Long time!

Maintaining a blog can be difficult and figuring out good content can be even more difficult!
Not that i am complaining...ever since i moved back to India(Yeah its been a month since Karth returned!) I have had hassles pretty much with everything! It took close to a month to get my internet connection going, almost 2 weeks to get my mobile connection and of course not to mention the 40 km drive to work!
Things are settling down slowly and i should be able to frequent the blogosphere more regularly. I have had tons of unread items in my google reader and tons of stuff i want to blog about.
Hoping to update my blog atleast once a week now. Gotta go now..Karth will be back soon!

Hello world

Wow. Been quite a while isn't it? . Not that my POWERSHOT is keeping me away from KarthInc, Actually a mix of busy weekends and general tendency for slackness!

So what the heck was keeping this lazy guy "busy" you might ask.

It all began with the Twenty20 world cup. I ended up spending late nights, evenings, mornings and weekends finding and watching live streams of the match. So if i wasnt watching cricket, i was sleeping :-(  But all in all, was good entertainment after a disastrous ODI world cup. On that topic, it was pretty sad to see the non-cricket fraternity sulk when the netas started showering moolah to the cricketers. Well the point is, In India other than cricket no other game sells. No point going on hunger strikes!

I also had a chance to go on a unforgettable and pulse racing rafting and canyoning trip in Minakami. Its a beautiful place about 2 hrs from Tokyo and was it fun or what! I have never done rafting or canyoning ever before and the weekend spent there was worth every penny(Or should i say yen?). Rafting was at least something i have seen on the "WORLD OF SPORTS " program on DD decades back, but Canyoning was a complete mystery. When we got there, we figured out Canyoning the hard way. Just walk up to the top of the mountains, and come all the way down sliding down on the waterfalls. Some of them as much as a 30 degree slope! Easy right? NO.!!! But all in all it was one heck of a trip!

 

After that fun and wet trip, the next weekend we made our way to the "Ryogoku Kokugikan" to watch the Annual Sumo Championships in Tokyo. Well,In contrast to the previous trip this was boredom at its best! We went to the stadium early morning and to our surprise found the stadiums near empty! Eh! Wasn;t it supposed to be one of the premier sporting event here? Whats going on! A quick glance on the schedule for the day answered our query. It turns out that on a typical tournament day all the preliminary junior division matches happens on the first half and the big guys come out to the ring only late afternoon. But when they did turn out it turned out quite exciting. Especially the ring entering ceremony and frustrated fans throwing cushions on the big boys. Now compared to we throwing bottles and rotten apples on our cricketers, this shows the politeness of the Japanese!! Check out our excitement levels though, most of the first half was spent on catching 40 winks!
Meanwhile i also had a Japanese test, which i failed! Doh! Well i am not to blame if the passing marks were as high as 80% Anyways my sensei was kind enough to let me take a retest with an added bonus-The question paper remains the same:-)

I also had a chance to witness the display of Indian Music at its best. A brilliant Bharatnatyam and Kuchipudi performances followed by a melodious Flute and tabla composition. The best part was this was performed not by Indians but by Japanese! Awesome. Actually,One of the Bharatnatyam dancer was my friend's wife and we went there to give our vocal support as well.

Apart from these, I also went down to Harajuku and Ebisu. Harajuku is famous for some of the best modern Japanese fashion. Right from the weird hairstyle to the clothes, its one colorful place! Ebisu on the other hand is a small quiet town famous for its Beer Musuem and also has a Beer named after it!

I guess thats enough rambling and after all those words, i will let the pics speak the rest of the words!

Luna!

384,403 kilometers away from us, the Moon is something which inspires many people in different ways.

How did it inspire me?


I am starting to love my powershot already:)

Freeze time!

I am now a proud owner of the Canon Powershot S5 IS!!!

Its going to be fun learning and using this amazing piece of machinery.
I have been researching on DSLRs and Digital cams for over a month now. I am still pretty much a newbie when it comes to photography and i suppose this cam will help me learn and graduate to the DSLR level rather easily.
The good thing about this cam is it allows me to experiment with the manual controls and there is also a flexibility of adding other lenses.
Check out some amazing pics this can take, of course by some highly talented people:)
http://www.flickr.com/groups/canonpowershots5is/

I am excited and its time to freeze time!

On a totally different and sad note, i just saw the news about the hyderabad blasts. My heart goes out to all the victims out there and i sincerely hope and pray that the fatalities don't increase anymore.
When is this all going to end..........

Cash-The review

If there is someone in Bollywood who can Make Hollywood feel they have a Brain Drain, its none other than our highly ambitious, technically efficient, lateral thinking Bollywood director Anubhav Sinha.

When Anubav Sinha was asked whether he was he inspired from John Woo for all his movies, he quicky replied John Who?

Some famous director said, "there are good movies and there are bad movies" and some producers have said "there are hit movies and there are flop movies" .

But what happens when bad movies becomes hit movie ?

Apart from the fact that the producers laugh all the way to the bank leaving the audience to cry all the way back home, more bad movies begin to follow.

After watching Cash, the latest in the "Diamond Heist" genre, I was left with a bad taste for hindi movies, a sense of nausea and a deep deep sense of sympathy to all the junta who watched this in the theater.

The movie starts with Zayyed khan in a nearly empty first class cabin of a flight-a scene which mirrors the nearly empty theaters screening cash-the only difference is there are 2 people in the flight and just one guy in the theater. An insanely voracious glib Ayesha Takia meets Zayyed khan and then the story begins or rather the sequence of narration begins.

Well, the story is all about who gets to steal the famous diamonds and the guys running for this race are all highly talented with these skill sets basically in no particular order.

Suniel Shetty-The man who can take upto 7 bullets in his back..mind you any more than 7 bullets, he will turn back and shoot you down. Any less than 7 bullets he doesn’t care.Here he is seen trying to drive a car blindfolded and mouthing the dialog "Yeh aaram ka mamla hain". Too many Briefs ads have this kinda effect.

Zayed Khan: The computer hacker. Now how many zillion times have we seen bollywood heroes look so much like "alice in wonderland" when it comes to using a computer. And how many gazzilion times have we seen the message "system is being hacked….pls wait" and "system hacked..". Very user friendly.

An additional skill set of ZK is his ability to stay underwater for real long time(sometime days..) and the moment someone says "lights, camera, action" he would come out on his motor boat flying and clapping his hands!! Yeah no kidding..clapping his hands right on a motor boat from under the water.

3. Isha deol: After driving the aam junta crazy, she now tries her hand on driving cars. And her favourite dialog is "mera pastime hain cops ko gumana"!! Less said about her better. Did i say she resembles a cartoon in one of the scene?

4. Diya Mirza: No special skill here. So she tries to ape Maryiln Monroe by performing the famous "when there is wind, my skirts fly" scene, but hey nobody cares coz in the background is Mr Suniel Shetty with 7 bullets in his back is trying to drive a car blindfolded. Just as the great King Dhritarashtra says in Mahabarath "Yahan itna sannata kyon hai bhai…", Suniel Shetty mouths this dialog as well…of course 7 bullets peet mein.

Later she clarifies in an interview "I was just picking up my hanky, and the scene came out very naturally..hain na?"

5. Shamita Shetty: The police officer/Detective/Mountain climber: I think Shamita Shetty(SS) knows what not to do after following her sister's carreer from close quarters. She also knows following the path of Vijayshanti EPS(eternal police officer) as police officerini in all movies would guarantee her unimaginable fame and success. But Vijayshanti was a police officer who used to follow the rules, but SS doesn’t seem to know hers. Clad in the same costume(the jockey banians and lara croft pants with 3 guns and lathi) she goes around finding the criminal.

But being a very innocent and sexy police officer, little does she know her husband is the criminal she has been searching for the last 25 yrs of her career.

And oh, btw these are her hard working assistants who help her on strategical issues. Now what is it with Hindi movies shooting in abroad? Why are all the phirangis shown as real dumb people? I don't get it!

6. Ritesh Deshmukh: Now if RD had been working in the circus, which in itself is a great acheivement for him, he would have been the worst clown in the show. But as you know he decides to act in Hindi movies, which pretty much resemebles a huge circus in itself. He is the guy who can pretty much win every chase with the cops and chase every cops with his "funny" dialog.

Now there is this scene which tips the entire movie in his favour. The challenge for RD is to flick a painting from a heavily gaurded art exhibition and if you are paid 2 "karore" to do it, you would do it without any questions asked. Fair enough. But to do it without a plan..well that can be done by the one and only RD . Mind you this is no exaggeration , RD walks to the exhibition, tries to be funny, fails miserably, gets frustrated, recites the mantra for success(failure in this movie)-"kabbadi, kabbadi" and this gets really infectious with the phirangi security gaurds. The next thing you know, MR RD picks the "costly exhibit" and amid "Sir, pls keep it back sir" and "Sir we will shoot you" dialogues he starts running! Yeah plain running. Nothing clever Nothing smart. Just run. Now if that is not good enough, he seems to be too good to carry the look of a theif along with a parachute, a pouch to keep the exhibit, a skate board and the falls of the building. Next thing you know, he "crash" lands in the open arms, I mean open car of our Isha deol who seems to have taken driving lessons from Sunny deol. The rest as they say is history.

7.Ajay Devagan: Now I had huge respect for this man, however after seeing him in Cash, my respect for him has increased by couple of notches. Who else other then AD, can pull of a role as complicated as that of the Shehenshah?
He is the innocent looking writer cum husband of a CBI officer cum don cum "bumb" expert whose favourite pastime is to fix bombs on bridges and blow up bouncers with Leo car bombs. UK police need to watch for this character.

The movie interpresed with animations, cartoon characters, chase and lots of narrations(I mean it!) At one point there is ZK narrating a story to AK, AD telling a story to DM, DM to SS and SS to a weird guy called "Uncle" will keep you on the edge of the seat,and later will make you kneel on the floor and later will make you plead guilty for watching this movie.

I bet Anubhav Sinhia and the rest of his gang are now thinking "kaash..." and "Crash!!"

Now did I tell you I watched only half the movie ? I had to live another day to say the story right?

But thanks to the support of my well wishers I have decided to complete it after completing my will.

So watch out for the sequel soon!

Culture relativity

When you are living in a foreign Country, your mind is always in a "Relativity" mode-meaning you are always comparing the culture, the people, the food, the social life etc.

Basically comparing anything and everything.

The "standards" that we set are from what we have seen back home. Yesterday while returning back from work, i witnessed a small incident which made yet another dent to those "standards".
On my rather longish walk back home, there is this narrow stretch of road which is a one-way only for vehicles excluding cycles. Usually unlike India, drivers here are more law abiding.
But yesterday i saw a car approaching from the wrong side. He probably did not notice the one-way sign.

But thats not the point. What happened next completely flummoxed me!

All of a sudden a cyclist dude coming in the opposite direction, stopped mid road facing the car speeding from the opposite direction.The car braked hard and screeched to a stop, literally centimeters away from the cyclist.

Now i thought this cyclist dude has had it. My mind started churning out pictures of a street fight and volleys of curses. I was ready to shoot the scene for a icaught moment.

But hang on, this is not the streets of Bangalore or hyderabad or Delhi.

The cyclist dude in a very polite manner informed the guy in the car that this is a one way and he is driving in the wrong direction. The driver apologized profusely and thanked the cyclist and turned the car back.

eh! Thats it? No "tera baap ka road hain kya"(Is this your father's road?) or "tu saale, kya commisioner hain kya" (are you the commisioner here?) dialogues??

But Having seen hundreds of duels on the roads of Bangalore just coz people don't want to let go of their ego, this small incident was a welcome change. And sure did make a deep dent to my "standards".

The bubble that went bust

Tech workers, dont panic after seeing the title. If you already have, then well..i can't help it!

The results of the much coveted, much awaited, much whatever, Olympiadistic(woah i just invented a new word!) Jammy's "Speech bubble Contest" has come to a rather disappointing end



As you can see, Karth has managed to finish a distant 4th.

Now seems like i have a mysterious admirer among the crowd, coz i remember voting 12 times and it turns out i have 13 votes..hmmm kaun hai woh chupa rustum?

Since i am such a bad loser and to uphold true losing spirit i will go on and list why i did'nt win.

1. Too lazy to keep voting through the day. (Serves me right!)
2. My comment was not fully visible :(
3. PRG had way too much time to keep on voting.
4. After campaigning for 48 hrs, i figured out that none of my friends had internet.
5. Since i have Rs.501 in my bank balance, Rs.500 is a meagre amount for all the effort.
6. And so on....
7. And so forth.
8. Thats all.

Now can't wait for the next olympiadistic event from Ouchmytoe :)