and it seemed apt that we should meet there. I reached the place a good 15 minutes before our meeting time and so went inside Music World. A few seconds later, the power supply failed and it was pitch dark inside. So they closed the store and I spent the next half an hour dripping in sweat waiting for my friend to show up........ so much for my excitement!

I have started to blog many times before but I usually get bored (which btw, happens with everything else too) and never bother posting regularly. But this time around, I have decided to give it a go and convince my friends that this is an easier way to exchange notes than group emails. So lets see how long this one lasts before i get bored again.