Thought for the day

"If you resolve to give up smoking and drinking, you dont actually live longer - it just seems longer."
Playright Tom Stoppard, quoted in the London Express.

Make it thought for the year, or...probably thought for the rest of your life...

Movie reveiw - Anniyan (tamil)

I have seen few movies that are as bad as this one. When I saw the mail that Anniyan was going to be screened, I screamed "wakaaw..!" to myself. I had not seen a tamil move for a long time and was looking forward to it. Its a Shankar movie and it has the usual dose of computer animation, "dic - chic" dance dumbers and a few dozen cars overturned. Shankar movies are usually the masala ones and this one is no different. But this one has so much of it that it leaves you gasping.

This movie is just an alternate version of shankar's superhit "Indian". It has some reference to the "Garuda Puranam", which talks about "hell" as seen by hindu mythology and what kind of punishments await the evil doers. It has the same format, the same issue and the same final message. The only difference is that Indian was good.

The movie starts with Ambi (vikram), an Iyengar lawyer. Ambi is a simple minded person who follows society rules to the letter. He quotes a rule in almost every sentence and tries to correct the entire system. A person straight out of utopia. With the result, he is a laughing stock at all situations, for being impractical.

Remo (vikram again) is a contrast. The self proclaimed charmer. He is the cool dude in town...a little too cool perhaps. Shankar's attempt to portray Vikram as a suave, self confident fashion model ends up with a over-stylized vikram with a fake accent and some corny pick-up phrases. "Come on babe..! Lets go do the yo-yo thing...!" he says to his love interest Nandini (Sada), which leaves you grimacing into each other's faces.

And then there is Anniyan (more Vikram..!) The Killer. The same character as indian thatha.

A series of gross murders by Anniyan sets a police investigation lead by Prakash Raj (DCP) in motion. The motivation for vikram to don the killer mask is again a sister (remember kamal's sis in Indian), who is killed in due to an unattended electricity wire that was cut due to rains. This impacts vikram deeply as a boy, and he takes it on from there.

The result is a senseless concotion of drama, action and romance. The movie constantly reminds you of other shankar movies, Indian, Mudhalvan and Boys. Vivek keeps you from walking out, with his witty comedy.

But the message is good. There are some footages shown in the movie about how our neighbouring countries have developed while India is still developing. Surely to set people thinking...and it does. But the movie fails hopelessly otherwise.

If you have seen Indian and read Sidney Sheldon's Tell me your dreams, you can write this story yourself. For the rest, dont decide to watch the movie reading some reveiw like this one...
http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/tamil/review/7066.html


Rating: (2/5)

The rise of Fall

I see people!
In your dreams?
No.
While you are awake?
Yes.
People like...in offices?
No. These are new students. Walking around the campus, like regular people. They see each other. Chat with each other laughing, smiling, and obviously enjoying themselves. They are everywhere.
How often do you see them?
ALL THE TIME!!

Yahoo..!
Fall semester has started...!
I was a heartening sight...to see the campus abuzz with activity. To see so many people after the desolate look the campus wore for about three months. Drumrolls..!!!

Change...!

I think I will agree with harry (in this matter)..! Change is required. It keeps you rolling. This is perhaps why I grow and shave away my french beard every 4 months. This is perhaps why I change my wallpaper everytime I feel like. This is perhaps why I have changed my apartment four times already...! (jest kidding') But still...change is needed. Else you cant even travel by public transport, let alone anything else.

As Rafiki, the baboon, nodding his head sagely, says in The Lion king, "Change is good." Anyway, there isnt much flowing out of my head these days. Maybe this new templete will knock some activity into my head and words out of my fingers. Amen..!

Sarkar: movie reveiw

The movie is good, but not outstanding.

Primarily, the entire portrayal of Sarkar seems a bit overdone. The way people, throng outside the gates of Sarkar's mansion to get a glimpse of Sarkar is a bit unrealistic. There are people carrying automatic machine guns in and around the house compound. But the public seems totally indifferent towards it. It is as if the whole of the masses fully understands the political dynamics of the state and completely endorses the activities of Sarkar. The news on TV too pretty much implies and accepts that it is Sarkar who runs the show.

How many people are required to shoot down two unarmed men in a lonely boat jetty? 10 armed men...! And do they do a good job at it? NO..! The first walks in the way of the bullets and gets shot, while the other runs away...! Abhishek Bachchan sprints across the wharf coolly dodging the bullets of 10 men, while the background score goes..."govinda...govinda..." Jeez..! You can attempt making reality movies but there is no denying the fundamental laws of bollywood.

The women of the house are portrayed loosely. Their sole purpose in the movie seems to be for dispensing tea and coffee to every minister or arms dealer who walks into the house. They are all around, calmly listening, if not making suggestions about who to thump and where.

But there and no songs thankfully! The casting is pretty neat. Amitabh, his right-hand man, Abhishek, his evil elder brother (this guy has done very well), and the evil gangs...all have done a clean job. The cinematography is nice. Shots from under the table, beside the coffee cup, and beside the fence, all give an elegant effect. The close-up shots are classy.

The movie lacks the vibrance and energy of Mani Ratnam?s 1987 hit Nayakan. But all the while, it is definitely a movie worth watching.

Read Apercevoir's reveiw too..!

http://apercevoir.blogspot.com/2005/07/what-evening.html

To put it simply !!

The life of a grad student in the US can be summarized as:

Apartment,
Department,
Advisor,
Budweiser...!

Bibliomania

I have this insatiable thirst to read novels...novels, that are not mine. Yeah, I am shit pissed with myself in that respect. I have bought dozens of books till now and never have I competed any of them. A lot of my friends have successfully read the books I have, while I just cant bring myself to read my own novels. However, when it is someone else's book, it is devoured instantly. I am a victim of this compulsive passivity I have toward the books I own!

I can draw only one conclusion from this...but I dont want to...
Instead, I think I will get back to my flatmate's "The Client".

Random observation

Poeple like to be called desis, rather than Indians...

Indiana Polis and the Fast Crusade

The mere presence at the venue is exhilarating. Moreover, for a person from a placid town like Rolla, where one hardly sees more than five people on the street, this was quite a sight. And for a person who is there for the first time, the experience is fantabulously mind-blowing, even though only six cars ran the race.

On Saturday morning, we (i.e. Ajay, Prashanth, Raj, Vishnu, Prabhanjan, Shiv and Me) piled into an SUV and left for Indianapolis. Spirits were running super high. We reached Indianapolis at about 6 PM. Since we had to reach Purdue University for our night halt, we could allot about 3 hrs for seeing Indianapolis downtown. Moreover, everybody in the trip had the trip objectives clearly laid out.

Objective one: F1
Objective two: Have Indian food

We visited the Indianapolis state park, cycled around the river, and after about 1 hour, left for the Maharaja Indian Restaurant which was supposedly one hour away.

We reached the restaurant after about three hours, thanks to all the wrong exits we took. The restaurant had closed. The time was 9:30 PM. We all were famished and infuriated. After some phone calls and furious discussions, we decided that we just can't give up now. Desi food meant a lot more than sleep and fatigue. We left for another Indian restaurant, a few blocks away. Luckily, we found it in a little while and soon we were treating ourselves to a sumptuous north Indian Thali. Guys could be seen smiling after a long time. We reached Purdue University at 2 in the night.


Morning came and after a quick breakfast, we left for the Indianapolis motor speedway, at about 8 AM. We reached the place at about 10:30, armed with Indian flags. By US standards, this was a massive crowd.

As it always is, the scarlet fever was the most predominant. There were many Indian flags fluttering too.

For the entire race, we never got to our seats in the paddock. We were too excited to sit in one place and walking up and down the aisles in the paddock, clicking photos. We got nice pictures of Rubens Barrichello and Schumacher. But when our boys spotted Narian, they went totally berserk.

The absence of the 14 cars was a big disappointment. The audiences were not told about this at all. It was only after about two to three laps that we heard the news, amidst the 'boos' and the 'bullshit..bullshit' chants.

After the race, we were on our way out of the city, when we spotted an Udupi restaurant. Amazed by our stroke of luck, we rushed to the restaurant. The buffet was divine.

Then, we sped on the freeway for 6 hours and reached Rolla at about 2 in the night. The F1 discussions haven't ceased yet...

Carry on camping...

We went camping yesterday. The last of the semester's presentations got over yesterday and I was standing outside the lab taking deep breaths, gazing at the campus through the window and generally letting the feeling sink in. I met Dave there and he asked me if I would like to join him and his friends on a camping trip that day evening. It was a place about 40 minutes from Rolla. Well, why not...!!

We were off at 6:30 PM in David's car, armed with sleeping bags and other accessories. The road we took soon turned into a twisting hilly road, reminding me of the Ooty trips. Dave's friends had already arrived at the spot. As we entered the camping site, we were greeted by Dave's friend who came to us and said, "We killed a snake."

This black copperhead had taken its afternoon off and was lazily crawling around in the woods when it unfortunately encountered these guys setting up a camp. One of these guys had a .22 with them and was eager try it out on something other than empty coke cans. This snake was spotted by the one of the guys and they promptly shot it down.

"Its a black snake, atleast 5 feet long", Dave's friend was saying. When I saw the snake, it was not black anymore. It was pink. Only then I realized that they planned to eat it! ugh..!

I will not go into the details of that. But the general opinion after 1 hour was than snake was indeed quite tasty. As for me, I ate some potatoes and green pepper and some bread. Then, it was just the "around the fire chit-chat" till about 1:30 in the night. Then crash. I had some funny snake dream... ("It's moving...!"), but I can't recollect much now. We were back in to Rolla at 9 in the morning. Nice start to summer holidays...

My bike

I bought a bike last week (OK fine...CYCLE!). Got is second hand from Dave. He bought it from his friend - second hand...I couldn't trace it back any further. Anyway, its great. The name has peeled away. The handlebar is slightly bent on the left, has 18 gears, but the chain refuses to go beyond two disks and the brakes have functioned in more than half the occasions. Today I pedaled all the way to Walmart... and returned! An excellent, sturdy bike, and I love it...!!! :-)

Hard work...bah!

I find this phrase really irritating. It is one phrase that has been used so extensively that it has become more a symbol than a phrase. Haven't we all been grilled into it all through our schooling and possibly beyond? Right from babyhood, I have been told over a million times, "Karthik, you have to do hard work?!" (grammatically incorrect statement, in the first place) by a million people. The phrase has yielded into a cliché. It has become the unquestionable, indisputable universal mantra for success. So much that, if you pick up a resume and scroll down to the Strengths section, the first line you would probably see is, "I am a hard working individual."

In my opinion, the phrase "hard work" is very negative in implication. First of all, why should you work "hard"? When would some work be hard on you? Only when you don?t like what you are doing. So "hard work" fundamentally suggests that the work at hand is despicable. Thats a totally incorrect school of thought. You have to be taught to enjoy the work you do. Once you start enjoying your work, it would no longer be hard on you.

What does hard work really mean anyway? How can we fathom the "hard" in our work? If you ask me, none of us work hard. We only work to the extent we can, nothing more. Of course, if you mean sitting up late into the night and not watching TV for hours, yes, but it still cannot be classified as "hard". You are doing it only because you are conscious of the bigger implications. I agree, it could be mighty infuriating to study network protocols when Federer is taking on Roddick in center-court, but here is no good in explicitly preparing you for it. So is concept of "hard work" essentially framed for fortifying to face that moment? This once again leads us to the same idea of "work-loathing" mentioned in the previous paragraph.

I think we have to emphasize on the sincerity with which we work, rather than how hard we work. The seriousness in our efforts to complete a work must be highlighted. Satisfying ourselves that full justice has been done to the work at hand, is far more rewarding, rather than thinking about how hard it had been on us.

Update

The past few days have been a fascinating series of amazing exploits about which I have had many profound insights. But frankly, none of it is any of your darned business, so butt out!

End of update.

Too good, Watterson is..!! :-))

One thousand thundering typhoons...!!

Behold...! I have had 1000 web farers stop by my blog page till now...!!!

Donno how many chose to come back. But truly an occasion that deserves a blog to its credit... :-)

Iniya tamizh puththandu Nal Vazthukkal*

*Wish you a happy tamil new year

Yeah.Its the Tamil New Year today. April the 14th. Received a lot of wishes; mostly over chat. Everybody kept asking "So, how did you celebrate new year day?" What can I say? "Oh yeah.I did celebrate.Ate a bar of Hershey's almonds and drank an extra can of Pepsi..." How else can I possibly celebrate Tamil New Year is this place?

If I was home, it would have been a totally different story. New Year ritual at home is one of a kind. Every year I go through this rather irritating, later amusing affair. First I would be woken up early, much against my wishes. I won't get my morning shot of coffee and will be asked to take bath instead. My mom would have kept an assortment of fruits, a bowl of grains, some cereals, a heap of coins, money, jewelry and a mirror in the Puja Room (the sacred place) in the house. She would then tell me to go look at the things kept. Yeah, fine. A superficial glance is sufficient to see what has been kept. Moreover, I would already know what will be kept. I do this every year, dont I? But no. She would say, "Look! Look at everything kept there! Look slowly! Why are you in a hurry?" Sigh..! I would turn back to them, force myself to concentrate and stare hard at them, trying to see every detail, notice every fruit, the design on the bowl, the crack on the mirror frame... She wouldn't be satisfied unless I spend about half-a-minute admiring these exciting things.

(The idea is to start the year by seeing pleasant things.Thats become a custom now.)

And then I would be rewarded with coffee for going through the ordeal (along with some grumbling about my impatience in everything, followed by advice).

Sigh! Though I hate to admit, I do miss home.

Resourcefulness

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. - Robert Heinlein

And its variation...

A programmer should be able to fix a bug, market an application, maintain a legacy, lead a team, design an architecture, hack a kernel, schedule a project, craft a class, route a network, give a reference, take orders, give orders, use configuration management, prototype, apply patterns, innovate, write documentation, support users, create a cool web-site, email efficiently, resign smoothly. Specialization is for recruiters.

Source: the web

Yes. I agree. One can no longer afford to restrict oneself to a certain domain and vehemently justify his/her ignorance in the rest, by calling oneself a specialist. Specialization is necessary. But not at the cost of losing resourcefulness. It is very vital to be conscious of the bigger implications.

A counter argument to this is on the quality issue. What good is it to have 100 averages? 10 specialists can do better than a 100 averages.

Well, the point that is being driven home is not about sacrificing quality for the sake of diversity. Quality is absolutely required. However, the point is about seeing the "big picture" in everything. There are thousands of cases where state-of-the-art technology has failed due to the absence of a market. A "NEED-MEANS-EFFECT" approach is necessary. Specialization comes after clearly identifying the need for a resource, the means for achieving it and the effects of realizing it. Not before that. Specialization must not be a veil. It is only a means.

Ting...Ting...Ting...Ting...

Okaaaaaaaay Claaaaaass...!!
Spring break is over...Put your toys back into the cupboard and get inside the classroom...!!!

:-(

Rimelicks...er...Limericks

Two brothers stuck in a feud
Swore at each other in a language rude
Said one to the other
Hear me oh brother
One more word and I'll have you barbecued!

Its merely just a tissue
So its no big issue
But if you want them
And cant find them
You dont wanna know what will ensue

A tenacious new breed
A canine that just needs to be freed
A prowler in the night
Is quite alright
Thirteen round the navel guaranteed


copyright the k factor 2005

Dont kill me for this...!

Question: Why are Boeing aircrafts the safest?
Answer: Because even if they crash, they just bounce away...boeing...boeing...

Spring break...!

Spring break is here...!!!. That means a week of nothing. A week to sleep late (i.e. later than 10:00). A week to do whatever you want to.

To me, spring break started with the cancellation of my ticket to Chicago. Due to multiple problems like logistics, cost and timing, the plan had to be revoked. But then, I am not grumbling. I have a whole week ahead of me to go ahead and complete all my work. A time for movies and hobbies. A time I can spend completely for myself without any disturbances. "Quality time with self" is what I have decided to call this week. I have scribbled down a list of "things to be done". Now all that needs to be done is to work that plan. I am yet to take a second look at the list.

Today, we celebrated Holi here. It was good fun, but not quite. Because the important bit was missing. The entire fun of Holi lies in the resistance to it. The real essence of Holi lies in getting "those" people dirty who do not want to get dirtied. However, the people who assembled at Schumann Park today where the ones who intended to get dirty. Unlike in India, where you go around in bikes to find unsuspecting friends, pull them out of their houses, douse them in colored water, drop egg grenades on their heads and create a big galata, we had to play it straight here. No nonsense. We were all limited to Schumann Park.

And if there is something in smearing and getting smeared with blaringly colored powders and end up looking like angry baboons, there is a great deal more in doing all this at 3 deg C. Bloody freezing...!! Thats what it was. Moreover, most of us were in our sleazy old t-shirts meant for holi. With the result, many were huddled in a corner after going through their part, while a few others were dancing ferociously to the tunes of "Rang bharse bheege..." to beat the cold and avoid getting frozen.

Finally it was decided that it was time to leave. After mumbling "buh...buh" to each other, we trundled back home for an ultra hot shower for 15 mins and a generous dose of shampoo. We assembled back in the community hall for a delicious steaming lunch of Pav Bhaji, fried rice and badam milk. Then I got back home for a nice nap.

That was day one of spring break. You never know what tomorrow would bring.