Auld Lang Syne

This is it folks! The last post of this year. I am glad I kept on posting as and when I felt like expressing myself. Never had I thought though that I will clock 400+ posts this year. :-)

I hope it's the same next year. I plan to write about movies I watch and books I read. Maybe some pearls of wisdom gathered while discharging official duties. There will be an odd song or poem that has caught my eye. I am sure I will not be able to resist the temptation of commenting on weird or disturbing news that has become the norm these days. Maybe something good will come out of my culinary experiments which I would like to share with a caveat ;-)

So let's wait and see what the year waiting patiently in the wings has in store for all of us. But I am hoping that it has lots of peace, happiness, health and wealth for everyone on this planet.

Happy 2010 folks! Take Care!

I never stop being amazed at the gems I stumble across every now and then on the internet. Sometimes I wonder how we used to manage before it became part of our lives.

Anyways, I came across a reference to a Christmas song called "Little Drummer Boy" recently. You can listen to it here.

Doesn't it fill you up with warmth and peace ? :-)

One of Life's all-time unanswered questions - why does work have the nasty habit of piling on when you least expect it? :-(

I will sign off for the day with 2 beautiful verses that came as SMSs:

अकेले तो हम पहलेभी जी रहे थे
क्यों तनहासे हो गए है तेरे जानेके बाद

-----

सूना है जिंदगी इम्तिहा लेती है फराझ
पर यहाँ तो इम्तिहानोने जिंदगी ले ली

Watching news is no fun these days and lately I have been wondering what's wrong with this country. The antics of the aged AP Governor and the gross injustice done to Ruchika are simply outrageous.

Hats off to her friend Aradhana for waging this seemingly-losing battle for all these years even when her friend was long gone!

Chetan Bhagat should have known better. I don't think grumbling now about the lack of recognition in the film's credit will do him any good.

I didn't have any plans to watch the movie anyways - never mind that the RJs on city's FM channels will call me Stupid for that. But now I am glad for this decision because I had liked Bhagat's Five Point Someone and One Night at a Call Center. So by not spending my hard-earned money on this movie which was touted as "loosely based" on the novel, I am exacting a small revenge on behalf of the author :-)

As I devour more and more pages of Obama's "Dreams From My Father", I cannot help but call my reaction to the news of his presidential candidancy.

At first, there was so much of hullabaloo over him and Hillary Clinton that I mistakenly thought the race is between the two of them. Even when I realized that only one of them will be nominated from the Democrat side, I was rooting for Hillary - not because she is a woman, but because she seemed to have some experience of US political scene, even if it wasn't on a first-hand basis.

Then Obama emerged as the candidate from the Democrats side. It was scary to think that if McCain became the president and passed away while in office, it would be Sarah Palin who would be at the helms. Equally scary was the prospect that if Obama became the president and got assassinated while in office, it would send the US financial markets and the rest of the wobbly world economy into a tailspin. I didn't envy the Americans over their Catch22 situation. :-)

But reading this book now, a different picture emerges of this man. Of course, I am still not 100% convinced that the book is written by him - my distrust of the politicians runs deep. :-) However, it's hard to ignore the fact that he really did work at the grassroots level to bring about a change.

And that kind of makes me sad for him. Now that he is occupying the nation's highest office, will he be able to bring about such changes? Or will he himself change, for the worse? Afterall, it is true what they say about absolute power corrupting absolutely :-(

Correct me if I am wrong but isn't the Nativity Scene supposed to have infant Jesus in it? I had been to High Street Phoenix in Mumbai twice last week - the first time was before 25th. When I saw the Nativity Scene I almost ran towards it. It had Mary, Joseph, Angels, Shepherds, even the animals but there was no baby Jesus. I thought maybe they will bring Him in on 25th morning.

I couldn't go there on 25th but I went there for some shopping on 26th. I checked out the Scene again. Still, no Jesus. Curious, isn't it?

I was amply rewarded at Mulund's R Mall though. The infant Jesus there was such a cute chubby baby that for once in my life I was tempted to do some shop-lifting :-)

It's always so good to see the Almighty in human form!

I have this habit of jotting down things that I want to find out about later while reading a book. Now that the year is drawing to a close, I thought of checking some of them out. At the beginning of the list are 6 words "Eugene Field poem little boy blue". I turned to Yahoo and when I read the poem, I felt as if I couldn't breath.

Here is the poem and the wiki page. :-(

What in God's name made the Casting team choose Robert Downey Jr. as Sherlock Holmes and Jude Law as Watson? Seriously now, when I first saw the posters of the movie I thought that Downey Jr. is playing the bad guy in this movie and Jude Law is Holmes. Poor Arthur Conan Doyle must be turning in his grave :-(

After last week's frantic running around to complete as many personal and professional tasks as I could, I am experiencing a curious lethargy of sorts this week. These last days of the passing year are meant for quite retrospection, soul-searching and making new year resolutions, aren't they? But somehow this year I am not so restless at not having made any resolutions so far. Guess I will wake up on 1st January and make up my mind about them. Now that's a resolution :-)

Hats off to Krishna Patil for conquering Antarctica's highest peak! Strangely enough, Yahoo and Google are still stuck on her Everest scaling feat. I had to try permutations and combinations of search words to get more information on her latest achievement. :-(

What with more work piling on during the last days of the year, I am not able to do justice to Obama's book though I had originally planned to finish it before 1st January. :-( But from whatever I have read so far, he seems like a sincere guy - if this book was really written by him, and not by some Ghost Writer ;-)

मागच्या आठवडयात टिटवाल्याच्या गणपतीला जाउन आले। अनेक वर्ष जायचं मनात होतं पण योग आत्ता आला। सुट्टी असल्याने गर्दी होती। कुठल्याही धार्मिक ठिकाणी आजकाल ती गृहीत धरूनच जायला लागतं। रांग शिस्तीत आणि चटकन पुढे सरकत होती हीच समाधानाची बाब। त्यातही काही बायका जोरजोरात भजन गाउन डोकं उठवत होत्या। :-(

गाभार्यात गेल्यावर सिध्दिविनायकाला गेल्यासारखे वाटले। पुजार्याची घाई, आरडाओरडा, धक्काबुक्की, हातातली फुलं देवापर्यत पोचवायला करावी लागणारी कसरत - जीव उबून गेला। देवाच्या दर्शनाच समाधान पदरात पडायच्या आधीच हरवल। तिथे एक विठठल-रखुमाईच मंदिर आहे हे वाचल होतं। पण तिथे जायला मन तयार होईना। शेवटी मनातच विठठल-रखुमाईला नमस्कार करून निघालो। :-(

Recently I was surfing the net for the cinema halls playing the Sherlock Holmes movie in the city. Of course, that was before I realized that the movie hasn’t been released in India yet.

Anyways, as I clicked on the name of a cinema hall at one of the sites, a dialog box popped up on screen with the message “Important: Remove this line from json.js before deployment!” I have been a developer (albeit a more careful one!) in my life and so will not mention the name of this website here. :-)

But if by some queer twist of fate, the developer concerned is reading this post, please remove that line from your Javascript file, dude!