Poking a big one?

So, its election time and for many its somehow fashionable to vote this time around! I voted too (not for the fashion part though :)). Frankly, I was kinda impressed with the organization of the whole thing.

The first part about finding which place to go to, my family's voting numbers (yeah they did not send out voting cards to us) was a bit frustrating - but thankfully there was a guy sitting with a laptop doing the job for you. That his laptop was about to conk off with his battery running out made it a tad more exciting is another matter..

So I find out the location which turns out to be a nice school with an iscrutable name (Kroot school!!) pretty close to my home. I go in and there are nice rooms with organized numberings put up in front. There are no serpentine lines (is that a good or a bad thing?) in the sweltering sun and in a matter of 5 minutes am done with the voting!! I go in to get my finger inked to proudly show to everyone in office that I voted.

I put forward my left hand's thumb to indicate a big thumbs up for the entire process. The lady poker-facedly says - "Put your left hand's MIDDLE FINGER forward please!!".

Did I hear her right! But middle finger it is. I am smilimg ironically at this tradition by now - they could have picked up any other finger and am fervently hoping that they did not pick this to poke a big one into the face of democracy!

Did you vote then?

Indian Idles!

I sometimes wonder as to where the talent of our country is. Sure we have a lot of reality shows which try to promote and make visible unknown talents, but the quality seems to be hardly up the mark.

In contrast, reality shows abroad tend to churn out latent talents in hordes. Take the ongoing "Britain's Got Talent" show. It has thrown up Susan Boyle to the world and the fact that her video on youtube has been watched 30+ million times speaks about the liking the world has developed for her.

Or for that matter take the 12 year old singing sensation Shaheen Jafargholi too!

Even American Idol has produced some good artists with Chris Daughtry being a personal favorite - and he did not even win the show!

Hmmm, remains to be seen who will steal the Indian thunder or we will see all Indian Idles whiling their time around!

Snow!!

I experienced proper snowfall (I had seen some itsy-bitsy flakes a while back in Boston) in Munich and it was pretty much fun. The Muncheners however used to shake their heads whenever it snowed, since this was one of their coldest winters and they were expecting a lot more sunshine at this period of time. I was happy though! Here is a video I took on the penultimate day of the trip. Luckily I could convert it into flv format using mencoder on Linux and the video size is now down from 71MB to 1.6MB! Hope you like it :)

Fools!!

The PuneTech folks seemed to have had a hearty laugh playing a good and a professional one on April Fool's Day. Basically they had a news item complete with news footage about how Pune is beating recession much better as compared to Bangalore. As Navin mentions in today's followup, its sad that a lot of people fail for it and actually tweeted, debated, argued about it too :P

Check out the fun here :)

Punetech Prank!

Eternal Sunshine....

So, we saw "Benjamin Button" the other night and Pi wanted to watch a similar Oscarish, Award-winning movie as a follow on. We settled on the Jim Carrey - Kate Winslet starrer "Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind" and yeah it is an interesting kind of a movie. Both the parties trying to erase-out each other from their respective memories and yet being drawn back together again and again because of the subconscious attraction makes for an interesting theme.

Jim Carrey was good in his non-comic, no-facial-contortions role and what can I say about Kate Winslet. I liked her the first time I saw her in Titanic and she is such a sweetly, dainty, cute actress :). The name is pretty interesting. It comes from the poem "Eloisa to Abelard" by Alexander Pope.

....
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
....

Watch it for an interesting perspective..