Gold and Beautiful

And I cry watching movies....Not necessarily the Hindi melodramatic ones but many times highly courageous or inspirational ones. I don't know why but somehow a soul stirring movie about a courageous deed or a highly inspirational speech can bring me to tears. And not to forget the highly melodramatic Hindi ones...For example when I was younger, Sunny Deol's rabble rousing speech in Damini had that kind of effect on me. Fortunately by the time Sunny paaji came up with similar things in Gadar , I had grown out of Hindi movies. But other movies like 10,000 Black Men Named George and Remembering the Titans or even Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson's court scene in A Few Good Men (I have no clue why I get emotional when I see that ???) too.... The list is long but in short any well shot/well acted scene showing the triumph of good over evil makes me cry!!!!! Funny eh ?

..... with Shilpa :-) It was not completely DIY.....I bought the pieces from a furniture store and then we assembled it at home...But hey, that's a big deal too.... esplly if you are used to having someone around to fix things for you!!! Although not a completely do it yourself project, it still required a bit of skill, labor and patience (just like looking at maps, I never know whether I am looking at it the right way !!)....But finally its done and now I have a new coffee table and two end tables that I assembled....... with Shilpa's help!!!! (Feels great..)

It's difficult for me to choose my favorite Celine Dion song....Two of her songs are my all time favs....No points for guessing that one of them is the Titanic song....It is beautiful and nobody could have sung it better than her. But today I am more in love with my other fav....This is how part of it (rather my fav part of it) goes: When you want it the most there's no easy way out When you're ready to go and your heart's left in doubt Don't give up on your faith Love comes to those who believe it And that's the way it is When you question me for a simple answer I don't know what to say, no But it's plain to see, if you stick together You're gonna find a way, yeah So don't surrender 'cause you can win In this thing called love The lyrics are great, very inspiring......And well, its sung by Celine Dion, what other reason do I need?

This weekend was for touristy sight seeing...... So off we went to Ruby falls, rock city and incline rail in Chattanooga, TN. Of course the drive was not as beautiful as it would have been in Fall, but nevertheless the destinations made the 2 1/2 hour drive worthwhile. I was under the impression that the Ruby Falls are called so because you can either find rubys down there, or there are some kind of red stones through which the waterfall flows...Alas! the Ruby Falls got their name from the wife of the first owner of the place (obviously called Ruby...duh!!!). The one hour guided tour through the caves, 260 feet under the ground was great if you had wild imagination. The limestone deposits formed draperies and different shapes. In an anti-climax of sorts the Ruby fall itself was decorated with colorful lights (red being one of them...). The waterfall was tall and I badly wanted to get under it just like we all did when we went to those caves in Karjat.... The next stop.... Rock city....

Saw this amazing, touching documentary about the Lost Boys of Sudan Quite a few thoughts rushed through my mind. The first one was about India's independence and partition. Over the years I have had so many conversations and many many arguments about Gandhi, Congress and partition...... Many people said how Gandhi, Nehru were responsible for the riots that are still going on between Hindus and Muslims, how we shouldn't have given all that money to Pakistan and so on. When I saw this movie, that was the first thought that went through my head. When the British decided to leave India, they had no stakes in our country, were tired of the growing unrest and just wanted to get out. They gave us a date when they would be leaving and we had to solve matters before they left. Our leaders had few options. One was to let Jinnah be the prime minister and avoid partition, which Gandhi was ready for but not the Congress (thank God!!). The other option was to keep arguing, not make a decisio

I always loved my parents and knew they were always correct (I am not saying I listened to them.....). At every important cornerstone of my life, I knew I should be listening to my mother. Whenever I did not follow her advice, I did not fail miserably but I could have done better and I always knew I should have done it her way. One thing I was good at though was sticking to the decisions I made and facing the consequences, whether good or bad...... I never took my parents for granted (thanx to the good things that they taught me), but after living on my own for many years and realizing what other things existed in the world I just think I should be putting my parents on a pedestal and worship them for everything that they have done for me. Yes I know, all parents do everything they can for their children......Or do they???? I am not so sure!!!!

Another of my favorite one from Shashi Tharoor's A-Z of India: UP: or Uttar Pradesh, is a state in north India, which accounts for 10% of our population, 20% of our industry, 40% of our pollution and 80% of our prime ministers.

Spent the last three Christmas vacations and birthdays in California. Not that I have anything against California...On the contrary I love California, especially San Francisco.....Of my 3 bdays in California I celebrated 2 at Stinking Rose, an amazing Italian restaurant that has a completely garlic menu (even garlic ice cream!!!)...This year for a change I was not in California...Although I did miss spending time with friends and was really cold, I still had fun shopping all day long in Georgia. Especially if your cold day of shopping ends with a hot sake and sushi and ice cream cake with close friends, what else could you ask for? Maybe a similar celebration next year ???

Spending money as if it is going out of style is out of style. -- Some car commercial!!!!

What are you doing for the rest of your life? - Niles on Frasier

A few months ago I was watching an interview of a journalist (don't remember her name..) who said she was so used to typing that she couldn't write with a pen anymore. I remember thinking that's just dumb, how can you forget how to write and other such things......And now I am experiencing the same thing... Not that I cannot write, but my writing just stinks big time.....When I was in school my handwriting was decent, not award winning but nice enough...In the past 7 years I have hardly written anything....I sit in a meeting with my laptop and am typing down notes as fast as I can.....If I ever have to use a marker in my class, that's it.....I hate it. First of all the white boards are a little high, so I cannot make the best use of it...I use only the bottom one-third of the board :-( and then when I write, my handwriting is legible but not good and I feel an uneasiness while writing, as if I am just starting to learn how to write.....Makes me feel terrible. O!!! that

We have all heard this one, "Life is short, so live every day as if it were your last".....Also reminds me of the "Life is an ice cream, enjoy it before it melts" version that I so loved in school. But I think that's really not true....On the contrary life is long and you have to live with the choices/decisions you make for the next 50 years or so!!!! Hey, but I don't mean to dampen your spirits at all......I decide which philosophy to adopt based on what I want to do.....So if I wanna go sky diving or bungee jumping then I go with the life is short philosophy, but otherwise (especially when it comes to relationships) tread with caution!!!

Some psycho shot 8 shoppers in a mall and then killed himself.....CNN and other news channels are busy covering it all day long and they will keep talking about it for the next 10 days....Seriously, these news channels really need to get global.....The same thing happened during Virginia Tech incident. For at least 2 weeks all that I could see on web sites and TV was the image of that depressed kid with two guns/rifles (whatever!!!) in his hand. And I am thinking to myself why on earth would you publish and re-publish such images and give out the details of how he got the guns??? To encourage other depressed/dejected/rejected individuals to do the same?? Don't you think you are glorifying the wrong idea? That is exactly what this mall shooter did. His suicide note said he wanted to go "in style".....So he decided to go into a mall right during holidays and shoot 8 innocent people. For a long time I used to think that human life was not valued enough in India and after the

Final week of classes, final presentations n loads of stress!!!! Whether you are student or a faculty it feels the same.....I was very pleasantly surprised as my class delivered their final presentations today... Some of them had videos in their presentations, just like I have in my lecture slides :-) I spent all my weekends looking for relevant videos on all sorts of web sites during last semester. And to actually have my students pick that up was really satisfying. At least they learnt something from me!!!! Way to go......