:(

In 2007 (Dec), I thanked people who planted the trees in Jayanagar in one of my posts. And in 2008 (Nov-Dec), I hear that these trees are going to be felled to make way for the Metro. But I always thought it won't happen because no one can actually think of cutting those trees on the Nanda road, they make a distinguished part of Bangalore.

No, I am not against development/progress. But to me, felling trees on the Nanda road (and Lalbagh) to make way for the Metro is like demolishing a part of Taj Mahal to make way for the Metro! Because those trees are part of our heritage just like how Taj Mahal is. I never thought it would be difficult for anyone to accept this, I thought Hasiru Usiru was doing a great job and we should be able to save those trees. Anitha, Boda and Chilli have been working a great deal for this cause with Hasiru Usiru.

From what I hear from them about the protests/progress, I realize that people don't care about these trees at all! :( Here are the updates from them, extremely disheartening.


From:Anitha
Sent: Monday, May 04, 2009 9:14 PM
Subject: Re: Map fundaes

They came around 5:30 when it started raining and chopped off one tree. As they saw people approaching to question them, they ran away! They even left the cut tree in the Lalbagh premises.

Some of the eye witnesses lodged a police complaint and the guy there said they will give protection for one night. So a constable was stationed at that place in Lalbagh so hopefully no more trees were cut last night.

----------------------------------------


From: Sridhar
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 10:42 AM
Subject: Bad day yesterday ...

The Mothers of Bangalore (Sanmathi) wanted to raise awareness in the Jayanagar 4th Block area. So, they held a protest there yesterday. I was supposed to go along with them to try getting information about people who might support our cause. The whole evening turned out to be a big messy affair!

Things were going fine with the mothers singing songs on Bangalore and asking the people of Bangalore to arise to the illegality of the Metro, about how they weren't against the Metro, but wanted it to be built in a legal manner, with least damage to the environment as possible. Then these two guys start shouting at us for being anti-Metro. So this is the exchange I am involved with.
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: Metro is a dream for us. Metro is a 100 year old dream. How can you oppose it!
Me: We are not opposing the Metro. But we want it to go underground.
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: Metro is a dream for us. Metro is a 100 year old dream. How can you oppose it!
Me: We are not opposing the Metro. But we want it to go underground.
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: Metro is a dream for us. Metro is a 100 year old dream. How can you oppose it!
Me: We are not opposing the Metro. But we want it to go underground.
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: Metro is a dream for us. Metro is a 100 year old dream. How can you oppose it!
Me: We are not opposing the Metro. But we want it to go underground.
...
...
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: What's the harm if 4 trees go?! If we need progress, we need to sacrifice some things.
[NOTE: All this is being shouted at me, and I am trying to be as calm as I can under the circumstances.]
Me: When there is an alternative solution possible which will not only help the trees, but also make the Metro more useful, why should we go with the current alignment?
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: There are trees being cut in front of hotels, bars. Why don't you protest there?
Me: Come, let's go right now and protest those as well.

Obviously doesn't come.

...
...
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: It's our right for a Metro. Because of your selfishness, we can't lose the Metro. Delhi has it. Hyderabad has it. We also want it.
Me: Delhi, inside the city, has Metro underground.
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: Metro is a dream for us. Metro is a 100 year old dream. How can you oppose it!
...
...
Metro-fanatic 1 & 2: All you people opposing are not Kannadigas. You are not from Bangalore.

At which point, another person in the crowd told me to not waste time talking to these people, and come out of the crowd. I did.

The women were still singing the songs. When these people go up to them, pointing fingers, flailing arms at them. Accusing them of people who will not remain in Bangalore.
Metro-fanatic 1: You people will go off to foreign. We want our Metro.
[NOTE: That guy was wearing a San Francisco T-shirt.]
...
...
And a minor slip from one of the women. She wants to ask the people of Jayanagar to be unapathetic, and arise. She says, "Kannadigas are lazy. We need to get up and fight this!"

M-f 1 & 2 latch on to this. And that's the end. :(

They tell us that we have 10 minutes to vacate the place, else we will be beaten up.

Anitha is waiting at Lalbagh where another tree was cut in the afternoon. As I leave from 4th block, she tells me that the DCP, ACP have given us assurance that no more tree-felling will happen until the 9th (when there will be another protest - probably the most important/final one).

-- edited to remove a line --

In the afternoon at Lalbagh, I am talking to the contractor in-charge of cutting the trees. He asks me where I was when trees were being cut at Vijaynagar, K R Road, etc. I tell him that when it happened on Seshadri Road, we were there. With a proud smirk, he says, "I was there at Seshadri Road". Resisted an urge to slap him.

End of the day, that's the story. Logic of most people - "You didn't protest before, why are you protesting before? Just let it go!" It doesn't strike them that it is this attitude that will result in more encroachments, more autocracy from the rogue BMRCL. Right now the station at Lalbagh doesn't have a parking lot, auto stand, bus stop, etc. They've ONLY taken 0.1% of Lalbagh. Few years down the line, I can visualise them saying this, "We have 0.1% already. What's another 1%? Besides, we need parking lots. We can't have roads jammed!"

Of course, it's progress. Development.

Excellent. Long live mindless infrastructure development.

Only good thing. Another day where I didn't beat up somebody.

I can't even imagine what Boda must be going through. In his place, I would have probably snapped a long time back.

----------------------------------------


From:Sridhar
Sent: Wednesday, May 06, 2009 3:23 AM
Subject: Re: Bad day yesterday ...

They had come with 4 police lorries, 5 jeeps, etc. Women police as well. Spoke to the DCP/ACP who had promised us protection just yesterday. His words, "Orders from higher up. Can't do anything."

I saw the cutting of 4 trees. They are in such a hurry to finish up. Most of the trees are landing on the asbestos walls they've put up.

All trees will be cut today for sure. And the saddest part, the land transfer to BMRCL hasn't even been done yet. Long live the Metro!

There are more protests planned (check http://hasiruusiru.org), these should make a difference, please spread the word.

I was excited to hear that Dr. Stroustrup was going to be talking on C++0x in Vancouver. A bunch of us that registered for the talk got official invites from the Simon Fraser university as our company has an university relations group that work closely with the universities.

So there we were, at the SFU on the 30th of April to take part in Dr. Stroustrup's talk. Dr. Stroupstrup talked about the new ISO standard for C++ that he has been working on and that he intends to get done by 2009, it's called C++0x (zero-x as the year is unknown until the standard is out).

I was expecting some major additions if not changes, however didn't see a lot of new stuff or radically different advances. Well, the reason maybe obvious that millions of people already use C++ and anything newly introduced shouldn't break the existing code and because whatever is done should kind of fit into the existing tool chains.

Here is what I could gather
1. Improvements to aid programming with systems that work closely with hardware, to support concurrency -new components, threads and thread pools added.
2. Increase type safety (strict enum type checks etc)
3. Initializer lists (std::initializer_list) to aid initializing pretty much everywhere - vectors, class members, function arguments something like below

void f(int, std::initializer_list, int)
so -> f(1, {2,3,4}, 5);

4. easier and safer use of templates
5. And a lot of smaller things like static_asserts, simplifying for loop syntax etc.

There were a few lighter moments in the talk that I must say I enjoyed :) He said a lot of people keep saying that C++ is not used much but it is a blatant lie. He also said we are not talking about the medium sized, medium reliable, medium performance applications written by mediocre programmers for windows!

There was also a slide listing what (who) all use C++ -Mar's Rover, Google's file system, Microsoft's every product, Photoshop, Cell phones, Gaming, Graphics, Compilers, Chip design etc.
A detailed list of applications that use C++ on his website -http://research.att.com/~bs/applications.html

It felt good to listen to him speak about something he created (that I have been using to write code) and is passionately working on it, the authority with which he speaks makes it nicer :)

Finished painting Karthik's 'Together' picture just before leaving for Bangalore so that I could give it to him. And tried taking pictures of the painting, never got the colors or the composition right :(





















Here is a close up of one portion of the painting. The colors are still not good, the original painting is more grayish but the cameras seem to make it more blueish.




















Finally a good one, this one was taken by Karthik himself :)

Sea to sky highway

Yesterday we drove to Whistler town, thanks to Tara and Akhilesh who are here on an official visit, we made up our mind to get to Whistler finally. Whistler town hosts the Whistler mountain (named after the whistling calls of the marmots to warn friends of the impending danger, that lived in the alpine areas of the mountain). Whistler mountain hosts the ski resort Whistler Blackcomb, more than a million people go there each year. This is the official ski resort for the 2010 Winter Olympics that is going to happen in Vancouver.

Whistler is a famous place and its beauty and grandness is talked about all the time but what I found amazing was the drive! The sea to sky highway which connects Vancouver and Whistler (Whistler is around 120 km from Vancouver) is a two lane (most part of it) scenic highway that passes both the pacific ocean and the snow-capped mountains. It was simply spectacular to drive on the highway. Here are a few pictures...
Around 80-90km of the highway was covered with these mountains and the ocean. And most both sides of the highway has these glaciated mountains which was really a treat.

There were view points too where we stopped and admired the views! There is construction going on for the Winter Olympics and so there were traffic diversions at some parts of the highway, however that didn't take away anything from the wonderful experience we had driving through this highway.

Want to do more trips to Whistler, people, please do visit us :) Susie you reading this? :)

It's been a really good month when it comes to the movies that I have watched...considering the fact that sometimes we wait so badly for a good movie, it makes me very happy that we have so many movies, all good ones!

Let me go in the reverse order because the latest movie compelled me to think of all the movies I watched :)


Luck by chance! -Such a well made movie... I walked out of the theater feeling so nice about the movie, it's makers, myself and life :) Thanks to Vinay, he wanted to watch it the moment he saw that it was released.
I had heard Zoya Akthar say in an interview that in the 90s all the Hindi movies made were awful and she couldn't relate to any of them. I thought I completely understood her feeling when I watched the interview but after I watched Luck by chance I think I understood her better! I could relate to the movie and connect to the characters in it to a very great extent.
The story of Luck by chance was just so complete, from covering the perspectives so well to getting the message across to the viewers so easily.
How I would like to see it is -Life is probably a very simple movie, you can either play Farhan Akthar or play Konkana Sen and in both the cases you are a winner! :)
Farhan plays an ambitious, confident, selfish (almost an opportunist) guy, actor by profession. And Konkana plays an ambitious, bold, independent, supporting and a sincere girl, actor by profession. Things fall in place for Farhan from the others perspective (from his perspective, he succeeded because of his belief in himself and the aspiration to go as far as it takes ) and he becomes a super star. Konkana is the kind of a person who trusts everyone until the trust is broken and she will have to face the consequences more than once in her life. Nevertheless she gets the point and goes on to do what she likes to do without giving a damn to success or failure.
It was a very nice movie and I loved everything about it, the satirical depiction of Hindi film industry, the emotions experienced by the characters, Farhan not being too much of a hero, Konkana Sen playing the lead role, and Shahrukh Khan's name being the last name to be shown on the "special thanks to" list :)


Defiance -I liked the movie very much. It may not be the first movie on the war between Germans and Jews but it surely is a movie that I am glad I watched. It makes us understand how better off we are when compared to people during those times. Sure we have our problems and they had theirs but I still think we wouldn't have survived those wars like they did. Great performances by the actors.


Revolutionary Road -Thanks to me, I was hell bent upon watching this movie the moment I heard about it. Awesome movie, awesome performances, extremely inspiring!
Again it is something that we all can relate to, very well. I really wish that everyone who watches it get the decisions of their lives right, that is they decide to move to Paris if they were April and Frank :)


Benjamin Button -It is a cretaive one for sure but I thought it got a bit boring after we got the idea because of the length. In any case that movie also had good performances and sincere, earnest moments that I enjoyed.


Slumdog Millionaire -I would say that it was a well made movie but honestly I didn't think it was a great movie. I think I have a problem with the storyline itself, I was just not comfortable buying the fact that Jamal won because it was written. I didn't think someone like Jamal would know the answers to just those questions that were asked (and not even to questions simpler than those) but rather to a lot more questions.
And another disturbing thing about the movie was the way Anil kapoor kept speaking to Jamal during the show. It was unbelievable that he spoke to Jamal so condescendingly! I am not sure if Vikas Swarup's original work also portrays Anil's character that way or if it is just the movie... but that was a total put off. Though I haven't seen much of "Kaun Banega Karorpati" shows, I distinctly remember from the ones I watched that Amitab Bacchan spoke to the contestants with so much respect. I know it is a small part of the movie itself but I must say it disturbed me quite a bit (I mean, we shouldn't be conveying wrong things to the worldwide audience about what happens in a particular Indian show).


Okay! that was a long post but I had to say that I loved the movie Luck by chance :)
To be watched list still has two more movies pending -Doubt, The reader.

It is 2009. As I welcome the new year I also recollect memories of the year gone by. I think it's something that everyone does but I must say that I do it more religiously after one of my friend Rashmi Kamath wrote a really amazing mail to the group recollecting all the events that had happened in the past year :)

Of the many things, I just thought of checking on my paintings (or art works as I would like to put) and then I thought I should post them here. Though I wanted to make this post, I must say that I was inspired by Dhimant and his work Neumonia and Other Sketch Stories to finally compile and post it!

I made this for one of my friends from office, Bhaktha, in February. He had this so called sun-swallowing picture taken on one of his trips and somehow I wanted to paint it the moment I saw it. I enjoyed working on the sunset part of it (I usually do because I love the sunset colours) and also enjoyed working on his hair as it required very thin strokes.

This was a part (my part) of the mural painting we did at office in August. Though there was no room for creativity or even the choice of colours, I enjoyed doing this on a canvas :) It is the tail of a colourful parrot that was in one of the eight parts of the mural.

This is a sketch of one of my colleagues watching a presentation slide during an all hands meeting at work. It was in September. The meeting was in a hotel and it was really boring, they had given us water cans as gift which came in a cardboard box. This colleague of mine was watching a presentation slide and I noticed that he was watching it very curiously, didn't appear like he would change his posture. So just made his sketch quickly on the cardboard box I had.

I started working on it on the 15th of August, had taken the day off. The theme was independence/freedom. I wanted to use only 3 three colours, the Indian national flag tri-colours and just keep drawing free strokes (of course with a pattern/style in mind) on the paper but no restriction on how it should look or how it shouldn't look. This is what it ended up as :) I finished it in early Dec though I started it on the Independence day!

When I visited EA office (Vinay's), I was totally impressed with the art aspect of it. Every single thing was arranged, designed very creatively. Be it the art on the walls or the theme of their gym everything was creative and artistic. I promised Vinay that I would make something very different for his desk too. I wanted to paint on a rock! I got one too, from a beach we went to. But never made anything on it. Finally I made up my mind and did this in December, it was Vinay's idea that I make maple leaves on it.

Thank you and hope to do more in 2009!

Watched this play Twelfth Night last night. It actually felt good, I was watching a play after a long time and it was different form all the plays I had watched as the play was inside a tent (500 seats) with an open backdrop! The play was presented by a not-for-profit, professional Shakespeare Festivals - Bard on the Beach. The tent is set up near a beach (English Bay beach). I always enjoy watching live performances, especially plays. Though I had a little problem in following some of the parts of the play (which didn't involve the main characters), I could enjoy it. The acting was very good, made me laugh quite a bit (considering my taste for humor). I think I liked the songs (and the music) the best...and was really impressed by the fact that almost all actors could sing so well. I was only hearing about actors singing their songs themselves in theater but hadn't seen a play where most actors sang their songs. One of the guys was singing and playing the music, that was very good. On the whole, it was very refreshing :) (though I ended up being frustrated after the play for all wrong reasons). Here is the picture of the stage that I took during the break.

Addicted to this game Fantastic Contraption. It is really a cool game and my friend has written a good post on it here.

I thought of posting the links to some of my designs (our designs as Vinay helped me with them), starting level 11 only as the first 10 levels are quite easy. Also I didn't do level 13 and 14 as my friends sent the designs even before I had started working on them. I did complete a couple of them (level 11 and level 17 to be precise) even after my friends sent them as I had already started working on them.

Although they are not the best of the designs, I really enjoyed making them :) A big thanks to the creators of this game! And special thanks to Vinay for sending it to us!!

Mission to Mars
Up the Stairs
Down Under
Awash
Handling
Tube
Back and Forth

Handling and Back and Forth are my favourite designs among these :)

credit to the credits girl!

Although I used to look at the closing credits of a film, it was more of a casual look and the duration of this act of looking at the closing credits were based on various factors, number of people walking out of the movie, who I went to the movie with etc.
Yesterday I learnt that one of my friend's friend who is a director herself in an NGO doesn't like it when people don't watch the closing credits. It suddenly occurred to me that she was so right!, it is a way of acknowledging the creators. I also regretted for having not thought about it earlier. But now I will make it a point to sit through the closing credits hope that people who read this also do. And the credit of making us realise the importance of doing so goes to her.

Well, Montreal GP 2008 was another race that Kimi DNF and I watched it live! May be its me, Kimi was out of both the races I watched live. I wrote about the other race here.

However I could watch him race and race well this time :) It was an eventful race with quite a few incidents and most incidents confining to the hairpin (turn 10), where we were seated!

Stumbled upon this awesome link and I am so overwhelmed by the way the video is made and the way the info' is presented! The timing was quite right too, I had just finished reading the adventures of the physicist Richard Feynman and was so blown over by his personality and talent and had realised how we were not taught physics the way it should have been :( (I wonder if we can do any good to our DreamSchool kids :()
It's brilliant, never seemed to have liked any info' on the web so much. So thought of writing things that I understood from the clips (I haven't watched it completely... still need to watch the last hour out of the 3 hours but couldn't resist writing about it). Please watch it, it's worth every moment.

Newton's days (300 yrs ago) - He discovered that the force that makes an apple fall on to the ground is the same force that keeps the earth in its orbit as it revolves around the sun... and he called the force Gravity.

Einstein happened to prove that nothing can travel faster than light including gravity. And this meant that Newton was wrong. Because according to Newton, say if the sun disappeared due to some catastrophe, the earth (and other planets) would just move out of the orbit in a tangential direction immediately. Now with Einstein proving that light travels the fastest and that it takes 8 minutes for the light to reach earth from the sun, if the sun disappeared, how can earth move out of the orbit immediately as the effect of 'no gravity' would not even have reached the earth (it would take at least 8 minutes remember)!

So Newton was wrong in assuming that gravity was instantaneous, that it acts upon a body immediately! Einstein solved this by reasoning Gravity as wraps and curves in the fabric of space and time (you must see the video for this) and also so proved that gravity travels as fast as light and reaches the earth like waves through the fabric of time and space taking the same time as that of light. This is the general theory of relativity.

Now there is gravity, but there is also electromagnetism the force that bounces us back when we fall off a roof of a 40 storied building. If there were to be no electromagnetism, there would have been a hole formed in the earth due to the fall. And also this force is much stronger than gravity. It is the force due to repulsion of the electrons of the two bodies when they come closer.

Now we have a feeble force gravity and a strong force electromagnetism. Einstein's wanted to find an encompassing theory that combines the physical laws of these two forces as part of his dream to have a unified theory to explain the universe, a theory of everything that he couldn't achieve in his lifetime.

After this came the quantum mechanics which said that at the tiny scale of atoms and particles, everything is uncertain, the world is a game of chance! If you imagine yourself to be in a quantum cafe and order a blue coffee, it's not certain that you get a blue coffee, you might get a red coffee! But this uncertainty in the quantum world is at such a tiny scale that we don't realise it in the real world. Now this is a contradiction to the Einstein's theory of gravity which demands certainty.

Also along with electromagnetism there were the strong and weak nuclear forces at the atomic level... and the mainstream science had accepted the particles as points and successfully united the strong force, weak force and electromagnetism, they called it the standard model. And at this atomic/subatomic world of particles, the gravity which explains the large world of astronomy so well, never fit! it was the odd man out...

There were also a group of people who believed that the universe was made of tiny vibrating stands of energy called strings. And that the string theory can unite the conflicting set of laws (the laws that govern the larger objects like galaxies and the laws that govern the subatomic particles) with one master equation. It all happened when a young physicist discovered what appeared to be string like objects hidden beneath the abstract symbols of a 200 yr old equation. Though he thought he would be considered the next Einstein nothing like that happened as the mainstream science was busy unifying the nuclear forces and electromagnetism.

But some scientists continued to work on string theory trying to tame the unruly equations of the theory. There were anomalies like a particle with no mass and a particle that could travel faster than light etc. But when they thought of Gravity being that particle with no mass and of the other forces also as particles (these particles which are forces were called the messenger particles), things seem to fall in place. They could get an equation involving gravity too, which meant that they could explain how gravity worked at the subatomic level.

However the string theory demands more dimensions (eleven of them) than we know of (the 3 spacial dimension and one temporal). The idea here is explained in a very simple manner. If we look at cable that holds something, it looks like a line to us (from far) meaning we see just one dimension. But for an ant that is exploring that cable, from its point of view, another dimension comes into picture, the ant can move forward and backward along the length of the cable (dimension 1) and it also can move clock wise and anticlockwise along the circumference of the cable (dimension 2). So the spacial dimensions can come in 2 flavours, along the lengths (the ones we know of), along the circumference.

A German mathematician had already proposed the existence of an invisible extra spacial dimension as he needed a place for his electromagnetic ripples (like how gravity was explained as wraps and ripples over 3 spatial and 1 temporal dimensions) and Einstein believed in this German mathematician's proposal.

So even if there were to be more dimensions, how would these extra dimensions (of course they are not visible) look like? Scientists propose that at every single point in space, there is a circular ring whose circumference, only an ant that is billions of times smaller can explore. And the existence of these additional dimensions at every sinlge point in space is the heart of string theory!
And since it is all at that invisible scale, its difficult to prove it all by experiments but unless it is proven experimentally, it won't be science but philosophy and so the scientists are on their way to prove it all, good luck to them!

Source: The above info' is based on what is available at http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/elegant/program_d.html

A friend of mine asked me to write about my experience here in Vancouver when I was speaking to him last night. When I thought of it I smiled to myself, all I have to say is that I miss my people and Bangalore! But when I thought about it again as to what is it that I would like to tell people about my one and half months' stay here, the thing that came to my mind is this...
The energy consumption here is too high. I know that its not a discovery, thats what I notice when I walk around, do things here. If automation everywhere is one of the reasons, another one would be the independent/individualistic lifestyle (Energy consumption is not shared, energy is used again and again to get the same type of job done by each person).
So when I came across a cartoon (sent by the same friend :)) that said something on the lines of "When I walk past an automatic door and it opens for me, I feel sorry for the door...if I don't go in I'll hurt its feelings", I said that I don't really feel sorry for the door but I do feel sorry that it opened! else some energy could have been conserved!

I also read here that the energy conservation might be enforced as a law by mandating the energy efficient equipments.

Hmmm, I would like to add that I am not being as energetic as I used to be in Bangalore and I will have to work on that :)

I did something very satisfying after a long time, planted trees on the sides of a road in Koramangala (the regional passport office road). Thanks to Bindu for getting me into it :-)

An organisation called TreesForFree (http://treesforfree.org/) had taken up this task of planting trees in Koramangala on Saturday. When Bindu told me about it I was very excited about the idea and agreed to join her. We reached that place at 10:00 AM and waited for a while for the dignitaries to plant the first few trees. In fact we didn't wait, we just left the first few slots and started off with the rest. Bindu and I were doing something together after a long time, we were very enthusiastic! There were people from a nursery to assist us but I think they had done most of the work. We had to just place the trees in the holes that were dug up in advance and cover it with mud (two different kinds of mud) using a shovel. Ms. Janet who was leading the activity was quite happy with us and said she would let us know when they plan tree planting in other areas around Bangalore. We must have planted around 12-14 trees.

After we left the place, it felt nice to think how it would feel when walk on that road 10-20 years later :-) I was thinking about those people who planted trees in Jayanagar, BasavanaguDi etc. we owe them a big thanks.

fanaticism continues...

KIMI in my hands ;-)

Chinnu, Vinay and I assembled this racing car yesterday :-) We found the kit with tools and parts in Landmark toys section!

Kimi, you rock!!

Kimi is the world champion!! Just can't describe how it feels, had waited for this day all along...

Chak De India! Chuck chauvinism!

what effect it had on me as i watched... the movie elevated my feminist ego and the love for my country! and i enjoyed watching every bit of it :-)

it's simply a no nonsense movie made with a sincere effort to showcase the intention and emotions of the coach Negi (on who the story is based on), the Indian authorities' attitude towards a women's team, the problems, insecurities, emotions the team members go through and how a sensible coach who is extremely focused can make a big difference!

details! they have given enough time to establish each team member's attitude so that we can appreciate it when they the coach has an influence on them. there is a fine balance between the theory and the practicalities of the game, the team playing hockey looks very realistic...they haven't missed the technical details. nothing in the movie is introduced just for the sake of it or anything, it looks like everything is there for a reason, or at least i could find a justification.

SRK rocks as the coach, his focus, his arrogance, his fairness, his ability to sense the exact problem/issue with the team members...are all showcased very well, he gets full marks for his acting.

i read in TOI that he touched Negi's feet when he went to see him first, and also that he was very detailed and made sure that every technical detail was correct. Negi has also said that he was around when the last scene (India winning the WC) was shot and he had his doubts as to if someone can actually express/demonstrate the emotions he went through in reality...but when SRK performed, he was speechless and thought it couldn't have been demonstrated better than the way he did!

with all this, what i liked the most about the movie was the parts where SRK stresses on playing for India and the parts where it is shown that he never discriminates between men and women!
and my favourite scene in the movie...
when SRK proposes a match b/w men's hockey team and women's team to decide if the women's team gets to go to the WC or not, he says "lets have a match b/w your team and my team" and the other person says "yeah, a match b/w men' steam and the women's team" and SRK stresses "a match between your team and my team"! i don't know if anyone could find it special but i did! when he stressed on "my team and your team" as a means to imply his non-discrimination, i could sense the respect he had for women...it's showcased so well is what i felt!

loving people...

just a thought that crossed my mind, that i can insanely admire some people for what they are!

watched this play “mysooru mallige” at ranga shankara yday, it was a good play though i thought it could have been a little shorter. i couldn't relate to all/most of the incidents showcased on the stage but in the end i saw myself standing up and applauding, i was really thrilled! i think what touched me is the fact that the poet in the play just wrote poems cos he loved to write, nothing more nothing less! there were a few strong dialogues which stressed this fact towards the end of the play and I think they what made me admire the poet so much. he said he wrote and wrote, never had time to stop and look at what he had written earlier. he said if he had spent time on getting his work acknowledged by someone he would never have written as much as he had written now. he said he could write what he wrote cos of what he was and couldn't have done that if he attempted to become someone. think it is so true.

i recently read Bill Watterson's graduation speech. he said the only significant thing he did in his first year was that he painted the ceiling of his room. he finished painting it towards the end of the year only to wipe it off by the year end as agreed! but he said that was one of the most satisfying things that he had done! amazing!

yeah, one kind of people... their passion is in doing things that they love/creating things they would want to create without spending time no anything else. there are some whose passion is in doing good to the rest of the people. there are some who are just principled. so many people to admire, an interview with Ratan Tata on a TV channel excites me so much...knowing that Rajani kant returns money to his producers/distributors if his films don't do well delights me.

coming to the people in my own life, i do insanely admire them for what they are! not just the people who are close to me but it could be someone who i interacted with for a very short period of time. once in the malleshwaram govt. school we asked the kids to write down what they wanted to become when they are old. one of the kids wrote that he doesn't know what he wants to become but he only knows that he wants to build a lot of orphanages and help all the orphan kids in his country! he touched a deep part of me by saying that, i really admire that kid.

i don't know if i can write what i am thinking but it’s something like i tend to love some people... the way they are, the things they do, the things they say, everything about them excites me, delights me, inspires me...

have no idea if am doing anything with all the inspiration from these people but it’s a special thought/feeling for me :-)

something i did recently out of passion and inspiration.

This was inspired by a picture taken by my friend Sainath :)

surpriZe!

A radio station here had a contest last evening where the host asked people to make a funny prediction of the movie Guru's story and she would give away two tickets to the first day's evening show as the prize! I never participate in any such contests but yesterday I was just thinking why they came up with such a contest. I listened to a couple of people who made funny predictions and won the tickets. I thought I can't make a funny prediction of a movie like Guru and just tried listening to some other station. But it somehow disturbed me and I decided to send the following message to them.

"Sorry.. Can't make a funny prediction of Mani's movie, am a big fan and am expecting the movie to leave a profound message -Ashwini"

After I sent it, I thought I sounded arrogant. But to my surprise, they actually called me and told me that I can collect my tickets!!
So, may be radio station guys also like Mani and his movies! Cheers to Mani!

proudly presenting my student Arvind's drawing :)
no, i don't teach him drawing... we teach him english but am really proud that he has the talent to draw pictures really well!

talking silently!

It's the opposite of thinking aloud! I am at office with nothing much to do and no one to talk to..So, here I write...

I am wondering ...do people stay silent, unexpressive because they are mature, composed or because they are not confident or because they are not passionate about any particular thing in life?

A part of the office here has a glass ceiling, its like working in natural sunlight...its designed in such a way that there is sunlight but we get to sit in shade...I think it's a wonderful thing...I love it!

I met this lady in the airplane who is a resident of Vancouver for the past 16 years. She was returning to Vancouver from India. She told me that Vancouver is a beautiful city and all that. After a pause she said she liked India better and continued that her kids and her husband don't prefer living in India. I also heard that my manager who was working in the US decided to settle in India because his wife preferred living in India. This is the case with two of the couples that I know well...the girls prefers living in India, the guys don’t!

I think I am religious... because I believe that a religion brings in discipline in an individual, it keeps us on track. Say I happen to stamp on a paper by mistake, I make sure that do the "touching the paper and then touching my eyes" thing every time (Paper is considered to be God Saraswati according to the Hindu religion). I do that because I know that it will make me more disciplined, it helps me in being committed on the things that I do. It is true with all the religions. Nowadays people don't seem to believe in a religion... that is definitely good considering the unity it brings in among the people irrespective of their religion but at the same time would it encourage people to be not hesitant in doing the wrong things?

It's Kimi’s birthday today! I already wrote a mail to the group about it, told people here about it! I also completed one year in my second company. No, I didn't plan it that way! It was just a coincidence... his birthday and my joining date. And yeah, I like to be a fanatic :)

I don't think I can survive without Indian food. I can't enjoy food anyway but I can't eat food that is not Indian. I am glad nature has a strong influence on people when it comes to food, if not the living place. People might like to go live in a different country but when it comes to food, they prefer their food :)

I really like the Sunidhi Chauhan song "beeDi.." from Omkara! Have always admired her powerful voice!