Scuba 'n surfing...

Following my earlier post, I finished my PADI certification at the beautiful Ulua beach in Maui. After that, we took another dive to some 40ft to check out some turtles. The green sea turtles put on quite a show for us. We took some photos, and I will put them up online soon.

I took another surfing lesson, with much better results this time around. I managed to catch quite a few waves, to my own surprise. Goaded by the instructor, I even tried a 180 stunt -- jumping on the board to turn myself by 180 degrees. Didn't quite make it, but I sure had a great time that day!

In the last few days there we snorkeled at Hanouma bay in Waikiki, Honolua-Waikelu (sp?) bay and Black Rock Pt in Maui and then, the best of all, at the Molokini crater. At Molokini we had visibility of nearly 150 feet, and saw a huge variety of fish and coral.

Maui!

I've been in Hawaii for four days now, of which 3 were in Maui. Beyond doubt, it is one of the most beautiful places on earth. The beaches are great, there is a whole bunch of things to do.. I took one surfing lesson, but apart from the three times I stood up and surfed to the shore, I spent the entire morning paddling or falling into the water :-). I am also one open water dive away from my PADI certification.

Today's dive was quite amazing. We dove to some 20 ft, off of the Makena beach here. Somewhere in the middle of the dive my instructor pointed a finger at something, and I looked up to see a giant sea turtle swim by. The visibility was great and the turtle swimming by only a few feet away as I took my underwater lessons was quite a sight. These turtles have a kind of smug, bored look about them. I guess it comes from spending a lifetime chilling in warm waters around here. :-)

I drove around the island a little bit today, mostly the northwest part. I was surprised to see a sign for "Blow Horn" on the curvy hilly roads here. It was funny because it is probably the first time I have seen this sign outside of India. The drive was nice, going uphill and around the green hills, with lots of photo-worthy sights. This drive isn't advertised much here, probably because of the nastiness of it -- it is mostly a single-lane road with lots of blind turns. On the other hand the "road to Hana" is on everyone's list of things to do in Maui -- and is full of cars. I am planning to check that out tomorrow. After, hopefully, I get my PADI certification.

1984

1984 evokes many different metaphors. The one that springs to mind first, of course, is the Orwellian world. Of late, however, there have been memories of what happened in India, Delhi in particular, that have been more on my mind.

I recently read another fascinating book by William Dalrymple -- City of Djinns. This books is an account of the author's one year in Delhi, sometime around 1990. Dalrymple writes with wit and has a fascinating collection of anecdotes. On top of it all, his curiosity and passion for the city of Delhi is amazing. And it shows in his narrative.

Coming to the point about 1984, the author recounts conversations with people in Delhi who suffered through that nightmarish episode. For many people in Delhi, it seems, the partition in 1947 and the riots in 1984 have left scars that run deep. The incidents in 1984 might even be topical these days, given the resignation of Mr. Tytler and the statements from prime minister Manmohan Singh.

I was 9 years old when the riots broke out in Delhi, and many other parts of India. I recall seeing the news on TV about Indira Gandhi's assassination. I don't recall the news about the massacres that happened soon after. One morning, a day or two after the assasination, I woke up to find that a Sikh family who lived in the house opposite ours were camping in ours. My mother explained to me, still half-asleep and quite perplexed, that there were fears that their house might have been attacked, and therefore my parents had brought them home in the night. Another family was similarly camping in our next door neighbour's house. I didn't quite feel the fear then, rather I felt kind of happy to have their kids at our place. But I did feel my family was kind of heroic in doing what they did. And then we saw a house in some distance go up in flames -- we rushed up to the roof, and we could see a couple more fires in distance. I don't recall a whole lot more but I do recall the fear in the air.

I think the people responsible for the riots deserve to be punished. However, hoping for justice and expecting it in India are two very different things.

Life in New York

Deep down, I've always wanted to spend a lot of time in New York. Every time I go there and leave, I feel I want to come back here and stay here for a while. Maybe it will happen one day. Till then I'm content with occasional visits.

When I landed in New York, the weather was hot and humid and, as everyone seemed to agree, quite unfriendly and quite unlike New York. Nevertheless, we hit the town soon after brunch. We were headed for the matinee show of The Lion King. We had time to kill and based on someone's recommendation (looking to counter the heat that was beginning to get to us), we stood in the queue for twenty minutes at Coldstone's to treat ourselves to a large cup of ice cream. Not bad, but it didn't quite hit the spot.

The Lion King show though definitely did. It was everything people had described, and maybe a little more. The only other Broadway show I have seen is the incredibly funny Urinetown. The two were both different from each other but the Lion King's setup seemed incredibly well thought out and very clever.

After the show we rushed to the Quad cinemas to catch a show of Tony Takitani. This was a 75 minute movie adapted from a short story by Haruki Murakami. After reading Norwegian Wood, I'm ready to lap up anything from this genius of a writer. The movie was kind of contemplative, and had a creative way of involving the characters into the narration of the story -- it kind of brought the characters closer to the screen than what a simple background narration would have done. I enjoyed the movie, and felt all the more a desire to spend time in this city, and watch a hundred more such movies before they disappear from the collective consciousness of mankind.

When we stepped out of the show we found New York wet and dark. A huge downpour had descended on the city and we were stuck under the awning outside the theater along with other fellow filmgoers. For some odd reason it reminded me of a scene from Woody Allen's Annie Hall -- I'm sure someone who's seen the movie will know which one. :-)
We managed to catch a cab, with the help of a friend who had come to join us there after the movie. We were headed for 11 Madison Ave., for dinner at a hip Indian fusion restaurant -- Tabla.

Tabla wasn't a disappointment, by any means, but didn't measure up to my expectations. Nevertheless, a great place to catch food with a touch of Indian flavor and a dose of creativity and fusion.

The next day in New York presented itself with a fresh face. It seemed as though we had time-warped into the fall in just one day. We celebrated by packing our rollerblades and hitting the Central Park soon after breakfast -- Central Park being another great reason to live in Manhattan. I couldn't help myself from comparing Cubbon Park in Namma Bengaluru to the Central Park. Well, comparing isn't exactly the word. I did think about Cubbon Park. Both are a large, green expanse in the middle of a bustling city. In case of Central Park, the city is New Yotk and park is much bigger, has reservoirs, running tracks and more. Cubbon Park definitely has its own charm, one must admit.

It is the 16th today, and officially my vacation has begun. I am headed to Maui on the 19th for scuba diving. I have a small fear that I might end up becoming a beach bum by the time I am done with my time off from Amazon. Either that, or a snow bum, if there is such a thing.

Let's get serious

After a long stint at Amazon, I finally decided to take a break. I've been toying with the idea for a long time, and finally things come to a point when I thought the timing couldn't be more perfect. Or almost. Nevertheless, the die is cast, and I am taking off on a sabbatical from work. The time off starts August 16th and I return mid November.

What am I planning to do? So many things... and three months seem so little! For now, I have tickets booked to the US, landing in New York. After a couple of days there and then a couple of days with my sister in North Carolina, I plan to head out to Hawaii and complete my PADI certification for scuba diving. I hope I am able to finish it this time around. I return back to Bangalore in early September. I am hoping I'll be able to wander around in the Himalayas for nearly a month without having a fixed plan. There are places in Himachal (Lahaul, Spiti, Narkanda) and Garhwal (Nanda Devi) that I want to spend time at. I might even spend some time in Ladakh again.

I am also looking into getting some surfing action in October. It looks like my earlier plan for spending time in Spain might not be feasible then. Australia looks more likely. New Zealand looks like it will be colder and more expensive.

Ah.. all these plans. I hope I'm able to see them all through.

Last weekend I went back home to Chandigarh. It was such a pleasure to drive in the city beautiful. There's so little traffic and the roads are actually wider. It is also pleasantly surprising to see roads being constantly widened and there is an acual plan for a mass transit system. Bangalore, on the other hand, despite being the so-called IT hub of India, is way behind in its public transport and mass transit.

On the trip I managed to wade through the rest of the White Mughals. I had written about it a while ago, but somehow didn't manage to finish it then. As before, I found the account of the British times in India extremely fascinating. What with Mangal Pandey coming out and all, it might even be topical. The movie also features a British guy taking on a Hindu girl as a lover. The book even recounts how women come from England in the hope of finding a suitable match, only to find that the British men here preferred Indian women (and these womenfolk who returned empty handed were called "returned empties" back home.. the British didn't have much imagination in those times, maybe...).

The trip also gave me time to read what I thought was a really great book: Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami. It has been a very long time since I read a book where the characters were so real, and so well written. There were parts where the book nearly made me cry. I have two more books of his lying on my shelf and they are not going to remain unread for long!

Back from Chandigarh, this week just feels like vacation already. I just can't keep myself from thinking about surfing, diving, trekking... Aaargh! It's time to get serious about having some unalderated fun. Work's for suckers.

Podcasting and NPR

You can't listen to NPR in your car in Bangalore. At least not on the radio. Oh well, at least not being broadcast on air. What you can do however is download podcasts, put them on your ipod and have them transmit to your FM radio in your car. So now you can listen to NPR show from Seattle while driving your car in Bangalore. Cool, eh?

On my last trip to Seattle in April, I picked up
an iPod plug-in for transmitting FM from Monster. I had tested one from Belkin earlier and didn't like it. The one from Monster has worked great so far. About a month or two ago I started downloading podcasts to the iPod and listening to them. However, iPodder and other tools I tried didn't work quite as well as I liked. I knew it then that it was only a matter of time before iTunes solved the problem for good. iTunes 4.9 indeed did. Now I manage my podcast subscriptions directly from iTunes and these get uploaded to iPod when I plug it in. When I get in my car, the iPod plugs into the FM transmitter, and voila! there's NPR on radio in a car in Bangalore! Heh.

More photos from Leh

I posted some more photos from Leh on Flickr. All these new photos are here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/VikgupTravel.

I used the feature on Flickr to add notes to a photo to mark out Stok La, the highest point of our 3-day trek. Really cool feature, I have to say. My respect for Yahoo! went up by a little bit the day they bought this cool website.

The forests of Bandipur and Mudhumalai

I spent the last two weekends in the Bandipur-Mudhumalai area. The first weekend was in Bandipur, and the second in Mudhumalai. I don't know how much the Lonely Plant to India covers it, but there is surely a lack of good resourecs on the web for these areas. These are some of the thickest forests I have ever seen, replete with wild life. Over the two weekends, I saw herds of wild elephants, even tuskers, lots of deer, a pair of black bucks, some mouse deer (something I didn't know existed!) -- but seem to have a lot written about them -- and some more.

The first weekend in Bandipur we stayed at Tusker Trails. Good food, good cottages, friendly staff and good set of activities to do -- in all it was a perfect weekend getaway from Bangalore. The second weekend I had extended family in town, and we stayed at the Casa Deep Woods in Mudhumalai. The facilities weren't as great (no pool!), but in general things were better organized. We did a short trek through the forest and on the way back chanced upon a huge herd of deer. Seeing the deer run and jump across a stream was a fascinating sight -- beyond doubt it is one of the more beautiful creations. As I write this I recall more than one stories I saw on National Geographic featuring deer being caught and eaten by alligators or tigers or lions... Ugh!

Anyway, Mudhumalai itself was great. After a day in Mudhumalai we headed to Ooty. I had made reservations at the Willow Hill. While it didn't meet my expectations, it was definitely a nice place to stay. I was hoping for it to be more of a retreat with much more charm. Ooty itself scored low on the charm factor. We visited Pykhara and Glenmorgan on the way to Ooty, and thanks to the clouds and the greenery most of these places looked right out of a Hitchcock thriller (in a good way! :). The next day we headed to Avalanchy and Coonoor. The small trek to the Avalanchy lake was nice -- through the greens and exposed land, along a small stream. The drive from Avalanchy to Coonoor was quite spectacular. The drive is surrounded by very green tea estates all around. With the clouds descending down to the hills, it made for a very enchanting drive. We didn't visit a tea estate till we reached Coonoor -- where we were disappointed somewhat at the High Fields estate. Next time I plan to spend a more chilled out time at a tea estate and do little else in Coonoor and Ooty.

I am back in the Bangalore noise now. Over the last few months I've gone from liking this place to disliking it completely to getting used to it to the point I've stopped caring enough to like it or not. Lavanya Sankaran recently wrote a book with stories from the city -- I read only the first couple and I found it just as superficial as I find this city. Nevertheless, there is money pouring into the city, and people too, with hardly any room to accomdate the latter. So, it goes on.

I'm considering another trip to the Himalayas sometime -- Hemkund/Valley of Flowers is a potential candidate, and Ladakh-Zanskar valley another. There were some discussions on a bicycling trip to Leh, but I doubt it'll happen this year. I am sorely out of shape and it requires a lot of training. Meanwhile I am happy to follow Lance's trail in France.

Books

Of late I have been on more than one flight. The flights to Leh and back and then to Pune for Hemant's wedding. I managed to read about 3-4 books in the meanwhile. During the trips to Leh, I read the The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency. The author tries to fashion a detective after Miss Marple, and does a good turn by making the tale more like folk stories from Africa. I had picked up another book for Leh, Red Carpet, by an author based in Bangalore (or at least writes about Bangalore). The book however got forgotten in Delhi enroute to Leh, and now that I have it in my possession again, I've started it. The first story was no great shakes.

On the way to Pune I picked up a Wodehouse, hoping to get an easy read. It was. Luck of the Bodkins, as it turned out, was something I had read earlier. But then, it is difficult to remember the Wodehouses separate from one another sometimes. Unless it is Leave it to Psmith, which stands out, in my humble opinion, the best of Wodehouse and one of the funniest books around.

Back in Bangalore, I picked up the The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time. It is a book written in first person, from an autistic teenager's point of view. I have no knowledge or experience with someone like that, but the book did make a good read. It sure does make feel one more comfortable with one's idiosyncracies, if there are some :). I wasn't sure all through if it was meant to be a children's book or not. There is sadness in the book, but from the autistic child's point of view, there is a simplification to everything. And the actions of this child, that would otherwise seem so strange (and they do to the people in the story), have very logical reasons.

Currently I am also reading Ignited Minds by APJ Abdul Kalam. I am through with the first couple of chapters. In some ways, the book tries to preach wisdom, and in some ways tries to inspire one to dream and make big things happen. What I liked most about the book so far was that it acknowledges outright that the book is not intended for cynical adults like me, and tries to speak to the children in their language, for Mr. Kalam believes it is these minds that will listen and will act. Sitting in India, seeing things broken around one in so many ways, it does make one nod one's head in agreement as one reads along.

Besides the books, every morning now I wake up early to pick up the newspaper. Not to read the news but to get my hands on the daily Su-do-ku puzzle. I had printed some out for the flights to Leh, and managed to crack some of the "very hard" ones during the flight. Alas, the papers carry easy to medium ones only. Apparently these are gaining huge popularity across the world these days. Someone in our office circulated them around before they started appearing in the newspapers, and now it seems too mainstream.

Photos from Leh

I posted some photos from Leh at Flickr. I am going to post more next week. Till then: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/VikgupTravel.

A couple of them will show up in my feedburner feed as well.

Riding to Khardung La

I spent the last eight days in the fabulous Ladakh region. On the last day of the trip, after all the other people I was there with had left, I rented a Yamaha RZ135 and rode it to Khardung La. Khardung La happens to be the highest motorable pass in the world, with a road at 5605m above sea level. That's more than 18000 ft. That's 2500 ft higher than Mount Rainier, the highest mountain I had climbed till then. We had also trekked to Stok La, a pass at 4900m elevation a day before, so Rainier already felt small.

It was a fabulous feeling. Of course, it felt good to know I can't be riding a motorcycle anywhere higher than this. Besides, I had made it there alone despite horrible weather, a junk of a rental motorcyle, no shoes (I only had hiking boots and I decided to not wear them for the trip because the three day trek had given me a blister!) and really bad road.

When I got there, my camera seemed to be not working. I did manage to take some pictures, and I am waiting for the results to come out to back my claims with a picture :).

Sleepless, thinking of Seattle

I miss Seattle today. I miss my friends. I miss the drizzle. I miss walking in downtown when there are still people around in the evening, when it is slightly cold and wet but nothing to really get you down. I miss the feeling that I can get up and go hike up a mountain anytime I want to. I miss having Whistler just 4 hours of a drive away. I miss the sight of Rainier peeking out of clouds. I miss the movies at the Egyptian. I miss driving on roads where traffic stays on its lanes and there isn't that much of it to begin with. :-(

Feedburner feed

I had signed up with feedburner sometime back, and integrated this blog, my Flickr account etc into one feed. Here is the feed URL to subscribe, if you want: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Vikasblog.

Bande à part, part II

I did finally finish watching this movie. I thought that the movie was kind of strange. First the visuals. There were, repeatedly, shots that ran for a very long time in one stretch. And for most part they didn't seem to serve any purpose than that the director wanted to shoot these shots. It seemed as though there was a purpose in the movie -- Godard wanted to make the movie in a certain way rather than making a certain movie. The subject could have been something completely different and he would have probably been equally happy with it. The story was quite simple, if I try to narrate it.

Then there are the dialogues. Whether it is the background commentary or Franz reading from a book (happened to be called "Odile," same name as the character of Anna Kareina in the movie), they again seem to have almost no relation to the actual story of the movie. There is an eclectic mix of book-readings, background poetry, commentary and whole bunch of stuff that the director seems to have interjected into the movie purely because he thought it would be neat.

There are also references of all kinds. There is the book that Franz reads. In the middle of a reading of Romeo and Juliet, Arthur passes Odile a note that borrows from Hamlet, the two actors enact the killing of Bily the kid, the music director's credit shows up as "the last(?) score for a movie" by him, the last scene in the movie (on the ship) seemed somehow reminiscent of something one would see on a mushy postcard, completely unlike the rest of the movie, etc., etc. The movie seemed more like a puzzle than a movie.

Luckily for me, there was a section in the DVD called "The Loot." One of the chapters here covered the movie in detail and put together all the pieces in the movie that puzzled me. As it turns out, there were more references than what I had observed. The movie was definitely paying homage to a whole bunch of movies, books, incidents, advertisements -- the current time in general. There are several references to the book Odile and other books by the same author. Several places there are references to music in other movies of the time or by the same music director -- there seem to be more than one references to the The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. The last scene on the boat was apparently a homage to Charlie Chaplin movies. The Shakespeare references were acknowledged. There were still more. The characters were named after specific people of the times, or related to Godard. The poetry was by Arthur Rimbaud, a poet who had turned gun-runner in Ethiopea, and of course one of the lead characters was named Arthur Rimbaud.

At the end I felt as though I've just spent a couple of hours in a cinema class, being educated about Godard and Bande à part. Not that I minded, of course. I can understand why this movie would be loved by cinephiles. As I said earlier, it isn't one of the most accessible movies.

Then there was a reference that I'd like to imagine exists even if the DVD did not acknowledge it. The last dialogue in the movie compares the state of affairs to a "pulp novel," where nothing wanes (can't remember the entire thing). Given the fascination Tarantino has for this movie, maybe this is where he picked up the title for Pulp Fiction? When Kill Bill came out, it didn't hide the fact that it was paying homage to movies of various genres. The mood seems to be right from Bande à part. Kill Bill can spawn off a research into movies and can keep one engrossed for a very long time putting the pieces of the puzzle together. While Godard probably made references to things around him for most part, Tarantino wraps his arms around almost the entire history of cinema and wraps all genres into one movie, be it anime, western, samurai sword fights, yakuza movies, kung fu, blaxpoitation and many more.

It would be fun to be inside Tarantino's and Godard's heads and watch some of this stuff being created.

The Climate of Man

I recently read a three-prt article by Elizabeth Kolbert in New Yorker, called The Climate of Man. It is an extremely well written article that tries to make it manifest for the rest of us that we are dangerously close to a state of global warming that may be irreversible, and may result in very drastic effects on civilization in a very short time -- if not in our times, defintiely in the next generation's.

Here is an excerpt from the last part of the article, that highlights how the greenhouse effect has worsened considerably in the recent years.

In the seventeen-eighties, ice-core records show, carbon-dioxide levels stood at about two hundred and eighty parts per million. Give or take ten parts per million, this was the same level that they had been at two thousand years earlier, in the era of Julius Caesar, and two thousand years before that, at the time of Stonehenge, and two thousand years before that, at the founding of the first cities. When, subsequently, industrialization began to drive up CO2 levels, they rose gradually at first—it took more than a hundred and fifty years to get to three hundred and fifteen parts per million—and then much more rapidly. By the mid-nineteen-seventies, they had reached three hundred and thirty parts per million, and, by the mid-nineteen-nineties, three hundred and sixty parts per million. Just in the past decade, they have risen by as much—twenty parts per million—as they did during the previous ten thousand years of the Holocene.

The article also talks about two feedback effects in the warming of the earth that make it even worse. Here is another excerpt that explains the first of the two:

At one point, Perovich asked me to imagine that we were looking down at the earth from a spaceship above the North Pole. “It’s springtime, and the ice is covered with snow, and it’s really bright and white,” he said. “It reflects over eighty per cent of the incident sunlight. The albedo’s around 0.8, 0.9. Now, let’s suppose that we melt that ice away and we’re left with the ocean. The albedo of the ocean is less than 0.1; it’s like 0.07.

“Not only is the albedo of the snow-covered ice high; it’s the highest of anything we find on earth,” he went on. “And not only is the albedo of water low; it’s pretty much as low as anything you can find on earth. So what you’re doing is you’re replacing the best reflector with the worst reflector.” The more open water that’s exposed, the more solar energy goes into heating the ocean. The result is a positive feedback, similar to the one between thawing permafrost and carbon releases, only more direct. This so-called ice-albedo feedback is believed to be a major reason that the Arctic is warming so rapidly.

“As we melt that ice back, we can put more heat into the system, which means we can melt the ice back even more, which means we can put more heat into it, and, you see, it just kind of builds on itself,” Perovich said. “It takes a small nudge to the climate system and amplifies it into a big change.”

In the last part of the article, the author talks about the attitude of two different countries towards this issue. Both are developed nations, and their attitudes are the pola opposites of each other. Netherlands government, activists and people are concerned and are taking actions (such as "room for the river" project). The Bush government, on the other hand, refused to even join hands with the rest of the world on the Kyoto agreement and has its head buried in the sand. And this despite the fact that the US is the biggest contributor of the greenhouse gases.

I live in Bangalore, and I cannot ignore the pollution that envelops this city all the time. While it is easy to point to the US, I think it behooves the Indian government to be still more concerned about it. It is heartening to see the improvements in Delhi over the last three years. It is, today, a much cleaner, nicer city than what it was some years ago. It is apalling to see the attitude of people and government alike in Bangalore. I almost have nightmares imagining the continuous increase of people and traffic in this city, dreading a day when everything will come to a standstill.

Are you making a difference?

I ask myself this question sometimes. I am not sure about the answer.

I am 30 years old, and over the past many years I have met several people about whom I can answer this in the affirmative. I recently ran a 7km race in Bangalore for an organization called Dream A Dream. I didn't really go out of my way to find how I could run for a charity organization. A friend's fiance is currently in Bangalore working for this organization. She's taken a whole year out of whatever she otherwise does to spend it with this organization. She is from the US, hardly speaks the language and Bangalore is probably not her most favorite place to be. Yet, she is putting in an effort, and I do believe she is making a difference.

On my recent trip to Seattle, I met up with Dave again. He had left Amazon sometime back, and told me he is about to start working with a non-profit microfinance company. Dave's a great guy and makes a huge difference in whatever he takes up. The organization he is working with, Unitus, is making inroads into alleviating poverty in different parts of the world. Microfinance is not something I was familiar with till Dave told me about it, but I've read about it a little since then. I like what they are doing and their strategy resonates with possibilities and hope.

When I went home to Chandigarh recently, I heard another story. My dad's friend's peon's son (a peon, for those not in the know, is the officeboy, the garcon, the guy who fetches glasses of water and does the running around so the babus in the office can chill in air conditioned offices) was doing very well in his high school studies. Once he graduated from class X, he wanted to prepare for competitive exams. My dad's friend figured out the best teachers in town, got him introduced and admitted to their tuitions, paid the fees and made sure the kid lacked no resources to prepare for the exams. I also found out that he runs a non-profit organization for such students (who are bright but lack resources), and there have been more such stories that I hadn't heard about so far.

I remember a dialogue in Casablanca. Rick congratulates Victor Lazlo on his work. Lazlo, trying to be modest, says "I try." Rick replies, as only Bogart can, "We all try. You succeed."

Bande a part

I recently joined a movie store in Bangalore. It's called Habitat and it's on Church Street. The store is pretty expensive to rent movies from -- it costs about Rs. 130 for a movie, the same amount I used to pay to the phenomenal Scarecrow store in Seattle. The good thing is that they have a pretty decent collection of movies I want to watch -- though a large selection of movies that I want to watch is missing as well.

In any case, ever since I joined I am back in almost a movie watching spree. I got a chance to catch up on Almodovar's The Flower of my secret -- and I did not like it as much as I liked his other movies. I am currently watching Bande à part. The primary reason I picked it up is that it is from Godard, but a very big reason I picked it up is also that Tarantino is such a huge fan of this movie. (His production company is called Band Apart.) For most part I find that French movies are kind of pretentious, so full of themselves and self-indulgent that they become boring. There are several exceptions of course. And I am mostly referring to more recent cinema here. Older French movies were a lot better. Cinema there, as pretty much everywhere else except for Korea and Japan, is in utter lack of creative juices.

Bande à part is in some respect quite an impressive movie so far. But it is not a very accessible movie. Maybe I'll write more about it once I am finished with it.

I also caught up on Coen brothers' Raising Arizona, and that was a hoot.

The morality tale called Star Wars

I just read the New Yorker review of Star Wars. I have yet not seen the movie, but I'd have written similar stuff (mine would lack the wit and the humor of the article, perhaps) about the rest of the Star Wars movies. I dislike all of the Star Wars, though I enjoyed the episode IV when I was a kid. Here is an excerpt from the review that I just loved.

The general opinion of “Revenge of the Sith” seems to be that it marks a distinct improvement on the last two episodes, “The Phantom Menace” and “Attack of the Clones.” True, but only in the same way that dying from natural causes is preferable to crucifixion.

We just put together the set of magazines to subscribe in the office, and New Yorker topped the list. Our office folks have also put together Kannada teaching lessons -- something I am sure are going to come in handy in Bangalore. Nannage ishta. (I hope I got that right! :)

podcasting

I've been meaning to checkout what podcasting is all about for a month or so now. I finally got around to spending some quality time with my Mac and plugged in. I first downloaded iPodderX, subscribed to some feeds (Talk about films, one music feed, Berkeley groks talk show). iPodderX was somewhat of a disappointment. Nevertheless, I got the downloads into iTunes, downloaded them to my iPod, and using an iPod FM transmitter listened to it while I was driving to work. Sounds a bit geeky, and it felt that way too. There are definitely tools missing that will make it seamless for any user.

The podcasts I downloaded were pretty disappointing too. The conversation about films was barely audible. The rest was content I wasn't particularly interested in. So why did I download these? Because there was nothing that told me what the content was going to be like in any of the podcasts available online. No reviews, no ratings, no tags.

Yesterday, I browsed for other tools besides iPodderX. I downloaded iPodder 2.0. This was a much better tool. I downloaded a new set of podcasts and dumped the ones I had subscribed to earlier -- and I am probably never going to go back to them. My first downloads did not just show up in iTunes -- I had to explicitly add them. Since then I've tuned the settings for iPodder a little bit, and I expect this to work more seamlessly next time.

Made in India

I recently read that 20th Century Fox is going to remake Munnbhai MBBS in English. I found it quite amusing. When I first saw Munnabhai MBBS, it came across as a remake of a Hollywood movie -- Patch Adams. It was adapted to Indian tastes extremely well, and definitely added dollops of humour that was absent in the Hollywood film (which was more trying to potray a real life story than make a comedy). In any case, this game of Chinese Whispers amuses me. It reminded me of a joke I had heard when I was much younger -- where nations compete to create the thinnest wire made of steel; each nation continues to improve upon the previous one till it reaches India where we stamped it with "Made in India."

Every other movie I see in theaters is "inspired" by something I have seen earlier. My Bollywood-crazy cousin was in town last week and we checked out a couple of movies playing in theaters. "Main aisa hi hoon" -- a dull, manipulative tear-jerker of a movie -- was copied from I am Sam. Most of "Kya Kool hain hum" -- and all of the funny part -- is a rip-off from the incredibly funny Roberto Benigni movie Il Mostro. Originality be damned.

I recently picked up a coffee table book about Bollywood cinema, despite the fact that it had Aishwarya Rai on the cover. The book has a pretty good coverage of India cinema. I wish the cover featured the famous photo from Sholay (the two dudes on the motorcycle, one riding on the other's shoulder), or anything else that was a bit of a landmark in Indian cinema. Aishwarya Rai? The doll that can barely act and comes across as someone with no brains in her interviews? Is she the identifying face of Indian cinema?

By the way, I saw a photo of a much younger Prithvi Raj Kapoor. I think the guy was extremely dashing. All of his progeny sucked in the looks department compared to him.