Sherlock

I just love it when people take their jobs seriously and find innovative ideas to make it better :) You would wonder what made me say this but it just occurred to me after I finished watching the new series "SHERLOCK". Its a television series made for BBC (BBC really knows good entertainment :) ). They have totally revamped it and set it in the current settings of London.

All I can say is that its a brilliant adaptation, the stories are new with characters same as the original sherlock stories. And this Sherlock is modern and hip. He uses his mobile to look up information on the internet, take photos of crime scenes, keep in touch with Dr. Watson and the police. Dr. Watson on the other hand has just returned from Afghanistan and comes in contact with Sherlock because of an accomodation issue. He maintains his blog www.johnwatsonblog.co.uk where he discusses the cases (yes! no more journals :) blogging is the way to go). Sherlock on the other hand has also got his own website which he maintains www.thescienceofdeduction.co.uk. Infact there are a few other characters as well who have their own blogs and their blogs actually builds the stories a bit :D. This is what I mean when I say taking the job seriously. The creators of this series have made these characters very real. The other series in which one of the characters maintains a blog is How-I-Met-Your-Mother's Barney Stinson. Will write about that another day.

They have currently come up with 3 episodes of 90 minutes each. I was extremely impressed with the pace of the stories, the way it was shot, the acting and the whole packaging. This is one series I will keep a look out for :) I am not sure many of you have seen it yet but if you can get the series, do it! Its easily available on the net. Suman owes a big "Thank You" for pointing me to interesting new stuff :)

As far as I am concerned, I vegetated all day long. Played more of Crysis, watched Sherlock and generally faffed around :P There were times in my life where there were shades of gray, most of it still is. But I think there is a part of it which I have in a strange sort of way directed into a world of 2 solid colours. No shades in it. I do not know how it happened. But it has finally come to the point where its either of the 2. No more confusion, no more shades. It was inevitable I guess, better now than 6 months down the line where things got more shitty. I try not to repeat the same mistake twice, I think I was about to. Corrective measures were required and that is what is in process. Corrective measures... Detoxification... or maybe just survival instincts.

Rakhi - Fortunately not Sawant :P

Another rakhi and my ophthalmologist friend/sister religiously tied rakhi like every year :) In my life, I have made sure that I made the least number of rakhi sisters possible. Why? Simply because I lack brotherly feelings. I do not understand it and now I have just stopped trying to figure it out. Rakhi was always a fun-filled day for me during school. That was the time when the girls used to torment the guys with rakhis. In Kalimpong, we didn't have this funda of girls tying rakhi to every guy in the class. I was pretty shocked to see it in Bombay.

The first year was shocking. On Rakhi every girl came armed with rakhis and some super cheap sweet. By the end of the day, both my hands used to be filled with itchy rakhis, decently large ones. Pathetic as it sounds, didn't give too much importance to it. Funnily enough as we moved on to higher standards (Standard 10), the number of rakhis dramatically decreased. Sanity dawned onto the girls and they realized that what they were doing was absolute A-grade tom-foolery. Though fear did creep into guys. For now, a rakhi meant, that the girl is off-limits!

It was a hilarious time during those days. A majority of guys spent their time hiding from girls they had a crush on, just to avoid the unfortunate incident of being caught by surprise and converted into a brother. The toilet used to be the most popular spot, with the number of guys in there reaching improbable numbers. A lot of guys usually "fell-sick" and didn't make it to school :P Me, on the other hand had a girl friend and was extremely happy and chilled. Girls knew that I was no more a threat to them, atleast those who considered me a threat, and I obviously didn't care who did and didn't tie rakhi. Though I had officially recognized three sisterly candidates. One was my ophthalmologist friend, two, my psycho friend (I don't recall if she actually tied me rakhi) and third, my phd friend. I became her official brother during her wedding in Jaipur. She needed a brother and I stepped up :)

Monali gave me a farewell dinner tonight. The restaurant we went to played a lot of saas-bahu serials followed by Aahat for entertainment :P She gave me The Messiah's Handbook, a very apt book at a very apt time :)

District 9

Watched a movie called "District 9". An interesting movie. Its about a group of aliens who have come and settled in South Africa in a camp which gets named as District 9. The movie has been shot in the form of a documentary. Interesting piece of work. The special effects have been done well, in the sense that the movie itself feels crude due to the documentary look but the aliens and weapons, etc have been matched to make pretty realistic. Damn ugly aliens though :(

Met up with Sameer and had a good time. Had 2 versions of KFC today. Kentucky Fried Chicken followed by Kalpana's Fatafati Chicken :D, ie, my mom's awesome home-made chicken. The KFC guys have got a new version of burger called KFC Smackers Snackers. They are smaller than the Zinger Burger but comes cheaper at 30 bucks plus taxes and tastes same as Zinger.

Was watching Batman Begins today and noted an interesting dialogue, it says, "And one day, you catch yourself wishing the person you loved had never existed, so you'd be spared your pain."

Crysis

Well yesterday and today have been weird days. My body and mind seem to be 2 separate things doing their own thing. While I am doing my regular activites pretty normally, the mind seems to be pre-occupied with a million things, while my body functions in a pre-programmed manner.

This is probably not the best time to be in such a state but then again who's to say what the best time to be in such a state is? Its ironical but in my time of crysis, it is CRYSIS that has come to my aid. I am talking about the game CRYSIS. I used to be an avid gamer. But its been quite sometime since I last played one. I recently got hold of CRYSIS and have been totally hooked on to it. Really helping me keep my mind off of things.

Its an interesting game, specially the interactivity with the environment and the AI. The physics is really advanced and I know that it was released quite sometime back and there are probably better game-engines by now but this is really good :). Atleast for me, cause I had stopped my gaming activities beyond its release and to me its just like a continuation to where I left things. Maybe I need to accelerate a bit and catch up to the current stuff. Maybe Pune is the solution to that, provided I get enough time to do so.

Anyways, having a blast playing it, I think I should get back to it and if anyone hasn't played it, I think its a shame. I say it now cause, I have now experienced it.

blyaaahhhh again...

The day was pretty boring. Was home all day for a change. The get-together was successful, so successful that it is still going on :P My junta has left but my mom and dad's junta are going strong :D Its good that they are having fun. The party was over due. Should have happened on the 15th itself but better late than never.

Don't really feel like writing much. Watched some more BBT-3 and generally lazed around. Finally, the concrete work of our floor is done. This rain has completely screwed our FSI work :( Fortunately Dad has stopped freaking out as much as he used to. He has finally realized that getting tensed will not really help in expediting the work in anyway. So he has now decreased his screaming frequency from daily to weekly.

Pot Pourri Live in Peepli

My food adventure continues! The plan was made last night itself over coffee. We were to go back to Pot Pourri for lunch, followed by Peepli Live. The rains are back since the past 2 days. They had subsided for a couple of days but are now back with a vengeance! I am extremely sick of it now. Another month of the damned thing :( and we have already had 107% of the normal rainfall. Why doesn't it rain in areas where its required?

I have written about Pot Pourri previously too but I need to give it a proper review, based upon the experience and what I have eaten. Its situated in Inorbit, vashi. Serves a whole array of cuisine, right from continental, italian to thai stuff. They have both buffet and "A La Carte". I have tried the buffet, both the times I visited the place. The buffet spread is larger on weekends. The menu is not the same and one could call and enquire about the spread before going. The buffet includes unlimited Ice Tea (Lemon, Peach, Kiwi and some more), pizza on a weekend and some other stuff on weekdays (had some weird bun today), soup, salad, some more starters such as satay or pasta and then the main course consisting of quite a few different dishes. There's good dessert too after that. Food is brilliant, atleast during the 2 occasions I have been there. The ambiance is good and pretty comfortable.

Its a good idea to book before going on weekends because the waiting period can be pretty irritating. Service is good ( inspite of the buffet, the waiters do serve the starters and ice tea ). The price is not exhorbitant and the buffet is "paisa wasool". It comes to around Rs. 330 on weekdays and more on the weekends (Don't remember how much it was the last time we went there).

Final Verdict:
Ambiance : 3.5/5
Service : 3.5/5
Food : 4.25/5
Value for Money : 4.5/5

After a overdose of awesome food we moved on to watch Peepli at Fame (I think they have the worst seats ever! The Gold class is obviously super comfortable). But the normal seats are like those semi-luxury non sliding seats. Extremely uncomfrtable! But before that we made a quick trip of Landmark (this place makes me feel so happy :) surrounded by books, music and movies)

Peepli Live was really good. Based on the farmer suicides, it touches upon a lot of things, about the media's TRP ratings, there sensationalizing of things and the governments apathy towards the misery of the farmers. Its a superbly shot movie, captured the village life very authentically. The actors were brilliant. Each and everyone did justice to their character. The casting director should be really applauded. There was not much of a story actually, it was just a situation shown. It doesn't try to preach or give any social message (atleast I didn't feel as if the makers were trying to force there idea on to the viewers). They just presented the situation in a satirical manner and left the viewers to form their own opinions. I have really liked Amir Khan for his work and his choice of films, whether he is infront of the camera or behind, he knows what good cinema is and to an enthusiast such as myself, thats all that matters :) I think everyone should see it once, either in the theatre or on TV, but watch it. Its a good film.

Oriental Palette, Bandra (W)

*Edit : The name of the place is Oriental Palette and not Golden Palette. This is what happens when you write food reviews at 2 in the nite :P 

I had a very very interesting and fun day :) Woke up as usual with my Dad fiddling with the laptop and trying to get the internet working. I do not know how he manages to screw it everytime. Its amazing. I am obviously responsible for it :P So set up the mtnl connection, cause You Telecom wasn't working. I have realized that my Dad has completely run out of patience. I wonder if its due to age. He gets irritated very fast nowadays.

Raghu, Sameer and myself had planned to meet up today. It was a confirmed plan and could be cancelled only on the occurance of either a life threatening situation or a situation involving saving the world. Well, I had a life threatening situation. Dad would have killed me if something was not done to the desktop. That was the reason why the plan almost got jeopardised. But fortunately the comp guy came and that got sorted out. No my PC is not fixed! He just took my MoBo away :P

I was free to go and I set off on my epic journey to Bandra. Inspite of numerous traffic jams, foreign exchange issues, always-reach-late syndrome, the 3 of us met almost simultaneously at the Bandra station, each arriving from 3 different directions. Raghu came by train, sameer from Bandra(E) while I reached Bandra(W). Monali was as usual kind enough to help me out with a good food place. After the post on Chinese food yesterday, I had a strong craving for it (inspite of forcing my mom to cook chinese last night). So we decided to try out Oriental Palette at Hill Road, Bandra (W). Its opposite Globus.

We reached there around 3:00 pm and were among the last 2 parties to enter. The waiter didn't seem too happy with us and promptly pointed out that we would get just one opportunity to order :P A big thumbs down for that. The ambience was decent, except for the sidey door setup, the door didn't have a door handle while one of the glass wall had a door handle :P. Anyways, the place serves, Chinese, Thai and Japanese. I wish I could write what we ate there, but except for Tum Yum soup I don't remember anything. Freaking tongue-twister names. We basically asked the waiter to suggest and then we pointed them out on the menu without attempting to pronounce them. But I think none of them were Thai or Japanese.

The soup came and though it looked like "Haldi-paani" initially, it was awesome! Hi5 for that one! They then served Chinese Tea (free! on the house! another thumbs up) Raghu enlightened me that it was used to wash away all the previous food taste, leaving your mouth fresh and ready for the next. We ordered noodles and chicken. Both the dishes were very good (a little bland though, cons of authentic chinese food)

By the time we were done, I got a happy feeling inside (exactly like the way I felt after eating at Pot-Pourri). Basically meant that it was a good experience. And for that kind of food, super value for money! The price was extremely welcoming. Not like how you tend to hyperventilate when you see the bill in some places. Also got my first fortune cookie (pretty useless fortune though, except for Raghu's).

Here's the final verdict
Ambience : 3.5/5
Service : 3/5 (got 3 because of all the hurrying because we went in late)
Food : 3.5/5
Value for Money : 4.25/5
Stomach is still fine. So I guess that needs a mention :)

My evening was super cool too. Met up with a couple of friends for coffee and we stayed till they started folding the chairs :P It was a good day :) I feel happy!