Monthly Archives: February 2009
Slumdog Millionaire and India
Quick last post before my hard disc is formatted and before I leave for my trip!
As most of the movie going world knows by now, Slumdog Millionaire has won 8 oscars. That’s right, EIGHT. That is quite an achievement.
For those living under a rock, it is about a poor Indian teen who lived all his life in a slum winning the “Who Want’s to be a millionaire” equivalent show and hence winning a million rupees.
So the movies is related quite a bit to India. Okay, it is entirely in India. However, the director and most of the crew of the movie is not Indian; the actors all are.
Among the eight oscars, 3 were won by Indians – AR Rahman, Gulzar (Shared wiuth Rahman) and Resul Pookutty. They won for Original Score, Original Song and Sound mixing respectively. However, none of the actors were nominated for any of the awards and so obviously, none won. The director was not Indian, the movie itself is classified as British. So how is this a win for India as it is being claimed by all most news channels?
I have nothing against the winners from India. But that does make it a win for India. An Indian win would be for a movie directed by an Indian (No, M. Night Shyamalan does not count or any of the other NRI or directors of Indian origin. Shekhar Kapoor does though :P ) or made by an Indian company.
Please folks, cut out the hype. It is NOT an Indian movie, it is not a win for India.
Of flayings and impalings and…
A virus from an infected flash drive infected my system. So I basically spent the last 4 days (including today) trying to clean out my system. Having run at the least about 6 different anti-spyware/malware/
So this brings me to the topic of this post. If I found the author of this virus/spyware (whose name I don’t even know) I have in mind some very enjoyable activities to take part in, enjoyable being for me of course. Due to this infection, I have essentially wasted 4 days of my time when I should have been working. Office can be so boring if the comp is down.
And also thanks to this virus, I called the IT support at work to try and clean it. So this gentleman, brilliantly, manages to lose ALL my open tabs (numbering in the high 80s, low 90s). All gone, collected over a period of months. Oh, did I also mention that he suggested that I use Netscape Navigator. What’s that you ask? It’s the old, discontinued browser which was so crappy near it’s end that even Netscape developers would probably not use it.
Anyway, so apparently the end result is that even was unable to determine the cause of the system freakiness and I have to get the system formatted tomorrow. Which means that I will not be able to take it with me on my trip which further means that I waste another 5 days without managing to do any work which means that someone seriously deserves some nice, slow, delicious torture.
ooh
Ps. And no, I did not wish to bookmark those tabs because I had other uses for them and bookmarking them would mean I forget about them and I did not want to forget about them cos I needed to go back to refer info from them.
Free Hugs for Valentine’s Day
Republishing this here from my article in Desicritics.org to set the context for the next post.
A day without a cell phone
Oh more than a day.. I went without my cell for a week. And it was quite a good experience. No calls to disturb, no spam, just free..
I want to repeat that sometime soon again.. Perhaps soon
Opinions
I was reading this excellent essay by Roger Ebert and found it a very good read.
I really connected to the following words from that essay:
It is not important to be “right” or “wrong.” It is important to know why you hold an opinion, understand how it emerged from the universe of all your opinions, and help others to form their own opinions. There is no correct answer. There is simply the correct process. “An unexamined life is not worth living.”
This has always been very important for me. To have my opinions independent of others influence. Not always easy but I try to ensure that I keep my opinions uninfluenced until I have had a time to examine them and come to some sort of a conclusion. While this sometimes lead to being judgmental it serves me well as I can look at issues and ideas with my own perception and perhaps provide a different perspective.
Ps. Yes, sometimes I’m too strongly opinionated to the point of stubborness ;)
It’s been a while
So… I’ve been off the blog for quite a while now. Travel, work and other stuff have kept me away along with a general sense of lethargy related to blogging.
However, I’m trying to get rid of it, re-prioritize my activities and try and do stuff which I enjoy.
Anyway, a belated happy new year. I’ve been on two trips the past 3 month, and two more in the next 4 months. But none of them “travel trips” which is what I want to do. Swetha (who btw, got a Canon Rebel XSi, the 450D) mentioned that I have not mentioned my cam. Well mid-last year, I got a DSLR, a Canon 40D. It is an awesome cam, amazing features and amazing picture quality.
(Du..uh.. Of course it is, that’s why I purchased it ;))
- Image via Wikipedia
Work wise, it’s been boring and frustrating past couple of months. Project mostly at a standstill and progress is sluggish if any. Almost like déjà vu.
My thoughts for 2009:
I think this will be a good year for me. I have positive feelings and expectations from the year. I expect a lot of changes in my life this year, mostly good ones. Hopefully ;)
I’m also participating in the development for a game that I’ve been playing for quite a while (Battlemaster), which is fun..
Well I had move to say but then I forgot.. Sigh..
Books I started and never finished
I don't know. Never got around to finishing it. It started getting deep into religion and philosophy and so I sort of tuned it out.
That is one of the very few books that I've started and never finished.
Another is Atlas Shrugged. BOring book. Could not get past 50 pages of the book.
But I guess the worst was Catch 22. Could not get past even half a page. Does that even count as starting? ;)
Thus speaketh