Last Post - 2008

Well, I got a few things to take care of this winter like getting a technical certification and concentrating on ski season training. And with more hours of planned sleep every day, I have decided that something needs to give. I also tend not to socialize much during winter preferring to spend most of my time by myself. No dating either since I can't be bothered with putting on nice winter clothing and taking long walks in city streets in winter. This is my last post for this year. Here is some food for thought until my first post next year:

This is half a week's worth of shopping. A second trip to the market will be to buy chicken, vegetables and more fruit. I use eggnog instead of cottage cheese for a couple of months out of the year. I also prefer heavy cream to that half-and half stuff. The white package is wild salmon. I like to cook fish the same day I get it as I don't like storing fish in the fridge. So I make 2 to 3 trips a week to the market just to buy fish. Alright, so there is some stuff in there that is not organic.

Fish and vegetables washed down with some plantation rum: my flagship recipe!


Breakfast stuff including some piping hot PG Tips' tea.


Bison hamburger with sauteed onions and mushrooms. No cheese. I prefer eating cheese by itself.


Roast chicken and eggs.

Roast chicken and vegetables.

Roast chicken and rice.

Of course, I could always get stuff from the food court in Faneuil Hall, a five minute walk from my house, if I don't feel like cooking at home. Here we see lamb kabobs from a Greek shop in the food court. I wouldn't have minded a little more meat and a little less rice though.

This blog will now go on hiatus until next spring...

Quantum of Solace (A brief movie review)

Opening Sequence

One of the most anticipated moments in a Bond movie is its opening sequence. In Quantum of Solace (QoS), the opening sequence is a continuation of where Casino Royale (2006) left off. As it played out, I yawned. Then the opening credits and the song accompanying it came on. The main reason why I developed a liking to Chris Cornell's You know my name was because I enjoyed how the visuals in the opening credits for Casino Royale played out. That eventually led me to develop an ear for Chris Cornell's track. Not so here. In QoS, I didn't even attempt to figure out who the singer was. The visuals were rather flat and so I sat back with pursed lips. This has got to be the worst opening in a Bond movie. I yawned again.

Bond Girls

Gemma Arterton is forgettable. Her time on screen is so brief that I don't even remember if I had a chance to observe her..um..selling points. Her destiny, in the same mold as a former Bond girl from a much better Bond movie, isn't as impressive. The other Bond girl, Olga Kurylenko, impresses to an extent. She is more in the mold of Maryam d'Abo from The Living Daylights (1987) except Kurylenko knows what she is getting into once she is, figuratively speaking, in bed with Bond. Her accent, playing a South American character, is slightly uneven but admirable given Kurylenko is East European.

The Baddies

The baddie from Casino Royale has hardly any screen time and is forgettable. We just want him dead and done with so as to be able to see what the movie can do after that. Another baddie, a corrupt South American General (how original) is on-and-off menacing. The main baddie is a pussified version of a villain from any action movie and I was sorely disappointed.

The Plot

After a point, I stopped caring.

The Stunts

An airplane chase over no-man's land is the highlight of the movie. The other stunts are cursory, badly edited and didn't stay in my mind.

Daniel Craig

Craig had a memorable presence in Casino Royale. In QoS, his character is severely lacking and he speaks no memorable one-liners. I think that Daniel Craig will be a Bond who is only as good as the script and its pacing. Otherwise, a distinct lack of charm with his leading ladies (think Roger Moore) and flair for a playful sense of humour (Pierce Brosnan) stand out rather painfully.

Conclusion

It is obvious that the filmmakers were unsure as to how to continue with the franchise from where Casino Royale left of. Without the Bond brand, QoS would have been just another piece of disposable action entertainment.

RIP M.N.Nambiar

Know anyone who has acted with 7 generations of actors and starred in more than a 1,000 movies?



From the BBC:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/7737798.stm

Anatomy of a scene

This is a repost of a post originally published on Crossroads back in June 2007. I am so busy at the moment at the office that I have not had much time to write.

"It was late afternoon as I pulled into my driveway and climbed out. The sun was warm and making its way toward the horizon. On a whim, I walked across the huge yard toward the rolling fields beyond the property line. I scurried over the freshly painted white fence and, with my hands on my hip, stood there taking in the lazy scene. The sky was a deep blue with wisps of milky white clouds passing by at a snail's pace. They had all the time in the world. A cockchafer went flying past me. I craned my neck to follow his flight path. He was moving fast and soon he was out of sight over a small hill overflowing with dandelions that were swaying gently to the breeze. It was a calm day but then it was always calm out here.

As I sunned, I slowly became acclimatized to the smells and sounds of the field. A slight but angry rustle nearby indicated that my presence had disturbed the slumbers of a small animal, perhaps a field mouse. Two butterflies were in earnest conversation a ways off. They seemed to tumble down a bit. They were in combat. Were they fighting for the love of a lady then? The distant warble of a purple martin seemed to add a layer of melancholy to their battle. One of them was destined to lose. I hoped that they were not brothers.

The sun was sinking lower in the sky and the breeze had picked up. The light had turned to a cooler blue. There was a faint hint of a familiar scent wafting down from a small hill yonder to my right: the fragrance of bur marigolds that I could not see. Maybe that cockchafer had a cousin who made her home amidst those marigolds. Had he been taking tea with her before he said his goodbyes and so ended up flying past me on his way home? Maybe it was time for me to be getting home too. I took one long earnest look around. Everything seemed to indicate that it was time to start settling in for the night. I turned and started waddling my way back home."

Goodmorning!

Pure Moods III - A brief CD review

I have actually owned this CD for several years now. When I played it for the first time then, I didn't notice any catchy tracks, especially in light of what I had gotten used to in the first two installations of the Pure Moods series. Recently, on a drive back from a hike in NH, I put this CD on. I played the CD twice and listened to all the songs. Here are my thoughts on which tracks caught my fancy and which fell short.

Some tracks, like Synaesthetic from the Blue Man Group, I skipped right away during the first play. Other tracks like Games Without Frontiers from Peter Gabriel, I listened to fully the first time but skipped thereafter. Yet other tracks like Deliver Me from Sarah Brightman, Only If by Enya and Gravity of Love by Enigma were listened to fully during both iterations and have not been listened to since (but may be listened to tentatively at some point in the future).

Here are the five tracks that I continue to listen to in Pure Moods III (the other tracks are skipped):

#5 Land of Anaka - Brian Eno and Geoffrey Oryema

It was Geoff's deep voice and what seemed like a slow guitar that initially drew me to this song. Now I have taken a very strong liking to it.


#4 Cristofori's Dream - David Lanz

A beautiful, mellow instrumental. This piece should be listened to in a very, very quiet room. Otherwise, you won't do it justice.


#3 Porcelain - Moby

I had been listening to this song on YouTube for a while now without realizing that I had had it in a CD for a long time. I had found it after looking up information on Moby, whose theme from the Bourne movies originally piqued my interest and eventually led me to discovering this song.


#2 On Sacred Ground - Yanni

I had a feeling that this piece, with its grandeur, might be from Yanni (I lost the album cover a long time ago and had to look up the track listing on Amazon). And I was right. However, there seems to be no piano/keyboard (a Yanni signature) in the instruments used. At first I felt that the flute that picks up after the first two minutes of this piece was a bit invasive but now I am used to that. This piece brings to mind visions of being alone in the insides of a very old cathedral or chapel in an ancient town...although the guy who posted the below video had other visions.


#1 Life in Mono - Mono

Y'know, I was worried that this track might have been by some female named Ashley or Kayden something or other. But, thank goodness, it turned out to be by a singer with the lovely name of Siobhan de Maré. This was also the theme song in the movie Great Expectations (1998). Love it!

As Tests go...

I know that I said I never watched Cricket Tests. It was true up until a month ago. But with the Australians recently touring India for the Border-Gavaskar trophy, which consists of four Tests, I seem to have taken a sudden liking to Tests. Somehow the thought that a Test equates to a battle is a charming thought. Unlike the Twenty20 or ODI formats in Cricket, a Test is played for a period of five days. That's right! Five days! Each team gets to play two innings, each attempting to better its scores, or simply keeping the other down, with every batting turn. At the end of a day of play, the teams get to assess a variety of factors:

• How did the pitch behave today? Was there enough turn on the ball? Was there enough swing for the pace bowlers?
• Who played well and who didn't? Is a player's exising injury starting to bother him and should that be taken into consideration going forward?
• How much of the weather was a factor today? How much of the weather will be a factor during the remaining days? If the weather makes a turn for the worse (maybe heavy crosswinds are predicted), will the behavior of the pitch change?
• If that particular batsman turns out to be in great form tomorrow, how should the fielding placings be to counter his favorite selection of shots?
• And so on...

So now you see why such a Cricket match is called a Test! Trust me. People call Cricket a slow, boring game. But that is because they don't understand it or don't care to. In the Border-Gavaskar trophy, there are four Tests involved. This is a series. Whichever team wins the most Tests takes the series. The series is played every few years in India. And it is always played between India and Australia. The Aussies are the number 1 ranked Test team in the world. India are in 3rd place (South Africa are in 2nd place).

So far in the 2008 series, 2 Tests have been played in this series. The first Test was drawn and India won the 2nd Test by a huge margin. The 3rd Test will be on a ground where the India team has not lost the last 7 Tests it played there. And the Aussies apparently, after their heavy defeat last week, are raring to go! Anyway, the 3rd Test begins tonight at 12 PM EST (9 AM local time) in Delhi. An additional problem the teams have to encounter at the beginning of this 3rd Test is low visibility because of smog from all the firecrackers that were used up for the recently concluded Diwali, a national festival! I am going to bed now to get a few hours of sleep because I have to be up at midnight!!