Festive week!

Another weekend's here and it's been an interesting week ...saw 2 movies..'The killer', apparently a "copy" of Collateral...but it was a good one and both the lead actors Irfan and Imran Hashmi were very good and dialogues were strong, and 'Corporate' which I saw last night and which was a bit booring frankly. I think they failed to bring bout the element of drama and irony effectively enough. Bipasha did carry the look of a corporate girl nicely though.

It's been raining nicely here for the last 2-3 days and besides the discomfort of having to put the clothes to dry in the hallway and the staircase, the rains have been pretty much welcome !
Went to a Teej fair the day before too at Dilli Haat and everything was so nice and colourfully decorated with the row of stalls selling a variety of handicraft stuff and oh the stalls selling colourful lak bangles from rajasthan just looked divine ..! There was a food festival too with the traditional daal, bhati, churma in a rajasthani thali and the usual stuff like gol gappas, pao bhaji n all too..plus, there was a cultural program too with tradional dances being performed and the whole lot of cameramen could be seen shooting various events from different TV channels and asking people if they were enjoying themselves.....Teej was yesterday and they must have telecast that on TV yesterday though I did'nt get to see it..

Unfortunatly I was not carrying a camera and my cell too ran out of battery or I would have surely shared some colorful pics with u..but for now m only putting up pics of two things i picked up from there....one was a set of 3 men dressed in traditional outfits and paying various musical instruments like u can see here...it's actually made of clay I think, and colorfully painted ...everything about rajasthan is so colorful !! This I have kept in the front lawn of the house..perched on the wall.. Then there's this papermache key holder which has madhubani painting on it....we have madhubani paintings in the staircase and it will look cool with it. There were other very nice figures of turtles and cow, etc like this but mom did'nt let me buy any :( lack of space in the house to keep them u know...!! I guess i'll have to pick 'em up some other time! And guess wat, I also applied mehendi on my left palm and bought some nice bangles !! :) A good week in all i'd say.

MoNdAy:(

Back with a (tiny) bang on bloggermania on a booring monday evening with a barely budging internet connection ! Let's see what did i do since last week..friday ko i made a score of 24 on Yahoo answers...then saturday ko i went to the market with mom n she did'nt let me buy more shirts but we got new lamp shades..sunday ko sleep kiya and stared hard at the TV to help bring Prince out of the hell hole he'd gotten himself into...and finally pulled through the day today by sheer grit and persevearance ...and oh, took lots of snaps with my new cell phone! :) Still have to arrange of an infrared kit for my comp. too so that i can trfs the pics here for u guys...!! Have a great week ahead ..!

Retro!

Hello n welcome back!! :) I know u guys were always there..but I was the one missing from the scene...and after many days of being puzzled as to why my blog would'nt open and imagining the worst...I read in the papers that some ISPs had blocked out some blogs after the mumbai blasts recently...!! Imagine that?!! But u know it's really ok with me...I'm all for national security... :)

So ive actually not been upto much lately, still go to work as usual n back home as usual..but m enjoying the free time at home right now as my next semester classes are still a few weeks away..meanwhile ive been juggling ideas about renovating my room at the lowest possible cost ...what do u think of textured walls? I wonder how much that would cost and how long will it last...gotta do a research on that one...and oh yea, I did buy that cell phone i wanted, but instead of the really high-end models I had thought of initially, i bought the Samsung X-650..VGA cam, FM Radio and Infrared..not much but then it costs less than half of other models I was thinking of earlier but was still not convinced about .. go on, say it..I know i'm hard to please !! ;)

So the idea is now to use this one for some time, and get a new one next year and sell this one off ..waiting for the Sony Cybershot camera phone now...

Oh n I also discovered Yahoo! Answers quite by accident but have been surfing that quite a bit recently...quite interesting and amusing too ! Notice that questions relating to relationship problems get the most answers? Moral of the story...man is a social animal....and he's lost in the jungle of his own making.. I put in a hypothetical question too ofcourse, and I got 40 responses to it...wow !! Most people did a psycho-analysis on me...won't wanna tell u what they said though..but i'd like to stress that i'm sane !!!!!!!........

Hey time to eat..gotta go..aaj tiffin mein curd rice hai...yummy..i should have been a south indian! Chao !!

GoodNight!

Hi there ! Just dropped in to say hi! It's 12:14 p.m., the parents are asleep n all's well with the world.! I'm just going through the day's mail ...been out in the morning, slept all afternoon, watched TV till late night..no special events today n therefore no news from the newsdesk !! But do keep watching for the amazing commercials to follow...

Chao!

P.S.- If i sound a bit crazy right now, it's just my chocolate fudge and Fruit Punch talking.. ;)

Mera Mobile..

One week of search on the net and i'm still not sure which cell phone to buy...everyday I seem to be settling on a new model..there r just so many but none that has it all..atleast for me!! Saw this site yesterday n it has a cool looking Motorola phone...W 375.. http://www.mobilewhack.com/reviews/cell_phone/motorola That's the one I'm in love with today..:)

Yea, it's not even in the markets yet..this whole cell phone buying thing has me perplexed(dunno what to buy), anxious (I wish this ordeal is over soon!), appauled( most good cells r really expensive), tempted (just wanna buy a really cool one, whatever the price!), eager( and wanna get it fast) and upset (still can't decide..ugghh..!)...life was so much easier when I bought the Samsung R220 which i'm using till now...there were just about 3-4 models of Nokia and two models of Samsung available here..and I loved the elegant looking Samsung.

Been through all Nokias, Samsung, Motorola and Sony phones !

So far ive seen some booring looking Nokia; they were never my fav. brand, though 6111 was a loaded model and the 6030 is a good basic model with a bright screen and an FM radio, costs about rs. 4300, some Samsung models..I initially wanted the Samsung D500 but when I saw it in the showroom, the screen did'nt look as large as it did on the website or the ads! Plus, the slide screen made the keypad look forsaken and difficult to reach..and other models did'nt seem too attractive after owning similar looking phone for 4 years..! Then there are the Motorola models which are either very old models and look like a drag or there's the ultra-slim SLVR or V3 priced at 10k and 13k resp. but both have a VGA camera and no FM Radio ! :( I'd rather pay Vandana Luthra to make me slim..!!!

Sony is the only brand which has some phones i wanna consider now...it's walkman range of phones are good...like the W700i which is a golden colour phone and has a 2 MP camera, FM Radio, MP3 player, has 35 MB memory (i think) and comes with a 256 MB extra memory, can play music even in flight mode,ie, when the phone is switched off, Mega Bass and u can buy flash for it for taking pics in the dark...all this for about 13k! Not bad, eh?

But when I do get my new phone..the first picture I take I will surely put that up on my blog ! Promise..!! Or maybe i'll put up a picture of my phone first !

Tell tale rains!!

Happy Days are here again !! It's finally rained a bit today morning after a long, long wait and what a respite from the terrible heat !! But the met dept. says it's just cos of some disturbances and extreme heat that clouds have formed and it's rained a bit..we're still not experiencing monsoons...i think when monsoons finally come, they'll be gone before i realise they're here !! Anyway, it's the perfect weather to go out for a picnic or shopping or just go for a movie (I've heard Superman Returns would be a good choice)and for the more romantically inclined, there's the long drive..though u'd sure be brave to drive in this city in the rains!! I did that once..though it was more like being caught in the rain after i'd left home..it so happened that i had just learned to drive and had a brand new driver's licence...my friend was at my place and my folks were out so we guys just decided to go for a spin..it was a nice drive mostly..i managed to negotiate the car on the busy road and reach the market and even park at a perfectly decent angle to the next car after which we did a bit of shopping and then decided to go to the South Campus canteen for lunch..!! It was a bit of a distance and just as we were crossed the huge gates of the campus..the car jerked to a stop on the deserted road n I had no idea what happened ! And it just refused to start again! I noticed a taxi stand tucked into a corner of a by-lane and had to ask for help from them. A helpful sardarji came over to take a look at what was wrong and casually told me that there was no coolant in the car and that it was also heated up ...that was the first time i'd heard of the term coolant and was obviously at my wits end !! I think he guessed as much by the look on our faces n just poured some water into in n after a wait of bout 20 mins my car finally started but i had strict instructions not to turn in off untill i reached home or it might not start again ! The rain started pouring just as we left the place and it really seemed like a boon then cos the rain n cool weather culd keep the car from heating up too much again. It was after another few mins that the rain came with all it's fury n i could barely see the roads but still we were almost enjoying the adventures of the day. But there was more to come..on the next red light we were amongst the ones right at the stop line and as the light went green n we all began moving ahead, i realised to my horror that the guys on my left and right were closing in on me in a bid to try to talk to each other by shouting from their cars !! Well i had to hit the brake so hard n at once my car started to slide backwards (cos the road was sliding bacwards into the service-lane!)before i could stop it..we hit a pole on the road and the door with the drivers seat suffered scratches and a big bump!! But the good part was that the engine did not turn off n after we recovered from the initial shock n a survey of the damage had been done, we went off again without wasting too much time as the damage was already done n we needed to get back home before my parents got back home !! So much for adventure n running off with the car like that ! I thought my friend would never sit in the car with me at the wheels ever again but surprisingly she had so much fun that i'm her favorite driver now!

The odysey was obviously intended to be a hush hush affair but since the car was danaged, we had to tell the parents that it happened cos a big flower pot toppled over it..ofcourse they did'nt really buy the story but we did get the benefit of doubt !! ;)

Gang Bang!

Just back from a sumptuous lunch and m going to have a coffee now to keep me awake so that the office can benefit from my services for a few more hours...!! It's so damn hot n humid in the city n that makes me all the more sleepy though ofcourse i'm sitting bang under an AC in the office! India's perpetually in a state of imbalance and a case in point right now are the very heavy rains in which mumbai is drowning and in contrast the parched city i'm suffering in ...!!

(Both pics downloaded from the net)




No rains n therefore very hot weather...meaning higher electricity demand... meaning power failure of an average of 5 hrs. a day in the poshest of areas and no driniking water either cos the motor won't run so that I can pull water into the house to use and store..which means that i'd either stay at home on the weekend and suffer from heat and loss of sleep or go to a shopping mall with backup and lots of restaurants and shopping...which means spending lots of money...which means uncomfortable situations when the bank statement arrives...which means generating heated situations between mom n me...Oh! when will the rains come??!!

We're having bets in the office almost everyday..no not about football...but about when is it likely to rain..but today we also did one other interesting thing ...we gave everyone nick names...and i'm mighty pleased cos i never thought that my name was also capable of being squeezed any further...but now we're a gang of four letter words...puns intended...:) the new and improved versions at all work stations are now called Nans, Rans, Pans, Vans, Reds, ofcourse all the versions are Windows XP Professional compatible!

How less??

Got this as an email forward today....pretty cool ...HOW LESS??!!

21 century...

Our communication - Wireless

Our dress - Topless

Our telephone - Cordless

Our cooking - Fireless

Our youth - Jobless

Our food - Fatless

Our labour - Effortless

Our conduct - Worthless

Our relation - Loveless

Our attitude - Careless

Our feelings - Heartless

Our politics - Shameless

Our education - Valueless

Our follies - Countless

Our arguments - Baseless

Our boss - Brainless

Our Job - Thankless

Our Salary - Very less !! :(

Generation Me!

Hi guys! In my last post I made a comment about today's youngsters not having understood the concept of modernity...n m under attack now from some friends n cousions for it! Trust me, I did not mean to belittle the youth..but there is definatly a section of them that I feel is a little lost ! Looking modern or wearing the latest styles whether they suit you or not, having the lastest gadgets and driving cool cars, having coffee at baristas and late night parties is not all there is to being modern!! What about a modern outlook in our way of life, our social manners, personal habits and attitudes? That's where being modern and progressive really counts !

Recently, I was chatting with a neighbour and she mentioned a cousion of her's who was unmarried though she was bout 32 yrs. and was only interested in social service.."I dunno what is the matter with her..we keep telling her to get married..but she always refuses! God knows what will become of her!" I could'nt believe she said that...and for the record let me tell u that my neighbour's a smart lady of around 35 yrs, is well qualified and has a great career, is divorced and lives abroad for many years now and considers herself very progressive, and yet she is able to preach and judge her as being wrong bout her life's mission ! I wanted to tell her to leave the poor lady alone n let her decide what she wants to do rather than trying to make her conform to the pre-determined ideas you have bout how a lady should lead her life!! Why was it so difficult for my neighbour to accept her as she was ?!

It's odd to see teenage girls wearing high heels and short t-shirts and low rise jeans in malls continuously tugging at their t-shirts or pulling up their jeans when they need to sit down !! I for one, sure don't understand the need for fashion at the cost of comfort and dignity!

But today's youth is also a lot smarter than ever before, having planned their futures way early and most of them know for sure what they want out of life. They are a more adventurous lot and are willing to work very hard for it ! Many of my friends and cousions have had the course to carve their own paths in life ...hence the protests ! I just wish they'd be more vocal against the injustices in society ...and I was very happy to see the "Youth for Equality" group come up and speak against reservations being imposed on us by the politicians who now want to highlight and cement the caste divide in each person's mind at every stage in their life right from school to college to higher education to jobs ! Soon, i'll be asking for shops where a general category can shop and table reservations at restaurants for general category n God knows what else! I'll soon be asking people about their 'category' before making any friends! And here I foolishly thought that it was time that there was only one category...Indian !!

Virtues, anyone?

Howdy? I've been out in the sun during the day hunting for a new cell phone today n doing certain other chores...n it was so damn hot n humid!! Drenched in the sun screen n further getting all sweaty n sticky in the heat is not my idea of shopping at all !! And add to that all the meyhem the traffic on the roads create...it's not funny! There was so much of honking and shouting n dirty looks from an irritated lot of people even inside the markets that it is just impossible to walk a few steps without being jolted from behind by some irritated middle aged guy or a youngster in a hurry or a driver whose fundamental idea of driving is only to aim in the general direction he needs to go to, put a foot on the accelerator and just honk, honk, honk so he can get a free path !!!!

Ever read celebrity interviews? I'm sure everyone's read a few and a lot of them ask the question...wat do u think is the most over-rated virtue? I've read all kinds of replies like honesty, beauty, virginity, sense of humour n all....but y don't we talk of the most under-rated virtue? I'd say it's PUBLIC MANNERS!! Please God, let me see more of that in people of this country...air'nt we the guys who are supposed to be really cultured? How do the parents forget to teach public manners? We're all too familiar with the guy honking like crazy behind us on the red light...what's his problem? Why do people walk down the streets as if there's no one else around, hitting n pushing n jostling around? I am specially intolerant of all the fat women in crowded buses who pass you by literally crushing you and then doing a double take by their thick bags trailing behind which hit you with double the force ! And if the lady also steps on your foot with her heels and all of 70+kgs...ure dead meat !! I wish they'd start a seperate service for all over-weight people who love throwing their weight around..quite literally! (I think that's what I wanna do if I had to answer " wat will you do if you became the prime minister for a day?" )

And why do people throw out litter from the bus window? Why should'nt you stand in the line to pay your bills just like the rest of them..are the others there just cos they enjoy standing in the line? Why do men stare at women in lifts, at signals, on roads, even when i'm on my own terrace ...Why can't they be more discreet when they're talking in public on their mobile phones? Is it social service when men water the plants all around the city roads ? Do u find it cute when lovers have scribbled their names on historic monuments...if i catch someone doing that..they'd sure be history! I'm quite sure it's typically indian culture to clean your own house n dump the dirt in the neighbour's courtyard..Ugh !

I sure hope someday it will also dawn on this country's youth that being modern is not about wearing low rise jeans ...it's about having an open mind ! Until then, Mera Bharat Mahan !!