WANDeRiNG MiND!

Just wanted to share this here.

Somebody mailed me this link sometime back and ever since I have been addicted to it. Whoever created it, which I guess is a guy named Dan from whose site it comes, must really hate George and this I say is the best way anybody who hates the guy can take their frustrations out.

Check it out.
http://www.planetdan.net/pics/misc/georgie.htm

Just drag the guy around and drop him and do whatever you want.

I warn you though. It’s quite scary how much you start enjoying this “torture game”

Been a long time. 2 months and 3 days to be more precise. And I’ve been too busy and then too bugged and soon too frustrated to be in mood to jot anything. I still am a li’l aloof and so have no idea what to write about. But then I thought I’ll just do the ramblings and mumblings on a text file rather than in my mind, so that I have something to post at least. Well, here I go. Get bugged. Feel frustrated. Kill yourself. I don’t care. And thanx in advance for not blaming me for it

I posted last on my birthday. So lemme start with that. My birthday.

It wasn’t something great, but it was a nice one. All my friends and cousins and uncles and aunts wished me, by phone or by sms. Oh, don’t be of the impression that I have loads of them though. Just a few good friends and relatives. In fact, more of my girlfriend’s friends wished me than my own old friends. Funny, eh? But that’s how it’s been always. My friends never remember my birthday. Even in school, I used to wish all my friends for their birthdays and send them cards etc. And they used to be like.. “Wow! You remembered!” That was good enough to make me happy. I never cared if they did the same to me. I was more excited when I used to get cards from unexpected sources. Like the one I got from Parry’s, the toffee company who had conducted some game once and I had participated. They sent me a sweet li’l card on my following birthday, which totally made my day!

Well, that was a long time ago when Internet and websites were a distant dream. Today, to be frank I get most of the birthday wishes from the umpteen websites I have registered with. They don’t make me feel special ‘coz I know, unlike the one somebody at Parry’s sent me, it’s an auto-generated e-card and lacks any human emotional value.

Anyway, this year the company where I work also celebrated my birthday, making me cut a yummy cake and smearing my face with some and giving me a small gift etc. Then when I went home, my sweetheart gave me a tiny party too… with just the 2 of us. It was a really sweet one and is something I always look forward to Then I went to my aunt’s place and they made me cut yet another cake and had dinner there and hogged on a lot of ice cream for dessert too.

Well, that was my birthday. A simple and nice day.

At work however, things have been a mixture of feelings. I have been going through a lot of pressure and some fun and quite a lot of irritations and frustrations. Am into designs and stuff, and so my job is a lot more pleasant than the coding and programming team here. Well, for me at least, it is. I enjoy the work when deadlines are set. Keeps me engaged the whole time, with no time for worries. That’s the only way I can keep my mind from wandering into the unwanted territories. So I enjoyed those days at work. But once I finished those works, a lot of stuff came up which were highly irritating. And something the company was to do for us in February, is still pending. So I have been pushed into the frustration zone and there I still linger. Not a pretty sight, I tell you.

Ok, forget that. Now what else happened in the 2 months and 3 days? Ummm… well, after a long wait, I got a new phone. A Sony Ericsson K750i. Quite a gadget. A cool 2MP camera with loads of options, just like a regular digicam, a cool mp3 player that comes with my favorite MegaBass option from Sony (it’s become a replacement for my Creative Nomad MuVo, which by itself is a cool gismo), a good FM tuner and a great, superfast processor which renders 3D games damn nice. Wanted a Nokia as am too used to them, but then nothing was available that could beat the K750i for its image and sound quality. And then I held it in hand and was head-over-heels in love! Oh yeah, am a gadget freak and am pretty happy with the one I got

I watched a few movies too which I really enjoyed. Will write about them in the next post. And you can read it if you haven’t killed yourself by the end of this. Ha! Ha!! (snort! snort!)

In the last 10 days, my parents were with me and it was their 30th wedding anniversary on the 4th of April. So, as a celebration, we planned a short trip with a few friends and relatives to Coorg, a district at the Karnataka-Kerala border. It’s known for its incomparable scenic beauty, lush green valleys, coffee plantations, teak wood forests & majestic mountain ranges. It was a nice trip, in a group of 9. The climate there has however changed a lot now which I presume is inevitable considering the global warming. And the roads of course were horrible too and that left everybody too tired for much walks and treks. The trip could have been better, but still it was a good one and is one I made after a real long time. A much needed break from this city pollution and traffic.

Talking of this city, those who have known Bangalore a few years earlier, would be crying inside now to see its plight. This place has changed so much. I remember how pleasant the days used to be here back in 1999. Throughout the day, throughout the year, we used to wear a jacket and go out. I still have many jackets I bought back then, now rendered useless. The place has become so horribly hot and polluted that during weekends we prefer to stay at home rather than get burnt alive outside. The temperatures that used to vary from 14C to 27C now swing between 19C and 37C. The sales of air conditioners, coolers, fans and refrigerators were never this huge here. People are switching to whites, lights and cottons from the ever-fashionable denims and corporate dressings. The daily travel to work and back is like a test of patience and self-control. While reaching the office on time is the greatest achievement of the day, finding a parking space for the vehicle on a weekend is that of the whole week. The once green garden city is now the city of a lot lesser trees; and never-ending traffic jams, flyover constructions, potholes and road repairs and corrupted politicians, government employees and cops. And even with all these bottlenecks, the cost of living here is soaring sky-high. Shopping malls just pop up like mushrooms.

I once had a dream of settling down in Bangalore, but now, am not so sure. Don’t blame me for that. Am allergic to heat…and dust…and pollution…and crowded places …and…irritating people…

Oh, shuddup!

Damn! How time flies when you don’t want it to.

Today, am officially a year older!
And am fishing for wishes… hee hee.

Yeah! It’s… like we used to say once… my “Happy Birthday”.
Just entered the last year of my 20s… Gosh! That does make me feel like a fossil.

Not very keen about celebrating b’days…err…I mean, my b’days. Not ‘coz I don’t want to, but I usually don’t have anybody around me that time. But yes, I get calls from all the people I really care about, and in the last 4 years, I’ve had the one person with me to make it special.

Well, I guess that’s a lot more than I could ask for

Oh well… Happy Birthday to ME

Manfred the Mammoth, Diego the Saber-toothed Tiger and Sid the sloth were the weirdest herd I ever came across. Their adventure entertained millions around the world in 2002. If you’re wondering what am talking about, well, am talking about the animated movie Ice Age. This funny and enthralling movie, set 20,000 years ago, during the titular Paleolithic era, is one of the animated movies I enjoyed a lot.The story line is simple. The unlikely team encounters a dying human mother who relinquishes her chirpy toddler to the care of these creatures. Hoping against all odds to return the little guy to his migrating tribe, the members of the herd need to establish trust among them, which apparently is not an easy task in a harsh world of predators, prey, and pushy glaciers. How they become a team is kind of similar to how the lonely ogre and the irritating donkey became a team in the “greatest fairy tale never told”, Shrek. Manny is annoyed with Sid, and after he saves Sid’s life from a pair of (prehistoric) rhinos, he just can’t seem to get rid of him!! Diego joins a little later, trying to steal the human kid from the pair and take it to his own pack.

The movie is real funny and the show stealers are Sid and Scrat (a saber-toothed squirrel? He’s kind of half-squirrel half-rat, and hence the name, I guess) especially Scrat even with the short appearances he makes now and then. The pun in the dialogues is hilarious. Overall, a great, wholesome entertainer. Am eagerly awaiting it’s sequel, Ice Age 2: The Meltdown, which is to come out this summer.

Few days back I watched Madagascar, yet another animated movie, this time from the makers of Shrek and Shark Tale. Yes, am an animated movie enthusiast too… heehee. Well, basically, am an animator, you know. Anyways, if Ice Age showed the “humane” side of the animals (or maybe it’s the “animale” side), Madagascar in a way deals with the inhumane side of humans. Maybe not directly, but it sure does, I feel.

So, what’s the plot? It’s about 4 animals, best of friends. Alex the lion (voiced by Ben Stiller) is living large on steak and applause at New York’s Central Park Zoo. The same goes for Gloria the hippo (Jada Pinkett Smith) and Melman the hypochondriac giraffe (David Schwimmer, who is annoyingly whiny. Well, that’s the character). The only complaints come from Marty the zebra (Chris Rock) who always dreams of the wild, the world beyond the fences of the zoo. A bunch of penguins successfully break out of the zoo in the hopes of reaching Antarctica. This prompts the zebra to realize that he could visit his wild roots and he breaks out of the zoo on his 10th birthday. His three friends break out as well in the hopes of returning him to the zoo. Things go wrong. The escape bid is seen by us simple-minded humans as a sign that the animals desire to return to their natural habitat and soon the bunch of “don’t-know-what’s-wilderness” wild animals are boxed and shipped by animal rights people, to be released… where else… in the wild. But a series of unfortunate events ends with them getting thrown overboard, into the sea, in the boxes. And that’s how the animals hit tropical Madagascar, ruled by King Julien XIII, a lemur (hilariously voiced by Sacha Baron Cohen). And then the trouble starts. The king enlists the “New York Giants” to scare off the predatory Foosa. But Alex, his own lion instincts aroused by starving and missing his fav steaks, digs his teeth into Marty’s butt. He’ll take his steak where he can get it.

The movie wasn’t up to my expectations, as someone made me expect a little more than it delivered. Like one of the reviews online says,

Less like Shrek, meaning hilarious and heartfelt, and more like Shark Tale, meaning manic and exhausting, Madagascar will keep kids distracted without transporting them to wonderland. Unlike recent age-crossing animated goodies, Madagascar is juvenile and deeply generic.

Now, for a moment, just think of what the animals that we keep in the zoo could actually be wishing for. Most of them never know what their real home is like, what their life actually should be like. If they ever get to go to the wild, would they survive? Tarzan grew up in the jungles, and when he finally came to civilization, he was in trouble. But he had Jane with him. What would animals do if they had to go from civilization to the jungles, which ironically is their real home? They should have been born free, free and wild. It’s sad, I feel. The first time I thought about that is when I watched Born Free a very very long time ago.

Anyways, Madagascar the movie, is an enjoyable one and has it’s share of laughs to offer too. Cohen as King Julien – the lemur, steals the show from the entire cast whenever his character is on screen. For me, the best part of the movie was the song “I like to move it, move it”, featuring Julien. God, that was hil-LLarious, and I guess even the team at DreamWorks loved it. It’s featured in the movie, and again during the end titles. And a special music video comes as a bonus with the movie too.

It’s worth it.

I hate myself
…for what I am.
…for being the way I am.
…for not being able to change myself.
…for hurting so many of you.
…for hurting YOU.

I hate myself… for being me!