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!

YSR is missing

The news that I heard on the TV channels jolted me . Jolted me enough to get going with my blog which I have been postponing for over a month now. Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y. Rajashekar Reddy has been missing since today morning. His helicopter has been missing amid the bad weather this morning. The whole of A.P has been praying for rains till now and now when they came, they have come so hard that they seem to taken the CM of Andhra along.

I guess the whole of A.P is tuned into their television sets. Our cable connection ( yeah.. the good old cable and not DTH) went kaput and we had switch on DD-1, the national channel. Hearing the TV sound, the aunty from the opposite house wanted to know if the cable was working. Her next question was about the C.M and his well-being. I also saw quite of few messages on TV, most of them praying for him and some cursing him. It was the same story on my aunt's phone call with her friend cursing him and my aunt wishing him the best.

Now on to Social Media from the traditional media. Nope. I am not talking about my blog. I am talking of the twitters and Google searches of the world. Just typed YSR on twitter and found quite a few tweets on the subject. I tried typing YSR on Google and was prompted by 'YSR misisng' and 'YSR dead' options.

I couldn't help but laugh when I found one Gtalk message which blamed telugu actress Roja for the entire episode saying that she has proved to be the bad omen for the Congress. This was my school friend who used to say the same when her movies flopped during our school days.

Now that I have started this blog, I wonder what category falls into. Umm.. ?Wow! ? or Huh? ? Perhaps it's mix of all these with the security forces wondering what went wrong with the helicopter and people across the state reacting in different ways. Or may be it is a shocking news that needs to be put under a different category. Well, the first post has been a bouncer on that front.

A universal Donor :)

Right now, I am wearing a red and white shirt. Well, nothing too romantic about it, but then this is a shirt which I bought during the 'Friends to support' run. 'Friends to support' is a social group that helps the society by providing information about blood donors and organizing blood donation camps.

Coming back to my shirt, the message on it reads ' I am proud donor' which is ironical because of the fact that I being a diabetic, can never donate blood to anyone :(. But I still think that I am a proud donor. And what makes me think so? Well, listen to me now. I happen to fall in love ( that's what I think it is ) every other day and end up giving so much that makes me feel that I am the universal donor. Just as Aarya points out, I guess I have so much love embedded in me that a single gal would never to able to take it all. And hence I need to spread the love around to all the gals around me :)

So in order to sync the message with my 'Dil se' and 'Dil de' thoughts I turned the friends2support logo upside down and tweaked the turned version a little bit. And lo! you can see my heart there, right on my shirt proclaiming that it is the proud donor. The logo on Kumar's shirt ( to the right) is the original one. Cool!!! Isn't it? :)