San Jose, Thanksgiving 2007

It's great to be back here for my annual cross-country trip, the only time I get to see my family and of course my adorable little nephew! He gets cuter every year and of course I feel great that he remembers me more and more as he gets older :-)

I had to work for the first three days of the weeks, but it's almost over now! Can't wait to get to the weekend!

Trying something new....

As usual, it's been a while since I posted anything, but somehow I felt compelled to try something new today. I've been using Orb to stream music from home to work, but other than that it also has this really cool feature which allows you to share play-lists via your blog! I just had to try this out.

So here goes! This is the album titled "Breathing Under Water" by Karsh Kale and Anoushka Shankar, hope you like it.

NOTE: I've added this as a widget on the right :-)

Been a while...once again!

Its not that I don't have stuff to write, its just about getting to it I guess! A lot has happened in the past few months and I don't even know where to start. My parents were visiting me (Mom's still here) and the whole trip was bittersweet for a lot of reasons. Lot's has changed too....I got a new TV, bought a lot of stuff for my apartment, sometimes I look around and I can't believe all this stuff is mine! I used to get that feeling when I was kid....I used to look around my house and say to myself, "Everything in here belongs to dad, every little thing; will I ever get there some day?", its kind of surreal to be in this place in life, of course there's always something missing :)

I'm gonna try and write about some recent thoughts in the next few days, so if anyone's reading....STAY TUNED!

Good deed for the month!

A very dear friend of mine (Shweta Mudgal) is running the Marine Corps marathon in Washington DC on October 29th. She has been training now for almost 30 weeks and even took part in the NYC half marathon. Of course the main reason for part-taking in these events is her social cause of raising money for educating under-privileged children in India on behalf of an institution called ASHA (http://www.ashanet.org/nycnj/); a Non-Profit organization that works towards this cause.

She has pledged to raise $100 for every mile she runs ($2600 in all for the marathon) and I would really appreciate any donations towards this noble and worthy cause. Please donate via the link below. Remember, even $10 is enough (but $50 would be really nice!) to educate a child for one whole month, so please be generous and of course all donations are completely tax-deductible.

Here's the link where you can make your credit card donations:

http://www.ashanet.org/nycnj/lib/marathon/publicmypage.php?1647

Zidane....The Fallen Hero.

In a moment of weakness, this player who is considered as one of the greatest in the history of football, gave up what would have been considered the greatest comeback and the greatest retirement in world football. Zidane who had retired from professional soccer came back into the game to lead his country to a world cup victory, but this man who was considered invincible showed us how human he was when he traded a possible victory plus a memorable retirement for a classless red card exit for a headbutt to his opponent in the final of the world cup 2006. Despite what happened, I still consider Zidane to be a truly great player; this video is in his dedication.......France could have been the champions.


Zidane Video - video powered by Metacafe

Formula 1 Greatest Race Ever

This is an awesome clip of two amazing drivers battling it out. I am not sure who the drivers are and which race this is, but it definitely reminds me of the race where Mika Hakkinen beat Michael Schumacher by accomplishing the greatest and boldest overtake monouver in Formula 1.

Light your stove with the heat of my bosom!

I was as puzzled and humored as you probably are when I read this; of course no woman in her right senses would actually say this, unless the implants have something more than just silicone :), but somehow the people behind the scenes, who did the subtitles of the critically acclaimed film "Omkara", seemed to think differently.

I watched this film in Bergen, NJ about a week ago with some friends. As we stepped out of the theatre, the mood was very sullen due to the very graphic portrayal of tragedy in the protagonist Omkara's life, however after a few minutes when a discussion ensued about the movie and some of its scenes and dialogues, the first thing that came to my mind was the line "Light your stove with the heat of my bosom!" from the song 'Beedi'. Apart from some spectacular acting by Saif Ali Khan, the movie seemed to stand out for its absolutely ridiculous subtitles; makes one wonder how a film which is being screened internationally doesn't go under the microscope for the accuracy of its subtitles. Are the people actually translating this stuff just going by what they hear and not contributing an ounce of imagination to the task at hand? How can you be so blatantly literal to actually put words like these in place of the lyrics of a song?

Apart from these annoyances, I did find the film to be very well made with some great acting, although halfway through the film, I started feeling the length of the film and definitely felt it could have been shortened had some of the songs been “backgrounded” or simply dropped from the film and retained in just the soundtrack.

However, considering the film had been single handedly written, directed, produced I think this was a great effort. Of course, Vishal Bharadwaj also directed the music and he and his wife have even lent their voices to one song each. That is some talent!

Overall I would highly recommend the film and of course watch it without any bias in case you happen to be reading this piece before actually watching the film.