The Pursuit of Happyness

After months of waiting to catch the movie, I finally did that last night. (It's one of the movies I bought at landmark sometime back, if you remember :) )
To say the least, I was floored. The narration was so smooth and the flow was so engrossing. Sure will be a great source of inspiration for all those who want to make it big.

But what incited me into typing this excuse-for-a-blog-post was just one scene close to the climax: when the bosses at the stock broking firm call Smith for a meeting at the end of his internship. I still get goosebumps when I think of the way Smith emoted in that scene.

Mind-blowing and Super (to borrow from Sangeetha and Sundaram Master of Jodi No 1 fame, respectively)

Want to catch "Life is beautiful" next (also so that I can finally put up one post with a label that makes some sense)

My new blog

People.. This is to announce the launch of my new blog. Do honour the page with your presence! :)

What d'ya mean!

Had my heartiest ever laugh in recent times now.

A friend was looking at an online catalogue and came across the term "Price on request". In all seriousness, he muttered under his breath: "Price on request.. Hmmm.. They will give the product at whatever price we request it for" and went on with his browsing!!!

:D :D :D

It took me quite sometime to overcome the strain of laughing and explain the terms to him :D

A matter of choices

I have always had problems when faced with too many choices. The more I am offered, the more confused I become. Why else do you think I flunked in CAT 2006? The paper had one choice more than the conventional four! :( And again, it's cos of this detest for choices of any kind that I have not watched the Matrix series more than once (they went on and on about "choices" and "consequences" and other such words starting in "C" - words that you have always considered stupidly simple; how naive of you, ha ha!)

Anyway, having set the background let me tell you what the problem is. Last Sunday I went to Landmark armed with a couple of gift vouchers for Rs 750. The vouchers were set to expire this month-end, so I could not push the trip off any further.

You know what is the greatest experience in life (apart from reading someone else's personal diary)?

It is: stepping into Landmark well aware that it's not your own money that's at stake.

So I floated into the showroom at Apex Plaza smiling like a deranged baboon. And the neat arrays of books seemed oh-so-lovely!

Rubbing my paws.. err.. hands gleefully, I stepped over to my usual haunt: the humour section.

At this point I have to tell you about the complex algorithm I follow when choosing books to buy:
1. Go to the humor section
2. Pick a book and look at title and name of author (to fool others)
3. Nonchalantly turn over to back cover
4. Act as if reading testimonies
5. But look at price tag ('p') on the sly
6. Turn over to last page and see page number ('n')
7. If p > n, smirk and keep book back in place
8. If p < n, whoop in joy and run to billing counter clutching cook to chest (actually "book to chest", but this one looks better.. alliteration.. and some 'c' words we actually know)

My favorite authors are PG Wodehouse and Dave Barry. An uncle of mine owns the entire collection of PGW, so buying that would be wasteful expenditure of hard-earned gift vouchers. And Dave failed the acid test of my algorithm. Miserably. (Dave, if you are reading this, do ask your publishers to release Eastern Economy Editions). And the rest of the humour books did not seem exciting.

With humour not staking a strong enough claim for my 750, I moved around looking for other topics.

Philosophy... eeeeek...

Computer... Grrrr...

Kamas -- oooohhhh -- tra...

Stocks... Waks...

PHOTOGRAPHEEEEEEEE!

This particular section grabbed my eyes tight. How did I not think of this before! Photography is my new-found love (my dreams revolve around the sexy silvery curves of the Sony DSC H3). At once I started leafing through books on digital photography. Found a couple of interesting ones. But somehow couldn't move beyond step 5 of my algorithm. Maybe cos I suddenly realized that there are a whole lot of free resources on the net to learn the technical aspects of photography. I swear.

With that undone, I was again left to fend for myself, burdened with a blasted gift voucher :( I truly lost the smile on my face. The more and more I looked around, the more and more I became confused (any onlooker would have thought I was modelling for 'Ring Guard').

NO I could not just pick any book and be done with it. Like the true Indian that I am, I wanted to milk as much "value" out of my 750 as possible - I wanted it to perform like a 1500.

Whilst I went round and round in circles, coming back to square one every time, my sis completed her purchase. And her patience wore out after sometime (read 1 hour). Then she scared me by pulling out all kinds of movies from the English movie rack, for me. That was a strong wake-up call for me. I did not want to spend my money on stupid movies titled "Dark Africa: In the wild lands" or "Darker Africa: In the wilder lands". If at all I had to buy any stupid movies, I wanted MYSELF to be the one to decide.

So after an cntire cvening of confusion, I FINALLY cettled cown for come Cnglish Covies I cave clways conged to catch.

Cya!