Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!

A movie after my own heart ..... about a guy who thinks all that a man needs in life .... is a Merc ..... and goes about stealing them ..... among other things.

The story reminds one of Di Caprio's Catch Me If You Can, but only just. The direction is fantastic ..... there are a host of actors not seen in your normal Bombay production, but they all perform admirably.

I admire Abhay Deol's role selections .... he picks his scripts well & delivers on the performance. All in all, a movie which is engrossing & never loses the pace. Perfect for a Sunday evening.

That's Test Cricket for you

The 1st match of a series that wasn't supposed to be. But England decided to return & return they did, with a vengeance. For 3 and a half days they outplayed India in every department to finally set up an imposing 387 as the victory target on a deteriorating Chennai pitch.

And that's when the Indians came into their own. Another savage innings from Sehwag set the tone & Gambhir & Sachin took it on from there. Laxman provided able support. And it finally fell on Yuvraj (who had been flustered into giving up his wicket in the 1st innings), to play an uncharacteristically mature knock, all the while being shepherded by Sachin to take the team home.



It was the 1st time ever(!) in his career that a Sachin century in the 4th innings had contributed to an Indian test victory. The 4th highest winning score while chasing in tests; the highest so on the subcontinent ever! And what a time & backdrop to bring it up!

Papillon

Not your usual Steve McQueen movie. The story is very dark & the mood remains serious throughout. Some of the stuff shown is quite numbing.

It's based on a true story though & it's one hell of a script. Hoffman acts superbly & McQueen is a good foil for him.

No change in power

"retina is ok, you have 6/6 vision - I am not changing your power, ok?" - Dr. Andrew.

So, for the 1st time since I started wearing specs, my power has stabilised & there won't be a change in power during the annual ordering of specs ritual that Sittu & me undertake.

Bye prasvi

It was Prashanth's farewell party today. He had replaced Kishore in March this year & we had got along really well sitting next to each other.

He moves back home to Kochi to join TCS. There aren't many like him whose wavelengths have matched mine so closely on topics ranging from nationalism & geo-politics on one hand to girls & cars on the other. I'll miss you bro.

All the best. As for the header, that was his Active Directory ID.

The drive thru temple

I've been meaning to post about this phenomena for a while now.

There's this temple near my house - which I pass everyday on the way to the bus stop. The amazing thing about it is that the idol is visible from the road in front of it - which is at right angles to the layout of the temple itself.

So what most people will do is this - drive to the gate, look to their left/right, close their eyes, drop their heads & pray - all the while sitting in their car/bike/truck. And then they drive off - without once having stepped into the temple premises!

If this isn't an example of a drive-through temple, I don't know what is. And it transcends all class barriers - from the guy who takes off his shades before praying while sitting on the driver's seat of the black Skoda Laura to the lungi clad idli seller on his TVS 50 - they all do it.

Weekend flicks

The Magnificent Seven

A lovely western movie with some of the best actors of it's time. Yul Brynner was particularly good with McQueen & Bronson great as usual. However, considering that this was the movie which was the inspiration for Sholay, I think the inspired product was way better.

Dasvidaniya

Vinay Pathak turns in a great performance in a movie remarkably devoid of the usual Hindi film brand of histrionics. And it all works rather well.

WMP 11

Upgraded almost 2 years after WMP 11 was released.

It's good, but I have a feeling Winamp will continue it's reign over the mp3s on my laptop.

alvida PCS PC

My constant companion over the last 6 years (bar a small period when I joined this job & moved to Bangalore) of my life, my PCS PC was sent home today.

It had had it's share of niggles & crashes (the PS/2 port gave up in the last year of college & the blue screen of death was becoming a half yearly occurrence) , but nothing that proved to be a showstopper. It would somehow always manage to come back to life & get along with doing the job.

Over the last year or so, it was subject to almost non-stop torrent downloading and very little of anything else. Also, it's configuration had become vintage (despite upgrades to a DVD writer & 512+64mb of RAM) & the resale value had dropped to ~5000/-.

Sending it home was another story in itself - I contacted 4 courier agencies separately & each quoted the most outrageous prices for an in-country transfer. Finally, once I'd settled for the best of the worst quotes (that of DTDC) - they just wouldn't show up!

DTDC had this agency in my area - upon calling up which one would be greeted with the most courteous response & the most assuring promises. But come the appointed hour when somebody was supposed to come & collect the consignment - no show - each & every time! And this happened for 3 continuous weeks.

I finally had to go to their website & raise a pick up request. The response was not exactly prompt, but the responsibility finally went to this guy called Babu from their Chamrajpet office - who did the job within 1 day of calling. So anybody from DTDC reading this - you've got a good employee in Mr. Babu & complete nincompoops manning your BTM layout branch.

IE7

Upgraded my existing IE 6.x version with a lot of trepidation. Thankfully, everything has been running smoothly thus far.

The interface is almost as good as Firefox's (on which I realize I have a huge dependency now, what with all it's add-ons & tools), but the speed could have been better. Not bad, though.