Quest for the Rest - Awesone Awesome Awesome

The Polyphonic Spree have come up with some new songs, I never before have heard of the Polyphonic spree, however I happened to stumble upon their launch website, now this website is designed as a game where you need to find ways to re-unite 3 band members with the rest of the band.

Wonderful animation, a very nice game and some nice music, the overlying theme of the game being "overcoming obstacles"
You have to check this out!

Weekend of Work and Chak De! with Rats and a District Collector

I signed up for a weekend recruitment event in Vellore, at ThoughtWorks, we (Developers, BA's and QA's) help out the recruiters recruit people. This time volunteering meant going off on a weekend to Vellore (Tamilnadu) to hire students from VIT (Vellore Institute of Technology).

The group was fun and VIT has a huge, beautiful campus, with a wonderful guest-house. So the whole set-up was fun!
Especially because the profs at VIT were expecting a group of experienced looking professionals in jackets n ties and there we were the 6 of us in jeans and T-shirts looking like students ourselves! hehehe
After the first day of presentations, the initial logic tests (The super cool Flow Chart thingys that had me hooked 3 yrs ago!) and the code pairing sessions, we decided to go watch a movie!

The movie was supposed to begin at 9:45pm in a theatre 8 kms away from VIT , we just had time to grab quick dinner and leave!

We got there just in time (or so it seemed then), and while waiting for the ticket counter to open - spent our time betting on the price of the tickets and arguing with a local shopkeeper about whether a Chikki is called a Chikki or a Burfi :-|
At 10 a school bell rang, announcing the opening of the ticket counter (the price of the ticket was 25 rupees!!!)
There were a few rats in the theatre and the movie did not begin until the arrival of the vvip, in this case the District Collector, by the time the DC arrived with his family it was already 11pm and most people in the motley crowd gathered to watch the movie were grumbling. The rendition of The national Anthem before the movie began, however set the mood for the evening!
I must say it was not the best of theatre experiences, but a good movie and a good group made the entire weekend a fun-filled one!

oh and we hired a couple of ppl from VIT too :)

The Best movie in a long time

The best gift I have received in recent times, is a dvd of the Iranian movie "Children of Heaven"

I began watching it on a sunday afternoon and 15mins into the movie I decided, "I have to watch this with Mom and Dad!" which I did later that night.

Children of Heaven is a piece of cinematic brilliance, I would easily rate it alongside Shawshank Redemption, the only difference being, SR has a hollywoodish feel and a great storyline,

Whereas 'Children..." is a very simple movie and has the simplest of storylines, now that I think of it, hey! I would rate Children of Heaven higher than Shawshank redemption.

A simple story about a 10 year old boy, Ali, his little sister Zahra and a pair of (missing) shoes.

No matter who you are, how old you are or how you think... you cannot help but enjoy this movie!

beg, borrow or steal to watch this movie!

You know its not your day when...

• you cross the road and almost get run over by a speeding auto
• Someone calls u to say lets have lunch and when u reach there you get "hey I am busy" :-|
• you lose 3 times out of 4 at ping-pong
• you come back home to watch Robin Uthappa and Gautam Gambhir struggling to score against a schoolboy bowling attack

Fantastic Karaoke

Check out this sing along song :D

Its Volare - Gypsy Kings

It lifted my mood to a completely new high
fantastic is an understatement...go get Rhythm!!

Kids, I say!

Recently a few of us went to a Happy Budday Party of a 7 year old, now none of us are the subject matter experts on how to behave at a little girl's party, but each of us knew that we had the ability to entertain the tots.

What we did not foresee was that a group of 7 year olds is a much tougher proposition than a single 7 year old. All my self professed ability of being good at handling kids vanished in ether when a little girl (a guest at the party) came up to us.

This is what followed:

Us: (*patting the lil girl on the head*) hellooooo whats your name??
lil girl: yo dudes! wassssup duuuude! (*in impeccable rapper accent*)
Us: errr, uh, well, how are you?
lil girl:( *making some complicated gestures with her fingers*) "duuuude SEE IT! REMEMBER IT and EAT IT MAN! EAT IT!"

-- I only hope that the girl was not displaying a centrally located finger to us --
:-|

I have decided to avoid Budday parties henceforth, and hey the term 'Bundle of joy' is a misnomer.

Movies

Trainspotting

Well this dopchi goes right into my list of weirdo movies to join movies such as 'I love Huckabees', 'Earth Girls are easy', 'The Cable guy', 'Jacob's Ladder' etc
Trainspotting seems to be a very well known movie, but it did not move me too much.


Glengary Glen Ross


A starstudded cast consisting of Jack Lemmon, Al Pacino, Kevin Spacey, Ed Harris, Alec Baldwin, make this adaptation of a play watchable with some very good acting :)
About 4 real estate salesmen, a sales contest (1st prize - a car, 2nd place - a set of steak knives, 3rd place - you are fired) and a robbery.
slow paced but interesting.