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Showing posts from October, 2010

I love Political Celebrity Visits ...

Yes ... I love Political Celebrity Visits ...   Whether it is our own Prime Minister or President or President Obama or President Clinton or for that matter any high profile political individual whose visit calls for heavy bandobast and a slew of clean-up and beautification activities around their visit ...   Yes ... They create a traffucked situation and you got to wait endlessly for them to pass if you are to cross their path ...   Yes ... It is often seen and perceived that nothing is actually achieved by their visits ...   Yes ... In general. these visits cause a lot of trouble and pain to the aam junta during their visits ...   But look at the bright side ... (be positive)   Roads which they will take are repaired and made crater-free   Roadsides are cleaned up and all markings are re-colored   There is heavy bandobast of policemen so crime is controlled for the few days   Beautification projects idling for long (and almost forgotten) are revived and completed

Movie I saw in July ...

Yeah ... Its Movie and not Movies ... I saw only ONE movie this month and that is also not something I enjoyed!   The Last Airbender (3D)   I had read the reviews of this movie and there was no reason I was going to watch it in a theatre. The reviews were pretty disappointing. My wife wanted to a enjoy a movie at the "The Red Lounge in Cinemax" and I was keen to show her an English movie in 3D. When we went to the   The Red Lounge in Cinemax at Infinity Mall in Versova; the only options we had were a romantic movie "Milte Milte" (which no one was talking about and had bad reviews anyway) and "The Last Airbender" which was incidently 'an English movie in 3D'. So that's how I ended up watching this one. I don't think I need to write anything about the movie at all. Much has already been written about it ... and its not really nice.

Books I read in July ...

  1.        The Immortals of Meluha by Amish – First Part of the Shiva Trilogy   A very interesting read. I completed in precisely one day J started it in the morning at around 6 and finished it off by mid-night !!! FELT GOOD !! Flight journey and waiting at the airport gave me ample time to read this one from start to finish in a single day.   A very interesting story woven out of the premise that Lord Shiva was actually a human being and not a divine being who was pushed to great karma and godliness by his deeds and circumstances and of course, the omnipresent motivation of Love. A very interesting read indeed except for the part that it is the first part of a trilogy and now we gotta wait for the subsequent parts to be published which might as well take a year to come by.   2.        Divine by Choice / Partholon 2 by P. C. Cast   The Part 2 or sequel to Divine by Mistake (which I read and completed last month). A nice read. I like the style in which the book is writ

Airtel continues to frustrate me

I have already written in an earlier blog post (5 days ago) about what Airtel did and how inconvenient it was. 5 days after submitting the documents I still have to hear the stupid message in 2 languages before every other call i make. Same for my dad. It is pretty frustrating. Yesterday i received 10-12 SMS asking me to submit documents. Called up Cust Care and they had no solution to offer except asking me to submit the documents (which I have already done) and then asking me to visit the airtel gallery to get the problem resolved. AIRTEL. FRUSTRATION. MORE FRUSTRATION.

Inkheart Cover Design

While reading Inkheart by Cornelia Funke; I came across a passage towards the end of the story where the book called 'Inkheart' is described. The cover page with its imagery and colors is described.  Reading that I turned to the cover of the book I was reading only to find them out of sync. I wondered why the cover artist or the author did not pick up the description of the cover in the book to design the cover of the book. Why is the actual cover different from the description inside? Did the artist NOT know of the description? Did the author forget that the cover design was described in the book and that was supposed to be used as a basis of design by the artist? Or was it that the publishers feel that the actual description of the book within the book was not saleable enough?   I googled about it to see if i can find something ... Did not. Anybody knows anything about it ...

RIDICULOUS - Airtel blocks Outgoing for want of documentation

  I had been receiving the sms from airtel regarding submission of documents as per new government norms. Ditto for my dad and bro (we are a Airtel Family)   Due to one or the other reasons I couldn't go over to the 'nearest' airtel customer care centre (which is not really so near). My mistake. I accept it.   Then suddenly today my outgoing calls are barred and I am told that I need to submit the required documents to enjoy the services. THIS is preposterous, ridiculous and absolutely inconvenient. When I went to the Airtel Gallery, there was a HUGE CROWD. My token number revealed the fact that there were about 150+ people ahead of me on the queue.   That was one frustrated crowd. People who were supposed to be in offices, parties, family functions, hospitals, colleges, businesses … were out here trying to first understand what documents were required and then busy getting the documents in place … biggest bottleneck being the rejection of Ration Card a

Movies I saw in June ...

Sex and the City 2   Well, I have never actually seen the series SATC on TV but the movie was a strange choice made by my wife. Of course, the movie hardly had any element of actual sex; it simply borrowed the title from the TV series from where it picks up the lead characters and actresses. I did not realize it then that this was the second SATC movie. Saw the first SATC movie on Star Movies (i guess) a few weeks after watching the second movie in theatre   An interesting comedy movie. Enjoyable. Entertaining.   Raajneeti   A very interesting movie. Not really an entertainer but then Prakash Jha has not really been known to make entertainers. He makes those serious kind of movies which are not a bore to watch. Raajneeti was precisely that. A movie which is worth watching, but once. Its not something you would like to watch again. Good performances and a nice storyline with all its interconnections and parallels with the great epic Mahabharat.   I clearly liked the role

Books I read in June ...

A good month as far as reading is concerned. In fact, it was excellent.   First of all, I completed the books started in April-May …. All 3 of them.   1. P.S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern   An absolute emotional roller coaster which sent the tears flowing and overflowing. This is the second book by Cecelia that I am reading and she has done this again to me (the tears overflow while reading fiction thing). This story is about a girl who loses her husband and finds herself unable to cope up. Her husband literally helps her cope and move on. A series of letters written by the husband before he died serve as the guiding lights for the girl.   If you have loved someone or lost someone you loved; you gotta read this one. Or see the movie (which I haven't seen yet)   2. Atlantis by David Gibbins   Wont say much about it. It was an interesting read but I would probably think twice before picking up another one by same author.   3. Divine by Mistake by P C Cast

Movies and Books :)

I have been posting about the movies I watch and the books I read … but recently noticed some books in movies so it tingled my curiosity and thought of putting in here. I was watching the movie 'Pyar To Hona Hi Tha' a few weeks ago on TV and in one particular scene towards the climax Kajol is shown to be reading a novel. I was quite surprised to see that it was a Robert Ludlum novel (considering that the movie was itself a romantic one with no traces action or that of being a thriller which Ludlum is known for) And then a couple of days ago, Shraddha noticed that Katrina Kaif was holding a Matthew Reilly novel in the movie 'Ajab Prem Ki Gajab Kahani'. Strangely, MR also writes action packed thrillers and Ajab Gajab was an out and out romantic comedy. Strange to see this combination of romance and action :) I would love to know what books they are actually reading. Just out of curiosity. Did not find any mention of the same on the internet (i googled, of course)

Dog-earing: a crime towards books!!

In Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (I read it last month), Meggie (a little girl) opens a book that is given to her and is asked to turn to a dog-eared page. She dislikes this act of folding a corner of a page as much as her father and simply straightens it out. Shraddha (my best friend and book buddy) and I have similar views on dog-earing. We feel it is akin to damage to a book. We don't dog-ear our books. She uses proper bookmarks and I used a variety of things as bookmarks (piece of paper, book or bus tickets, even movie tickets J). These days even I am using bookmarks since most of the books that I am reading are from Shraddha's library and she has a bookmark in each of her books J We both love our books and take care of them pretty well protecting them from weather, wear-n-tear and people alike. We are both pained to see other people manhandling their books or in rare occurrences not really being careful with our books. Reminds me of an interesting incident where Shraddha

Movies I saw in May ...

Housefull   One of those hilarious movies where one lie leads to another and then another and then everything is mixed and jumbled until the final climax sequence when everything falls in place as confessions are made and truth is revealed. An entertainer. Can be watched again, albeit you have company to laugh with. It is a typical Akshay Kumar comedy with a good measure of Riteish deshmukh thrown in with Deepika in her trademark short shorts and Lara to give company.       Its a Wonderful Afterlife – Hai Marjawa   A funny movie to watch but then again, it's a watch-once movie which you wouldn't want to see again unless you were wishing to get a nice cozy slumber.   Iron Man 2   Well, what would one expect from Iron Man movie. Explosive Action (literally) with hi-tech gadgetry packed in a metal suit. After the 'Dark Knight', I found that this one also had its fair share of emotional content besides the action. Its often interesting to see how Hollywood b

Books I read in May ...

Well ... a couple of posts about things here and there ... and now I am back to my pending books and movies posts from the past months :)   ------------------------------------   May 2010 ... An extremely busy month I would say (I got married in this month after all after getting engaged on 22 nd April … )   I started a couple of books but could not progress much. Could not complete a single one.   1. Divine by Mistake by P C Cast   2. P.S. I Love You by Cecelia Ahern   3. Atlantis by David Gibbins   I actuallly started 'Divine by Mistake' in April but managed to read only 35 pages during April :P The book did not move further until the last week when i managed another 100 pages or so ... but it is still not completed.