Wednesday, October 31, 2007

Schindler's List and Shawshank Rdemption

Schindler's List

This is one touching movie which I saw on DVD yesterday. If you are the kind who likes emotion, suffering and pain in the backdrop of a war, you would like it. Schindler's List is a brilliant and heart touching narration of sufferings and execution of the Jews before World War II. There are many occasions in the movie that would break you down. You will witness the numerous sufferings bore by the jews, the helpless victims in the Nazi regime. Man, seeing the pain in the movie itself was terrible. But with all this, there is this one man, the hero Oskar Schindler who saves 1000 odd jews from the inescapable clutches of Nazi execution. It's a real story and towards the end of the movie it is shown there is a now sect called the Schindler Jews, who owe their lives to Oskar Schindler. I went by the reviews, which were laudatory and after watching all I say, true - it is.


Shawshank Redemption

This is another movie that I saw last week. I really regret watching it so late 'coz it belongs to the league of brilliant-ones-one-could-ever-see. The story is about a rich banker, who is mistakenly taken as his wife's murderer and given a life imprisonment by the court. Morgan Freeman is also a prisoner with life imprisonment and the movie leaps forward with his soft and witty narration. The plot revolves around the prisoners, the daily routine, the trauma one suffers inside a prison and few good things like bonding, humour, prison library et. al. But the climax is simply brilliant, true to the spirit of its tagline - "Fear can hold you prisoner. Hope can set you free." . I recommend strongly you watch it. Note that IMDB has given a rating 9.2 (updated)/10!

Monday, October 29, 2007

Google Transliterate

Yet another innovative product from GoOgLe - Transliterate.
Type any Hindi/Malayalam/Tamil/regional language word in English (same way as we pronounce it) and hit SPACE... It gets translated to that regional language and boy, quite accurate! This works like a dictionary mode on your mobile phone and of course, boon for me folks like me !!!

My first attempt (pasted from the typepad in the link):

हेल्लो वर्ल्ड (Hindi)
ஹலோ வேர்ல்ட் (Tamil)
హలో వరల్డ్ (Telegu)
ಹಲೋ ವರ್ಲ್ಡ್ (Kannada)

And my name:
कासी
காசி
కసి
ಕಸಿ

The languages included for now are Hindi, Tamil, Telugu, Kannada and Malayalam. More languages would be added in near future, me thinks. Please note that this Google Transliteration is a prototype and still is in the early stages of development. No doubt, the product when formally rolled out would be a huge hit!

Thursday, October 18, 2007

The return of ME !!!

It’s been a long while away from the blog. So this shall be a very blog-friendly post capturing most what I want to record and dabble here..

My mother came to London last month. So, kind of re-touring London every weekend covering places such as London Eye, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, Thames river, Hyde Park, central London et al. This way I got to see Buckingham Palace, which is open only for 2 months a year, from inside for the first time. It was a fabulous experience! Also visited places were one Murugan temple and another Sivan temple in Lewisham. My mother is pleasantly surprised to see this – I have been here for over 9 months and all I visited among temples is one Mahalakshmi temple and Swami Narayan temple - that too each only once. Anyway, she is not at least startled when I discovered recently that there are actually two Indian temples in Wembley, the place where I stay! Okay now pause this ;-)

The festival season has started! With Id and Navaratri on the same day, it was double celebration. Last Saturday evening (till Sunday early hours) yours truly was with Gujju friends Parth & Co. enjoying Garba and Dandiya at a Gujrati Hall nearby. It was damn crowded with over 1000 heads. Needless to say, all girls with their traditional wear were (or least seemed) beautiful!

Over the past two weeks, I watched loads of movies… Scream 1, Scream 2 and Scream 3 in dvd in one sitting whole night – started at 10 pm Saturday and ended at 5.30 am Sunday! And it was certainly worth the time and efforts ;-) Later bought few Tamil DVDs – Chennai 600026, Ammu Aagiya Naan, Arya, Pirappu, Pallikoodam and Sivi. Finshed watching all of them with ‘a- dvd-a-day’ schedule! Of all these I enjoyed watching Chennai 600026 a lot – it was total fun! Ammu Aagiya Naan, slightly off the beat, is also noteworthy with a bold story, and is impressive with its poignant narration and picturization – definitely worth a watch. Arya is a mere waste of time; remember to park your sense of logic outside when you decide to watch this. Pirappu is okay, nothing impressive. Pallikoodam getsyou the de’javu' of Cheran’s Autograph – yet this melodrama is worth watching once. Sivi, the horror flick, which is getting rave reviews is good, but ended abruptly with a climax. May be the team is planning for a sequel? Other than these recently saw The Last Samurai. It was awesome!!! If you haven't watched it, my advice/suggestion/request - go now and watch it. And saw a really old movie - Al Pacino's Scarface, though it is critically acclaimed I find it just palatable.

When I started looking into latest gossips today, one news item caught my attention immediately – Chiranjeevi’s daughter elopes and marries against dad's wishes. Srija Chiranjeevi, 19, second daughter of Chiranjeevi, a recent graduate married Sirish Bharadwaj, 22 an engineering graduate at Arya Samaj, in New Bowenpally Hyderabad yesterday. It was a wedding against both their parent’s wishes and looks like the couple is seeking support from media and police for alleged threat from Chiru’s family. Interested to read more and see pics? Simple. Google ‘Srija’ and amen, you get it.

Talking about blogs, Apna company’s CTO has started a blog linked to our inhouse employee’ web portal. It is a hit – the first entry posted about 4 days ago from our CTO has drawn almost 250+ comments so far. One of the contributors there, Kris Ashok has a sparkling blog. Go thru it – its funducative! Until then, this blog is adjourned till the next post. Adios!