Movie Review

This is a movie review, and I've decided not to care about lack of credentials for movie journalism -- if there are really, anyway. You see, sometimes Bollywood comes out with movies that I truly despise (that I still watch a whole gamut is a sign of hope -- and there have been reasons). And I feel this uncontrollable urge to get it out of my system. A need for catharsis.

On to the movie. Bollywood put out another candy floss movie based in an American metropolitan, wrapped in designer clothes and soft-focus marketing stills. This movie is a dud. You see, when you watch a movie you are gradually led to a denouement, a climax. At this point, all questions get answered, and mysteries are solved, and it ties everything together. Good movies work because they handle this buildup and the eventual denouement well. This movie bumbles along, for most part builds up a confused mess, and when the time comes for final denouement, it falls with its face on a slab of cement -- there is blood splattered everywhere, and you wish you weren't there to witness it.

Starting with the first frame where Shahrukh Khan shows his arrogant, smirking face I wanted some character to slap him hard and wipe that stupid grin off his face. I wished Amitabh would do that for daring to think he could do a Don. When Shahrukh meets Rani Mukherjee, I think she came pretty close to doing the honour. When Shahrukh blurts out his affair with Abhishek's wife, I thought this is it! Bachchan Jr. is going to land him a sock. Nopes. Then Shahrukh's mom comes face to face with him, having caught him red handed. I think the slap got edited away, because it was hanging there in the air. And then, finally!, when Shahrukh tells his wife madam Zinta about the affair, she, amongst all the fine cast of this movie, has the pluck to deliver what it takes. She delivers a slap that I clapped hard at. I even shouted for an encore! This, for me, was the denouement of the movie. The climax. This is what the entire movie seemed to be building up to.

But alas, someone thought differently. According to the writers and directors of this movie, you get punished for adultery by spending 3 years alone. So the movie blunders on, till there are enough weddings and funerals, and till they've captured the fall, the winter , the summer through 20 different camera angles, and finally ends with the dumb and dumber couple walking off the Grand Central. It makes one wonder -- what a shallow, sheltered, deprived lives the writers and makers of this film would lead. You wouldn't notice if most of the cast was replaced by plastic cards.

The first half hour or so of the movie works -- primarily because of the chemistry between the Bachchan father and son duo. The rest of the movie is an exercise in sadism. The Chinese may have invented many different torture schemes, but we have them beat with Shahrukh Khan.

If someone is interested in more details of the movie, there are none -- or at least not any more than what you already don't know. Shahrukh Khan chews gum, limps, yells, smirks, frowns and thinks he is the super stud. And so thinks Rani Mukherjee, who happens to be married to Bachchan jr. Why is Rani Mukherjee smitten by the wimpy Khan? Because he is a loser with a limp and a smirk, who tells her what an idiot she is. So they do a Silsila thing, have a fling. The loser yells some more. The dumb girl cries and falls along. And yes, she makes it a point to clean the gardens and apartments of New York when you are not looking. They get caught, they admit their folly. Shahrukh Khan tells his wife over coffee -- I was hoping there would be hot coffee splashed on his face and then a slap, but madam Zinta (as she herself said) was too much of a man to do that. Rani Mukherjee probably tells her hubby in bed. Big noises ensue, furniture is broken -- the designer stuff in Rani's house, and Shahrukh's ugly face in Preity's. The guilty are thrown out. And then the director tries to make it a redemption saga. The real redepmtion was that Shahrukh's character walks off the screen to 15 days in jail(are there chains in New York trains?). 15 days won't cut it, but they'll do for a start.

Castro coincidence

I had picked up the latest issue of New Yorker as I left home yesterday to catch a flight. I usually start with the Fiction piece, but this time around I got off the block with the article on Cuba and Castro. And as I was leaving the plane I saw the news plastered on newspapers -- Castro steps down. Lucky for me, I had had a real good primer for the state of affairs in Cuba, and I knew who Raul Castro was, and so on.

The article is online here.

Talking about topical stuff, this Middle East buddy list from Slate was useful in trying to figure out who's on whose side. When the recent war started and Egypt and Saudi Arabia criticised Hezbollah, I was a bit confused. It's complicated.

Dave the funny guy with a funnier hat posted a yet funnier joke on Jibjab. Check it out!

movie of the week.. Jakarta

This week another Korean movie gets the pick. I had picked up Jakarta because of its premise -- it seemed like an interesting thriller/heist movie. It turned out to be a lot more than that.

In the first 10-15 minutes of the movie, I was thinking that I had picked up an amaterurish production -- horribly acted, poor cinematography. The plot looked silly and simplistic. It didn't seem promising. To my pleasant surprise, however, the movie seemed to evolve. In 90 minutes, everything in the movie got increasingly better. The plot of the movie turned out to be quite a twisted one, where loyalties changed as we learnt more about both the present and the past of the bank robbery that the movie starts out with.

In most movies, as an audience, you figure out your loyalties with some characters, and wait as the directors predictably leads you to a tragic or satisfying end. This movie, however, doesn't make it that easy for you. And yet, its denouement is quite satisfying.

Unfortunately, I haven't seen this movie get mentioned in many places, and it may be hard to find its DVD in the States. I know Scarecrow in Seattle carries one, and Netflix doesn't. But if you can find it, enjoy!

Jambooling...

Last week was pretty significant. For me, i.e.

Last week I incorporated my company -- Jambool, Inc.

It's one of the many small steps before I can start taking any step I can call big. What is Jambool about? It's about users, and trying to figure out how to help me, the user, make sense of the spread of content online. Vague enough, eh?

Movie of the week: Time and Tide

For a very long time when I thought of an action movie, the only movie that came to mind was Die Hard. It still remains one of the best action movies ever. However, ever since I saw this masterpiece from Tsui Hark, Die Hard moved to number two spot.

Time and Tide is a Hong Kong action movie, and packs some of the most incredible stunts and action sequences. The movie has two distict parts: the build up and the deliverance. And luckily, it is the latter that fills most of the movie. There isn't a lot to the plot of the build up, except that it sets up a tame looking character against a gang of dangerous looking (and sounding) assasins/killers/mafia/what-have-you, and lands all the characters in one of the tall congested apartment buildings in Hong Kong for a good part of an hour. The action is nicely scripted, and some of it just -- literally -- takes the breath away.

Movies of a generation

Every generation has a movie that sort of defines it. So it seems to me. When I look at those around me, I see people clinging to some movie or the other that they feel was "theirs." My view has a strong Indian bias, of course, and one has to admit that cinema is more entwined with people's lives in India than elsewhere. Where else would one find temples erected to celebrate film stars?

Coming back to generations, I thought I'll try and come up movies that probably some generation identifies as "theirs." These are more ruminations on my part, so if you have comments, please do share.

The first generation and the first movie that comes to mind, my mind, i.e., is the bell-bottom angst-ridden 70s and the era of teeny-bopper romance Bobby (the bell bottoms) and Zanjeer (the angst). Both these movies came out the same year (1973), and both started two parallel mainstream trends that sometimes met. With Bobby, Rishi Kapoor began a long career trying to romance women of varying age with a routine that more or less stayed the same over 20 years. Early on he tried to romance older women Simi Grewal (Karz) and Rakhee(Doosra Aadmi), and later on girls less than half his age.

Rishi Kapoor's antics notwithstanding, anyone with even the remotest of Indian connection will probably know the significance of the other movie of that year. Zanjeer brought to Indian cinema the persona of angry-young-man, with rage that was simmering just beneath the skin of the otherwise tall, charming police officer. The cause was much helped by the fact that this persona was played with endearing sincerity by Amitabh Bachchan. The rest, as they say, is stuff history is made of. From 1973 to today, no generation has grown up without being fed on his legend. And he still remains a tour de force.

It is small wonder then that a generation would identify themselves with Zanjeer. 1970s were pretty tumultous for India. We saw the corruption and Congress-led dirty politics at the worst, culminating in an emergency and total breakdown of the democratic system. The decade started with a war with Pakistan and ended with the Indian political system having gone through a complete upheaval and returning to its original state. And still, through all this, it was a time of bell-bottoms and rebellious love -- thanks to Bobby.

Le Bikini

The Bikini turns 60!

Bikini's impact on this world is phenomenal. They've helped sell everything from automobiles to zips. On our trip to Mexico, we noticed that every billboard, irrespective of what it was trying to sell, featured a bikini-clad model. I was wondering if there is anything we men wouldn't do if a hot babe in bikini asks us...

Inspiration comes from all kinds of sources

Someone recently invented a submarine explorer that looks like a shark -- something right out of Tintin's Red Rackham Treasure. As it happens, that comic was indeed the inspiration for the contraption!

Srini just referred to an article about Tintin. Incidentally, just yesterday I was browsing the interesting store called Karikter, off of Union Square here in SF, and picked up a couple of small toy figures, including those of Tintin and Thompson & Thomson. Though Americans hardly know of Tintin but everyone else in the world does. And, yes, did you know Tintin's the only comic characters to be honoured by Dalai Lama for spreading awareness in the world about Tibet? Tintin in Tibet remains one of the reasons I find traveling, mountain climbing, Tibet, remote monasteries so alluring.

Tinin also makes a good way to connect with people from different parts of the world. I remember I was having dinner in a very international crowd -- German, French, Indian(myself), Dutch, Arab -- and I brought up Tintin. Everyone looked at me with blank stares. They hadn't heard of him. Strange. Snowy? No. Thompson and Thomson? No. It couldn't be happening, I thought. In a final attempt, at the risk of looking and feeling totally ridiculous, I started describing the two crazy detectives. The moustaches, the crazy antics, "with a 'p'"... "Dupond et Dupont!" cried the French guy. "Shultze and Shulze", goes the German. "Jansen and Janssen", went the Dutch!

International currency -- that's what Tintin is.

My geekiness of movies.. or maybe not..

When I sat down in the theater to watch Superman, and credits started appearing, I was surprised to see a name called 'Eva Marie Saint.' The image I had of her is from the Hitchcock movie, North by Northwest. So when the movie started in earnest, I was on the lookout for her. An old lady appeared first, and I wondered... Yes it is her, and lord, oh lord, she is wearing the same lipstick from North by Northwest!

I felt a little sheepish telling my wife as we walked out that I recognized the actress from the shade of her lipstick, especially since I'll be damned if I can recall my wife's shade of lipstick from any day.. But you have to grant that Eva is a woman in a different class, and that shade of lipstick is rather rare. Or maybe it was just that I was sitting in the fron row of an Imax theater. You can't miss much from there, can you?

When I read Lane's review I felt I was in good company -- there were others who felt more excited about Eva Marie Saint, and Kevin Spacey, in the movie than the Supe himself.

HR

I was reading Ranjit's post on how ridiculous HR was in one of his companies.

I thought I'll share an anecdote that was almost funny.

This happened in a small company of about 100 people in India, mostly engineers and about a handful of HR like people. There was an event being organized that kept getting postponed, and it wasn't clear why. So one day I popped around to the HR cube -- about 5 cubes away from mine -- and seeked to gain some higher knowledge. The conversation, honestly, went something like this.

HR-czar: "Oh. that.. uh.. yeah.. it needs budget planning and PR, and then approval from business, and then finance approval and budget sanctioning, and then only we can do this. It's a long process. It takes time."

I thought at this time that the governing overseas company must be really clamping down now on costs. But something else was bothering me.

Me: "What's PR?"

HR: "Purchase Request."

Me: "Who does that?"

HR: "X does."

I turn to X, "how long does it take?" expecting that this probably needs a lot of evaluation and planning, so maybe a few days.

X: "about 2 minutes. Shall I get it?" "Yeah, let's."

2 minutes later, with a PR in my hand. "Who gives the business approval?" I was getting the hang of it.

HR: (and she's begun to laugh by now.) "Y can."

I walk over to Y, in the next cube. Signed, no problem. I jump over to the HR cube again. "How does finance approve?"

HR: "Well... it's just Z." Z's sitting next to her. Finance signs.

There are some sheepish grins and blushes, but there is joy all around. We had a party to plan. You had to see the sudden rush of excitement in the HR cube.

Why is independent thought rare?

What is independent thought? Something that does not conform to eveyrthing else around. Something that sticks out.

Why is it rare? Is it? I think it is because there's very little I run into that I feel isn't exploring known territory. Every once in a while there will be someone who breaks the norm and a legion of followers wake up as though they were all really thinking the same thing and just did not say it. At times it is just admitting that the emperor has no clothes.

But as I wondered more I thought maybe there is a more inherent reason for someone to not have independent thought. Survival. From a pack of 100 zebras, the one that's most likely to get picked by the lion is the one that stands away from the crowd. The head that's going to roll is the one that sticks out.

I read an interesting book called Sync sometime back. It talked about how order emerged spontaneously in the world around us. It explores why a audience full of people end up clapping in rhythm without any external cue and why fireflies flash in sync with each other. The subject itself was fascinating for me. It even had insights that I was considering applying to a distributed system design I was working on then. But I don't recall the book actually explored survival as a possible reason for this tendency to be in sync get programmed into us -- it may have, I just don't recall it.

If everyone in a hall was clapping in sync, and you decided to clap out of sync, imagine the whole hall turning around and looking at the sore thumb in their midst.

If a bug-eater is on the lookout for bugs and sees a bunch of fireflies flashing in unison, it'll probably think they are the latest invention from mankind, or a UFO or something and flee for its life. But if there's a firefly in its midst flashing away at its own merry pace different than the others.. aha! Supper time!

We all have an innate urge to conform because we don't want to be a prey. And thus independent thought becomes rare.

Anthony Lane's review of Superman

Anthony Lane is hilarious. Check out his review of Superman Returns.

Here's a brief excerpt...

What these [crystals] are I never really gathered, but their potency is plain: just add water, and bang goes the power supply of the Eastern United States. Add more crystals to more water, and up from the seabed rises a fresh landmass, on which—if you are Luthor—you plan to build a whole new continent of your own devising. Picture my disappointment as I realized that, for all the pizzazz of “Superman Returns,” its global weapon of choice would not be terrorism, or nuclear piracy, or dirty bombs. It would be real estate. What does Warner Bros. have in mind for the next installment? Superman overhauls corporate pension plans? Luthor screws Medicare?

Fabulous stuff.

While on fabulous, there should have been an emperor fabulous, shouldn't there? "Hi, I'm emperor Fabulous!" "Oh yes, so you are!" (If you didn't _get_ it, it's time you met Senor Izzard.)

Superman's back and more

I am no movie critic, and this isn't a movie review. When I heard Superman's coming back, I knew that if I waited too long it wasn't going to be fun. It is probably going to get trashed and then I'm not gonna watch it all that much. I hadn't expected it to really be great so I wanted to watch it before the deluge of reviews came out. And today the reviews of the movie are just like the hero himself -- wherever you look, there they are.

So what did I think of the movie? I think it was great. Lot of fun. I think Kevin Spacey is my hero. The guy should go do Shakespeare or something. The movie is good entertainment. 3-D stuff is decent but you won't miss much if these weren't in 3-D. The movie has some tongue-in-cheek stuff, and some occasionaly subtlty that I enjoyed. Even without these, the movie is good entertainment.

There is this other superhero film I saw that was good, cheesy, mindless fun as well. Krrish. For people unaware of movies from India, this is a Bollywood attempt at a superhero born with powers from out of this world -- thanks to the alien who blessed his dad with powers in an earlier movie.

I recall a friend once telling me that you can judge the mental age of a country by the movies being made for them. We must all be gradually progressing towards infancy. Fifty years ago, the movies though we were mature adults, somewhere in our 30s or 40s -- what with silly themes about life, self-respect, politics, freedom, struggle and all that. Two decades ago we were all in our twenties -- action films, heroes that made us dream big and conquer the world. Ten years ago were were teenagers -- cheesy romances and juvenile jokes seemed to be the way. And now we enjoy our dose of Spiderman, X-men, Superman, Krrish, Batman -- and all with the glee of an eight-year old. What? There are bigger things to worry about than ogling at the pretty girl, and jumping up and about in my super-costume? Pfththth...

Movie of the week: Bubba Ho-Tep

My officemate at Amazon was once playing the third of the Evil Dead series (Army of Darkness) on his computer. I had only seen about the first 10-15 minutes, and I wasn't sure if I wanted to watch the rest of it. Then, sometime later, I saw Evil Dead 2 in a theater. And I became a fan of Bruce Campbell and this whole genre. I got me a copy of Army of Darkness DVD at some point. And I loved it this time.

Then I heard about Bubba Ho-Tep. This time I wasn't getting left out. I got me, and convinced some friends to join me as well, tickets to an early show. And I don't recall laughing that hard in a movie theater ever in my life. The movie has an ingenious premise, an out of this world (pun intended) plot and incredibly funny dialogues.

The premise: JFK and Elvis are actually alive and spending their lives in a senior residents home, somewhere in the south. And, JFK is black. The plot? There's an egyptian mummy on the loose sucking out souls of residents in this community. So it's up to the wheelchair-bound JFK and crutches-bound Elvis to save the world. The plot evolves gently, weaving through bug problems, egyptian graffiti in the toilet, cowboy boots and some ridiculous mummy-dialogue (with subtitles).

Let there more of Bruce Campbell!

Add penalty shoot out to Cricket test matches

While there is the exciting world cup matches being played out in Germany, Indians are busy dragging match after match with the West Indies to tame draws. This version of Cricket is unbelievably indulgent -- top players (and extremely well paid too) of two nations, half the globe from each other, meet in a stadium where thousands buy tickets to watch them play, and after five days of play it is announced that the match is a draw. No result. No winners to celebrate, and no losers who feel beat. How can this form of any game draw such popularity, money and fame?

I think they should add a penalty shoot-out version of cricket at the end of these five days. If there is no result at the end of five days, the players play a 5-over-a-piece game to decide a winner. And the buggers keep doing it till they get a result. If someone paid to watch you play, I think you should be spending a good part of the time entertaining them and not sipping tea in the pavilion.

On the internet, no one knows you are a dog

Everyone's seen this popular New Yorker cartoon. Very often I get reminded of this, especially these days of the blog.

Speaking of New Yorker, it's a magazine that keeps serving excellent stories. And cartoons too. I remember that the Star Wars review in the New Yorker was better than the movie itself. How would you compile an online version of such a magazine? The attention span online, apparently, is much shorter. Instead of turning pages, you scroll down (or click a link). It just isn't the same.

But what of the generation that's growing up with the Internet. Will they have completely different set of skills? It's an old thought, though, already.

In the meanwhile, World Cup goes on -- no major surprises yet. Unless Ghana manages to do one up on Brazil. Beckham finally bent one like only he can to get England into the final eight. Italians and French made it to the last sixteen, and I am sure they must be glad they managed to get this far, given their performances. Among the quarterfinals, Gemrnay - Argentina will probably the most entertaining encounter.

Random musings

I was getting tired of working off of the laptop all the time -- however much I love my powerbook. Of late I've been churning out some serious amount of code, and I finally succumbed to the urge to buy a desktop.

I had seen a Mac mini in the Apple store, and it is quite an eye-catcher. It looked so, so... tidy. But I wasn't sold on buying the mini. When I decided I needed a desktop, I thought I'll check out the reviews on it. As I was browsing the reviews, I thought I noticed a pattern -- and that triggered a thought.

How do I know what someone's posted as a review on the Internet is an actual review by someone trying it out? Maybe the review I am reading is really a marketing ploy to make me go one way or the other. The pattern I had noticed was the negative reviews were all referring to very similar things, and had some similar ways of saying it (e.g., many reviewers said "I wanted to like it, I really tried"). I may be reading too much into the reviews I read. But I am positive that companies are using online reviews as marketing ploys.

Anyway, I ended up still buying the mini. I want a development platform, and something I can use for things other than just writing code as well. In other words, iTunes, iPhoto, etc. etc. -- all those cool things I can't live without any more.

Ghana is the new Cameroon?

Ghana went and beat the Czechs 2-0. And it was no fluke. Czechs just didn't know what hit them. Just when I was missing Cameroon, this team put life into the Cup. Go Ghana!

Ich bin ein berliner, or is it?

One fine day, my dear, dear friend Abir introduced me to Eddie Izzard. I have to say that after that I could barely enjoy any other stand up comedian. This guy just raised the level many times higher than others. And for this introduction alone, I will always be indebted to Abir -- who incidentally also introduced me to many other wonderful movies, including the Jeeves and Wooster TV series (another wonderful stuff from British Television).

The first time I watched the "Dress to Kill" show, I remember my sides were hurting so bad that I had to pause the DVD for some time. This guy takes on the ancient history, to Humbledink to Kennedy (who apparently made a huge error with his speech in Berlin) to England to current (then) politics and covers just about everything in the middle -- which includes Egypt, Switzerland, Hanging Gardens of Babylon among other things ;). I've seen this show several times over, and still put it on, have tried to show it to many (everyone?), and it still is as funny as ever. I just can't stop myself from laughing when he mimes a squirrel looking up from eating a nut (f***ing nuts, all the time), and wonders... did i leave the gas on?... No! I am a f***ing squirrel!

Go get this show. It's good for you.

On stand up comedians, I recently came across a South Asian dude who's apparently become a huge rage in the US and Canada -- Russell Peters. I checked out some of his videos on youtube, and I have to admit that this guy is very, very funny. His material seems somewhat limited though, but let's hope he keeps working on it. One of his shows is now on my netflix queue, and at the top too!

The World Cup

Many moons ago -- again around the time I moved to Seattle -- a Burmese/Nepalese movie came out, called The Cup. It was about a Buddhist monastery in India that serves as an asylum for Buddhist monks who escape from Tibet. No, that's not right -- the movie was about a young Buddhist monk who is crazy about soccer and desperately wants to watch the final. In a course of an hour or two, the movie quiety engaged me in this simple tale, with non-actors and the passion for soccer. The movie doesn't seem to be available on Netflix, but I've seen this in several good video rental stores. Highly recommended. And yes, the movie is based around the 98 world cup when France took the trophy home.

The world cup 2006 continues -- no major upsets so far. Among the teams I've watched so far, I loved the Czech Republic's performance. The US team was just no match for them. I think the Czechs have a serious shot at the Cup this year, despite all their injuries. Rosicky's goals were brilliant!

Among other teams, I thikn Brazil still looks ok -- their passing and skill is always there to see and applaud -- but they seemed to lack a desire to take it all the way. It may be just because of the team they were playing against and they definitely will have to up their game level against the likes of England, Czechs and their own group mates Japan and Australia.

I didn't see the French but they never were a team I would root for. Italians as usual seemed to falter as a team. Too many people wanting to do it all on their own as usual. Germans look ok, and so do England. Beckham was great in the game against Trinidad. But they seem to have problems in people like Crouch.

It's going to be a great second round. Brazil, England, Czechs, Germany, Mexico will all be there.

I miss the Cameroon and Turkey teams from the last world cup, though. Theirs were some of the most memorable games.

Dr McNinja!

This comic strip has quite a sense of humor!

Signal to Noise ratio

This post is a rant. It is about the noise I have to sift through online to find something I want -- or give up trying.

I was recently trying to find out more about distributed ruby. I have a book -- Dave Thomas' pragmatic programmers -- so I started there. This book, to begin with, runs out of its use in a very short period of time. Half of this book is a reference to the language where the description for methods is a one line sentence that repeats the method name in an English sentence with five more words around it. I remember writing comments like this in code, thinking the function name is self-explanatory. Heck, I wasn't writing a book. But Dave Thomas was. Anyway, it isn't a rant about this book.

So I searched online. Naturally, I went to Google. My search for distributed ruby showed plenty of results. But the promise turned to anguish as I found that most of these results were identical pieces of text on different websites. And guess what, all of these were identical to the text for distributed ruby in Dave Thomas' book. What a stupid, inbred world. Evolution stopped somewhere, I felt. But this is not a rant about these posts.

If you search for something online, again at Google for most part, you will be told that Google found 10s and 10s and 10s (ad infinitum) results from many million times more of the number of pages online. Wow. Images and articles about Googles' server farms and file systems and armies of Phds and some people like me working away (or not) in Google immediately come to mind. But I seem to be digressing again. What I realize, looking at my results, very often these days, is that most of the results are blog posts or articles or rants (like this) that talk _about_ the stuff you are looking for, but themselves aren't the stuff you are looking for. It is even worse than that. Most of these articles -- and you only find this after you've read them -- don't really add anything to the ocean of knowledge. I don't mean it in a way that the ocean is too big and therefore their contribution too small -- no, most of these blogs are too happy to either just repeat what's out there, or make derive inane epiphanies -- their actual contribution to the world is not just insignificant, it is none. And yes, not to forget, they also give you a bunch of ads from Google (ahem, ignore the stuff on top of this page, please).

I think the reason people write blogs is to massage their inflated egos. I can't sidestep this accusation either -- I think this reason contributes to the existence of my blog. Not all blogs, I agree, but most exist for satisfying their authors' desire for attention. The reason I feel this way is that in most blogs, it is not the content that assumes importance but the author. It is always about the author. It is rarely about the content. There are a few blogs I follow for content, but even most of these haven't really evolved much since they first started. Most of the blogs I follow are of people I follow, and beause there are common interests, they often give me leads to things interesting to me. But I find that most blogs, in the guise of enlightening the world with their wisdom, are just an outlet for people craving for attention.

The result is that many blogs/people write about the same stuff. How many people have to write about their experiences with coding a new Ruby on Rails application that I _want_ to read? Aren't there enough blogs with similar content to yours that you can just do your stuff and not have to write about it? Sure you have views about how Google manages its storage, but you don't know anything about it, really, and unless you are going to add something that google hasn't already shared, or that others haven't already inferred, why do you have to write about it?

I think one of the reasons this problem exists is Google. They have this huge machinery where they can slurp any new content and make it accesible through this one search box. And this machinery is hungry for new content all the time. I recently watched this movie called The Corporation. It talks about companies and large corporations that take decisions for their own profitability and revenue, and in their wake leave behind problems that others have to deal with (envionmental issues being the most prominent ones). I think Google is doing something similar to the web. Because they have a solution for handling large volumes of content, and they have a candy call AdSense for people ready to write content, everyone is ready to contribute to the problem by providing more content. Behold the world of inane junk that surrounds us on the web.

Of course, Google is not evil. Their motto says so. They are anti-Microsoft. And Microsoft is evil. Heck, Microsoft charges people! What a supid, hundred-year-old idea that is. Who ever thought of paying for anything? Amazon ships stuff to you for free. Hey, they even give you discounts and don't charge sales tax. Google pays you money for writing junk and having a bunch of ads on your site -- or better still, they'll pay even if you don't write anything but just have ads on your site! And yes, the prices of adwords are increasing. More people want to advertise on your site. More money for you. It's a beautiful world. And an ugly web.

Enough ranting. I should really be spending this time working on what I am doing. But then writing this softens my craving for attention. And before I leave, here's a thought from the lovely, lovely movie Usual Suspects: "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist."

P.S. I recently stopped giving forwarding links to Amazon for movies, and instead have them point to Netflix. I had an Amazon associate account, but I don't have a Netflix account (because it was a pain to set up, not because I don't like money, which I do). One reason is that a friend asked me to do that because it makes it simpler for him to act upon things I write. It made sense to me. Why would someone buy something because I liked it? But, if acting upon my writing was free for you -- like adding the movie in your Netflix queue is -- then you might. Or at least you are more likely to do that than buy it from Amazon. Hence the move.

Cinema of Sang-jin Kim

I "discovered" this director by picking up the comedy "Attack the Gas Station" on a whim from Scarecrow video. The movie, I thought, was a laugh riot. It had a group of actors who rob a gas station, and then, because they are bored, they rob the same gas station again. This time, one thing leads to another and they are holed up in the gas station for the entire night. The movie builds up to a very entertaining climax, and in the process packs in a lot of whimsical, quirky incidents.

I happened to "meet" the director at one of the Seattle Film Festivals -- he was there with his another incredibly funny movie -- Jailbreakers. All his movies, as I think many Korean movies do, have plenty of small, quirky sides to their characters. In Jailbreakers, one of the guys, when he breaks out of prison, sits on the ground, arms raised in sky, eyes closed -- reminiscent of Tim Robbins from Shwashank Redemption. Why does he do that? Because he always wanted to. The movies also pack in some bizarre situations, e.g., the jailbreakers looking for a way to break back into the jail that has cops under seige by the prison inmates. The movies don't try to explain away the quirkness of the characters -- they are there, and others have to deal with them. And I loved this about his movies.

His latest movie is out -- "Ghost in the House/Gwishini Sanda" -- but unfortunately it isn't available on Amazon or on Netflix -- so I ended up ordering it from some obscure online store. Meanwhile, if you are up for some entertaining, quirky cinema, you can rent two of his movies from Netflix. (Sang-Jin Kim on Netflix)

World Cup 2006!

Soccer world cup is a heck a lot more fun that Cricket, Wimbledon, Superbowl and World series all put together. The characters (and not just players) are so much more diverse, so much more action gets packed into a short time of play, and the energy on the field and the stadium is just electrifying. I can't wait for the world cup to start in another week!

I discovered today that the coffee shop next door is going to be opening shop early morning and will be showing hte matches on TV. They are rooting for Italy. I suspect it might be an England and Brazil showdown in the finals. Whatever happens, plenty of action is on the cards for next month!

Talking of action, I just saw X-Men 3 a few days back. I was a bit disappointed -- it seemed like a lot of buildup for.. nothing. Mystique used to light the screen in the earlier movies and here her role ends early. They give incredible powers and personality (two of them, in fact) to Jean, and for most part of the movie she just stands and stares in space while kids fight it out. Magneto seemed like a caricature of his earlier roles. Halle Barry should really do more stuff like Monster's Ball or James Bond. She seems almost out of place in this movie. But then everyone in the movie seemed a little confused about what they were doing.

Last night I saw this beautiful gem of a movie called "Mongolian Ping Pong." It's a story of a couple of kids in Mongolia who find a ping pong ball and don't know what it is. They think it is a glowing pearl at first, and then they discover that it is a Ping Pong ball -- the "national ball" of China. So they conclude that it must be a very important thing to the nation, and they must return it. It is never hilarious, but it always keeps you engaged with its charm. The innocence and childhood is packaged with phenomenal landscapes of Mongolian grasslands -- making it a very beautiful film to watch. This movie was a part of the San Francisco film fest, but I missed it then. Be warned -- the movie is slow and at no time is in any kind of rush to get anywhere and the majority of screen time is taken by three kids who do not seem to be professioanl actors. But the movie is a total charmer -- packed with a Mongolian shepherd with quixotic ambitions (including one to build a windmill -- made me wonder if there was a reference to Quixote), and the constant bewilderment on the part of kids who seem to be adept at everything else around them.

Mexico

Pooja and I spent the memorial day weekend in Mexico -- Puerto Vallarta, to be precise. We stayed in La Cruz de Huanacaxtle -- a small town about 40 minutes of a drive to the north. The beaches in the area were fabulous -- especially those around Punta de Mita. The one beach we both loved was slightly to the north of Punta de Mita, hidden away from busy areas.

The town of Puerto Vallarta seemed like any other party town on the beach -- except that it had some Mexican flavor to it. There was one thing that captured my attention. When walking on the Malecon (the promenade) in the evening, I heard this periodic rumbling sound -- initially it sounded like a distant thunder, or some kind of disturbance in a neighbouring towns. Then I realized it was the sound of the water flowing back after a wave had crashed on to rocks. There is no beach for most part along the Malecon -- there are rocks and boulders that line the water. And when waves crash and water rolls off of these rocks back into the ocean, it makes this rumbling sound. I don't remember hearing this sound any other place. A random thought came to me then -- each of these sounds was made as rocks somewhat moved against each other due to the flow of the water. The force of the water and the position of the rocks is probably never same at any two times I hear the sounds -- and this means every time I hear the rumbling, it exists only then and is never repeated and is lost forever once it dies.

I wish we had more time to explore other parts of Mexico. The Mexico city itself, and more of the Aztec and Mayan remains. Some other time, maybe.

Some good documentaries

There are two movies I saw about a couple of years ago that were very impressive. Both of these were documentaries, and nature and environment featured as a common theme in the two.

The first one was Baraka. Baraka comprises several segments about people, nature, industry, religion to paint a fascinating collage. The film covers the entire planet, and captures some exquisite beauty from everywhere. I remember that the scene where chicken are put through a plant to be marked and packed off to a poultry farm put me off of any kind of meat for a while. The scenes are very effective in letting some hidden beautiful aspect of the picture evolve slowly without the help of a narrative. The film's music helps -- again effective in drawing the viewer in and keeping him engaged. (Rent from Netflix)

The second film is called Winged Migration. As I watched the movie, I thought it was impossible to have done what they did. Or at least extremely difficult. The film makers tracked birds as they migrated one season and then migrated back the next. And not just one flock or one kinds of birds -- birds from all over the planet. It is a fascinating movie again -- another one that captures the beauty of nature so well. I saw this movie at a theater, so I don't know if the DVD has features on making of the movie etc., but they would be a delight to watch. (Netflix rental)

Moved..

I recently set up an account with textdrive and now have my own site there. The blog is moving to: blog.vikgup.com.

Over the past few weeks I have been working on a small user application. I am planning to have it go live tonight, or by tomorrow, depending on how deployment goes. So far, things have been very smooth with Textdrive, and with Ruby, Rails, MySql.

A movie a week: La Communidad

I chanced upon this movie in the fabulous Scarecrow movie store in Seattle. Scarecrow is responsible for helping me find so many of the movies that I couldn't otherwise. It is truly a remarkable store. Coming back to the movie of this week, La Communidad is a less famous Spanish movie, and I could not figure out why it is not more well known.

The movie is a dark comedy, a thriller that entertains you very well. The movie is about a huge sum of money that is supposedly hidden in an apartment, and since everyone in the building knows about it, they all want it. The greed of the people bind them together even though no one trusts anyone, and they rally to not let whoever takes the apartment have any of the cash. It reminded me quite a bit of the other incredible movie -- Delicatessen, a movie where a similar community in a building works together to harbour their secret.

La Communidad was very fresh, and it continued to surprise till the very end. I have a bias for dark comedies, for noirs, and this one very much comes close to being one of the best.

Dracula in Pakistan

Browsing the Virgin music store in the SF city the other day, I chanced upon this movie that I couldn't resist. It's called "The Living Corpse". The movie was a little bit disappointing -- it wasn't as campy as I had hoped it would be. Nevertheless, it was bad enough to have some value. The best was a scene where a female "evil spirit" breaks into a Latin dance to entice a man. The movie had value in just existing -- I don't think there's something quite like this from subcontinent's cinema, and definitely not in the 60s.

A movie a week: Waking Ned Devine

I remember walking out of the theater feeling very happy after seeing Waking Ned Devine. The reason I am talking about this movie today is that I recently ready about a new Hindi movie release that has a storyline that seems suspiciously similar to this movie. The basic premise of the movie is a small Irish village trying to collect the prize on the winning lottery ticket -- when the actual winner dies (of the shock of having won a jackpot!).

All said, the movie is a very funny, heart-warming story told in the setting of a beautiful Irish village. The story starts with two old men finding out that someone in their small village has the winning lottery ticket. They don't know who, but they set out to find out who it is, and how to get a share of it. It turns out that the winner is an old man who dies at the shock of the win -- he is found dead smiling, holding the ticket, looking at the TV. From then on follows a fun ride -- featuring a naked old man racing on a motorcycle, a flying telephone booth and an on the spot improvised funeral speech -- as the old men try to outfox the government and the village in trying to pocket it all.

It isn't slapstick, as the Hindi remake seems to be. It carries a LOT of charm -- despite the fact that the average age of the cast is probably seventy five.

Coordinates update..

Pooja and I just landed in Palo Alto. It's her first day in the office with A9 today, and my first day at home. I just started looking around for deciding where to live, what car to buy and where to play squash. At least the last seems to have more than one decent option in the neighbourhood.

I just heard about Google buying out Upstartle. Interesting.

A movie a week

I had been thinking for a while about using this blog to write about movies that I like or hate. It'll give me a chance to at least update the blog once a week for that. :)

The movie this week is what I have always felt is probably one of the best movies I have ever experienced. To say that I just "watched" Ikiru would be wrong.

I watched Ikiru in the year 1999, I think. I had just moved to Seattle, to an apartment within walking distance from the fabulous Egyptian theatre there. Another theatre I used to frequent then was the Grand Illusion theater. This is where I got a chance to see some of the really memorable movies. One of them was the movie of this week, Kurosawa's Ikiru.

I could talk about the plot or the screenplay or the acting or direction, but that would really be pointless. It is one of the best works of Akira Kurosawa, and that in itself makes it one of the best movies ever made. It stars Takeshi Shimura in probably the most well known on-screen roles of his.

What I want to talk about are different aspects of the movie that really made it so dear to me. The first was the sheer impact of it. I've seen it in entirety only once, but ever since then its imagery comes back to me with a strong force. It makes you want to do something good with your life. The impact is probably accenuated by how the truth unfolds in the movie -- through impressions and anecdotes of people touched by an honest life.

One of the scenes that I felt was particularly interesting was when Takeshi Shimura is walking down the street, after learning about his illness. He is so lost in thoughts that he doesn't hear or see anything around him. And neither do we -- there is no sound. Then abruptly, he gets a jolt and gets out of the way of a truck -- and we hear noise of a busy street. The camera pans out from focusing on Shimura to take in a lot more around him. The result is very effective. These things are what make Kurosawa's movies a treat to watch.

The essence of the movie is about asking oneself -- what have you done with your life? I remember that a friend left his job, has been roaming the world and doing odd things, with the quest: How to live life. It's a question probably impossible to answer before having lived it -- and I don't thing anyone can answer this for you. Lots of people I talk to -- whether successful and rich professionals or young teenagers or older parents -- have been reading Paul Coelho's The Alchemist. Many of these actually express a desire to figure out how to live life. This of course implies that their current life isn't what they have in mind. All these people will have something to learn from Ikiru. It teaches a simple lesson about life much better than the Paul Coelhos and Richard Bachs of the world.

One of the things I did after watching this movie was to get the lyrics (translated in English) of the song that Takeshi Shimura sings in the movie. It is supposedly a much older song in Japan, and is used very effectively in the movie.

If you watch plenty of world cinema, you will slowly come to realize the impact of Kurosawa's movies on cinema everywhere. The best loved Hindi movie of all time, Sholay, is a remake (a most remarkable one at that) of a remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai. Star Wars was inspired by Hidden Fortress. There are countless other such remakes. But you will also find scenes from Kurosawa's movies that seem to have inspired scenes in other movies. Watch Seven Samurai and then watch Lagaan. Scenes where Aamir Khan takes on the entire village to convince them to take on the British is very similar to the argument in the Japanese village over hiring Samurai to fight the dacoits.

Similar such inspirations from Ikiru show up in movies when you least expect them to. My love affair with Korean movies started with the great action movie Nowhere to Hide. The movie itself seemed to draw inspiration, albeit lightly, from a Kurosawa movie Nora Inu. In the middle of the movie one of the characters is sitting in a children's swing in a snow covered field, dwelling on a recent shoot out. The first thing you think when you see this scene is "Ikiru!"

Few movies have the power to make you want to do something with your life. Ikiru is one.

Moving on..

After about 6.5 years of working at my current company -- Amazon.com -- I will finally be saying goodbye. Looking back, I have to say that I had an amazing time here. But staying any longer would have just been complacency on my part.

There are so many friends, so many sweet memories that happened in this time.

Right now, I am in the middle of getting everything closed, packed and shipped back to the United States. It kind of feels strange -- the last one year in India has changed so much in my life in some ways. The time in India was very memorable, though I can't complain enough about the life (or the lack of it) in Bangalore.

Punjabi ghazals, anyone?

When someone mentions Punjabi music, most people probably think of Bhangra, Daler Manhdi, Malkit Singh an the like. Try this
for a change.

I picked up this album by Kiran Ahluwalia because I remember I had seen the album photo online somewhere, and remember that I had kind of thought about getting it sometime. I saw it when browsing in a store, and next thing I was listening to her amazing voice in my car. Her story of leaving her job to go find music is impressive too. But really, her voice, and her rendition of the ghazals, is something you get hooked on to easily.

The Lisp Way

My journey with Lisp continues. I had progressed to the second chapter of SICP, and now Ajit has swiped it from me. So I'll have to get another copy. (The book's a lot cheaper in the Indian edition -- Rs. 400, or about USD 9.)

I managed to find the Common Practical Lisp book in a store in Bay area. This one's a great read as well. I'm actually reading this stuff in flights, lord forbid.

It's getting to the extent where I have been thinking about past stuff I've done and how I could have done them that much better if I had picked Lisp to do them.

I couldn't find Peter Norvig's book I was looking for in stores anywhere, and I was in the US for a short visit and didn't have time to get it from Amazon. But I have plenty to work thorugh for now!

Physics of 15 Park Avenue

The title is a little misleading. I have little to offer on the physics of 15 Park Avenue. But I have some observations. For those not in the know, 15 Park Avenue is a new movie by Aparna Sen -- the director of the amazing Mr. and Mrs. Iyer.

I saw this movie a few weeks ago, and we weren't prepared for the grim mood of the movie. Nevertheless, we came away impressed with the movie. Before you read any further, there are spoilers below -- so if you haven't seen the movie, you might be better off not reading ahead.

From the very beginning of the movie, it seems to have a thread running about questioning reality, and there is also a thread that keeps mentioning quantum physics. Shabana Azmi is a quantum physics professor. She befriends a neurologist who is treating her sister -- played incredibly by Konkona Sen -- of schizophrenia. Together the doctor and the sister have conversations about what is real and what is not. The movie ends where you are left wondering what it was all about -- and it kind of ties these odd ends about quantum physics and reality and alternate worlds, though still leaves a lot of questions.

The other interesting aspect about the movie was how all the characters revolved around Mithi the schizophrenic. Everyone brought their perspective -- the educated sister treats her like a project and a responsibility, the old mother just looks on helplessly, the maid treats her like a pain she has to endure, the deserting lover looks at her with guilt and seeks redemption in trying to help her.

In one of the conversations in the movie, they discuss a sadhu who "hears voices in his head." The mother is an instant believer who thinks this can happen. The scientists are all non-believers and think he is a charlatan. The doctor brings his perspective -- maybe the sadhu is schizophrenic? And this ties the conversation with Mithi, who talks and lives in a world different than the one others around her are living in.

--

I saw Rang De Basanti last night -- another patriotic themed film by Aamir Khan. It was many times better than the damp affair called Mangal Pandey, of course. The movie had its flaws but I thought the movie was quite well done.

Teaching myself Lisp

Whenever I can make some time these days, I try and make progress with learning Lisp. To begin with, I started with a refresher on Lambda. I remembered some of the lambda calculus stuff, but not a whole lot. Google search pointed me to Wikipedia entries, so that's where I went.

Next I searched for some basic tutorials on Lisp that could get me started. This is the one I ended up using: http://www.notam02.no/internt/cm-sys/cm-2.2/doc/clt.html
Once I was through with this tutorial, I started looking for good books. I found the Common Lisp: The Language book online. I've now downloaded it on my powerbook (which is running for hours on battery now!)

I always felt I could learn better if I had programming problems to work through. They make you wade through some basic concepts that elude you when you are simply reading tutorials etc. After I looked around a bit, I picked up the class assignments from a course at Georgia Tech (where I actually had spent 2 years, without taking this course -- what a waste!): Class CS 2360.

I am almost done with the second assingment now. They weren't very tough, but I couldn't stop myself from smiling when I solved some simple problems like swapping the first and the fourth elements of a list, or implementing simple set operations.

I also bought a copy of Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. It's been a great read so far -- I am still in the first chapter.

Of soundtracks, Korean movies and Indian copies...

I saw the Sajay Dutt starrer, Zinda, this weekend. I thought the movie was a far superior product than what one would have expected. I think it's also largely due to the ability of the lead actors being able to carry off their roles. There were all kinds of goofs and letdowns, but nevertheless this is a good product from Bollywood.
One of the funny goofs was when a guy whose both hands have been cut off is asked where the girl is, points using what must have been his third hand, "upstairs."

Now, one of the reasons, I am sure, this movie appeals to me is that it is remake of the Korean movie Oldboy. I have a weak spot for Korean and Thai movies, and I end up watching a lot of junk from them just because I want to not miss out on a rare gem somehow. That's how I got to see Attack the Gas Station, Jakarta, The Eye, One Missed Call and so many other very good movies (imho). In any case, Zinda did a good job with the production though they could have easily done with someone better than the leading ladies they actually hired -- one thinks of Shilpa Shetty.

One or two movies every couple of months seem to have really good soundtracks. Bluffmaster did it with its hip hop tracks a month or so ago, and now Zinda with its tracks by Strings. Pakistani bands seem to be the flavor du jour, and fully deserved too. Jal, Fuzon, Strings -- all these guys rock!

Lisp..

I met Ranjit for lunch a couple of days back, and naturally there were plenty of geeky things to talk about. He had made references to Lisp related blogs recently, and conversation steered towards functional programming and like for a bit.

About a year and a half ago, when I started working on a brand new product, the nature of the product naturally lent itself to be implemented in a functional programming langauage -- or so I believe. Unfortunately I can't talk about it in detail, but I was very excited that I might get to tinker in Lisp or ML once again. But it wasn't to be. This time, however, I am a little bit more determined to just work in Lisp for fun, if nothing else.

This led to an exercise of installing CLISP on my powerbook. I have Panther (10.3), and the majority of my pain in getting CLISP installed was in finding how to get the Xcode developer tools installed. It turned out that the whole thing was incredibly simple once you knew where to install from. In any case, as of this morning, I have CLISP on my laptop, and I feel like child again, eager to get back home from work and play!

Bringing the powerbook battery back to life

For some time now, the battery on my 12-inch powerbook had been behaving erratically. I noticed it first some 4 months ago, when the battery went from 100% charge to dead in about 10 minutes. Initially I thought the battery must be close to dying (it has been close to two years of usage). Last week, I decided to at least tamper with it a little bit. With only a little bit of internet research, I figured that the problem is probably related to the memory problem, and I found two ways people have fixed similar problems. I narrowed down the possible things I could try to fix the laptop to these two: boot up open firmware, and try to reset nvram; and try and completely discharge and recharge the battery a few times.

I didn't know how to boot up in open firmware, and this place had some good information to get me started. Other people had written about how they had fixed battery problems in open firmware too.

Once my powerbook was in open firmware, i reset-nvram, and reset-all -- resulting in the latop restarting. There didn't seem to be any effect. The battery was still draining pretty quickly.

Then I started the process of draining the battery completely. In order to do this quickly, I downloaded BatteryAmnesia, but it didn't work -- it kept reporting that the AC adapter is connected when it wasn't. It probably did its best and there was a problem with the battery I needed to fix, but I was a little disappointed with the software -- as a programmer myself, I expect programs to work when users use them.

So I began the process of letting the battery drain off completely, and then recharging it again. After a couple of these sessions I noticed that the powerbook would start reporting only 1% charge left after about 20 minutes of work, but then would stay on for another hour or so at that level. In some ways, the problem was fixed -- my battery was lasting much longer now than it was earlier.

After a few more sessions of fully draining the battery and recharging it, the battery seems much healthier. It is charging and draining at a much lower rate -- which does seem to indicate a "memory problem" as the root cause.

Kumarakom and Allepey

A couple of weeks ago Pooja and I went to Kerala. We planned it at a very short notice, but we managed to still get to do what we wanted to -- which was a day at a lakeside resort in Kumarakom, and a houseboat cruise. We were initially trying to book it online, but decided to go through a travel agent, in the hope of getting better rates. It turned out the buggers charged us the rates we saw online, and added their own margins on top of it. I've seen the same thing now with just about everything in India -- flights, hotels, holiday packages. Probably the best rates you want are already available online now.

I wholly recommend Kerala visit to everyone -- it is indeed a place out of this world. Sitting by the water in Kumarakom in the evening was probably one of most pleasant memories in India. The day and night in the houseboat was great as well. We travelled from Kumarakom to Allepey, but I believe most of the cruises are from Allepey to Kollam.

Hampi

We went to Hampi on the new years' weekend. It was a very quiet new years, but great nevertheless. The city of Hampi was a part of the old Vijayanagar empire till the 15th century, when it was brought to ruins by invaders. This was the first time I saw preserved ruins of a whole city. Cities like Delhi, Udaipur, Mysore, Hyderabad have their own (and even longer) history, but there are layers of cultures that have hidden, or completely erased what existed centuries ago. In most of these cities you can still see the more magnificient pieces of architecture -- the palaces, the forts -- but in Hampi you can look over what used to be an entire city, complete with markets, temples, festival grounds, drainage and drinking water aqua ducts and more.

The city has boundary walls that have gates to come in and go out -- large enough that elephants used to come in years ago, and buses make it through easily now. The moment you enter Hampi, you immediately feel as though you've been transported to a different time. On barren rocks you see beauty in the form of architecture of old everywhere. I found it fascinating to see what seemed like resting places for trekkers in several places -- in the middle of what seemed like nowhere.

The most majestic and impressive of the temples was defintiely the Vithala temple. This temple has "musical" pillars. It is difficult to describe but there are actually different instruments that you can hear when you play on different pillars. Besides this, the Queen's bath was interesting -- one of the times when the good old phrase comes to mind: "It's good to be King!"

We stayed across the river, and getting there by car was quite an adventure. The village across the river from Hampi is now just a row of guest houses and garden restaurants, all catering to mostly foreigners and hippies. Nevertheless, it was not very expensive. I recommend though that you stay in Hampi, preferrably in a guest house or in the Hotel Mayur Bhuvaneshvari that's run by the Karnataka government. You have to take a boat to go across the river, and it stops running at 8pm, and doesn't start till 6am. We were planning to leave Hampi very early morning on Monday, to get back to work in Bangalore, and had to drive some 40 km on very bad roads to get across.

And it was just six years ago...

Today I had to make a call to Bank of America to get the address of the location where I opened my account. While I was asking the CS rep at BofA to help me with it, it occured to me that when I opened my account, the bank was called Seafirst, and so many things were different then. So much has happened since then, it doesn't seem like it was just six years ago. I can almost remember all the months, sometimes even weeks and days, that made up these six years.

Come to think of it, how can human brain just keep cramming up all these memories, and have them so readily available all the time?

We saw King Kong. I had been patiently waiting for this Peter Jackson remake of the 1933 movie, and it didn't disappoint. The New Zealander has put $207 million to good use.

What makes it all worth it in the end...

People talk of crossroads, and the Frosts of the world have extolled the value of the road less travelled. I have been thinking about some drastic changes, some of which are now right upon me (such as marriage), and some I am thinking of bringing upon myself (such as work). There are several different ways one can go, and many different places one could potentially end up at. So I am asking myself, what makes it worth it all in the end?

Blogging has been light of late primarily because life's gotten a lot more mundane (yet hectic) since I came back from my vacation. I was in Chennai on a recruiting trip, and managed to dine at the fabulous Murugan Idli Stall. Besides that, nothing of note's been happening. I am off to Goa for a weekend of party before I tie the knot a week or so later.

Here's to the last few days as a bachelor!

Reality check in Bangalore

I've been back in the office for the past 2 days. I am trying to figure out what I want to be doing now. In the meanwhile, everything about Bangalore only sucks more. Our office has moved to Banerghatta road -- which was supposedly voted as the worst road in India on a TV channel. After a couple of days of long commutes managing to stay alive despite craters on the roads and buses moving around like misguided asteroids, I am questioning why I am here doing what I am doing. Nothing could be worth enduring the shithole that Bangalore has become.

Shopping in Sri Lanka

A bunch of us spent some 4 days in Sri Lanka last week. It was primarily a trip to do some shopping, and also to travel a bit. The only thing going for Sri Lanka, I thought, was that there were probably a lot more beaches to check out.

We managed to only see Bentota beach, and a little bit of the beaches closer to Colombo. Rest of Sri Lanka seemed not very different from India, except that it was maybe a little less crowded, people were a little more well behaved (they actually stop for pedestrians!), and food was not as great. Other than that, as an Indian you would probably feel right at home -- almost to the extent that you would expect these people to know Hindi. It even happened to us a few times -- we blurted out in Hindi to the auto rickshaw driver or the taxi driver, and didn't realize for a second why they didn't respond. Indian Rupee works just as fine in most places, you have to haggle your way through everything, and we didn't look out of place. We felt so much at home that we decided we should be paying the Sri Lankan fares for all parks and temples we visited -- which were of course much less then the charges for foreigners.

We stayed at the Hilton for the first couple of days. I had found out that they have squash courts at the Hilton, so naturally I went prepared. I got a chance to play squash after about 6 months, I think, and loved every second of it. It left me quite sore for the rest of the time in Sri Lanka -- and I felt all of it when trying to jet ski in Bentota the next day.

Our time in Lanka felt like we were driving around most of the time. Traffic seems really slow there. The drive to Bentota took us longer than upwards of 2 hours, and it is just over 60km from Colombo. The next day we drove to Kandy and stayed at the really lousy Queens hotel there. The hotel seemed to have been left behind by the British, and the folks who took it over seemed to have decided that by just letting it be makes it all the better. On the way to Kandy we stopped at an elephant orphanage -- still called that though the original orphans are now grandparents and parents of the rest of the elephants in the orphanage now. We had had some really good time up, close and personal with the elephants in Nagarhole, so it didn't seem that much of a novelty. Nevertheless, elephants are majestic, and command respect when you lay eyes on them.

The third day we were back in Colombo, this time at the Taj Samudra. This hotel was definitely worse off than the Hilton, but better located and decent facilities. Their dinner pricing was quite baffling though. They had priced their buffet at three times the price of the most expensive item on the regular menu -- not surprising then that hardly anyone touched the buffet.

The fourth day was a rare day when I went on a shopping spree for about eight hours at a stretch. We started at Odel (great for clothing, especially t-shirts), moved to House of Fashion (amazing for jackets -- unbelievably low prices!), Arena (which was apparently unceremoniously shutdown for no apparent reason), Paradise Road (really beautiful store, good selection of Dilmah tea, hand paper stuff, handicrafts and more) and then back to Odel to wrap it all up. At Paradise Road I also picked up a book called "Colpetty People" by Ashok Ferrey. I've read half of it now and it reminds me of RK Narayan quite a bit in its prose, and Saki and Roald Dahl in its stories and characters. The book has short stories bases in Sri Lanka, or with Sri Lankan characters. I like it so far.

Back in Bangalore, it seems just like it was before, only worse. The rains have helped make the traffic situation worse -- and I thought it couldn't get any worse. Bangalore seems to heading to some kind of a climax -- one day the traffic will get so bad that everyone will run out of petrol just sitting in the cars, and will have to leave their cars on the road to go home; everything will come to a standstill. It really does feel that way when it takes 2 hours to drive half a km here. And if the people ruling this state would have their way, all of us should soon start farming.

Headed back home...

As all good things do, my surfing vacation ended. :(

But it ended on such a great note, I can't complain. For one, I am doing a lot, LOT, better than when I first started. I am turning more and more, and am able to go across waves!! How cool is that. Whenever I've taken holidays in the summer I've felt that I needed to have a summer sport. Snowboarding's been a great winter sport. With surfing, and, to a slightly lesser extent, diving, I finally have one. Ever since I saw the surfing movie Step Into Liquid, I've felt a need to learn surfing. I tried my hand at it for 3 days in Oregon about a year ago, and that was like tasting blood. Unfortunately I hadn't been able to do it again till now. It feels great to finally get past this constant desire in me to want to get into water.

The other reason it was so great the last 3 days was that, hold your breath, there were dolphins surfing right next to me!! Imagine getting on a wave, catching it, and as you surf a dolphin jumps out from beneath you and surfs the wave next to you! And this wasn't no Seaworld. This was open ocean. I can't describe the feeling... I was howling with joy when it happened.

Look Both Ways

I checked out this movie today at an art house theater in Brisbane. The theater, called Dendy Cinemas, reminded me of some of the smaller art house theaters in Seattle. Anyway, the movie was surprisingly very good. It is an Australian movie, and though I was expecting good stuff, this one exceeded expectations. Slow, downplayed emotions, very real stuff, and nicely put together.

Surfing got even better today after the break. I am beginning to turn and go sideways, and am hoping to take that a notch higher by the end of the week!

Go Dive!

I took a break this weekend from surfing and came over to the Great Barrier Reef for some diving. I did two dives this morning and in one word, it was INCREDIBLE. I think everyone should learn diving, and then explore the world down below water. It's bigger than IMAX! ;-)

I am staying at the Heron Island, an island on the reef itself, in the Marine park. It is a really tiny island (takes about half an hour to walk around it), and it sits on top of a huge reef shelf. The dives were a short boat ride off the island.

During the first dive, I was a little disoriented. Being under water, at 40ft, is still somewhat of a novel experience for me. And everyone else on the dive being expert divers kind of made me look even more green. I was under water for nearly half an hour, and for most part I spent it kind of under the spell of the incredible beauty that surrounded me, not to forget trying not to make too big a fool of myself. It was one incredible experience -- to be surrounded by amazing stuff that IMAX movies are made of, with water squeezing the air bubbles in you, and then there is even more beautiful things that swim by you, taking you somewhat by surprise.

The second dive was a lot better. I was a lot more relaxed, and if I thought the earlier dive was fascinating, this one beat it hands down. We descended to about 18m, and swam along the reef for about half an hour. At one point the divemaster signalled us to come over, and we swam around a coral to find a, yes!, a shark beneath it. It was at least a meter long, maybe 1.5 meters or so. At first sight, I felt a slight twinge of fear. But when the divemaster just went close to its face and waved it out from the coral, I let myself just take it all in. I was swimming 18m beneath the sea level, about a couple of feet away from a 4.5ft shark, the one with the JAWS, so close I count its gills and had time to compare it with what I had seen in books, documentaries and Spielberg's horror flick, and my guide was even close to it and trying to scare it out of its hiding space. I assumed it wasn't going to come for me -- there were more meaty looking divers around me. Surely the guide wouldn't be waving at it if there was indeed a risk. So, I just watched, fascinated, enthralled. No shark cages for me, no sir! Just give me this fearless divemaster!

On my second dive I had taken my underwater camera with me. On the first dive, I reckoned it would be too much hassle, too much of a distraction. I clicked one photo before the dive to make sure the camera worked but, as though to make Murphy the lawmaker give the i-told-you-so smile, the camera refused to work once I entered the water. So I have no pictures to prove what I saw, but I know I'll never forget it either. Tara the fearless divemaster was there as a witness!

I think everyone in this world should learn to dive and explore the world under water. It is worth it! Go dive!

I am headed back from my trip to Heron Island, back to the "mainland." I start my third part of surfing tomorrow morning. My break from vacation has ended, and the vacation itself is drawing to conclusion. In another eight days' time I will be in Bangalore, and then there will be families, flights, weddings and back-to-work.

Bollywood is everywhere!

This Sunday I spent the afternoon at the Queensland Multicultural festival in Brisbane. The program listed music and from from lots of different countries. In fact, it was crammed with performances all day long, with 4-5 shows at the same time. There was food from everywhere as well. I tried a Bolivian dish, the name which I already forgot.

There was a significant presence of Indian music there. And food too. There was a classical music performance, and a Sikh music performance (a guy called Dya Singh who was made out to be a world famous, but I hadn't heard about him before). But what seemed to be much more predominant theme from India was Bollywood. the emcees kept talking about the Bhangra show in the evening and a chance for everyone to learn the dance moves of Bollywood. Among other cultural shows there were bunch of performers singing and dancing to Bollywood songs. Bollywood seems to be defining the Indian culture everywhere, for good or bad. The "filmi" dances and the mushy songs with peppy music are everywhere and there is no escaping. It's like one of the asian underground performers said, the brown invasion has begun.

Crazy Frog

I had heard this song on radio in Maui, couldn't find it in the stores in the US or in India, but finally found it here in Australia. It's funky and though I haven't heard the original Alex F, I like this version.

On my way to Brisbane this evening I heard an incredibly funny recording of a guy in the US, who calls his boss while he is driving, and happens to see a road accident in front of him. The RJ said that the conversation is available on the internet as a podcast and an MP3, but I haven't found it yet. If I do, I'll post a link. It was a rare gem. If someone does have access to it, please send me a link!

Surfing's been great. Little by little I'm getting the hang of it. It get damn tiring after a couple of hours out in the water. But when i catch a wave, it's just sweet!

I checked out the local Carrumbin wildlife sanctuary yesterday, and spent some time up close with kangaroos and koalas. Koalas are incredibly cute little things. I saw a few sleeping in the trees -- all rolled up into a ball, wedged between two branches.

This weekend I'm planning to check out Byron Bay area, and more of Brisbane. I had dinner there at a restaurant/bar called 1 degree, and a drink at the Jade Buddha, both at the Eagle St pier. It was Friday evening, and almost everyone seemed to be out and about. The central area is littered with hip restaurants, coffee shops and bars everywhere -- and all of them seemed to be packed today.

Brisbane

This morning was great. I surfed for some 3 hours and the conditions were just about perfect. On the Rainbow beach here, waves were glass-like and the Sun on the sky made everything even better. My third day into surfing here and I think I am getting a lot better -- it may have just been the conditions, but today felt great. The conditions gave me a lot of rights (the waves coming in from the right) that I caught all the way in. Awesome, awesome.

In the afternoon, I took a train to Brisbane. I had bought the Brisbane Sunday Mail, and I was overjoyed to find that Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is playing here. And in Japanese version with English subtitles too! It wasn't something I could pass up on. I had written a long time back about the movie, and I knew there was no way I could catch it in India. It's a shame that there is no mainstream audience for international cinema, even in metropolis, in India. There are all kinds of small cliquish clubs that watch old cinema classics, but that's about it.

The latest from Miyazaki was beautiful as ever. Miyazaki's world is so enchanting. This time around, however, the movie itself wasn't as impressive as his earlier works. The story did not seem very well put together, and the characters seemed to be almost rip-offs from Spirited Away. Nevertheless, it was worth the afternoon.

The rest of the time, I roamed around in Brisbane, mostly around South Bank. Whatever little I saw of the city, I liked. I've always believed that a river, and to a slightly lesser extent an ocean, gives a city more character. Cities that have neither aren't worth living. Brisbane has both! In just the small area I spent time in was littered with several restaurants, coffee shops, and art galleries. Over the next week I am thinking of checking out several more parts of Brisbane.

Some thing I learned about this area: signs of "XXXX" mark bars or beer shops. I am not sure if this is widespread across Australia, I believe it is something specific to the Queensland area. Apparently a joke goes that the sign says this because Australians can't spell beer. Also, the shops that sell liquor are called, very aptly, "bottle shops."

Gold Coast, Australia

I finally got an Internet (dialup) connection at home here in Coolangatta, Australia, and am logging on. I've been here for two days now, have taken my first sufing lesson, have bought groceries for the next month I am here, have a prepaid SIM card in my tri-band phone and... well, I am just about as settled as I was in Seattle or in Bangalore.

I don't have a rental car yet, but I soon will. That will just about complete whatever's missing.

It is becoming such a small, and simple, world all over. Staying connected is universally similar and downright easy (and cheap). It cost me, what, A$15 for the pin converter, A$30 for the SIM card and A$20 for the internet connection. Credit cards, what an ancient invention now, are of course everywhere accepted. Not to worry about the bills, you can pay them online, using the internet connection you just purchased. Of course, I am not exactly in the outback or in the "middle of nowhere," but nevertheless these things make it really simple to travel and still not be too far. (Does it defeat the purpose? Maybe.)

The place itself is quite nice. It is a bit slow, but the beaches are beautiful, the ocean is everywhere, and just about everyone seems to surf. The apartment I am renting for a month is very sexy, very elegant. It overlooks the Coolangatta beach, is very nicely done, something I wouldn't mind spending a much longer time in.

The water was a little cold today, and is expected to stay that way for the time I am here. The time I spent in the water today was great though. I am excited about the next few weeks of surfing. :-)

Photos

I just posted some photos on Flickr. If you subscribe to the feedburner feed, you would have already seen them show up. If not, check them here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/VikgupTravel.

Leaving for Australia

Bangalore is still the same, probably only a little bit more congested. One night I was driving to the Forum mall in Koramangala, to catch a movie that started at 10. Naturally I left my home, close to Cunningham road, an hour earlier. Since I had the tickets already, it seemed a safe enough gap. All of us in the car were amazed to find ourselves at the mall in about 15 minutes. The roads seemed to be very much devoid of traffic that particular day, though I don't know whom or what to thank for the good fortune. I repeated the drive a few days earlier, and still gave ourselves an hour, and it did take us close to 45 minutes to get there. So whatever happened on Tuesday must have been quite a rare fluke.

I had an interesting conversation with the folks in the Australian embassy this morning. The gist of it was that they promised to try send me my passport today though they couldn't commit to it, but the interesting part was that they wanted me to call in two days to find out if they had actually sent the passport. This was after I had told them I had a flight reservation for tomorrow. It was even more frustrating because whoever I was speaking to was acting as a relay device between me and someone else on the other side. Nevertheless, they thankfully despatched my passport today and I am going to board my flight to Brisbane tomorrow night. Next post will be from down under!

If the blogging is light for the next few weeks, it is probably because I am having too much fun. :-)

Lugging books on treks has its rewards

On the trek to Chandertal, that I had to give up on due to bad weather, I carried 3 books with me. One of them was a trekking guide to the area, a novel and the third one was a collection of papers by Knuth. I had to think about carrying these -- I did not want to lug around extra weight unless I was pretty sure I was going to need it. And surely enough, on the last mile before Hampta pass, I felt the weight of every single ounce (that seemed to become heavier with every step). What clinched the argument was the fact that I was getting horses to carry most of the stuff, so they could easily carry these books too.

However, when I had to stop hours at end waiting for the storm to go away, these books came in very handy. I devoured the trekking guide book many times over, and every time I found it lacking the detail I was looking for. The novel was the next to go. For the last two days, I went through the book by Knuth and spent quite a bit of time trying to solve some of the problems I encountered in it. All said, I was very, very happy to have got those books with me -- they kept me good company in an otherwise lonely tent. :-)

The trekking guide I used was Trekking in the Indian Himalaya by Harish Kapadia. When I first leafed through it I found the book quite good. It helped me choose the trek and plan for the number of days. But that's where the usefulness of the book ended. Once I started on the trek, I realized that the plan that the author laid out, similar to the one charted by my guides, was for a lazy stroll and not a trek. I mean, we started around 9am the first day, and we had already put up tents by 1pm. So I pushed the guide into squeezing two days' worth of trekking into the second day, and things looked much better. The book was full of errors, had the order of campsites wrong, had elevations wrong (surprisingly, the text didn't match the figures as well). I think the author probably spent some time in the town of Manali, sat down with some guides and in a week had slapped some stuff together and sent it for publishing. Quite a letdown.

The novel I was carrying with me was the very fat Cryptonomicon. And fat, of course, also means heavy. But this book was what made passing time real easy. It's a very geeky book, what with encryption algorithms and perl scripts in the middle, talk of Riemann zeta functions and an appendix by Bruce Schneier. It was a blast, though. I thought it turned into a bit too much of fantasy towards the end, but till then it was a great ride. It did make me more curious about some of the Maths involved.

Once I was done with Cryptonomicon, I turned to Selected Papers on Computer Science by Knuth. Knuth is sometimes really difficult to read, just because of the sheer density of material in his text. These papers were at times much easier (some of them were almost like stories), and at times just as difficult to follow. But they were almost always interesting. In one of his papers, he discusses whether toy problems are useful. After recapping some older mathematicians' point of view, he jumps into some actual problems. One of the problems was given by a Stanford professor to his class in 1975 (or some such year): Write a program to divide the square roots of numbers 1 through 50 into two sets such that the sum of numbers in the one set is as equal as possible to the second set. Further the program should not take more than 10 seconds of computing time. Of course ten seconds of computing time was a lot less than what it is today, but the problem was interesting. I didn't have a computer at hand, but I tried solving it without the use of one. The result was a good amount of time doing simple algebra and some simple insights. I had a solution but I knew it was not the best. It did help me spend some time sitting in a dhaba, consuming glasses of milk tea and scribbling on a letter pad, while a snow storm brewed outside. Didn't someone say mathematicians are a machine for convertng coffee into theorems? The other interesting problem that I remember is the discussion about the hash tables and average cost of insertion with open hashing -- just the mathematics parts were interesting and sometimes difficult to follow.

Next time onwards, I am definitely going to carry some books on treks with me. I might consider, however, tearing a novel the size of Cryptonomicon into 3 or 4 parts and dividing the load across the horses. ;-)

Serving up delicacies at 4000m

Yesterday I arrived back in Manali from the trek. Unfortunately we ran into lousy weather, almost from the 2nd day onwards. By the fifth day, we were in the middle of a storm that just refused to go away. After waiting for about 3 days at Chhatru -- the only place in its 80km radius with a phone connection -- we decided to end the trek and head back to Manali. And of course the weather opened up today. But by yesterday our tents were all wet, and we were more or less done with sticking it out in the relentless rain, and even snow at times.

The first four days, though, were good, despite bad weather. On the third day we reached Hampta pass, close to Deo Tibba, at an elevation of 4270m. I couldn't see a thing from there as the visibility was less than some 20 feet. That night we camped at Sheda Ghauru ("cold place"), and I spent almost the entire time in my tent waiting for the biting wind and rain to subside. It felt like North Pole. The analogy isn't far from true -- I met a couple of Swedes later who took pictures at Sheda Ghauru to show their friends that there are places in India that look like somewhere in Norway or Sweden.

One of the things that caught my attention on the trek -- and it doesn't require trememdous observation skills -- is the amount of shit that covers Himachal. Litterally. All through the trek I had to be careful to avoid stepping into something that came out of a four legged creature. It came in several variety too. There's the wide, circular buns of cows, brown lumps from horses and mules and the droppings from goats and sheep. The number of animals I saw didn't quite match up to the amount of shit everywhere, so it seems all the more amazing. The place we camped on the second day -- Balu Ghera (circle of sand) -- was entirely, I kid you not, covered with cow dung. You had to really step around carefully to find clean ground -- or really ground covered with dried up shit -- and there was absolutely no strolling around in the dark. And of course, half the place smells like the stuff covering the ground.

The trek covered beautiful meadows in Kullu valley in the first 4 days, and then descended into the Lahaul valley, all the way to Chandertal. We didn't go much into the Lahaul valley. We camped at Chhatru, close to some dhabas and a satellite phone operated out of a rest house some 15 minutes' hard walk away. At that elevation, devoid of vegetation for most part, that walk took much more than what seemed at first.

What was really amazing on the trek was the stuff that the cook churned out every evening. It may not sound that spectacular to think at first that he made banana pie one night (at Sheda Ghauru). I must remind you that this place was in the middle of nowhere. I had once heard this phrase applied to Columbus, Ohio. But that doesn't even come close. I mean, if you stepped out of the tent and looked around (if you dared the piercing wind), you would see... nothing! There's no sign of civilization around (if you can ignore the ground). You would have to hike about 5 hours to get somewhere. Then you will have to drive another 5 hours to get someplace that begins to get somewhat close to the middle of nowhere that Columbus is. So, when the ever surprising Om Raj, the cook, presented the banana pie, I was justfiable amazed. On other days he had made macaroni, momos, pooris and he had planned to cap it all in the end with pizza and cake on the last day (which didn't occur thanks to the weather).

I am headed back to Chandigarh tonight, and then to Bangalore soon. The trekking plan didn't work out as well as I had hoped, but it was great nevertheless. it is beautiful country here, and deserves many more trips. And yes, I'll put up some photos once I am back in Bangalore.

Trekking in Himalayas

I arrived in Manali this morning on a rickety bus from Chandigarh. Once I was done with everything I need to do to plan the trip to Australia, two days ago, I packed my bags and flew to Chandigarh yesterday morning. From Chandigarh I had reserved a "deluxe" bus to get me to Manali today morning. For those not in the know, a deluxe bus in India is slightly more expensive and promises more comfortable seating. However, when I arrived to board the bus a very different looking bus greeted me. I was told that the original bus had broken down and this was the replacement. It was not "deluxe."

This bus broke down about 2 hours before Manali, at 4 in the morning, and I hopped on to another bus passing by after about an hour of wait. These non-deluxe buses are exquisite pieces of minimality. Everything just barely works. Seats have cushions but they flatten to paper-thinkness once you sit on them. Almost every screw, bolt and frame creaks, rattles and sings if the speed of the bus is anywhere between 5 km per hour to 60 kph -- they are surprising happy and quiet beyond that.

Anyway, I arrived in Manali this morning and met up with my guide. I leave for the ten-day trek to Hampta pass and Chandertal tomorrow morning. It goes up to some 4200m elevation, lower than what I hoped to reach this time around, but promises good scenery. This time I will have an entourage going with me -- a guide, a cook, a porter and 3 ponies. It should be a walk in the park. :-)