Here's an idea

Why dont we all grow weeds in our lawns ? I spend the entire Saturday removing weeds from one corner of my lawn! You start off with lot of energy trying to get them by their roots, and then as you get tired (due to the heat and what not) it starts to get into your head. The weeds are now winning the battle and they seem to hold on to the ground more tightly than ever. Now your mind starts playing tricks on you - you are imagining holding a blow torch and burning the last one down to the ground grining an evil laugh!

I admit the lawn looks better (at least the part which I worked on) after the fact. But all the while you cant help thinking - why not have a weed that looks pretty ? These things grow with minimal sunlight water or supervision. Lets face it - they dont face competition from weeds (duh!) and bugs dont seem interested in them. So, all you scientists working on seedless watermelons and freaky egg plants, here's your next assignment. Make weeds that look pretty. There's a huge demand for those!

Things I discovered during my road trip

1. I love the Twix ice-cream bar! It has just about everything I want from my icecream - chocolate, caramel and crunchy cookie pieces. Sad that it does not last as long. I will run on the treadmill as long as I have to, in order to enjoy my Twix ice cream bar without any guilt!
2. I love oranges. I sort of started this at home prior to the trip but there were stretches on that trip when I devoured 3-4 oranges at a go! God knows if all the Vitamin C is preventing me from getting a cold now, but I ended up eating healthy, while enjoying it.
3. Even though I deny it, I do enjoy visiting man-made structures like the Lincoln Memorial or the Washington Monument. I was very reluctant to visit these crowdy places, but it was either the weather or the high spirits of the people that made me really have a good time. I would have loved it if someone sold bajjis off the streets :)
4. I got my road trip mojo back! I had a terrible cold while driving towards Virgina but recovered after a night's sleep. I did not mind the drive on my way back and in fact enjoyed it a bit. All charged up for my next long drive now!
5. Uma has become quite a hiker now. Not only did she push me to get on a hike on Saturday, she maintained a steady pace while climbing uphill - something I can never do. My strategy is to walk as fast as I can, while making frequent stops. Uma maintained a steady pace while making lot fewer stops. Got to admire the patience
6. I need to re-invent myself on the photography front. I thought I was creative with my shots, till I realized that I am repeating myself too often. So no more of those close up shots of wild flowers or long exposure shots of streams. Time to think differently.
7. I am getting tired of the songs on my ipod. I probably forwarded through a dozen songs before playing one. It could be because I have not updated my ipod in a while. I need to listen to different kinds of music.

Memorial Day 2009 road trip - the short version

Here is the fact sheet from our long road trip.

Started from Indy on Friday (the 22nd) at 5 pm. Had dinner at Taco Bell along the way (at 8:00 pm). Reached Roanoke (Virginia) at 2 am in the night battling a cold and drowsiness (had to pull over the last 45 mins and have Uma take over!).

Woke up on Saturday (the 23rd) at checkout time. Rushed out, and had breakfast at Waffle House. Drove to Shenandoah Park, along the Blue Ridge Parkway in 4 hours. Did a 3 hour 3.5 mile hike that took us to the Doyle falls. Drove to our hotel at Harrisonburg, VA after another 2 hr drive. Spotted a bear cub sprinting across the road about 20 feet from our car! Watched the Nuggets lose at the hotel. Had dinner at a Mexican restaurant close to our hotel.

Woke up on Sunday (the 24th) morning at 9 and drove back to Shenandoah. Did another 3 hr 3 mile hike, this time to a panorama point showing good views of the park. Started driving for DC at 2:30 and reached The White House, at 4:30. Walked around and saw the Lincoln Memorial and Washington Monument. Reached Aruna and Kanna's house at 7:45 and had dinner there. Drove back to Harrisonburg by 11 pm.

Woke up on Monday (the 25th) morning at 9 and had breakfast at a bagel place nearby. Loved the Berry bagel with Maple cheese spread! Started driving back at 10:30 and reached Columbus, Indiana at 7:30. Watched the Nuggets beat the Lakers at the comfort of home!

Rooting for your team

     Did you ever notice that you have always been rooting for "your team" all your life ? As a child, one of the first teams I liked was the Indian cricket team. You knew that Ravi Shastri, Srikanth and a bunch of other cricketers were real losers and were no match for the stars on some other teams. You knew you couldn't win with this team, yet you rooted for them. When I came to US, I picked a new team to cheer - the Denver Nuggets. When I started following the team, I knew deep down that there was no way we could win much with this team. Yet, night after night, my emotions ran high when the team lost matches, and I screamed myself hoarse cheering them to win! I rooted for every single player, however ridiculous they might have been. 

   Now, as years passed most of the original Denver team got traded to other teams, and now I found myself annoyed at how bad these players used to be. I could not believe that I used to like these players. I see myself going through a similar phase with the IPL, in cricket. I saw an article today in the newspaper saying that Andrew Symmonds (an Australian player) might be fit to play for Deccan Chargers  (the Hyderabad based team). I was a little relieved on seeing the news as I was hoping that my team makes it to the final four. I did not care, if they demolished Sehwag and Dhoni's teams along the way. I was prepared to even support Andrew Symmonds for this. Andrew Symmonds. Abey Maakki!! What's going on here ?? 

  Are my loyalties so shallow, that they can be compromised ? Do we associate ourselves with "teams" for no logical reason ? Makes me wonder about all my prejudices. 

Recently watched movies

In no particular order

Angels and Demons: Leave aside the fact that it was a book first, or that there is a controversy involved in the movie. You can watch this movie for the action involved. It will be interesting to see if any director considers making a third movie, without a novel as an inspiration.

Rating 3 on 5

Pachchai Kudire: Happened to chance upon this movie, while browsing. Uma got interested with the initial scenes. The heart of the story is about an uncouth menacing man who changes for the good eventually. What I liked about the movie was how they captured the crude ideas that this man has when he initially wants to turn "good". The idea of being good, is not easy to comprehend, and he eventually does more philanthropic deeds. Namitha acts surprisingly well.

Rating 2 on 5

Mamma Mia: Loved the songs as I have always. Got to hear a few more songs of ABBA that I hadn't before. When we were kids, we used to make up short stories, during which we inserted movie songs (out of context) to make it sound funny. Looks like someone took this idea a bit further and made this movie out of ABBA's songs. One thing that takes your breath away is Meryl Streep's energy. I was getting tired seeing her prancing around to all these vibrant songs!

Rating 2.5 on 5

X-Men origins : Wolverine The prequel to the X-men comics was atually better than I expected it to be. Watching this movie made me think that the first X-men movie was better. When I went back and watched it, I wasn't really sure any longer.

Rating 3.5 on 5

Multiplicity: What happens if a man clones himself multiple times ? The premise of the movie sounded interesting. I watched it on DVR. The movie was funny in parts but I guess I was expecting something else from the movie. It bothered me that each clone did not feel ownership, and let the "original" Val Kilmer boss them around. Kudos to the guy for showing enough variation across the characters!

Rating 3 on 5

Johnny Gaddar: I loved this movie. I dont watch Hindi movies on a regular basis, and for good reason. I hate to see yet another khan opening his arms wide open for a new heroine to run in to. This movie had a novel story line, a tight execution and a good choice of actors for most part (excepting the lead). At the risk of hyping the movie too much, I would recommend it heavily.

Rating 3.5 on 5

A Wednesday: A phone call received on a Wednesday morning sends the Mumbai police into a frenzy. The caller intends to blow up bombs placed at multiple locations unless the police are ready to negotiate. I did not like the idea of Anupam Kher and Naseeruddin Shah in the lead roles. Anupam Kher is not cool and Naseeruddin Shah is way too cool for their roles. The supporting cast does well though. Again, I like the fact that it does not feature yet another khan gyrating to loud music!

Rating 3 on 5

In defence of Oldboy

There are two reasons why I am trying to come to its defence. One, I picked the movie (without knowing ANYTHING about it) to watch on Netflix and got heavily criticised by my wife and two, I liked the innovative story line.

This movie is definitely not on my list of best movies watched by any means and I dont intend to glorify or recommend it to even a third of my friends. The simple reason being that individual tastes vary, and I am pretty sure most of my friends might react in a way that my wife did. I am trying not to give away the story line, so you can continue to read without worries, if you have not seen the movie yet. In my mind, the director could have made a movie with a simpler story line, which would have had less taboo topics. In doing so, it is possible that the movie might have appealed to a much larger audience. Infact, I am pretty sure that some filmmaker in India is toying with the idea of making a movie on similar lines with a story line that gels well with "Indian sentiments". However, this particular director did not. He chose to stick with the story line, and chose to live with the comments. To his credit, he got a lot of positive attention which is good for him.

I am a strong advocate for creative stories. I like paying attention to the story line and viewing a movie as I would read a book. I like movies, and I consider myself pretty open minded when it comes to new ideas. Point being that this movie has a novel idea. I have heard that it has been compared to Memento and I think that it is pretty silly to do that. It stands alone and is as unique a movie as I have seen. The reason why it does not make it to my favorites is because I thought it could have been much better. It should have had better accompanying visuals and it should have had better team to dub it into English. Yes, pardon me for not understanding Korean and bring a prick about it, but the English version is the version I saw and understood. Production values are important for this reason.

Did you see and like this movie ? Let me know why!

Star Trek

Uma and I caught this movie on Saturday. I have never been a Star Trek fan, preferring Star Wars to it. The movie did enough to rake my interest in this franchise. I might not have appreciated the nuances of the movie (like the original Spock showing up). I admit I am not a Trekker, so my views might not mean much. However, I have the advantage of analyzing the movie as any other movie-goer. Warning: Spoilers ahead

] So pardon me when I say that the whole idea of forging a friendship between Spock and James T Kirk, at the behest of the older Spock seemed very contrived to me. It seemed like the director was running out of time to tell his story, realized that Spock and Kirk were heading in opposite directions, and brokered a peace between them!

Having gotten that out the system, you have to appreciate what a fine job the script writers have done. The characters of Spock and Kirk came out as instantly likeable. You root for these guys to become better friends and at the end of the movie, you realize they have a very good team, and are curious to see how they face their upcoming adventures. All in all a likeable movie. I would give it a 3 on 5.

10 years ago

A small snippet from my life during my Undergrad days. I was thinking about my undergrad friends and got reminded of my first room at Mandakini Hostel - 365 B. I was a very quiet freshman and I tried to avoid seniors as much as I could initially. As I got past the fears of ragging, I developed an awe for some of my illustrious seniors and tried to get to know them as much as possible. By the end of my first year, I had made some good friends. Unknowingly, I made friends with people who were either elected representatives or had ambitions of being elected representatives.

During my first year, I shared my room with two others as most freshmen did. Though I never felt the lack of space in my room, I always wondered what it would be like, to have a complete room to myself. At the end of the first year, the freshmen were allotted single occupancy rooms by a lottery system. Someone (I think usually the Social Secretary) made a list of rooms that would get vacant (as a result of final year students vacating their rooms) and allot them to the freshers. Now, as with most things at hostels, this room allotment is not without drama. You see, some freshmen have favorite rooms - the room that is closest to the stairs, or the room that their favorite senior stayed in, or the room closest to the common room (with the TV), or the room that is closest to the carroms room. You get the point. While some of the lesser fortunate freshmen just pray for getting their favorite room, people with "influence" somehow end up with their dream rooms. This is accomplished by getting to know the Social Secretary or some close friend of his. All this was news to me, and I never intended to use this system as I was not sure I was close enough to the secretary.

One fine day before the room allotment happened one of the guys in my neighboring rooms walked up to me and said "Hey Phani, a bunch of us are trying to get rooms next to each other. I will put in your name in this so that you can stick with us". As I do in most situations that Ia m not prepared for, I froze. However, during my first year, I ended up becoming good pals with a different set of people and I really wished to be located next to them. Amidst all this drama, one of the freshmen announced publicly that he was positive that he would be asked to pick the first room to be allotted. As shocked as we were with his claim, at some level we all knew that anything could happen.

On this particular day, we assembled to see how it all played out. We saw the Social Secretary sit down with a large container filled with pieces of paper that had our names on it. The Soc Sec was supposed to stick his hand into the container, pull out a paper at random. The person whose name appeared on this paper picked a room among the available rooms. I took as close a look as I could at this container and all the folded paper pieces looked identical. I was convinced that the Soc Sec would not be able to pull off anything. There were already people who had got wind of the potential cheating in this process. I assumed that the Soc Sec decided it was too risky to pull this one. So imagine my surprise when the very first name that was called out, belonged to the person who had claimed it would be his!! He walked with a broad smile, pumped his fists in the air and picked the room that he had sought! I turned to see the Soc Sec, who continued picking names with a calm poise. How did this guy do it ?? Everything "fell in place" and we ended up getting rooms next to each other, just like the freshmen said we would. The couple of people who did not end up next to us, swapped their rooms with someone and somehow ended up next to us.

The thought of how insecure we were, in wanting to be surrounded by familiar faces, brought a smile to my face.

Title justification

So I got into blogging (again!). After spending an entire sick day at home, with nothing else to do, I realized that I haven't ever blogged seriously. I have a twitter page, which I feel pathetic about. No, it's not that I think Twitter is pathetic. It's just that I feel I can afford to write longer posts every now and then. Anyway, long story short, here I am. Now, finding a name for your blogsite isn't a simple task. You want the name to be short so that you (and potential visitors) don't have to type a long name. You want to avoid the lame options that the blogsite offers (kiran_thoughts2009 ???!), and at the same time you want it to be catchy. Well, Rehman's songs are catchy, and in particular there's that song from Sakkarakatti. That got me my blog's name. Sure its not friendly to the non-tamil speaking junta - so here goes the explanation. Illavasa Taxi means "Free Taxi". The song that I am talking about compares a friend to a free taxi. Its a uber cool song and I highly recommend that song if you haven't heard it yet.