Wednesday, August 27, 2008

My blog turns 3

Today is the 3rd anniversary of my blog. Happy birthday “Sandi’s Musings”. I won’t look back much but here but here are some stats: 103 blogs in 156 weeks which is like one blog every 10 days and I believe is a good frequency. Also I have evolved over the years. Earlier in my first year it was always about my past and my feelings and what I did and what I liked. Slowly, I became more conscious of my identity and there were some self discovering posts. Then I started taking interest in the current affairs around the world and mainly India. There have been some repetition of ideas and one of them being “what news I follow” and I still like it and I think I will do that more often. Bipasha has been a consistent topic of my blogs too.

Anyway, in this blog, I will do something which I have never done in ages and for which I have been asked many times. I have never reported my trips here after a one day trip to Austin in 2006 summer. I have had many long and exciting and beautiful trips since but did not have the patience to write a travelogue. But today I will describe about this place called Beavertail State park in Rhode Island USA.

I went there with my friend Sumit who is also my colleague and an amateur photographer. After a quick visit to Newport, which I have already been to before, we headed to Beavertail State Park to be on time for the sunset. The island is named so after its shape which is like a beaver’s tail. The extreme tip of the tail is supposed to have sea on all three sides. We parked the car a bit far from the tip and walked through the trail with trees around and getting glimpses of the bay here and there. It was almost sunset so there were lot of activities by the insects and I was intently listening to their sound. I had not consciously listened to this sound for quite a long time. And far from the noise of the cars on the road or ACs in home, this was a welcome sound.

Soon we arrived at the tip of the island and I was dumbstruck. This was one of the best places I have ever been too. There is sea on all three sides and rocks at the place where they meet. I ran as far as I can go to the tip. Sumit shouted: “ How do you like the place?” . I replied “ I feel like Swami Vivekanada already”


There was also this foghorn along with the lighthouse. Quoting Wikipedia : ‘Foghorns are a navigation aid for mariners. In foggy conditions, when visual navigation aids such as lighthouses are obscured by the weather, foghorns provide an audible warning of rocks, headlands, or other dangers to shipping.’ I remember foghorn from a old story I read in my English textbook about a dragon (probably last living dragon) thinking the foghorn as a call from his mate and coming from far away only to find the lighthouse with the foghorn. Can somebody please share the exact story if you remember?

Anyway, I was fully immersed into the scenery when I witnessed a clear sunset after a long time. How the sun touched the horizon and the illusion of sun actually changing shape from a circle to an inverted ‘matka’ and then making a nice ‘Sunny Side Up’ egg before finally disappearing, and then the dancing of the colors, the various shades of oranges and reds and yellows and pinks and blues and whites in the scattered clouds and sky and ther constant change of wardrobe makes you forget even the best of the dances like Bipasha’s “Beedi” :)



PS: A video with a vague and funny commentary by me is attached alongwith. Notice the foghorn sound and the great roar of the sea.


Sunday, August 17, 2008

Bachna Ae Haseeno Review

Bipasha does it again. Yet another crap movie. The list is just becoming endless, but I can still not stop praising her. Her looks are killing (तीखी नज़रें , कातिल अदायें)। God knows what she means by when she says I choose my movies carefully. For that matter, which heroine can really claim that she chooses her movies carefully except may be Shabana Azmi.

Yes Advay, I also have to admit that in one song, she did look more like Serena’s sister than Venus, but that was just one wardrobe in one song. Other than that she was the best in the entire movie. But that should also not come as a big complement considering the rest of the starcast: newbies Ranbir, Deepika and Minisha. Bipasha had to be the best and she does it in style. Finally Bipasha has understood, that she has to do the oomph roles very much like Aishwarya has understood that she can only do crying and simply sitting looking beautiful.

Anyway, now the other characters starting with Minisha Lamba. She reminds me of Divya Dutta trough and through. Needless to say she can’t act which is true for any contemporary heroine other than Rani and Kareena, but this girl also does not have the heroine looks. She looks so much like heroine की बहन . Additionally, I don’t know why the cameramen did not notice this but her nose is much redder than her rest of the face in the entire movie giving her a look of joker with the red ball on the nose. And who designed her outfits for her first 30 minutes? She was wearing a green pajama and violet short kurta in Zurich. Give me a break. Even any काम वाली बाई will have better dressing sense. Overall, Minisha has scope for improvement and she looks promising but she should change her makeup man and dress designer immediately.

Let’s move on to Deepika Padukone. I did not like her in OSO, and I did not like her here either. She is too much girl next door kinds. I thought she has an eggface, but this move it was small and back to circle. So she is more of the egg yolk face now. And where did she learn her dialog delivery? She is born and brought up in Bangalore but her way of speaking is very Pune types. I have seen many pune girls talk like this. Feels very out of place and weird. The funniest part was her crying. She cried twice in the movie. Once from right eye and once from left and never from both. Why, God only knows. And the crying is like a tap of water is opened and then suddenly closed.

Now to Ranbir Kapoor. Even in this movie he tries to be Raj Kapoor. I would suggest he should try to be more like his father or Kareena, the only 2 decent looking people and decent actors in the entire kapoor खानदान . Ranbir has done his homework, he has presentable body, knows dancing and can act fairly well. He just needs to improve a bit more.

Now some movie aspects but so much has been said about it already by other reviewers: length is long, story second half is predictable, story lacks good humor etc etc. I have nothing new to add. On the brighter side, te Yashraj did what it always does well: breathtaking locations.

Now back to Bips, she has done perfectly what was expected out of her but I did not like what was expected out of her. But that should not be a problem. Also, why does she have to do that showing hands with mehendi to the camera. It doesn’t look sympathizing but scares me by reminding me of “Kile ka rahasya”. Suggestion to her, Bipasha, you look beautiful in almost any style and any look but sometime you do look like Serena. Please try to avoid that look. It’s not difficult.

Sunday, August 10, 2008

Funny observation about News Channels

Off late, we many times keep bashing the internet news and TV news channels for showing nonsense stuff. We want quality news. News that matter to us and that’s where I think is the catch. What news matters to us?

Do we really care if Obama wins or Mc Cain does? Even their decision on healthcare doesn’t bother us as company pays our healthcare. None of our families are serving in Iraq or Afghanistan too that we will be worried about them. Even if they had been, their news would have been brought to us by they themselves over phone. Nor even does the news of serial blasts in Ahmedabad or Bangalore directly affect us because it is not going to prevent you from going to work. Yes, certain part of it does matter but these news you as a resident of Bangalore would hardly have got from news channel, you would rather have over heard in person.

What are the news that matter to us directly? May be what is the best school in vicinity for the kids (if you have any), what are the good restaurants nearby Where do you get cheap and good groceries. This information (news) is more important to us rather than what Omar Abdullah shouted in the Indian parliament.

Now there may be certain issues which matter like how much percentage government hiked the pension scheme or what is interest rate cut by the Fed but then that’s hardly .001% of what TV news channels cover. Another important thing might be weather. But even that, the Indian news channel in particular hardly pay any attention to.

So the bottom line is that, news channel are entertainment channels and the show us what we want to see. That is why we have Britney all over the news and even news like people do not want to see any more of Britney becomes news. Or we have these murders of beautiful or rich women in India starting form Jessica Lall to Aarushi. I am pretty sure atleast one per month is killed in the tiny villages of India for petty reasons as dowry or even caste etc but they do not cover that. They rather cover what’s happening in Delhi and Mumbai. And they are right too. They have to sell.

A good idea of our own want of news can be judged from the most read or most watched sections of news websites.

Here is a sample:

One of the 5 most read news in BBC: Soul icon Isaac Hayes dies at 65

In CNN: 'Batman' No. 1 for fourth straight weekend

In Times of India: Are you hot in bed or a hopeless wreck? Read on for tips to get your act right... What makes a person great in bed?

In NDTV: Durga Puja rights sold to US company.

Now apparently, death of Isaac Hayes is the biggest news in BBC, CNN etc and may be the guy was really famous. Bit do I care? Not really.

On the other hand, rightly so, the news in Times of India is of most direct consequence. But do we really need that as part of news?

For me, the most important news form the above 4 is the last one, but probably it interests only the smallest portion of the readers of my blog.

Strange world.

I guess what the news channels and sites try to do is to put up news that most of the people would cherish and hence we get all the masala news we want to read/see but also love to comment on that what is news media becoming today.