Autumn Break

If I ever had any doubts about the ability of time to fly, they have been put to rest now. It's been only some time that I came to Belgium, and I am already booking tickets for Delhi and looking forward to my winter vacation. Yeah folks, I will be in Delhi for Christmas and New Year's! I can't wait for it and guess what I am missing most in Leuven?? South Indian Food! Yeah, that's surprising for me too. Not family, not friends, not 'ghar ka khana', but I am missing good old Idli, Sambhar and Dosa here. Would anybody believe that? Maybe because that is the only thing that I could not find here at all so far. I am regularly in touch with family and friends, I cook my own 'Indian' meals but Idli-Sambhar is something that is just not to be found in our little town :(

We don't have any classes for this entire week and I am enjoying the break. Talking for hours with Siddharth, cleaning every minute inch of my studio, listening to songs, cooking nice meals etc. Of course I will also catch up on all the subjects where I am lagging behind and prepare for projects and exams, but that is secondary priority for this week.

Our classes have been progressing at a break-neck speed as usual and I did not even realise when subjects like Leadership, Human Resource Management, Corporate Social Responsibility, Business and Law, and Entrepreneurship zoomed past us. The learning in each was immense and I am in awe of most of our professors here. For example, our Business and Law professor started the course with us by distributing some cases and questions to test our ethics and knowledge about Law. In the first class he told us jokingly that the purpose of his course was to keep us out of jail. The entire class laughed but when he discussed our answers to the cases and questions, we realised how unethical, hypocritical and unaware of the Law we were. If we indeed did those things in real corporate world, we would have been put in jail, and all the while we thought that we were being fair!! I do believe my professor's joke now and realise how difficult ethical choices are in the real world. Wow, I am already beginning to talk like an MBA!

Diwali came and went and I did not light a single cracker. I badly missed home during Diwali but thankfully I have very nice classmates. A chinese classmate called us home for tea on Diwali afternoon and we had dinner at an Indian friend's place. His wife had prepared a delicious Indian meal for us, which we ate while watching the classic 'Jaane Bhi Do Yaaro'. We also played cards, because Diwali without gambling is utterly boring. I explained the concept of Diwali to many of our classmates who wanted to know the story behind the festival and why and how we celebrate it. I hope I gave them the correct version of the story, but anyway they would never know the difference :)

On the day after Diwali we visited a Krishna temple called Radhadesh in Ardenne. It is a beautiful place with rolling hills and dense forests. After the prayer ceremony at the temple we took a walk in the woods and it felt like going back to nature and connecting with the Supreme.

The second pic is of the castle in which the temple is situated.

I hope that after this one week break, I will emerge refreshed and full of energy, specially because it is Autumn and it is so beautiful here. I love taking walks in the park close to my studio and will post pics of the beautiful park soon.

A Fresh Beginning

I never thought that I would ever be too busy to post on my blog or to read posts of my favorite bloggers. It has happened now and I am not too happy about it. I started this blog last year and whatever crap I wrote here gave me immense satisfaction and an outlet to burst out. Moreover, reading blogs of unknown strangers (who I now feel I know since ages) gave me a sense of belonging. I am too busy to write posts and read blogs regularly now and it feels that some part of me is locked up and getting suffocated. I feel guilty when I don't post for long periods and then coming back to the blogosphere is even more difficult. It is like facing a close family member whom you have been avoiding since long.
I have lost track of what is happening in the lives of my blog friends and I feel left out. Is this weird? My blog friends would know, I guess.

A quick review of what I did all the while I was missing from blogosphere:
~I got my Visa (yippeee).
~I read MANY books, To Kill A Mockingbird, Rebecca, The Kite Runner, The Firm; to name some of them.
~I entertained guests and relatives at home. Many relatives came to visit and live with us for few days because they know I will be leaving soon for a long time. That was sweet of them. I had an awesome time gossiping, shopping, eating with them. I have gained a lot of weight after these visits and screwed my daily routine, but it was all worth it. I will miss them all in Belgium.
~I completed my French classes. Yes, sadly my French classes are over. My teacher can't continue for the next level so I have to now learn on my own.
~GO came back from US and I watched 2 movies (17 Again and Paying Guest) back to back with him again, after knowing that the last time I did that was a disaster. It wasn't so much of a disaster this time, except that Paying Guest is the most pathetic movie that I ever watched. By-the-way, Zac Efron looks cute in 17 Again.

It was enough to keep me occupied if you add it up with social networking, trying to read business related books and articles, and sleeping :)

I can see that life ahead will be even more hectic. My School has e-mailed a list of recommended pre-MBA reading and will make us take 3 online courses (Stats, Financial Accounting and Economics) in July. I have to shop and pack and generally prepare for going.

But, all said and done, I have no intentions of staying away from my blog, like I have been doing for some time now. I have realised that it is important to me, and I am going to make it a part of my routine. It is strange how we neglect many things, knowing that they hold a lot of value for us. Like family, friends, learning new things, and in this case, blog :)

It has started to sink in, now that the initial excitement is getting stale, that I am indeed going for at least 13 months. Away from people who care for me, food that I love, and the life that I am used to. It will be fun and a great learning experience, but I think it would also be difficult. All I have in my survival kit is my enthusiasm, passion (which I hope won't fizzle out too soon), common sense and intellect. I have realised that another survival tool is my blog, just rant here and it becomes easy to get along with things. More so, when unknown strangers (with blogs that I am only too familiar with) post comments that are all concerned, supportive, hopeful, energizing and considerate at the same time. I love my blogger friends. There comments are sometimes all that you need for a doze of energy :)

I changed my blog template. The new one looks fresh and professional, and goes with my present mood; to make a fresh beginning.

Movie + Drinks + Movie = Bad Headache

A movie, followed by a couple of drinks, followed by another movie results in a bad headache!!

That was the lesson I learnt on Saturday. GO and I had another date; GO drove all the way from Noida to Gurgaon again, I made him wait again and we had drinks again. Everything was pretty much the same except for the fact that this time I insisted on watching two movies that day. Yeah, I make such insane choices at times. I totally disregarded the fact that GO comes from Noida on a weekend so that he can meet me and not to watch lousy movies. However, I had to watch a movie and it was painfully difficult to pick between Raaz and Slumdog!! Okay, I know there's no comparison between the two movies but I am a die-hard horror movie fan. I enjoy the creeps that I get sitting in a theatre and moreover I had enjoyed Raaz 1, little did I know that Raaz 2 has not even the remotest connection to it. I fell for the line 'and the mystery continues...' and assumed that it continued from part 1, but, no, it didn't. To make matters worse Emraan Hashmi looked like a wild gorilla because of his hairstyle. I made GO suffer through Raaz and he kept asking me at intervals, "You really wanted to watch this???". I unconvincingly replied each time, "Come on GO, it isn't that bad. And if it gets worse, we can walk out in between". We did walk out but only when just 10 minutes of the movie remained and I realised that we barely had time to grab a bite before it will be time for the Slumdog show.
We were in Ambience Mall and neither GO nor I had ever been there before. I just loved this mall, specially because you don't get the feeling of being at a crowded place at all, so much so that it almost makes you feel that you are not in India. Anyway, after Raaz both of us badly needed good drinks to recover from the disappointing experience and we found a pub, Firangi Paani. Unusual name and nice place. They have an awesome scheme going these days, they have a ladies nite on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, when ladies can have free drinks, yeah absolutely free!! No I am not advertising for them, I thought it may be useful for anybody in NCR :-). Anyway, I ordered the usual LIIT and GO ordered some nasty and evil looking cocktail with Blue Curacao in it. It tasted just like cough syrup, sweet and heady, ugh!! The LIIT was good, not as good as in TGIF though. We were a little high soon and didn't realise that we had missed nearly 20 minutes of Slumdog already. Anyway, we rushed to the auditorium, I with unsteady steps and GO holding my hand. I dropped on my seat in the audi and wanted to sleep right away but GO whispered in my ear almost threateningly, "Don't sleep, watch this movie, it's better than Raaz." He filled in the background so that I could understand what was going on, and although I was almost on the verge of sleeping, and my mind had gone comfortably numb, I watched for a few minutes. The movie was good, my mind slowly aroused itself and then I really watched it, taking in the brutalities, the dust and grime, the reactions of the foreigner couple sitting next to us and even though the narrative went on at a breakneck speed, I enjoyed it. However, GO kept making some intellectual comments about how the director had caught an incomplete view of India albeit a poignant one.

By the time we came out of the audi, I had a bad, real bad headache. Lessons learnt: Never watch two movies in a day; never mix drinks and movies; never mix GO and bad movies (although he is sweet and can watch any movie with me but I later feel guilty).
Next date is already planned and despite headaches and lousy movies, I am loving it! :-)

Long Island Weekend......... Contd.

My last post (or should I say non-post) was unintentional. I accidentally posted just the title and hence the funny post without words happened. I would have removed it but when I got a couple of comments on that post I decided to let it stay.

Anyhow, this post is about what I did this past weekend and how does Long Island come into picture. I met GO (My George Orwell) on Saturday after a pretty long time. None of us remembers when was it that we last met, as if we have collectively lost that portion of our memories. I can guess that it must be close to 2 years but I am not sure. Its funny really how we don't remember when and where did we last meet. We have stayed in touch throughout, courtesy orkut and phone, probably that's why we never realised that time is flying by and it's probably 2 years that we haven't seen each other. Finally we met and I noticed that GO looks as cute as ever; the same smiling face, the same witty jokes, only this time GO had a car :-)

We wanted to catch a movie, or to be true, it was I who wanted to catch a movie because I usually don't get company in Gurgaon for the movies. The only available option was Chandni Chowk to China! GO warned me that it was a crap movie but I HAD to watch it, so we did. Crap was an understatement, the movie is outrageously bad. I don't even want to write about it. However, GO and I still had a good time by laughing at everybody and everything in the movie. After the movie it was time for TGIF, yeah whats a date without a couple of drinks!! Oh, didn't I tell you that it was a date? Well it was, seemed like it at least :-)

Whenever I want to try a new drink, I mostly end up getting confused and then I order what I love drinking, Long Island Iced Tea. I love its name (specially because Tea is the only beverage that's not in it), I love its color, I love its taste, I love its ingredients (gin, vodka, tequila, rum and triple sec) and I love it because its stronger than any other cocktail :-). So I had 2 LIITs and they were enough for me because I did not want to scare GO when I met him for the first time after soo long. The next time we meet, I am going to have more. You reading that GO?

We laughed, discussed drinks, friends, old times, new times and later GO helped me walk to the parking lot, even 2 LIITs make me need support while walking. He dropped me home and I have to say now that I really had a great time. Would look forward to the next time you come here GO :-)

Sunday was another thrilling day. I met another great friend, Karan. We attended an MBA fair where some Australian Business Schools were participating. Karan had come with some friends and three of us who had taken the GMAT (all 3 of us have decent scores), got on the spot offer of admission from University of Technology, Sydney. Now, how cool is that?? You go to an MBA fair, you are not even interested to study in that country and you are offered admission in a University that's ranked 9th in Australia. None of us was delighted however, because we have gone through gruelling days and nights to apply in couple of universities in US and we are still not sure whether we would be offered an interview, let alone admission, and here we get a straight admission offer with the only condition that we need to submit our documents. I mean wasn't that too easy?? Still, I GOT AN ADMISSION OFFER FOLKS!!!! In August, probably I would be writing from Australia about how much I love Sydney and how cool my university is :-)

When 3 of us had admission offers, that called for a celebration. Since we were in Vasant Vihar we went to RPM, the only disc in the vicinity. It was time for LIIT again :-). The LIIT in RPM was stronger than it was in TGIF. We drank and danced, 5 guys and me, all of them sweet and decent guys, and had a great time. So this past weekend was my Long Island Weekend and I still feel that I just can't have enough of LIIT :-)

The New Year Begins

I watched Ghajini on the first day of the new year and really liked it despite the violence and just okay music (except Tu Meri Adhoori Pyas). I had a mind to write a review of the movie but I just read a post by Chandni, who is one of my favourite bloggers. She wrote a review of RNBDJ and it was plagiarized word by word by a certain Ms Salty Sea Breeze who posted it on her blog as her own. I feel offended for Chandni and that kills the mood to right a review now. I will write it some other time.

Anyway, the other day I read some lines by Vikram Seth that really touched my heart. I will dedicate them (even though they are not mine :-)) to The Unsung Psalm whose writings I enjoy. Here goes:

Some men like Jack and some like Jill

I'm glad I like them both but still

I wonder if this freewheeling

Really is an enlightened thing,

Or is its greater scope a sign

Of deviance from some party line?

In the strict ranks of Gay and Straight

What is my status: Stray? Or Great?

A few years back I read A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth and found it unnecessarily stretched out with irrelevant details although the plot and its setting were really good. There were many things that I liked about this book but the unnecessary length killed my interest in it when I had managed to read only about three-fourth of the book. It was the only book of my life that I had not been able to finish and I blamed Vikram Seth for that. However, when I read the above lines of poetry by him they salvaged his reputation in my eyes :-). Also, I found that Vikram Seth did his schooling from my hometown Dehradun (Welham Boys and Doon School), so that kind of settled the fact that I would definitely read more books by this author :-)

Luckily, the day I watched Ghajini I found that there was a Sale at the Om Book Shop in MGF Mall at Gurgaon. A sale and that too at a book shop is too tempting to ignore and so I went inside telling myself that I would not buy anything but would just take a tour. I already have around 5-6 still unread and good books lying around at my home and I had told myself that I would not buy any more books until I finish those that I already own. However, the shop offered a great bargain on many books and the shining hard covers of books had an almost lusty appeal. I think everyone would understand if I say that I finally did buy books but only 2 of them. One is of course by Vikram Seth (An Equal Music) and another is a collection of spooky short stories :-). It has some stories by authors like Edgar Allen Poe and Charles Dickens and has a beautiful cover, hence I bought it.

I got these two books for just 500 bucks, can you believe it? Such beautiful, hardbound, original books together cost just 500 Rupees!! Wow what an amazing start to the new year :-)

Kismat Konnection - A Review

Do I need to say that the movie is bad? I guess not, since most of you have probably already read the reviews. Then why am I wasting my time writing a review about it? There are two answers - First, I love movie bashing. Second, an interesting incident took place when I went to watch the movie, which I wanted to share.
I went to the movie with my friend Neelam. We snacked before the movie in the food court and Neelam was adventurous enough to leave behind her cell phone on the table. I, of course, did not notice. As it was my birthday [ :-) I love bringing it up], I was carrying a digicam in my bag, and the PVR people don't allow eatables, shopping bags and cameras inside the hall. I was stopped at the security and was asked to leave behind the camera battery at the baggage counter. We went to the baggage counter, which is 2 floors below the hall, to do as asked. We were late by the time we rushed back to the security and did not check the audi number on our tickets. The first Audi on our right had a moving neon display on top which said Kismat Konnection. We rushed inside and reached our seats smashing the toes of various people. As soon as we sat down Neelam realised she was not carrying her cell phone. After a hurried check into her bag and then mine, she grabbed my cell phone, muttered something about being back soon, and smashed some toes again to rush outside. I now concentrated on the movie which had already started. There was Shahid Kapoor looking crestfallen, Vidya Balan getting engaged to someone and I was not able to understand what was going on. I thought a flashback into the past would soon happen, to clear things. However, I waited and watched but no flashback came. There was a song and many weird characters and other stuff but no flashback. I watched for about 15 minutes till Neelam came back. She said, "Nicky this is Audi 8, we are supposed to be in Audi 6." I responded with "So what, audi 8 is screening the same movie." Neelam watched with me for a minute and said, "I think we are watching the post-intermission movie."
"What!" I gasped. We looked at each other and dashed out of the hall, smashing toes again. I had no time to yell back at people who were yelling at us. We reached audi 6, found our seats and I wondered how come those same seats were unoccupied in audi 8. Providence, I suppose. I felt so bad at missing the first 30 minutes of the movie at that time, but I can safely assume now that the first 30 minutes were not too exciting either, just like the rest of the movie.
It's an illogical, slow-paced movie, with a boring plot and lifeless characters (Ah! so many adjectives). I have seen some illogical movies, which were entertaining (like Om Shanti Om) but Kismat Konnection falls too short of the mark to call even some parts in the movie as entertaining. I always go to the movies to look at good looking people for few hours. I don't want to look at a next-door-kinda-boy (Shahid Kapur) and a next-door-kinda-girl (Vidya Balan) for 3 hours. I see too many next-door-kinda-people in day-to-day life. Vidya Balan lived up to the expectations of dressing pathetically again. Why can't she just give up trying to glam herself up? It makes her look even more, ugh, sad!
The movie revolves around Shahid Kapur who plays the role of a failure who can't do anything right to save his life. In desperation he goes to a seer, played by Juhi Chawla (who seems to have forgotten all about acting), who informs him that he would be aided by someone or something that would make him lucky. Imagine! This someone, turns out to be Vidya Balan. Whenever, she's around he gets lucky - he lands a project, he plays a great shot at Snooker - oh, leave it. He becomes friendly with this girl in order to stay lucky but she's engaged and going to leave the country after her marriage which is going to happen soon. However, she realises her fiancee is a male chauvinist pig and is getting laid by his female boss. There are other things and characters in the movie that don't deserve to be mentioned.
My advice- Don't Watch. And BTW Neelam did find her cell phone, it was with the security people in food court :-)