Touching the void

The closer you are to death. The more you realize you are alive.

If you want to know what real guts are, watch this movie.
It is a true story of two mountaineers (Simon Yates & Joe Simpson), who decide to climb the peak of Siula Grande in Peru, how one of them is left alone to face death, when things go horribly wrong and his eventual fight back.
More about it on wikipedia.

Double trouble

I have been partaking in many a misadventure in the past few days.
Firstly, I joined the gym after a long long break of around 1 year. My gym schedules , till now, have usually lasted for around 3 weeks after which I give up due to some excuse or the other. Anyway after half an hour of gym, I came to realize why I had given up gym for so long: It pained !!

When I reached home 2 DSPs were waiting. And the resulting party resulted in the worst hangover I have ever had in my life.

And today I combined swimming and gym together. As in, I swam for an hour and then went to the gym. Interestingly, basketball is more strenuous than the two combined and I would have stuck with that if I hadn't torn my shoes (again).

"All things must pass none of life's strings last. So, I must be on my way and face another day"

- Beatles

Flickr pro

My brother bought me a Flickr pro account when I was in Delhi, and it rocks. So, these days when I'm not wasting my time watching ridiculous movies, I organize my photos.

The weekend continues

I seem to be laying my hands only on really pathetic movies these days. Yesterday I got "Teesri Aankh", Sunny Deol's latest flick, not because I expected a great story, but because I wanted to see some of Sunny Deol's trademark stunts. Like, for example in "Gadar" he stops a bunch of goons just by shouting out loudly. In "Hero" he manages to kill Amrish Puri by breaking a test tube of plutonium in his mouth, which causes nuclear fission. Sunny Deol, who was in close proximity to the explosion, is unhurt and only suffers from mild cold and cough.
"Teesri Aankh" though is a great dissappointment. There is only one stunt which impressed me, where Sunny praji kicks a SUV, which then flies into the bad guys. Amisha Patel is dumb (as in she can't speak) and dumb (as in she is really idiotic) in the whole movie. Her antics made me stop fast forwarding the movie. I just stopped watching it. Another 20 bucks down the drain.
But wait, I'm not done yet. I also watched "Skeleton Key", which is supposed to be a horror movie. The first CD dragged on for quite some time. By the time I started watching the second one, I fell asleep. Maybe I will just go watch "Crash" a third time.

Another weekend

and I rushed to the CD shop to get some movies.
"15th Park Avenue" is a tragic movie on two counts. Tragic because it depicts the life of a girl who is suffering from schizophrenia and also because the movie is a genuine waste of time (not that my time is valuable or anything, but still). It is a painstakingly slow movie with an open ending. And I hate open endings. Given that I would like to see intelligently made movies, but I'm not intelligent enough to work out some obscure ending all by myself. I don't have that much intellect. But I guess such movies will get (or has already gotten) critical acclaim in the same way that modern artists get to sell their paintings for a fortune. Most people don't understand them, but the rich ones pay a real big amount for them, just to show off (it is obvious that they too don't understand them). Bloody rich people. I hate them too, along with open endings !!

The second one, Pink Panther, is what we call a "Khaali" movie. Full of nonsense and it sure made me laugh. The only dissappointment being that *the Pink Panther* is not in the movie.

Weird coincidences

I have not been updating this blog for the past few days, due to some really lame reasons, one of which is internal exams. But exams got over yesterday and I'm all relieved that another pain is off my back.
I saw "crash" yesterday and it is a really good movie, just couldn't understand its motive.
Attendance was again the reason for me to go drag myself to class in this really hot and humid day. The 7th semester results were announced when we were in class and I came to know that I weigh as much as my percentage. And I'm happy about both.
Update: The overall good results resulted in us landing at Cherai beach at 1 a.m and trying to imitate the white mischief advertisment. I have sand all over me ... dammit.

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On other no-nonsense notes, I took the grand risk and endured the two days, two nights in a surprisingly chilling sleeper coach to reach back home. College is reopening tomorrow (according to the most recent confirmed rumor), and internals will be from Monday. So, I will be making my grand entry on Sunday morning, to face the tropical heat of the land of coconuts.

Water water everywhere

I'm sorry to bore everyone with videos of my project, but I have nothing else to do.
The scrolling texture at the bottom is supposed to be water. It doesn't look real, but I'm a beginner in this.

Another video

I combined a few things on which I had been working on separately and came up with this:

Now a video

I just signed up on youtube and uploaded a video of my project in action. The video is a walkthrough of a terrain. At the beginning fog has been enabled. The fog is disabled halfway through the video. And at last the terrain is displayed as a wire mesh.
I'm tempted to embed it here itself ...

and I give in to temptation.

News at 11

-Rumors and some newspapers are claiming that CUSAT has been in fact given IIT status. I still maintain my cynical pessimism.

-The tickets for Delhi have been cancelled, leading to a loss of Rs 150/-. No news of the suspension being withdrawn though.

-E-mails and SMSs still continue to be boring. Consisting of messages from lawyers of deceased kings in Nigeria, who want to make me rich and "Exciting offers !!!!!!" from airtel, respectively.

-Orkut records massive traffic from Cochin as most B.Tech students from CUSAT suddenly feel the need to view the profiles of a thousand people, their friends and their friend's friends.

-Our yahoo group bombards the unsuspecting subscribers with viruses, hair pulling forwards, and other subtle forms of torture, leading to mass hysteria.

-In sports news, India fielded like they were trained by Bishan Singh Bedi and lost many an opportunity. The third umpire was without doubt an ISI agent for not giving Pietersen out.

-In weather, Cochin experienced mild showers with some lightning yesterday, which distruped most of the internet service in the campus. This left most B.Tech students aimless, as their sole source of entertainment was gone for hours.

Confusion prevails..

Delhi is a near and dear place to us all. So when the (malayalam) newspapers announced today that our college has been suspended till March 17th, it was a reflex action to plan the trip to Delhi. For some inexplicable reason, I was deliberating whether to go or not. Don't ask me why I did something like that? Sometimes I surprise myself with my stupidity. So after a lot of thought I decided that I will go.... and then after some more thought I decided that I won't go.. that was final... yes, final.
Anshul was going to the station to book the tickets for himself and Ashish, when I told him that I won't be coming. So he left and as soon as he reached the station, as the gods would have it, my mom telephoned me and convinced me that I should be coming to Delhi. So, I chased after Anshul to the station and booked the tickets for tomorrow evening (confirmed, no waiting list/RAC hanky panky).
Finally, at least something was decided... or maybe not.
The latest news (rumor) has it that the strikes and the suspension will be withdrawn by wednesday. Now this is the point where I want to strike myself with a hammer, because as soon as the college reopens we will be having our internal exams.
The next logical step is to cancel the tickets for tomorrow and lose 25% of the money spent on it. I'm sure as soon as I do it, all hell will break lose in campus and the college won't reopen till a month.

I propose a toast to CUSAT where, as Ashish once said to his HOD at her house, "anything is possible".

Taxi no 9211

Worth the watch. Thumbs up!! I liked all of Nana Patekar's recent movies and this one is right amongst the top.
All four actors have equally substantial roles. The story is also good and well paced with a retro style ending. Go watch it!!

A few snaps from yesterday.

 

Munnar revisited

We had the audacity to repeat the stunt of yesteryear. Same old story: Bunch of guys get a holiday and plan to make good use of it: We went to Munnar (the Darjeeling of Kerala)... once more.
This time we were 7 instead of 5. Because of some mystical reasons Rahul planned to stay back, otherwise we would have been 8. There was one more difference ala I carried my x-ray vision glasses (I will post some photos to make things more clear).

The drive consisted of carefully navigating the blind curves and the f*ckers who kept their lights on high beam, all the while being sure you don't land up 3000 ft downhill in some tea farm . The drive was repetitive (honk horn, turn left, honk horn, turn right and repeat), but I enjoyed it anyway.
We again went to Top station (which is like ... umm welll.. at the top) . Nothing much happened there, as most of the awesome scenery which is visible from there was covered in a dense fog.

We then went for boating. Sujit, Anshul and Sourav, learning from their past experience opted for the pedal boat. Whereas I, in a hope to relive my past heroics, opted for the row boat along with Ashish, Arun and Addy (who were doing the row boat thing for the first time). I wish I hadn't. It was more tiring than enjoyable. I guess I never learn.

Basically we visited the same places again and did the same things again... the reason being: We didn't have enough money to go to Goa :(
I'm sure I'm making very less sense right now, but in my defense I haven't slept for 36 hours straight. Maybe I will write something more sensible when I regain my sleep. ... till then Good night.