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Showing posts from 2012

Hunger Games Trilogy

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I wasn't planning on reading the trilogy since I wasn't happy with the first book. I would rather wait for the Jennifer Lawrence movies. However, London celebrates pre-Black Friday and Black Friday even though it has nothing to do with Thanksgiving, all thanks to consumerism! So Amazon had these deals spread around, emailing us, friends passing links to each other and I came across the trilogy set. And there was my early Christmas gift... The story is rather bland. It still continues to be a show with few acts of heroism from anyone at all. Those from Gale are rather dumb than heroic. Their Mocking Jay would just turn up and shoot a few scenes. Sometimes during the shooting she would get into a bit of trouble and then would survive anyway. The twist with Peeta was a little too much drama may be. The twist with Snow was rather expected but good. It added to the story and gave it some weight that was missing. The climax was rather at odds with the rest of the trilogy.

4 years in one picture

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No, my name is not Pranav! No, it wasn't my birthday. And I'm far from 3 years old. Yet the cake was for me. You can imagine it was a big surprise! My birthday fell in the summer hols during my IIT life. More like the monsoon but nevertheless, holidays. So I never celebrated it with my little gang of girls. Actually we didn't have many campus birthdays. Only one of us has a birthday during semester and we celebrated hers. For the rest it off the sem yet somehow it happened that over the four years we celebrated everyone else's once. Except mine! On my very last day on campus, and I have never gone back to campus since so truly my last, my friends came into my room with this cake, apologised for the spelling mistake in my name and celebrated my non-birthday to make up for four birthday's I never had with them making it the most memorable day ever. And most importantly the most surprising. Actually I had to act surprised. They couldn't really keep it a s

Milano. European. City.

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My visa would soon expire and I wanted to take another trip to Europe before it runs out. I planned with a friend to go to Greece but the vacation got longer and the people lesser. I planned to go to Budapest with another friend but the plans were never finalised and finally ditched. And then I came to know both of them are meeting up in Milan. On a whim and a fancy, I decided to go to Milan. It doesn't beat the whim of going to Prague . But the purpose beats it. I went to Milan simply to go because I have been planning for a while and not going anywhere and to catch up with friends I haven't met in a while. Prague is a beautiful touristy place. Milan is not supposed to be. I come back to work on Wednesday and everyone at office thinks I went to Milan on work. Really! So I went to Milan to catch up with friends and see how Italy looks like in general when it's not decked up for the tourist or the pilgrim or the lovers. Simply the way people live. That's what you ge

Hunger Games

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The games | The books | The movies | What's with Archery ? It's hard to find a film as good as the book it's based on. It's harder to find one that beats it! I know most people would disagree with me, but Hunger Games, the movie was far far better than Hunger Games, the book. I'm not saying the book was not good. It had a plot. A plot that can gather momentum and put together a running story that runs all the way to the end. "Easy to read and full of masala". That's how a friend described it to me when I asked if I should read it. What I felt the book lacked for was description, imagination in words and the punch. It left a lot for the reader to imagine, not because it wants the reader to think but because it forgot to put it in words. How the hell did they even give a girl 11 points when she shot at the judges ? I almost missed the importance of not having a victor. Really? What's the big deal for the games if one year they did not hav

Take a bow

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... Hold it outstretched, pull an arrow through it and let the arrow fly. That's pretty much it. If someone would have told me the Olympics would make me learn a sport or a skill I would have laughed once. But now I know. I haven't watched archery in the olympics. A friend did. He got inspired and picked it up. And when he talked of it I wondered why I should not be doing it. It is a cool hobby to have! So I learnt it last weekend at a beginners course. And it was fun. Awesome fun. My arm still hurts but I still wish I could try today. But alas many a times I tried stuff and let go very soon, may be too soon. Just hope it's not one of those things.

Heading ahead...(600)

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I need to tag in the title that it's my 600th post. Else I lose track. So once every now and then I feel that need to turn around and look back at all the blogging I have done. Usually, it's a milestone or a birthday or simply new year . This year, I forgot my blog's birthday, like I did my sisters, like I did my parents, like my parents did mine, and like I nearly did mine! So apologises to all my friends whose birthday I forgot and congratulations to all those who wished (facebook is very dutiful). Hence, I look back at my last hundred posts (and even older). But when I do look back, it was meant to be a soul-searching sentimental feeling. So as I sat to write this post down I was struck by writers block for hours. I have indeed changed. I haven't lost the capacity to write, just to be overly sentimental. And just like that I could write again. When I look back, I often feel sad that I have changed so much, even though change is the in thing. Looking back to wh

The Channel Connection

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When I was still studying in IIT, and we called up a European alumni for something, her mother said she went to France in the morning for some work, and should be back later that evening. It was so fascinating to me that you can just say you want to go to another country and just go and just come back all in a day and all with no prior booking. So the fascination never left me... till last weekend that it. On Thursday, a friend thought out aloud that it was going to be a beautiful weekend and a trip to Dover might be nice. I thought out aloud that if I go to Dover, I might as well go to Calais ! So I thought I would go on Saturday. But I woke up late on Saturday and no one else seemed interested. Yet it was a sunny day. So I accompanied friends to Oxford Street for some random shopping, more like window shopping with all the live models posing as mannequins and the different kinds of decorations that turn up only in Oxford Street (check out LV window below, oh, and this

The Belfast dAIry

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Belfast is not big and not very old either. Yet you can spend a couple of days with much left to be seen. The city has five quarters, not four. And it seemed to me that each quarter is different in so many different ways! The city has drawn out a few "trails". You can find them at any tourist information centre marked out on the map. The City Hall is by far the most impressive point in Belfast. A massive structure, it has glorious internal design as well. Some of the windows have been commissioned to depict glass paintings telling us of incidents in the history of Northern Ireland. The lawns are dotted with weird cement cows but unlike in Milton Keyes these actually depict people and ideas. You will find a lot of interesting architecture and stories on the City of Merchants Trail including Belfast's very own leaning tower! And the other thing that Belfast is proud of is building the Titanic. The largest ship ever built, and it sank. I read in somewhere tha

Scottish Highlands

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Train to Edinburgh A nearly beautiful journey through the country side of England a bit of Scotland brings you to Edinburgh from London after about 4.5 hours on a train. Waiting on the train for the view to get better and better we fell asleep till we reached. Edinburgh was on the verge of a fest so everything was shut down or closed out and bus stops were changed and worse of all, maps were removed I mean REALLY !!! We found our little hotel behind the castle that looked like somehow they managed to keep it together, but it was really nice inside. A spooky look on the outside was pretty cool... The next day we found Hertz, showed him a license and got a lovely little family car. A car so much like our own that it felt own. A near new Ford Fiesta. And invested well in a good road map. The Loch Drive We started off west towards Glassgow and weaved through the city passing by the Cathedral before hitting for the prettier roads. We drove through the Trossachs and past the all

Towering Museums and Olympic London

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On a splendid rainy Sunday we went to Tower of London. A tower so well preserved but it isn't that old either. It was the first fort/tower/castle sort of thing I had seen. Having been sucked into A Song of Ice and Fire, it felt like the book comes alive. The crown jewels are of course the most important part of the museum. Though we went to see the Kohinoor, what we saw more importantly was the Cullinan I. It was the largest thing eve, as large as an egg and dwarfs anything around it. The wall walk was the most amazing though. To walk around and see the different gates, the draw bridges, the buildings that the walk encloses, it all feels so real! Monday was reserved for a special purpose. London 2012 Olympics. I picked up tickets because I thought it might be easier to get tickets for a Monday, because hockey is the national game of India and we associate it with the Olympics, because an afternoon session does not require you to wake up early in the morning or delay yo

A Weekend in Czech

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I came back from Paris on Tuesday evening, halfheartedly. I didn't want to come back. But I didn't want to stay in Paris either. I wanted to travel, far and wide. Who doesn't? My friends carried on to Rome. On Wednesday morning at work, it suddenly made no sense for me not to join my friends at Prague for the weekend. Within an hour, I booked my tickets and hostel for Saturday. See, you can just decide and fly out to a different country all together! Cheap tickets come with their bane, the airport was in another city, no not city, it was in the middle of nowhere. It tougher to get to than to get to Prague. On Saturday I woke up at 3am and some 6 hours later I landed in Prague! From the airport to the city, I had to take a bus. I stepped into the bus and asked for a ticket to my destination. I realised for the first time in my life I was in a country of a completely foreign language without guidance. But it was not language that crippled me at that moment, but body langu

4 days in Paris

4 days... one day with an old friend, one day as a tourist with friends, one day at an amusement park and one day by myself. A beautiful Saturday morning to wake up, pack a backpack and take a train to another country. No, you can't just go to another country in a couple of hours on a train! Well apparently you can. I gazed through the window occasionally, taking my eyes off the economist I have so begun to love as a part of traveling on weekends. I waited. Sunny and bright it was outside my window. Then a long tunnel so dark I fell asleep. When I woke up it was all a bright and sunny country side. There was no difference except for an occasional hoarding in french. And so I reached Paris. I went down to cité universitaire to meet an old friend from college. The place was beautiful calm and peaceful. They had a festival on with each country house showcasing their local culture in different forms. I ate Egyptian food and watched some Japanese drumming. My friend and guide (and

A Vacation over a Weekend

They say time passes by slowly when you are bored. And 5 mins seen like an hour. But when you manage to keep so busy and do so many things in a day, even though time passes by quickly you feel it was long day wouldn't you? My weekend started on Friday evening just like all weekends. I came home changed and took a friend around my neighbourhood just to show her around. Dinner was at friends house. We turned up there in time to help out with the cooking a whole load of us (left in time to not help out in the cleaning). We had proper home cooked andhra food, courtesy one of friend's mother. So full and tired we were we just went to sleep. Woke up early on Saturday morning, my friend and I went our fire breakfast and hit the shopping centre of London and randomly shopped around. Spent a good amount of money. We met up more friends and had lunch. We picked up half price tickets for a musical. We went on to walk around London. Along the touristy areas showing my friend around all t

Trains of thought

I find the sounds of moving trains soothing. A journey exciting. Of many different people and many different ideas and many different reasons. Moving through the platforms. Moving, walking, running. No luggage. No baggage. Some baggage. Heavy baggage. Take a train. Take the wrong one. Go to new places. Once in a while go back to an old place. Write memoirs. Write books. Travel. Watch people. Watch them play music.

Easter Bunnies

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Easter weekend was long. The longest you can get, like in Christmas... 4 days.... We weren't sure if we could go to Isle of Wight, everyone said the weather was going to terrible. But we went anyway. We wanted to leave London by 7.30am but obviously we were ambitious. We reached Portsmouth, dumped our luggage and were super excited about taking a hover craft to Isle of Wight by 1pm. The hover craft was such a disappointment. It didn't look like it was hovering. Even if it was you can't see it. And from in it you can't see anything at all. So we reached Ryde Harbour and we grabbed some lunch while decided what other things we could see. Alum beach was one and Needles the other, both of them on a shore across the island from where we were. We found out that it would take way too long to get them and by the time everything would be shut. So there is no point. So we took an open bus and roamed about the island for a bit and got off literally in the middle of no

The story retold - Kahaani

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The plot is discussed in detail, the way I saw it. So SPOILER ALERT ! But I guess most of you have already seen it.. *** It all starts with a crying baby in the arms of a woman in the packed Calcutta Metro. A police officer is looking around for a bag, or anything suspicious. Now who would suspect a woman with a baby? And that too the baby's milk bottle? The bottle breaks, a poisonous gas is realised and everyone exposed to it dies. Fast forward two years, here comes Vidya Bagchi, a heavily pregnant women to the dirty yet beautiful and thoroughly romanticised city of joy. The police officer, Rana, is more than happy to help her, carry her bags, etc. Now, I must admit that Calcuttans are helpful people, but police? I've never met one but in movies they are always portrayed as annoying people. But then again she is pregnant, and people are always willing to help her, aren't they? It seems like an intelligent point. But as the story progressing you come to believe it