feeling really yuckkkkkkk

I want today to go off asap

How ?

The last two digits of your birth year + Your current age is 108.  Why is it ? Can anyone prove this?

mindry.in

If you are a victim of TV remote unavailability during prime time and you have watched dozens of kannada serials THESE LINKS are for you !!!!

Delightfully original and satirical . The english ones are just OK but the kannada ones are really delighful. I laughed my heart out !!!!!

Mimicry and Spoof of Mukhta CSP 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B9CO-wqPM40&feature=related

Mimicry and Spoof of Ede tumbi haaduvenu (SP Balasubramaniam)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QXRyM1jlG1E&feature=related

Mimicry and Spoof of Udaya TV Horoscope programme

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQdY4gfqP9M&feature=rec-HM-rev-rn

Hale Paathre

Hale paathre , hale kabbna, hale paper kane thaayi...

Never knew anybody could write lyrics on Old vessels, Old paper and Old iron....That anybody happens to be the director Yograj Bhat of "Mungaru Male" fame.

Hale hudugi hesaranu thagiyede ninna mundhe saacha aagiruve...

Just stumbled upon this song of the film Junglee today by chance ... The flavor of the month, I suppose!

the going is getting tough at work.
deja vu of sasken´s ssf team.

Obama on McCain

.And yet, what makes John such a rare and courageous public servant is not the accomplishments themselves, but the true motivation behind them 

Yen maatadtaane ee Obama...Super dialog king. 

Weekend Post

Sunday evening blogging is something done when you have nothing else to do. Well , I don't have any specific to say in this post, but what the heck. Just scribble something so that the time goes by and then get ready to prepare some food.  

Yesterday while strolling thru' the Keskuskatu of Kajaani, I found a theatre. It is a stone's  throw away from my house. It took me more than 2 months to realise that there was a theatre in Kajaani. So we saw Quantum of Solace. It didnt even leave a Quantum of Impression on my mind. And the new song by Alicia Keys is not impressive. Yawwn.

Anbe Sivam was the pick of the weekend , for sure. I am too bored to actually write a review nowadays, but I am sure noone is expecting me to write about it too.

Apart from that, a small note on weather. Days have started getting a little longer. Finnish beer is a little strong.  I realise it is so important and useful to have an internet connection and wireless router is a wonder in such places. Really.

The discovery channel which is tailor-made for Finland(just like how it was tailor made in India) talks mostly about some crazy arctic or antarctic expeditions and how they made it to the pole. 

And I leave this post with a photograph : not taken with ANY special effects, but with natural light on a cloudy day. That's what I meant by a black and white world....This is a zoom view from my apartment window, taken by my roommate.

and now ....

recession has started in full blown proportion in the tech sector. I heard that Nortel has filed for bankruptcy, Microsoft starting lay offs .... Hope we do not slip into a deep depression and things will be alright soon.

A day in the life of ...

As I sit here breaking my head with a debugger like Visual Studio (after using Unix for so many years) I was thinking abt some memories .... Memories of life ..... Not computer memories.

So many inconsequential things which just pop out , for which I don't have a strong reason to remember , yet I have some memories.

I remember going into some obscure roads behind HanumanthNagar main road and going into some random 'Guru Internet Cafe ' to check some email. Maybe I was working with Infy or I was in college , I don't remember. Just a memory. Another memory of me and my school friend Shiva playing holi...Another one where Anil Kumar a middle school friend bicycled a steep uphill inclined road for which he was lauded by my friends ... Another memory where I swallowed a plastic pawn while singing 'mera jootha hain japani' and panicked like hell....My scooter in engineering where I travelled to college....memories keep building ......memories++

chuckle

The Guru and the shishya are staring at a baloon in the air.

Shishya: There goes the old businessman  .... Up in the baloon .... Can the businessman see us ?

Guru     : No, the businessman cannot and will not. 

Shishya : Why will the businessman will not see us ?

Guru     : The businessman will NEVER poke into your business.

Shishya : A rocket awaits me.

Guru     : Chuckle.

blah blah

Temperature has become 0 degrees after staying in -20s for sometime. It was a welcome change....It was good yesterday went to a small walk and came back into the house.

Weekend breakfast continues to be tomato pasta and thai noodles. And since vegetable availability is very restricted we have run out of ideas and keep making sambar and rice almost everyday. Lunch is either Puliyogre or chitranna. 

But we get good coffee.At work, the MIMO-B "Integration Camp" continues to be woefully slow. This weekend I saw Nodi Swami Naavu Erodu Heege. Quite depressing movie. And I saw "The Usual Suspects" - Did not like it that much.

But I saw Ananthana Avanthara, probably one of Upendra's earliest creations and enjoyed the movie like anything! I need to try skiing before I leave. But the gear is pretty costly, looking for rentals.  I can pronounce some Finnish (imitating them gives me the kicks)

the MTR and the People..

am talking about the Hong Kong MTR, which is the Mass Transit railway and not related anything to Mavalli Tiffin room in bangalore (though people wait for space in both the MTRs)..

I found the people's attitude (including me) fascinating is on the MTR.. and I think it is generally the same in all form of public transport systems..

People who board the train a stop earlier to others feel that the train belongs to them. Once you board the train you feel like the owner of the train. Your behaviour towards the passenger boarding from the next stop will be like - Y the F*** are you boarding my train.. cant you seen I am standing/sitting here.. its my space, its my train dont you dare step in.. you give them the EYE, shake your head as something terrible has happened and even mutter a few words

and infact the people boarding in the new stop feel guilty of jumping to the train and disturbing the peace and tranquility of the passenger.. but once the train moves they become the owners of the train as well.. now they view the next stop passengers like - why the F* are you here.. this is my train - and the cycle continues..

Ghajini

I have not seen the Tamil Version, I have seen Memento, but I liked Aamir's Ghajini. It is a full blown masala movie with a proper South Indian touch.

Especially the song, "Behka re Behka" looks like a Vijay/Surya (the Tamil actors) song. The colors and the junior artistes and all that. And story is like a gripping Puneeth Rajkumar movie. All elements of action , romance, flashbacks, revenge and after a loonnng time in a Bollywood movie, a villain who is black character (no grey shades at all!!!). The villain reminds me of the 80s and the 90s villain- travelling in an ambassador and wearing white kurta and pyjama and really huge guy with gold chains and going around with 10 guys behind. Something like Spot Naga. Aamir shouts and snarls like a proper South Indian hero before going to beat up the baddies.

Anyway I think this will be a 50 day or a 100 day movie and rake in the moolah at least in India. 

Fargo

I watched the movie Fargo this weekend. It is a simple story with a strong narrative and set in an environment where crime is not an everyday affair. The acting is genuine and the characters are believable. The pregnant police lady who is a supporting actor is just superb.

It is about a car salesman who hires two guys to kidnap his wife. The car salesman is your regular clean guy who does his job and goes back home to his wife and kid, but he is in deep financial trouble. His father-in-law is a rich guy but he does not want to give his money. Thats why he hires two crazy guys to kidnap his wife. The kidnap ransom would be paid by the wife's father and the ransom money could be shared by the guys and the car salesman as 50-50. After kidnapping the wife, things start going horribly wrong. The folk song in the beginning, it seems, is a Norwegian Folk Song. I loved it. It just blends with the movie. More than the camera work, and the all the snowy environment which is the landscape, it was the grip of the narration. It was just absorbing. Kudos to the Coen Brothers. They have the ability to get a very good joke or two in the most bizzare situations. This is not the first time I experience this.

But my favorite Coen Brothers movie continues to be "The Big Lebowski".

Slumdog Millionaire

I did not like it. The hype was unbelievable, I just wanted to watch it badly. But boy, I was disappointed and angry.

First of all, yes , India has grave problems. Poverty, Communal Violence, Child labor, Child Prostitution etc... But the way it is shown in the movie, it is just, yuck. The India shown here is the darkness : Filth and shit and disease and blood. This condition prevails but it reaffirms a Westerner watching the movie that India is full of stench. I could almost smell the stench from the movie scenes... gimme a break!! I dont want to meet a westerner who has seen slumdog millionaire think of all Indians as Slumdogs.

A small child diving into the gutter with his nose closed to get an autograph of Amitabh Bachchan who comes in an airplane running with gutter water dropping. The height of imagination.

And the hero of the movie, Dev Patel does not have an Indian accent and he does not look like a slumdog. He looks like a polished Brit-Indian or Amer-Indian guy with zero Indian accent. A chaiwallah with so much hardships looking like Dev Patel , a nerdy NRI ...hahah.

What the hell was Anil Kapoor doing in this movie ? He looks like a weird slimmed down version of a grizzly brown bear wearing a suit. Rahman was not at is best in the music department.

And in India "Who wants to be a Millionaire" is fondly called Kaun Banega Crorepathi.

Maybe it's just me. I did not like Slumdog. Dont take my opinion ... Just watch it. But the potrayal made me baised in the beginning itself.

welcome 2009

Welcoming 2009....
Happy new year to anyone who sees this post!

2008 went like swoooosh. I want a calmer,peaceful,happier and satisfactory 2009.

Cars and Cycles

Hapless car and cycles standing in front of my apartment.

The world

Is such a place ... Humans have gone to every place possible in this planet...Adapted to all the climates....Humans are a remarkable species...We are there in the place where there are polar bears, we are there in the places where the Bengal Tigers roam in the sunderbans...

This part of the world is like a black and white movie during winter. Like the video like Stranger in Moscow. Two predominant colors :- Black and White. White background, Brown and Black Tree barks with no leaves, People walk around with one color jackets : black. But I must admit gold hair on black jackets look cool ;-) I now understand why they call India as colorful. There are so many people, that it constantly changes ... So fast that it is so self-occupied and self-important to itself. Just like we dont like April and May and call it as mid-summer, these guys have the midwinter. They treasure their summers...

I live on a Road by the name Koivukoskenkatu. Try telling it as fast as you can...Thats the way they say it! I think katu means road...Kasariminkatu, Merikoskenkatu. The downtown is called Keskusta. Initially I thought it was the name of an area...I was puzzled, how come every city/town had an area called Keskusta!!! The finnish have several words to say "Hi"...Some people say "Moi", some people say "Moro", some people say one fast incomprehensible word. The Santa Claus is called as Joulu Pukki.

Since the South of Finland is where the action is, the government is taking steps to improve the situation in the North as many youngsters leave the North and move over to Helsinki-Turku-Vantaa-Espoo-Tampere the important cities in the South. The only big city in the North is Oulu. It owes its existence to the University of Oulu. Because the University is a big and a prestigious one, there are many Tech companies there and almost all of these companies are into telecommunications/rf and all that.

There are no landlines in Finland. Even on train when I travel from Oulu <=> Kajaani, in the deepest snow covered forests, there is connectivity. The difficulty of maintenance of Telephone lines here forced people to come with an alternative. That was how Nokia invested heavily on implementation of GSM and the rest is history.

But one things which is welcome here is in peak hour , there will be 4 cars on the road. Which means travel time is negligible. Traffic in India has its own character and personality and you cannot neglect it or take it for granted. The other day when I had to leave to Finland, I has to miss my seminar because of Kumaraswamy anointment as the JD(S) chief. The idiot.

Sudeep the eskimo

I stand here in front of an igloo(eskimos live there)... I went to Rovaniemi, a place in Lapland which is on the arctic circle... There were igloos there!!! yappa....ond tharaa experiencu ...

But in one museum they have shown the effects of global warming in the arctic region...it seems in 1904 rovaniemi had a temperature of -47 in winter...now it is -3 or -4 .... warm winters

the best clothing

is not pyjamas ... heheh.... all my jeans were to be washed...so i went out with pyjamas this weekend... -7 degrees