The Perfect Beverage

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For all the devotion, thirst for and yearning that I have for a drink that I have never ever tasted – just imagine what it would be like if I’ve had a pint or two!

For as long as I can remember watching English language movies, tv series and travel/living/food shows I have seen people drinking the Irish dry stout that is supposed to be heaven on earth. Ok, I have never tasted it but just look at it! Look at the way, a cold pint is poured into that curvy, sexy looking glass. That dark liquid body with the foamy head. Does it not look like the best drink you could ever pour into your mouth?

Created in the brewery of Arthur Guinness (St. James Gate brewery) in the 18th century, Guinness is Ireland’s gift to the world. It’s also one of the things that makes you want to become Irish and therefore, a matter of pride to them. Guinness stout is made from water, barley, hops, and brewer’s yeast, and is treated with isinglass finings made from fishes’ air bladders, a portion of the barley is roasted to give Guinness its dark colour and characteristic taste. Despite its reputation as a “meal in a glass”, Guinness only contains 198 kcal (838 kilojoules) per imperial pint (1460 kJ/l), fewer than skimmed milk or orange juice and most other non-light beers.

Wherever you are reading this post from, if you drink and can reach for a Guinness nearby, please drink a pint in my name.

When Is It Ok To Cheat?

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Hmmm. I would say that usually it is not ok to cheat. Like if it is a competition or work or whatever. Cheating is never good. I do understand that sometimes, in order for the greater good, the rules have to be bent to see the right thing done. As to how much bending is the question.

What would you do if a family, a community or homeless kids depended on you winning a competition / prize money for their survival? An orphanage could be lost, a community led sports center or a playground. And the opponent are mean, heartless, bastards who treat everyone else really badly. And no one likes them. So would you cheat just a little bit to give yourself the edge (I’m going into sappy, corny Hollywood rom-com movie territory here fellas)?

Would ya? Would ya? I think the circumstances will dictate it and even though I wouldn’t condone it, I would understand it. Hell I might even help you cheat!

Innerevolution – Philip Sayce

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I first came to know about Philip Sayce and his guitar playing abilities due to his liaison with Jeff Healey, touring with the late Blues legend and often jamming with him on twin guitar ditties and playing on two albums for Jeff. Post that Philip has also spent time touring with Uncle Kracker and more recently his high profile stint as the lead guitarist for Melissa Ethridge. In July 2010, Philip Sayce supported the legendary ZZ Top in Europe. In December 2010 he supported Deep Purple on their French dates. Along the way the Welsh-Canadian blues guitarist has also released two solo albums, the second of which is what I am reviewing here.

Innerevolution is a Bluesfest, dripping with rawking hot guitar leads and breaks but Sayce is a good vocalist as well, bringing us to mind a more rocking sounding Gavin DeGraw. He also has elements of Stevie Ray Vaughn & Jimi Hendrix in him – his two heroes growing up. Starting off with a thumping drums solo, Changes comes charging outta your speakers, like a rhino on steroid. It’s a song about picking up the pieces and rolling with the changes. Richard Marx has co-written some tracks on this record, like Scars the second track. Wah-wah drenched lead guitar rips through the track, singing to a lover that everyone has their scars, their pains and their hurts. Rolling drums leads into the main guitar riff announcing the onset of Bitter Monday a very energetic crowd pleaser during live performances. It’s a pulsating track about regrets and the morning after.

Anymore really sounds like Philip is using his DeGraw influences; the songs sounds like it could find a place in the latter’s repertoire. Lyrically it’s a heart-break song and about moving on. From the little subtle previous track, he goes all out a bit more in the rambunctious Take You Away which is more hard rock & roll and features a screaming solo lead guitar. Daydream Tonight is more sublime and tender, a ballad from the heart. Another wah-wah laden riff introduces the next track; My Pearl is just appreciation for the woman in your life. The chorus sounds very rnb or Motown. There’s some delectable keyboard playing during the chorus too. A nice brooding blues-rock number is Tennessee Girl, about a heartbreak & outlaw girl from the mentioned state.  A bad girl who can cause a lot of damage.

Are You Ready is a question in the form of a song to the lover is she is ready to commit and ready to accept the love of the singer. It’s a very catchy number. Another rawking track is Gimme Some More, a song about sex and love. And we come to the 11th & final track called Little Miss America, a number about the glamour & wealth that young women would do anything to possess. It’s almost got a political message to the US as a whole.

I really like this guy’s music and enjoyed the whole album; no weak tracks just a great bunch of blues rock numbers. Incidentally this album is dedicated to his mentor the late Jeff Healey. Here’s a live rendition of Bitter Monday.

Evening Out With The Boys

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Yesterday I went over to Padma Junction at around 3:30 pm joining my friend Anil in an auto along the way. I needed to buy an electrical stove, the small one, the kind that allows you to heat up one vessel at a time. Ofcourse the reason is that I am moving to a rented place in Chalakudy and, well, I’m gonna need something to heat up my water for coffee and make some food. Like I stated before the only thing I will be able to make is veggie sandwiches and instant noodles. No eggs or meat as the landowner’s very specific about it, what with the house being right next to a temple and the gods have sensitive noses that cannot tolerate any meat smells or meat being cooked!

Anyways, Anil and I went to the White Planet store (where they have lots of household items) on MG Road and I quickly purchased an electric stove and paid for it. We then hailed an auto and went over to Coffee Beans to meet up with Madhu who was waiting for us. we had a lemonade each and I strategically place both them both married old men on one side of the table as I sat on the table that’s against the wall. Reason? The table opposite ours had 3 really good looking women sitting there, with this really sexy looking fair maiden in a purple churidhar, with wavy hair and a little tattoo on her arm that was driving me crazy! Eye candy to behold and to be held (LOL). Anyways, we needed some drinks and off we went to Velocity Bar.

We didn’t stay long at the bar, just around 2 hours or so. Anil had brandy and I had vodka and Madhu just had some more lemonade as he is currently taking some medicines and he shouldn’t be drinking. For food in the evening we had some eggs (omelets and hard boiled), some chilly chicken, a salad, chilly fish (which was reall good) and a plate of chicken spring rolls (which was delicious). We talked and laughed as usual and then left around 6:30. I said my goodbyes, went to a medical store to buy mom her meds and then heaed back home.

Gulliver’s Travels

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20th Century Fox brings us Gulliver’s Travels, a fantasy-comedy film, loosely based on the classic story of Gulliver. The film stars Jack Black, Emily Blunt, Jason Segel, Billy Connolly, Catherine Tate, Chris O’Dowd, and Amanda Peet. Bringing this story to the 21st century, the film creators attempt to retell this story with a lot of comedy and assign Jack Black with breathing life into a famous story. Well they almost do it right but in the end they fall short of making it a really memorable film, worth watching many times over the years to come.

Lemuel Gulliver (Black) works in the mail room of a big New York newspaper but his attitude towards life keeps him from progressing at work and this is brought to the fore front when a new employee, who initially reports to Gulliver, is soon made his boss. Depressed, Gulliver talks to Darcy Silverman, who he has a crush on, and convinces her that he can write a good travel article. He copies stuff from the internet and shows it off as his work. Impressed, Darcy presents Gulliver with a new task – to travel to the Bermuda Triangle and write an article confirming that the legend of ships mysteriously disappearing in the area being caused by extraterrestrials is not true.

On his boat ride, Gulliver encounters a storm and is washed onto an island, Lilliput, which no one has ever heard off. All the people are really tiny, hence Gulliver is a giant to them. They tie him up and imprison him in a cave. After befriending Horatio (Segal), Gulliver soon becomes a hero when he saves the princess from being kidnapped and saves the king from a fire by peeing on it. Gulliver is hailed as a brave warrior and he creates a story about his exploits and gets royal treatment and new luxurious accommodations. General Edward, miffed at this and at being rejected by the princess Mary (Blunt) defects to the enemy island. There he finds a magazine (belonging to Gulliver) on making a robot and creates one with the help of the enemy soldiers. Using this, he beats Gulliver, who leaves Lilliput.

Horatio searches for Gulliver and finds him trapped, caught by a giant girl and convinces him to come back and face Edward. Also Darcy was washed up on the island of Lilliput, when she came to search for Gulliver, mad at him for copying other people’s work and showing it as his own. Now Edward has Darcy prisoner too. Gulliver comes back to the island, frees Darcy and defeats Edward with the help of Horatio, who deactivates the robot’s controls. Gulliver then brings peace among the two rivaling nations and then with Darcy leaves back to New York in their repaired boat. It’s revealed they later became a couple and successful fiction writers in New York, writing about their experiences on Lilliput.

Nothing new, some of it is funny, some of it is predictable. Perhaps the funniest part is the rendition of War that all of them sing towards the end. I’d give it a 7 outta 10.

First Impressions

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I tend to be very wary of people I meet for the first time. It takes me a while to be able to trust them or even speak openly to them. This comes very slowly to me but once I feel that I can trust them then I warm up very quickly. Now there are quite a few exception ofcourse. Ever meet someone, be it casually or work related and immediately feel a distrust of that person at the very first interaction? I’ve had that quite many times actually, I am introduced to someone and I feel like the person, him or her, cannot be trusted, is a backstabber, is a problem creator and is probably gonna do everything to make my life miserable.

Most of these cases have turned out to be true, atleast 99% of the time. The 1% exceptions have been pleasant surprises and I even have become close friends with those people. And I am man enough to admit to them that I didn’t like/trust them at first but that they changed my mind about them soon and that I feel guilty about ever thinking bad about them.

What I do notice about people is the air about them, do they come off as being haughty, arrogant and full of hot air. It’s the little things; they way they introduce themselves, shake your hand, ask about you, talk about the things that they have done. Often I get really annoyed when people from the cities of Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi & Bangalore comment on Cochin – how they thought that it was a small town and how surprised they are to find that it is so urban compared to the vision they had in their mind. Come on – that only lets me know that you have absolutely no idea about the rest of India, other than your cozy prison of a world. If they don’t about Cochin, a major port, center of commerce and IT, they should be ashamed of themselves.

I also look to see if their smile is genuine and that tells me a lot about what kind of person he/she is. If you smile and it does not reflect in your eyes, then you are a fake person. And I should be wary of you.

The Banking Klutz That I Am

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I’m really excited about moving to my new place in Chalakudy. I’m also a little scared and worried about how I will get on by. I’m worried about cost and stuff and also thinking that I might end up not being able to live the way I want to because of circumstances and cost facts inhibiting me. At the same time I think this will be quite good for me and I hope I get to spend some good months here if not years.

I had some stuff to do today, mainly which was getting some cash into my account. I’m hopeless when it comes to banks. From 2003 onwards I’ve always had money credited straight to my salary account by my employers and I’ve always taken money out via ATM/debit cards. I’ve made some purchases via swiping my card or making online payments. My phone bill & my internet bill has never been paid other than through the online netbanking option in the last 4.5 years. Hence I must admit that I suck at doing banking the old fashioned way. I struggle to enter pay slips, to deposit cash into my account or withdraw money from my account. Today when I went there, I had to as twice just to make sure that the deposit that I was doing from a cheque in my name towards my account was correct and that it wasn’t going to some other account.

Time for some beer and to relax. Here’s what we had, the we is me & my cousin Sujith, at Couchin.

For the record we had 2 beer each, barbecued sausages and soft fish fingers with a cheese dip. The fish fingers were wonderful and the sausages awesome. I didn’t get the other stuff that I was looking for but I can do that tomorrow.

Free 3 Day Weekend

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I think I must have slept as much yesterday as I have in the last 3 days put together! I guess a combination of losing a lot of liquids, sweating as much as I did, getting cramps, walking all over the Chalakudy market area and the fact that I was up from 3pm on Wednesday till 4pm yesterday did the trick for me. I was so tired and drained out that I slept from 4pm till almost 10 pm and then post dinner and after watching some Corner Gas episodes and one from season 3 of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, I went back to sleep again at 1:30 am and woke up only by 7:45 am. That’s 6+6 hours and 15 minutes! Wow, considering the fact that I usually mostly sleep only 4 or 5 hours these days!

Reality is sinking in about my moving to Chalakudy. I need so much stuff and so little money to do it with. I’ll have to pace myself, buy some stuff now, the essentials and then some the next month. I need a clothes hanging rack for my stuff. Food is a major challenge and I’m looking to buy an electric stove, the most basic one, for doing some light cooking. It’s gonna be mostly instant noodles, sandwiches (witheither jam, cucumbers & tomatoes) and lots of coffee. I’ll take some plates and pans and glasses from home. I will also need to get a trash bin to keep in the kitchen for all kinds of trash & waste.

What else? I dunno things are a blur right now. Money is gonna be tight this month and I can’t wait for it to be over. That reminds me that I have to deposit a cheque for some cash, which is my final payment settlement for the first 5 days of March and my entitled encashable leave from my previous office. I know – I got my cheque back in the first week of April and it’s been 2 months since then but I just haven’t been able to get myself to the bank to deposit it. As I have taken today and tomorrow leave as well for sorting out stuff, I’ll get it done today.

As I type this, I’m sipping a mocha frappe and just had a chicken sandwich at Coffee Cube. Post going to the bank, I will go for a beer with my cousin Sujith and then look for the electric stove. I can’t believe how tired I still am despite sleeping & resting so much. I’m also going to party with my best friends tomorrow and chill out with them in the evening. It’s gonna be fun.

Moving To Chalakudy

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Well the deal is done. I have forked over the advance rent payment for two months to my landowner. It’s the same place that I mentioned in an earlier post. After I spoke to them they said that they would fix the issue that I had with the bathroom and have a proper toilet installed in there. While that was being done, I went to see them this morning (after my night shifted ended) and I reached there at 7 am and paid two months rent in advance. After I spent an hour speaking with them I went to the nearby market area in order to look for furniture stores. Ofcourse they weren’t open at that hour so I looked around for a small tea shop for a coffee and some breakfast.

I then waited outside the store to until they opened. Arun, a colleague, also joined me and went to a place called Quality Furniture and then walked to bigger place called Modern Furniture and then two more places. After much haggling and discussing, we finalized on buying a bed from one place, a mattress and a plastic table from another. We arranged for the stuff to be delivered to my new place and we went along to place them inside the rooms. After that it was onto the Chalakudy KSRTC bus stand and waiting for a bus. We had some lemonade and a bite to eat and I bought some water too as I was parched with thirst. Ironically during the monsoon, I had to choose the hottest and sunniest day in recent memory to walk along the market for nearly 4 hours in search of furniture!

After waiting for a while, we boarded a bus for Aluva and from there I took the low floor Volvo bus to Kacheripady. By the time I reached home it was 2pm and I was dead tired. I had sweated a couple of litres, got cramps and was ready  to be put down. I changed my clothes and ate my lunch. For a while I sat at my laptop and tried watching some tv series. But by 4pm (remember that I had just worked a night shift) and sleep caught up with me. From 4pm till 10pm I just slept off, dead to the world. I’m taking leave from work till this Monday to sort out stuff at home and then pack my stuff and move to Chalakudy. Alone at last in a couple of days.

Skyline

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Hollywood seems to be coming out with some alien invasion movies in the last couple of years but these are ones which, dare I say it, dehumanize the aliens completely. The special effects keep improving over the years but they feature a lot less and give the movie a more gritty, down to earth, dark & sombre feel altogether. And it’s also boring to tell you the truth. You only get to see the humans’s side and this movie, we have no idea what the whole deal is about the aliens who attack us.

Directed and produced by the Brothers Strauss, Skyline is the first of what is supposed to be a series of movies. We have Jarrod (Eric Balfour), Elaine (Scottie Thompson) a couple who have flown to Los Angeles for Jarrod’s best friend Terry’s (Donald Faison) birthday party. Terry has made it big in LA and the party is all out. Jarrod & Elian spend the night celebrating with Terry’s girlfriend, Candice (Brittany Daniel), and his assistant, Denise (Crystal Reed). During the party, one of Terry’s employees, Ray (Neil Hopkins), welcomes Jarrod to L.A., thinking he has moved there to join Terry’s special effects company. During a private argument about whether or not they should move, Eliane confessed that she is pregnant.

At night a bright deep blue light awakens the couple and Jarrod is strangely drawn towards the windows headed for the light. The lights make the eyes turn milky white and the blood vessels to stand out on the skin, as people entranced by the light are capture by alien machines. Ray is sucked into one but Jarrod is saved when Terry tackles him down. The two friends go to the roof top of the building to investigate and see many alien ships, sucking people out of buildings and are nearly captured but Elaine guides them through the door, nearly getting sucked in herself. The group try to go into open waters as there seem to be no alien ships over the ocean. On their way they try to help a couple but they are both killed. Terry & Denise are sucked in by a machine while the group try to escape.

Jarrod, Eliane, Candice & Oliver (the building manager) hide out in Terry’s apartment and the next day the US air force attacks the alien machines. Military helicopters come in and insert squads of marines. Jarrod and Elaine go to the roof hoping to ride a helicopter to safety. Oliver and Candice still hide in the penthouse, but they are found. Candice accidentally exposes herself to the blue light and absorbed; Oliver sacrifices himself in an attempt to kill a machine, but does not succeed. Jarrod & Elaine fight off a machine and kill one but they are soon sucked into a bigger machine and pulled into one of the giant ships. The army is losing out and all over the world, humans seem to be either killed or sucked into the machines.

Inside the space ship, Elaine is moved to a chamber where other pregnant women are stored. Jarrod’s brain is sucked out by a machine and inserted into a humanoid alien. After initially seeming to attack Elaine, Jarrod gains control of the alien body and protects Elaine against some other alien humanoids that approach her. Eventually “Jarrod” defeats them, picks his girlfriend up, and runs off with her.

And so ends the movie. No explanation, no clue as what the hell is going on and why these alien ships are here on earth. It seemed like a big fuss over nothing. Special effects cool, storyline sucked and therefore 6 outta 10.

Fiction Or Non-Fiction

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I’ve always read fiction a whole lot more than non-fiction. Fiction involves the mind’s imagination and dreams from the writer and for the readers as well. Everytime I read a fiction novel, every character comes to life for me. I create in my mind the way he/she looks, walks, speaks, laughs, cries, dresses, fights etc. Its not something that I do willingly; it just fucking comes to me. I can’t help it. I start reading and I see the house or apartment, the street, the lawns, the tables, the chairs, the clothes, the dogs, the cats, the love making scene (and no matter how descriptive an author makes it, it still won’t hold a candle to what goes on in my head! If only I could fix a camera in there, I’d make a fortune in the adult film industry!!)

That’s fiction for me. It’s no wonder that before I got internet at home, which was as recently as Sept 2006, I read a lot more. Infact a cold rainy day like today would be perfect to be spend in bed with the blanket upto my chest, music playing at mid-volume level on my stereo and cups after cups of strong black coffee to keep me awake as I read a novel or two. Depending on the weather, coffee would be substituted with a 7up/Sprite or a fruit juice. And I would spend hours at a stretch reading the novels, lost in my own world, only stopping to have food or take toilet breaks. My family called me a bookworm and that I would be all quite and satisfied as long as I got a good book. Ofcourse in the beginning it was comics and stuff but novels took over by the time I was 13-14 years old.

I do like non-fiction but the stuff is rare that I like. If you ask me to name some of some good novels I’d be hard pressed to just name a few as there are so many that I have read and liked. My brain would freeze with all those titles and author names rushing to come out. But if you want non-fiction, I have read so few that I can name a couple right off the bat. I love autobiographies and two tennis greats – Bjorn Borg & Martina Navaratilova have well written autobiographies. I had a copy of My Life & Game, Borg’s 1980 published book which he co-wrote, chronicling his life till then. That is a really good read as is the book I read, taken from a library, on Martina’s life, which she also co-wrote. The last non-fiction novel that I have read is Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion.

Although I do not mind reading non-fiction, it’s 95% usually fiction for me. Reading is something that I want to do more of once again and I’ll probably start in a couple of weeks once certain things are sorted out with work and my stay.

Art Work From Namratha

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My good friend Namratha Dand does some art work in her spare time away from work as a means to relieve some stress. Along the way, not only has she gotten good at it but she is also making money out of it. She creates plagues and wall murals, wall hangings and name plaque for people. She does it on demand and creates it as per the customer’s specifications.

Take a look at some of them.




I told her to showcase them in a blog which she can use to get more clients and use as reference material. She sent me these photos and has more. I’ve setup a simple blog for her since she didn’t know how.

http://namaratadandsart.wordpress.com/

What Would You Do With A Whole Week Off?

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In retrospect I made a mistake – the gap between my last day at my previous job & my current one was just a single Sunday. That was not wise but at the time I felt due to emotions running high, it would be better to jump straight into it. Hindsight being 20/20, it wasn’t a great idea at all, especially noting the fact that I haven’t taken time off, like a real holiday/vacation from work since 2009 May. That kind of schedule isn’t kind to the working man’s mind and body and I have been itching to get away and do something on my own for a long time.

I had intended to take a break in May but held it off as my computer crashed and I needed to save cash for my laptop that I bought in June. Hence a good chunk of my June & July salary went to paying off the cost of the lappy. Then I though I’d something in August but with lots of challenges at work I decided to put it off till November/December. When I had almost planned things for taking a 9 day vacation in December, the company announced a new project which required me to be fully involved for the 1st full month. That meant that December was a no go as well. And I really needed a break after that hectic month but then things went from bad to worse and I decided, after discussing it with people at the office, to quit after serving 2 months notice.

So my last day there was March 5th and I started coming here from March 7th. I wish that I could actually take a break, a long one but even a week will do. I would sleep in for 2 days and then travel around with no particular aim for the remaining 5 days. Go to the beach, eat some fresh sea food, visit some friends, go to the movies and maybe have a get together with some of my cousins. Go stay in my mom’s parents’ house in Mattancherry and see some of the old digs there. Guess that’s what I would do.

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And The Boys Do The Boogie Woogie

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The year is 1994. Lots of changes in music. Hair Metal has given way to Grunge and music is angrier and pissed off.  Although I am a huge fan of grunge, in between all this angst came a cool song which I so love. Here’s Wild Night from John Cougar Mellencamp & Me’Shell Ndegeocello. On this late Sunday night, with sleep no where near me, this song seems so appropriate.

What Was It Like 10 Years Ago?

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10 years ago, I had no idea that the things that would unfurl during the last 10 years would ever happen. 10 years ago, 2001 what was happening? Well I had just completed a course in e-commerce or still doing it I guess. My biggest pass time was going to an internet cafe 3 times a week, as it was still quite expensive at that time. I still used a lot of floppy disks to carry my data around.The internet connections at that time were quite slow too.

That year was quite tough on my entire family as my uncle passed away. It weighed heavily on us as he had been quite ill 5 years before that but he had gotten better and there wasn’t much sign that he was going to pass away. He just did and it came as a shock to a lot of us. Most of us were hit hard and it took us a while to absorb the loss. A lot of family members kept coming and going to my house and my grandmother’s house.

Around the same time I got into Star Trek again after a gap of a couple of years. This was because Hallmark was showing the entire seven seasons of Star Trek: Voyager starting in October of 2001. I saw the ads and got so interested in knowing more about the ship of Starfleet personnel that got lost in the Delta quadrant, a till now unexplored and unknown area of the galaxy to humans. Despite knowing that they have almost insurmountable odds in front of them, the crew bond as a family and make their way back home, facing tough choices and making new friends along the way. I so identified with the show and it remains one of my fav series of all time.

I had no idea what was in store in front of me. I didn’t know that I would tons of bad things and a lot of good things up ahead. There are a lot of things I wish I could have rectified (story of my life) but the positives are so good and I wish I could re-live those highs.

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Sorority Row

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Ok I love a good slasher movie. Directed by Stewart Hendler, written by Josh Stolberg and Pete Goldfinger, and stars Briana Evigan, Leah Pipes, Rumer Willis, Jamie Chung, Margo Harshman, Audrina Patridge, and Carrie Fisher, Sorority Row, although good on the visuals falls short of being a good movie. Why? Why is the killer killing all those girls? The reasoning is so stupid and unbelievable that when I found out who the killer was, I wanted to shoot the screen!

In the looks department of the female kind, you can’t do much better than the cast of this film – awoooooo woo woo (imitating a wolf’s howling)! What a bunch of babes, who I have never seen before. Leah Pipes leads the babe department and typically, the hottest blonde, is also the biggest bitch in the movie. Well the only bitch but wow what a gal! Jamie Chung is so hot too. I was so surprised to see that this girl, Rumer Willis, who I have seen in in the tv series 90210, is Bruce’s & Demi Moore’s daughter. That was a shocker! She looks cool in a different way but I do not see much of either of the two parents in her. Anyway, I hope she does well, she seems to be on the verge of a good film career.

Well the movie starts off well – at a party in their sorority house, the girls play a joke on Megan’s boyfriend Garrett as they find out that he cheated on her. Megan fakes her death while the two of them are making out and the other girls play along. With the help of her friends, Garrett brings Megan out to a steel mill, intent on dropping her body down a mineshaft. The girls jokingly mention they need to release the air out of her lungs so her body won’t float to the top, and while their backs are turned, Garrett stabs Megan through the chest with a tire iron, actually killing her. That was like the coolest, in a sick & demented way, part of the film.

Panicking, the group dumps Megan’s body in the mineshaft, vowing never to speak of the events that transpired ever again. A year later, someone starts killing all the girls and sending them a photo of a tire iron to their phone. Charlene confess to her therapist and so he is killed by the killer hurling the tire iron at him. Charlene is killed when as she is drinking from a champagne bottle, lying down on the sofa, the hooded killer comes up and shoves the bottle down her throat. While two of the girls discuss the murder in the shower another girl overhears their conversation, so she gets murdered with the tire iron impaled though her head. During the party, Claire’s boyfriend, Mickey, is murdered when the killer pushes the tire iron’s knife end into his throat, with Ellie witnessing it.

The girls go down the shaft to see if the body is still there and Cassidy sees “Theta Pi Must Die” written in blood on the shaft walls. Clair is killed by a shot from a flare gun into her mouth. Mrs Crenshaw, the matron of their sorority house, who tries to help them from the killer is also killed. Jessica’s boyfriend, who initially looks like being the killer chases after the girls, but he is killed by Cassidy’s boyfriend andy- who is the actual killer. He then kills Jessica by stabbing her in the mouth with the tire iorn. Why is he killing everyone? He tells Cassidy that the deaths were for the good of them, killing everyone who knew about her involvement in Megan’s death so they could never tell anyone else and reveal she was involved. He explained how Charlene told her therapist, Joanna overheard the conversation in the shower, Jessica told Kyle and Mrs. Crenshaw (thinking Mrs. Crenshaw had found out about the murder), and how Claire may have told Mickey but that he was a jerk anyway.

And now Ellie & Megan’s sister Maggie is next on his list but Cassidy and the girls fight him off and he is killed by Ellie using a shotgun. The house burns down and Andy falls through the floor which collapses under him. The three girls are safe.

Can you believe that storyline? Of all the shitty reasoning for going on a slashing spree. Oh well, 5 outta 10!

No Throne For This King

Posted on by Roshan 1 Comment

Remember me hunting for a place to stay in? Remember the many places I visited and was disappointed? Ok, now read this post about a place in Chalakudy.

Remember that one? Well now the same guy called me up on Thursday night and said that his land-owners have a vacancy and that they were giving me first choice on it. I was happy and I spoke to the owner and arranged for me to go see the place on Saturday evening (last evening). I ended up waking very late from my sleep in the afternoon and could only leave my house by 6:15 pm and got a bus very late. Hence I reached the Chalakudy KRSTC bus stand only by 8:20pm. There was a power outage in the area due to a transformer blowing a major fuse and the area was plunged into darkness. I took an auto and went to the Bharatan temple which was nearby.

I found the house and although the house owner wasn’t at home as he was away at a function, I met his wife. She showed me the place – it’s a portion of a old house, which they have partioned off to make it like two sections of 1bedroom with bathroom attached, 1 living room and patio/sit-out area and a little kitchen area. There is a seperate entrance with a gate that leads right to the patio and living room. It’s an old house, quite old and you can see how old it by looking at the roof and the old style switches and rooms & cupboards but what they have done is got new tiles put in throughout the house, parts of the walls in the bathroom and the kitchen so it does look a lot more cozy and you get a newer feeling.

It’s small and quaint and I liked it for the rent that they were asking. The negatives is that it seems that the area gets very dark and if there is a power outage, it’s gonna be very difficult to see 5 feet in front of you (bear in mind that I work nights and am looking at leaving the house after 8:30pm to go work for my 10pm shift). And although it was quite dark and late, I couldn’t see much shops for me to buy groceries near by. That could be difficult but I would have to see the place more during the day or evening hours to judge that. But it can be rectified as there are shops near the bus stand where I will have to get down and I can always buy from there and then bring the supplies to the house. Also there is no furniture, so I will have to buy a cot and a mattress the first thing if I move there and also get a chair and a table.

But the biggest downer is the one that I causing me doubts. And it’s a big one – the bathroom doesn’t have a toilet! No throne for me to sit on while I drone! It’s a hole in the ground in an otherwise nice & clean bathroom. That is a problem for me as I am not used to doing my business Indian style. I’ve only had to suffer this way for a year in Bangalore while I stayed in a hostel and for 8 months while I was staying in a lodge in Calicut – the last time was 2003 Feb. I do not like this style and hence am sitting on the fence! No not to shit, I mean I’m sitting on the fence figuratively. I can ask the owners if they wouldn’t mind installing a toilet commode and I’m even willing to pay for the charges myself if needed.

Guess it will come down to that eventually. One can always hope.