KBC 3 – the season finale

Well well, it must have been my joblessness, or the sun taking its toll on me. Nevertheless I decided to watch the KBC 3 (Kaun Banega Crorepati) – the “grand” finale, “starring” Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif, knowing fully well that this show had lost its status and had started showing traits of “Coffee with Karan” ever since the “wannabe” Big B SRK had taken over. But little did I realize that things were leaps worse than I thought it would be. Just to give you a brief history, “KBC – the first” was one my favorite shows in the past. I used to make sure that I didnt miss any of the episodes, just to see how much I would earn, had I been in the “hot seat”. Not that I ever managed to get close to a crore, but it still had a touch of class and the seriousness of a quiz contest.

A “comparative” study of KBC1 and KBC3 (i have not seen a KBC2 episode yet), in itself would become a Gartner Report and hence would not be covered in this entry ;-). Anyway, this episode was perhaps a bad choice in its own terms, owing to the fact that the people involved were never meant to be on those “hot seats”, otherwise. Expectations were really low, and so were the standard of questions. But the following caught me off guard.

Question : Which is the race associated with the event Tour de France?

A. Marathon.
B. Formula 1
C. Decathlon
D. Cycling
(I dont entirely remember the options that were provided. Hence the B and C were made up, since they didnt seem relevant to the point of discussion ;-))

The answer came within seconds as D, from Katrina Kaif. Although that too surprised me a little bit, what followed as an explanation to why she chose D, left me speechless!! So here it comes.

Apparently, she remembered two names in this context – Alanis Morrisette and a “movie star”!! And when asked how that related to the question, she replied she had read in one of the “gossip” magazines that Alanis once dated a guy called “some” Armstrong (in her exact words), who had won tour de france. And the “movie star” (who was her new boyfriend) was once seen cycling along with him !!

ROFL !!

Can’t write anymore. I am devoid of any sort of reaction or ability to write more. I need sleep !!

PS: I tried a little bit to figure out who the “movie star” was, but gave up hope after a couple of tries!!

Before I go to sleep …

I watched Pirates of the Caribbean – At world’s end, today. Interestingly, the three movies in as many weeks, reminded me of the early days in Bangalore :-). But the 3 hour walk in Manhattan and the 2 hour 45 minutes movie that followed made me a little too tired to write anymore. Add on a complex storyline, mixing parts 1 & 2, and I need time to look back and relate !! So the review would soon follow.

For now, here’s for the Memorial Day !!

How you doing ?

Having almost completed a year in US, a question that was thrown to me on one of the occasions, kept me thinking that whole day. I was asked, “what was the weirdest thing you have experienced in US”. Two reasons why it caught me off guard – one, I was in a huge gathering with people who knew each other, way more than they knew me and two, when this question was asked, I suddenly experienced a thundering silence around me 🙂

It did take me a while to think about the weirdest of the weird things I have seen in this country. I did have several options, such as explicit calculation of the tip amount in some of the restaurants, to the extent that they refused to accept a cheque without a “20%” tip. But perhaps, the best of the lot would be the fact that people on the road, look at you and ask you, “How you doing today” and walk away at the exact same pace, without pausing to hear the answer. Every other day, as I walk down the lane, from my house to the campus, I see umpteen number of people who look at me and ask me the same question, with an unnatural amount of seriousness in their faces. They then continue to walk without even waiting for an answer, be it a good or a bad one. It baffled me in the beginning and I used to pause and turn around to see if they even bothered. But as time progressed, and things seemed more obvious, I realised that courtesy was the word for it. Phrases such as – “How you doing”, “Hows everything”, “Whats up” etc – do not really require a response. During my initial few months here, my inexperienced self, wondered if it was just me who got this response. But I soon realised that was not the case !! 🙂

Because, thats America for you !! 🙂

Disclaimer: This post bears no intent to attack the morality of any individual or a group of people 🙂 It just portrays some views, purely based on my perspectives and can hence not be quoted / referenced.

Missing home ….

another summer day has come and gone away in Paris and Rome, but I wanna go home…

Suddenly missing home and my room !! So here’s to that “miss” 🙂 Castle Nalanda !!

Sequels and Shrek – the third !!

I have always maintained that sequels lose their charm esp. after the second movie unless there was a strong backing from a book or a true life incident. This was rather obvious from the movies such as Final Destination, Spiderman and Scream, unlike movies such as Harry Potter and Lord of the rings. Perhaps this preset initial condition was what set my expectations low, when I watched Shrek the third, last weekend. I was a little surprised that tickets were still available at 9:45 for a 10:00 show on a Saturday night, although that had to be expected in a “small town” such as Syracuse where the population is mostly “emigrants” from the “rest of the world” – that too during a summer vacation.

As it turned out, the movie was not as bad as the “Sequel theory” would have predicted it to be. The new additions “in accordance” to the fairy tales, especially on the villains and the Cindrellas and Rapunzels (the “real” villain in this movie) and the sleeping beauties were innovative!! So were the funeral song, sung by the “band of frogs” and the donkey – puss (in the boots) “partnership”. Shrek and Fiona were their usual loving self, with a bunch of ogres joining them in the end. One of the disappointments was the absence of a song in the end like the Ricky Martin one in Shrek 2 (I had started developing a liking towards that song ever since I watched Shrek 2 :D). Having said all those, I still maintain that Shrek 2 was a much better movie than its version three. And Shrek 4 would certainly be a disaster going by the intermittent signs in “the third” !! But for now, this sure is worth a watch.

Ironically, life has become a routine after the summer break set in. The past two weeks have just been about the work that I do on campus and the three hours of tennis (a new obsession of mine) everyday. In fact the long list of books I posted earlier, are still lying on my rack, waiting to be read. I need to add more activities into this routine, so that it does not turn into a monotony.

As for starters, it is the soccer match tomorrow. Champions league it is – a repeat of the 2005 finals – one of those days I would never forget !! Hope THIS happens again !! 😀 But just a small regret, this time, that I would not be able to post a similar picture, since soccer is not something people in US are mad about and SopCast is yet to realise that an OS known as Mac exists 😉 Nevertheless I shall try !!

Spiderman 3 / Kal Ho Naa Ho

It was not exactly my idea of celebrating the end of semester. But as it turned out, Spiderman 3 was deemed to hit the theaters this week and all my roommates wanted to watch it in theater, taking a break from how it has been over the past one year. In fact we even thought of booking the tickets online, for the fear of it being sold out. For this reason, we decided to go early to the mall and get ourselves the tickets. I was a little surprised to see that tickets were available even an hour before the show (the time when we reached there). But little did I know of the impending disaster. 🙂

3 hours later, I was speechless!! Even Karan Johar would have done a better job of it. He would have loved to do a “spidey” act over the Brooklyn Bridge instead of Shah Rukh Khan (SRK) running across it. It had everything in it, that a Hindi movie would have had – triangle love, anti-hero, vengeance (over what happened 3 movies ago !!), and even “sacrifice” !! I even took a break while the movie was on, to get a grasp of the what was happening and to make sure I was actually watching the “right” movie !! Well, all said, it would have been perfect with a couple of songs injected into it like – Maahe Ve, when Mr Spidey proposes to MJ, Mary Jane (I stand clarified) and Kal Ho Naa Ho, when the “sacrifice” was being made !!

What a start to a wonderful vacation !! 🙂 Well, for the rest of the vacation – I have three books waiting to be read – Beyond Black by Hilary Mantel, Miracle at Kitty Hawk by Fred C. Kelly and Caught in the Current by Jay Bookman and some more on my next visit to a bookstore.