OMG Its so cool!

Places I visited in 2006 Ottawa, Canada Mumbai, India Shirdi, India Navasari, India Gandevi, India Ambaji, India Washington DC Silver springs, MD Germantown, MD Chapel Hill, NC Durham, NC Raleigh, NC Morrisville, NC* Charlotte, NC Boone, NC Wilkesboro, NC Denver, CO *hometown [via AWLN ]

Don-TCBH released and flopped like any hyped hindi movie. It was a big disappointment for the simple reason that the director did not care to keep the original dialogs nor did he add any new mesmerizing ones (he was the writer for the movie). I just wonder, to change the climax, Farhan (director) made a remake of the original and screwed it. Rather, any smart movie-maker would take it a challenge to use this new climax idea for a prequel movie of Don. That makes more sense to me as the idea would be completely original and people won't make comparisons to the 1st one. Anyways, the whole Don craze has died down. Long back! The IN thing these days is either Wii or PS3. The hype and gossip behind these consoles is mind-blowing. You talk with any one and they seem to know someone is camping out of Bestbuy or Target to get their hands on these consoles, or some smart ass is selling his preorder on ebay. So are these worth the hype? My say - PS3 has cool graphics and Wii has cool new co...

October is here and in 2 weeks, we'll get a chance to rekindle our memories of DON - one of the most captivating characters Big B has ever played of. Don ...The Chase Begins Again, is a remake of the 70s classic . Its not a new phenomenom for Bollywood to remake Hollywood movies for desis but remaking old Indian movies (I say Indian, which include Hindi, Tamil, Marathi and other 23 languages) is catching up. Not only that, audience who never had a chance to catch up with stage performances, called Nataks in Gujarati, are loving their remakes too . Don will be Farhan Akhtar's 3rd movie (don't even talk about his disastrous 2nd movie). His first movie Dil Chahta Hai set the trend for India's youngsters like a cool freshman course - Fun 101, which basically introduced us to big screen HDTVs (at Aakash's place), mature relationships (Sid), hanging out in Goa and ofcourse, fancy pants (cmon, most of them were wearing shiny leather tights at the sendoff party). On the...

non-Unix users, don't think too hard. You'll never get it!

Smart ad on Indian TV, setup in a princely environment; most likely Rajasthan. [via GV ]

Highs Federer wins 3rd consecutive US Open Title (I loved his 5-0 17 minute first set rally against Roddick) Schumacher wins his 90th race at Italian Grand Prix . Sigh! He also announced he'll be retiring after this season (but he is close to his 8th Championship title! A Tifosi!!! ) Lows Clemson (ranked 18th) lost to an unranked Boston College by 1 point in College Football (Jay Dean couldn't get that one kick and the performance by defense was just pathetic!!!) Carolina Panthers lost to Atlanta Falcons in NFL (Damn! Now Dsouza will brag about it all the time) Don't Care Baseball, Womens basketball, Eng-Pak Cricket series

Bolo Chai Garam Chai !!!! ISPESIAL!!! Select your favorite flavor Beer CHAI , OJ chai or Wine Chai (Merlot) Only for a $100,000 bucks! Heh, no jokey! I am talking about chai franchise here ;)

Previously Titled: Blogger Spam Alert Apparently, Blogger thinks my blog is a spam blog. For that reason, they have put a "word verification" in the Compose Post section (which I even filled while writing this blog). I wonder why my blog is under spam alert. Maybe, 1. I have been too active on Blogger recently. 2. I changed my blog title to a famous 80s Doordarshan Marathi show. 3. I wrote a blog with the word, Pimp and Sexy. 4. I revealed my true identity that I am Paladin, Destroyer of Eidolon. 5. Since anybody hardly reads my blog, they are trying to save my time to stop me posting further blogs. 6. They just don't think my language is human english (yea, I had a low verbal score. Big Deal! I live with it, so should they) 7. Somebody f#$%ing flagged me! They are going to let a human verify my blog now. To make that human's life simpler, I thought of helping that human evaluate this blog. Just in case, the human has any doubts, this should clarify that if there is ...

put ya hands in da air 4 ek glassy ... da song totally rox!! Features the sexy HardKaur and British Asian crew, Sona Family [Courtesy: Sanup]

"Yahoo! Messenger with Voice is so cool!" , says my grandma (ofcourse, this is translated from Gujarati), as she was voice-chatting away all morning while she was cooking at the same time. Grandpa loved it too, " Bluetooth headset rocks with voice chat! How do they fit in all this kind of stuff in such a small thing? " Ofcourse, grandpa likes these new gadgets but he is unwilling to use them. " No not me! " Pointing at Grandma, " Let her keep talking! I am happy to see her chatter to someone else " :) So, clearly, grandpa and grandma looks like they love new technology, which is also helping them connect with their loved ones with such ease. Grandpa and Grandma were with me for a couple of weeks last month. So, I thought of showing their regular Indian soaps at my place. But how? After pimping my Xbox, I hardly got a chance to use it. Fortunately, I got an opportunity last week when I realised I could, in no way, get Indian cable from Dish TV for...

... if only I had not bought my iPod before. This one has an FM receiver, sleek NeoN design and expandable memory. Although I wonder if its user interface is as user-friendly as the iPod. Still, worth a dekho (at the nearby store)!

Before they take off the link (I hope not! :D ), I'd like to share a story from CNN-IBN Live which says Taj may not make it to the 7 wonders of the new world. Apparently, there is this new online based survey to find the new 7 wonders. CNN-IBN editor Divisha Gupta thinks Taj is at risk. Divisha says that Taj is at 20th place as of now and we have only 1 more year to vote to top 7. From the New7Wonders website, I do not see any "as-of-now" rankings yet. I wonder how she found it. All I saw (and she may have seen) was an ALPHABETICAL list of "wonders" listed. Apparently, Taj starts with a "T" and is 20th on the list. ROTL!!!! I can't believe they have such editors in their news agency. Hahahahaha! Seven Wonders list: No wah Taj Editor: Divisha Gupta ibnlive.com Posted Thursday , August 03, 2006 at 15:49 Updated Thursday , August 03, 2006 at 16:07 New Delhi: Taj Mahal represents eternal love, inspires many a poet’s imagination and has been immortalis...

Wouldn't it be cool to have an Air Hockey game like this with my friend on the other coast, Pal ??!!

Waiting eagerly for August 7 Update: Waiting for some confirmed rumors now :(

Finally I pimp my Xbox. Got it modded to basically have it as a Media Center. It even has loads of emulators to play my old-school games. One in particular is WWF Wrestlemania. Man! They don't make such games anymore. Its a very basic game but the final moves of the players are so fantasized (skulls flying, hams falling, wolves), it just brings the game to a different level. Besides WWF, I have a few Mario games for Snes and a few Xbox games to I play. XBMC is another app which is the multimedia part of the media center. I hooked up my xbox to my router and now, my PC can easily stream all the audios and videos I have (I use ccxstream for now). Which leads me to build my own file server very soon. Hopefully, a half TB to start with! Another game worth mentioning is the most loved demo game I ever played - Hexen2. Yes, I finally have the game now and am loving it. Its cheats are the simplest (type god to be in god mode) and has almost similar graphics as Quake2. Only difference here...

Critics, get ready! (I don't have any fans for my blog, just critics and occasional random reader ;) ) I am back from a long vacation. Most of you know (well, from Orkut scrapbook) that I had been to India for a month. Its been a few days already after coming back and I have no jet lag no more and I am getting on my daily schedule. Regular blogging will pick up soon after my brain stops farting all the nostalgic moments from the trip. It keeps coming out like a smooth 5sec transitioned Picasa-Slideshow. No wonder when I watched Swades the other day, I felt it is the best movie a director can ever make. Thud! *My head hits hard with a Reality rock* Work is piling up and I have moved out from my holiday mood. I'll not talk about what I did on my trip here. Or even on what happened after I left Mumbai . There are many discussions, debates, arguments, suggestions, help on this matter. All I can say is, my support is for the people of Mumbai. I don't feel an urge to pour my emot...

I have always liked Bharat Bala's initiatives to bring a sense of patriotism. This is his latest offering. "This film is a journey through emerging India, 'the fastest growing free market democracy in the world'. It celebrates the relentless spirit of the people of India, who through their karma give it a place amongst the leading economic nations of the world. Conceived and produced by Bharatbala Productions (BBP) for India Band Equity Foundation (IBEF)."

Bored after eating out in restaurants & cafeteria, preparing the usual frozen-to-microwave meals, dal-rice & vegetable curries, I decided to go for something hatke . Here are a a couple of such experiments: Sev Puri Looks really good but the red chutney kind of sucked and overall, it wasn't tasty. None the less, had two such big plates of sev puri (to fill my stomach). Also vowed never to make it again! Its a pain in preparing it and its a pain to get it taste-worthy! Oven-Baked/Grilled Sandwiches Prepare Cilantro-Chilli Chutney, apply butter (or veggie spread), add sliced cucumber, tomatoes, baked potatoes, green peppers, onions, shredded Amul cheese and salt-n-pepper. And your sandwich is ready. These were good. I don't have a grill. So, I prepared them in my oven. I could make them again but the chutney has to be less spicy next time. It could give someone a hard time next morning ;)

Are South Park kids just a bachpan version of Kramer, Newman, Jerry and George from Seinfeld? An interesting observation!

I was in DC a couple of weekend's back. I had gone for the Paul Van Dyk concert and its become one of my favorites! PVD kick-assed some cool mixes!!! The show was organized at Nation and it supposedly has a capacity of 2000+ people. I don't quite know how many were there that night (yup, drunk!) but the main floor was pack! It was a wild night and enjoyed so much after a long time. At the end of it, Bonda and I even went in the front and shook hands with PVD. We both got an autograph from him on driving directions papers. His assistant was handing out posters and cds but we couldn't get one. So, Bonda and I started shouting, "Hey Paul! Cmon man, a poster here! A CD!!! Paul, cmon!". We thought casual calls to him will feel like we are one of his close buddies. Nope, it didn't work for me. After a while I just gave up. Bonda kept trying. I guess it was the booze but still, he didn't get a cd. We were at least happy about the autograph. Later, we tried gettin...

See how this "common man" broke the chalta hai attitude and took a step to do the right thing against a Traffic Police Commisioner breaking the law . [via Vantage Point ]

If 2005 was a year of watching South Park, 2006 looks like the year of reading Blogs. Although peer competition forced me into writing blogs, I wasn't into reading other blogs (except my peers' blogs with whom I was competing). Lately though, reading blogs has become a new hobby for me. It so happened that one fine day, after screwing with XP system files, my Office PC crashed and I lost all my old RSS Blogs bookmarks. Some of them include materialistic blogs like Google's unofficial news, Apple products' updates and Deals2buy. It made me realise whatever I was reading was in fact, not quite worth reading. Otherwise, even after losing those bookmarks, I would have remembered them if they had made a solid impression on me. I started off fresh after the PC crash. Sitting extra hours, (after office time :) ) I managed to set up a few bookmarks that came out from my memory. I searched for a few ones (related to Sepia Mutiny ) on the then, newly introduced Google Blogsearch...

A couple of weekends back, I moved to my new apartment. This past 3 years, I had been living with roommates but now, I have gone away from this whole "common" experience. No more sharing bills, meals or blaming each other for the apartment's conditions! I am by myself now. The first step to start off living in a new apartment is a painful step. It's the Move - packing, transfering and un-packing! How hard can that be? For starters, there are hundreds of websites which will give you advice to do things in certain ways for making it least painful during this miserable stage. Advice also starts coming in from other directions (family, friends or the stranger from office breakroom). In fact, I got a lot more advice for this Move than my earlier Moves. Since giving advice is free, people tend to use it rather, umm, freely. But every advice has to be heard, understood and analyzed to see what advice will actually work. I got advice about how I should move, where, when and w...

Ever had a day when you find that everything goes wrong? For me, it was 4/2/06. Nothing went right. I keep six alarms to wake me up (yea, I am a deep-sleeper :) ) but that day, none of them woke me up. So, I get up late which leaves me only 20 minutes to attend office meeting! I could have skipped my bath and saved some time there but guess what? I felt so dull the moment I woke up that I felt I needed a bath. Badly! By the time I got ready, it was already time for meeting. I hurry up on the hair & clothes but got stuck on the jacket. I realised I had left one in my car, one at Patil's place and the third and last one was missing. A bright, yellow jacket had disappeared in thin air! I scan my entire apartment and couldn't it. After wasting 10 minutes in finding the jacket, I opted to just run to my car. I drive like a crazy NASCAR driver to reach office in record time. Never seen a NASCAR race but that's my general impression about this sport. Crazy, ass driving! When I...

Its about time I wrote something about the company I admire the most (even more than Google). Apple will officially support dual-boot XP on their hardware. This'll give me a chance to switch to Apple without completely losing my XP usage experience. Gradually, I can move away from Windows apps and transition to Apple. [via tuaw ]

Ever wonder what happens to the Ganpati idols immersed after Ganesh Chaturthi ? Scientifically, it should dissolve but we are not talking about science here. Its religion, faith! We should see extraordinary things happening beneath the sea. Just like this! ;) My favorite part is the M.I. theme. What's yours? (via The Eternal Optimist )

No doubt that Natalie Portman looks cute and ofcourse, hot! Well, she revealed her "true" side on SNL when she was asked, "What's a day in the life of the real Natalie Portman like?" Find it out!

Link: Photo Blog of Clemson Trip March 2006 Bonus Video: Rocking Clemson (credits: Bonda)

Proving Atlanta's speed limit absurdity...

Think of this - you go out for a cruise for 2 months. You come back and check your email only to realise they are all gone. Or in case of some long illness, you are not able to check emails for a month and when you do get a chance to catch-up, you find them GONE! Hotmail has a policy that if you don't login within a month's time, your emails are gone FOREVER! Gmail has 9months (understandable) and Yahoo has 4months (so-so) but 1 month is preposterous. I didn't check Hotmail for a month and they just removed all my emails. I can't believe I lost hundreds of my emails in there. Damn! I sooooo freaking hate Hotmail!!! Plus, its slow, has heavy graphics and gives less storage space (just 250mb!). Hotmail sucks!

Want to learn play songs on your Guitar in less than a day? Check out Mark's website . I am not kidding here! He's got no fancy website but has some amazingly simple videos / mp3s teaching you to play. Mark will get you started with a few songs in a jiffy. Guitar beginners' Heaven ! Strongly recommended!!!

I believe I can fly We saw the last of Williams that day. We skipped breakfast and hurried to get back to GC. The reason being a helicopter ride over the Canyons which we were eager to take. On our way, we noticed it had snowed last night and we were lucky to see a white outfield. We reached the airport to get the ride but it turned out to be the wrong one. At this pitstop, we even had a snowfight! Those who stayed in the car were forced to come out when they were targeted :) After playing for a while, we realised we were getting late for the helicopter ride and all of us hurried back in the van to again search for the airport. The right one, this time! The chopper people gave some initial instructions to better prepare for our adventure. We got an awesome helicopter, a 7-seater - perfect for us! And we even got to see both North and South rims of the Canyons. It was spectacular! Hoover Dam After the ride, we hurried back to Las Vegas as Dsu, Kokate, Korade had to leave that night. Plu...

" Can you tell its a CG car? Look carefully there's more than meets the eye." (source: TheMichaelSmith )

The Grand Canyon We left Williams after having omlettes and Cowboy-Coffee for breakfast at a downtown diner. For the first time, I saw speed limits of 75mph in USA. Nice to be "officially" above 70! When we reached the point where we could see the Grand Canyon, Pal and Dsu ditched us to be first to see the GC. We were still searching for parking but found one spot at some distance ahead. So, it was a little further from the actual point to see the view. While heading towards the point, we actually found this *spot* which was about 50 feet inside the Canyon. Instead of going to the point, we explored a 360-degree view from over the spot. We ditched the ditchers this time! Sorry, no tip for you! Our entire day went by sight-seeing the Canyons. Sunset part was really beautiful but it was chilly enough NOT to enjoy it! By the time we were done with the *tour*, we were really hungry. We decided on a decent restaurant with some fine wining-n-dining. To serve us, we had a wierdo wa...

Its very rare that I make trips to my office on a weekend. This is a story about one of those days. I came to office on Sunday afternoon. There was not a single soul on my section of the floor. It felt odd doing work without the chatting, typing noise and the smell of your neighbors' lunch-food (or was it the smell of their farts). So, to make my life more interesting, I thought of making some strong espresso coffee shots. Not that I am addicted to caffeine but occasional coffee is great to have. So, I head down to the break-room, freshly grind some coffee , put the coffee in an espresso "spoon" (don't quite know what its called) and fix it in the espresso machine. I press the coffee button and vola, my coffee is getting brewed. Nothing special about this here except for the fact that I was kinda doing this for the 1st time (2 half-hearted attempts to use it had failed earlier). So, once I have my cup-ful of coffee, I try to remove the espresso "spoon" from ...

Karmacy 's 'Blood Brothers' video - Its brilliantly funny! Funny cuz its a Gujju hip-hop!!! Brilliant cuz it looks so professional and sincere!!! ;) If you are a Desi, you'll giggle and enjoy it (probably even laugh your ass off)! And if you are a FOB, you'll even relate to it! Or if you are a ABCD, you'll sing it! But ofcourse, if you are a Gujju, you'll understand it! :)