Three Years

Today happens to be the day when I posted my first blog post in 2007. I had not thought at the time that I would manage to keep this blog alive even for a year, let alone three (given my short attention span for anything I dabble in J ). Although my blogging frequency has considerably reduced over the years, I still try to put together the thought that comes to my mind once in a while.

On a different note, it occurred to me yesterday that if a film about film is called metafilm and data about data is called metadata, should a blog about blog be called metablog? I looked up metablog in my trusted dictionary.com only to be rudely questioned – did you mean metabolic? Of course I didn’t! But google as always turned out to be quite helpful in letting me know that my useless thought wasn’t useless after all. And that the blog about blogs is indeed called a metablog!

The best way to treat Shopaholism..

.. is by making one go through wedding shopping twice in less than 1 year. Now that I have realized from experience - no wedding shopping lasts less than 2 months (I know of some which go on for 6 months or more). There are so many things to take care of that all your weekends turn out to be much more hectic than your work days. So much so that you wish for the work week to begin soon!

The other thing I have realized in the past few weeks is that there is no such thing as a simple wedding. All your resolve about having a simple wedding goes down the drain when things start happening to you mysteriously without you realizing that this is not what you wanted. And by the time you do realize, it is too late …

Image courtesy: http://www.mimifroufrou.com/

That Rainy Day...

It was a busy day at work. I had to leave earlier than usual in the evening to attend to something important. It was one of the days when I wasn't driving home myself. He was already on his way to pick me up. I was almost racing against time to wrap things up. So much so that I had to forgo my afternoon tea. He calls " I am ten minutes away from your office". "Gosh!", I swear under breath, I had not realized it was so late. "I'm on my way out", I gushed. The walk from my building to the gate takes over 10 mins!!

The sky was slightly overcast and there was a nice breeze when I left my building. I had walked only a few steps when it started raining ... not a light drizzle, but one with raindrops the size of ping-pong ball!! On a good day I absolutely love the rains, but not today. By the time I reached his car I was half-soaked in spite of the umbrella. His welcoming smile almost made be forget my misery. He started driving. I mumbled something like "I was so caught up today I didn't even get time for tea. I feel dead without it ". He gives one of his trademark smiles and says "Put your handbag in the backseat, there's something for you over there". I find a bag containing a flask of steaming hot tea, a coffee mug and a box of cookies!!

What I say out loud is "You are the best! I couldn't have asked for anything more" and I say to myself "I'm so lucky to have found him .. I'm glad he is the one .... "

Image courtesy: http://wiki.zope.org

Earth Hour 2010

This year's Earth Hour is just around the corner - Saturday 27th March 20:30 to 21:30 local time. I observed it last year and planning to do so this year too. Please spread the word about the event. All one needs to do is switch off all light switches and electrical appliances during this period, simple isn't it? But more importantly, all this will have a lasting impact only if we make some small changes in our lifestyle on a regular basis.

You can find some interesting stuff in the official earth hour website, especially the did you know section.

Yes, Still Alive!

This happens to be my first post of the year 2010!!

As Chithal rightly pointed out to me, Jan 2010 was the only month (since I started writing) when I did not write a single post. So just to ensure that Feb does not end up being the second such consecutive month, I am writing this post :). This is to let my readers (which I think happens to be at the most 5 people) know that I am still around, that I have not abandoned this blog and do plan to write more often than I am currently doing. There is a lot happening in my life right now which is taking most of my time .. but I am sure I will find a way to successfully juggle all of them and still manage to blog ... real soon :)

Dreams ..

For some reason this line from the film Luck by Chance has been playing in my head for the past few days - Sapne wo nahin hote hain so hum raat ko sote huey dekhte hain, sapne wo hote hain jo hamein raaton ko sone nahin dete ( dreams are not what we see while sleeping, but the ones which don't let us sleep).


... no wonder I am having sleepless nights these days ...

Driving Tales

Finally a post that I have been wanting to write for a while. In this post I am going to reveal all my deep and dark secrets related to driving, right from the time when I took driving lessons for the first time ...

Year 2001: My instructor (whose name I don't remember now) was a very polite young man in his early twenties. He was such a nice person that he never told me I was doing anything wrong; even when I drove at 50 in second gear or passed by a pedestrian merely centimeters away! About 7 classes and 1000/- Rs later, all I had learnt was to start the car and keep it moving at a constant speed somehow. I could not afford to buy a car in those days so due to lack of  practice I managed to unlearn whatever little I had learnt within no time.

Year 2007: After being subjected to many harassment by Bangalore autowallas, spending a fortune on cabs and getting almost daily dosage of sarcasm filled lecture from my sister (who became an expert driver in the years that went by) I decide to take driving lessons again. Fortunately for me Mr Pillai, my instructor, speaks good English, is polite yet firm while giving instructions and keeps giving driving tips. This time around I try to practice a bit in my sister's car, but somehow I was not driven enough  this time again. Bangalore traffic seems to have grown by ten folds! The fact that there's always my sister's car or City Taxis available to get me around doesn't help me with my driving again. And this time again I let the opportunity fizzle out ....

Year 2009: The fact that my sister was getting married and moving to another home, albeit in Bangalore itself, jolted me out of my comfort zone and think seriously about re-learning driving and buying a car. Thankfully by then my dad, who is an expert driver and teacher, had moved here and I had to look no further than home to learn driving for the third time. Many early morning practice sessions with him later, I was finally in a position to even think of driving on my own. The biggest challenge for me in bringing the car to work was not to face the traffic (because I take an alternate route which avoids most of the city traffic) but the fact that I will have to go over the ramp to park my car and pass through the two security personnel holding large mirrors to check the underside of the car. I always told my friends that with my kind of precision in driving I would definitely knock off at least one of them!

As of today it has been a little over 2.5 months that I am driving on my own. I haven't had any major problems on the road except ... I have asked complete strangers to park my car twice after having unsuccessfully tried for over 10 mins, I have caused some minor traffic jams few times by trying to overtake at wrong places, have made a car coming at high speed from opposite direction apply crash brakes because I was on the wrong lane, in the first week of my driving got the car's engine stalled so many times that my mom innocently asked me 'are you low on fuel, why is the car stopping so many times?' (little did she know that it was my lack of clutch/accelerator coordination that was causing it ;) ) ... Well, you get the idea.

But on the brighter side, my car doesn't get stalled in slow-moving traffic or at inclines, I don't burst into cold-sweat on seeing more than 2 vehicles on the entire stretch of road, I don't wait for early morning or late night to take my car out and I even overtake vehicles :) But the best part is - the two mirror-holding security personnel at my workplace's parking lot are still unharmed. They have no idea how lucky they are!

Images courtesy:

http://www.philwale.co.uk/

http://www.wroscoe.com/

Things-to-do and Things Done Well

It appears that a lot has been happening in the past few weeks which has made my blogging take a back seat. There have been many times when I clicked on 'New Post' link when some thought appeared in my head and I felt like putting it into words. But then it disappeared almost as quickly as it appeared without taking a proper form and I was left staring at my computer screen for a long time.There are other things also that I have been ignoring lately; most important of them being my reading. I have not read a single book in the past 3 months or more. My bookshelf is filling up with unread books (well, I have a habit of buying at least one book every month). So I have Murakami's Underground, Orhan Pamuk's Istanbul, Franz Kafka's Complete Novels, Bronte's Jane Eyre, John Steinbeck's East of Eaden, Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo... the list seems endless. I also need a lot of catching up to do on the movies front. The last film I saw was Wake up Sid and that was more than a month ago!

But things haven't been as bad on other fronts all this time. I have managed to catch a lot of plays at Ranga Shankara lately (Girish Karnad's Flowers and Bikhre Bimb and Swanand Kirkire's Aao Saathi Sapna Dekhein to name a few) and am going to watch Naseeruddin Shah's Waiting for Godot tomorrow.

The other good thing is that I have started driving - in Bangalore and on my own! Well, it might seem innocuous to people who drive, but for a person like me, it is a big deal given the fact that I have taken driving lessons from professional instructors twice (the first one being 9 years ago!), got my driver's license about 10 years ago and still got nightmares at the mere thought of driving on my own in Bangalore traffic! Probably I will write a separate post on my driving (mis)adventures some time soon. I have also been taking language lessons of which I had been planning ever since I landed in Bangalore 9.5 years ago. Will write more about it on completing it :).

And while reading the post one final time before publishing, I realized that most of my plans take 9-10 years for me to turn them into reality! Now, what does that say about me? :(

Blue - Some Observations

First off, this is not a movie review post, just some random observations I made while watching the film Blue.

• The first few minutes of the film are breathtaking! They show the underwater life in the ocean surrounding Carribbean islands. Looks more like a Discovery Channel feature than a Bollywood film's opening credits. If you miss these few minutes, half your money's worth is lost
• The person who was holding the camera must have been very short (say about 3 ft tall). Most of the shots that have women in skimpy clothes, the camera is focussed only at their waist or below. So it was anyone's guess where the camera would focus whenever a woman in bikini appears on the screen
• If you have many great tattoos but don't have a great body to go with it, you are a loser. Sanjay Dutt, with his fancy tattoos could not show them one bit due to his huge paunch. Poor guy!
• If you are not in shape, please please please don't wear diving suits. You have no idea how gross it looks!
• Yes, Lara Dutta has a wonderfully toned body in this movie and I liked her styling too
• Kylie Minogue song was over-hyped. She did not look that hot either. What was the price they paid her I heard??
• Rahman's music was a bit of a let-down, I didn't remember even a single song after leaving the movie theatre!
• Akshay still seems to be extremely fit. The guy looks much leaner than he has looked in any of his recent releases

There was something I liked about the movie, wasn't it? Oh yeah, the first 5 minutes of the film showing underwater life. Well, I already mentioned that in the beginning...

Feast of Love

I watched this beautiful movie called Feast of Love this weekend. I had never heard of this movie before and had bought its DVD a week ago by just seeing Morgan Freeman on the cover :). A little bit of reading its back cover gave me an idea that it would be something on the lines of Love Actually. The film is directed by Robert Benton of The Human Stain and Twilight fame.

The film has many stories in it .. all on the theme of love. Each of them exploring a different dimension of love - be it between two youngsters who fall in love with each other the moment they lay their eyes on each other, between two women (one of them married and having no idea that she could get attracted to another woman), between two people who had been having an affair with each other only to realize later that they were actually in love all along and my favorite .. love and comfort between two older people .. the kind of love that comes from decades of togetherness. The film has been dealt with a lot of sensitivity and the characters are well developed and layereed. The film also managed to stay away from becoming the usual romantic chick-flick, which I do not have much liking for. It has elements of both happy and sad endings to love stories. Most of the actors have given good performances but I particularly liked those of Morgan Freeman and Alexa Davalos. Alexa's beauty and talent have shone through the whole film and she has managed to steal the attention away from more established names like Radha Mitchell and Selma Blair.

A good romantic film that also has depth to it. May not be suitable for family viewing as there are some explicit scenes in the film.