Post From The Past – From The Archives Of An Old Blog

Here’s an old blog post, circa 2006 that I posted on my old blogspot account on Blogger.com about the decision to sell our old family house and move to the current apartment we live in:

I can’t remember if I have ever mentioned that my family was planning on selling the house we have in Thrikkakara. Perhaps I have, but anyway we were planning on doing so and finally reached an agreement with a doctor who decided to buy the house and land surrounding it for a good sum – which was 4 lakhs less than what we planned on selling it for and 4 lakhs more than what he planned on buying a house with.

The long search for a good offer has taken us almost three years on & off. This year the search for a prospective buyer had intesified with my dad going all out to find a willing person and my sister pitching in as well. We wanted to sell it as fast and for as much as we could in order to pay off the loan we had with TATA Tea which was incured at the time when my dad’s business went down. The interest on top of the money we own them will take care of a huge chunk of the money we get for our house. And then we had the search for a replacement house or an apartment that would suit our requirements. My dad & mom opted for a flat which would require less of day to day maintainance and cleaning. With me out for most of the days it would be mostly just the two of them plus a part-time maid.

We searched high and low all over Cochin for a good place. We found good houses for less money but the catch was that they were located quite far off from the main parts of town. A really good house with four bedrooms at a price that could be called a steal and a bargain was almost too good to resist. But the fact that it was so far from a bus stop or shops or the town made us decide against it. Several good flats were looked at but the price disuaded us. Or in somecases they were really good and the price was ok as well but either they were months away from completion or the current owners wanted us to buy it immediately which we couldn’t do as they money for our house was not yet recieved. Finally we got one in Kacheripady – in the heart of town, close to everything. I would have a nice bar (there are three nearby), a supermarket, shops of all kind and I can walk back after watching late night shows in three or four movie theatres and be home in less than 20 minutes. What a great deal! The apartment is 3 bedrooms kinda small and the outside looks kinda old. The insides will be fixed with some paint and we have to work out some cabinets and drawers all over to store stuff. That will be done soon – I can’t wait to move.

Alien Hunter

At about 12:15 this movie came on and I decided to watch it cause it has the title Alien Hunter and it stars actor James Spader, who must be a Sci-Fi fan; this is the third movie of his that features Aliens and/or Space. The other two are Stargate and Supernova. Infact, Spader’s character is so similar to that of his in the movie Stargate, where he plays a Linguist who is hired to be part of a team of soldiers who enter a gateway to a distant planet. Here he is a once heralded professor who was chided for being an “alien hunter”. I must say that I am disappointed with this movie which follows in the long line of movies that fail to deliver when aliens are involved.

Satellite imagery detects an anomalous mass six meters long by three meters wide, buried within the Antarctic ice shelf — and emitting radio signals. Crews at the Rundell Peak research station near the South Pole dig it out and bring it in. As scientists wait for the ice around the mass to melt, spectrographic analysis reveals something unexpected: The radio signals are non-random. University of California, Berkeley: Linguistics professor Dr. Julian Rome (James Spader) is called in to the office of his boss, Dr. John Bachman (Roy Dotrice). It’s not, as Julian fears, about that long-ago trouble involving a young co-ed. It’s about his days — also long past — as a decoding cryptologist with the government’s Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence project (SETI). Bachman tells him about the exhumed object, and that the esteemed Dr. ALexi Gierach has invited Julian to the Antarctic to help them understand what the radio signals might be trying to communicate. Not that, when he gets there, most of the staff think it’s communicating anything, or that Julian is anybody. Dr. Michael Straub (John Lynch), a chief scientist on a genetically engineered crop project, chides the beaten-down Julian as an “alien hunter.” And Dr. Kate Brecher (Janine Eser) is downright hostile, for understandable reasons — she was the co-ed from Rome’s past. “There’s four women here,” she tells him tersely. “Try not to set any records.”

He wouldn’t have had time to, whatever his inclination. As the encrypted message becomes clear and as nightmares become premonitions, the ice-station crew begins to realize the danger it faces, and the terror that is hidden in the code — all leading, in a complex and suspenseful drama, to a global pandemic, a U.S.-Russian failsafe, human betrayal, rekindled romance and the end of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. A tussel with Dr.Straub and the rouge alien fails to ignite the screen (although they do have a great scene where the crops wilt as soon as the “infected” humans come towards them. And the four survivors leaving in the alien spaceship is so boring and predictable.

Come on, people : give me a real alien movie!! I rate it 4 out of 10!