19th June --> Madagascar to Anniyan...

After another Saturday at work, Madagascar seemed to be just about the right way to relax. A nice light hearted animation flick.
But Madagascar does not come anywhere close to Shrek or Ice Age or some of the other animation flicks. But with a walk down Chapel Street on a Saturday night, the trip to Jam Factory was well worth it for more than one reason. The Director has got himself a few animals from a New York zoo and has no clue what to do with them. It was funny and witty in bits and pieces.

Sunday, was the day for ‘Anniyan’.

Much awaited by many, Anniyan was released in Australia just a day after its release in India (Or probably on the same day). Many cinemas in Melbourne ran special shows over the weekend.

The Chinatown Cinema on Bourke had a show at 4pm on Sunday, which we caught up with. Arriving there at around 3:30, we were absolutely amazed at seeing a mini Madras on Bourke Street. Mama’s, Mami’s, Thatha’s and paati’s seemed to have sprouted out of thin air. The air was buzzing with Tamil and all of a sudden we felt at home. Yet it was different.

The movie was expected to be a ‘superhit’ with Vikram in the lead role and Vivek being himself as usual and Harris Jayaraj providing the music.

The show began to a packed audience amidst whistles and howls. We were transported straight back to India.

To say it did not live up to the hype created around it, would be an apt way to sum it up. The music by Harris Jeyaraj, whilst being enjoyable, did not leave any lasting impression. In short, I don’t think I remember a single song in the movie. It just left you with a faint suspicion that Rehman would have done a better job any day.

Like any other B/Kollywood flick, it seems to have been targeted at the masses. But this one strives to convey a message or rather inspire them. The Director seems unsure of whether to stick to the message in the movie or to give the masses what they want. On the one hand he attempts at conveying a message and on the other he provides you with the usual masala and songs at unwanted places. Well, I would advise you to leave your brains behind if you intend to go watch this flick.
This movie has its share of laughs though, with Vivek not missing a single opportunity to entertain. The scene with Vikram singing ‘Manasa Sancharare’ in the train to woo his girl was just too good. It almost had me rolling on the floor laughing…

That brings another weekend to an end. Well almost, there’s still Aus vs Eng and the F1 to catch up with before hitting the office tomorrow.
Aussies are in for a thrashing from England. Tottering at 63/4, after a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Bangladeshis, its looking like a double whammy for them.

Queen's Birthday - 13th June

At last we had another long weekend. It’s a great concept to shift a holiday to the end of the week so that you get that well needed long break rather than a holiday right in the middle of the week. This time it was the Queen’s Birthay. I’m not sure if it was a co-incidence that the Birthday was conterminous with the weekend or whether it was conveniently shifted. Will need to look that one up. But all that mattered in the end was that it was a long weekend.

So we decided to drive. And it decided to rain.

The rain god had apparently decided to keep us company. And we couldn’t get rid of him the whole day. And when we eventually did, we did manage to find a worthy replacement.

Of course, we had no intention of reaching any place in particular. But I guess someone at somepoint decided we’d be going to bucham caves, cos that’s where we ended up.

The Bucham caves are essentially underground caves (actually they are inside a mountain and not exactly underground) formed by a river that used to flow through it. The water level in the river over the years has gone down several meters leaving the caves as they are now. The special part of the caves were the stalactites and stalagmites that were gradually filling them up. An hour of crouching, crawling, climbing, ‘clicking’( not forgetting to smile) and plenty of dry and wet stalactites and stalagmites and a little bit of geography peppered with some history got us to the exit of the caves.

The rain god was absolutely faithful.

It was then that the GPS system in the car came on its own. The next destination was to be Lakes Entrance, a 40 minute drive from Bucham Caves. But apparently it didn’t find any favour with the car’s GPS System. One and a half hours of driving , and the GPS System maintained that we needed to go another 130 kms in the same direction. And we persisted, proving once again that common sense isn’t so common after all.

Eventually we did end up asking and were advised to travel around 150kms back in the exact opposite direction. It was 6:15 PM and dark as hell.

And that was when the rain god decided to call it a day. But he soon had a replacement – Mr.Fog, who was happy to keep us company all the way back to Melbourne.

An hour’s peering and praying and also driving, got us to Lakes Entrance. And another 4 hours got us back to Melbourne.

It was 2:30 am and we had driven 949.3 Kms. And had managed to see a double rainbow. It was beautiful.

Googly's from google

Figure this one out... a lil late sending this, still... :))

http://www.google.com/googlegulp/index.html

And this one is interesting...

http://yagoohoogle.com/

Horny Indians

I miss the krrrrrrrrrrrr from the autos, trrrng trrrng from the cycles, Pom Pom from the buses, peeeeeeah peeeeeah from the cars and various other varieties of horns and expletives that resonate in Indian roads. Be it men, women, kids , young or old, not a soul hesitates to use the horn. Not without a reason though. You would feel absolutely incapacitated without a horn in your vehicle. I mean, just imagine!!!

I guess its tough to imagine. Just as it would be for an Aussie to imagine someone honking at them for no apparent reason. A horn is the most unlikely thing you’d hear on the roads here. To get honked at is akin to being sworn at.

As far as India is concerned, the ‘People’ factor does inject itself everywhere. Here, Time, Tide and People wait for none. So use the horn and make way for yourself!!

After all rules are meant to be broken and horns are meant to be honked.

Mel 'Bourne Voyage'

And then one day I was on a flight to Melbourne. The events of the previous weeks had run through so fast that the mind had not had the time to process them.

Sitting in the Malaysian airlines flight, helping an old Indian couple and myself get some vegetarian food, it hit me like a bag of ice falling from a 1000 ft above me. Well, couldn’t think of anything worse to compare. I survived though.

I spent the rest of the time trying to answer questions that I was throwing at myself. Am not sure if some of those will ever find themselves an answer.

The ABCD(American Born Confused Desi) sitting next to me, on his way to LA, wasn’t helping my cause. Thankfully, after a change of flights at KL, I found some decent company and successfully kept myself away from helping some of those questions find answers.

Like someone once said, and I hope he was right, ‘Everything happens for good’. Duh!!

A Buffalo herd moves only as fast as the slowest buffalo…

..and when the herd is hunted, it is the slowest and weakest ones at the back that arekilled first.

This sentence has to be judged not by what it says literally but by the wealth of knowledge that it camouflages.

The intended audience for this sentence was certainly not a herd of buffaloes, I hope.

It is applicable to each and every one of us and everything we do in our daily life.

When it comes to nature, it consistently follows the principle of Survival of the fittest, automatically eliminating the slowest/least fit in the herd. This is good news for the herd because the general health and speed of the heard is maintained and at times improved.

Much the same way, our performance is restricted to the average capability of our peer group. You can see it happen in all walks of life. An average student performing averagely in an average school, when put in a very competitive school either manages to rise to the occasion or loses out badly to the competition.

The best example I could take is the performance of the Indian Cricket team. How could a team that has lost to a young inexperienced team like Bangladesh beat teams like Pakistan and Australia in their home grounds?
When we play against a superior team like Australia we automatically raise the level of our game.

It happens to each and every one of us. We restrict our performance to just what is required of us at that particular point in time.

It is important for each and every one of us to realize that we are capable of a lot more and must constantly yearn to consistently extract that level of performance from ourselves.

Here is to a world of continuous improvement, where, as I see it, there is no limit to improving ourselves. Here is to an extremely competitive human race…