Dhoom 2 review

OK, so this other day there was a company outing for the movie Dhoom-2 !! After watching the movie I realized that "Times of India" had given it a biased review, 4 stars, by a large scale. I would have given it 2.
The story has numerous loose ends. The action is not out of this world (these days I despise stunts with cables. I mean c'mon, people don't somersault and land on their feet after getting punched on their chins.). Ash and Bipasha look good but I felt like slapping them when they opened their mouths. You feel like slapping Uday Chopra when you look at him, but is quite funny when he opens his mouth. Abhishek Bacchan is pissed off during the entire movie. Hrithik Roshan is "sophisticated" .. I mean you have to be if you are the "perfect thief" of the world and want to write an "A" on the whole world. But above all, the movie doesn't have the amount of bike stunts which I would have liked to have. And yes.. the whole movie is filled with scenes where the actors/actresses walk ... and oh how they walk.. in style.
In normal life, when you walk you can hardly do it in style. There are various things which you need to be aware of. The bird which likes to bomb you with its morning payload. The paan chewing auto-rickshaw wala who will invariably spit when you walk past. The sweepers directing the dust of the streets in to your face. Due to all these things, you have to walk fast, dodge, duck and sometimes shout.
But in movies, you walk in slow motion. You have your soundtrack playing in the background. You may even have dancers doing somersaults in the background. Balloons going up in the air. Fireworks all around.
But apart from all that the only good thing which I found about the whole movie was the make up. Now that is really good and maybe.. just maybe for that it is worth watching once.

My first test ride

After days of procrastination I finally decided to test ride a bike. The reason for the delay, more than my laziness, was the fact that I'm a beginner when it comes to riding a bike (note: I'm an expert pillion rider though B-) ) So when I left from office the agenda was to try out a Pulsar 150 or Avenger, but we somehow landed up in a Hero Honda showroom and there lay CBZ-Xtreme. First impression is that the bike does look good. It has got LED tail lights, black alloys, black engine, the smiling grid of the old CBZ in front, 1 down 4 up gear shifts and a 63K on road price tag.
And then came the main course. The time I was supposed to test ride the bike. People who have driven vehicles with gears will tell you that of the many embarrassing things in life, stalling the vehicle after starting and putting it in the first gear comes on top. Yes.. you guessed it right, thats exactly what happened with me. Not once, not twice, but a grand three times and the bike had moved roughly 12 inches. So apart from insulting myself, I also managed to insult the 149 cc pulsar by making it move slower than an old snail.
Well.. life goes on and I'm still stuck on neutral.

Temptation Vs Practicality

Vs

I have spent the last week debating with myself and some of my unfortunate friends on the above issue: Which one to buy?

Tiny grasshopper

Power to Wii.

Proof by oddity

Got this the last time I ran fortune.

Proof techniques #2: Proof by Oddity.
SAMPLE: To prove that horses have an infinite number of legs.
(1) Horses have an even number of legs.
(2) They have two legs in back and fore legs in front.
(3) This makes a total of six legs, which certainly is an odd number
legs for a horse.
(4) But the only number that is both odd and even is infinity.
(5) Therefore, horses must have an infinite number of legs.

Topics is be covered in future issues include proof by:
Intimidation
Gesticulation (handwaving)
"Try it; it works"
Constipation (I was just sitting there and ...)
Blatant assertion
Changing all the 2's to n's
Mutual consent
Lack of a counterexample, and
"It stands to reason"

T-Shirt folding machine

More 360 bashing

By the way my previous 360 review doesn't hold. It seems that the game on demo is rendered only at a paltry resolution of 600x600 (info courtesy Rahul). Don't know why the Microsoft guys made such a dumb move.

Me Delhi trip

I somehow managed to sneak around 12 days of holidays (begging and borrowing from here and there) and went to Delhi on Diwali. Few of the highlights of the trip include:

• Getting a bird's eye view of Diwali from up above the clouds. I'm not much of a cracker burster so I didn't miss doing that and yes if I had done it then I would probably be behind bars right now. By the way the aerial veridct is that the Delhi Diwali was much more festive and polluting than the Bangalore one.
• A defunct school reunion which happened on the next day I landed. I don't blame anyone, but it was a failure.
  
• I have gained a more than passing interest in income tax, mutual funds and the stock market. Reason being: I hate channel surfing and my PC was down, so this was the next best thing to do.
  
• I attended a rock concert (courtesty Rakesh) and didn't quite enjoy it that much. First, I hadn't heard a single song which the bands were playing (given that they were Indian and I don't listen to heavy metal) and second I couldn't grasp a single word they were saying (given that they were Indian and I don't listen to heavy metal). One new revelation which did come out of it was that of the Mosh Pit. If you are even .000093 % sane you won't be in one.
  
• Finally, Air-Deccan can't be relied upon to take you anywhere on time. You may reach before time or after time but never on.