Happy New Year 2010

Dear friends, this has been a wonderful year, both in and out of Bloggerville. Life will never be the same in 2010. Yes, life is not going to be the same. I got engaged to Sravanthi and the marriage is scheduled to take place in April, 2010. I'll share more on this in the coming posts. For now, I am writing this post just to wish you all a very happy new year.

Let's hope for the below in the new year:

1. All(if not, a few) of our wishes come true.
2. There will no be any more disasters natural calamities like floods, tsunamis, hurricanes etc.
3. The terrorists change themselves and let others live peacefully.
4. India will stay on top of the world(in cricket, though).
5. We look at some more technically brilliant movies like "Avatar" and feel-good movies like "3 Idiots".
6. May Telangana issue be solved in Andhra Pradesh.
7. Last but not the least, let us all pray that my salary increases at least 25%.

Simply speaking, I hope All iz well in 2009 and All will be well in 2010.

My return to Bloggerville on a wonderful day

Folks, first of all, I regret being away from such a wonderful place, Bloggerville. The reasons for my long absence(more than two months) from here are:

1. There was a fund-raiser organized by TKS in the third week of November. Thank God, all iz well.
2. I was on vacation to India for about a month, right after the above said fund raiser. Here too, all iz well.

I've been waiting for some proper time to return back to Bloggerville and there it was yesterday. Actually, I started this post yesterday but couldn't finish it off then. Anyways, yesterday has been an awesome day for me for the below reasons:

1. It was sister's b'day yesterday. All iz well.
2. India won the tournament against Sri Lanka yesterday. All iz well.
3. It was raining out here in Bahrain yesterday. Loved the climate. All iz well.
4. I was awarded a certificate of appreciation and a Gold coin by my company here for assisting in the successful completion of a major project. All iz well indeed.
5. The day ended fittingly well, when I went for the late night show of the highly anticipated "3 Idiots". Believe me, the movie was simply awesome. Just like most of the sites reviewed the movie, all iz very, very, very, very well indeed.

With this, I end this post and promise you that I'll be back soon with a lot of news as there are many things happening around me right now and I need to tell you all those.

A couple of feel-good movies

Folks, sorry for being away for quite a few days. I was a bit busy with work both in & out of office(TKS). My vacation is due in about 4 weeks for now and still I have some departmental objectives to be finished before year end. The only time pass that's keeping me in senses is a few movies here n there.

Recently, I saw a couple of movies which are worth mentioning. One is "Wake Up Sid"(WUS). I was not interested to watch this one until my adamant friend, Deepak, wanted to watch it. I went into the theater with half mind expecting the worst. The movie opened well with an interesting scene of how our protagonist, Sid, is preparing for his boards. From then on, there was no looking back. As soon as the movie finished, I was thinking of watching it again.

WUS is a perfect example of how to keep things simple and achieve the desired result. The director did a good job in that aspect. The sentimental scenes are handled well, the comic timing was perfect, the emotions are up to the mark. There are some scenes which I liked well:

1. The scene in which Ranbir makes fun of Konkana by pouring water on her and then he asks her in an innocent way, whether she felt bad.
2. The confused look on Konkana's face when Ranbir asks her out for a walk on their first meeting.
3. The scene where they both sit at the beach and Ranbir explains to Konkana about how the ocean looks at the times of monsoon(felt like I was standing in rain after this scene).

The above are only a few scenes out of a whole set. If I write all those that I liked and why I liked them, this post will be as big as a novel. As a whole WUS is a wonderful feel-good movie which reminds us of our college life(if you are not one of those nerdy types). Ranbir is now the new addition to my list of actors to watch out for.

The other movie I liked is the "The Proposal". I picked this one from the DVD store just because I can't find anything interesting there. In fact, I kept even this one pending for a few days before watching it. But when I saw it, I was really impressed. It's been quite a few days since I watched a decent romantic comedy and this one perfectly filled the bill.

The story is simple. An immigrant, yet sort-of-nuts boss, perfectly portrayed by Sandra Bullock, has been issued notice that she'll be deported after her work-visa is not renewed. She immediately puts up an act that she's going to marry her sub-ordinate, a wonderful Ryan Reynolds, and hence can stay in the US of A. Both of mutually agree to help each other provided that he'll marry her(and then divorce her), while she promotes him to a higher position in office. But before that she had to spend a week at his parents house. Everything seems to go well inline with the plan, until they both really start falling in love with each other.

Both these movies are worth a watch over the weekend and gives you a break from the usual pot-boiler masala movies. Happy weekend, folks.

Happiness

I was under a lot of stress yesterday(in fact, throughout the week). The various reasons are:
1. Am suffering form a very bad headache from the past 50 hours or so.
2. We had an unexpected server crash yesterday and nobody has a clue of why it happened.
3. One guy called me over for a snack last evening and I ended up paying for that.
4. Last evening was my fifth straight evening at the TKS office.

Well, I was in a pretty bad shape because of all the above crap n a lot more. But, while walking back to my flat from TKS, there was this lovely little breeze that changed all my moods. It was normally a walk of just above 10 minutes from my house to TKS, but last night my heart wanted to enjoy the walk and it took me more than 25 minutes to cover the distance. Suddenly I felt like a child and did some weird things which included:
1. I was trying to balance myself on the edge of the pavement while walking. This went on for quite a distance.
2. I saw a hump on the road which resembled a landmine in the PlayStation game "Black". I couldn't take my eyes off it and in front of a heavy traffic, I lifted my hands and positioned myself like the protagonist in the game(a soldier) and tried to shoot that hump. Everybody waiting at that signal was shell shocked. I literally looked at them and laughed n went away.

All this made my heart lighter and I was in a cheerful mood for the rest of the night. But today, struggles have started yet again.

Random Ramblings

Folks, had a lot to post but very less free time to do so. So am putting up a brief notes of what's going on these days.

1. Today's the much-awaited India-Pakistan cricket match. Our cricket brothers of the neighboring country are giving too many statements to the press and our guys are calm n composed as usual. So let's see who wins the battle, which's going to kick-off in a few more hours. All the best, Team India.

2. The great slogger whom International cricket has ever produced, Mr Shahid Afridi was telling to the press the other day that the GOD(read as Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar) was no longer a threat. Brother Afridi, do you know that he's back into his prowess(mind it, he was never out of it) and made his way back into the ICC top-10 even after missing from the International ODI cricket for quite some time? Did you read in the newspapers a few days back about what happened to the Lankans in the tri-series finals?

3. Well, looks like my parents are feeling bad that they are not able to find a bride for me, even though they are trying hard to do so. Will write a post about that in the next few days.

4. About a month back, the PR manager of Coca-Cola Bahrain, Mrs Leila Rajkumar was kind enough to induct us(me n my friend Deepak) into their elite group, Thirst Quenchers. You all know how hot it gets in summer in this part of the world. So Coke will provide us with water and some soft-drinks. We(the Thirst Quenchers) are supposed to carry these around the island and give them free-of-cost to the laborers toiling out in the hot sun.
It was a very good example of what-a-little-help-can-do. I still remember the thank-filled eyes of those hard-working guys when we told them that we are there to give them free water n drinks. Some locals were curious enough to know why we are distributing them free-of-cost. Long live the human spirit. Find below the certificate that Coca-Cola has given me for doing whatever little I can. It was so kind of them.

We are OUT

Well, it's not a great news to share, but the verdict is out. We are out of the cricket tournament with a loss in the last night's match. The saddest part is - we lost the match by 3 runs. In the tournament, we had 12 groups with 5 teams each. Each team in the group has to play one match with each other and the top 2 teams in a group will go to the next round. Before yesterday's last match, we played 3 and won 2. Our opponent last night were the hosts. So ultimately, they had the home advantage.

One good thing for me from yesterday's match was - my batting. I was surprised with the way I hit some shots. Wait wait, don't think that I'm a good batsman. I'm a below-average cricketer and for a person like me, every single run is like a boundary. And if you play well, when others fail, it boosts our confidence. Right?

Well, looking forward to continue the same form in the coming Friday's match. This one doesn't belong to any tournament, but something that we play among friends. Professionally, though.

Note: I'll post some pictures of yesterday's match as soon my friend hand them over to me.

Cricket n SRK

Being from India, we love cricket and worship cricketers. And sometimes, we like to play too. So, we are participating in a 7-a-side soft-ball tournament here in Bahrain. A total of 60 teams are participating in the tourney and we played our first match last night. We lost it successfully, but at least we did give a tough fight to the opponents(my favs for the title). Batting first, they made a not-so-tough 52 runs in their allotted 6 overs while our side managed a convincing 45 runs in the same number of overs. Well, the nest match is on 28th of this month and wish us all the best.

And now, let's go to a strange issue that raging in some hearts in India. One Mr Shah Rukh Khan(in short SRK) was frisked at an airport in the US of A. Ok, the airport authorities did detain him for a couple of hours and checked his credentials blah blah. The only problem is this SRK guy is a super-star or a Badshah of Bollywood(naah, I'm an Aamir Khan fan). Fans started protesting this act and started burning effigies of the govt of US of A. TV channels started flashing the news of this footage in "exclusive bulletins". Bollywood bigwigs are interviewed, politicians were asked questions and people are made idiots.

But what's the big deal in the airport authorities doing so? Clearly, not everyone knows what Bollywood is or who SRK is. He's just one of those guys traveling through their airport. Is there any point in this whole incident for the entire nation to stand up(or rather sit n watch those stupid news channels broadcasting this)? Aren't there more issues that are bothering the nation?

Just in the past one month, more than 22 farmers committed suicide in the state of Andhra Pradesh courtesy poor rainfall and increasing debts. I saw in a regional news channel yesterday that a farmer set fire to his crop after a very less output(I don't exactly know the term). No one cares about issues like this. All we care is when a celebrity is detained in an airport or a famous cricketer scores a duck or when a politician is making useless comments etc. God save India.