2005 December archive at Rhythmic Dissonance

Archive for December, 2005

Dec

Random

By Raj 18 Comments

Categories: Bangalore, Pictures and Random

Note: This post was supposed to be published yesterday but since my boss’s boss has finally figured out that maybe I come to the office to work, I have almost no time left for blogging.

Here are a few pictures I took this weekend.

The Bell

No, I didn’t buy this bell! It came with my room. It was hanging from the drapery rod. On Christmas, I cleaned it, took this picture and put it back up. This is also the first time most of my blog readers can see me. Sure, its just a hand but still.

The Thing hanging from the ceiling

This is the weirdest thing that came with the room. I think one is supposed to place a bulb inside it. I never did. In fact, I’ve never cleaned it. You can see the cobwebs if you look closely.

City Map

I bought a new map of Bangalore on christmas eve. I am a mapfreak. I already have 4 different maps of the city but this is the most detailed and i guess the last.

In other news, a hawker on MG Road asked me if I wanted to exchange money. I was surprised. I stuck around for a while to see if he asks others but he only asked a caucasian couple. It made me wonder if he thought I was a BOF (i.e. opposite of FOB. BOF is an intelligent term coined by me for all the indians who have just returned from a foreign country after a long stay.) I don’t look like a BOF, do I? Not that there’s anything wrong with being a BOF but I don’t want to counted as somebody I’m not.

Dec

The Letter

By Raj 15 Comments

Categories: People, Funny and Life

Since I was always a disciplined student, I never had to go see my school’s principal in her office for doing something wrong. I wanted to sail through college with the same unblemished record but as luck would have it, I did have to go see the director of my institute once. And it happened because of a dumb letter I wrote. This is a not-so-long, not-properly-told-cos-I-cant-write-well tale of the letter that haunted me for quite some time.

There was this girl in my class who didn’t speak to anyone in the class and nobody spoke to her cos she was kind of timid (not that there’s anything wrong with that). Lets call her Gehu. She was a weirdo. The legend had it that in a viva in first year, she didn’t answer a single question and later proudly told everyone that the examiners tried a lot but she didn’t open her mouth.

Now one day, in the third semester, during a very boring class of Electrical Measurements, my boredom mixed with my dumbness (dangerous combination, that) caused me to write this letter:

To you,
I hate you.
-From Me.

Dumb, huh?

And thanks to two of my friends, Sameer and Sonal, it made its way to Gehu.

They thought it would be funny. I had my doubts. And I was right.

She cried later that day in her bus (as reported by our bus news bureau chief, Ritu), got her section changed and complained against all three of us to the director. But we only came to know about it a week later when the three of us were asked to go see the director.

Since we figured out why we had been called, we cornered Gehu first and asked her about it. She said that she was really hurt by the letter. We feigned apology and got her to go with us to see the director.

Fortunately for us, the director found this whole thing as dumb as it was and we almost convinced him that she made a big issue out of it cos she wanted to get her section changed (she had tried to do that once before too with no success). Basically, the three of us said that it was just a joke, that we were passing that note to all our friends and we didn’t mean to hurt anyone. We were a little worried though that Gehu might say something in front of the director but guess what she said. C’mon, take a guess? No? Okay. She said nothing!! So the legend must have been true.

So we got off easily with just a small speech about we shouldn’t do something that might hurt someone. But the most important thing in all this was that even though I wrote the letter, in the list of names that Gehu gave to the director, my name was the last. Yes!!

P.S.: I just realized that this post shows my friends and me in a very bad light but we’re really not that bad, especially not me.

Dec

Sledgehammer

By Raj 17 Comments

Categories: Ranting and Funny

My work is keeping me away from my blog. I feel really bad about not being able to write anything but the funny part is that when I finally had some time on my hands, my mind went completely blank and I didn’t know what to write. So I just took a short break and when I came back, I had been assigned another task. Images of an old grumpy guy who we shall call Fr’s head being smashed with a giant sledgehammer ran through my mind. It felt good.

I have so much to write about but no time.

In the meanwhile, How do you commit such an error?

“…A trader of Mizuho Securities mistakenly placed a sell order for 610,000 shares of J- Com at one yen each, instead of the intended one share for 610,000 yen….”

Read how it resulted in Nikkei chief’s resignation.

Dec

Bow to The King

By Raj 15 Comments

Categories: Reviews and Movies

King Kong – Movie Review

Warning: Might contain spoilers and infantile views.

So I finally saw “King Kong” on Saturday evening.

And, to say its great or fantastic would be an understatement. I’ll just say that it’s an experience worth having and that Peter Jackson has done it again.

The movie makes Jurassic Park, Godzilla and the likes look like b-grade sci-fi flicks.

The CGI is of course out-of-the-world. Not that you expect anything less from Jackson.

The story in a line if you don’t already know it: A film crew sets out on a voyage in search of a mythical “Skull Island” and finds a lot more than it bargained for. The crew comprises of the moviemaker, Carl Denham (Jack Black), the lead actress, Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), the scriptwriter, Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody) and few other not-too-important people.

The movie starts off slowly and the build up takes a little too long although it does provide a very good contrast to what you are about to witness but once the real action begins you forget all about it cos there is simply no time to think.
The screen is soon bombarded with one sequence after another and the excitement never ends. Some commendable examples are the ship hitting the rocks, the first interaction between the film crew and the inhabitants of Skull Island, the subsequent kidnap of Ann and the dinosaur stampede.
It’s difficult to not think of Kong (played by Andy Serkis), the giant ape, as a quintessential bollywood hero who fights off baddies for his girl in the long one-dinosaur-after-another sequence.

The director is also successful in lending a somber tone to the worms-n-crustaceans-attack-humans sequence.

The relationship between Kong and Ann has been developed beautifully. Ann moving closer to Kong when the last dinosaur approaches and Kong showing off his anger when Ann refuses to perform have been executed well.

The capture of Kong, “The King Kong Show” and the Kong-in-Manhattan destruction sequences are again brilliant. I especially loved the way Kong picks up random blondes and throws them when they don’t turn out to be Ann. The ice-skating sequence also deserves a special mention.
And the climax, set against New York skyline, is spectacular and heartbreaking.

All the actors are good in whatever role they have cos we all know that the main hero here is Kong. Naomi Watts is already one of my favorites and she is brilliant here as the beauty who captures the heart of the beast. You can feel the pain in her eyes when Kong slips from the top of Empire State building. She looks very beautiful in the movie. But I couldn’t help noticing how with every movie, she’s starting to look more and more like Nicole Kidman.

Andy Serkis is great too. First Gollum and now Kong, he surely knows how to play CGI generated characters. Adrien Brody plays second fiddle to an ape so it won’t be wrong to say that he’s totally wasted here. I was apprehensive about Jack Black playing the role of a ruthless, unredeemable showman but he manages to do a fine job.

But the biggest winners here are Peter Jackson, CGI and the audience.

Go watch it for the kid in you!!

Rating: 10/10