Lyrics of that Goan song in the Nike ad...

'Wait, partner, wait
First let me play
If you don't play, I'll keep chasing you all day

Our game is like this only
Where we have no time to think
It is the game of cat and mouse
That I have begun to love
And in the falling running breaking
My destiny is entwined'

I could make out bits and pieces beforehand, stuff like 'khelche amche osle' which means our game is like this only, then the last word is 'phasle' which is entwined and some more words here and there like that.
This ad is awesome therapy if you are having a slow day and want things to pick up or need a jump start :)

Here are some pictures from a recent drive...

The Indian FM and the 2007 Budget...

In the 2007 budget, again in my limited knowledge, nothing has been done to address the first issue and very little towards the second. Nothing incites me to continue to pay my taxes and no encouragement is there for more people to start paying taxes starting this year. In terms of allocation, he has increased spending towards education and farming but from what I've read looks like there are many other obvious areas in which a growing country like ours should have increased spending but have been ignored.

And coming to inflation, this just bums me out. The FM has been caught napping. Despite a drop in oil prices inflation continues to increase in the country. And our eccentric FM is refusing to move and is just sitting and waiting for a good monsoon to solve the problem for him. Well a good monsoon solves almost all problems in our country. Any kid knows that but my expectation as a citizen of this country is that you get off your fat ass and do something about this rising inflation starting now!

Here is my cousin's post:
In a post last April, real estate bubble, had indicated actual inflation is not what the government is reporting. The finance minister and his boss, the PM, are doing whatever it takes to hold on to their chair. It seems, they need another mandate from the IMF and world bank to continue reforms. As a citizen we would love to pay our taxes, if we are convinced the money is put to the right use. When you visit any of our government offices, can you ever believe they spend our money right. They do no work, accept bribes which adds to our overall tax bill, bad role models for our next generation. Whom will they emulate when they pay bribes to get their temporary driver’s license and one more to make it permanent.
One of the real drivers of inflation is the cost of real estate, however this did not get mention anywhere. Real Estate prices will get tamed only if there is more legal straight forward supply and tightening of interest rates. It will make Indian services and manufacturing more efficient. In education, 2 lakh more teachers will be appointed, who will never come to work, however they will press the button alongside the Hand symbol, many times, during the next general elections. Chidambaram has proven to be slimy and a pervert one more time. Its time we get these fossils out and replace with new blood.

Vishal

Here is a picture of my friend Vishal (bee-sh-aal). His dad is a guard in my building. We started to get to know each other one day when I had popped into my apartment for a couple of minutes to quickly pick up something. I had left the door open and suddenly as I turn back I see him standing right behind me. He asks me 'kya kar raha hai?', 'darwaja kyon khula hai?' He knew me so I told him that I was about to leave again to which he replied 'bahar ja raha hai!'.

These days we have become good friends. He likes to chew 'Happy Dent' :) and helps me almost on a daily basis to take my stuff out from the car when I get back from work. Over multiple visits he now knows how to operate my TV. Couple of days back we both sat and watched about 15 minutes of 'Takeshi's Castle' a comic game show on Pogo (the kids TV channel).
Slowly I have gotten to know more about him. I know that to get to his school I have to "pehle aaise jana, fir aaise, fir seedhe, fir aaise, fir seedhe." Now I only have to remember the accompanying hand gestures to figure out which turns were left and which were right! :D

A bad sketch of the posters hanging on the wall of my cube...I can't draw straight lines for nuts! :)

More plays...

Been watching a lot of plays these days. Have watched 4 in the past two weeks and all of them have been at Rangashankara. Going for one today also, anyway here are the quick reviews of the ones till now...

Love Letters: This was performed by the troupe Evam and was a touching story about relationship between a man and woman told through letters, spanning about 40 years. The story starts when these two people are just kids and in school. Then it meanders through their lives in which somehow circumstances always keeps them apart. Through letters their whole life is told right until the end...which I won't tell here how it is. The acting was really good. People were saying that this play is the same as 'Tumhari Amrita' but I haven't seen 'Tumhari Amrita' so don't know for sure.

The Odd Couple: Again staged by the Evam troupe, this was a hilarious play about friends. The story is about a really weak and uptight just divorced man who comes to live with his friend who is also divorced. The other guy is very carefree and 'bindas' whereas the just divorced guy kind of the opposite. Surrounding them are another 3 friends. This play was a real laugh riot that I thoroughly enjoyed. Especially the part where they think the divorced guy is going to the bathroom and the rest think he will commit suicide in there which prompts one of them to callously say "What do you think he'll brush himself to death in there!" :D

Yayati: This play was based on the Girish Karnad's adapted screenplay about king Yayati. A good play with decent acting but definitely had flaws. It felt really stretched at various points but was still good. The story is about a king who is drunk on his youth and power and makes all the wrong choices. When only his son Puru who is considered to be a weakling comes through to take off Yayati's curse does he realize how wrong his choices have been and then he starts off to set things right.

The Anklet: The adaptation of a popular mythical story called 'Silappadigaram'. I didn't enjoy the play much at all because it was very stretched. There were parts where I felt like screaming 'get on with it!' Good acting though and good setup but overall the screenplay was just too slow and long. The climax was especially slow and painful. Definitely a flawed play that can improve quite a bit.

Nike Cricket Ad

Nike is showing this awesome cricket ad these days. World cup fever I guess. Anyway it's quite brilliant and captivating...The pause near the end when the guy is just about to bowl the last ball is just perfect...

Holi Hai!!!

That's the state of my hands after playing around with all that green colour and that too this is after about 27 scrubs! I have a upcoming geo summit at work in two days with about twenty five people from all round the world coming over for presentations. Well my team will have to do all the pointing and explaining during the demo while I will stand with my hands firmly planted in my pockets!!!

Happy Holi Everyone!!!

Somebody gonna get a hurt real bad...

Well...Russell Peters did not use this famous line of his in his show on Tuesday in Bangalore but he did use his other famous line 'Be a man!'

Tickets were tough to get but finally we were able to get them and go see this really funny guy. He in his usual style took people of all ethnicities on a ride and didn’t spare anyone. Like when he asked a sardarji in the front row what his name was the man replied in a very guttural voice so pat came the reply “Did you just burp or actually tell me your name!” Then he joked about the Gujarati people how they use ‘cho’ and ‘che’, even their swear words are all like cho#$, chu!!#@ etc. :)
He cracked that we Indians are so cheap that we invented the number ZERO! Its what we like to pay for everything :D I have seen so many mails claiming how India invented zero but this guy put a twist on that and surprisingly it made more sense :) Then he went on about George Bush about how he is the biggest moron. When Bush came to India he gave us nuclear secrets and we Indians being good at striking deals gave him mangoes (!) in return!

These were his clean jokes. He started clean but by the end he was on a roll and as explicitly dirty as you can get. There were several ROTFL moments and we had a ball of a time…

Snipet of the winners at the Oscars:
Best Picture: The Departed (Other nominees: The Queen, Little Miss Sunshine, Babel, Letters from Iwo Jima)
Director: Martin Scorsese for The Departed
Screenplay: Little Miss Sunshine
Actress: Helen Mirren in The Queen
Actor: Forest Whitaker in The Last King of Scotland
Foreign Film: The Lives of Others (Germany)
Animated Film: Happy Feet. I felt Cars was better...
Al Gore's movie about global warming and climate change "An Inconvenient Truth" won the "Best Documentary Feature" award.

Haven't seen a few of the movies so can't argue much or agree/disagree but 'The Departed' definitely deserves the awards. Anyway so the next must watch movies for me are:

• Little Miss Sunshine
• Letters from Iwo Jima
• Pan's Labyrinth (nominated in the Screenplay, Cinematography, Foreign Film and Art Direction categories).
• An Inconvenient Truth

And the wars go on with brainwashed pride...
For the love of God and our human rights,
And all these things are swept aside.
By bloody hands time can't deny,
Are washed away by your genocide
And history hides the lies of our civil wars

--- 'Civil Wars' - Guns N' Roses

Grand Unified Cosmos Theory

Now life devalues day by day
As friends and neighbours turn away
And there's a change that, even with regret, cannot be undone

Now frontiers shift like desert sands
As nations wash their bloodied hands
Of loyalty, of history in shades of grey

--- 'A Great Day For Freedom' - Pink Floyd

Save Darfur

Down and out
It can't be helped but there's a lot of it about
With, without
And who'll deny it's what the fighting's all about
--- 'Us and Them' - Pink Floyd

There is a genocide going on in Darfur, Sudan. An estimated 400,000 people in Darfur have died since the conflict began in 2003. An estimated 2 million people have been displaced from their homes, mostly seeking refuge in camps in Darfur's major towns. Two hundred thousand have fled to neighboring Chad.

First, I cannot understand why such killings happens at all, what goes on in the brains of people where all of them just start taking lives on such a widespread scale. What prompts not 1, not 10, not 100 but like half a country to take to killing the other half.

Second, why does the international community take so much time in reacting. Do something, arrrrgh...God!

Have we human beings just absolutely lost the plot? What are we doing to each other on this planet and what the feck are we doing to this planet....sigh!

Educate yourself:

Darfur Genocide
Save Darfur
Darfur Conflict

Some music that is currently on my playlist...

Audioslave - Revelations
Audioslave was the band that was formed when the lead singer of Rage Against the Machine left and the rest of the members joined up with Chris Cornell. Chris Cornell was the lead singer for the band Soundgarden and was coming off a couple of solo projects. Together they formed a super group called Audioslave.
INXS - Afterglow
Athlete - Wires
U2 & Green Day - The saints are coming
Snow Patrol - Chasing cars
All American Rejects - Move along
Nickleback - Far away
Angels And Airwaves - The adventure
Stone Sour - Through glass
Flipsyde - Trumpets
The Fray - How to save a life