Home Sweet Home!

Sunday 25th was a day I had been looking forward to for the last couple of months. I started my 3 week-long vacation in Chennai, India. Flying by Indian Airlines (:-s) my hols started off on the wrong foot as the aircraft from Chennai reached Singapore 3 hours late, delaying my flight by 3 hours too. Anyways, as they say... better late than never.

Was in Chennai for a couple of days, now in Bangalore to spend 3 days with my cousins and will be back in Chennai tomorrow. Oh mom's food - fantastic!!

A Day to Remember!

24th September 2005. 7.15pm at the Singapore Indoor Stadium. A. R. Rahman makes his entrance at the top of the Singapore leg of his '3rd Dimension Tour'. The next 4 hours were awesome. Song after song he kept us entertained. Yeah they dropped the '3d' part of the show for their Singapore appearance, but heck, who needs 3d images when you have that awesome music. As I write this email on Monday evening, my voice has still not returned to normal, and a sore throat is the only physical remains of the merriment of that day!

The crowd was, sadly, so-Singaporean in the sense that the crowd was so behaved.... only clapped when the sing ended - no clapping to the rhythm of the song so much so that Hariharan, Blaaze and others had to push the crowd to sing and clap along... atleast thats how it was until the 'break'. Yeah, I add the apostrophe for break 'cos that was how that piece was advertised... as a filler for the performers to take a break. But I'll be damned if anyone in the crowd walked out to take a break.Renownedd drummer Sivamani held the whole packed stadium to their seats as he slowly converted a fusion piece with Levon and Attila into a Sivamani solo. Oh that man simply breathes percussion. The speed of his movements almost made one feel like he must be having a couple of extra hands hidden somewhere :-s

And all the big names in the Indian playback industry were there - Hariharan, Sadhana Sargam, Udit Narayan, Madhushree, Karthik, Kailash Kher. And no, I haven't forgotten Chitra... its just that she deserves a mention all to her self. Her voice is simply amazing, and I just couldn't have enough of her! I know I'm repeating myself, but what a show, what a night! Its gonna be a night I'll remember for days to come. And I hope that ARR can enchant us once more sometime soon! Long Live ARR! Longer Live His Music!!

PS: A friend found someone who had actually spent their time at the concert noting down the songs :-s, so here it is if you are interested.

Hi Hello!!

Salaam Namaste was the next to be ticked off the list by Aye Kay. And it was a well-worth outing. Starts off as a brilliant comedy starring the entertaining Saif Ali Khan of Hum Tum fame and the adorable Preity Zinta of Kal Ho Na Ho fame. Both imensely likeable characters (Nikhil Arora & Ambar Malhotra respectively) who come out so natural that you can really connect with them having fun. The movie starts off with them disliking each other having only heard of the other, and as with many other Bollywood flicks, they go onto falling in love - all the while, the comedy keeping the audience thoroughly entertained.

Here's where the movie was, in my opinion, at the most professional. Them falling in love was not depicted in the standard Bollywood's moving-close-to-each-other-and-moving-away-at-the-last-minute style, but rather taking it the full way which, in my opinion, is the more professional and accurate reflection of life today. There were scenes of them in bed together and stuff, but nothing that was what I would call obscene. Yet, I would be terribly surprised if the version I saw was the same that was being telecast on the Indian silver screens - and if it is, then hats off to the Bollywood industry and the censors, and more importantly for the Shiv Sena for not demanding the scenes' removal - everybody grows up I guess.

The movie has its share of seriousness and the director has tried to make up for it with a rather overdose of slapstick comedy in the last 15 minutes which, depending on your mood at the time of watching the movie, can swing from mildly funny to outright irritating. Anyhow, Abhishek Bachan's narration through the movie is quite good and he tries to add-on a lot in the final few minutes as he tries to play the Robin Williams' character of Nine Months. In addition to this lift from Nine Months, there appears to be a lot of comic influence from the ever popular serial Friends.

Oh and I forgot to mention Javed Jaffery. An interesting Bihari character who doesn't stop pointing his middle finger at any point in the movie, and well his character really has to be seen to be appreciated. So go watch Salaam Namaste, its worth a visit to the theatres. I would love a 2nd visit myself, but I'm unlikely to be in the majority on that choice. Happy viewing!!!

Cinderella Man

Given my recent blogging trends, if I am writing a post it usually means that I've just watched a movie and wanna share my thoughts about it, and this time around its Cinderella Man. Directed by Ron Howard and starring Russell Crowe - the same combination from the mutiple oscar winning 'A Beautiful Mind' - and Renée Zellweger, the movie is based on the life story of the early 20th century American boxer James J. Braddock. The story is about an up and coming boxer who loses his way up the boxing ladder due to the Great Depression following the 1929 Stock Market crash. He struggles to make ends meet for himself and his family, and hunger and lack of practice meant that he kept losing the few boxing matches he got a chance to take part in. Finally, with the support of his long-time manager and friend Joe Gould (played by Paul Giamatti) he gets back in shape and starts to climb his way up until a match is setup against the World champion of the time.

Overall, the movie appears to have a Rocky touch-and-feel to it, espescially in the 2nd half as Braddock trains to get himself fit for the matches. Ofcourse, Rocky was an out and out action movie, but this one was more realistic (probably because its a true story :-p). The way the character of Braddock was depicted as an inspiration for the whole country - fighting back from the downs of the world to regain what he has once lost - it was something very well done, and I think the character portrayal was something that stood out even in A Beautiful Mind. Overall, a movie definitely worth watching - possibly an Oscar nomination for the director.

Rs 1,000,00,00,000 shredded down the drain!

You read that heading right! Rupees One Thousand Crore are to be shredded because they were in the basements of Mumbai banks and got damaged by the now-infamous floods. Attempts are on to dry the notes, so as to be able to count them, following which the RBI will be shredding those notes.

On a related topic, the RBI has found a huge number of counterfeit notes - over 1 lakh notes worth over 2 crores - and has issued a public warning to be aware of counterfeits at large. I still remember the times in Chennai shops (not sure if it was the same case in other parts of the country) 7 to 8 years ago when the 500Rs note was still new, everytime you handed over a Rs500 note, the cashier would turn around and compare the numbers against a known set of 'possible' counterfeit bill numbers.

Damn. That 'I still remember' statement makes me feel olddddd.

Canon S2 IS

Over the weekend Comex 2005 happened at Suntec, and I got myself a Canon S2 IS digital camera. 5 mega pixel, 12x optical zoom. It rox!! Here's a pic of it!

The Canon S2 IS

Samples of some pix taken thus far with it:

Waiting for the MRT

Outside my friend's office

Looking down from the Esplanade

In the midst of nothing!

The Fullerton Hotel