Saturdays and Sundays

Saturdays and Sundays... If you ask me are better than vacation. I was just thinking today that I dont do much during weekends nowadays as I used to back in India. So I started recollecting all the fond memories I had about these two brilliant days.. So here is my story..

When I was an undergrad, I used to be a day scholar. So I was subjected to all rules directly or indirectly put forth by my Mother. One among them is getting up in the morning. During weekdays, I usually got up at 6:30 in the morning. Even though I got up this early, I missed the first class most of the time. I have no idea how that happened. Anyway, On friday evenings, usually lots of friends come over to my house and we usually ended up chit-chatting or in our words "manga". Among them, Hari usually crashed at my place for the night as he used to be a hosteler.

Okay, my saturday starts something like this,

"Dae.. eilthuru ra... papamma vanthutanga paru..." My mom used to whisper in my ears... Papamma was our  house maid. Really nice lady, very old and she was always right on time. I used to sleep on a floor on a mat. My mom wanted no one to disturb papamma when she was doing her job. Ofcourse, I was a disturbance because I was sleeping on the floor and she couldn't clean it.

"Enna amma... its saturday... 8 u mani than achu..." I murmerd like a drunk who had a really bad hang over... "Dae... eilthuru..." My mom was persistant... I eventually got up. After scratching my eyes and trying to get a feel of early morning, I saw Hari was still sleeping. I was so angry. "Amma.... avan mattum thungituirukan... enna nakkala... avan thungituiruthana mattum vetta clean panna pudiyuma..." I told my mom in the kitchen. She finished the conversation by her winning line "Athan eilthuruchutalla.. aparram enna..". When I crossed the bedroom, I sighed at Hari and thougth to myself.."lucky #@$@#%".

But thats it. Getting up early in the morning and arguing with my Mom was the maximum activity that I had on saturday morning. I am not a big fan of playing cricket (one big reason being I am a crappy player and whenever we went to play, I preferred keeping wickets or umpiring) which is what everyone played. So I spent most afternoon playing games on my PC, mainly NFS. But I had Madhavan and his brother Sharanyan for company in playing NFS. I usually burned most of the games from them. Whenever I went to their house, Sharanyan would be many levels ahead of me in NFS. So I once asked him "Eppadi ra.. ivolavu levels mudhicha ivolavu sikrama?. 24 hours valadraya?". Sharanyan always replied "Ofcourse not". I tackled "Oh... I know.. you have a better computer"... Madhavan's reactions would be "ahh.." and then would start laughing... which revealed that I was lying my ass off....

Saturday evenings are typical.. Myself and Hari eating Gobi from a food cart on street or in tamil "Kaiyanthi". I still have not found anything that I could eat outside and enjoy as much as I enjoyed eating Gobi. I dont know how they do it.. but its too damn good.

My sunday goes something like this:

On Sunday mornings, I am not forced to get up in the morning because papamma comes only at 11 AM. So saturday night.. before sleeping I usually think to myself... "Ahh.. Tomorrow is sunday... I am not getting up until 11 AM or 12 PM". One random sunday morning at 8 AM, TV shouts "Lalitha Jewellery in 'Patukkku Pattu' ". Okay..Lets rewind a little bit. Saturday nights I usually end up sleeping in the hall watching TV. Okay.. we are back. I got up and saw my father operating the remote. He greeted "Good morning!". I replied sarcastically "Suppper morning..."

Patukku pattu program was telecasted only during a short period during my college days.. I guess during my first year of college. But then the program stopped telecasting. I said "Finally freedom". Another sunday morning..  conversations from TV "unga ponna pathi solunga..." Mom of the girl replied "Romba nalla ponnu... bank la valapakkra.. Mouglaya gothram..". At the same time in my dreams a Blonde chick comes towards me, shakes my hand and says "Hi. I am Mouglaya gothram... Thula rasi"..  I replied in shock "What the hell!" and thats when I woke up. Conversations from TV continues.. "Thula rasi..". This time the TV program name was "Mangalyam" or something close to that. I dont remember correctly. This program was like a live BharathMatrimony.com. I asked my father, suprised, "Yarukaga intha program pakuringa? Enaku ippo therinche aganum". My father laughs in response. When I was brushing , it hits me.. "Was there a blonde girl in my dreams?Oh god.. Mangalyam sucks".

After that I read the news paper. For some reason I like the Sunday sections of The Hindu. In the kitchen, my Mom was cooking something really good for lunch. Okay... the deal with Sunday lunches is my Mom cooks one of the following:

- vengaya sambar, molagu rasam, potato curry or

- Bisibelabath, potato curry, raita or

- Vethha kolambu, vendakka curry.

Brilliant menus. Brilliant food. One of the things that brightens my Sundays which I really really miss these days. In between news paper reading and eating lunch, I never missed one program.. "Lion dates Top 10 Movies". When you watch this program long enough, you will start realizing that the anchor says these cool phrased tamil sentences eventually to conclude that the movie is crappy.

I actually dont remember what I did Sunday afternoons. Probably playing games.

Thats my Saturday and Sunday story back in India guys. I wish I could be more active (this is something I lacked even in India :) ) and do something fun during weekends these days.

Enjoy your weekends guys. Could easily end up being your most memorable times.

UPDATE: The name of the program was not Mangalyam. It was Kalyana Maalai. Thanks to Arun R for mentioning it.

What is life without crappy movies...

crap.py mov.ie [krap.ee mōō'vē]

1. A movie with an attractive actress and a famous actor trying to do things that is unimaginable in the real world that makes you say 'what a crap' after around one and half hours.

Examples: The Happening, The Peacemakers, Miami Vice

My latest was The Peacemakers. It was so typical. The only motivation for me was Nicole Kidman. But she also turned out be someone who has a job title which is hard to remember and runs around with the actor (in this case its George Clooney) and finally ends up stopping the detonation of a nuclear war head at the last second and eventually ends up saving the world. And oh ya... you guessed it... after they are fully recovered the guy get a medal and they both end up dating. The poster says it all...

[caption id="attachment_24" align="alignnone" width="209" caption="You have no idea how thrilling this film is :) ..."][/caption]

But if you ask me... Crappy movies are part of everyone's life. Its hard to avoid them. Probably fifteen years back the probability of someone watching a crappy movie is more because its hard to get a review before you end up watching it in the theater. But nowadays... there is no excuse.. If you are watching a crappy movie.. its purely your fault :). You wanted to watch it simply to find out how crappy it was. I still remember the last time I watched a movie like that on the big screen. This time it was with my friends. We all knew that the movie was so crappy that we had some fun reading the reviews. Yet we ended up watching the movie. After an hour or so everyone started saying 'What the hell! Nothings happening'. You guessed it again... the name of the movie is 'The Happening'. I am not exaggerating here. Nothing actually happened in the movie.

But for me crappy movies still ranks above Cleaning the house and Cooking anytime.

One thing I have noticed is crappy movies are so much fun when you watch it with friends who are ready to mock it from start to end.  There was this one time, we were all getting geared up for a movie because the tagline  read 'If the sun dies, so do we'. OOOOOOO... thats ...[big pause]... interesting. This time the movie was not all bad. It was almost on the edge but still bearable because it was not happening on earth and the genre was Sci-Fi. But we still ended up mocking (mostly by my friends) so bad that we missed couple of important scenes in the film and ended up getting confused at the end. The name of this movie was 'Sunshine' and the Danny Boyle was the director. Note: Good directors also create crappy movies.

So if at all you badly want to watch a crappy movie.. try to watch it with your friends. You will end up having some fun.

I am ending my weekend by watching another movie.. this time a good one..

Happy watching movies everyone.... Enjoy!

Virtual Haircut

Hello there.
This is going to be a small one. I just couldn't resist this.
Check this out:
Virtual Haircut
One of the most amazing things I have heard so far. It might get scary too :) .

Enjoy the audio!

Catch ya later.

Discovering interesting websites

I love exploring new websites. As technology keeps improving the quality of the websites improves drastically. I am going to the share some of the websites and tools that I usually use to discover new websites.

StumbleUpon - No doubt. This tool surely goes on top of my list. Previously stumble upon can be used only with toolbars installed in browsers. But now you can explore new websites using their website.  You get tons of options. You can stumble videos, pictures, websites, news articles, wikipedia pages, search on specific topics. This tool is also a social network. You can have friends and share links, articles with them.

MakeUseOf.com - Amazing website. Its a shared weblog. It lists some of the rarest websites which will be hard to find in other places. Look out for Cool Websites and Tools section.

DownloadSquad - Another shared weblog. This website focuses more on tech (software) news. Every once is a while it posts articles about interesting website. If you are seeing a website mentioned here, its definitely worth checking out.

Digg - A very interesting website and  the first of its kind. Its allows users to post articles on various categories and allows other users to rank (digg) the article. So based on the rank, you might either see that article on the first page or you might not. Even though this website is famous for articles, there are lots of posts on new websites in the Technology section.

Delicious -  The most famous and most used online bookmarking tool. Since most of the them make their bookmarks public, you should be able to get atleast a dozen matches for whatever you are searching for in this website.  This is a great way to find new websites. I rarely use it as you need to search for getting what you need. I don't know if I have that patience.

I use these websites on daily basis to find something interesting on web.   I knew about these below websites with the help of the ones listed above:

- Mint, Billmonk, Billy - light weight music player, Roxer, Clerkdogs - The most efficient movie recommendation website

Hope this will be useful. Please let me know if I have missed any good website here. See ya around.