Last evening, Ramya and I watched Golden Compass with my sister, brother-in-law and their "almost 4 yr old" Tarun. The movie was a great watch especially with Tarun.
The premise of the movie centers around a 12-yr old Lyra, who lives in north-central Europe in a magical parallel universe where souls take shape as talking, continuously transforming animals. Lyra has gypsys for friends and plays around with them. She lives with her uncle, Lord Asriel (Daniel Craig) is a researcher who is attempting to get in touch with magical worlds in parallel universes, via a communication medium called 'Dust'. His research takes him away from home and while he is away from home, the smooth talking but evil Marisa Coulter (Nicole Kidman), asking Lyra to escort her to the North on an adventure. This adventure coupled with the disappearance of a gypsy friend, triggers an extraordinary adventure for Lyra filled with courage, fun and friendship.
The movie has a very good storyline filled with rich characters including the eagerly anticipated polar bear Iorek Byrnison (voiced by Ian McKellen). The scenes filled with action have been designed to make it gripping, being suitably supported by non-intrusive simulations.
The storyline/plot is along the lines of Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter and Chronicle of Narnia with many parts inspired by these movies. However, the inspiration is productively transformed into a different experience, making it a worthy watch.
On the negative side, Daniel Craig's character is under-developed. But, since this is a trilogy, it is likely to evolve in future episodes of the movie. Also, the director seems to have used dialogues in between action to create a context for the movie's progress. This could have used slick editing.
Nevertheless, I would strongly recommend this as a good watch, especially for those of us who are still young at heart and want to take another jab at our childhood.
Monday, December 10, 2007
Wednesday, November 28, 2007
From Farmworker to Neurosurgeon
"From illegal migrant worker to Hopkins brain surgeon: It sounds like a movie plot, but the leading man now walks Hopkins' hallways."
What?!
Read the whole story
What?!
Read the whole story
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
Monday, October 22, 2007
Paul Potts -- an amazing journey
A few months ago, Ramya sent me a video of a cellphone salesman called Paul Potts, who participated in a British Talent show and mesmerised the audiences with this amazing operatic voice.
I share below 3 videos of his, which show a remarkable journey of a shy and humble man, who went on to win the talent show. ENJOY!
I share below 3 videos of his, which show a remarkable journey of a shy and humble man, who went on to win the talent show. ENJOY!
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Report of Oct 2nd Hospital Cleaning by Bhumi
I spend some of my spare time for an online group called 'To Make A Difference'. This group is predominantly led by members in Hyderabad and Bangalore. In both these places, the members double up as volunteers for various social causes.
One such social cause where the members participated was on Oct 2nd in cleaning up of Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad. This event was created by a group called BHUMI. I have posted here the report of one of the volunteers, followed by pictures of the hospital cleaning and a followup candle vigil.
I am posting this to bring to your notice the current state of hospital's in India and leave you thinking about what you can do to alleviate this situation.
Following is the report from Ravishankar of TMAD group.
"It was about 12'O clock by the time we all assembled. Though few of us came early we waited for all so as to have fun while working together. There was some more delay because of equipement (Brooms, phenoil etc..). Actually, the superintendent there is supposed to help us regarding that but it was not encouraging.
One such social cause where the members participated was on Oct 2nd in cleaning up of Osmania General Hospital in Hyderabad. This event was created by a group called BHUMI. I have posted here the report of one of the volunteers, followed by pictures of the hospital cleaning and a followup candle vigil.
I am posting this to bring to your notice the current state of hospital's in India and leave you thinking about what you can do to alleviate this situation.
Following is the report from Ravishankar of TMAD group.
"It was about 12'O clock by the time we all assembled. Though few of us came early we waited for all so as to have fun while working together. There was some more delay because of equipement (Brooms, phenoil etc..). Actually, the superintendent there is supposed to help us regarding that but it was not encouraging.
We went directly to MO ward 2 and directly asked the head nurse to help us arranging them. Her attitude really irritated but still we had little fun with some witty answers to her. She responded like ' r u really going to clean?? r just came to show off'.. for that we responded with complete coolness like ' u speak after the program'.
It was a huge ward and we dragged all the cots and cleaned entire floor and walls row by row. We were joined by engineering college students (I don't remember all names, but it was complete fun along with them). we worked in a competetive spirit to get a chance to take the broom. Lakshmi never transfered the broom to any one excepet when she find lizard etc.. (Balli.. kalijeru.. ).. There are few perfectionists among us who doesn't move from a place unless that mark on walls vanishes.. Really they put their muscles to a great pressure. We thought we should have taken a photograph 'before' and 'After' some thing like obesity treatment centers. We completely couldn't remove the marks as those have been used for years to spit pan (Aakulu tini godala meeda use vaaru). One encouraging thing was that one patient scolded the other old lady for spitting on walls as we are giving too much of efforts to clean them. We were completely lost in time that we realized at about 4'O clock that we din't have lunch today.
After that ward we split the team and me, pradeep and few other engg. students moved to post operation ward. It was heart rending to see somany injured patients with bandages at once. Here the problem was that we are not supposed to move the beds. Even then without compromising, we cleaned the floor as we cleaned the other ward. Initially when we were given aprons and face masks i thought that organizers were over careful but later realized that those are compulsory. Infact, one doctor warned us that it is highly infectious area.
We had taken the help of Ravi, who is a contract employee there to remove the water after cleaning. His skill was of great help, in fact. He was a contract employee there and he need not to work with us. but still he helped us. No hospital employee worked with us except the nurse who was a disturbance rather than being helpful .
All in all, it is a wonderful experience. All our efforts will be fruitful only when they are maintained like that and only if authorities realizes the importance of hygeine and show some concern in that regard."
Also, please view pictures from the event
Also, please view pictures from the event
Friday, September 28, 2007
A Dying Professor's Last Lecture
"Top professors are often asked to give final talks on the hypothetical theme: what wisdom would they impart to the world if this were their last chance? Watching healthy teachers consider their demise and ruminate over subjects dear to them can make for an intriguing hour. But a recent speech by Dr. Randy Pausch of Carnegie Mellon University was more than just an academic exercise. The 46-year-old father of three has pancreatic cancer and is not expected to live longer than a few more months. His last lecture was a rollicking and riveting journey through the lessons of his life."
Watch this very inspiring video here
Also, read the article about the same event here
Watch this very inspiring video here
Also, read the article about the same event here
Monday, September 24, 2007
Early morning call ...
Its 5.10 am this morning and the Mission Impossible ringtone on my cell phone goes full blast. I have one of those "Earthquake Happenned" type awakenings, as I jump out of bed. I find the cell phone quickly and it says "Unknown" on the caller id. Ramya who is still trying to come to terms with my explosive jump tells me it must be from India.
Groggily, I say "Hello!".
Guess who's calling? Its my dad!!
He's like "What are you doing still sleeping? It is India v/s Pakistan cricket match finals. Aren't you watching it?"
I say "Nope dad ... no live relay anywhere!"
He says, sorta sad for me, "Oh! Sorry I woke you up"
I say "Its ok dad ... Thanks for calling anyways"
I tried sleeping, but couldn't! I was super curious about the match now. I tried refreshing the score once or twice on my cell phone, while still sleeping. The match was just too exciting for me to sleep.
I jumped out of bed and started following the game excitedly on cricinfo. Man ... what an exciting match! India's total was pathetically low. For a game like this, something close to 200 or even 200+ would have been very safe. I felt Yuvraj and Dhoni let the team down badly by their batting. Bowling and fielding was amazing as usual, except for pathetic bowling by Sreesanth and Harbhajan. But, Sreesanth made up for his follies by taking crucial catches.
An early morning work related phone conference meeting made following the game all the more tense. Man! that's what great games are made of. I wish I could WATCH it live.
Thanks Dad for making my morning a great one! :-)
Groggily, I say "Hello!".
Guess who's calling? Its my dad!!
He's like "What are you doing still sleeping? It is India v/s Pakistan cricket match finals. Aren't you watching it?"
I say "Nope dad ... no live relay anywhere!"
He says, sorta sad for me, "Oh! Sorry I woke you up"
I say "Its ok dad ... Thanks for calling anyways"
I tried sleeping, but couldn't! I was super curious about the match now. I tried refreshing the score once or twice on my cell phone, while still sleeping. The match was just too exciting for me to sleep.
I jumped out of bed and started following the game excitedly on cricinfo. Man ... what an exciting match! India's total was pathetically low. For a game like this, something close to 200 or even 200+ would have been very safe. I felt Yuvraj and Dhoni let the team down badly by their batting. Bowling and fielding was amazing as usual, except for pathetic bowling by Sreesanth and Harbhajan. But, Sreesanth made up for his follies by taking crucial catches.
An early morning work related phone conference meeting made following the game all the more tense. Man! that's what great games are made of. I wish I could WATCH it live.
Thanks Dad for making my morning a great one! :-)
Sunday, September 16, 2007
Remembering Ganesh Festival in India
An old writeup of mine ... posting it to coincide with this year's festival
On the previous evening of Ganesh Festival of 2001, my brother-in-law told me "hey karthik, let's go to Albertson's for some groceries". I just joined him
and his dad. We drove to the place. I asked him then, "hey, how come we are shopping at Albertson's, that too with such a huge list?". His dad told, "tomorrow is Ganesh Festival". BUZZ!! Suddenly i was lost for a few minutes in the many Ganesh Festivals back home. This, is just a weak effort looking back at those wonderful days.
Hindu festivals, irrespective of the religious aspect, have always been something we looked for. Firstly, it meant a vacation day. But, beyond that was something much more special. It was the actual day. It was so very resplendent with all the beautiful colors of the new clothes people wore and the fresh flowers and fruits on sale everywhere, coupled with the hectic activity. It used to look like the colors of holi bursting everywhere. The doors in the house were decorated with mango leaves which had a strangely attractive aroma about themselves, telling you that this was a very special day.
Perhaps, the most colorful aspect was about the flowers. Truckloads of them were spread out on the pavements like a flower show, with all their wonderful colors. The interesting part was, these surprisingly fresh flowers had a very high price tag stuck to them. two days before or after the festival, you would probably get the same flowers for a fifth or maybe even a tenth of its price on the festival day. But on that day, the vendors ruled!! They'd say "75 bucks saar, take it or leave it!!" Wow! that may sound rude, but hey! they have a truckload to sell and there are people to buy those flowers. I remember negotiating for 5 or 10 bucks off this price and have a smile for myself at the nice deal I got myself. Today, i realize that i might have stolen that money from a poor man who was also planning on celebrating the festival. Anyways, I do remember though that there used to be a few nice vendors, who would voluntarily cut down the price and sell it with a nice smile, provided you bought one or two more not-so-costly items from them that you had originally planned not to buy. Among all this business, for the person with an eye for beauty, there were lots'a beautiful young ladies dressed in beautiful colors looking around for flowers like you and something more. This was like an added bonus. I caught myself today asking a friend of mine, who just came back from india, about how his flower shopping went for the festival!!!
Perhaps the most important part of the Ganesh Festival was, buying the Ganesh idol. The city used to be full of Ganesh idols of various sizes, colors and shapes. Off late Lord Ganesh has gone quite hep, playing cricket, using a computer et.al. The activity around these stalls never ceased. I always wanted to buy a huge Ganesh, don't know why though. Probably it looked good. But my mom was scared that, if during the process of transit to the house, the idol would suffer some fracture it would not be a good omen!! Transporting the idol used to be thus, always kind of a scary process. At the doorstep of the house, my mom used to then perform arathi to the idol and then we used to place the idol at the place for pooja.
Coming to the actual festival celebration. Man!! it was something really memorable. The day started with the ceremonial oil application to the body, followed by a nice soapnut headbath. There was no 'casette priest' like the present day but my father performed the pooja. it was really elaborate. my mom, used to spend most of the previous day of the festival preparing lots'a goodies most importanly the 'kadubu', which is said to be Ganesha's favorite. Of course, we were not allowed to go anywhere close to the kitchen because the food was to be first offered to God. Well, the wait would be worth it 'coz they were really tasty. The pooja used to be a real long one, my dad used to do the pooja going according to the book. What do i do? Well all those colorful flowers lying around the large quantity of turmeric and vermilion looked real attractive. I used to make a neat decoration of the flowers around the idol and later sprinkle turmeric and vermilion on it, to give it a neat look. My mom says that, when i was very real young, i was as interested but with lot more enthusiasm, which meant i ended up throwing the flowers et.al. all around the place!!! After the pooja it used to be that wonderful lunch with lots'a varieties of nice food. this obviously led to the nice holiday afternoon nap. In the evening, we used to don our new clothes which looked very colorful. We'd love to do this and be extra cheerful. We used to visit our relatives and friends to exchange good wishes for the festival. In total it used to be a very eventful day.
The next important thing used to be the immersion of the idol. Though we used to just settle for an immersion of the idol in our backyard tank, there were people who used to take the idols to nearby lakes for immersion. Man!! for nearly the next one month following the festival there used to be lots of idols being immersed with shouts of "ganapathi bappa moreya...." et.al. the festival also brought a lot of enthusiasm in the youth associations of the year, to organize major celebrations of the festival. What this usually meant was loud music well into early morning and lots'a other disturbances. We felt the ill-effects, especially during exams. of course there used to be some nice cultural programmes like dramas, concerts et.al. Sometimes high profile ministers
used to visit these places. That sounds cool, especially when you try to imagine if the governor of California would visit San Jose Ganesh Mitramandali. Lot more memories pass by, some of them much more close to heart, when all of a sudden i hear, "Sir, the raisins are in the aisle next to the frozen food section". What??? I then realize, neither is this the crowded Malleswaram market nor am I in Bangalore celebrating the festival, but in a place thousands of miles away from home. Needless to say, this year's festival was quite low key with a small pooja and a quite dinner. no new clothes, no friends or relatives house visits, no loud speaker playing one of those famous Ganesh songs.
As am typing these words, a new song starts on the CD am listening to and kishore kumar sings "koi lauta de mere beete hue din...."
P.S.: The Ganesh festival of 2007 was unlike the sadness evoked in the last few lines. This was my first one after marriage. So that was a whole another experience with Ramya cooking yummy stuff and being around the Pooja. Also, met up with lots of family and friends, some of them newly married too ... so it had its own touch of uniqueness. :-)
On the previous evening of Ganesh Festival of 2001, my brother-in-law told me "hey karthik, let's go to Albertson's for some groceries". I just joined him
and his dad. We drove to the place. I asked him then, "hey, how come we are shopping at Albertson's, that too with such a huge list?". His dad told, "tomorrow is Ganesh Festival". BUZZ!! Suddenly i was lost for a few minutes in the many Ganesh Festivals back home. This, is just a weak effort looking back at those wonderful days.
Hindu festivals, irrespective of the religious aspect, have always been something we looked for. Firstly, it meant a vacation day. But, beyond that was something much more special. It was the actual day. It was so very resplendent with all the beautiful colors of the new clothes people wore and the fresh flowers and fruits on sale everywhere, coupled with the hectic activity. It used to look like the colors of holi bursting everywhere. The doors in the house were decorated with mango leaves which had a strangely attractive aroma about themselves, telling you that this was a very special day.
Perhaps, the most colorful aspect was about the flowers. Truckloads of them were spread out on the pavements like a flower show, with all their wonderful colors. The interesting part was, these surprisingly fresh flowers had a very high price tag stuck to them. two days before or after the festival, you would probably get the same flowers for a fifth or maybe even a tenth of its price on the festival day. But on that day, the vendors ruled!! They'd say "75 bucks saar, take it or leave it!!" Wow! that may sound rude, but hey! they have a truckload to sell and there are people to buy those flowers. I remember negotiating for 5 or 10 bucks off this price and have a smile for myself at the nice deal I got myself. Today, i realize that i might have stolen that money from a poor man who was also planning on celebrating the festival. Anyways, I do remember though that there used to be a few nice vendors, who would voluntarily cut down the price and sell it with a nice smile, provided you bought one or two more not-so-costly items from them that you had originally planned not to buy. Among all this business, for the person with an eye for beauty, there were lots'a beautiful young ladies dressed in beautiful colors looking around for flowers like you and something more. This was like an added bonus. I caught myself today asking a friend of mine, who just came back from india, about how his flower shopping went for the festival!!!
Perhaps the most important part of the Ganesh Festival was, buying the Ganesh idol. The city used to be full of Ganesh idols of various sizes, colors and shapes. Off late Lord Ganesh has gone quite hep, playing cricket, using a computer et.al. The activity around these stalls never ceased. I always wanted to buy a huge Ganesh, don't know why though. Probably it looked good. But my mom was scared that, if during the process of transit to the house, the idol would suffer some fracture it would not be a good omen!! Transporting the idol used to be thus, always kind of a scary process. At the doorstep of the house, my mom used to then perform arathi to the idol and then we used to place the idol at the place for pooja.
Coming to the actual festival celebration. Man!! it was something really memorable. The day started with the ceremonial oil application to the body, followed by a nice soapnut headbath. There was no 'casette priest' like the present day but my father performed the pooja. it was really elaborate. my mom, used to spend most of the previous day of the festival preparing lots'a goodies most importanly the 'kadubu', which is said to be Ganesha's favorite. Of course, we were not allowed to go anywhere close to the kitchen because the food was to be first offered to God. Well, the wait would be worth it 'coz they were really tasty. The pooja used to be a real long one, my dad used to do the pooja going according to the book. What do i do? Well all those colorful flowers lying around the large quantity of turmeric and vermilion looked real attractive. I used to make a neat decoration of the flowers around the idol and later sprinkle turmeric and vermilion on it, to give it a neat look. My mom says that, when i was very real young, i was as interested but with lot more enthusiasm, which meant i ended up throwing the flowers et.al. all around the place!!! After the pooja it used to be that wonderful lunch with lots'a varieties of nice food. this obviously led to the nice holiday afternoon nap. In the evening, we used to don our new clothes which looked very colorful. We'd love to do this and be extra cheerful. We used to visit our relatives and friends to exchange good wishes for the festival. In total it used to be a very eventful day.
The next important thing used to be the immersion of the idol. Though we used to just settle for an immersion of the idol in our backyard tank, there were people who used to take the idols to nearby lakes for immersion. Man!! for nearly the next one month following the festival there used to be lots of idols being immersed with shouts of "ganapathi bappa moreya...." et.al. the festival also brought a lot of enthusiasm in the youth associations of the year, to organize major celebrations of the festival. What this usually meant was loud music well into early morning and lots'a other disturbances. We felt the ill-effects, especially during exams. of course there used to be some nice cultural programmes like dramas, concerts et.al. Sometimes high profile ministers
used to visit these places. That sounds cool, especially when you try to imagine if the governor of California would visit San Jose Ganesh Mitramandali. Lot more memories pass by, some of them much more close to heart, when all of a sudden i hear, "Sir, the raisins are in the aisle next to the frozen food section". What??? I then realize, neither is this the crowded Malleswaram market nor am I in Bangalore celebrating the festival, but in a place thousands of miles away from home. Needless to say, this year's festival was quite low key with a small pooja and a quite dinner. no new clothes, no friends or relatives house visits, no loud speaker playing one of those famous Ganesh songs.
As am typing these words, a new song starts on the CD am listening to and kishore kumar sings "koi lauta de mere beete hue din...."
P.S.: The Ganesh festival of 2007 was unlike the sadness evoked in the last few lines. This was my first one after marriage. So that was a whole another experience with Ramya cooking yummy stuff and being around the Pooja. Also, met up with lots of family and friends, some of them newly married too ... so it had its own touch of uniqueness. :-)
Thursday, September 13, 2007
Hot Culinary spots in Bangalore
The author of this article has made a fairly decent effort at listing favorite jaunts for eating out in Bangalore. This is also about 2 years old, so may not be entirely accurate.
Read through the comments at the end of the page for some more recommendations.
What are your favorite eating outlets in Bangalore? Do share :-)
Read the article here
Read through the comments at the end of the page for some more recommendations.
What are your favorite eating outlets in Bangalore? Do share :-)
Read the article here
Monday, August 6, 2007
Canada Trip report
One of the trips we had planned for this year was the trip to Vancouver. This was planned around the stamping of my visa at the consulate over there. Also, visiting Vancouver gave us the opportunity to look around the very beautiful area, including Victoria.
The trip took enormous planning which was very well managed by Ramya. First step was getting the Canadian visitor visa. This took about a week and was mostly straightforward. Next, we got the appointment for the US consulate. Once the appointment date was fixed, we could go ahead with the trip reservations.
We planned to fly into Seattle on April 27th. Spend most of April 28th, a Saturday with friends and family, I have couple of cousins who live there. Then on April 28th night, we planned to arrive at Vancouver by road. On 29th, we planned to spend the day in Victoria. On 30th, I had my appointment and we planned to spend the rest of the day around Vancouver. On May 1st, we would spend some more time in Vancouver, before driving back to Seattle for our evening flight. My sister and brother-in-law had already visited the area and hence provided some very useful tips for our trip.
Ramya spent a lot of time planning the trip intricately well. This went a long way in making the trip an effective one. She visited multiple websites for activity guides. Then prepared a detailed plan of what needs to be done on each day, including directions and estimated costs. Pretty cool, huh?!
Day 0: Flight to Seattle
On Friday night, April 27th we left from San Francisco airport by the 9.30 pm flight. We reached Seattle by 11 PM. We picked up our rental car, a brand new Toyota Camry and drove to my friend KB's house. We got there by midnight. At that time, he was very much excited to see us and we spent a good hour talking. After a quick call home, we called it a day around 1.30 am.
Day 1: A Seattle Day
We were up by around 9.30 am after a lazy resistance to waking up ;-) KB woke up soon. Ramya and I took the time to get ready and spent sometime watching the recent Telugu hit "Bommarillu". It was a very nice watch with good laughs and a nice family plot. Siddharth and Genelia are adorable in the movie. I've been a fan of the soundtrack for a while now. At around 12 pm we headed off to meet my cousin Ravi who works in the Belmont area as well. We had planned to meet my other cousins Jayant and Praveen too. But they were busy that day.
Ravi and his wife Nirmala live close to KB's house. We drove over there and soon headed off to lunch at a nice Indo-Chinese restaurant called InChin. The food was very tasty with a generous helping of spicyness and tangy twists. After lunch, we went to a nearby lake called Lake Samamish which is very beautiful and peaceful.
After spending a few minutes there, chatting away, we drove to the Microsoft campus and looked around Ravi's office. We soon bade goodbye to Ravi and Nirmala, at around 3.30 pm and drove back to KB's house.
KB was eagerly waiting for us. The 3 of us headed off to the elegant downtown area. We had a nice time chatting away along the drive about all sundry items. We parked near the Seattle space needle tower.
We took a elevator to get to the top. It was not a very cold day, though the wind was blowing strong. We took a lot of pictures from the vista points. Inside the view point visitor area we got some coffee and some very tasty pastry which KB politely refused, lest it have an impact on his waistline ;-) We shopped a bit in the visitor center and then drove off towards KB's home.
Once we got to KB's home, KB busied himself in the kitchen!! Wah ... that's something amazing for an Indian man :-) He made Chapathis from scratch and had also prepared some very delicious palak paneer to go with it. Also, to top off the celebratory feeling, there was some delicious Shavige Payasa. He's one terrific host, I should say. Ramya was quite happy about it and gave me suggestive glances about how I should also improve my cooking skills ;-) I convinced her that us climbing Mount Everest and sleeping next to lions in Serengeti national park is a lot safer than me trying cooking!
We started off after dinner, at around 9.30 pm, to Vancouver. We were going to be driving on I-5 which, after the US-Canada border, would become CA-99. The drive was a good one, with a conference call with Vinay (driving from Delaware to Cali), Vibes and Nagi in SJ. After that, we called Ramya's home and spoke to them for a while. The Canadian immigration was a breeze and we reached our hotel in Downtown Vancouver by midnight. When we got there, the place was one festive area with 100's of people dancing and howling with pitchers of beer in hand. It was a saturday night, the most active night. Our hotel was in the Granville area, which is right in the heart of downtown and one of the most happening areas of town. We soon called it a day since we were far too tired and we had an early day the following morning.
Day 2: Following the elegant trail of Victoria
We woke up at 7 am, since we had to be at the ferry terminal soon, to catch the 9 am ferry to Victoria. The ferry terminal was a good 45 minute drive way. We reached the ferry terminal by 8.20 am and had sufficient time to catch breakfast. There was, not surprisingly, a very good food court. We had delicious crepes for breakfast and eagerly awaited the departure of ferry. The ferry departed promptly at 9 am. It was a great day and we spent a significant part of the journey hanging out at the deck, taking pictures and enjoying the nice view.
The ferry docked at Victoria by 10.45 am. Our car, which was on the ship, got off soon and we drove off to Butchart Gardens which was a 30 minute drive. The drive was good, along lush green meadows. Butchart gardens itself turned out to be a treat from the word go. It was not too busy. The parking lot is decorated with flags of countries around the world, including India :)
The garden has a suggested sequence of visiting the smaller sub sections. We decided to do something smart. We decided to go in the direction opposite to the one suggested, because the entrance was crowded. It helped us because, we could get through the garden faster than the other way. We entered on the Italian garden which was full of flowers around ponds and fountains. The colors were various shades of blue, red, purple, yellow and what not. Just too cool. A gentleman was very happy to take our pictures against different backgrounds, which he suggested!
From the Italian garden, we went to the Japanese garden which was developed in Japanese style by Mrs. Butchart with the help of gardeners brought from Japan! The Japanese garden style with the wooden pipes, seen in the climax of Kill Bill Vol. 1 and small waterfalls and ponds was very beautiful to look at. The peony and white cherry blossom like flowers were good to see. Even the entrance to the Japanese garden was the traditional Torii.
From the Japanese garden we stopped at the Sturgeon fountain which is in the shape of 3 fish jumping and a fountain bursting out. A few tourists were happy to take our pictures. Here, in the absence of a tripod, I managed to balance my camera on a thin looking pole and took a timed shot of both of us. The camera was placed very precariously and could have easily fallen off!
Our next stop was the rose garden which, unfortunately, was totally empty because it was not rose season at that time of the year. However, the view of the entire garden was spectacular, including the residence of the Butcharts. From there, we walked to the totem pole area and took a few pics. From the totem pole area, we walked to view a beautiful synchronized fountain which looked beautiful with flowers in the foreground.
We then walked through the main garden area. It was already nearing 1 pm and I was getting tired. How much flowers can one see? ;-) But this didn't have an impact on Ramya who was happily clicking away. The main area was just beautiful with lot more different types of flowers all placed delicately well in areas such as ponds, small hillocks et.al.
We were out of the garden at around 1 pm. We stopped by the cafe to get an ice cream and a cool soda. We shopped a bit at the gift store and then drove off for dinner in the Victoria downtown. The Victoria downtown is very beautiful with old buildings and a marina. There is the natural history musuem, the parliament building and the empress hotel.
We had a sumptuous meal at the Grand Pacific hotel. After lunch, we strolled around the marina and the nearby totem pole garden. The totems were very cool and we had a lot of fun making faces to match the faces of the totems ;-)
Then we shopped a bit in the Natural history museum, after looking around some more totems which had rich stories to tell about the history of the Indian tradition. We wanted to take a quick look around the musuem but it was far too expensive to get in and we didn't have enough time to justify the cost of the entrance tickets.
We decided to do some more shopping in the area and on our way to the shopping area, we stumbled upon the Miniature World musuem which we had planned to see later. But it turned out that it was going to close at 5 pm and it was already 4.45 pm! We thought it would be open till 8 pm (which was going to be the timings from the following week). We were disappointed at not being able to see the musuem. We shopped around a bit and then decided to head to the empress hotel for some high tea, which was also on our plan. On the way to the empress hotel, we sat in front of the hotel and enjoyed the nice view of the marina and chatted up for a while. We went to the empress hotel by 5.30 pm, only to discover that high tea service had stopped at 5 pm!! *aargh* That was two disappointments in one evening.
We spent the rest of the time looking around the area and stopped by a Tibetan-Nepali restaurant called the mint where we got some delicious food to go. The momos were mouth watering and got emptied in seconds, while we were waiting for our ferry! Our ferry departed from Victoria at 8 pm and we reached Vancouver by 9.30 pm. We ate the delicious mix of Tibetan, Nepali and Thai food and called it a night after calling home to update everyone. I had a super early start the following morning.
Day 3: Exploring the beautiful Vancouver
On this morning, I had my consulate appointment at 8 am. In trembling anticipation of the moment, I had set 10 alarms from 4 am to 5.45 am, lest I shouldn't wake up!! I was up and ready by 6.30 am. Ramya drove me to the consulate by 7 am. We had a cup of coffee at the Starbucks and then she left. I had a reasonably simple Visa appointment and was out by 9.30 am. Since Ramya had told me that she'll come only at 10 am, I had to find a phone booth to ask her to come sooner. This gave me the perfect opportunity to walk around the beautiful downtown area.
Ramya soon joined me for breakfast at a nice restaurant where he had the standard egg and bread breakfast. After breakfast, we returned to our room, where I changed and left all my documents. We had a long fun day ahead. Our first stop was going to be the beautiful Stanley park area. We got there by 11 am. Stanley park is a huge park next to water/marina area.
The area can be either driven around or walked around or one can cycle around the park. We got a park map and started driving around the park. One interesting stop was at a Totem pole park where we spent quite a bit of time learning about totempoles. The natives worshipped nature and all her forms via Totem poles. Aquatic creatures, reptiles, wild animals et.al. were represented in these statues and worshipped for their power.
From Stanley park, we drove to Capillano suspension bridge at around 12.30pm. There is a nice park in the area and we spent time exploring the park and took pictures. Then we walked on the bridge itself. It was wobbling a lot. Ramya had a hard time walking and not feeling dizzy.
She was quite concerned about the stability of the bridge. We soon got over our jitters when halfway through somebody requested us to take their pictures. By the time they took our pictures and we took their pictures, we had gotten used to the wobbly nature of the bridge. The other side of the bridge was a thick patch of green trees. We spent time walking around and taking pictures, including some funny ones ;-)
Our next stop was Grouse mountain. We drove there by 2.30 pm, only to be disappointed by the very expensive tram ride. We did not take the tram ride, instead took a couple of pictures in the area and left after having coffee. We headed back to our hotel room to rest for some time. We slept from 4 pm till about 6 pm. On our return to the room, Ramya spent some time researching about local hotels offering high tea. To our delight, we found that there were a couple of places locally!
At 6 pm, we decided to explore the "historic" Gaslight area. The area gets its name because of an old steam operated clock which was quite interesting to see.
Unfortunately, that was about the only interesting thing we saw in the area. We walked around the deserted downtown area, which was deserted because it was a Monday! We took some pictures along the historic buildings of the area. We made a right turn in our walk, which unwittingly put us into a very shady street of the area which was full of homeless people. Though everyone was keeping to themselves, it was still quite a scary walk for us and we wanted to get our of there ASAP. We then ended up a riverside restaurant and had a quick snack. Some of the guests at the restaurant, suggested livelier places to checkout.
We headed then in the direction of the consulate and it was more alive with lots of people and major nightlife. But, I guess the day had been long and tiring so we got pizza next door to our hotel and called it a night. We settled in our hotel room watching a rehashed version of all the classic fairy tales called "Happily never after" which was decent fun. Watching the movie made us hungry again. So, we headed to the downstairs bar called "Wings" to get some Thai food. After dinner, we completed the movie and slept off.
Day 4: Wandering the last few alleys of Vancouver
We woke up at around 8.30 am and checked out of our room. We planned to pick up our visa by 3.30 pm and drive to Seattle, to catch the 7 pm flight to San Jose. From our hotel, we drove to Dr. Sun Yat Sen's Classical Chinese garden. The place was a real treat for its elegant design following ancient chinese architeture, that inspires one to get involved in spirituality, philosophy and other such intellectual perspectives. We stayed there till about 12 pm and shopped at the visitor center where Ramya bought some gifts for my sister and her cousin.
We then headed to a new age Chinese restaurant called the "Wild Rice" where the decor and the presentation of food was very elegant and distinct from what we usually have. The food was very tasty and spicy. A sumptuous meal, i may say. It was almost 2 pm when we left the place.
We then wanted to go the high tea place but parking was turning to be a problem with street closures, one way streets and all the busy traffic. It turned out that we were likely to get delayed by High Tea. Ramya let go of this dream of hers ... I have an open promise to take her to the best High Tea place there is :-)
We picked up our visa by 3.30 pm. We also realized then that we'll likely miss our flight. So, Ramya printed the boarding passes at a nearby computer center, so that we get a seat on the next flight. We started the drive back at around 3.45 pm. By 4.30 pm, we were at the border, where I had to stop because I had a new stamp. It took a good 45 minutes for the whole port of entry procedure. But the officer at the post did a thorough job of the entry including giving me a printed I-94 card for a princely sum of $6!!
We continued our drive on and reached Seattle only by 7 pm, by when our flight had left!! We nevertheless, got a seat on the next flight to San Jose which was scheduled to leave at 8.45 pm. This worked out better because our other flight was scheduled to arrive at SFO. We had to check in all our bags, including our carry on bag because it had some items left in it, which were not allowable under travel restrictions. So, Ramya and I had the opportunity of living a fulfilled dream of travelling with no bags to carry around ;-)
We spent time till 8.45 pm chatting up and grabbing something to eat. We arrived at 10 pm in San Jose to be picked up by my BIL. We headed straight to their place for dinner and then called it a night.
Thank you for reading this report :-) I hope you enjoyed it.
The trip took enormous planning which was very well managed by Ramya. First step was getting the Canadian visitor visa. This took about a week and was mostly straightforward. Next, we got the appointment for the US consulate. Once the appointment date was fixed, we could go ahead with the trip reservations.
We planned to fly into Seattle on April 27th. Spend most of April 28th, a Saturday with friends and family, I have couple of cousins who live there. Then on April 28th night, we planned to arrive at Vancouver by road. On 29th, we planned to spend the day in Victoria. On 30th, I had my appointment and we planned to spend the rest of the day around Vancouver. On May 1st, we would spend some more time in Vancouver, before driving back to Seattle for our evening flight. My sister and brother-in-law had already visited the area and hence provided some very useful tips for our trip.
Ramya spent a lot of time planning the trip intricately well. This went a long way in making the trip an effective one. She visited multiple websites for activity guides. Then prepared a detailed plan of what needs to be done on each day, including directions and estimated costs. Pretty cool, huh?!
Day 0: Flight to Seattle
On Friday night, April 27th we left from San Francisco airport by the 9.30 pm flight. We reached Seattle by 11 PM. We picked up our rental car, a brand new Toyota Camry and drove to my friend KB's house. We got there by midnight. At that time, he was very much excited to see us and we spent a good hour talking. After a quick call home, we called it a day around 1.30 am.
Day 1: A Seattle Day
We were up by around 9.30 am after a lazy resistance to waking up ;-) KB woke up soon. Ramya and I took the time to get ready and spent sometime watching the recent Telugu hit "Bommarillu". It was a very nice watch with good laughs and a nice family plot. Siddharth and Genelia are adorable in the movie. I've been a fan of the soundtrack for a while now. At around 12 pm we headed off to meet my cousin Ravi who works in the Belmont area as well. We had planned to meet my other cousins Jayant and Praveen too. But they were busy that day.
Ravi and his wife Nirmala live close to KB's house. We drove over there and soon headed off to lunch at a nice Indo-Chinese restaurant called InChin. The food was very tasty with a generous helping of spicyness and tangy twists. After lunch, we went to a nearby lake called Lake Samamish which is very beautiful and peaceful.
After spending a few minutes there, chatting away, we drove to the Microsoft campus and looked around Ravi's office. We soon bade goodbye to Ravi and Nirmala, at around 3.30 pm and drove back to KB's house.
KB was eagerly waiting for us. The 3 of us headed off to the elegant downtown area. We had a nice time chatting away along the drive about all sundry items. We parked near the Seattle space needle tower.
We took a elevator to get to the top. It was not a very cold day, though the wind was blowing strong. We took a lot of pictures from the vista points. Inside the view point visitor area we got some coffee and some very tasty pastry which KB politely refused, lest it have an impact on his waistline ;-) We shopped a bit in the visitor center and then drove off towards KB's home.
Once we got to KB's home, KB busied himself in the kitchen!! Wah ... that's something amazing for an Indian man :-) He made Chapathis from scratch and had also prepared some very delicious palak paneer to go with it. Also, to top off the celebratory feeling, there was some delicious Shavige Payasa. He's one terrific host, I should say. Ramya was quite happy about it and gave me suggestive glances about how I should also improve my cooking skills ;-) I convinced her that us climbing Mount Everest and sleeping next to lions in Serengeti national park is a lot safer than me trying cooking!
We started off after dinner, at around 9.30 pm, to Vancouver. We were going to be driving on I-5 which, after the US-Canada border, would become CA-99. The drive was a good one, with a conference call with Vinay (driving from Delaware to Cali), Vibes and Nagi in SJ. After that, we called Ramya's home and spoke to them for a while. The Canadian immigration was a breeze and we reached our hotel in Downtown Vancouver by midnight. When we got there, the place was one festive area with 100's of people dancing and howling with pitchers of beer in hand. It was a saturday night, the most active night. Our hotel was in the Granville area, which is right in the heart of downtown and one of the most happening areas of town. We soon called it a day since we were far too tired and we had an early day the following morning.
Day 2: Following the elegant trail of Victoria
We woke up at 7 am, since we had to be at the ferry terminal soon, to catch the 9 am ferry to Victoria. The ferry terminal was a good 45 minute drive way. We reached the ferry terminal by 8.20 am and had sufficient time to catch breakfast. There was, not surprisingly, a very good food court. We had delicious crepes for breakfast and eagerly awaited the departure of ferry. The ferry departed promptly at 9 am. It was a great day and we spent a significant part of the journey hanging out at the deck, taking pictures and enjoying the nice view.
The ferry docked at Victoria by 10.45 am. Our car, which was on the ship, got off soon and we drove off to Butchart Gardens which was a 30 minute drive. The drive was good, along lush green meadows. Butchart gardens itself turned out to be a treat from the word go. It was not too busy. The parking lot is decorated with flags of countries around the world, including India :)
The garden has a suggested sequence of visiting the smaller sub sections. We decided to do something smart. We decided to go in the direction opposite to the one suggested, because the entrance was crowded. It helped us because, we could get through the garden faster than the other way. We entered on the Italian garden which was full of flowers around ponds and fountains. The colors were various shades of blue, red, purple, yellow and what not. Just too cool. A gentleman was very happy to take our pictures against different backgrounds, which he suggested!
From the Italian garden, we went to the Japanese garden which was developed in Japanese style by Mrs. Butchart with the help of gardeners brought from Japan! The Japanese garden style with the wooden pipes, seen in the climax of Kill Bill Vol. 1 and small waterfalls and ponds was very beautiful to look at. The peony and white cherry blossom like flowers were good to see. Even the entrance to the Japanese garden was the traditional Torii.
From the Japanese garden we stopped at the Sturgeon fountain which is in the shape of 3 fish jumping and a fountain bursting out. A few tourists were happy to take our pictures. Here, in the absence of a tripod, I managed to balance my camera on a thin looking pole and took a timed shot of both of us. The camera was placed very precariously and could have easily fallen off!
Our next stop was the rose garden which, unfortunately, was totally empty because it was not rose season at that time of the year. However, the view of the entire garden was spectacular, including the residence of the Butcharts. From there, we walked to the totem pole area and took a few pics. From the totem pole area, we walked to view a beautiful synchronized fountain which looked beautiful with flowers in the foreground.
We then walked through the main garden area. It was already nearing 1 pm and I was getting tired. How much flowers can one see? ;-) But this didn't have an impact on Ramya who was happily clicking away. The main area was just beautiful with lot more different types of flowers all placed delicately well in areas such as ponds, small hillocks et.al.
We were out of the garden at around 1 pm. We stopped by the cafe to get an ice cream and a cool soda. We shopped a bit at the gift store and then drove off for dinner in the Victoria downtown. The Victoria downtown is very beautiful with old buildings and a marina. There is the natural history musuem, the parliament building and the empress hotel.
We had a sumptuous meal at the Grand Pacific hotel. After lunch, we strolled around the marina and the nearby totem pole garden. The totems were very cool and we had a lot of fun making faces to match the faces of the totems ;-)
Then we shopped a bit in the Natural history museum, after looking around some more totems which had rich stories to tell about the history of the Indian tradition. We wanted to take a quick look around the musuem but it was far too expensive to get in and we didn't have enough time to justify the cost of the entrance tickets.
We decided to do some more shopping in the area and on our way to the shopping area, we stumbled upon the Miniature World musuem which we had planned to see later. But it turned out that it was going to close at 5 pm and it was already 4.45 pm! We thought it would be open till 8 pm (which was going to be the timings from the following week). We were disappointed at not being able to see the musuem. We shopped around a bit and then decided to head to the empress hotel for some high tea, which was also on our plan. On the way to the empress hotel, we sat in front of the hotel and enjoyed the nice view of the marina and chatted up for a while. We went to the empress hotel by 5.30 pm, only to discover that high tea service had stopped at 5 pm!! *aargh* That was two disappointments in one evening.
We spent the rest of the time looking around the area and stopped by a Tibetan-Nepali restaurant called the mint where we got some delicious food to go. The momos were mouth watering and got emptied in seconds, while we were waiting for our ferry! Our ferry departed from Victoria at 8 pm and we reached Vancouver by 9.30 pm. We ate the delicious mix of Tibetan, Nepali and Thai food and called it a night after calling home to update everyone. I had a super early start the following morning.
Day 3: Exploring the beautiful Vancouver
On this morning, I had my consulate appointment at 8 am. In trembling anticipation of the moment, I had set 10 alarms from 4 am to 5.45 am, lest I shouldn't wake up!! I was up and ready by 6.30 am. Ramya drove me to the consulate by 7 am. We had a cup of coffee at the Starbucks and then she left. I had a reasonably simple Visa appointment and was out by 9.30 am. Since Ramya had told me that she'll come only at 10 am, I had to find a phone booth to ask her to come sooner. This gave me the perfect opportunity to walk around the beautiful downtown area.
Ramya soon joined me for breakfast at a nice restaurant where he had the standard egg and bread breakfast. After breakfast, we returned to our room, where I changed and left all my documents. We had a long fun day ahead. Our first stop was going to be the beautiful Stanley park area. We got there by 11 am. Stanley park is a huge park next to water/marina area.
The area can be either driven around or walked around or one can cycle around the park. We got a park map and started driving around the park. One interesting stop was at a Totem pole park where we spent quite a bit of time learning about totempoles. The natives worshipped nature and all her forms via Totem poles. Aquatic creatures, reptiles, wild animals et.al. were represented in these statues and worshipped for their power.
From Stanley park, we drove to Capillano suspension bridge at around 12.30pm. There is a nice park in the area and we spent time exploring the park and took pictures. Then we walked on the bridge itself. It was wobbling a lot. Ramya had a hard time walking and not feeling dizzy.
She was quite concerned about the stability of the bridge. We soon got over our jitters when halfway through somebody requested us to take their pictures. By the time they took our pictures and we took their pictures, we had gotten used to the wobbly nature of the bridge. The other side of the bridge was a thick patch of green trees. We spent time walking around and taking pictures, including some funny ones ;-)Our next stop was Grouse mountain. We drove there by 2.30 pm, only to be disappointed by the very expensive tram ride. We did not take the tram ride, instead took a couple of pictures in the area and left after having coffee. We headed back to our hotel room to rest for some time. We slept from 4 pm till about 6 pm. On our return to the room, Ramya spent some time researching about local hotels offering high tea. To our delight, we found that there were a couple of places locally!
At 6 pm, we decided to explore the "historic" Gaslight area. The area gets its name because of an old steam operated clock which was quite interesting to see.
Unfortunately, that was about the only interesting thing we saw in the area. We walked around the deserted downtown area, which was deserted because it was a Monday! We took some pictures along the historic buildings of the area. We made a right turn in our walk, which unwittingly put us into a very shady street of the area which was full of homeless people. Though everyone was keeping to themselves, it was still quite a scary walk for us and we wanted to get our of there ASAP. We then ended up a riverside restaurant and had a quick snack. Some of the guests at the restaurant, suggested livelier places to checkout.We headed then in the direction of the consulate and it was more alive with lots of people and major nightlife. But, I guess the day had been long and tiring so we got pizza next door to our hotel and called it a night. We settled in our hotel room watching a rehashed version of all the classic fairy tales called "Happily never after" which was decent fun. Watching the movie made us hungry again. So, we headed to the downstairs bar called "Wings" to get some Thai food. After dinner, we completed the movie and slept off.
Day 4: Wandering the last few alleys of Vancouver
We woke up at around 8.30 am and checked out of our room. We planned to pick up our visa by 3.30 pm and drive to Seattle, to catch the 7 pm flight to San Jose. From our hotel, we drove to Dr. Sun Yat Sen's Classical Chinese garden. The place was a real treat for its elegant design following ancient chinese architeture, that inspires one to get involved in spirituality, philosophy and other such intellectual perspectives. We stayed there till about 12 pm and shopped at the visitor center where Ramya bought some gifts for my sister and her cousin.
We then headed to a new age Chinese restaurant called the "Wild Rice" where the decor and the presentation of food was very elegant and distinct from what we usually have. The food was very tasty and spicy. A sumptuous meal, i may say. It was almost 2 pm when we left the place.
We then wanted to go the high tea place but parking was turning to be a problem with street closures, one way streets and all the busy traffic. It turned out that we were likely to get delayed by High Tea. Ramya let go of this dream of hers ... I have an open promise to take her to the best High Tea place there is :-)
We picked up our visa by 3.30 pm. We also realized then that we'll likely miss our flight. So, Ramya printed the boarding passes at a nearby computer center, so that we get a seat on the next flight. We started the drive back at around 3.45 pm. By 4.30 pm, we were at the border, where I had to stop because I had a new stamp. It took a good 45 minutes for the whole port of entry procedure. But the officer at the post did a thorough job of the entry including giving me a printed I-94 card for a princely sum of $6!!
We continued our drive on and reached Seattle only by 7 pm, by when our flight had left!! We nevertheless, got a seat on the next flight to San Jose which was scheduled to leave at 8.45 pm. This worked out better because our other flight was scheduled to arrive at SFO. We had to check in all our bags, including our carry on bag because it had some items left in it, which were not allowable under travel restrictions. So, Ramya and I had the opportunity of living a fulfilled dream of travelling with no bags to carry around ;-)
We spent time till 8.45 pm chatting up and grabbing something to eat. We arrived at 10 pm in San Jose to be picked up by my BIL. We headed straight to their place for dinner and then called it a night.
Thank you for reading this report :-) I hope you enjoyed it.
Saturday, August 4, 2007
The first lunch
The first lunch ... a wonderful one
There was something different outright in the lunch Ramya cooked this afternoon (10/25/2006). It was 'good' food. Nevertheless, it dawned on me, shortly, that this was unlike any lunch I had. My food is almost always about how salty and spicy it is. This was not about that. This was about the completeness of everything that's part of the lunch. I had to, but, notice how well the Pudina and the beans were a major part of the Pulao. How tender the rice was. These are details I always miss. How can I satisfactorily appreciate this, in words?
Somewhere along the way, the best part of the lunch revealed itself. It was the spice itself, which proved elusive at the beginning. The spice was so delicately present all over that, it baffled me how I missed it in the first place!
If the food was so well made, how good must the person who cooked it be? Underneath the excitement of cooking that "first lunch", there was a subtle calmness which showed as the graceful way the vegetables were cut or the way everything came together. How, there was no trace that something was ever being prepared, to be cooked. The place was exactly the way it started out as. Really confirms for me that, the food we eat is a reflection of the person who made it. Now I know was 'different', was the experience of eating food prepared with love and care.
There was something different outright in the lunch Ramya cooked this afternoon (10/25/2006). It was 'good' food. Nevertheless, it dawned on me, shortly, that this was unlike any lunch I had. My food is almost always about how salty and spicy it is. This was not about that. This was about the completeness of everything that's part of the lunch. I had to, but, notice how well the Pudina and the beans were a major part of the Pulao. How tender the rice was. These are details I always miss. How can I satisfactorily appreciate this, in words?
Somewhere along the way, the best part of the lunch revealed itself. It was the spice itself, which proved elusive at the beginning. The spice was so delicately present all over that, it baffled me how I missed it in the first place!
If the food was so well made, how good must the person who cooked it be? Underneath the excitement of cooking that "first lunch", there was a subtle calmness which showed as the graceful way the vegetables were cut or the way everything came together. How, there was no trace that something was ever being prepared, to be cooked. The place was exactly the way it started out as. Really confirms for me that, the food we eat is a reflection of the person who made it. Now I know was 'different', was the experience of eating food prepared with love and care.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
My favorite actors and why they are my favorites
An old writeup ... resurfaces ...
My interest in watching movies has kinda skyrocketed recently. In record time, we completed watching all
those "Annowru" movies from India. Also, thanks to netflix I've been watching some awesome "foreign"
movies recently. So, I was just takin' a walk thinkin' about all these movies and somehow the thought
process shifted to my favorite actors. A list (fairly long one?) popped up almost immediately ... here
they go ... for lack of a better order, sorted by alphabetical last name.
Amitabh Bachchan
Johnny Depp
Robert Di Nero
Clint Eastwood
Toshiro Mifune (A recent discovery thanks to Japanese
movies)
Al Pacino
Dr. Rajkumar
Of course, the question that next popped was why were these my favorite actors among the 100's of movies
I watched of various actors? Simply because these are actors who bring a humanity to these roles. All of them are more often than not underdogs who've been cheated out of something they really love. However, they never really take that lying down. They revolt against that system that deceived them and seek revenge with anger that is colored in various hues of either anger itself or kindness or forgiveness. In the end, almost always everything ends well. Even if they do get killed at the end of the movie, their death would bring with it a better future for all concerned. But, the one interesting thing I discovered that I love the most
in all these characters is their love for humanity, which (probably except for Dr. Rajkumar) gets expressed in a very subtle way, especially with Clint Eastwood being the most subtle. They also tend to be super possessive about the people they love. One last thing is their amazing comic presence, sometimes it is super dry and black and sometimes it just makes you jump up and down and roll in your seat laughing.
I wouldn't want to leave this article high and dry without mentioning my favorite movies of each of these actors. Lets start in the reverse order of the above.
Dr. Rajkumar
Loved his roles in Haalu Jenu, Kaamana Billu, Bhagyadha Lakshmi Baaramma, Guri and Kasturi Nivasa.
All, just for his pure, unabashed expression of love for humanity -- which, of course some critics may
call overly emotional. Of course, he's also a very romantic guy ... the smile and the swing of his eyes
would make any of his heroines swoon. Also, he's got this sense of humor in these movies, which can just
make you laugh like crazy if you don't think too much about it.
Al Pacino
Ah! the firebrand. The favorites are Scent of a woman, Godfather II and Scarface. The guy's terminally pissed off and he still never loses that presence in the midst of being pissed off. Who can ever forget the scene where he shoots his newly married sister in Scarface or slaps his wife in Godfather II. However, his comic timing was perfect in Scent of a woman, though as usual laced with language that would make a sailor's face turn red.
Toshiro Mifune
A brand new favorite from Japanese movies. Probably unknown outside of the Japanese world. He's a
master of expressing anger as itself. Someone who just doesn't hide that he's been hurt, as he does in
Seven Samurai or Hidden Fortress. But at the same time, he shows that unabashed affection for his people
and doesn't back off from helping them in their moment of need, as seen in "The Red Beard".
Clint Eastwood
The quietest of 'em all, never seen him raise his voice in a movie and so incredibly cold all the time. Be it the early Fistful dollars or Few Dollars more or the more recent In the line of fire or Bridges of Madison County. If there's anyone hurt in a movie, its this guy -- super hurt. But, he never talks about it. All he wants is revenge, cold and clinical. Even a romantic movie like the Bridges of Madison County, leaves you with the coldness of this guy at the end of it. But, for all this that he brings to his movies, he also brings that subtlest love for humanity, where the innocent person gets to be saved. Justice is delivered.
Robert Di Nero
Again one of those cold, smiling, pissed off guys and very unforgiving. Once he knows something's
right, you can't pull him away from heading that way. Be it the revolutionary cabbie in Taxi Driver or
the possessive unloved boxer in Raging Bull or the cold don in Godfather II or the hired hand in Ronin
-- he's there to chill! But, if you see the human being underneath the chilling guy, he's really endearing. The love for the people he's looking out for is thrown at the audience, as a product of the crazy action that he just took. He doesn't talk about the love, he puts the love into action.
Johnny Depp
The queerest guy of the group - none of his movies resemble the previous one he made. In one he's
funny while in the other he's serious. In one he's a wonderful friend while in the other he's a psycho. But undiscovered in every movie is a skill he never showed earlier -- the comic timing of Pirates of Carribean or the chilling seriousness of Ninth Gate or the love for people in Finding Neverland/ Edward Scissorhands/ What's eating Gilbert Grape. The qualities I mentioned as common to all actors, may not be present together in one movie, but Johnny Depp as the actor brings together all these qualities and that is something so special about him.
Amitabh Bachchan
Though it was not my intention to place his review last, I guess he's the one actor I've had the longest phase of admiration in my life - more than 15 years in the making! Gosh! he's such a multi-faceted guy. On the top, he's pissed off -- eternally pissed off -- started out as angry young man, is now the angry old man, the anger only amplified by that deep baritone voice. But every so often, the anger gives way to love for people or "roll on the floor" comedy or tears that are so genuine that they'll trigger the same in your eyes. Of course for all the stuff I love about him, I hate it when he dances or is in a super emotional romantic scene with his heroine, the guy just freezes. But, then again, he later makes up for it in the movie. Favorites include the comedy of Namak Halaal/Yaarana/Satte Pe Satta, the super serious Zanjeer/Deewar/Black/Muqqadar ka Sikander/Agneepath or the have it all Hum/Shahenshah/Sharaabi.
I guess eventhough I've seen so few movies of these actors, I guess their roles are so powerful that they tell the stories of their life - a trait so rare in the rest of 'em.
My interest in watching movies has kinda skyrocketed recently. In record time, we completed watching all
those "Annowru" movies from India. Also, thanks to netflix I've been watching some awesome "foreign"
movies recently. So, I was just takin' a walk thinkin' about all these movies and somehow the thought
process shifted to my favorite actors. A list (fairly long one?) popped up almost immediately ... here
they go ... for lack of a better order, sorted by alphabetical last name.
Amitabh Bachchan
Johnny Depp
Robert Di Nero
Clint Eastwood
Toshiro Mifune (A recent discovery thanks to Japanese
movies)
Al Pacino
Dr. Rajkumar
Of course, the question that next popped was why were these my favorite actors among the 100's of movies
I watched of various actors? Simply because these are actors who bring a humanity to these roles. All of them are more often than not underdogs who've been cheated out of something they really love. However, they never really take that lying down. They revolt against that system that deceived them and seek revenge with anger that is colored in various hues of either anger itself or kindness or forgiveness. In the end, almost always everything ends well. Even if they do get killed at the end of the movie, their death would bring with it a better future for all concerned. But, the one interesting thing I discovered that I love the most
in all these characters is their love for humanity, which (probably except for Dr. Rajkumar) gets expressed in a very subtle way, especially with Clint Eastwood being the most subtle. They also tend to be super possessive about the people they love. One last thing is their amazing comic presence, sometimes it is super dry and black and sometimes it just makes you jump up and down and roll in your seat laughing.
I wouldn't want to leave this article high and dry without mentioning my favorite movies of each of these actors. Lets start in the reverse order of the above.
Dr. Rajkumar
Loved his roles in Haalu Jenu, Kaamana Billu, Bhagyadha Lakshmi Baaramma, Guri and Kasturi Nivasa.
All, just for his pure, unabashed expression of love for humanity -- which, of course some critics may
call overly emotional. Of course, he's also a very romantic guy ... the smile and the swing of his eyes
would make any of his heroines swoon. Also, he's got this sense of humor in these movies, which can just
make you laugh like crazy if you don't think too much about it.
Al Pacino
Ah! the firebrand. The favorites are Scent of a woman, Godfather II and Scarface. The guy's terminally pissed off and he still never loses that presence in the midst of being pissed off. Who can ever forget the scene where he shoots his newly married sister in Scarface or slaps his wife in Godfather II. However, his comic timing was perfect in Scent of a woman, though as usual laced with language that would make a sailor's face turn red.
Toshiro Mifune
A brand new favorite from Japanese movies. Probably unknown outside of the Japanese world. He's a
master of expressing anger as itself. Someone who just doesn't hide that he's been hurt, as he does in
Seven Samurai or Hidden Fortress. But at the same time, he shows that unabashed affection for his people
and doesn't back off from helping them in their moment of need, as seen in "The Red Beard".
Clint Eastwood
The quietest of 'em all, never seen him raise his voice in a movie and so incredibly cold all the time. Be it the early Fistful dollars or Few Dollars more or the more recent In the line of fire or Bridges of Madison County. If there's anyone hurt in a movie, its this guy -- super hurt. But, he never talks about it. All he wants is revenge, cold and clinical. Even a romantic movie like the Bridges of Madison County, leaves you with the coldness of this guy at the end of it. But, for all this that he brings to his movies, he also brings that subtlest love for humanity, where the innocent person gets to be saved. Justice is delivered.
Robert Di Nero
Again one of those cold, smiling, pissed off guys and very unforgiving. Once he knows something's
right, you can't pull him away from heading that way. Be it the revolutionary cabbie in Taxi Driver or
the possessive unloved boxer in Raging Bull or the cold don in Godfather II or the hired hand in Ronin
-- he's there to chill! But, if you see the human being underneath the chilling guy, he's really endearing. The love for the people he's looking out for is thrown at the audience, as a product of the crazy action that he just took. He doesn't talk about the love, he puts the love into action.
Johnny Depp
The queerest guy of the group - none of his movies resemble the previous one he made. In one he's
funny while in the other he's serious. In one he's a wonderful friend while in the other he's a psycho. But undiscovered in every movie is a skill he never showed earlier -- the comic timing of Pirates of Carribean or the chilling seriousness of Ninth Gate or the love for people in Finding Neverland/ Edward Scissorhands/ What's eating Gilbert Grape. The qualities I mentioned as common to all actors, may not be present together in one movie, but Johnny Depp as the actor brings together all these qualities and that is something so special about him.
Amitabh Bachchan
Though it was not my intention to place his review last, I guess he's the one actor I've had the longest phase of admiration in my life - more than 15 years in the making! Gosh! he's such a multi-faceted guy. On the top, he's pissed off -- eternally pissed off -- started out as angry young man, is now the angry old man, the anger only amplified by that deep baritone voice. But every so often, the anger gives way to love for people or "roll on the floor" comedy or tears that are so genuine that they'll trigger the same in your eyes. Of course for all the stuff I love about him, I hate it when he dances or is in a super emotional romantic scene with his heroine, the guy just freezes. But, then again, he later makes up for it in the movie. Favorites include the comedy of Namak Halaal/Yaarana/Satte Pe Satta, the super serious Zanjeer/Deewar/Black/Muqqadar ka Sikander/Agneepath or the have it all Hum/Shahenshah/Sharaabi.
I guess eventhough I've seen so few movies of these actors, I guess their roles are so powerful that they tell the stories of their life - a trait so rare in the rest of 'em.
Thursday, July 26, 2007
"A lot like love" -- a review
Ramya had added this movie a while ago and finally the movie got its turn in the queue.
The premise of the movie is about two 20-somethings Oliver (Ashton Kutcher) and Emily (Amanda Peet) who keep running into each other over the years, everytime having a good deal of fun but never really getting around to express their feelings for one another. They go through their phases of life of breaking out of adoloscence, struggling in relationships, building a career ... basically living life. But, everytime they meet each other, the movie turns into a riot where each one keeps getting back at the other with something funny to say or do that has you in peals of laughter. Of course, predictably enough, they come together at the end of the movie :-)
The movie has delightful performances by Kutcher and Peet with both putting in a natural effort and excelling in the same. The movie is never a pain on the viewer's patience and has lots of laugh-a-lot moments :-) Kal-penn has a short but energy filled role. Rest of the cast has done a fine job.
The locations of the movie, which are mostly urban have been picked tastefully. What's especially awesome is the house where Emily lives. The beautiful courtyard makes the house look so elegant.
The movie is overall fast paced, though I felt that the last 10 minutes could have used better editing.
Nevertheless, I'd rate the movie as an excellent watch.
The premise of the movie is about two 20-somethings Oliver (Ashton Kutcher) and Emily (Amanda Peet) who keep running into each other over the years, everytime having a good deal of fun but never really getting around to express their feelings for one another. They go through their phases of life of breaking out of adoloscence, struggling in relationships, building a career ... basically living life. But, everytime they meet each other, the movie turns into a riot where each one keeps getting back at the other with something funny to say or do that has you in peals of laughter. Of course, predictably enough, they come together at the end of the movie :-)
The movie has delightful performances by Kutcher and Peet with both putting in a natural effort and excelling in the same. The movie is never a pain on the viewer's patience and has lots of laugh-a-lot moments :-) Kal-penn has a short but energy filled role. Rest of the cast has done a fine job.
The locations of the movie, which are mostly urban have been picked tastefully. What's especially awesome is the house where Emily lives. The beautiful courtyard makes the house look so elegant.
The movie is overall fast paced, though I felt that the last 10 minutes could have used better editing.
Nevertheless, I'd rate the movie as an excellent watch.
Saturday, June 2, 2007
Cheeni Kum -- Review
Cheeni Kum was a long awaited movie and a bunch of us friends got a chance to watch it last night at the Theaters here.
The premise of the story is around two protagonists ... Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Amitabh Bacchan), owner of a high profile Indian restaurant, Spice6, in London and Nina Verma (Tabu), a Delhi based software engineer visiting her friend Shalini, at London. The movie starts with proud and arrogant Buddha having a tiff with Tabu, who thinks his top class Zafrani Pulao is too sweet for her taste and she comes back with her own authentic Zafrani Pulao. This event bowls Buddha over and an unusual romance builds between them. This provides amusement to the restaurant employees, who get a break from their tough boss and also to Buddha's mom (an amazing Zohra Sehgal) and cute 9-yr old neighbor Sexy (the very cute Swini Khara).
The romance builds around Nina coming back daily to the restaurant to return his umbrella on rainy London evenings. Eventually, Buddha lets go off his guard and falls for this intriguing women. There is a problem however, Buddha is 64 years old and Nina is only 34 years old. The two are convinced they need to get married. Its easy to convince Buddha's mom. But its very hard to convince Nina's dad (Paresh Rawal), who himself is only 58 years old. How the mission is accomplished forms the rest of the plot.
There are a lot of amazing things about this movie. Foremost are the performance of Amitabh and Tabu. They are just natural for this role, as though they were going through it in real life. Amitabh's performance as a snooty, arrogant and proud chef is amazing. He has the best dialogues in the movie ... a non stop stream of one liners ... they are far too many of them, that tickle the funny rib. Tabu at the same time is no-nonsense, refusing to let go of her ideals but at the same time very human.
Sexy is the best supporting role in her cute part giving "romantic" advice of a 9-yr old to Buddha. Her fundas would shock anybody. Zohra Sehgal has an amazing energy going even in this advanced stage of her life, she is 95 yrs old now! She has a very cute dance at the end of the movie.
The rest of the crew plays a very good support cast, especially the chefs who keep making fun of one another, particularly the one with teeth jumping out of his mouth ;-)
The soundtrack is very awesome, especially given that Illaiyaraja has composed the music. He has reused a lot of his past work in Tamil and Kannada movies. Shreya Ghoshal has sung all songs to perfection.
First time director Balakrishnan, who was formerly an Ad Man has done a fantastic job, keeping the movie fast paced with loads of comedy.
On the flip side, the movie loses pace in the second half. It could have used some crisp editing. Paresh Rawal's talents are mostly unused, which is very sad, given his amazing comic abilities. The comedy dries up too, in the second half.
Nevertheless, it is a worthy watch ... maybe worth watching a second time too and owning the DVD for those laughs, isn't a bad idea. :-)
The premise of the story is around two protagonists ... Buddhadeb Dasgupta (Amitabh Bacchan), owner of a high profile Indian restaurant, Spice6, in London and Nina Verma (Tabu), a Delhi based software engineer visiting her friend Shalini, at London. The movie starts with proud and arrogant Buddha having a tiff with Tabu, who thinks his top class Zafrani Pulao is too sweet for her taste and she comes back with her own authentic Zafrani Pulao. This event bowls Buddha over and an unusual romance builds between them. This provides amusement to the restaurant employees, who get a break from their tough boss and also to Buddha's mom (an amazing Zohra Sehgal) and cute 9-yr old neighbor Sexy (the very cute Swini Khara).
The romance builds around Nina coming back daily to the restaurant to return his umbrella on rainy London evenings. Eventually, Buddha lets go off his guard and falls for this intriguing women. There is a problem however, Buddha is 64 years old and Nina is only 34 years old. The two are convinced they need to get married. Its easy to convince Buddha's mom. But its very hard to convince Nina's dad (Paresh Rawal), who himself is only 58 years old. How the mission is accomplished forms the rest of the plot.
There are a lot of amazing things about this movie. Foremost are the performance of Amitabh and Tabu. They are just natural for this role, as though they were going through it in real life. Amitabh's performance as a snooty, arrogant and proud chef is amazing. He has the best dialogues in the movie ... a non stop stream of one liners ... they are far too many of them, that tickle the funny rib. Tabu at the same time is no-nonsense, refusing to let go of her ideals but at the same time very human.
Sexy is the best supporting role in her cute part giving "romantic" advice of a 9-yr old to Buddha. Her fundas would shock anybody. Zohra Sehgal has an amazing energy going even in this advanced stage of her life, she is 95 yrs old now! She has a very cute dance at the end of the movie.
The rest of the crew plays a very good support cast, especially the chefs who keep making fun of one another, particularly the one with teeth jumping out of his mouth ;-)
The soundtrack is very awesome, especially given that Illaiyaraja has composed the music. He has reused a lot of his past work in Tamil and Kannada movies. Shreya Ghoshal has sung all songs to perfection.
First time director Balakrishnan, who was formerly an Ad Man has done a fantastic job, keeping the movie fast paced with loads of comedy.
On the flip side, the movie loses pace in the second half. It could have used some crisp editing. Paresh Rawal's talents are mostly unused, which is very sad, given his amazing comic abilities. The comedy dries up too, in the second half.
Nevertheless, it is a worthy watch ... maybe worth watching a second time too and owning the DVD for those laughs, isn't a bad idea. :-)
Thursday, May 31, 2007
"Shwaas" -- a movie worth watching
We recently watched Shwaas. It is a marathi movie made in 2004 which was India's official entry to the Oscars that year.
The movie is the story of a Grandfather and grandson who live in Rural Konkan region. The child is 4 years old and is stuck with cancer of the retina. The grandfather brings the kid to the city for the treatment and the news of the cancer is revealed. It is a really hard moment because the kid has a choice between blindness for the rest of his life or death ... if he chooses to live, it means that he can never easily pursue his favorite passion of education.
The emotional movie has many a touching moment including the "climax" where the child has one nice evening to remember before his operation and the moment where he stumbles upon the realization that he'll be blinded forever. Ooh! I am getting goosebumps typing this :-)
The kid portrayed by talented Ashwin Chitale and the grandfather by Arun Nalawade have put in Stellar performances. They have been very well supported by Sandeep Kulkarni as Dr. Sane, Amrutha Subhash as Ashawari the social worker and Ganesh Manjrekar as the kid's uncle.
Bhaskar Chandavarkar's music is perfect for the movie's setting.
I'd definitely recommend watching it. Read here for a full plot summary
The movie is the story of a Grandfather and grandson who live in Rural Konkan region. The child is 4 years old and is stuck with cancer of the retina. The grandfather brings the kid to the city for the treatment and the news of the cancer is revealed. It is a really hard moment because the kid has a choice between blindness for the rest of his life or death ... if he chooses to live, it means that he can never easily pursue his favorite passion of education.
The emotional movie has many a touching moment including the "climax" where the child has one nice evening to remember before his operation and the moment where he stumbles upon the realization that he'll be blinded forever. Ooh! I am getting goosebumps typing this :-)
The kid portrayed by talented Ashwin Chitale and the grandfather by Arun Nalawade have put in Stellar performances. They have been very well supported by Sandeep Kulkarni as Dr. Sane, Amrutha Subhash as Ashawari the social worker and Ganesh Manjrekar as the kid's uncle.
Bhaskar Chandavarkar's music is perfect for the movie's setting.
I'd definitely recommend watching it. Read here for a full plot summary
Thursday, May 10, 2007
The inspiring story of Suresh Kamath
"Suresh Kamath, the managing director of Chennai based Laser Soft Infosystems Ltd is an unusual man. Unlike most other entrepreneurs, he does not aspire to create a business empire; his sole ambition is to provide employment to 10,000 people. He also plans to reserve 40 per cent of the jobs for the disabled."
Read the whole story
Read the whole story
Monday, April 23, 2007
The old woman who gave her town a swimming pool
An inspiring video of how Maisie raised hundreds of thousands of dollars in her own simple and inspiring way.
Thursday, April 5, 2007
"The Namesake" -- my review
After procrastinating on this for a while, Ramya and I finally watched "The Namesake". It was well worth the wait :-)
Premise
The story, as must be already known, is about the immigrant Ganguli family (Irrfan Khan and Tabu) in upstate New York and their two children Gogol (Kal Penn) and Sonia (Sahira Nair). The movie begins in a bit of a flashback around Irrfan and Tabu's marriage. They make a very cute couple who are beginning a new life together. Then the children arrive and gradually grow up among their white counterparts. Somewhere along the way, Gogol hits a roadblock about his name where everyone starts teasing him about its weirdness and he feels left out. This leads to constant bickering with the parents about why they named him so. The name incidentally happens to be derived from Nikholai Gogol, a favorite author of Irrfan.
The rest of the movie is about how Gogol comes about to discover the links behind his name and eventually discovers the peace and freedom which has always been missing in his life and leads to all the confusion and battles of his life.
First off, what really impressed me about this movie is how well the story has been formulated. Jhumpa Lahiri's work is really amazing. What is more amazing is how well Mira Nair has brought to life such a complex story to life without getting drawn into lazy frills or avoiding difficult shots. That, for me, is the mark of a true filmmaker.
The other two winners of the movie are music and cinematography. The movie starts off in the mid-70s and ends somewhere in the last couple of years. The music shifts according to the different eras and different moods. It literally drew us to become involved in the movie. The background voice for Tabu's hindustani alaaps are really haunting. But, our favorite was definitely the sexy remix of Mukesh's soulful "Yeh Mera Deewanapan". No one could guess that this song could be remixed!!
The camera work has been stunning in being able to capture the beauty of New York and Kolkata. Ramya, who lived in New York for many years was continuously baffled about what part of the city was being showed! The shots were stunning. Kolkata has always been famous as the city of joy and the camera work has captured the dizzy life of the city. We were left with the feeling of being home and wanting to visit Kolkata on our next trip to India :-)
As far as acting goes, Irrfan, Tabu and Kal Penn shine in their own right. Irrfan has played the sensitive role of a dad with aplomb. He doesn't push his son too hard to discover everything about life. He gives the gentle nudges required but then again gives his son the space that is required by children to discover life. Irrfan's scene where he has a long chat with Kal Penn was definitely very moving and brought out the value of being a dad, really well.
Tabu plays the role of a wife and mom in a way that probably only she could. She is shown to be a normal, everyday woman who loves her family like crazy and is deeply strong and powerful yet kind and gentle on the top. Aren't all our moms like that? :-) Yet, in the latter half of the movie she emerges as a brave woman who is out to balance and shoulder the responsibilities of the family. Her scenes in this part of the movie are sensitive and very moving.
Kal Penn has evolved a lot from playing the boorish college kid in "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle". There are shades of that at the beginning of the movie. He then gradually evolves to playing the confused kid in the middle of the movie making interesting decisions about his lifestyle and preferences. But where the really best part of his role emerges is towards the ending where he is forced to take a long look at life. He could have been a lot more human in his emotions but still manages to get the message across.
The rest of the cast is mostly ok and doesn't have much of screen time to make any impact. The movie running time is mostly ok, though it drags towards the end. The ending could have received some crisp editing.
That apart, its a fabulous movie ... a movie at the end of which, Ramya and I got into a long winded discussion about parents, parenting, immigrants and life in India. You'll surely would want to do that :-) We plan to send a gift of this DVD to our parents as soon as it releases ... this is one of the better tributes we could give to them, for the fine job they've done!
Premise
The story, as must be already known, is about the immigrant Ganguli family (Irrfan Khan and Tabu) in upstate New York and their two children Gogol (Kal Penn) and Sonia (Sahira Nair). The movie begins in a bit of a flashback around Irrfan and Tabu's marriage. They make a very cute couple who are beginning a new life together. Then the children arrive and gradually grow up among their white counterparts. Somewhere along the way, Gogol hits a roadblock about his name where everyone starts teasing him about its weirdness and he feels left out. This leads to constant bickering with the parents about why they named him so. The name incidentally happens to be derived from Nikholai Gogol, a favorite author of Irrfan.
The rest of the movie is about how Gogol comes about to discover the links behind his name and eventually discovers the peace and freedom which has always been missing in his life and leads to all the confusion and battles of his life.
First off, what really impressed me about this movie is how well the story has been formulated. Jhumpa Lahiri's work is really amazing. What is more amazing is how well Mira Nair has brought to life such a complex story to life without getting drawn into lazy frills or avoiding difficult shots. That, for me, is the mark of a true filmmaker.
The other two winners of the movie are music and cinematography. The movie starts off in the mid-70s and ends somewhere in the last couple of years. The music shifts according to the different eras and different moods. It literally drew us to become involved in the movie. The background voice for Tabu's hindustani alaaps are really haunting. But, our favorite was definitely the sexy remix of Mukesh's soulful "Yeh Mera Deewanapan". No one could guess that this song could be remixed!!
The camera work has been stunning in being able to capture the beauty of New York and Kolkata. Ramya, who lived in New York for many years was continuously baffled about what part of the city was being showed! The shots were stunning. Kolkata has always been famous as the city of joy and the camera work has captured the dizzy life of the city. We were left with the feeling of being home and wanting to visit Kolkata on our next trip to India :-)
As far as acting goes, Irrfan, Tabu and Kal Penn shine in their own right. Irrfan has played the sensitive role of a dad with aplomb. He doesn't push his son too hard to discover everything about life. He gives the gentle nudges required but then again gives his son the space that is required by children to discover life. Irrfan's scene where he has a long chat with Kal Penn was definitely very moving and brought out the value of being a dad, really well.
Tabu plays the role of a wife and mom in a way that probably only she could. She is shown to be a normal, everyday woman who loves her family like crazy and is deeply strong and powerful yet kind and gentle on the top. Aren't all our moms like that? :-) Yet, in the latter half of the movie she emerges as a brave woman who is out to balance and shoulder the responsibilities of the family. Her scenes in this part of the movie are sensitive and very moving.
Kal Penn has evolved a lot from playing the boorish college kid in "Harold and Kumar go to White Castle". There are shades of that at the beginning of the movie. He then gradually evolves to playing the confused kid in the middle of the movie making interesting decisions about his lifestyle and preferences. But where the really best part of his role emerges is towards the ending where he is forced to take a long look at life. He could have been a lot more human in his emotions but still manages to get the message across.
The rest of the cast is mostly ok and doesn't have much of screen time to make any impact. The movie running time is mostly ok, though it drags towards the end. The ending could have received some crisp editing.
That apart, its a fabulous movie ... a movie at the end of which, Ramya and I got into a long winded discussion about parents, parenting, immigrants and life in India. You'll surely would want to do that :-) We plan to send a gift of this DVD to our parents as soon as it releases ... this is one of the better tributes we could give to them, for the fine job they've done!
Monday, April 2, 2007
Random observations from a weekend at the beach
This last weekend had gorgeous weather ... so, Ramya and I took the opportunity to visit the Santa Cruz and Monterey beaches. On Saturday, we went to Santa Cruz with my sister's family including her 3 yr old tiny tot Tarun. On Sunday, we went to Monterey's 17-mile drive with Ramya's cousin.
There are few interesting things I noted ...
There are few interesting things I noted ...
- no matter how many sea gulls' photos I take, I am always excited to take lot more of them!
- sunny days cannot have any impact on cold beaches
- cold beaches can't turn away excited kids who somehow get great joy in running into the waves
- kids run around in the cutest outfits such as Tarun's white vest and trainer pants. Of course, girls of his age have more colorful stuff to wear! ;-)
- If there are too many boulders on the path to the water then the crowd stays at a comfortable distance and prefers to take photographs
- The ones who tread past the boulders are guaranteed the pure joy of tredding on untrodden sands
- Older uncles and aunts have a nice way of romancing, that can be inspiring to us, the younger lot ;-)
- Squirrels, who are normally shy, get past their reserved nature and dare to jump into people's pockets, if the pockets contain food.
- Dippin' dots, that claim to be the future of ice cream, are really tasty and unleash the taste of ice cream in your mouth even though they don't seem to be able to do that
- its great to get face painting done, especially if its similar to the one your spouse got ... it triggers stares from the older folks and giggles from the kids.
LA-gannada for dummies
Years ago, a bunch of us friends in Los Angeles invented a new form of Kannada called LA-gannada. Following is a small tutorial in la-gannada to help people become better
users of this wonderful langwaze. it is by no means complete. Examples, where needed, are in red.
Some basic conversions:
users of this wonderful langwaze. it is by no means complete. Examples, where needed, are in red.
Some basic conversions:
- alaa -- "hello", a form of greeting
- bezaan -- "bejaan", a lot
- biskit -- "biscuit" or taking for a ride
- bondbidthu -- "came off" (Eg: yelligo hoytha idhe suddenaagi naayi bondbidthu -- was going somewhere and a dog came off)
- chamak -- taking for a ride
- checchax -- smashing away to glory
- chitranna -- reduced to pieces
- coolamma -- a more english version of kewlamma
- coolagiru -- suggestion to some1 whoz acting hyper to cool down
- enzaai -- "enjoy", a suggestion to start enjoying
- fleece -- "Please"
- fleeco -- A major request
- foozaari -- "poojari" or priest
- frazay -- "praje" or a disciple/subject
- gaan -- destroyed/finished
- hifi -- something too good
- hoytha idhe -- "was going"
- kewlamma -- exclamation following something relieving
- lavalamma -- exclamation following an achievement not possible by ordinary mortals
- naayi thara -- something too good
- nimazzi -- "nimm ajji"
- soofar -- something too good
- tofi -- "topi" or taking for a ride
- vaagbudnaa -- shall we take off?
- vaana -- abbreviated form of vaagbudnaa (Eg: yelligo hoytha idhe -- was going somewhere)
- yaffo yaffo -- exclamation
- yaffo yaffo dileefouraffo -- major exclamation
- Conversyaa Rules
- ([A-Za-z]*)[ts]ion --> \1sy[aa]+ where \1 is the Regular Expression in parantheses
- english word --> la-gannada equivalent
- conversion --> conversyaa
- permission --> permisya
- promotion --> promosyaa
- any occurence of p followed by h has to be changed to p (ex: philadelphia --> piladelpia)
- any occurrence of p not followed by h has to be changed to f (ex: paper --> fafer)
- cryptography --> cryftograpy
Friday, March 16, 2007
Sunday, March 11, 2007
Wild Hogs -- The movie review
Last night we watched the movie 'Wild Hogs'. We were supposed to watch it last week but didn't do so because it got an F grade from the critics and most user reviews weren't gr8 either. But to our surprise, the movie made $40 million in one weekend and hence we decided to watch it. It turned out to be a very pleasant surprise.
The movie is about 4 40-something friends Doug (Tim Allen) who's a married dentist, Woody (John Travolta) who's a high profile broker kinda guy just divorced, Bobby (Martin Lawrence) a henpecked plumber and Dudley (William H. Macy) a geeky software programmer who is perpetually scared of women. The situations of their lives where one has high cholesterol and can't eat junk while the other cannot pursue a book writing dream while another is bankrupt et.al. lead them on the quest of freedom. Being good old college buddies, they decide to do what they've always doing together -- BIKING! They decide to head out in quest of the pacific on a road trip from Cincinnati.
The movie is about how their roadtrip shapes up, including their troubles getting along with each other and then getting accepted among real bikers. Somewhere along the skirmishes with real bikers, there's a nice little love story that gets created in a tiny little New Mexican town.
The movie is an out-and-out comedy which has a very good mix of mid-life crisis, the quest for freedom and the attempt to be 'cool'. Dudley's character is hilarious right from the beginning, given his attempts to fit in among friends and women though he loves his geeky beginning. The scene in the trailers of him banging into a realtor board is only the tip of the iceberg. His character has been very well crafted to keep you rolling in laughter. William Macy, traditionally the serious 'character role' artist, carries out Dudley really well.
Martin Lawrence's Bobby is well-crafted. Age has definitely taken out any of the goofiness from him. The sways and stylish way of talking that only he can do with that husky "am in pain" accent is good to hear as usual.
John Travolta's character of Woody starts off very boisterous and full of enthusiasm. Somewhere along the way, his situation in life shows up as guilt and it is really funny to see him cringing, though it borders on irritation at times. Towards the end of the movie, his back to where he started the movie and that's really entertaining.
Tim Allen's Doug has the most gentlemany character of role. Doesn't do much but generate a few good guffaws. It is the kind of typical Tim Allen role that we get to see on "Home Improvement" :-) He has one of the best scenes of the movie when he slaps a bull's butt, only to realize that a bull should never be slapped twice on the butt! I leave the rest for your imagination.
There's a wide variety of supporting cast that provides good laughs here and there.
The story itself is one of those "feel good" stories, where the underdogs win. Add a romantic angle to it and there's your nice enjoyable movie. Added to that, given that these gentlemen are mostly 45+, it is mostly clean humor with little or no profanity or "adult" material, making it a clean family entertainer.
I'd definitely recommend that you watch it.
The movie is about 4 40-something friends Doug (Tim Allen) who's a married dentist, Woody (John Travolta) who's a high profile broker kinda guy just divorced, Bobby (Martin Lawrence) a henpecked plumber and Dudley (William H. Macy) a geeky software programmer who is perpetually scared of women. The situations of their lives where one has high cholesterol and can't eat junk while the other cannot pursue a book writing dream while another is bankrupt et.al. lead them on the quest of freedom. Being good old college buddies, they decide to do what they've always doing together -- BIKING! They decide to head out in quest of the pacific on a road trip from Cincinnati.
The movie is about how their roadtrip shapes up, including their troubles getting along with each other and then getting accepted among real bikers. Somewhere along the skirmishes with real bikers, there's a nice little love story that gets created in a tiny little New Mexican town.
The movie is an out-and-out comedy which has a very good mix of mid-life crisis, the quest for freedom and the attempt to be 'cool'. Dudley's character is hilarious right from the beginning, given his attempts to fit in among friends and women though he loves his geeky beginning. The scene in the trailers of him banging into a realtor board is only the tip of the iceberg. His character has been very well crafted to keep you rolling in laughter. William Macy, traditionally the serious 'character role' artist, carries out Dudley really well.
Martin Lawrence's Bobby is well-crafted. Age has definitely taken out any of the goofiness from him. The sways and stylish way of talking that only he can do with that husky "am in pain" accent is good to hear as usual.
John Travolta's character of Woody starts off very boisterous and full of enthusiasm. Somewhere along the way, his situation in life shows up as guilt and it is really funny to see him cringing, though it borders on irritation at times. Towards the end of the movie, his back to where he started the movie and that's really entertaining.
Tim Allen's Doug has the most gentlemany character of role. Doesn't do much but generate a few good guffaws. It is the kind of typical Tim Allen role that we get to see on "Home Improvement" :-) He has one of the best scenes of the movie when he slaps a bull's butt, only to realize that a bull should never be slapped twice on the butt! I leave the rest for your imagination.
There's a wide variety of supporting cast that provides good laughs here and there.
The story itself is one of those "feel good" stories, where the underdogs win. Add a romantic angle to it and there's your nice enjoyable movie. Added to that, given that these gentlemen are mostly 45+, it is mostly clean humor with little or no profanity or "adult" material, making it a clean family entertainer.
I'd definitely recommend that you watch it.
Friday, March 9, 2007
Wednesday, February 28, 2007
Of microfinancing schemes, morals and social responsibilities ...
A friend of mine forwarded information regarding a non-profit organization that is into microfinancing. This e-mail was doing rounds on a mailing list that we are part of. Soon, a war of mails started about how organizations doing microfinancing aren't actually hitting the real target i.e., end of poverty. Especially at the heart of the argument, were 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Winners Dr. Mohammad Yunus and his Grameen Bank.
Grameen has done phenomenal work in alleviating poverty over the last 30+ years in Bangladesh and rest of the world. Atleast, that is the claim made. However, a series of articles, such as the ones below, exposed how the microfinancing system, though theoretically extraordinary, fail to make drastic social impact and in fact, on the flipside, end up doing far more damage to societal structures.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061030/bello
The articles above would give the reader a better idea about microfinancing, which is not the purpose of discussion in this blog, which I delve into now ...
Reading these articles really made me wonder, why on earth should one care about ending poverty or making lives of people better. Of course, people have provided me with endless arguments about how poverty can never end because it defies the laws of economics or how peace can never be achieved in the world because it defies the laws of societies and economics and politics et.al. I always ignored these comments in the enthusiasm of 'making a difference' in the world. However, I now concede, yes ... it is a perfectly valid argument that poverty is never going to end and world peace will never be achieved.
This rolls me over to my favorite 'moral' conversation ... what about social responsibility? How responsible is one for the society around them? I think people living in a society can be structured into the following ....
a. People who are happy to pay their taxes and wait for the government to work wonders.
b. People who pay their taxes, are unhappy about the governments work and on top of that pay extra money to NGOs to get some good work done that is 'helpful' to the society.
c. People who contribute taxes to the government and also contribute to NGO efforts but are still left unhappy about how the world is and are seeking solutions (I probably belong to this group)
d. People who've had enough of what's being done by the government and NGOs and instead decide to give it all up and go and do something of their own.
At the end of all this long blah ... blah ... I am left in this reflective state of mind where I really would want to think that instead of pursuing seemingly impossible, utopian goals, it'd make much more sense to scale down to a much more manageable level of life than go for the moon. I am reminded of what a very good friend of mine once said ... "I want to end my own poverty. I think that's the best contribution I can make to the end of world poverty". This is very selfish, I guess, but a lot more sensible :-)
P.S.: A full 12 or so hours after writing this blog, I am at much greater ease on this topic ... my newest and favoritest advisor i.e., my wife told me to follow what Lord Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita about doing one's duty without caring for the fruits of the effort! :-)
Grameen has done phenomenal work in alleviating poverty over the last 30+ years in Bangladesh and rest of the world. Atleast, that is the claim made. However, a series of articles, such as the ones below, exposed how the microfinancing system, though theoretically extraordinary, fail to make drastic social impact and in fact, on the flipside, end up doing far more damage to societal structures.
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20061030/bello
http://www.leftbusinessobserver.com/Micro.html
The articles above would give the reader a better idea about microfinancing, which is not the purpose of discussion in this blog, which I delve into now ...
Reading these articles really made me wonder, why on earth should one care about ending poverty or making lives of people better. Of course, people have provided me with endless arguments about how poverty can never end because it defies the laws of economics or how peace can never be achieved in the world because it defies the laws of societies and economics and politics et.al. I always ignored these comments in the enthusiasm of 'making a difference' in the world. However, I now concede, yes ... it is a perfectly valid argument that poverty is never going to end and world peace will never be achieved.
This rolls me over to my favorite 'moral' conversation ... what about social responsibility? How responsible is one for the society around them? I think people living in a society can be structured into the following ....
a. People who are happy to pay their taxes and wait for the government to work wonders.
b. People who pay their taxes, are unhappy about the governments work and on top of that pay extra money to NGOs to get some good work done that is 'helpful' to the society.
c. People who contribute taxes to the government and also contribute to NGO efforts but are still left unhappy about how the world is and are seeking solutions (I probably belong to this group)
d. People who've had enough of what's being done by the government and NGOs and instead decide to give it all up and go and do something of their own.
At the end of all this long blah ... blah ... I am left in this reflective state of mind where I really would want to think that instead of pursuing seemingly impossible, utopian goals, it'd make much more sense to scale down to a much more manageable level of life than go for the moon. I am reminded of what a very good friend of mine once said ... "I want to end my own poverty. I think that's the best contribution I can make to the end of world poverty". This is very selfish, I guess, but a lot more sensible :-)
P.S.: A full 12 or so hours after writing this blog, I am at much greater ease on this topic ... my newest and favoritest advisor i.e., my wife told me to follow what Lord Krishna told Arjuna in the Bhagavadgita about doing one's duty without caring for the fruits of the effort! :-)
Friday, February 23, 2007
Closing off a hectic week
What better way to close a week that's been hectic for my wife and me, than a poem? ;-)
"wake up! we need to wake up" you say
*yawn* "yeah i will ... oh man!" i say
"quick ... quick ... its 7.30 already" i say
"yes ... yes ... am almost done" you say
*yawn* "i am on the train now" you say
*yawn* "good! have a gr8 day ... go 2 sleep now" i say
"where were you all morning?" i ask
"meetings all morning ..." you say
"had lunch yet?" you ask
"not yet ... too busy fixing bugs" i say
"have you left yet?" i ask
"not yet ... will leave soon" you say
*yawn* "have you left yet? i'll be there soon" you ask
*yawn* "am on my way" i say
"man! i am so tired ... i can sleep now" i say
"hahaha ... lets see" you say
"i can't sleep ... i am yawning so much" you say
"... me neither" i say
zzzzzz ... snore ....
"wake up! we need to wake up" you say
*yawn* "yeah i will ... oh man!" i say
"quick ... quick ... its 7.30 already" i say
"yes ... yes ... am almost done" you say
*yawn* "i am on the train now" you say
*yawn* "good! have a gr8 day ... go 2 sleep now" i say
"where were you all morning?" i ask
"meetings all morning ..." you say
"had lunch yet?" you ask
"not yet ... too busy fixing bugs" i say
"have you left yet?" i ask
"not yet ... will leave soon" you say
*yawn* "have you left yet? i'll be there soon" you ask
*yawn* "am on my way" i say
"man! i am so tired ... i can sleep now" i say
"hahaha ... lets see" you say
"i can't sleep ... i am yawning so much" you say
"... me neither" i say
zzzzzz ... snore ....
Monday, February 12, 2007
A new realm of work in Jalamangala
History
Jalamangala village is a small village about 45 miles from Bangalore. My family has a history
of about 300 years in this village. Our ancestors came from Andhra Pradesh long ago and settled here. My grandfather was a priest and post master. He was very active in the Village during his lifetime, active in politics and was a philanthropist. During his lifetime and the years following his death, his 8 sons moved to Bangalore city for livelihood.
My relationship to the village
I had made a few trips to the village during my childhood days. I have fond memories of those
trips. The simple nature of the villagers always touched me. At the same time, the caste structure was something that disappointed me because it put the people of the village at a lower pedestal than my own. For me, we are all humans after all and need to be treated alike. But, being the scared little sissy that I was, I kept quiet!
I came to the US in Dec ’99. Many Indians that I spoke to were disappointed with how
rural/poor India showed on the global map. Some were sad and others were outright critical about the country. This made me angry, but then again I just kept quiet bottling up that anger.
Life smiled on my predicament in the form of a couple of seminars (The Landmark Forum and The Landmark Advanced Course) that I participated in through a seminar company called Landmark Education. These seminars revealed to me in no-nonsense terms that I need not stay angry forever about my country’s state but could actually do something about it. Trivial as this may sound, it was an amazing breakthrough that infused a fresh breath of freedom for me.
In a community project seminar (The Self-Expression and Leadership Program) that I did immediately, I did a small project of inviting my family members to go on a day trip to Jalamangala. Though this sounds small, the context in which it was created was huge. I created the context of the accountability for my family – we got so much out of the village and prospered but we didn’t give much back to the village. Now it was payback time!
The day long trip had its impact on the members of my family, many of who were visiting the village after 10+ years. They were left inspired by what’s possible for them.
My dad’s return from the US
Somewhere in the middle of my seminar, my dad arrived in the US in late 2003. I had just
been laid off from my job. He thought it wasn't a good idea to do some project for my village instead of stabilizing in my career. I threatened a mutiny and told him that I am willing to head back to my village and become a doodhwala aka milkman ;-) My dad got scared like crazy and he proposed that we reach an agreement. Soon enough I found a job and he chilled out. In the following days, he shared with me his own vision for our village and impressed on me the importance of me staying in the US and earning money to help our village. That proved to be a turning point in my life, as money was no longer a tool of the greedy but a vehicle for alleviating the quality of life for mankind. Of course, it also meant that becoming a doodhwala remained a fantasy of mine :-( My dad returned to India much earlier than he planned.
The Project is born
An Uncle of mine had been active in the village and the area surrounding it for many years. Given the momentum that he had built up already, my dad got together the rest of his brothers and sister and convinced them about the importance of our family’s role in our village. The family decided on starting off by renovating our 300 year old ancestral home. My dad, given his experience as a highly successful executive in the area of project execution, got the home renovation project done in record time. The newly renovated home was grandly reopened to the entire family and relatives. A lot of them reminisced the life of my grandfather. A beautiful flower and fruit bearing garden was also created. The funds for the entire project was raised within the family.
Following the home renovation, projects were taken up that would help the village. The first
area that was identified was healthcare. A few health camps were organized to help people with
physical disability, eye care issues, heart issues et.al. Also, given the value contributed by religious and spiritual activities, visits from RK Mutt were organized.
Project with a life of its own
Around this time, the villagers actually grew skeptical about the efforts of our family and
wondered if this was a short lived “cool” idea. Fortunately, for us and them, that was not to be the case. The medical camps continued. Also, the religious activities expanded with the renovation of important temples in the village that were ignored for a long, long time. Recently, a Ganesha temple was newly constructed and has had a huge impact on the villagers.
The local high school was impacted in a useful way when teachers/experts from Bangalore
city gave useful guidance to the students of 10th class. The school also organized numerous student events that was presided by members of our family and the messages delivered our deemed inspiring.
One of my aunts, who teaches high school students in Bangalore, organized a roadtrip for her
students and the mix of students from the two areas was something very amazing. The children from the city realized how much they lacked in terms of extra curricular activities.
Current/Future projects/status
Our family plans to continue its projects in the areas of medicine, healthcare and
religious/spiritual activities. We are able to manage the financial needs within our family. However, personnel who can participate frequently is what is needed. Currently, only my parents, a couple of uncles, aunts and cousins have the bandwidth to be active.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the context that would make a difference is what’s said in the movie “Gandhi” by
Gandhi’s character, that India is a country made up of 700,000 villages. If each one of us takes on our respective village, then 700,000 people can make a difference with the entire country’s progress!
Jalamangala village is a small village about 45 miles from Bangalore. My family has a history
of about 300 years in this village. Our ancestors came from Andhra Pradesh long ago and settled here. My grandfather was a priest and post master. He was very active in the Village during his lifetime, active in politics and was a philanthropist. During his lifetime and the years following his death, his 8 sons moved to Bangalore city for livelihood.
My relationship to the village
I had made a few trips to the village during my childhood days. I have fond memories of those
trips. The simple nature of the villagers always touched me. At the same time, the caste structure was something that disappointed me because it put the people of the village at a lower pedestal than my own. For me, we are all humans after all and need to be treated alike. But, being the scared little sissy that I was, I kept quiet!
I came to the US in Dec ’99. Many Indians that I spoke to were disappointed with how
rural/poor India showed on the global map. Some were sad and others were outright critical about the country. This made me angry, but then again I just kept quiet bottling up that anger.
Life smiled on my predicament in the form of a couple of seminars (The Landmark Forum and The Landmark Advanced Course) that I participated in through a seminar company called Landmark Education. These seminars revealed to me in no-nonsense terms that I need not stay angry forever about my country’s state but could actually do something about it. Trivial as this may sound, it was an amazing breakthrough that infused a fresh breath of freedom for me.
In a community project seminar (The Self-Expression and Leadership Program) that I did immediately, I did a small project of inviting my family members to go on a day trip to Jalamangala. Though this sounds small, the context in which it was created was huge. I created the context of the accountability for my family – we got so much out of the village and prospered but we didn’t give much back to the village. Now it was payback time!
The day long trip had its impact on the members of my family, many of who were visiting the village after 10+ years. They were left inspired by what’s possible for them.
My dad’s return from the US
Somewhere in the middle of my seminar, my dad arrived in the US in late 2003. I had just
been laid off from my job. He thought it wasn't a good idea to do some project for my village instead of stabilizing in my career. I threatened a mutiny and told him that I am willing to head back to my village and become a doodhwala aka milkman ;-) My dad got scared like crazy and he proposed that we reach an agreement. Soon enough I found a job and he chilled out. In the following days, he shared with me his own vision for our village and impressed on me the importance of me staying in the US and earning money to help our village. That proved to be a turning point in my life, as money was no longer a tool of the greedy but a vehicle for alleviating the quality of life for mankind. Of course, it also meant that becoming a doodhwala remained a fantasy of mine :-( My dad returned to India much earlier than he planned.
The Project is born
An Uncle of mine had been active in the village and the area surrounding it for many years. Given the momentum that he had built up already, my dad got together the rest of his brothers and sister and convinced them about the importance of our family’s role in our village. The family decided on starting off by renovating our 300 year old ancestral home. My dad, given his experience as a highly successful executive in the area of project execution, got the home renovation project done in record time. The newly renovated home was grandly reopened to the entire family and relatives. A lot of them reminisced the life of my grandfather. A beautiful flower and fruit bearing garden was also created. The funds for the entire project was raised within the family.
Following the home renovation, projects were taken up that would help the village. The first
area that was identified was healthcare. A few health camps were organized to help people with
physical disability, eye care issues, heart issues et.al. Also, given the value contributed by religious and spiritual activities, visits from RK Mutt were organized.
Project with a life of its own
Around this time, the villagers actually grew skeptical about the efforts of our family and
wondered if this was a short lived “cool” idea. Fortunately, for us and them, that was not to be the case. The medical camps continued. Also, the religious activities expanded with the renovation of important temples in the village that were ignored for a long, long time. Recently, a Ganesha temple was newly constructed and has had a huge impact on the villagers.
The local high school was impacted in a useful way when teachers/experts from Bangalore
city gave useful guidance to the students of 10th class. The school also organized numerous student events that was presided by members of our family and the messages delivered our deemed inspiring.
One of my aunts, who teaches high school students in Bangalore, organized a roadtrip for her
students and the mix of students from the two areas was something very amazing. The children from the city realized how much they lacked in terms of extra curricular activities.
Current/Future projects/status
Our family plans to continue its projects in the areas of medicine, healthcare and
religious/spiritual activities. We are able to manage the financial needs within our family. However, personnel who can participate frequently is what is needed. Currently, only my parents, a couple of uncles, aunts and cousins have the bandwidth to be active.
Conclusion
Ultimately, the context that would make a difference is what’s said in the movie “Gandhi” by
Gandhi’s character, that India is a country made up of 700,000 villages. If each one of us takes on our respective village, then 700,000 people can make a difference with the entire country’s progress!
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
car ... car ... car ...
People's love for automobiles is variegated. The so called purists, love a car for its design. The miserly love a car for its mileage. The lazy love a car for its ease of maintenance. The lazy and miserly have all the more to celebrate, now! Then there are the hopeless romantics, who love a car for no apparent reason ... sometimes not even knowing what's cool about the car they love.
I am a hopeless romantic, when it comes to cars. Since childhood, I've been amazed by the gorgeous curves of those two Italian ladies ... nope, I ain't talking about Sophia Loren and Monica Vitti ... I am talkin' about the Ferrari and the Lamborghini. The vrroom...vroom sound, the claims about top speed, the raw power ... just the plain layman attractions of these cars made me drool over them.
When I was old enough to have my own motor vehicle, my parents chose the Maruti 800 that was lying around, than a motorbike, hoping that I'll be safer in that one ;-) Well, when your friends ride bikes at top speeds, you can't really be a sitting duck, can you? ;-) So, I was soon famous in college for how "well" I sped my car. Some infamous anecdotes include a midnight race of mine in the car with a friend on a bike in Bangalore's narrow residential roads and the famous one of my aunt chanting Vishnu Sahasranama in the back seat of the car, even as I beat the clock to drop her off where she wanted to get and get to my tuitions in time. Needless to say, there were numerous funny incidents such as running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere and flat tires at critical junctures et.al. But the end result of all these experiences in the car was that, by the time I left for the US, the car was sounding like a truck and the mechanic asked my dad how could I have driven the car when the engine was barely mounted ... yeehaw!!
When I started my job in the US, it was time to buy a car. I had various choices. I could save money and buy a used car. Something that I didn't want to do, obviously. I somehow felt that my first car must be a nice, brand new car. OK! The next piece of advise that was floated around for me, from well meaning long-time resident desis, was to buy a Honda or a Toyota for its nice mileage and ease of maintenance. I wasn't sure about this, but at the same time, the deluge of advise was overwhelming. Respite came in the form of a good friend of mine, who owned a BMW and told me that I should get something "hatke" like a BMW. Now, that was something beyond my affordability. So, the next available options were Volkswagen Jetta, one of the Mazda cars and the Nissan Altima. The first place I went shopping was to the Nissan store, to do a testdrive. I just loved the rev of the engine and I walked out with my Nissan Altima in tow (remember, I am a hopeless romantic when it comes to cars) ... some quick shopping, eh? That was on 20th August 2001.
The Altima has been like a close pal since then. I've driven the car on some of the coolest rides in and around the area. When my friends were still in school and since I was one of the few who owned a car, it was a very welcome luxury among them. Everytime I went to LA to meet them, it was always a very wonderful time that we had. It was our 'ratha' to go to late night pizza dinners in the 'dark den' and then drive over to Santa Monica beach at 2 am to have a duel with the raging waves to see if we could keep the waves away from us! Even the drive to LA was memorable many a times because of the exhilirating thrill I got out of taking my car to the peak speed possible of 120 MPH and then spend the next chilling 5-10 seconds as the speed came down to 70-odd MPH. Of course, I ensured there were no cops around, enjoying my crazy stunts! On a trip to Yosemite, with the LA gang, the moon roof came very useful, as people took turns to put their head out into the chilling night as we zipped past the valley. The most recent fabulous trip on the car was a 3000 mile roatrip with my sweetheart wife. It was a wondeful trip for many reasons including the moments spent with my wife ... not to forget the memorable but scary drives through snow country in Colorado and Utah.
That reminds me how, my car has saved me despite my rashness in driving. I have had the misfortune of rear-ending my car two times. Though the car did suffer some damage, I was never injured! After this, I had to really re-evaluate my driving habits. I realized that though I had the cocky attitude that I was a safe driver, there was this sense of negligence towards the other drivers on the road and a lack of respect for their safety. Needless to say, my driving is safer now :-)
So my dear friend, teacher and trusted servant ... Nissan Altima ... here's saluting you on seeing me through 100,000 miles of service. Here's hoping a longer time together.
I am a hopeless romantic, when it comes to cars. Since childhood, I've been amazed by the gorgeous curves of those two Italian ladies ... nope, I ain't talking about Sophia Loren and Monica Vitti ... I am talkin' about the Ferrari and the Lamborghini. The vrroom...vroom sound, the claims about top speed, the raw power ... just the plain layman attractions of these cars made me drool over them.
When I was old enough to have my own motor vehicle, my parents chose the Maruti 800 that was lying around, than a motorbike, hoping that I'll be safer in that one ;-) Well, when your friends ride bikes at top speeds, you can't really be a sitting duck, can you? ;-) So, I was soon famous in college for how "well" I sped my car. Some infamous anecdotes include a midnight race of mine in the car with a friend on a bike in Bangalore's narrow residential roads and the famous one of my aunt chanting Vishnu Sahasranama in the back seat of the car, even as I beat the clock to drop her off where she wanted to get and get to my tuitions in time. Needless to say, there were numerous funny incidents such as running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere and flat tires at critical junctures et.al. But the end result of all these experiences in the car was that, by the time I left for the US, the car was sounding like a truck and the mechanic asked my dad how could I have driven the car when the engine was barely mounted ... yeehaw!!
When I started my job in the US, it was time to buy a car. I had various choices. I could save money and buy a used car. Something that I didn't want to do, obviously. I somehow felt that my first car must be a nice, brand new car. OK! The next piece of advise that was floated around for me, from well meaning long-time resident desis, was to buy a Honda or a Toyota for its nice mileage and ease of maintenance. I wasn't sure about this, but at the same time, the deluge of advise was overwhelming. Respite came in the form of a good friend of mine, who owned a BMW and told me that I should get something "hatke" like a BMW. Now, that was something beyond my affordability. So, the next available options were Volkswagen Jetta, one of the Mazda cars and the Nissan Altima. The first place I went shopping was to the Nissan store, to do a testdrive. I just loved the rev of the engine and I walked out with my Nissan Altima in tow (remember, I am a hopeless romantic when it comes to cars) ... some quick shopping, eh? That was on 20th August 2001.
The Altima has been like a close pal since then. I've driven the car on some of the coolest rides in and around the area. When my friends were still in school and since I was one of the few who owned a car, it was a very welcome luxury among them. Everytime I went to LA to meet them, it was always a very wonderful time that we had. It was our 'ratha' to go to late night pizza dinners in the 'dark den' and then drive over to Santa Monica beach at 2 am to have a duel with the raging waves to see if we could keep the waves away from us! Even the drive to LA was memorable many a times because of the exhilirating thrill I got out of taking my car to the peak speed possible of 120 MPH and then spend the next chilling 5-10 seconds as the speed came down to 70-odd MPH. Of course, I ensured there were no cops around, enjoying my crazy stunts! On a trip to Yosemite, with the LA gang, the moon roof came very useful, as people took turns to put their head out into the chilling night as we zipped past the valley. The most recent fabulous trip on the car was a 3000 mile roatrip with my sweetheart wife. It was a wondeful trip for many reasons including the moments spent with my wife ... not to forget the memorable but scary drives through snow country in Colorado and Utah.
That reminds me how, my car has saved me despite my rashness in driving. I have had the misfortune of rear-ending my car two times. Though the car did suffer some damage, I was never injured! After this, I had to really re-evaluate my driving habits. I realized that though I had the cocky attitude that I was a safe driver, there was this sense of negligence towards the other drivers on the road and a lack of respect for their safety. Needless to say, my driving is safer now :-)
So my dear friend, teacher and trusted servant ... Nissan Altima ... here's saluting you on seeing me through 100,000 miles of service. Here's hoping a longer time together.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
December 2006 Roadtrip
A long, long, very long ... really very long report of our December 2006 road trip
prologue ...
Sometime in early december, my company announced a shutdown in the last week of december, owing to customer site closures, employee vacations et.al. ... simply put, end of year slowdown :-) That meant, a break from 23rd dec - 1st Jan!! Thrilled, I called Ramya and she was just dancing around with joy, 'coz it meant we could do just about anything for those 9 days.
We started planning what to do ... she came up with simple, sensible stuff and I came up with outrageous ideas such as a roadtrip to
One of the stops HAD to be
We started excitedly planning for that and let Savita, my cousin in
Phew!! planning the route of a trip is so difficult. The trip is easier. So, we finally settled on
We started trip preparations in the meantime. Ramya went on a big Trader Joe's shopping trip and got lots'a munchies for the trip. I printed directions for the trip. We burnt new audio CDs with a mix of songs of Kannada/Hindi/English/Ghazals. Hotel reservations were made at most places. The excitement was building up big time. We debated a lot about whether to rent a car or drive my car. We finally decided to use my car. The mileage on it is so high that, a few extra miles wouldn't matter. Also, we could save on some expensive rental quotes we got!
In the meantime, our jobs provided interesting twists continuously. I had lots of bugs to fix ... some of them having the same killer effect on me, like their real life compatriots. At times I wondered and shuddered about whether I had to postpone our trip because the bugs wouldn't get fixed. Thankfully my manager was understanding and worked with me on those killer bugs and was thrilled I was going on a road trip with my wife. In fact, he assumed I am going on a roadtrip, given my penchant for road trips.
In the meantime, Ramya's new job folks wanted her to join right after Christmas. Another small jhatka there. However, Ramya pasao'fied them by sweet talking in a sentimental pandribai tone about how she was recently married and would not get such long vacation opportunities with her hyper busy husband et.al. You get the picture, right? End result -- they fell for it and told her that she could start her job on 2nd Jan.
While all this was going hunky-dory, we realized that on one particular day of the trip, Thursday 28th Dec, weather would be a disaster zone with heavy snow in the
I shall refrain from giving out the final trip route because on the night before the trip we came up with one more twist to the trip plan. Damn! Ain't this trip plan a report in itself? ;-) That's what road trips involving me have been like ... Nagi, Shyam and CJ stand testimony for that! On the night before leaving on the trip, we realized that going to
So, here's how our final plan looked on the night of 22nd
23rd Sat Drive to
24th Sun Look around Hoover Dam. Leave for
25th Mon Look around Bryce. Drive to
26th Tue Look around GC. Drive to
27th Wed Look around
28th Thu Drive from Co Springs to Green River UT and stay there (Distance 450 miles)
29th Fri Drive from Green River UT to Reno NV (Distance 550 miles)
30th Sat Drive from Reno to Lake Tahoe (Distance 65 miles)
31st Sun Drive from Lake Tahoe to San Jose (Distance 210 miles)
Remember all that ... there's a pop quiz for you further down ;-)
23rd Dec (Saturday)
We decided that since we weren't going to LA anymore, we could start slightly later than the original 6 am start that we planned. But, you know me, "berulu kottre, hastha nungo" types. "slightly later" was 10.30 am on my watch ;-) We started 4.30 hrs later than original plan 'coz I got up late and then we went looking for breakfast and all. We had a slow start from
We drove from 101 S -> 152 E -> I-5 S -> 46 -> 99 S -> 58 E -> 15 N. I drove the slow first half of 200 odd miles.
I-5 had become a parking lot for some unknown reason, so much so that Ramya woke up thinking I pulled over somewhere. Slow trudging became fast moving eventually. But, I was left with a headache at the end of it. Only pieces of entertainment were Ramya's anecdotes from
We checked into a fabulous room at the MGM grand casino. The room had a beautiful view of various casinos, full of amenities, a nice king size bed and a good jacuzzi. All the luxuries one can ask for.
We were late for the 9.30 pm show of "Ka", a very entertaining Cirque-De-Soleil style martial arts musical. We got the tickets for another 10.30 pm show called Zumanity, which is also based in Cirque-De-Soleil. We had to walk to
24th Dec (Sunday)
We woke up around 9 am and checked out of our room. We got some tasty bagels and nice coffee from a local coffee shop, called Einstein Bagel, that brewed their own coffee. We drove down route 93 to Hoover Dam on a bright sunny day. Ramya took some beautiful shots of the blue water, brown mud and clear skies.
Once at
We got some nice photographs taken. We headed over to the gift shop and found some Hoover Dam and
From there, we headed off to
We stopped at around 4 pm for a quick bite at a Burger King at the Nevada/Utah border. Ramya was mostly doing fine, so she continued to drive into
The drive after the 20 mile
We drove at the best safe speed to get there by 8.15 pm. We shopped around for lots'a bryce memorablia including trinkets and magnets for our fridge, which looks like a magnet musuem ;-) We got some fruits, burritos, juices and cereal (for the morning breakfast). We checked into the hotel room which was in the middle of a lot of snow! Called our parents with whatever was the available cellphone signal and chatted for a while. Our parents informed us how a lucky draw in the Bangalore fun fair had Ramya come out a winner ... we were thrilled to hear it but also regretted getting the news a tad late 'coz if we had known this earlier we'd have gambled in Vegas, which we didn't do (if you read the report closely ;-)! Ok, you are now allowed to say, "What? you went to Vegas and didn't gamble?!" Hey! come on, you gotta commit some sin in "The Sin City"! ;-) Anyways, since it was still quite early "our time" in
25th Dec (Monday)
We woke up around 9 am and had some cereal for breakfast and left for the park, after making a quick stop at the gift shop 'coz I wanted to buy one magnet for our fridge museum. The services at the park entrance were closed owing to the holiday but the park was open. We drove first to sunrise point where the hoodoos were beautifully bathed in the white of the snow and were gleaming in the sun. I was recounting to Ramya about my trip to Bryce with my parents and also of the early morning "sunrise nodlebeku" episode when I went with my friends.
We took a few more snaps and drove on. As we continued driving, I realized that I had overestimated the fuel level. So, we drove back to the lodge area and refilled the gas and re-entered the park. Blew a few minutes there :-(
Then we drove to Inspiration point and looked around for inspiration. It was whiter than ever and lot more beautiful.
We took some cool pix of the area. Then I topi'd Ramya into going on a small hike to Bryce point. She was gullible enough to agree, thinking its a short hike. But the snow and the steepness, soon dawned on her. Then she gave in, resigning herself to the devillish schemes of her husband and did the entire stretch barely having enough breath to catch the next breath!! Once back to normal, we looked around from Bryce point which gave a much more elevated view of the hoodoos and was really gorgeous. This is one of those places that one can never get bored of!
From bryce/inspiration points, we drove all the way to Rainbow point, because we wanted to leave the area by 3 pm and it was already 1 pm. The drive to and back from rainbow point was peppered by a beautiful narrative by Ramya of "America America" which started off by me saying that the movie was not much appreciated by Indians in the US, for its inaccurate potrayal of lives of Indians in the US. As a rebuttal, Ramya narrated the story. Now, I really wanna watch it!
From Rainbow point, we drove straight to the lodge. The restaurant at the lodge was open. We had some nice salad, burger and a pot of coffee, that really filled us up. For dessert, we had a local speciality pie made of 5 different fruits that just tasted yummy. Lets not talk about how guilty it made us feel, after eating that! ;-) We started off at 3.45 PM from
The distance was about 275 miles. It was fairly a good drive with almost little or no traffic. Given it was a holiday, there were no cops either. So I decided "chalo le-dhana-dhan" and cruised at 90-95 mph while Ramya kept herself busy chitti-chatting, listening to music, taking some nice pix, dosing off et.al. Once we got to AZ-64 junction, it was about 7.30 pm and soon we entered the park through the south entrance. At this time, the fuel got nearly empty and there were little or no signs to indicate whether we were on the right track. Since I had driven here before, I was happily driving and Ramya was humming some songs. So, I thought everything was fine. It was only later I came to know that deep down Ramya was freaked out because there were almost no road signs and the fuel was almost empty and to make matters worse, there was no cell phone reception. Imagine getting stuck in the middle of nowhere on a cold night!!! The devil continues to reign!
We arrived at GC by 8 pm with some fuel left. Checked into a holiday inn. There was no cellphone reception in the area but our hotel had internet connection!! So we sent off an e-mail to all concerned about the progress of our trip. We went over to a neighboring pizzeria and had some jalapeno poppers (rather cheese poppers) and pizza for dinner. Back in our room at around 9 pm, we made reservations at
26th Dec (Tuesday)
One of the resolutions the previous night, that we made or more so that Ramya made, was that we see sunrise the following morning. It was a decent time -- 7.37 am. I promised I'd be up and set alarms for 6.30 am and 7.00 am. I woke up at 7 am and told her we had too little time to see sunrise. I interpreted when she said she wanted to see sunrise as seeing "the sun rise" not as the "minutes after sunrise" too! Too bad, we slept off ... Ramya pulled my leg about it for a while and I am now coupla inches taller as a result ;-)
We finally woke up around 8.30 am. I lazily took bath and Ramya, full of enthu, got ready and got the early bird breakfast to the room. We got dressed and headed off to the park. At the park entrance, we bought a $50 annual national park pass that lets us visit all US NP's for 1 yr with no additional fees. We wanted to stop at the first point, Mather point but everyone wanted to stop there too, so the whole place was just full with no parking space. We stopped at the next point, Yavapai point. This was Ramya's first view of the
We took a few photographs and continued on. We made similar stops at Powell point, Hopi point and Hermits rest. Here we saw the famous Brahma and Vishnu temple peaks. At Hermits rest, there was a nice memorablia shop and we bought some trinkets and stuff.
On our way back, there was quite a confusion about where we wanted to go. Ramya, who was driving, wanted to go to the
We shopped for some more memorablia next door and left around 3 pm to
At
Along the way, we saw an exit towards
We reached
27th Dec (Wednesday)
We started off from the hotel at around 10.15 am. We drove to The Plaza, the 'downtown' area of
There was even a glass mural of our local Mother Teresa! We made a stop at the local gift store and bought coupla interesting memorablia. Our stay at the gift shop was extended by an overly systematic elderly cashier at the checkout counter. Seeing the delay she caused for the customer ahead of us, I paid by cash and made a quick exit! We were quite hungry by then and decided to get breakfast. We walked through the plaza area which is lined by dozens of gift stores selling traditional native Indian ware. We got some bagels and coffee and started going through the stores.
Our first stop was an interesting one. We went to this store where authentic Indian clothing and paintings was sold. The artist who made them, an elderly native American, was around too, proudly talking about the wares. The place was expensive too ... jackets costing no less than $200! Ramya found an interesting shawl and inquired the price ... it was a cool $1900. Later on, we found a very nice painting of an Indian hunting scene ... that was priced at $2600 ... a bigger one costed $7800. These were made on real deer skin. Seeing that we were fairly interested, the gentleman told Ramya that he's willing to give her a deal ... the shawl would cost her ONLY $1500. Taken over by the generosity, Ramya asked politely if there slightly less expensive paintings. The gentleman said, "Well, next year, when I go hunting. I'll hunt for some
We stopped at another gift store, where we found these really cute dolls called "The Storyteller". This is a very important part of the native American culture, where elders make kids sit around them and on them (on their feet, shoulders, laps, head, shoulders et.al.) and tell them stories of the native American culture. This is the only way that the rich heritage can be passed on. We bought some storyteller toys, pottery, t-shirts and a nice looking reproduction of a traditional Indian painted horse. Another interesting thing about
From the musuem, we drove to
From there, we did a quick stop at the old railroad station and bought some toy trains (for Tarun and ourselves) and took a picture in front of the train. After that, we went to a store, called The Spanish Table, that apparently sold Spanish and Portugese cookery ware. Ramya was very excited to see this store. Somehow, it didn't live up to our expectations. We bought a Spanish water jug and left. We drove through, from there, an area called
28th Dec (Thursday)
We got up at 9 am and looked out of the window, first thing in the morning and found it very cloudy. As we stepped out of the hotel room, snow had already started falling and it was already 10 am. So, we ditched the plan of looking around
Ramya started the drive on Rte 24 and it was quite an intense drive because she had to keep her attention on the road constantly. We had a good group of traffic sticking to one lane for a long distance, this helped make a path in the snow and so we could pretty much follow the tracks.
At some point, we noticed that the snow was fully plowed, so we got a beautiful stretch to drive at normal speed. However, after we passed some major towns, the traffic reduced and the snow increased on the road, though there were little showers coming in. We had to again reduce our speed. The interesting thing is that, when we reached the Rte 24 and Rte 82 junction, we were surprised to see that Rte 82 was hidden under 2” of snow and hence we felt that it is better to drive on Rte 24 which was much better than 82 and 24 also would join I-70. So, we continued on our drive. Thankfully things improved further down the road with lesser snow on the road and some sun. We reached I-70 at around 1.30 pm, taking almost 3.30 hrs to cover a distance of 150 odd miles! Once we got on I-70, we stopped at a gas station to clean the car windshield and the vipers which were a mess by then. We inquired at the gas station about
From there, we drove on till about 4 PM and stopped for lunch at a town called Rifle, getting a sandwich from Subways. We then headed over to a Starbucks where Ramya got a hot chocolate and I got a green tea latte which looked like green goo ... Ramya didn't even want too have a look at the thing and wouldn't let me get more than a sip of the hot chocolate she was having ... imagine my plight 
Though she soon took pity on me and gave me the hot chocolate ... phew!
I took over driving from Rifle to
29th Dec (Friday)
We started at 9.30 am from our motel on what was a gorgeous and sunny day. Today we were driving almost 550 miles to
We reached Ely by 1.30 pm. It was the first in sequence of those old cowboy towns. At Ely, we looked around for the famous "I survived Route 50,
We continued on our trip and stopped at 
We ended up ordering room service and just slept off -- no gambling!!
30th Dec (Saturday)
Following morning, we woke up at around 9 am and left for Tahoe after a hearty breakfast. On the way to Tahoe, we went through
We stopped closer to
epilogue ...
It was really a fabulous trip for various reasons. We discovered a lot of different places. Our snow adventures were really cool ... not to mention cold ;-) Lots of cool pictures got taken and awesome memorablia collected. But the nicest thing about this trip was that I and Ramya got a chance to spend a lot of time together ... laughing, joking, talking and me irritating her to the core ... that for me, was the very best part of the trip ... every moment ... just so memorable.
Thank you so much for reading this ... comments, brickbats and boquests are welcome :D
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