Francais, Sil Vous Plait

Watched two French movies in the last 2 weeks. The French at times can be well...French. The first one I watched was The swimming pool. It is the story of an English best selling author (played by Charlotte Rampling) who moves to a small village in France to work on her book. This supposed respite from everyday life starts going awry with the unannounced arrival of her boss's slutty daughter (Ludivine Sagnier). The movie has its beautiful parts, like the French countryside, the background music, Ludivine Sagnier's breasts, etc. But the ending makes you tear your hair and cry over your lost hours (minus the gratuitous skin show) . No, it's not one of those lame endings, but one of those endings that change the entire storyline. You suddenly realize that the movie doesn't believe in time going forward. You also realize that parts of the movie happened only in Charlotte Rampling's head. The more you think about it, you aren't even sure whether Ludivine Sagnier's character even existed outside Charlotte's head. Or for that matter anything including the trip to France. Why the movie is called Swimming pool is unclear except the fact that it allows for some really nice cinematography. Here's my advice to French moviemakers. You have some awesome cinematography skills. Get your story straight like the next movie I watched...."A very long engagement". Before dwelling into that, one line from The Swimming Pool was worth a laugh...Awards are like hemorrhoids. Sooner or later every asshole gets one.



Un long dimanche de fiançailles or A very long engagement.
This is one movie worth the DVD rental cost. Set in the France of early 1920s, it follows Audrey Tautou's (Of Amelie fame) search for her lost, presumed dead, fiancee. The movie at times reminds one of Amelie given Audrey and that the director is the same. And it has some sex scenes (including one of Jodie Foster) shot in the Amelie style.
But the movie is like...well...a combination of war epics like Rashomon and Saving Private Ryan with a hopelessly romantic movie like Love Story and for added flavor an old-style detective movie. The movie switches from the horrors and absolute ridiculousness of WWI trench warfare at the Somme to the unbelievably beautiful French country around Breton, to the savvy French capital of the swinging 20s with finesse. I haven't seen such beauty and such violence coexist in the same movie before this. Not even in classics like Rashomon, from which BTW, this movie borrows one useful and well-used concept. The same war zone scene is repeated twice or thrice from different perspectives/angles. I was impressed and floored by this movie and it erased my ambivalence about watching French movies after the Swimming pool experience. Audrey delivers once again and is one actress whom I intend to watch more of. She apparently speaks very good English and is part of the upcoming film version of the Da Vince code. But before that, I need to watch another French movie, "La Battaglia di Algeri" or "Battle of Algiers", which according to many is the most unbiased movie ever made about France's involvement in Algeria.

War of the words and whats in a name

Is it the W on T or is it G SAVE? or in other words, is it the war on terror or the global struggle against violent extremism. This is the current debate in washington. I didn't make up the names or the abbreviations. which makes it worse. some asshole got paid for making this shit up. Pick a name you bastards and find us the bearded c**t who started this shit.

For a diffent answer to whats in a name, ask the Patels of Georgia. This shit is wrong and troubling. Best reaction would be shut down each and every dunkin donunts/7-11 in the country for one day and enjoy watching people suffer sugar/caffeine withdrawals (-:

Urbs Prima, Urbs Maximus

Recently read this book by Suketu Mehta. I read it in 2 or 3 sittings. Not because it is well written, but because it is about Urbs Prima in Indus, Urbs Maximus: Bom baia, Bombay, Mumbai. Call it what you want, it shall accept you as its own.

Its funny that I lived all my life in cities and towns surrounding Bombay (Thane, Vashi, Dombivli) , studied in Bombay and yet have never read any book written about this magnificent piece of land.

The book is written in a journalistic approach and meant to give the reader a voyeur's eye view into the lives of the shiv sena, the mumbai police, gangs, socialites, bar dancers, prostitutes, film stars and directors, slum dwellers, the upper middle class. Apart from the usual artistic error of not covering the absolutely ordinary folk inhabiting the city, the book suffers from poor editing. It is as a reader on Amazon called it a 300 page book masquerading as a 500 page book.

Despite all this, the book is a rewarding read for its insight into the various movers and shakers of the city. The parts dealing with the 1992-93 riots and subsequent bomb blasts are well written and well researched. It is interesting to know how the perpetrators and victims still live close to each other and in fact conduct business with each other as if nothing has happened. For example, it was interesting to learn that 5% of Muslims voted shiv sena in 1995, just 2 years after the riots. Its like giving the sheep pen key to the wolf.

The book does a good job of giving an idea of scales. That the population of Bombay and environs is the same as that of the entire continent of Australia. That the population of Savoy, a town neighboring uiuc and housing its airport is approximately the same as the number of people in a 12 car train during peak hours. That 17500 people live every square mile. That a city so huge in its effect and destiny is controlled by people so small in stature and thinking.

The book is especially transparent and stinging about the shiv sena and its supremo, bal thackeray as well as the gangland bosses like chota shakeel and abu salem. The fact that the Srikrishna commission report , possibly India's best conducted survey on the reasons and outcomes of any communal riot CAN never get implemented due to it non judicial nature is stunning. Equally stunning is the impunity with which the gang bosses actually dictate who can and who cannot leave the country. Its funny to read that the Abu Salem gang actually refused permission to Hrithik Roshan to visit the US. And that too weeks after his dad was shot thrice by the same gang!!

The book does a decent service of capturing the fact that Mumbai is both a city of dreams and last resorts. And how in fact it can be both to the same set of people. Though the author lived in Bombay in the 70s till emigrating with his parents to NY and then again in the late 90s, he doesn't try to answer what Bombay is all about and whether there is anything common between someone living in the "town" and someone living in Mira road. He, like me, calls the vada pav the only unifying factor. It is a city of vada pav eaters.

If you has ever lived in or around this city, or have been fascinated as to how 20 million people live in such a small area, do read it. If you are looking for a travel guide, skip it and read a lonely planet guide instead.

tamils and Vikings

Patronymics. It connects Tams with Vikings. It is the naming ritual that has caused me infinite misery and my father to have research papers credited to his name in refrigeration and MEMS optical property measurement apart from his own field of organic chemistry. Ja, I am talking about kids having their father's first name as their last name. Vikings followed that system. The Danish government outlawed it for more than a century (for reasons I don't know, but I think it was the terrible confusion). It did what I am thinking of doing. Freezing the last name at some stage and passing it onwards to your kids and grandkids.

I am seriously thinking of making chandrasekharan my family name for ever. It is long enough to confer it the seriousness of a last name (am not sure if ramesh can or will have the same effect). And it has enough alphabets in it to ensure that any kid I have will win the spelling bee before spelling their own last name right.

In the case of the Danes, it screwed up their naming as most kids in the 1820s had names Jensen, Hansen or Rasmussen with the curious byproduct that many successive heads of state totally unrelated to each other have had the same last name. Makes it easy for President Bush to remember the Danish head of state.

In my case, it will prevent any kids I might have from having to explain at age 6 to any dumbass teacher/government clerk/culturally insensitive moron that they do have a father (and know him) but they won't fill the "father's name" as that name is the same as the last name.My father never used a last name. He used his first name alone with a initial J for Jayaraman. I was to do the same. But I was bullied by a nice old Catholic teacher (she was the nicest teacher I had in all other respects) to fill something in my "last name". So at age 6, I did cave in and it has caused me the misery of never having papers credited to my name but to R. Chandrasekharan. So i have decided to end the chain of misery. The only thing i transfer down to future generations is the last name and my Y chromosome.

as if i needed this

check this out
Penguin classics

initially they had a mailing fee of 3.99 USD. they realised the meaninglessness of it and its now free (-:

rain rain

its going to pour here for sometime. thanks dennis.

rain rain come again
i dont have to wash the damn car again

the onion

here is an article from the Jan 18 2001 issue of the Onion. (satirical newspaper). Read on and you shall be amazed (-:

WASHINGTON, DC—Mere days from assuming the presidency and closing the door on eight years of Bill Clinton, president-elect George W. Bush assured the nation in a televised address Tuesday that "our long national nightmare of peace and prosperity is finally over."

"My fellow Americans," Bush said, "at long last, we have reached the end of the dark period in American history that will come to be known as the Clinton Era, eight long years characterized by unprecedented economic expansion, a sharp decrease in crime, and sustained peace overseas. The time has come to put all of that behind us."

Bush swore to do "everything in [his] power" to undo the damage wrought by Clinton's two terms in office, including selling off the national parks to developers, going into massive debt to develop expensive and impractical weapons technologies, and passing sweeping budget cuts that drive the mentally ill out of hospitals and onto the street.

During the 40-minute speech, Bush also promised to bring an end to the severe war drought that plagued the nation under Clinton, assuring citizens that the U.S. will engage in at least one Gulf War-level armed conflict in the next four years.

"You better believe we're going to mix it up with somebody at some point during my administration," said Bush, who plans a 250 percent boost in military spending. "Unlike my predecessor, I am fully committed to putting soldiers in battle situations. Otherwise, what is the point of even having a military?"

On the economic side, Bush vowed to bring back economic stagnationby implementing substantial tax cuts, which would lead to a recession, which would necessitate a tax hike, which would lead to a drop in consumer spending, which would lead to layoffs, which would deepen the recession even further.

Wall Street responded strongly to the Bush speech, with the Dow Jones industrial fluctuating wildly before closing at an 18-month low. The NASDAQ composite index, rattled by a gloomy outlook for tech stocks in 2001, also fell sharply, losing 4.4 percent of its total value between 3 p.m. and the closing bell.

Asked for comment about the cooling technology sector, Bush said: "That's hardly my area of expertise."

Turning to the subject of the environment, Bush said he will do whatever it takes to undo the tremendous damage not done by the Clinton Administration to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. He assured citizens that he will follow through on his campaign promise to open the 1.5 million acre refuge's coastal plain to oil drilling. As a sign of his commitment to bringing about a change in the environment, he pointed to his choice of Gale Norton for Secretary of the Interior. Norton, Bush noted, has "extensive experience" fighting environmental causes, working as a lobbyist for lead-paint manufacturers and as an attorney for loggers and miners, in addition to suing the EPA to overturn clean-air standards.

Bush had equally high praise for Attorney General nominee John Ashcroft, whom he praised as "a tireless champion in the battle to protect a woman's right to give birth."

"Soon, with John Ashcroft's help, we will move out of the Dark Ages and into a more enlightened time when a woman will be free to think long and hard before trying to fight her way past throngs of protesters blocking her entrance to an abortion clinic," Bush said. "We as a nation can look forward to lots and lots of babies."

Continued Bush: "John Ashcroft will be invaluable in healing the terrible wedge President Clinton drove between church and state."

The speech was met with overwhelming approval from Republican leaders.

"Finally, the horrific misrule of the Democrats has been brought to a close," House Majority Leader Dennis Hastert (R-IL) told reporters. "Under Bush, we can all look forward to military aggression, deregulation of dangerous, greedy industries, and the defunding of vital domestic social-service programs upon which millions depend. Mercifully, we can now say goodbye to the awful nightmare that was Clinton's America."

"For years, I tirelessly preached the message that Clinton must be stopped," conservative talk-radio host Rush Limbaugh said. "And yet, in 1996, the American public failed to heed my urgent warnings, re-electing Clinton despite the fact that the nation was prosperous and at peace under his regime. But now, thank God, that's all done with. Once again, we will enjoy mounting debt, jingoism, nuclear paranoia, mass deficit, and a massive military build-up."

An overwhelming 49.9 percent of Americans responded enthusiastically to the Bush speech.

"After eight years of relatively sane fiscal policy under the Democrats, we have reached a point where, just a few weeks ago, President Clinton said that the national debt could be paid off by as early as 2012," Rahway, NJ, machinist and father of three Bud Crandall said. "That's not the kind of world I want my children to grow up in."

"You have no idea what it's like to be black and enfranchised," said Marlon Hastings, one of thousands of Miami-Dade County residents whose votes were not counted in the 2000 presidential election. "George W. Bush understands the pain of enfranchisement, and ever since Election Day, he has fought tirelessly to make sure it never happens to my people again."

Bush concluded his speech on a note of healing and redemption.

"We as a people must stand united, banding together to tear this nation in two," Bush said. "Much work lies ahead of us: The gap between the rich and the poor may be wide, be there's much more widening left to do. We must squander our nation's hard-won budget surplus on tax breaks for the wealthiest 15 percent. And, on the foreign front, we must find an enemy and defeat it."

"The insanity is over," Bush said. "After a long, dark night of peace and stability, the sun is finally rising again over America. We look forward to a bright new dawn not seen since the glory days of my dad."

watch this space

I started a new hobby. taking pics. not ordinary digital snaps, but pics with filters attached to the camera.
I start off with an IR filter. This hoya R-72 filter cuts out light below 700nm. Thus the pic is majorly due to near IR reflecting off various objects. Note that this is not the same as thermal imaging. Digital camera CCDs are nowhere near that sensitive. The effect is eerie with green foliage appearing as an almost fluorescent white while other objects appearing in various shades of darkness. The awesome thing is that the air around us does not absorb much in the IR, so these snaps appear clearer than ordinary pics. Anyways...here goes

 IR pics

that sinking feeling

i rarely watch the news in the morning. i should have stuck to that pattern today. but my roommate whose sister lives in the UK was glued to the tv set. got that same sinking feeling of watching a trainwreck unfold in front of your eyes. sorry london.

oh india

i am a volunteer at the local Asha for education chapter. i joined it in the first year out of curiosity/boredom on that particular weekend and have been actively involved in various fund raising events ever since. beyond that i dont know why i joined. i notice that many indian students in the united states are part of such organizations (Asha, AID, etc.) Interesting given that very few of us did any social volunteering while in india. not that i or others did not have time while in india. anyone saying that would be bsing through their mouths. is it some kind of guilt complex? i dont know.
anyway....Asha was rated as the top charity organisation by a neutral body called charity navigator. so in case you have a chapter around you...join it. or at least give your money (-:

one thing that struck me while reading the charity navigator website was the fact that two indian charities are in the top 5. both are entirely volunteer run and have no paid employees. and both have extremely high standards and excellent "returns on investment". they both have budgets of around a million (roughly). the american charities listed there have ceos, excellent quality and budgets of 100s of millions of dollars!

so, despite all this progress , or is it talk of progress?, india is still a few orders of mangitude lower in development indices. heres one that shocked me when i first heard it. the number of domestic airline tickets sold from march 2004 to march 2005 in india grew 10 odd percent over the prior fiscal to 16 million tickets. thats the number of tickets sold in the united states in 5 days!!

obit

Jack Kilby, university of illinois, ECE, 1947, inventor of ICs died this week. His Ge based device was the model for future Si based devices.
Charles Keeling, University of Illinois 1948, first person to point out global warming died yesterday. He was a legend in experimental circles for his anal behavior and resulting accuracy of his data. Even the Bushies and industry hacks could never dispute his data or methodology.

the race that wasnt

a few snaps from the indy trip and my new used car.











less said the better about the race itself

monkey business

Do read this week's new york times sunday magazine. its about money, economics and monkeys. A group of researchers at yale trained monkeys to use money to buy food. the money was silver colored discs and they could exchange it for jellos and other sweet foods. within some time of getting trained to use money, the monkeys did two things normally associated with humans: a bank heist and prostitution!! stealing is something to be expected from monkeys, but the actual use of an inedible thing to get sex disturbed the researchers. to prevent turning the lab into a brothel, they have modified the experiment (-: another stunning find was that the monkeys are optimists. they are ready to take risks and believe that they can make a good gamble. the actual statistics of the monkeys taking optimisitic gambles matched that of stock market humans.

all you classical music fans

check this out. this promises to be some fun
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/beethoven/downloads.shtml

article about mumbai

if u ever lived in bombay, you will understand what this article is about.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/17/international/asia/17mumbai.html?8hpib

and ya...if you are a gamer....the new xbox 360 has one terflop computing power (-:

how true

error is human, everything else is divine.

nuts

today is the day science and thinking died in the united states. 050505 (555). shave a religious nut's head and you shall find 555 tattoed. for today, kansas started hearings on evolution. They actually have a "hearing" where PhDs are being asked to defend their stands on evolution and darwin himself. Whether it is a sound enough theory to be included in school texts. Questions asked of the best and brightest included " Dr. XYZ...how old do you think the planet is or life is?"
They want to know why "intelligent creation" shouldnt be taught. and evolution omitted. here's a clue...if the creator were intelligent, he wouldnt have made kansas. so maybe it is stupid creation? any buyers?

In other news...Korea, the northern cousin that is, is preparing to test a nuke. and american officials are saying it could just be an ruse to trick american spy satellites into thinking that they are testing. Here's a clue on what might unfold: in 2003, n. korea said...enough is enough, i am dismantling reactors, taking the fuel and making it into bombs. it was wished away as an empty threat. cut to 2005. they do have the damn bombs. maybe, just maybe, the fuckers are telling the truth. all along.

nice saying

in all these years of reading fortune cookies in chinese restaurants and meaningless astrological columns in newspapers, here is the best one i have ever read:

" create like god, command like a king, work like a slave".

mental hotfoots

here are some mental hotfoots; things that you can do to wake people out of their daydreams and give them something to discuss all day or all their lives! (note...some of these are mine and some are....not)
1. ask a german whether "chow mein ist mein chow" (food) qualifies as spoken german or is it just meaningless bullshit.
2. find some evangelical selling christianity. ask him/her whether he/she has found jesus. if they answer yes, shout out loud looking skyward "2000 years ......at last...now your turn". before starting to find a hiding place, dont forget to tell the roving soul converters to say hi to jesus from you if they find him again. this will not only wake them up but chances are you will be wide awake after the righteous anger on display. (no offense to the believers...if the jerk on my campus stops me again and warns me that i am going to hell ....i plan to try this or something similar on him)
3. go to starbucks and ask for coffee flavored coffee. i am pretty sure they wont have any clue. grande assholes.
4. walk into a subway with mirror finish (literally) shoes. watch the ladies clear the way. wait for a short but very high speed travel through thin smelly air usually found in subway tunnels.
5. paint your car white with red bumpers. for added effect, attach white and red canes to your fender. drive with your darkest sunglasses on and hold the wheel supertight. you shall be king of the road.
6. call up everyone in the directory who share your last name. say you cant remember your address or phone number and are eliminating possibilities. this works best at 2am on a saturday morning. doesnt work with a name like mine. i ended up calling my dad.
8. call AAA, report some trouble. insist that you have a 1985 peice of shit. if further pressed for year and make, say 1985 POS, turd coupe. (u really must be sick and bored to death to try this one)
7. if you are ever pulled over, dont wait for the cop to walk over. get out and run. chances are you will be shot dead. fbi, cia and all three alphabets in the english language will spend a fortune trying to find a motive. you shall live on in history and conspiracy theories. forever.

spring is here

it was a beautiful day here in urbana. fell in love all over again with the neighborhood that i live in. it gets dark and cold during winter. spring gets the life back into the birds, flowers and trees. i cant remember when was the last time i literally stopped and smelled the flowers!
before posting this, i just checked my last post. my heart sank one more time:it was about uiuc's bball team. it took me a good 2 days to get out of the depressed and hollow feeling after our loss on monday to Sean May and NC. we played well...but couldnt stop one guy. well...i better not get started. the sadness might be below the surface now, but still hurts. Luckily, before manic monday we did have super saturday when we beat the hell out of louiville. it was one wild party on the streets of this town after we won. will try to post some pics soon.
saw sin city yesterday. i cant get the movie out of my head! keep remembering some or the other absolutely stunning or sickening scene. or remebering jessica alba or brittany murphy [;)]
it is the beginning of a new genre for sure. it sure is not for the weak hearted or those with a weak stomach for violence and gross stuff. but if you can bear the violence and other assorted insanities, watch it.