First things first. Presenting before you, my totally new laptop, an HP Pavilion dv6114tx. I need a name for it. So please suggest a name. It should obviously be a heroic name like Merlin or something.

Looks sexy, doesn’t it? (The pic has been deliberately cropped to ensure that you don’t see the wire clutter.)

And now, the second showcasing of the post. Yes, its my brand new iPod 80 GB.

Please note that my palm just made its second appearance on this blog.

And I know that its not a very good picture but its difficult to take pics of gadgets for me so I can’t help it.

Now that we’re done with the aforementioned show off, lets talk about something else. Like how crazy I am about Tropicana’s Lychee Twirl. I drink it like water. Thank god I don’t drink alcohol. Otherwise, I would have been an alcoholic. I have absolutely no self-restraint.

Also, I’ve luckily found some awesome DVDs to add to my collection. I now own Airplane! which is like the funniest movie ever. Hey, its not just me. American Film Institute thinks so too. Plus, I have its sequel, the Police Academy series, The Naked Gun series and Hot Shots and its sequel. I’ve seen quite a few other movies and would recommend Finding Nemo and Khosla Ka Ghosla to everyone.

This post was written by me four days ago but thanks to the unbelievably excellent service from my broadband provider, Tata Indicom, it got delayed. Its only been 23 days since I first came in touch with Tata Indicom people and I already hate them so much. I never knew I was capable of so much hatred. I want them to be wiped off the planet. But lets not talk about them in this post. They deserve an entire post. Actually, they deserve much more but that’s okay.

Yes, its officially 7th December now which makes it my 25th birthday!

And I got a really long-awaited gift just hours ago, broadband connection at home for my new laptop!! And I’m very excited!!!

So continuing the tradition I started last year, I wish myself a happy birthday and a great year ahead (full of blogging?!) .

Can’t believe I’m in my mid 20s now!

It’s never easy to accept the truth especially when the truth is that one is losing interest in blogging. Add to that the fact that one’s swamped with work and what you get is no post for exactly a month!! But lets not talk about it.

• So my trip to Lucknow on Diwali went well. I spent 2 days in Delhi and just 9 days at home. Diwali night was fun though a little too windy. I took lots of photos out of which 14 pictures are posted on flickr for all of you. Most of those are of Gurgaon (a city I visited for the first time and what a disappointment it was!)
• I also met some really old school friends back home, thanks to Orkut. For some reason, some of these friends felt really concerned about me because of my last post and suggested that I should obviously get married so that there’s someone to take care of me. The fact that I don’t want to get married anytime soon did not go down very well with them which is weird cos its one thing for such things to come from your parents but from your school friends? It’s totally weird!! And the best part is that my parents don’t even care about me getting married. Few relatives do but my dad knows how to get each and everyone of them to shut it. And my mom doesn’t encourage them as well. That’s why i love my parents! They are non-interfering. Just the kind i like.
• After the heavy rains last week, I finally decided to buy an umbrella. And know what – it hasn’t rained ever since!!
• And to end with some good news – if things go as planned, I will finally have my own personal laptop in a little over a week.

Last Wednesday, after being confined to my home on the bandh day, I swore to myself that I would not stay at home the whole day ever. And I spent the whole of Thursday and Friday very much at home because I was down with viral fever. Oh, the irony of life! But those two days and two long nights were horrible. I constantly ran a fever of 103.5 degrees and hence couldn’t sleep. To make things worse, this was the first time I fell ill since I started living alone and so I had no medicines other than few homeopathic ones from my dad.

On Wednesday night, when the illness started, I employed my mp3 player to help me sleep and it worked for sometime. I was starting to feel really sad about the whole situation cos I was sick and all alone but Frou Frou helped me get over it by singing “There’s beauty in the breakdown” in my ear. And so at 3:15 am, I called up my landlady and asked for medicines.

I am much better now. The motivation for getting better, of course, is that I’m going to Lucknow tomorrow for Diwali. And its been a year since I went home. I last went on last Diwali. The difference this time would be that my parents now have broadband at home so I will keep posting and keep reading other blogs. In fact, I may be able to post more than I do now.

And even though I don’t write too many posts these days, its good to know once in a while that my blog can keep people occupied for hour(s) and even make them come back as is evident in screenshot 1, screenshot 2 and screenshot 3. (The third visit was longer than the screenshot). I think that’s enough reason to feel good about. What do you think?

Update: In a major offence, I forgot to tell you all about my new pictures from my trip to Nagarahole in which I saw crocodiles, elephants, dears, birds, a fox and a will boar. The pictures can be found on flickr, as always.

Update 2 This is a small clip from one of the funniest episodes of Family Guy. Take a look. It’s just too funny!! Watch it, please!

I have seen few new and few not-so-new movies recently (I had to make up for the 1 month I lost) so here’s my short review of each:

• United 93: Its the first American movie I’ve seen about 9/11 and it is pretty good. The fact that the cast is relatively unknown makes the movie more credible. There are lots of characters and yet you feel connected to all of them. I think that’s one of the movie’s main strengths.
• Kabhi Alvida Na Kehna: I had heard, seen and read so many bad reviews of the movie that I was expecting a disaster and thus was kinda surprised to find that it wasn’t all that bad. I would still like to challenge KJ to make a movie in which no one (and especially SRK) has to cry.
• The Killer: I’ve been told that its a copy of Collateral but since I haven’t seen the original (cos it had Tom Cruise), I found the movie to be okay. Also, I saw it while cleaning up my closet so it served as the perfect movie for multitasking.
• Krrish: I and Lucio watched it cos we wanted to know how some people actually liked it. Even though we didn’t get the answer to our question, we had a great time laughing and ripping the movie apart.
• Lage Raho Munnabhai: Again, I had heard so many positive reviews that I was sure it would fall short of my expectations but it actually surpassed it. I really enjoyed the movie. It brought a wide smile on the faces of everyone in the theatre. I liked it a li’l more than the original Munnabhai.
• Scary Movie 4: What can I say about it? Just like its predecessors, Its also hilariously funny. Especially the scenes from The Village. Also, there’s a great scene where two characters pretend to talk in Japanese when they are actually just naming Japanese brands. Oh, and there’s a spoof of Tom Cruise’s infamous appearance on Oprah at the end which is a must watch.
• Omkara: Simply fabulous! Vishal Bharadwaj has done a great job in creating the feel of Rural western UP. Konkona Sen Sharma and Saif Ali Khan are superb. Even Kareena Kapoor makes her character very believable. I really liked the track “Namak” too. However, I laughed really hard when Bipasha Basu spoke her first line. I had to rewind twice to understand what she was saying. What I liked about the DVD was that the English subtitles weren’t literal translations which can be laughable at times.

A long weekend starts today and there’s Bangalore bandh next week which means that I’ll be watching more movies. So watch out for more mini-reviews.

And wish you all a Happy Dussehra and Gandhi Jayanti!