What can I say? Jai Ho!!!

I think Slumdog is the first Oscar winner that I have seen before it got an Oscar for the best picture. Usually it is the other way round where some not so interesting movie will win an Oscar and then I may or may not see it. But due to the movie's word of mouth publicity, we came to know of it much earlier. What can I say? They did rock the Oscars big time!!! 8 Oscars, wow, I would say not too far from Titanic and Ben-Hur ;). Watching the presence of the movie grow in Hollywood from a mere contender to an inevitable juggernaut was fantastic. Also the whole team on the red carpet seemed to have a great time including the kids.

Well there has been a lot of talk on this movie from mis-understood comments from Big B to it not being an Indian movie. I guess the media doesn't have much to say/write about in this economic downturn. Agreed that as much as I love Mumbai and its high profile presence, no body wants to see your favorite city to be shown in bad light. My first reaction to the movie was, why did they have to show the slums. But then, what would the movie be without that. Would an already established millionaire coming on the "Who wants to be a Millionaire" show say that hey, I am here to earn a few extra bucks? I like the movie; I like movies which give you a good feeling after you have watched them, the last time I had this feeling was on seeing "Jo Jeeta Woh Sikandar". It gives you a different kind of a high.

The songs of the movie are catchy but not one of the best scores by AR Rahman. But that should not take away anything from this guy and what he has achieved. Congratulations to him. How much does the success of SM affect Bollywood, we'll have to wait and see.

Orkut... Chirkut... Mirkut!!!

“Are you still not on Orkut?” !!! What a funny name, the first time I heard it I was almost ROTFL [rolling on the floor laughing… that’s for those who are ignorant to the IMs and the Texting world]. Sounds like a hybrid between a coconut and Orko, the character from the He-Man and the Masters of the Universe franchise, btw one of my favorite tv cartoons growing up. So, the previous question was thrown at me by a lot of friends and I had to eventually jump in the pool of social networking rather unwillingly at first. Then came facebook and a plethora of other sites but there is still one thing that distinguishes Orkut over all the networking sites is its simplicity of use. l had never imagined that l would be able to stay in touch with my school buddies whom l hadn't seen in almost 17 years. I still haven't seen them but l do interact with them and that is immensely satisfying.

Before Orkut the only way of keeping in touch with friends was through IMs like yahoo and msn messengers, some times email and rarely phone calls. Agreed that other sites like Facebook and Myspace have a wider appeal here in the US but Orkut helps me keep in touch with friends and family back in India too. The earlier versions sure left a lot to be desired but now the site seems to me much more mature and stable. With close to 2,000 apps the number is set to balloon to 20,000 by the end of this year. Choices are good but a lot of choices just confuses the user. How the hell are you going to browse through so many categories of apps and find the right one that you need? Teen Patti has been my favorite app out of the few that I have managed to look at. I personally think that Orkut was better off without the Facebook style status messages. Does anyone care if you just got 2 hours of sleep and you want all your friends to know? Or does it matter that you are now going from one grocery store to the other? Anyway, just a personal opinion, some people just like to let others know how bad of a day they are having or how the 3 day old biryani has made their stomachs worse.

The security of the site still remains an issue as well as the legality of age etc. Even my ten year old cousin has a profile on Orkut. But it still has some features where you can restrict access to your scraps or photo/videos. Being a networking and a “personals” site as decided by our search engines and web crawlers, this site is blocked at work and for a good reason, sometime its really addictive. Just to guage the popularity of this website in other countries, primarily being Brazil, take a look at some of the stats below as gathered from their website.



So let me know some of the other good and bad things about this social networking, down time stress reliever, site with the funny name, that come to your mind.

Chandni Chowk 2 China = Animated Movie 2 Crap!!!

CC2C reminded me as to how unoriginal has bollywood become in terms of the storyline. This movie is the height of "being inspired" by a hollywood storyline while adding our own masala to stretch the film to a 3 hr play time. Are you kidding me??? A bollywood remake from an animated Hollywood movie - the Kung Fu Panda that too the animated movie in this case being far better. What the hell was the story writer thinking. Its true that the writers from bollywood suck at coming up with a truly original story and hence the original screenplay and story category should be removed from our award nominations altogether. Once in a while you get to see some good movies like "A Wednesday" last year, but 90% of what bollywood churns out each year is crap. I wish we had some quality over quantity here. Please save some money, peace of mind, bandwidth, whatever.... and skip this movie for good.

The Old Monk Effect

Whats with the title you may ask - nothing it just sounds so cool with a lot of awesomeness (sorry the awesomeness was from Kungfu Panda that I watched a few weeks ago). Recently my brother got me a bottle of Old Monk, actually 2, from Atlanta. I live in Utah so I hope you understand the irony there. At the same time it brought back memories of college days where the old monk rum was one of our favorites. Sure now we have moved on to the Bacardis and the Captain Morgans but Old Monk still has a special place. We had it at new years with Thums Up which is its preferred natural mixer. I was surprised in the first place that he could find it here in the US. Below are a few other cocktails that I have tried out with Old Monk:


Old Monk Martini:
This sure tasted better than the vodka martini that I usually make.

Old Monk Mojito
I used a regular mojito mix to make this. All I can say is - DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!!

Old Monk Black Margarita
Sure the color of the margarita was far from the conventional, but this was awesome.

Old Monk Fresh Lime Soda
A dash of the rum on the plain fresh lime soda turned out to be a refreshing drink just like its non-alcoholic counterpart.

Old Monk LIIT
This is your regular long island with old monk instead of any other rum. More sweeter than the regular long island.

Wish you all a very Happy & a Prosperous 2009!!!

As we near the end of 2008, here are some of the activities that we did and places we visited this year:

December: A trip for the nth time to Antelope Island from the time we have been in Salt Lake City.

My sister-in-law was here and we decided to show her around. The good part about Antelope Island is that it has its own beauty in summer as well as winter. I enjoyed shooting some scenery with my new Canon Rebel XSi.

November: Diwali Party at our place, OUR Birthday party and then a fun 2 weeks of travel, first to Las Vegas and then to Colorado Springs.

At the beginning of the month, my wife Radhika and I had organized a Diwali party at our place for the Maharashtrian group we had met earlier. It was fun and we got to eat a lot of faral. Then it was the time for Aarav’s 2^nd birthday. We do share the same birthday btw. You know, that’s like a 0.5% probability of that happening in the entire world. We threw a party at our community clubhouse for our friends. Radhika made food for like 40 people which was awesome. It was also great to have my brother Ashvin and his wife Sarika [also my sis-in-law] at the party. Then it was time to celebrate their first wedding anniversary and we were off to Vegas. It was more than a year since we had been to the sin city and I could feel a lot of changes already as we passed by the strip. We had a great time there, eating at PF Chang’s, twice, and playing roulette. We then came back and in a few days and were off to Colorado Springs to meet our Cousins for Thanksgiving. It was some experience driving in the snow storm there but overall we enjoyed the trip.

October: Celebrated Diwali and Halloween

Aarav was dressed as a Giraffe this time at the Halloween party. He was looking damn cute. We celebrated Diwali and the Hindu New Year also by decorating our house with lights and eating a lot of sweets. We also made a day trip to the Alpine loop to see the fall colors.

September: A ride on the Trax

Since Aarav loves the trains so much, we went for a ride on our local Trax. It was a hot day but the little guy loved it.

August: Trip to Oklahoma City and Houston

My parents were due to leave from Houston and so we decided to visit our cousins in Oklahoma City and Houston. We basically just ate and drank in OKC but in Houston I loved the trip to the Keemah boardwalk and NASA. At the end of the month my parents flew back to India. Aarav was missing his aaji aaba for quite a while after they left.

July: Yellowstone and Salt Lake City tours

This was a fun month filled with a lot of travelling and family reunions. We had our relatives over and had a lot of fun showing them around here in Salt Lake City. Some of the places that we visited were Antelope Island (n-1 and n-2)th time, the Copper Mine, Wendover, Snowbird, Gateway, Temple Square, etc. The entire gang then left for Yellowstone. It was one of the most gorgeous national parks I had ever seen and the place we stayed at was awesome. I would definitely love to go there again next year.

June: Zion and Bryce Trip, Bear Lake and the Hogle Zoo.

The beauty of the Bryce Canyon NP was truly breathtaking. Zion NP was also a great place to stay. It was also the birthday month for my Mom and my wife. We also had a great time power-boating on the Bear Lake. We went to the local Hogle Zoo which Aarav enjoyed thoroughly as it was his first trip to a zoo. The sight of the giraffe truly fascinated him.

May: Wedding Anniv, Aai Baba came to US, Camping trip, Thomas!!!

It was our 4^th wedding anniversary this year, boy 4 years have just flown by. By the end of the month, Aai Baba had come to visit us and Aarav was onto them instantly. We also went on our first outdoor camping trip here in Utah. That was a fun experience. Since my boy is such an ardent fan of Thomas the Tank Engine, we got a chance to take him to see the real life version. He just loved that ride.

April: Trip to Capitol Reef NP, IPL, Fishing Trip

We went to the Capitol Reef National Park here in Utah which consists of the natural rock formations. This is the smallest and the newest of the NPs in Utah. It was fun to drive the 4X4 off-road. Indian Premier League started this month and as we all know it was a great success. I really enjoyed the format, but still am a big fan of the test cricket. This month we also went on our first fishing trip. We picked up some basic fishing gear from Sportsman’s warehouse and headed off to Piute Lake which is in central Utah. We never expected to land a catch but to our biggest surprise, Radhika was able to net a Rainbow Trout. We wanted to eat it but later decided against it.

March: Indoor activities

There was still some snow around and we had fun visiting our friends and taking Aarav to the Jungle Jim.

Feb: Valentine’s Day

We celebrated the V day by going to a nice Chinese restaurant.

Jan: Move to the town house

At the beginning of the year, we finally moved out of our 2 bedroom apartment into a newly built town home. It was a big change in terms of the space as after Aarav’s birth we had started to outgrow the earlier place. This place was now 10 minutes from my work so it was all the more great! It also has a 2 car garage which means that I no more had to clear the snow off my car in the winter which was a big relief.

An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore - Wow!

After his "I invented the Internet" fiasco, I was not so sure whether watching a film involving Al Gore would be a good idea. My cousin had recommended it a few months back but I kept putting it off until last week when I finally got to watch it. It's not like I was not aware of Global warming as a term but this documentary helped put the concept in to perspective. The one thing I liked about the documentary was the way the facts were represented as figures, graphs and trends. It made me realize that we are not aware of so many things happening around us that contribute directly or indirectly to this phenomenon. I would not say that suddenly I have started caring about the planet after watching it but at least from now on I can gradually start making the changes towards solving this issue. I would highly recommend to all of you to watch this documentary and to take a stand which I am pretty sure there would be just one way to go about it. Below are a few of the quotes that I found really interesting:

Al Gore: [quoting Mark Twain] "What gets us into trouble is not what we don't know. It's what we know for sure that just ain't so."

Al Gore: [quoting Upton Sinclair] "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."

Al Gore: We have everything, save perhaps political will. But in America, I believe political will is a renewable resource.

Al Gore: I don't really consider this a political issue, I consider it to be a moral issue.

Al Gore: You see that pale, blue dot? That's us. Everything that has ever happened in all of human history, has happened on that pixel. All the triumphs and all the tragedies, all the wars all the famines, all the major advances... it's our only home. And that is what is at stake, our ability to live on planet Earth, to have a future as a civilization. I believe this is a moral issue, it is your time to seize this issue, it is our time to rise again to secure our future.

Al Gore: You look at that river gently flowing by. You notice the leaves rustling with the wind. You hear the birds; you hear the tree frogs. In the distance you hear a cow. You feel the grass. The mud gives a little bit on the river bank. It's quiet; it's peaceful. And all of a sudden, it's a gear shift inside you. And it's like taking a deep breath and going, "Oh yeah, I forgot about this."

Al Gore: Future generations may well have occasion to ask themselves, "What were our parents thinking? Why didn't they wake up when they had a chance?" We have to hear that question from them, now.

Al Gore: What we take for granted might not be here for our children.

Al Gore: It takes time to connect the dots, I know that. But I also know that there can be a day of reckoning when you wish you had connected the dots more quickly.

Salute to the Little Master

His 103* at Chennai last week against England is one of the best compiled innings I have ever seen. Some of the other test innings have been more flamboyant but this got rid of the "Tendulkar cannot bat in the second innings" stigma for sure. I had decided to watch the match only until 1:00 am that night as I had to go to work the next day but I got a hunch that something special was about to happen and boy was I glad that I didn't miss it. At no point of time did he play a false shot in this inning. He very much stuck to the basics, curtailed his cover drive and was ticking the scoreboard beautifully. As the total got closer he was more vigilant in his approach and guided Yuvraj in the chase. Below are some of the quotes that others have said about him.

"Sachin is cricket's God"
- Barry Richards.

"He is 99.5 per cent perfect. I'd pay to see him"
- Viv Richards.

"I have seen God. He bats at number 4 for India"
- Mathew Hayden

"There is no shame being beaten by such a great player, Sachin is perhaps only next to the Don"
- Steve Waugh.

"I still think Tendulkar is the best batsmen in the world ahead of Steve Waugh and Lara"
- Glenn McGrath.

"You take Don Bradman away and he is next up I reckon"
- Steve Waugh.

"Cricketers like Sachin come once in a lifetime, and I am privileged he played in my time"
- Wasim Akram

"Sachin Tendulkar is a genius. I'm a mere mortal"
- Brian Lara

"Don't bowl him bad balls, he hits the good ones for fours"
- Michael Kasprowicz.

"It's scary, where the hell do we bowl to him"
- Allan Border.

"Yeah mate, but that's with all great players"
- Ian Chappell.

"He's better than Ben Hur"
- Paul Wilson.

"There's no doubt about it. He is the best"
- Tony Grieg.

"Technically, you can't fault Sachin. Seam or spin, fast or slow - nothing is a problem"
- Geoffrey Boycott.

"Destined to be a great"
- Barry Richards.

"You have to watch India in India truly to appreciate the pressure that Sachin Tendulkar is under every time he bats. Outside grounds, people wait until he goes in before paying to enter. They seem to want a wicket to fall even though it is their own side that will suffer"
- Shane Warne.