Domain Maximus

Fresh out of the first day first show of “Kingdom of Heaven”, I can say I am impressed. By many things. For starters I find it nice they ran the movie with three people in the theatre out of which one guy came late, and the other I am sure was an employee posted to make sure I didn’t do any of those things single men normally do when in dark rooms alone with movies. (Married men don’t use dark rooms, they have “something important” that come up in the office just after everyone else has left. This is particularly prevalent among those who have laptops not subject to weekly IT team checkups. Sometimes this causes headaches when they go back home. Forcing their wives to subscribe to Cosmo. Which the men then smuggle to the office. It is a vicious circle.)

But onto more serious things, KOH is a good movie. Orlando Bloom actually pulled off the lead role well I thought. I don’t know if it was the rugged costume and makeup or the strong double espresso I had before the movie, but he looked very unlike his roles in LOTR or Troy, both of which were very gay. Ridley Scott seems to have made a product which is classier than Gladiator, but I would be surprised if any Oscars happened this time. Just does not have that feel about it. But I enjoyed it thoroughly, even moreso because of the historical background to the story and a lack of the pretentiousness that made a hash of Alexander. Some excellent graphical work, and good performances by a majority of the cast. While the story and the sript seems very touchy in this day and age, the movie seems to pull it off well with minimal cliche or jingoism. The very fact that it was screened without controversy in the Middle East I think is proof enough. A good couple of hours of filmmaking. I think Ridley Scott has done ok. Or it could be the espresso.

I bought a cassette of clasical music today. Now before any of you start waving admonishing fingers at any perceived pseud behaviour, let me tell you that I enjoy a little bit of the symphony and all without really understanding much of it, or purporting to do so. Today I pocketed a nice little collection of bits from symphonies. I think it makes excellent accompaniment to a blogging session or some light reading. One of the things I want to be able to is identify atleast the famous bits of music when I listen to them. Beethoven, Mozart etc. And then maybe even learn to appreciate all of them a little bit. Right now its all a little bit frustrating really. I see that aftershave ad and I swear I’ve heard that bit of music somewhere. Which reminds of me a conversation I once had with a friend of mine:

Me: Dey!!! Whats that piece in the Old Spice ad?
Friend: The one with the surfboarder?
Me: yeah yeah
Friend: Tada tada tatata tada… (etc.)

He had a good memory for music. Pity we were chatting online then. Anyways the tape plays behind me as I write this and it is a soothing feeling let me tell you. Speaking of symphonies I can never forget a friend of mine who was burning a CD in a packed netcafe. He caused a minor uproar when he called out to an aquaintance a few computers away that he had just “completed Beethoven’s Unfinished”.

Back home my sister, yes the Gameboy whiz, rushes through lunch to watch Kkusum on cable. Kkusum I believe is a highly rated soap. I used to watch episodes of the Bold and the Beautiful when I was small. Everyone who had a crush on Caroline when they were in school say AYE!!! Ah those were the days. Before all the infighting and plot twists went awry. I finally gave up when some guy divorced and remarried so many times he became his own aunt at one point. Nowadays I only watch it when the episode guide says things like “intimate”, “romance”, “steamy” etc. Then you get to see small patches of lingerie before the camera moves behind a bookshelf.

Coming to think of it, its not so tough to make one of those soaps. I mean a sample episode would be so:

Scene 1: Phone rings, male character picks up, “Hello”, “yes” Look of shock… “My God…”
Ad break
Scene 2: “Batao…kya hua Blossom Babykutty ko?”… (Rest of family gathers around phone…) Male character hangs up…
Ad break
Scene 3: “Blossom ko hospitalise kiya hua hai…” Mother character: “Nahi…!!!” Faints…
Ad break
Scene 4: They all go to hospital, rush to ICU, doctor walks up to male character… look of shock.. pause… end of episode…

The next week you can reveal that Blossom had an appendix problem that actually turned out to be an illegitimate child that looks a lot like the male character except that the child does not wear glasses or smoke. That should take it till 2008.

Though for all the turmoil and suspense in our desi soaps, nothing can match the phirangs in terms of character names. ALL the guys, every single one of them, have ultra cool names. Most of them are named after geographical formations, tools and other industrial supplies. Which muscle ripping young man would not want a stud name like Spanner, Drill or Crag?

Anyways the rest of today will be spent in trying to hammer out a short story thats been playing around in my head for sometime. An interesting little thing that should take a couple of days to rough draft atleast. On the professional side I will be booking into a hotel in Mumbai for around ten days from the 15th of May before I get my own acco. Need to find a place somewhere around BKC where the office is. Anyone with any leads to drop in an email.

Now off I go to complete a book about marvels of modern engineering. Has all the major feats of indutry and fabrication like the Brooklyn bridge and all. It doesn’t have Micheal Jackson though.

Ciao people and take care.

Aloha people from the unusually unsunny and cool climes of the Middle East. The princely city of Abu Dhabi to be precise. Another few days of feeding and fattening before I hit the Mumbai roads two weeks from now. A terrible lot of things have happened since the last post by the way. I was witness to another spectacular feast at the local church, yet another laptop crash and reinstall and, to top it all of nicely, an exhilarating road trip from Mumbai to Chennai through “Oh I really want to retire here” Pune and “I will drop if I have another bite of Biryani” Hyderabad. The trip itself augurs many a traveloguish post. I dare say my adventures in Mumbai, a mere couple of hours after landing there, would make a rollicking little chapter in any book of historical blunders. Suffice to say, one cellphone was lost in a Mumbai taxi, and in an hour’s time one call was made on that phone, on roaming, to my house in Mallu-land by a certain Inspector Mahabole in the Mumbai Crime Branch. The incident was not well received at home. The police have as much to do with the Vadukuts as Iraq has to do with WMDs. (By which I mean “nothing” for all you war-mongering types.)

I started off an a day-by-day, pint-by-pint description of the road-trip, but lost everything when the OS on my IBM crashed. I tried to revive it many many times, and even took it to a conclave of IBM service people. But there was only black smoke everywhere. So I had to reinstall everything. Voila!!! Sidin’s Thinkpad the Second. And now my memory fails me in this old age and I don’t remember enough of the trip to write posts on. And how old am I? A ripe old 26 as of the 30th of April… Yes people 3 days ago was yours truly’s birthday and I celebrated it by filching out of my dad not just a new cellphone but a computer game thingie as well. But more on all that a little later…

On friday I was a passenger on one of the first Air India Express flights. I took the one out of Cochin to Abu Dhabi and the experience was mixed. I was thrilled at having saved a nice little packet on the ticket which I could use on something useful in Abu Dhabi like chocolates full of peanuts or a pair of jogging shoes or something. But all the while I was also scared they may try to reduce costs by cutting down on the number of wheels, wings or pilots based on some consultant’s work. My fears were uncalled for, at least on that particular front. The flight had excellent security arrangments, and even had a pilot all the way from Boeing. The uniform for the cabin crew varied according to seniority. From “dignified dhinchak” for the senior staff to “pathetically pansy” for the underlings. The guy who served in my section of the plane wore a pink shirt over an orange turtle-neck something underneath. Both garments had numerous cheerful red-brown swoosh marks on them. And just in case they tried to de-pansy themselves with a coat, they were issued with screaming red overcoats, thus in one fell swoop doing away with the need for any sort of emergency lights in case of a landing at sea in pitch darkness.

All that said the crew were very courteous and the seats were not as bad as I was told to expect. Being one of robust girth I was secretly dreading the thought of spending the whole flight wedged between handrests with my bottom a few inches off the seat. But I was quite comfy in my aisle seat and had much fun watching the new crew learning the ropes and making a complete hash of the little flight safety demonstration thing they do while taxiing. Which is excellent timing. The ordinary passenger is just minutes away from take off and suddenly they are telling him what to do in case of a landing on water. But even the most pessimistic of passengers must have cracked up seeing the orange and pink crew member aggravate the situation further by wearing a yellow life jacket. I held my tongue while almost shouting for an encore. (More than one housewife was spotted choosing paint shades for the new children’s room during the demo.)

Then they served a light meal. You know that moment in a horror movie when the transition occurs from nice, romantic and steamy intro sequence to random rapid fire appendectomies? That happened when the meal was served. In one moment of culinary madness they had made all that X-raying and frisking in the airport meaningless. The vada could easily knock out one man at 10 paces and an aloo bonda on a mad trajectory could pierce the aircraft fuselage before you could say “one cube of sambar please”. I was looking at over 170 people being served potentially fatal weapons of destruction. Indeed it took me a little while to notice that what I thought was cleverly disguised sheets of kevlar was actually a cheese sandwich, at least at one point it was. I wore my seatbelt just in case dozens of mouths biting into the bondas and vadas led to turbulence. While I gathered my senses and chipped teeth, I made a small mental note to carry some food and a pair of Ray-bans the next time I flew. No sense in exposing my body to the food and uniforms.

But otherwise it was a pleasant flight and I hope the venture is a succesfull one. Once home I quickly went about securing the purchase of a cute little Samsung mobile phone and a Gameboy Advance Handheld game console. I was due a new mobile phone, but the computer game was a total whim. It was not easy to convince especially when the only other person who owns one in the family is a cousin younger than that grey pair of socks I have. But I have always have been a computer gaming freak and though I am terrible at them, I enjoy a good hour of gaming more than most things. (More than mos things that take an hour I mean…) So off I went and bought the machine and a couple of games including Max Payne!! Boy, games have become tougher than when I was in school. Back then Streetfighter was hot property and you were a master if you knew the special moves for all the characters. Today you cant even make your character throw a punch without tearing the webbing between your fingers.

Phew its been a tough couple of days trying to get past even the first few stages. But damn!!! it is a good machine and helps me forget the fact that I am 26 years old and will be working in two week’s time. But my sister is already sizing up the machine for conquest. She is a whiz at these games. I dunno how I am ever to play these games they make nowadays. Sometimes I see nightmares where they make a game where you have to grow armies and then drive from village to village in Porsches killing Nazis and recovering flags. People out there pray for me to kill that guy with the big gun in level four. If only Max had a few “Air India Express” vadas and bondas… sigh…

Chalo all, and do keep reading and writing in…