"Happening"

Have been out of the boil really this week despite of the resurgence of my material management classes ( out of the dead ?? ). It started but due to some teacher problem ( as always ) had to be stopped in dec. As of now, waiting for the CHANGE.. !!

And ya, the big Oscar day today aye ! Needless to say i didn't see ( cumon, we still using rajai's),  It was special this time for me because for once really i stumbled upon some oscars flicks ( Juno, Atonement and ratatouille ) and was expecting them to win something. Atonement for which i wrote earlier ( for the regular's) had an awesome background score , and guess what ? it won for the same. Honestly sometimes you feel a bit recoiled back telling people that you downloaded soundtracks of a movie ( in India ). But i guess i wasn't the only dork in town to appreciate the music. Not to forget the great Mukesh songs i've been trying to find. Amazing songs i tell you !

Well, coming back to our 'happening' country, Raj Thakre ( phew ) has again found his way on the head lines by his absurd statements about chucking out people of Bihar from Mumbai. Nothing more than a laugh i can respond for this really. And how can the week can be described happening without the whole gaga money spilt in IPL i.e. Indian Premier League. Its nice to see things happening like EPL (football) about the whole buying players thing. But certainly film stars buying teams and players sounds a bit nutty. Specially when players are being bought by the owners unlike football where managers do the real work of making a good team. I wonder how people like Preity zinta ( mind you, the real one ) will go about something she's not famous for ! 

My fantasy football has never been better i tell you. I somehow found my winning leash and now on 2nd. Mighty Mr. Maninder came from 4th to the top in slaloming fashion. Still 12 weeks to go, so tables can turn around on any lucky weekend. 

Staying with football, all i can say for this week is OUCH !! 

After a horrific injury to poor Eduardo of Arsenal. Am not a big fan of Arsenal but a injury like this injects the same amount of pain in every football fan's heart. And by the word i described for the injury, trust me, it covers every ounce of gravity which goes with it. Sky Sports people did not allow any of the EPL's contributers round the globe to show the replay of that horrendous tackle. And believe me, it took time for me as well to collect some courage from my mush to see a pic of the injury. I didn't see the video though. 

Get well soon dude.. 

 

APPEND

I seriously can't hold myself to add this jaw-dropping concept video to my post. This is the future guys ! Nokia people are working on this nano technology have created this animated video giving a glimpse of the future phones. Image tapping out text messages on a device of the size of an index card and as flat as a peice of paper, then folding it in thirds to hold it to your ear and make a phone call. Some of the features could start appearing in commercials as soon as 7 yrs from now. 

Varanasi

How many of you have actually gone for 'an' aimless trip for some days without a shadow of a clue in your top shelf , how will you spend your time.

Well my misfortune threw a bucket of cold water to make this nightmare a reality. Conjuring the fact that you traveling to a place like Varanasi and that too with your Sis, its the second worst thing that could happen to you after no ESPN in hotel on a football packed weekend. Damn.. How in the world people watch EPL in varanasi ??

Anyways, thanks to my swift thinking of my bum brains to somehow arrange seasons of Lost (2 & 3). And i tell you what, it was perfect to get my engines pumping to rise above my doldrums.

Varanasi, the first thing which rings a 'ghanti' in your brains is "Banaras ka Paan". Oh ya, the famous Big B's song. Bollocks. I just can't seem to wipe off the scene in our Patiaale da seeneyma ( Tagore ) where people started to actually dance infront of the screen when this song came in the film ( SRK one ). Ok, coming back to vanarasi topic, besides Paan, usual splashes of "red" glory you get to see everywhere.

And its also famous for banarsi saarees in which God went easy on me that my mum wasn't on the reservations charts.

And ya, again another temple city it is. Where ever i go in India, i get to read the same old line on a rusty board. " City of temples". Well this one was different, was with the red gloss on it.

I just went to Vishwanath and the Sarnath temple. Vishwanath temple is all enchanted with its antiqueness and purity. What you can't miss are the monkeys who are striding like stray dogs on the path and stealing prasad of the temple. Me and my sis attended the very beautiful Ganga Puja. Seeing the ardent foreigners listening to the puja carefully made me sneer abt the fact that , what the hell even they can understand in the puja. But actually the sneer fired back at me bcuz even I cudn't get what they were saying. hehe :-). I even had this famous tea of Banaras which was worth every praise i heard about it.

Second day I just relaxed in the hotel which greatly involved dragging Lost episodes on the VLC one by one. Lost is the first series i've seen which actually held onto the ropes leaving a surge inside you for more. Very much unlike Heroes (S02) in which it seemed like people having no powers in the series should be the ones called Heroes bcuz every damn person you see have some or the other power. And same is the case with Prison Break (S03). (Though finally Mr. Scoffield managed to escape after whole cauldrons of twists ). After downloading and watching episodes week in week out, I've honestly feel the director and the script writer of the show should be sent to an actual prison. Its just a prison for god sake ! If they want to show microwaves and binoculars in a prison, they'll definitely loose my tiny share in the % of the total TRP.

Not to deny the fact that even Lost has fair share of bed breaking anomalies but they cover them off well. The biggest of all is the Desmond's time travel and his flashes of future. But at the same time, to have a dramatic stakes of the ultimate endgame rooted in relationships and redemptions gives Lost a better shot at an emotionally satisfying conclusion. There is still a BIG mystery connecting all the survivors of Flight 8-1-5.

 I still have 7 episodes to go from the season 3 which I won't be able to watch now in the train. Damn compartment doesn't have a power plug here. And people really staring out of their sockets to know what i'm typing here. I actually should sleep bcuz its 10:30 ( Damn) and Mac's batt meter aint looking pretty in red. [ Mind you, not the Banaras one :-) ].

And finally what i cud gather and deduce from my trip was, that Scottish and Banarasi Language has so much similarity. In both languages, people tend to speak in an singing flowy manner and to prove my pt. , there's another very comical similarity. In banaras, people add 'bhaiya' most of the time and scottish people add Brother in the end.

UPDATED : Obv i didn't publish the blog in train, and now am through with the season 3. The ending was somewhat dodgy, but perfect !

Nil-Nil

Liverpool finally rediscovered their form ( thankfully ) on Road at Chelsea. Liv che was obviosuly the most awaited match this week for all the Liv supporters. Reds didn't actually manage to get 3 pt.s from the game but ruled the roost really on the pitch the full 90 min. Am pretty much happy with yesterday's performance without our golden boy ( Torres ). The ultimate showdown is next week in the champions league.  And did I miss the BIG Manchester Derby at Old trafford ? You can easily guess the whole flooding rapture from the above line. Yes Manu again lost to their local rivals who played not exactly fly but I tell you what, they defended in an extremely well fashioned manner which ripped manu out of their pants.

Ok, besides football which left me engaged this week was ABAP. I finally got the whopping 60 GB software on my stingy Dell who's left with only 80 GB now. And I was wrong about the quality of the mini-dvi cable to RCA converter. I was about to get it replaced but decided to atleast give some kudos and watch a movie on tv. The quality was really very watchable, ( all those dvd rips ) , and about the movie I saw, which actually made it a delicious plus. Atonement.

Its the ( one of the ) most talked about movies at present along with Juno, which i'll be coming to later. Atonement has been nominated for 8 oscars I guess. I don't usually download such serious dramas, but the growing banter about the movie and CD's recommendation made me leech another movie from torrents. And I wasn't disappointed frankly.

The movie has an engaging but intricate plot which has been directed to the perfection really. A 13 yr old girl's overactive imagination lead her to make an accusation which results in a genuine tragedy for everyone. Cinematography of the movie is exquisite depicting the World War 2 and ramping thru the lives of 2 lovers and gamut of emotions. Its a must watch movie and by no means its a popcorn-affair, a remarkable Drama with a tragic ending which makes it a master piece. Not to forget, the subtle music in the movie simply adds to gloriously depressing movie. I loved the music at the beginning with the percussive clacking of an old typewriter mixed with some smooth piano score which made the movie even more beautiful. 

After watching Atonement, I was very satisfied with the quality of that cable which motivated me to download another Oscar flick, Juno. Juno brings back the time which was left behind in Atonement ( WW II) to the modern world. Its about teenage pregnancy which couldn't have been portrayed in a more sweeter way without leaving behind any decency. And for all those just ready to rip apart the screens and want to comment that its Kya Kehna, hold your horses guys. Its 180° turn from what Kya Kehna was.  Juno is again an excellent movie which leaves a feel good factor lingering inside you. Surprisingly, the music in this film as well goes on top in my unranked list. Its a well chosen score weaving in-out of the folk-indie pop etc. 

And to a funny part really. I went to chandigarh few days back, and while zooming in the car, a board caught my eye. It was a garment shop but its name really made me squint twice to check what I saw was right. It was Langoors. Now how on earth one can keep a shop's chain name like this and that too for women's clothing. What will aunty's discuss, we bought this saaree from Langoor ?? Like this, people will go on opening shops with names like kutta or billi for that matter.

There's this video I saw showing the dexterity with a lighter. Ya, even I never knew people can actually do tricks with a lighter. Check it out.

What do you want to call Yourself ?

Well, if you call yourself Indians then start calling yourself by your state.

I just saw in the news today that Raj ( Correction ) Thakre's party people want north Indians to be out of Mumbai. What the fuck do these ppl want really ? Bashing up taxi drivers and hawkers from north India is the so called protest they are showing for their anger. But don't you think, its most pathetic and the weakest way to show it.

And all this is due to what.. ? That Amitabh Bachan made schools in UP and not in Maharastra.What they are questioning is, that he hasn't done anything for maharastra. Ask those fuckers that what they have done in maharastra ? When will people realize the fact that these fucking lame reason don't matter in this age. What they actually want is, you should speak language of their place. This means, a person who's mother belongs from south, he should no that lang, and if his father is from punjab, he should know punjabi. N ohh wait wait, if we are born in gujrat, he should know that language as well. And if he's studied in the eastern states, he ought to learn that language as well. So, how many lang it makes, 4 ? ok and there will no end to this. Do these things really matter if you live in a untethered country like ours ? And then we blame Britishers for what they did in the history and their policy of divide and rule. What the fuck these ppl doing now ?

Its time, something should be done before the contemporary adds to the pages of history in future..

Sun Has gone down in the West..

To add to the my week's terrible plight , the internet of Egypt and India ( Don't care abt Egypt) were slowed down due to some damage to the undersea cables. To be really honest, I never knew there were any undersea cables laid down for internet. Damn..

Here's a pic showing the cable pattern been laid down undersea.

Its actually stuns you ( Did to me) with the amount of cables which have been implemented. Hundreds of undersea cables often owned and managed by international consortiums keep telecommunications running worldwide. In india only, 60% of users were affected ( including me ) , but large companies switched to there backup plans which made them come in the 40% of the ppl affected really. One of the affected cables affected stretches from France through Mediterranean and Red Seas, then around India to Singapore which is known as Sea Me We 4 ( sounds like a scary movie sequel name ). This cable is owned by 16 telecommunications along its route. The second cable is known as FLAG (Fibre Optic Link around the globe) which runs from Britain to Japan. But amazingly, the movie I was downloading from torrents was constantly giving me arnd 110 kpbs but the browsing speed i cudnt actually check, but you can imagine when Google.com takes time to load, you hav a worst net connection.

I bought this mini-dvi to RCA converter for Macbook to hook it onto tv ystd and am really not pleased with the video quality am getting. I might change it for mini-dvi to VGA. Don't even think about RCA converters , You'll need a DVD quality with big resolution video to atleast look bareable on the extended TV output. And specially for the people who keep hunting and downloading movies from internet, all those AXXO,PUKKA and Diamond video files we download will look absolutely crap and blocky. Watch on the laptop itself I suggest or get it to connect to VGA supported TV. Even windows(Xp) look so glassy and crystal clear thru VGA output which I never noticed from all this time :-).


And finally Liverpool register their first win of this yr '08 with whole bori's of draws in the previous 4 games in EPL. There has been a rumor(Bad) flowing that Stevi G might leave Anfield, but as per now, even Gerrard has come out crashing on the media on these report that he's going to no other club but I tell you what, If Gerrard leaves Liverpool, I'll stop supporting any team in this world really. That will be the last thing pool fans want, so Liverpool must show some champions character to bounce back and be counted as champions. I really cant wait for the champions league clash against the start studded Inter Milan.

Ok, besides football, mercury is falling seamlessly and drastically here,so me and mum dad went today to Bardog ( 35 Kms from my home towards simla ) and hell I tell you. It was the most arresting scene I could imagine. We were about to reach and while on the way, snow fall started and it was simply amazing with snow flakes falling and hitting the windshield of the car. I honestly had a wonderful time with the natures most palest yet the most stupefying ambience known to mankind. ( Did that sound like Disconery Channel ? :-)

So Chill.. which people in north India cant help doin..