TURQUOISE CHILL

After watching the third installment of the Twilight Saga, my mind is eclipsed by the thought of being dragged to the viewing of the next. Well in all fairness though, I'm looking forward to the next movie in the series just to see how painful this Bella character can be. Throughout the movie with all its action and intrigue of Vampires VS Warewolves and stuff, there's one person I felt like getting into the screen and slapping to make her come to her senses and that was Bella. For those who haven't read the books or watched the earlier installments, don't bother watching this one till you got and catch the first two. once you're up to speed with who's who and what is what and why is why, you will get it. The movie is well made and the plot is racy, all except the character of Bella who is absolutely insipid. She is more frigid than ice, well except in the last scene where some colour and life comes into her being. I guess Kristen Stewart played her part...

I had got home early and was out on the balcony checking on our Finches when I saw this beautiful dragonfly on the cable wire next to the door. I thought to myself, this would be awesome to shoot if I had an SLR Camera. Hello! I do have one, I realized and rushed in, grabbed my Canon EOS 1000D and started shooting. Here are the results.

After last night’s soiree at THE WALL where I had gone on an official yet casual gathering of work colleagues and others, I headed back home. I skipped eating dinner to head back home to have a home cooked meal with my wife. So I got home by 11 PM and as I settled down to have dinner, the power went. So we waited for a while in the hope that it would come back as it usually doesn’t go for more than half an hour in our neighborhood. But then the time was a bit odd too and I had the worst feeling that this wasn’t a regular outage but a breakdown somewhere. Finally after a sweating it out for nearly an hour, my wife suggested we go out for a drive and hopefully by the time we came back, the power would be restored. It was close to midnight by the time we got out and suddenly my wife had a craving for Ice-cream. I was like if we were in Delhi I’d go straight to India Gate, and she was like that was exactly the thought I her head that led to the craving for Ice-cream. Well so we drove aro...

So after The Basement it was good old SOMEPLACE ELSE. Man, it had been ages since we had been there and the completely renovated driveway was witness to that. I loved what they had done to it, no more chaos with proper lanes and all in place. We popped in and to our surprise we couldn’t recognize even one of the boys behind the bar. Man the staff had done a once over in our absence. Anyway we grabbed to pints of Kingfisher Beer after we had watched The Saturday Night Blues Band perform their last track and headed to the front right side for a vantage point to check out this new act. Well new to us at least, since we hadn’t been witness to the changes that had occurred in the Mecca of live music. So suddenly we see this waif like girl who had been trotting about get one stage with the rest of the band and we realized that she was the lead singer. This was going to be interesting. They looked like kids but once they started playing things got interesting. Initially they did a sound ...

I had heard so much about The Basement and how it was the new destination for live gigs, so after watching the movie, we headed there. Once we got down the stairs, this place truly was a basement. It had the ambience of being someone’s personal hangout pad with a little bar at one end, a small stage and a wooden dance-floor in the middle and some cozy lounge type seating on the other side. We headed to the bar which had the best view of the band and while I got a Pint of Kingfisher beer, my wife was a bit more adventurous and ordered a Pinacolada. We watched the bartender prepare the drink and wondered if he knew what he was making, but when we got the final product, it tasted fine. Sure it was Vodka instead of White Rum, but what the heck, we weren’t complaining. While sipping our drinks the band started to play and I remembered seeing these guys playing at Some Place Else long ago. I wasn’t really sure if they were Urban Reflektion or Catch 22, but the Vocalists definitely sand w...

We had been waiting to watch this much hyped movie with Angelina Jolie as a secret agent called SALT. Well the movie was a bit of a disappointment till the interval as it was more drama than action. The building up of the story in the entire first half did take a little away from the action thriller. But then the second half was racy and the story was quite twisted. Suddenly you couldn’t guess who the good guys were and who the bad guys were, anymore. Anyway by the last scene I kind of figured it was a decent action thriller and the action scenes were well choreographed. Jolie does a great job as agent gone rogue trying to prove her innocence.

I had reached office and my wife called me all excited and said she witnessed the most amazing thing. She saw one of the eggs hatching and baby Finch coming out. She even managed to capture some pictures of the event and mailed them to me. Here they are:

When my friend Diptanshu invited me to watch him and his band perform I made sure that I went considering I had missed their last performance too. They were doing a gig at Big Ben which is the night club at The New Kenilworth Hotel . Well that in itself was an added bonus, having never been there, I’d get to see a new act in a new place. Wasn’t surprised though that when we got there at about 8:30pm, things hadn’t yet kicked off as was supposed to, but then that’s IST (Indian Standard Time) for you. That gave me enough time to scope out the place. After one round only I liked it. It reminded me of a place I used to love to frequent in Delhi; Djinns at The Hyatt Regency. Anyway my wife and I found ourselves a place at the bar from where we weren’t in the middle of things and yet could view the performance. We chose the bar, as it had been a while since had actually sat on high bar stools, and these ones were really comfy. The other reason was that at a night club, this was the best...

I just watched INCEPTION thanks to a friend of mine; Ekdum free ka movie at FAME South City. He also told me the movie would be best viewed from the middle of the hall and so my wife and I opted for row E instead of our customary Row A/B/C and were sitting plum in the middle of the hall. The screen looked quite huge from here. The opening scene introduced us to our Protagonist, Leonardo Dicaprio washed up on a beach. And after that starts the madness. The guy who conceived the script, the guy who directed it and the people who have acted in it must have spent a lot of time getting used to the entire concept. The entire first half is about familiarizing you with the concept. If you’re not paying attention from the word go, you’ll completely lose track of the movie post the interval. So what’s it about, well it’s about dreaming and how people can be influenced in their dreams. Explain the concept would require me to be on some sort of “stuff”, so I’m not even going to go there. Al...

My wife and I had a 10:20 pm appointment at the multiplex at Fame South City. It’s nice when you have friends in the right places; we’d been invited to a special viewing of the Film “INCEPTION”. Infact we were going to be the first people in the city to watch the film. So we had time to kill from 6:30 pm till then. I had suggested Momos at Elgin Road, but while she was on the way to meet me at Park Circus, she suggested we do Chinese and that too at “Kasan”. It didn’t sound like too bad an idea, it was close to my office and they did serve draught beer. So Kasan it was. Well Kasan, though we still refer to it by that name, changed hands from its original Chinese owner several years ago and is now called Flavours of India, but for most people it’s still Kasan. It’s located on A.J.C. Bose Road, just short of the Lamartiniere for Girls School back gate if you’re coming from Theatre Road or Park Street. Anyway I got there first and got straight down to the business of beer at a tabl...

After watching an action packed film last night, I had quite shocking morning. As usual I got out of bed and as the practice has been for the past couple of weeks, in my sleepyhead state went out to check on our little finces. I looked into the Ross & Monica nest where there had been two eggs, and to my surprise I couldn't see the white orbs.I looked more closely and wondered where they could've have gone to. No sign what soever. That's when I started to panic and rubbed my eyes and got them to open wide. I was in complete shock to see those two pink creatures form in-front of my eyes; tiny little finchy babies. Two of them with their beaks opening and closing. Gosh! Could the be so tiny? I went running back in and shook my wife out of her sleep. I told her the eggs had hatched and we had Finchy Babies. That's the fastest I've seen my wife jump out of bed and kiss her sleep goodbye. One moment she was asleep and the next she was at the cage checking the l...

I was mentally prepared to watch an action packed movie starring the top gun and one of the Angels of Hollywood and that is exactly what I got. Tom Cruise just cruises through roles of this sort. The plot is intriguing as the story makes your mind oscillate between wondering whether Tom is the bad guy or the good guy. I noticed that the women in the hall were drooling at the sight of the 48 year old Mission Impossible star. Cameron Diaz on the other hand plays the enamoured car junkie. She is besotted by Tom and they go globe trotting on one crazy adventure. But wait, I would do justice if I didn't mention that she just burnt the screen in a sizzling red bikini in one of the scenes from the movie which had all the guys’ eyes popping out and maybe some of the girls too. The movie is great for its action scenes, and the car chase scene is just awesome. Bad guys in fancy cars chasing Tom & Cameron on a bike and to add to the sheer madness of this chase, a dozen of so bull...

I clicked this pic while waiting for my wife. I was amazed at the intensity of the rain and how I had managed to drive through this blinding onslaught. This picture was taken in front of the Unnayan Shopping Complex.

Coffee World 1 Green Apple Soda: Rs. 63.00 1 Grilled Chicken Salad: Rs. 99.00 1 BBQ Chicken Sandwich: Rs. 144.00 Grand Total: Rs. 306.00 Tax: Rs. 38.25 Total: Rs. 344.00 Cream and Fudge 1 Strawberry Shortcake: Rs. 185.00 Tax: Rs. 23.12 Total: Rs. 208.10

It was only 9.30 Am and my wife wanted to visit the Ice Skating Rink to get something sorted out with one of the shops she had bought a product from a couple of weeks ago at an Exhibition. There was no way in the world that the exhibition would have opened for business at such an early hour. So we wondered what we could do for the next couple of hours. Suddenly my wife suggested we go to her mother’s work place and hang out with some little wonders. Hang out with children for a bit, that’s awesome. I was immediately in. She wanted me to see this one child in particular and told me how she thought he was so cute. So we landed up at SICW and spent the next hour or so with the kids. All I can say about the experience is “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” . you can know all about their work at www.sicwforchildren.org

After China Town, we headed towards our original destination for our Sunday Morning Adventure. After finding out that “Rachel” was not really a “Rachel” but more like a “Ross” my wife decided that we had to get two more female Finches. We had visited our local pet store, but she didn’t quite like the finches there and after some research we had found that this was the Mecca of Pets. Galiff Street was like the Numero Uno place to visit for all things pet. Every Sunday this street is shut to traffic, except the Trams, and is besieged by breeders, buyers, animal lovers, photographers and tourists. Galiff Street is just a little beyond Shyambazar 5 Point crossing. Head towards Dunlop and it is on the left just as you are ascending Tala Bridge. We went crazy and spent about two hours here, during which time we learned quite a bit about Finches and also bought two female ones. I'll say no more and let the pictures speak for themselves. I was so overwhelmed by the sight of the s...