For a change, college had nothing to do with me having a bad week. I was riddled with what the good doctor tells me was acute sinusitis. I realized that you're better off staying at the hostel instead of coming home when you're down with something like acute sinusitis. Even if there's a holiday. Especially if you're gonna be home alone. But I realized all that a bit too late. I was already home.
My eating habits didn't help either. I was (and still am) running on a bread diet. Pizzas, burgers, doughnuts, croissants, muffins, and the occasional white bread and naan. I didn't mind, but it was kind of difficult to go as far as the nearest Hot Breads outlet to get some of these, what with my head hurting with every step I took, and me accidentally stepping on the paws of street dogs. Well, one street dog, which was sleeping before I disturbed it, and didn't seem to be bothered enough to start chasing me.
I still managed to catch a movie on Republic Day. Rang De Basanti; it was a friend's treat. It was alright, I suppose. Good fun. What wasn't fun was what happened after the movie. The friend said there was a dinner treat too, which was fantastic, but that left me in the middle of nowhere at midnight, trying to find a bus home. And buses don't run at midnight. Even at the biggest bus terminus in Asia. I resigned to spending a fortune on an auto to get home, eventually.
Oh yeah, this new design is number... Number... Well, I've lost count. Come to think of it, I never kept count. What started out to look great turned into this piece of junk before your eyes. Ah well.
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Monday, January 16, 2006
Oh joy.
College starts again tomorrow. That means staying at the hostel again. Isn't that wonderful?
Here's a little something for you tech buffs out there... Bothack. You could say it's sort of an alternative to Lifehacker, but there's more to it. Apart from the usual 'latest technology' bit, they've also got the latest on tech fests in India and around the rest of the world as well. I'm glad somebody finally took the initiative to do this. What's more, they've got solutions to those agonizing problems you often face if you're a Linux newbie. I remember facing a problem similar to the one outlined here, about a year back (not on Suse, though. I was using Ubuntu). Solved that one after a lot of digging around on the net. Don't miss this one, folks.
Here's a little something for you tech buffs out there... Bothack. You could say it's sort of an alternative to Lifehacker, but there's more to it. Apart from the usual 'latest technology' bit, they've also got the latest on tech fests in India and around the rest of the world as well. I'm glad somebody finally took the initiative to do this. What's more, they've got solutions to those agonizing problems you often face if you're a Linux newbie. I remember facing a problem similar to the one outlined here, about a year back (not on Suse, though. I was using Ubuntu). Solved that one after a lot of digging around on the net. Don't miss this one, folks.
Friday, January 13, 2006
30 minutes or free?
Pizza Corner came first. 39 minutes or free, they said. But they were always on time.
Domino's Pizza came next, and they had this weird offer that if the pizza ain't delivered in 30 minutes, you get 50% off on the next pizza you order from them.
And then came the glorious Pizza Hut, who had the habit of delivering pizzas quite late. Enjoyed many a free pizza, at least in the beginning, when they said "30 minutes or free". Then it became "30-40 minutes or free". And then just "30-40 minutes". And today, they said, "Thank you for ordering, your pizza will be delivered as soon as possible". Sigh...
Domino's Pizza came next, and they had this weird offer that if the pizza ain't delivered in 30 minutes, you get 50% off on the next pizza you order from them.
And then came the glorious Pizza Hut, who had the habit of delivering pizzas quite late. Enjoyed many a free pizza, at least in the beginning, when they said "30 minutes or free". Then it became "30-40 minutes or free". And then just "30-40 minutes". And today, they said, "Thank you for ordering, your pizza will be delivered as soon as possible". Sigh...
Tuesday, January 10, 2006
You can puke later.
One of the things I dislike about staying alone at home is cleaning up after I've eaten. Sometimes I forget to do away with the leftovers. They just lie on the table for a few days till I notice that the house stinks. That's how I spotted this:
That's rice, cooked and kept in a "microwave-safe" bowl, left unattended for nearly a week. If you're feeling sick after looking at the full size image, be grateful you didn't have to smell it.
UPDATE: Two days afterward, the nasty odour still continued to exist, only a bit more fruity now. The rice was only a partial contributor to it. I found the primary cause - a bag of overripe bananas infested by unidentifiable flying insects.
That's rice, cooked and kept in a "microwave-safe" bowl, left unattended for nearly a week. If you're feeling sick after looking at the full size image, be grateful you didn't have to smell it.
UPDATE: Two days afterward, the nasty odour still continued to exist, only a bit more fruity now. The rice was only a partial contributor to it. I found the primary cause - a bag of overripe bananas infested by unidentifiable flying insects.
Monday, January 9, 2006
A film festival of sorts...
More than a week of holidays and home alone, I thought I finally had some time to myself. I did, only for a day though. My relatives seem to think I'd die if I live alone. I tried to avoid them as best as I could, but they cornered me. They wanted me to stay at my Grandmother's for the holidays. I politely refused. They asked me why. I couldn't come up with a reason that wouldn't hurt them. So I hurt them. But they aren't the kind who could take a hint. They tried coaxing me again, and again, and again, till I finally agreed to stay there, but not for more than 2 days. That's where I've been for the past two days.
My Grandma's place is somewhere I don't normally like to stay. Two vital sources of entertainment, the computer and cable TV, aren't a part of that place. I couldn't recall the last time I wasn't bored over there.
Now, I hadn't visited my Grandma in a year. Weird things can happen in a year. Like, my uncle (who lives there) could strike it big in the movie collection scene. Which he did, surprisingly. I had never seen so many foreign films in one place before, not even at a video store. They were all DVDs; movies of all sorts of languages. There was Russian, French, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Persian, Chinese, Japanese; you name it, he had it. Oh, English too. Entertainment, there was.
We (my uncle and I) decided that the best way to pass the time would be to watch as many movies as possible without enduring starvation or sleeplessness. And that's what we did.
Here's what we saw:
Solaris (Or Solyaris, 1972, Russian) - Directed by the talented Tarkovsky. My uncle, being a cinematographer, liked this movie for the camera work. That was pretty much the only good thing about the movie initially. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller after reading the blurb on the DVD cover. I hadn't seen the more recent George Clooney version of the movie. There were long and, in my opinion, unnecessary scenes involving clever transitions between black & white and colour on highways. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to a space station which orbits around a weird planet called Solaris. The planet's weird because it can read the minds of people around it, and is able to create sentient beings from the memories of the people. Kelvin is sent because the people on board were assumed to be under severe mental stress, i.e., mad. The story is a more philosophical one than a thriller, though it does have subtle instances that thrill. It's definitely worth watching if you have the patience.
Dead Man (1995, English) - I couldn't believe I'd missed this one. Directed by Jim Jarmusch, it stars Johnny Depp. Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, Iggy Pop and Alfred Molina have short appearances. Music from the guitar of Neil Young. A Western flick (Black & white) where William Blake (not the poet, Johnny Depp) is wanted for murder. He meets a Red Indian, Nobody (Gary Farmer), who mistakes him for the poet William Blake. What ensues is a humorous adventure, in a dark sort of way. I personally liked the menacing Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen), who has a few violent but funny scenes in the movie. Knowledge of William Blake's poetry can be useful while watching this one.
Knife In The Water (Or Nóz w wodzie, 1962, Polish) - This is one helluva film. Directed by Roman Polanski, it has just three actors in the whole film - two men and a woman. A fantastic play on human emotions, it's a brilliant psychological thriller with snappy dialogue. A hitch hiker joins a man and his wife on a boat ride, and the two men compete for the woman's attention in dangerous ways.
Kwaidan (or Kaidan, 1964, Japanese) - A film with four different stories in it. The stories are simple, Japanese ghost stories. Not the scary kind. To look at, this movie is beautiful. A lot of work has gone into it. The artwork and backdrops are stunning. And the lighting is fabulous. But the stories are too darn simple to be interesting, in my opinion. This first one is about a Samurai who ditches his wife for another and then returns to find her ghost. That's it. The second one's a bit better, and I kind of liked the third one. I wasn't patient enough to watch the fourth story in the movie. Unless you're a fan of art and Japanese folk stories, don't watch this one.
The Third Man (1949, English) - This one's often considered one of the greatest films of all time. I couldn't figure out why, though. The plot was pretty easy to guess during the movie. Perhaps because it's the first of it's kind. It's set in post-war Vienna, when the four powers occupied it. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a writer of cheap Westerns, is invited by his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) to Vienna. Upon arriving, Martins learns that his friend had died in a car accident, and also that he was a racketeer of sorts. He feels that it was not an accident but murder, and conducts an investigation of his own. A touch of humour here and there makes the movie enjoyable.
Close Up (or Nema-ye Nazdik, 1990, Persian) - Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, this is a kind of documentary. All the actors are people who play themselves, and it's based on a true story. A poor citizen of Iran, Hossain Sabzian looks a lot like a famous director (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), and he takes advantage of this fact and tricks a family into thinking he's the director, and stays with them. Later, he convinces the family that their house would be the perfect location for his next film. The movie also deals with what happens after he's caught, and the courtroom scenes were shot while the trial was actually happening. The real Makhmalbaf also makes an appearance in the film. A unique movie experience.
Underground (1995, Serbo-Croatian) - A film that starts out to be a raunchy comedy and ends in drama, directed by Emir Kusturica. It's set in a broad time period, starting from WWII and ending with the war in Yugoslavia 50 years later. A very long film (167 minutes), it's divided into three parts. Two friends, Marko and Blacky, are Communist rebels in German-occupied Belgrade during WWII. They're black market weapon manufacturers. Marko, being the smarter of the two, tricks his friend into staying in an underground bomb shelter till the war is over. And he never tells him when the war gets over. A very entertaining movie.
8 1/2 (1963, Italian) - Ah, this one's a classic. A brilliant film by Federico Fellini, it's about a movie director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) who tries to take a movie which, for a change, would be pure and honest; a movie about his life. But he fails miserably, as he doesn't know what he wants. There's often a mix of fantasy and reality in this movie; Guido daydreams a lot about his childhood and his love life. He gets the actors for the movie but is still confused what to do. I really liked this one.
I borrowed a few movies before I left on that second day. The Killing by Stanley Kubrick, Wong Kar-Wai's 'In the Mood for Love' and 'The White Sheik' by Federico Fellini. No, I won't be writing about them.
My Grandma's place is somewhere I don't normally like to stay. Two vital sources of entertainment, the computer and cable TV, aren't a part of that place. I couldn't recall the last time I wasn't bored over there.
Now, I hadn't visited my Grandma in a year. Weird things can happen in a year. Like, my uncle (who lives there) could strike it big in the movie collection scene. Which he did, surprisingly. I had never seen so many foreign films in one place before, not even at a video store. They were all DVDs; movies of all sorts of languages. There was Russian, French, Italian, Polish, Serbian, Persian, Chinese, Japanese; you name it, he had it. Oh, English too. Entertainment, there was.
We (my uncle and I) decided that the best way to pass the time would be to watch as many movies as possible without enduring starvation or sleeplessness. And that's what we did.
Here's what we saw:
Solaris (Or Solyaris, 1972, Russian) - Directed by the talented Tarkovsky. My uncle, being a cinematographer, liked this movie for the camera work. That was pretty much the only good thing about the movie initially. I was expecting a sci-fi thriller after reading the blurb on the DVD cover. I hadn't seen the more recent George Clooney version of the movie. There were long and, in my opinion, unnecessary scenes involving clever transitions between black & white and colour on highways. Kris Kelvin, a psychologist, is sent to a space station which orbits around a weird planet called Solaris. The planet's weird because it can read the minds of people around it, and is able to create sentient beings from the memories of the people. Kelvin is sent because the people on board were assumed to be under severe mental stress, i.e., mad. The story is a more philosophical one than a thriller, though it does have subtle instances that thrill. It's definitely worth watching if you have the patience.
Dead Man (1995, English) - I couldn't believe I'd missed this one. Directed by Jim Jarmusch, it stars Johnny Depp. Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, Iggy Pop and Alfred Molina have short appearances. Music from the guitar of Neil Young. A Western flick (Black & white) where William Blake (not the poet, Johnny Depp) is wanted for murder. He meets a Red Indian, Nobody (Gary Farmer), who mistakes him for the poet William Blake. What ensues is a humorous adventure, in a dark sort of way. I personally liked the menacing Cole Wilson (Lance Henriksen), who has a few violent but funny scenes in the movie. Knowledge of William Blake's poetry can be useful while watching this one.
Knife In The Water (Or Nóz w wodzie, 1962, Polish) - This is one helluva film. Directed by Roman Polanski, it has just three actors in the whole film - two men and a woman. A fantastic play on human emotions, it's a brilliant psychological thriller with snappy dialogue. A hitch hiker joins a man and his wife on a boat ride, and the two men compete for the woman's attention in dangerous ways.
Kwaidan (or Kaidan, 1964, Japanese) - A film with four different stories in it. The stories are simple, Japanese ghost stories. Not the scary kind. To look at, this movie is beautiful. A lot of work has gone into it. The artwork and backdrops are stunning. And the lighting is fabulous. But the stories are too darn simple to be interesting, in my opinion. This first one is about a Samurai who ditches his wife for another and then returns to find her ghost. That's it. The second one's a bit better, and I kind of liked the third one. I wasn't patient enough to watch the fourth story in the movie. Unless you're a fan of art and Japanese folk stories, don't watch this one.
The Third Man (1949, English) - This one's often considered one of the greatest films of all time. I couldn't figure out why, though. The plot was pretty easy to guess during the movie. Perhaps because it's the first of it's kind. It's set in post-war Vienna, when the four powers occupied it. Holly Martins (Joseph Cotten), a writer of cheap Westerns, is invited by his friend Harry Lime (Orson Welles) to Vienna. Upon arriving, Martins learns that his friend had died in a car accident, and also that he was a racketeer of sorts. He feels that it was not an accident but murder, and conducts an investigation of his own. A touch of humour here and there makes the movie enjoyable.
Close Up (or Nema-ye Nazdik, 1990, Persian) - Directed by Abbas Kiarostami, this is a kind of documentary. All the actors are people who play themselves, and it's based on a true story. A poor citizen of Iran, Hossain Sabzian looks a lot like a famous director (Mohsen Makhmalbaf), and he takes advantage of this fact and tricks a family into thinking he's the director, and stays with them. Later, he convinces the family that their house would be the perfect location for his next film. The movie also deals with what happens after he's caught, and the courtroom scenes were shot while the trial was actually happening. The real Makhmalbaf also makes an appearance in the film. A unique movie experience.
Underground (1995, Serbo-Croatian) - A film that starts out to be a raunchy comedy and ends in drama, directed by Emir Kusturica. It's set in a broad time period, starting from WWII and ending with the war in Yugoslavia 50 years later. A very long film (167 minutes), it's divided into three parts. Two friends, Marko and Blacky, are Communist rebels in German-occupied Belgrade during WWII. They're black market weapon manufacturers. Marko, being the smarter of the two, tricks his friend into staying in an underground bomb shelter till the war is over. And he never tells him when the war gets over. A very entertaining movie.
8 1/2 (1963, Italian) - Ah, this one's a classic. A brilliant film by Federico Fellini, it's about a movie director, Guido Anselmi (Marcello Mastroianni) who tries to take a movie which, for a change, would be pure and honest; a movie about his life. But he fails miserably, as he doesn't know what he wants. There's often a mix of fantasy and reality in this movie; Guido daydreams a lot about his childhood and his love life. He gets the actors for the movie but is still confused what to do. I really liked this one.
I borrowed a few movies before I left on that second day. The Killing by Stanley Kubrick, Wong Kar-Wai's 'In the Mood for Love' and 'The White Sheik' by Federico Fellini. No, I won't be writing about them.
Tuesday, January 3, 2006
Off The Record - My Morning Jacket: An Observation
For the uninitiated: Off The Record is a song in My Morning Jacket's last album, Z.
I seem to have a knack for recognizing English when spoken backwards. I guess repeated viewing of 'The Exorcist' was the cause for that. Anyway, I've never been wrong in recognizing it. Except for that one time when I thought the lead singer of Sigur Ros was actually a woman singing in English, but backwards. It was just that one time.
Coming to the topic at hand - I recently acquired the aforementioned album, and happened to notice that this particular song had instances of English spoken backwards, towards the end of the song. Tried Googling it, but surprisingly, nobody else seemed to have noticed that. Even lyrics sites didn't mention anything about it; they just had the main song's words.
I had my doubts. Perhaps I just made another mistake. But I had time. Lots of it. And also some version of Audacity(an audio editor). It's pretty fast when it comes to reversing songs. Soon I found myself listening to the singer speaking random English words, or that's what I thought it was. The music was louder than the singer's voice during that part, so I couldn't make out much of what he was saying. Some of the phrases I happened to hear were - "Here's a clue", "Burn burn burn" and "Oh my Jesus", not in that order. Reminded me of an episode of 'The Simpsons', the one where Bart forms a pop group that sings "Ymra eht nioj", which is "Join the army" spelt backwards. So, I'm going to make a totally misinformed and probably wrong statement - My Morning Jacket is a band that spreads anti-Christian thoughts through subliminal messages in their songs. Clever chaps.
In other news, I was listening to my copy of Radiohead's 'Pablo Honey' in the living room for change(I wanted to know how they sound on 5.1 speakers), when my mother came in shouting "What happened to the speakers?! Those noises sound like a mixie's!". She was referring to the distortion guitar riffs in 'Creep'. Sigh...
I seem to have a knack for recognizing English when spoken backwards. I guess repeated viewing of 'The Exorcist' was the cause for that. Anyway, I've never been wrong in recognizing it. Except for that one time when I thought the lead singer of Sigur Ros was actually a woman singing in English, but backwards. It was just that one time.
Coming to the topic at hand - I recently acquired the aforementioned album, and happened to notice that this particular song had instances of English spoken backwards, towards the end of the song. Tried Googling it, but surprisingly, nobody else seemed to have noticed that. Even lyrics sites didn't mention anything about it; they just had the main song's words.
I had my doubts. Perhaps I just made another mistake. But I had time. Lots of it. And also some version of Audacity(an audio editor). It's pretty fast when it comes to reversing songs. Soon I found myself listening to the singer speaking random English words, or that's what I thought it was. The music was louder than the singer's voice during that part, so I couldn't make out much of what he was saying. Some of the phrases I happened to hear were - "Here's a clue", "Burn burn burn" and "Oh my Jesus", not in that order. Reminded me of an episode of 'The Simpsons', the one where Bart forms a pop group that sings "Ymra eht nioj", which is "Join the army" spelt backwards. So, I'm going to make a totally misinformed and probably wrong statement - My Morning Jacket is a band that spreads anti-Christian thoughts through subliminal messages in their songs. Clever chaps.
In other news, I was listening to my copy of Radiohead's 'Pablo Honey' in the living room for change(I wanted to know how they sound on 5.1 speakers), when my mother came in shouting "What happened to the speakers?! Those noises sound like a mixie's!". She was referring to the distortion guitar riffs in 'Creep'. Sigh...
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