Tuesday, December 23, 2003
been a crapper o' a day till now. nuthing has gone well till now :-(
went for ticket reservations, waiting list 100. called up meena, that mandu had forgotten 2 charge her phone (r atleast thats what she says). coming 2 office again, called up travel agency 2 book for chithappa, again no luck.
and 2 top it all, still don't know whether i'll b goin' home tonite...
went for ticket reservations, waiting list 100. called up meena, that mandu had forgotten 2 charge her phone (r atleast thats what she says). coming 2 office again, called up travel agency 2 book for chithappa, again no luck.
and 2 top it all, still don't know whether i'll b goin' home tonite...
Monday, December 22, 2003
a typical monday comes 2 a close. woke up v late, dabbled with 'cosmos' a bit. 2 office by 1030. coded some test programs.
sunday went as xpected. chatted the whole day away with the family. it was nice being with raja. tush & shek were there 2. chithappa was his usual self - telling stories abo' his shift handling & of course giving health/yoga tips. this time it was on protein rich pottu kadalai with pottasium rich banana combo.
appa was there too & we spoke the common language the whole of india speaks - cricket. the recent test victory over the aussies dominated the talk.
sriram's dad & mom had come in the evening. purrfect mami/mama. they were quite talkative & didn't show off nething as xpected o' maapilai veetar.
raj & suchi had planned an outing with deepika, her hubby & shruthi.
after dinner at k p puram, left for velachery.
sunday went as xpected. chatted the whole day away with the family. it was nice being with raja. tush & shek were there 2. chithappa was his usual self - telling stories abo' his shift handling & of course giving health/yoga tips. this time it was on protein rich pottu kadalai with pottasium rich banana combo.
appa was there too & we spoke the common language the whole of india speaks - cricket. the recent test victory over the aussies dominated the talk.
sriram's dad & mom had come in the evening. purrfect mami/mama. they were quite talkative & didn't show off nething as xpected o' maapilai veetar.
raj & suchi had planned an outing with deepika, her hubby & shruthi.
after dinner at k p puram, left for velachery.
Saturday, December 20, 2003
haaa, the week's finally coming 2 an end. raja & chithappa will b here tonite. xciting sunday on the cards.
Friday, December 19, 2003
k, its a late blog allrite - it was fun watching 2 movies in a row last sunday along with old chum rozario. first, the disney cartoon "finding nemo" at studio5. got the first row tickets for just 10 bucks :-) the film was fun as the dad fish goes in search of son fish nemo (with the lucky fin) till sydney. he's accompanied by this fish named dory. dory suffers from short memory loss & was real witty. the adventures of sea creatures were told in the usual funny disney way.
after we found nemo & paired him up with his dad, it was time for us 2 go fite "the gangs of new york". think we missed may b 5 minutes as we had 2 rush 2 anand theatre for the 1 pm show there. daniel day lewis with his glass eye, as the 'butcher' acted his role 2 perfection. nuthing much for caprio & diaz tho'. and much needed solace - the film had some topless scenes.
by 4 pm, we were real hungry. a late but nice lunch at ponnusamy's in spencer's plaza reved us up. went 2 landmark then. after browsing books & women, left for home.
altogether it was an njoyable sunday.
after we found nemo & paired him up with his dad, it was time for us 2 go fite "the gangs of new york". think we missed may b 5 minutes as we had 2 rush 2 anand theatre for the 1 pm show there. daniel day lewis with his glass eye, as the 'butcher' acted his role 2 perfection. nuthing much for caprio & diaz tho'. and much needed solace - the film had some topless scenes.
by 4 pm, we were real hungry. a late but nice lunch at ponnusamy's in spencer's plaza reved us up. went 2 landmark then. after browsing books & women, left for home.
altogether it was an njoyable sunday.
its lunch time. in today's hindu, cud get a few crossword clues rite & read abo' the ol' blue eyes, frank sinatra @ frankie
Thursday, December 18, 2003
been reading carl sagan's cosmos. a wunnerful book indeed. just 40 pages into it & how many o' the science concepts he has xplained, all in a nutshell. he travels from the big bang millions of light years away to the bluish earth. he expains with the simple example of a twins life, why astrology is a pseudoscience - the argument is foolproof, lists the works of ancient greats from egyptians to the greeks to the babylonians. came to know about the 5 perfect solids. and from why the shadow never falls on the ground (has this got 2 do something with tanjore's gopuram??) to arriving at the circumference of the earth, all xplained thru simple elementary geometry. after dealing with the evolution of life forms & darwin/wallace, now reading about the middle age astronomers like copernicus, tyco brahe & johanes kepler. kepler's laws are astonishing. though we had read about them in higher secondary skool physics, its baffling now 2 think of how the sun can be at one of the focal points of the elliptical orbit that a planet follows, how a planet can trace equal areas at equal interavals of time, how billions of planets thru out the universe obey such simple laws. kepler's findings is a true revelation!
mm, this cms real fun!
writing test programs for the new feature of multivalued support for datainputs...
writing test programs for the new feature of multivalued support for datainputs...
this write up's the latest:
Have you ever wondered how many Indian characters have appeared in English books and films of the Western world so far? Let us explore a little into the subject.
In the recent futuristic flick, Matrix Revolutions, we saw three Indian characters. The featured Indian family didn't have much of a role to play, but what matters is that they were there. The characters spoke of the Indian views of creation, karma and destiny. And to top it all, the film ended with the chanting of the Sanskrit verse Asatoma Sadhgamaya from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
Captain Nemo was the Indian Prince of Bundelkund as created by Jules Verne. He makes appearances in Verne's The Mysterious Island and later in his more famous 20 000 Leagues Under The Sea. Not long ago, there came a film named The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (it was an utter flop alright). It had Nasirudeen Shah starring as Captain Nemo. He is shown worshipping the fiery Kali and navigates his huge submarine Nautilus, which sports a big linga on its stern.
Talking of lingams, Arthur C Clarke had Dr. Sivasubramanian Chandrasegaram Pillai wearing one onto his neck. Dr. Chandra is one of the main characters in Clarke's Space Odyssey series and is the inventor of the robot HAL. This super intelligent robot of Dr Chandra autopilots the humans half the way across the Solar system to Jupiter & beyond. (Dr Chandra comments once that HAL means Heuristic ALgorithm and not one step ahead of IBM as everyone thinks!)
Yann Martel's The Life of Pi, winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2002, had Piscine Molitor Patel as its hero. Pi came from Pondicherry and was the son of a zoo keeper. The much hyped J K Rowling's Harry Potter series too features Indian children as attending school at Hogwarts along with Harry. Parvati and Padma Patil the Indian twins, aren't given as much space as the Weasly twins of George and Fred, but still they make timely appearances through out the series.
Cartoons and comics are increasingly being considered a part of modern literature. In the Dilbert strip, Scott Adams has the character Asok, an engineer from IIT. Sample some of Asok's humble quotes - "Luckily I'm an IIT graduate, mentally superior to most people on Earth", "I'm trained to only sleep on national holidays". And this, "At the Indian Institute of Technology, I learned to use my huge brain". "But I try not to frighten ordinary people with any gratuitous displays of mental superiority". "For example, I no longer reheat my tea by holding it to my forehead and imagining fire."
Speaking of cartoons, we had an Indian cartoon character much much before Asok. Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books was adapted by Walt Disney and made into a wonderful classic that any child would love to watch. Mouglee & his animal friends, with their sweet rhyming songs have enjoyed equal status with Mickey & Donald of the generations past. A sequel to the film got released recently. Kipling though English, spent most of his youth in India. And so, his Kim, which had Kimball O' Hara as the adolescent Irish Indian hero, vividly captures the living styles of India at the turn of the twentieth century.
Two old films have to be mentioned here. We had Kabir Bedi as the tough Sikh Gobinda, weilding his sword against Ian Fleming's 007 in Octopussy. Also, tennis ace Vijay Amritraj made a guest appearance in the film, as the story passed through India. The other cult hero next only to Bond, Indiana Jones, had to fight Mola Ram, played by the good old baddie of Bollywood Amrish Puri in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.
Not long ago, we had R K Narayan as the widely popular Indian novelist known to the West. And now, we have many writers of Indian origin like V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Arundhathi Roy, Deepak Chopra, Anita Desai and others who are writing books about the one billion plus strong Indian diaspora spread across the world. If it was R K Narayan in literatue, Indian cinema's sole representative for long was Satyajit Ray. After Ray, film makers like Shyam Benegal, Aparna Sen, Shekhar Kapoor, Mira Nair, Nagesh Kukunoor, Deepa Mehta and others have made the Indian genre of films well known. Even regional directors like Kasaravalli & Adoor are acknowledged in film societies worldwide. Not to mention the Indian musicals, which have found their mark too. The West and the world in general, is finally taking note of the Indian presence. And it'll be no wonder that we will continue to see more and more of this Indianness being showcased in international cinema and literature in the years to come.
Have you ever wondered how many Indian characters have appeared in English books and films of the Western world so far? Let us explore a little into the subject.
In the recent futuristic flick, Matrix Revolutions, we saw three Indian characters. The featured Indian family didn't have much of a role to play, but what matters is that they were there. The characters spoke of the Indian views of creation, karma and destiny. And to top it all, the film ended with the chanting of the Sanskrit verse Asatoma Sadhgamaya from the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad.
Captain Nemo was the Indian Prince of Bundelkund as created by Jules Verne. He makes appearances in Verne's The Mysterious Island and later in his more famous 20 000 Leagues Under The Sea. Not long ago, there came a film named The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (it was an utter flop alright). It had Nasirudeen Shah starring as Captain Nemo. He is shown worshipping the fiery Kali and navigates his huge submarine Nautilus, which sports a big linga on its stern.
Talking of lingams, Arthur C Clarke had Dr. Sivasubramanian Chandrasegaram Pillai wearing one onto his neck. Dr. Chandra is one of the main characters in Clarke's Space Odyssey series and is the inventor of the robot HAL. This super intelligent robot of Dr Chandra autopilots the humans half the way across the Solar system to Jupiter & beyond. (Dr Chandra comments once that HAL means Heuristic ALgorithm and not one step ahead of IBM as everyone thinks!)
Yann Martel's The Life of Pi, winner of the Man Booker Prize for 2002, had Piscine Molitor Patel as its hero. Pi came from Pondicherry and was the son of a zoo keeper. The much hyped J K Rowling's Harry Potter series too features Indian children as attending school at Hogwarts along with Harry. Parvati and Padma Patil the Indian twins, aren't given as much space as the Weasly twins of George and Fred, but still they make timely appearances through out the series.
Cartoons and comics are increasingly being considered a part of modern literature. In the Dilbert strip, Scott Adams has the character Asok, an engineer from IIT. Sample some of Asok's humble quotes - "Luckily I'm an IIT graduate, mentally superior to most people on Earth", "I'm trained to only sleep on national holidays". And this, "At the Indian Institute of Technology, I learned to use my huge brain". "But I try not to frighten ordinary people with any gratuitous displays of mental superiority". "For example, I no longer reheat my tea by holding it to my forehead and imagining fire."
Speaking of cartoons, we had an Indian cartoon character much much before Asok. Rudyard Kipling's Jungle Books was adapted by Walt Disney and made into a wonderful classic that any child would love to watch. Mouglee & his animal friends, with their sweet rhyming songs have enjoyed equal status with Mickey & Donald of the generations past. A sequel to the film got released recently. Kipling though English, spent most of his youth in India. And so, his Kim, which had Kimball O' Hara as the adolescent Irish Indian hero, vividly captures the living styles of India at the turn of the twentieth century.
Two old films have to be mentioned here. We had Kabir Bedi as the tough Sikh Gobinda, weilding his sword against Ian Fleming's 007 in Octopussy. Also, tennis ace Vijay Amritraj made a guest appearance in the film, as the story passed through India. The other cult hero next only to Bond, Indiana Jones, had to fight Mola Ram, played by the good old baddie of Bollywood Amrish Puri in Indiana Jones and The Temple of Doom.
Not long ago, we had R K Narayan as the widely popular Indian novelist known to the West. And now, we have many writers of Indian origin like V S Naipaul, Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Arundhathi Roy, Deepak Chopra, Anita Desai and others who are writing books about the one billion plus strong Indian diaspora spread across the world. If it was R K Narayan in literatue, Indian cinema's sole representative for long was Satyajit Ray. After Ray, film makers like Shyam Benegal, Aparna Sen, Shekhar Kapoor, Mira Nair, Nagesh Kukunoor, Deepa Mehta and others have made the Indian genre of films well known. Even regional directors like Kasaravalli & Adoor are acknowledged in film societies worldwide. Not to mention the Indian musicals, which have found their mark too. The West and the world in general, is finally taking note of the Indian presence. And it'll be no wonder that we will continue to see more and more of this Indianness being showcased in international cinema and literature in the years to come.
Wednesday, December 17, 2003
hi blog, this is my first post. letz c how it turns out 2 b :-)
