Things just came rushing to me...

I was listening to the song 'Perfect Blue Buildings' by Counting Crows and that had the following lines:
...Down on Virginia and La Loma
Where I got friends who care for me...

Great song by the way but for some reason I went to Yahoo maps and put in 'Virginia and La Loma, Berkeley, CA' and there it was, the place showed up. Why did I put Berkeley? I think subconsciously I remembered that Counting Crows is a Berkeley based band and there was this other thing. I have lived on Virginia St. in Berkeley. My brother used to stay just a block away from Virginia and La Loma.

I checked it out and Adam Duritz the vocalist for Counting Crows is from Berkeley and the band started there. I have spent a lot of time in that area and have plenty of memories of Berkeley...things just came rushing to me...

Infinitesimal things...

[12:28 PM]:
i did coding today
wrote a quick test application of 49 lines in some 10 mins
testing took another 3 mins
felt good when it worked in the first shot

[12:29 PM]:
i need cold water

Little Miss Sunshine...

Oh this movie is one of the most enjoyable movies I have ever seen, right from the name of the little girl 'Olive' to her older brother's antics of taking a vow of silence and using a scribble pad.
The story is about the Hoover family taking a cross country trip in their VW bus to fulfill the deepest desire of 7 year old Olive to participate in a beauty pageant. Olive, a small girl with a big heart, big dreams and big spectacles, under the tutelage of her beloved grandpa wants to win the Little Miss Sunshine pageant. The family with its internal wrangling needs to pull through and deliver for this girl.

The cast really makes this movie work. All the central characters of the Hoover family do an awesome job on the acting front. And Olive is the best, her smiles bright enough to light up the whole sky. Olive’s gay uncle Frank (played by Steve Carell from the sitcom ‘Office’ where he plays an annoying boss) is another character that stands out in the movie. Frank is a recovering from a suicide attempt of slitting his wrists after falling in love with one of his grad students who didn’t love him back. Olive’s reaction to that is ‘That’s silly.”
Very good comebacks and slick dialogues delivered very appropriately by the actors are scattered throughout the movie. For me this particular aspect was what made the movie so engaging. One of the most memorable parts of the movie for me is when Olive's brother finds out that he is colourblind and that crushes his passionate dream.

The photography of this movie is really good too. A simple movie which probably doesn't allow for too much of computer graphics or spectacular visuals, it is full of interesting and heart warming picturization. I still remember the low angle shot of the VW family bus passing under those symmetrical freeway flyovers of a big city. The music throughout is really appropriate and good.

A really warm movie with a very human story involving very lovable characters. A definite must watch for those who haven’t already, certainly deserves a place in any movie collection. It’s already there in mine…

Don't give a damp!

How do you like my new blog template? :) It reflects the weather here these days...

The template needs a little tweaking 'cause as of now there are a few empty spaces around...need to utilize them.

Cheers!

Tempo Run

I have been running at the same capacity, speed and stamina level for quite some time now. I have been unable to improve my stamina, capacity and times. Even if there have been improvements they are too slow and too little. This is mostly due to the lack of time. Work, travel and lastly my own laziness have been major factors. Lack of good training resources and plans have also led to the stagnation.

So recently I bought two running magazines 'Running Times' and 'Runner's World' that contained lots of training tips and plans. After devouring them front to end, something caught my eye that read 'This "Comfortably Hard" run is key to running your fastest'.

This was an article on 'Tempo Running.' Basic definition of a Tempo Run is that the effort should be "comfortably hard." As in something that is really hard in effort but still do-able and not over the top hard. And it is obviously not something that is comfortable in effort, along the lines of 'comfortably numb' ;-)

Tempo running improves our metabolic fitness. Tempo runs teach the body on how to use the oxygen reaching the muscles more efficiently for metabolism. LT or Lactate Threshold is the level at which the body fatigues. Tempo runs aim to push the threshold higher thus making your muscles better at using the acidic by-products of metabolism. The result is less acidic muscles letting you run farther and faster...

"A classic tempo or lactate threshold run is a sustained, comfortably hard effort." In a tempo run you start with an easy warm up and end with an easy warm down. In the middle you run at a speed that is higher than your average running speed but is a sustainable speed and not your top speed. At this speed you should not end up panting or feel the need to walk in these middle sections. The magazine had a very simple plan that I have started following.
Week 1: 5x3 minutes at tempo pace, 60 second easy jog between each one.
Week 2: 5x4 minutes at tempo pace, 60 second easy jog recovery
Week 3: 4x5 minutes at tempo pace, 90 second easy jog recovery
Week 4: 20 minutes steady tempo pace.

Run!

More Bheja Fry...

In the last panel Hobbes is sort of equal to Ranjeet Thadani and actually even to all of us and Calvin is like Bharat Bhushan...

Bheja Fry...

How irritating is the central character, played by "Vinay Phatak", of Bheja Fry? Oh you better believe it, it is one of the most irritating characters executed in films.

Bheja Fry is an awesome movie that will leave you guffawing throughout and exclaiming "My god, he is so irritating!" The story is about this innocent, downright stupid and obsessive income tax officer who somehow lands in the net of a rich music executive to recruit a bakra/muse for him and his rich friend's weekend stress busting pastime. Bharat Bhushan played by Vinay Phatak (One of the hosts for 'Cricket Crazy') is that bumbling fool who questions "kya idiots insaan nahin hote?" Central to the movie is that fateful night where Ranjeet Thadani (played by Rajat Kapoor from Monsoon Wedding and Dil Chahta Hai) auditions the guy who will turn his world right on its head.

The movie is damn funny and is made that by its dialogues and not by slapstick visuals or anything of that sort. So pay good attention to what is being said and also observe the subtle facial expressions of Vinay Phatak, they are priceless. This guy always goes off track, especially when he is on the phone for a particular reason then without fail he ends up going completely off track driving people insane or frying their bheja ;-)

Go see this movie, it is totally worth it. I wish bollywood made more and more comedies like this. I did hear/read somewhere that this is picked from a french movie but the movie has been adapted enough to fit in the Indian context that it deserves its own merit...

Have a new phone...

...couldn't stand waiting around for the iPhone to make it to India so just went ahead with the 'HTC Touch'. This phone is quite comparable, in terms of features, with the iPhone. It is a totally touchscreen based phone with just 3 small buttons, as you can see below, near the bottom of the phone...

The coolest feature of this phone is the 'TouchFLO' screen. When you slide your fingers on the screen in a certain way the screen rotates to a different desktop. Each of these desktops serves a different purpose, like one of them is the multimedia center which has audio and video launchers. Other one has contacts and so on. By the way the music player's interface is very similar to the iPod interface. The phone has a nice 2.8 inch screen and the videos in landscape mode look really good...

Other than that the phone has Wi-Fi and I've already used Wi-Fi to surf the net without opening the laptop ;-)
This phone has Windows Mobile 6.0 and HTC has worked with Microsoft to provide its own interface, which is pretty striking, and to add the TouchFLO technology...

It has the pocket version of Microsoft Office and can sync with your Outlook email over both wireless and wired interfaces. I haven't used the wireless interface because don't have GPRS nor have the access rights for the corporate email server. But have used the wired interface to sync with my laptop directly and that is pretty straightforward...

Cool device overall, weighs only 112grams, pretty light for a Windows based smartphone and the form factor is quite cool too. It is definitely a tiny device compared to others. The phone is being provided by AirTel in India and also comes with a 1GB micro SD card on which you can store your audio and video files...

TTYL on the Touch ;-)

Nadal can play on grass...

If Federer is the best tennis player of all time and I think he is, then Nadal is a very very close second.

From how the Wimbledon finals played out I agree with what Federer told Nadal at the net "You [Nadal] deserved to win today, but today I [Federer] was the lucky one."

The game was unbelievable. Federer is god, no doubt. No player past or present comes close to him but yesterday Nadal did the unthinkable. He not only matched Federer but was clearly outplaying him. And this is on grass!!! Even when Federer was pulling out all stops, Nadal took the fight to him. I have heard commentators tell many times that Federer wins many matches in the locker room itself. That's how good he is, people come out afraid, and on grass people just wilt in front of him. But Nadal was the Lion on the court yesterday, something even Federer himself couldn't do at Roland Garros this year when he had the chance. All heart man, all heart...

It was just an amazing match, can't remember two players at their peak going at it like this, toe to toe at the same time. Almost every point was worthy of making it to the highlight reel. I personally will remember this match for Federer's record tying 5th consecutive title but will probably remember it more so for the fight Nadal put up...

How smooth is smooth???

Everyone has probably heard of the Gillette Mach 3 shaving razor which have 3 blades. Then some of you might have heard of the Schick brand of razors, Quatro, which has four blades. Well I recently found out that 4 blades is not enough for a smooth shave. You need 5!!!

Gillette probably heard that song 'Smooth' by Rob Thomas featuring Santana and came up with their Gillette Fusion...

5 blades!!!

I think it's time for me to at least chuck my twin blade and graduate to the Mach 3 ;-)

Live Earth

The concerts are live on VH1 in India tomorrow 7.7.07...

London buildings...

London, in terms of buildings, definitely has a really good balance between the old and the new. At many places I saw the two worlds clashing, wierd looking modern buildings of glass and steel standing next to old, elegant, brick and stone buildings, maintaining a pleasing contrast. Here are some examples:

This was visible from the Westminster bridge...


Don't remember where I took this but found the two buildings next to each other very striking...


The next two are while walking from the London bridge to the Tower Bridge on the southern side of the Thames river. The walk from between these two bridges is something I would recommend to everyone. There are a million things to notice there...

Portland Aerial Tram

The aerial tram is a 3 minute ride to the top of a hill to the Oregon Health and Science University and definitely a must see for people visiting Portland. Here are the mountains that were visible...

Mt Hood


Mt St Helens belowing volcanic smoke...

Aww nuts!!!

Manged to finally get one picture in which he was staring straight at the camera and the camera didn't shake :)

Places...

Trillium lake...Trillium was the name of the first company that I worked for after graduation...

Madras!!! Well, I didn't take the 26 East to check if they too have their version of the 'Sarvana Bhavan' ;-)