After his initial attempts at lording it over Vice City were unceremoniously thwarted by the severely limited amount of RAM on my PC, Tommy Vercetti is back at doing what he does best .... raisin' hell for Grand Theft Auto, now that my PC sports a respectable 576 MB. Looking forward to many hours of playing one of my favourite-est games.


Arnab is all set to wing it back to Kolkata for the Pujas. He'll be gone for a long, long time, returning only on the 18th of next month. Wish I could have gone home too .... I'm desperately in need of a break.

.... will be India's entry to the Oscars this year. This don't sound too good to me, man.

Happenings

Haven't posted for a while & a lot's been happenin .... so here goes.

Ever since we've got BroadBand at home, my sleeping & resting have gone for a toss. It's either YouTube or Yahoo! Messenger or Orkut all the time. Have to cut down.

Speaking of Orkut, it's allowed me to get back in touch with a lot of people from school. One of 'em happened to be Sonu or 'Zonu' as he was nicknamed back then. Dude works for Accenture in Bangalore & we set up a meeting on Saturday evening. He's put on a serious amount of weight, but still remains the strong, silent type he used to be.

It was fun catching up on old times with him, Soumya & Pritish. The 4 of us, along with Pritish's ex-roommate Raegan, then went to Soumya's favourite late night diner on Hosur Road, R K Dhaba. A table was set up for us in the open & the cool wind & Bacardi-ThumsUp combo (Pritish makes a damn good peg) soon had conversation flowing at full tilt. Chatting up opened a pandora's box of long lost memories & acquaintances & a few sordid details (such as Baba's l'affair Namrata & Rajesh being present in Bangalore) which we were too glad to come to know of. Deba also chose that very day to call up Soumya from Bombay & he wasted no time in apprising him with what had happened.

All this went on till 4 in the morning & we were all set to break the land speed record on the way back home on Hosur Road when a traffic jam put paid to our plans. Yup, a traffic jam at 4:30 in the morning! Anyway, this meeting has revved up the enthusiasm among everybody & there is talk of planning a trip to Pondicherry next weekend. Let's see.

Coming to Cricket then. The DLF Cup in Malaysia was the perfect chance for India to fine tune before the Champions Trophy in October. But sadly, they've let the oppurtunity go by & are looking really ragged right now. Their last 2 league against the Windies & Australia, were must win ones if they had to reach the finals. Against the Windies it was a stirling performance shooting them out for 142 after having scored 160 odd with Sachin playing the anchor's role. But against Australia, it was the same old inconsistency on show again, falling short by 18 runs after the Aussies had put up a not-so-big 213.

I've always maintained that to be called great, a team or a player has to perform well against great teams like the Aussies & Pakistan on a regular basis. But sadly, India don't seem to be doing that enough. The same goes for Sachin. Just when he was beginning to show sparks of brilliance, he comes up with an insipid display in a crunch game .... something that he does with alarming regularity .... something that his die-hard fans who call him 'great' just don't seem to notice .... oh well, it's their problem, not mine. The only player of the present team who measures up to some level in this criteria is Dravid. That's it. Not Sehwag, not Yuvraj, not Dhoni & Ganguly isn't even on the team anymore. No one else .... & that's sad.

Moving on to something cheerful then, my vintage PC now sports such new fangled add-ons as a DVD Writer & 578 MB of RAM.

Also, saw all 8 of the BMW films on YouTube & they were pretty entertaining. John Woo's 'Hostage' was typically stylish with a super interplay of slow-mos & flash backs, but story wise I loved Alejandro González Iñárritu's 'Powder Keg' & Joe Carnahan's 'Ticker'. The scene from 'Ticker' where the H1 slams into the Escalade/Denali is simply awesome.

Thank God for YouTube .... & Orkut .... & cable TV .... technology, in general ;-)

D.P.

Back home, this was the time when people would start getting into the festive mood. The weather would lighten up giving rise to clear skies, cooler weather, lesser humidity (the official North Indian picnic season starts in October).

All the big corporations start handing out fat bonuses, businesses gear up for the busiest time of the year & there is a general air of excitement in view of the coming festive season which lasts all the way till January. After all, there's Dussehra, Diwali, Guru Parb (or Gurpurab, if you will), Christmas & then New year coming in rapid succession.

But, the one that gets it all started, is the big bang, D. P. as we used to call it in school, the time when all the Bongs come back home for their biggest annual celebration.

Arnab informed this morning that today is Mahalaya, the 1st day of the Durga Pooja. So, here's wishing all my Bengali (& half-Bong, in case of 1 of them) friends a very happy D. P. Enjoy!

radio indigo

'radio indigo' is Bangalore's latest FM station.

After the mindless Hindi/Kannada trash & yack happy RJs of all the other channels, I hope this one delivers some sensible content. Entertainment will be a bonus.

Was listening to it for the 1st time yesterday .... the song selection was above average, but just about. But that maybe because that dawg Rohit Barker was in control.

I wonder why the GoI does not allow private FM stations to produce news/current affairs .... look at how the TV market for the same has exploded. Maybe they want AIR to hold on to whatever remains of it's audience. How long that's gonna last is the question.

soapbox

MicroSoft is at it again. Windows followed Mac OS; XBox followed the PlayStation, Zune followed the iPod & now soapbox follows YouTube.

Koda!

Guess who's India's youngest CM .... it's Madhu Koda, the newest man-in-charge of the home state. Now, guess which party he belongs to .... none! The guy's an independent!

Some people have all the luck .... hope he passes on some of it to the state & it's people.

The Net @ Home

Finally, the Net .... has come back .... to Rob's home.

Another school shootout

Over the years, I've read about numerous school/college shooting sprees including Columbine & the Texas university, so it seemed like deja vu when news of the Dawson College incident at Montreal came through. But, there was a twist in the tale. The shooter this time is an NRI!

Yup, Kimveer Gill matches up to everything there is when it comes to crazed gunmen running amok with automatic weapons .... right down to the Black trenchcoat. Funny thing is, this kind of thing only seems to occur in N. America. I do think they tend to go overboard with this whole personal freedom thing.

The RSX is dead

One of my all time favourites is being laid to rest. The Acura RSX won't have a 2007 model. Sad!

Of late, I've ....

.... been bored at work.

.... made some bad investment decisions.

.... undergone some big mood swings.

.... reconnected to a large number of friends from school.

.... allowed the Bangalore traffic to get to me.

.... decided to be more positive.

.... burnt up far too much talktime on the cell.

.... managed to lay my hands on some old Hindi & English favs from the 80s & early 90s.

.... been missing home & the hometown.

.... been hearing more Bengali than Hindi in the cafeteria.

.... been confused about what to post on the blog.

It's been 5 years.

Things have not quite been looking up of late so I'll concentrate on some of the stuff making the headlines.

Aussie "Crocodile Hunter' Steve Irwin's death has received surprising coverage in the national & international media.
I hadn't reckoned so many people watched Animal Planet/Discovery Channel, leave alone knowing about him.

There has been little cricketing action involving India since the Carribean tour. The 'Tri Series' involving Sri Lanka & South Africa was bombed/washed off. I think it's the first instance of so many things occuring at once during an ODI series. First, the Proteas getting scared out of their wits by a bomb blast & deciding to scamper home to their cities which have the highest crime rates in the world (no joke, this). Then, rain coming down in buckets & forcing abandonment of each & every ODI left in the series. A grand total of about 5 overs was bowled in the series. Crazy, once you think about it. Anyway, everybody's waiting for the ICC Champions Trophy now.

Then there's the case of this Chandigarh girl, Yamini Sharma whose pic appeared on ToI (as she protested against a ban on cell phones at her college campus) & caught the eye of Satish Kaushik, who decided to cast her in his new film! Talk about hitting pay dirt! Still, I can't help wondering what he found so beautiful about her .... okay, she's good looking, but not the kind who'd make you turn back & look at her twice .... oh well, to each his own I guess.

And finally, living in Bangalore, you are exposed to a lot of stuff one wouldn't normally encounter up North. Cable for example, shows a plethora of South Indian channels, a lot of which I hadn't even heard of. The same is the case with the FM channels. Of course, film music dominates their contents & I've been forced to listen more closely to some of the songs shown. Even though I don't understand a word of what they're saying, some of the music is really good. I've heard Harris Jeyraj's compositions for Anniyan, Ghajini & Vettayaadu Vilayaadu & one thing is clear .... this guy is one of the best we have in the country today. Presently am listening to Rehman's work for Jillunu Oru Kadhal & can't have enough of the track 'New York'. Some really good stuff & a nice break from the normal staple of Hindi film music. Keep 'em coming ....

And last but not the least, there are floods .... in Kashmir & Rajasthan! It would have been funny if it wasn't so tragic.

I have never felt more deprived, more helpless & more discriminated against than I do today.