Happy Birthday :)

So then another year has passed and I have turned an year older. I believe that a birthday should be a special day in the year and not just any other day in the calender. I have always made attempts to have as much fun as possible on my birthday believing that everything would go my way on my birthday.

I still remember my school days when teachers used to wonder when a usually silent and reserved student like me would talk non-stop with his neighbours and friends.
Haa.. the Birthday effect!

Last year after 26/11, my birthday was a low key affair in Mumbai. I had lunch at New Yorkers  with my  room mate and spent the rest of the birthday on a damn assignment.

This year's birthday was different. But yeah it was my choice to go this way this year. I was in no mood to go out for a dinner or lunch with anyone today.

But yeah thanks to all my friends, it has been a lovely birthday today. I was either on phone or chatting on my laptop for most of the day. It feels good when someone remembers your birthday and wishes you.  Each of their wishes was special and unique in their own way. I thought it would be fun to put down a couple of  them here.

First wish

I am still like a teenager who loves being wished at 12'0 clock on his/her birthday. It was then perhaps natural that my one of youngest cousins, a teenager was the first one who wished me at 12'0 clock.

The shortest greeting of the day 

VS: Chu

Me : hey ( this was after 2 minutes)

Well.. these nick names like 'Chu' ( can't give the full form here !!!) come when love overflows :) . This happened on gmail and this friend disappeared for the rest of the day.  Since this happened at around 12'o clock, I assume that it was a birthday greeting.

Miss Forgetful

 It was 6pm and she did not wish me till then. This despite me chatting with her for more than 15 minutes earlier in the day.

Me: hey

MsF: hey.. whatz going on

Me: voice chat?

MsF: sure , sure why not?

Voice chat started with the regular hi.. hello and 'I just got up' stuff for 5 mins

Me: so what's going on?

MsF: haan.. nothing special

Me: But it's special

MsF: What??

Me: Today is special for me

MsF: Matlab?

Pause for 30 secs

MsF: Oh.. don't tell me?

Me: hmm

MsF: Is it your birthday today ?

Me: hmm..

MsF: I am so sorry. I feel so embarassed!

Me: hmm.. ( i was feeling even more embarassed :(  )

MsF: Happy Birthday !!!

And we went on for the next half and hour !

   I went for a walk around 8 P sporting my 10k run T-shirt and shorts. I just walked a kilometer and realized that it was too cold for my comfort. It haven't seen it get this cold in Hyderabad for quite some time now. More importantly I was never dressed like this in this kind of weather. I managed to complete the walk but I guess I will catch cold in the next 24 hours. ( huch.. huch).

On my way back, I went to the temple to say hi to God Ganesh. But then it was closed.  I thought I would do all my prayers standing outside. '

'After all isn't God present everywhere' I said to myself.

'You should come in the morning and break a tender coconut for the God'.

I was startled when I heard this voice. It was a drunkard sitting outside the temple. Think of God and here is the devil. Not feeling too secure, I did a quick 'hi-bye' to God and left the place.

At the end of the day,  I realized that I  did not meet a single friend  this time on my birthday and had lunch and dinner at home. I don't remember the last time I did this. I usually eat out at least once even on weekends. It has been a different but lovely birthday nevertheless.

Albert Einsteen once said that solitude is painful when one is young, but delightful when one is more mature. Awww.. Does that mean that I have turned mature ? Hehe.. I would like to believe that Einsteen was kidding :)

Cinema Paradiso

Just watched Cinema Paradiso. Lovely movie! I think it is an Italian movie. I was able to understand some words like 'Merci' and 'Tres Bien' thanks to my french madame. I was just wondering if an Indian movie can be made on those lines. Of course, the movie should be devoid of any kind of masala or tamasha.

 I guess many Indian kids  are passionate about movies like the little kid in the movie is. Think! Think! I guess it would be one damn interesting project to try and make an Indian version of  'Cinema Paradiso' . Perhaps someone like Vishal Bharadwaj should try it out.

P.S- I haven't yet googled 'Cinema Paradiso'. I just typed what I thought about the movie as soon as the movie was over, It would interesting to note how the writings on the net about the movie affect my thoughts on the movie.

New releases!

I don't mind going alone to watch a movie these days. I went to Cinemax today to try and get tickets for Aarya-2 releasing this 27th November. Unfortunately the tickets were already sold out.

Me: So do you have tickets for Saturday?

Ticket counter guy: Front row seats.

Me: Thanks but no thanks.

I am a big fan of the whole'Aarya' idea. I thought one-sided love was never depicted better in any other movie. Of course, it is a movie at the end of the day and all that happens on the screen can't/won't happen in real life.

Five years is quite sometime and as per what my one of my good friend was saying the other day,  I have toned down quite a bit since the good old Aarya days. The raw energy and the unbridled enthusiasm is usually amiss and whatever left is accompanied by some thought and doubt these days.

So then it remains to be seen if Aarya-2 lives up to my expectations. I heard the songs today and found them good. I hope Allu Arjun's look in the movie has some logic to it and is not just a random attempt to look different. Let us wait and see.

I put my ear-phone and clicked on the song  'He loves you so much' . There was some problem with the volume. 'Why is it so low?', I wondered. I tried adjusting my ear-phone volume but that did not seem to help. Mom suddenly entered my room as if I had done something wrong.

Ooops! I realized that I have not connected the ear-phone  to my laptop. !!!!  I have done it yet again. I am so funny.

Talking of new releases, I am dying for '3 Idiots' to hit screens. Aamir Khan looks so young in the trailers of the movie. I think the effort that he puts in to get into the skin of the character is really amazing. 

New releases! I want to be a part of new releases too. I am really missing the deadlines and delivery dates that were so much a part of my life when I was working and later while I was studying. I am waiting for that meeting with the client where I get to talk about work.

Oh.. yeah .. I am missing work!

P.S- This blog started off as a freehand writing attempt. I put some thought as I went along. Freehand writing  is the kind of writing that you just write something without thinking of your quality or errors . I just opened blogger and started typing whatever came to my mind. 

Umm... I feel I should be doing it more often.

Huh or Huff?

I always had this negative feeling associated with the word 'huh'. Some of the conversations ( the chats in gtalk again) with my friends often saw the word 'huh' being used for expressing irritated surprise or disapproval. I went a step ahead and used the word 'huh' in my blog to mean hatred. ( exaggerated of course.. please don't get flabbergasted at my understanding or rather the lack of it :(  ).

Today however I checked the Cambridge dictionary and found that 'huh' is an informal expression used to show that one has not heard or understood something.

  Huh? These instructions don't make sense!

It is sometimes used in a humorous tone to express disapproval.

Huh, I don't think much of that idea!

Or  used at the end of a question or statement, especially when you want someone to agree with what you have said  

I'll bet you wish you hadn't done that, huh?
Pretty cool, huh?

So then, I had got it wrong in my blog. It isn't  dislike so it certainly could not be exaggerated to hatred.  I wanted to replace the word 'huh' with something else.

However I loved  the sound of Umm...Wow! Huh :< . I did not want to change the blog title  to something that was very different from this.

Then the word 'huff' came to my mind. I checked the Cambridge dictionary again and found that it is expression used in a angry and offended mood.

She's in a real huff because I forgot her birthday..

So it would be Umm.. Wow! Huff :< from now on I thought. But somehow I still liked the earlier one better.

 Finally I decided to free this blog of any kind dislike or hatred in order to retain 'Huh'  'Huh?' in this blog would be associated with posts or things that don't make sense and deserve to be forgotten. The disappointment   ':<' at the end of Huh is replaced by a question mark '?'. Also in the tag line the word 'hate' is replaced by the word 'forget '.

I have changed the 'About the blog' text also accordingly. Right now I am too embarrassed to discuss the previous text.

Umm..Wow! Huh?

My new blog.  Still in the Beta stage though.

This is what I keep telling some of my friends. I know I am not talking about Google Wave here but my silly blog. But still it is fun to blog about all these things that one goes through while starting something new and talk big about the same :)

Reactions!

    I just discovered that reactions can be posted for each and every post in blogger and I am super excited about it. Since quite a few days I was wondering if readers of my blog could post their reactions on the posts using the 3 words Umm...Wow! Huh? ( just like the Comment, Like options on facebook)

So at the end of each post there is a Howz It? Box where a reader can Umm.. Wow! Huh? 
These words are of course exaggerated reactions and would simply mean  

Umm... - Hmmm. This makes me think 
Wow!     - Good. I like it 
Huh?  - It doesn't make any sense. Forget it!

The right mood to write!

I woke up and signed into my gmail account in the morning. I saw Aizaz online and I thought I should tell him about this blog. I had discussed the Umm...Wow! Huh?  idea long ago.

Me: Umm...Wow! Huh ?

Aizaz: what's this now?

Me: http://ummwowhuh.blogspot.com/
My new blog
Still in the beta stage though

Aizaz: this is your # blog??

I mean the count

are you updating the other blogs?

Me: 12th for the count
Na..let me update this regularly now!

Aizaz: added to my reader
will read it later in the day

Me: there is lots of energy when I start a blog. Later after sometime that disappears

Aizaz: i will keep pushing you to write this one regularly

Me: Hmm.. When the energy comes back, it usually does in the form of a new blog.

Aizaz: treat this blog as your wife
I don't think you are a kind of person who changes wives for new energy and new form.

Me : lol. true!
But I have realized there is no point forcing urself to write .. u need the flow to come naturally...so u need a life around u :) 

Aizaz: but wives are nagging
so must be this blog.

Me: lets see :)

So I believe that I need a mood to write something that makes me feel good.  Sometimes it becomes important to write within a few hours from the time I get an idea. The mood usually doesn't stay too long ( not more than a day for sure in my case).

The 'Wither Bollywood'  post was a collection of thoughts that were lying in my mind for some time and I feel the end post did not come out too well. Of course lying on the couch doesn't generate a great mood and it only makes me lazy. Sometimes just a walk along the road or even an conversation on gtalk gets you writing like this one did :)

After thought

The above conversation is not the Copy+paste of the one on gtalk. A couple of words have been added here and there. I think Google should provide a feature on each chat window for users to export the conversation into Blogger.( for all those on blogger). It would be great for someone like me.

I believe that there can be story around most the g-talk conversations and tool like this would be cool to make a post of it. One can just export a conversation that I think would make an interesting story. In the blogger dashboard, there should be an option to export and use conversations from gtalk. This of course would need the person at the other end should be ok with the conversation going on to the blog. I think most of my friends would be ok. What say??

Wither Bollywood!

I have grown up on regional and Hindi movies. I can't do without watching them however cliched the themes might be. I also need to put some kind of an effort to watch an English movie . Most of my friends were like me around 10 years ago.  Most of them start watching English movies during the engineering phase of 4 years ( even those who hardly watched Hindi movies ).  I was somehow different and Hollywood movies never excited me.  So much so that I did not even watch 5 Hollywood movies in those 4 years.

Over the years however ( especially during the last 2 years), I have started seeing English movies and I find them superior to the Bollywood and regional ones in terms of the stories and ideas. This also might be due to the fact that  I watch an English movie when someone suggests that I should see it as opposed to watching any random regional or Bollywood that hits the screens.

I saw many Bollywood movies in the last 4 months. Just in the last 1 week, I saw 3 of them. I didn't  find anything new or interesting  in 'Ajab Prem Ki Gajab Kahani'. The only highlight of the movie was perhaps Ranbir kapoor who also did a good job in 'Wake Up Sid'.

The less I talk about 'London Dreams' the better. Salman and Ajay are no longer in the 20s or even 30s to do such roles. It is sad that our story tellers don't find stories beyond the routine 'boy meets girl' kinds. If there are 2 male-leads, then it cannot be anything other than jealousy for the lady. Both of these movies, APKGK and LD  should have come 10 years ago. I am not too sure if they would have made an impact even then.

The third movie that I saw last week 'Tum Mile' where the director had at least tried out something different.  The hero meets his ex-girl friend in the face of a calamity where the audiece are taken back to the Mumbai 2005 floods. The theme was contemporary but I thought the story wasn't  too  gripping.

There are too many flashbacks during the 'flood' incident which should have been the most engrossing part of the story.  Ideally, the effect of the flood should have had the audience  thanking God for the clear weather once they stepped out of the cinema hall. Instead, it turns out to be a pretty ordinary movie with a few flood scenes and the 'boy finally meets girl' happy ending.

For me, the last good movie of the season was 'Kaminey'. and I loved watching it. I am a fan of the movie's director -Vishal Bharadwaj and I thought the two characters of Shahid Kapoor were etched superbly. It was good to see a Bollywood heroine look like an ordinary girl without any make-up. Thankfully, there were no dream sequences where the she turns into an angel. I thought it was  Shahid Kapoor's best performance to date and I think he deserves an award for his performance in the movie.

It was interesting to note that the audience had extreme opinions about it. One category of those like me who loved the movie and the other category who detested the movie so much that they felt like leaving the movie half way.  I am planning to buy a DVD tomorrow to make my Dad watch the movie and find out to which category he belongs to.

I have realized that I have been stuck on this post for too long. More bouquets and brickbats later. For now.. I just want to see more 'Kamineys'!

(pic courtesy:http://rakeshzone.files.wordpress.com/2009/08/kaminey12.jpg)

Unexpect the Expected ?

After almost a month, I went for a walk today. Going on a walk gives me the time and space to talk to myself, inspire myself and decide what I am going to do next. As I was walking along, I was telling myself that I won't go after any pretty lass from now on. Especially once I start working at a new place.

My attention was diverted when a girl walked past me in the park. I could not see much of her face but she seemed interesting enough. On further observation, I realized that she was the reason why I decided to work inside the park rather than on the road outside. ( My heart detected a faint shadow of the fairer sex and instructed my legs to take the right path).

Oops! I have resolved that I should take the right resolutions at the right places. A park is hardly the place to make resolutions concerning girls.

Now coming to the blog post title .... I couldn't help using the word 'Unexpect' although there is no such word. ( The spellchecker is already red at me) .I thought using that would convey my idea better. It is said that the best things in life happen when you least expect them to. I don't quite understand this.

If there is something good that is going to happen to me, how can I not think about that 'good' thing. I would be anxiously waiting for it happen. If that is the case with something good, then I need not say anything about the best things in life. I also wonder if the best thing will remain special to me when it happens at a time when I don't think about it or expect it to happen. These days when I tell myself not to think too much about something it is only with the hope that the unexpected ( or is it the expected?) might happen.

Media effect of the day

The cable went kaput for sometime today and I happened to watch the National channel for sometime. It was some programme for the farmers. I was somehow able to relate with the farms and cotton crops being grown.  Aha.. that's the farmville effect I realize :)  I couldn't however judge what % the crop is grown like Farmville does.

The mirror and my mood

There is something about what I write on this mirror every morning just after I finish my bath and just before I come out of the bathroom. More often that not whatever I write on the mirror reflects my mood. If I am  in the best of the moods, my name appears there. More than an year ago, while I was working and may be even till very recently it would be the name of a girl. ( The name would keep changing of course). 

Over the last 1 month the names of some companies who were forturnate to interview me ( haha ) were on this mirror. Now I am past all that. The 3 lettered word 'job'  followed by an exclamaton reflects my mood!