musings

just a random updates of some of things around which my daily life rotates.. friends form a big part of it but space is limited here to write about them :)

• books - have purchased 5 odd books during the last one month, reading "wind-up bird chronicle" for more than a month now.. still 200 pages left.. written in typical of murakami style though different in the length of the story.. this story is told in 600 pages, unusual for murakami.. don't know how the story will unfold in the remaining 200 pages but for the time being will rate "norwegian wood" as the top murakami book that i have read..

• movies - finally watched memento. yes full 8 year late, but as they say, der aaye durust aaye.. movie is really amazing, have to watch some portions of it again to understand it properly.. though still not clear about everything.. was reading some discussion about the movie and read this tagline by one of the person based on the movie's theme.. it goes like this "i remember, therefore i am".. found this tagline quite interesting.. a hindi version of this movie is going to release around christmas, it's called ghajini, don't expect it to be as good as the original.. they are sure gonna focus a lot on the romance with many songs which might spoil the charm of the original.. also watched into the wild and loved it.. wish i could take the courage to do something like that.. one of my batchmate from iimc (abhimanyu) has resigned from job long time back and is on a bike-trip all across india.. you can read about his daily accounts here .. good to see that at least some people are pursuing their passions rathing than fighting in the rat-race..

• music - after rock on (where i like all the songs except for the zehreelay), the next album that i liked was dostana.. music is by vishal-shekhar and the songs have a very fresh appeal to them.. 2 of 3 best songs (jaane kyun and khabar nahin) are actually sung by vishal himself while the 3rd one (kuch kam) is by shaan.. next came yuvraaj, a collaboration of gulzar + a.r. rahman but this doesn't come even remotely close to the magic of dil se.. though the music is different in that some of the songs are a fusion of indian & western classical but i think it could have been better.. my personal favorite is manmohini money.. next in line is rab ne bana di jodi, stars srk and the newcomer anushka sharma and is directed by aditya chopra of ddlj fame.. music by salim-sulaiman and lyrics by jaideep sahni (they have collaborated in earlier srk movie chak-de india too).. the album has just 4 tracks and an instrumental track but simply love all the tracks.. the most unique number is without doubt the phir milenge chalte chalte track.. sung by sonu nigam, it consists of 5 stanzas.. the lyrics of each stanza is composed of the lyrics of the songs from the movies and name of the movies of one particular actor, the 5 stanzas thus take care of raj kapoor, dev anand, shammi kapoor, rajesh khanna and rishi kapoor in this particular order.. this also matches the chronological order in which these actors were the kings of bollywood.. what else each stanza of the song starts with the signature tune of a hit song of the respective actor.. you have to listen to this song to understand what i am saying here.. after this only last week i downloaded songs of sorry bhai.. liked only 2 songs (jalte hain and mere khuda), coincidently both are sung by kk.. though not as good as the songs sung by him in gangster, woh lamhe or metro, but still always good to hear the refreshing voice of kk.. may be if the music was composed by pritam, it could have made the difference.. lastly, i downloaded ghajini soundtrack last night, this one is a.r. rahman + prasoon joshi (earlier they worked on rang de basanti and taare zameen par).. till now have listened to only one song, tu meri guzarish sung by javed ali (last heard in jashn-ae-bahara in jodha akbar), but this has really grown on me very fast, actually from the first listen itself.. don't know if i will care to listen to other songs :)

• sports - playing football regularly every saturday, hope this continues.. also playing squash regularly every sunday except for the last sunday, my squash partner was out.. he is also out for the coming sunday but will be playing with another of my office colleague.. the court will be closed down for many months from december for some renovation work, will have to look for another court then.. one thing that i miss is tennis, haven't played since may :(

• office - obviously this has to come at the end :) nothing great on this front, except that my colleague has gone on leave since yesterday.. he won't be there till next friday.. so i have to manage the work all by myself for 9 days, of which i have successfully completed 2 days.. besides the usual work, today i gave a briefing of all the products that i work on to two of the sales team member, the whole session lasted for 2.5 hours with a break.. at the end of it, they told me that i taught them very well and so i felt good.. my previous teaching experience is the stint as the statistics tutor in second year of iimc.. that was also a good experience for me.. one thing that i have noticed is that i teach better when i teach a small group and when i am teaching on a paper using a pen as compared to teaching a big group and teaching on a black/white board using a chalk/sketch pen.. i don't know what is the reason for this but i felt the same thing at iimc also.. even in office, when i was briefing a bigger sales team yesterday, i don't think it was as good as it went today..