Temperature cool-off

So its rained a few times, even had a storm over the weekend, and the temperatures have abated some. Meanwhile the ‘Swine Flu’ aka H1N1 remains a hot topic of discussion and you know its news when it gets incorporated into the opening stand-up acts of well-known comedians and their daily shows.

A friend of mine has recently sown the seeds of an adventure holiday (yes I know I just got back from one but that doesn’t mean I can’t take another short trip again) in Borneo..complete with jungle trekking and a trip to see the orang utans. She’s also mentioned spas in her description so I’m not sure how to break it to her not to expect a spa in the middle of rainforests but I could be mistaken. If anyone knows where nature and man can commune in materialistic harmony do let me know

Meanwhile in the event the temperature decides to soar again – a highly likely possibility given that the hottest season is around the corner here’s a little picture I like to look at and visualise to take a ‘mental’ break from the heat.

This picture was taken on January 27th of 2002 from the kitchen window of my apartment in Vancouver. This lovely view was my companion each morning as I partook of my coffee/tea/or whatever other stimulant was needed to kick-start the day.

Enjoy the rest of the week!

Extreme temperatures

Phew … Singapore is a hot, hot place to be in right now. The temperatures seem even more extreme to me since I’ve just gotten back from my second home, Vancouver B.C., where the weather was unseasonably cool. A foray south of the border into the states had it hailing-snowing-then pouring rain all in some 10 minutes. I must say though I did get a thrill out of blowing out big puffs of breath to ‘see’ it – something which has a snowball’s chance in hell of occurring naturally in Singapore!

Well my fingers are crossed that the blog and weather drought ends – perhaps I should make it a rule to blog on every day that it rains..lol..something needs to be fixed with regards to this blog and figure it out I shall

Since it most definitely has not rained in my corner of Singapore this brings me to what prompted this post. I’ve been following ‘The Sartorialist’ blog for some time now. I like seeing how others adapt fashion for themselves and make their individual statements – something I’m similarly fond of. My creative eye opened with this picture:

(picture reproduced from The Sartorialist)

Now normally even the Punjabi/Sikh community doesn’t consider itself terribly fashion forward (turbans matching your shirt do not count) so its nice to see someone cut a dashing figure with all the accoutrements of being a traditional Sikh.

Till it rains or I get off my duff enough to blog about what I’ve been up to…hint: Twilight!

The GetIT Party

There’s a new hottie in town

My fascination with the mature, sophisticated, and intelligent man (who is usually not the pin-up poster boy with the perfect body) has been well documented in this blog. The list of “IT” men for me has a brand new entry … Farhan Akhtar. As a director he blew audiences away with his first movie ‘Dil Chahta Hai’ with its off-beat and quirky style and unconventional and mature themes. I thoroughly enjoyed his movie Lakshya as well. His other directorial venture, the re-make of Don, was seriously slick and had (in my opinion) the more believable ending, as compared to the 70′s original version.

Now he’s made his debut as an actor in ‘Rock On’ and man is he sexy His sophistication shines through his character and he’s easy on the eyes. I’ve seen his interviews and honestly..a man who looks good, is intelligent, has a wicked sense of humour, and a voice thats sooooooooooo husky it sounds as if he’s smoked an entire pack of cigarettes just before speaking to you…Hubba hubba baby!

Take a look at him performing my favourite song from the movie and decide if he floats your boat

Pichle Saat Dinon Mein

Book review: “The Kite Runner” & “A Thousand Splendid Suns”

I discovered the wonder of Khaled Hosseini late. After his books had achieved critical acclaim and he even had a movie made out of one.

There’s little left to be said about his engaging narrative which draws in the reader. He creates a world which begins with the first word and stays with you beyond the last. He involves you in the lives which unfold across the pages and despite having his stories set against a bold cultural backdrop the challenges, failures and triumphs he details are ones which every reader can identify with and most importantly feel for.

A critic may sit and examine prose, grammar, sentence structures, the use of allegories etc but for me the acid test is but one. The moment I pick up a book and begin to read the world outside should melt away. For both these books the world melted away and at times to such a degree that what I read aroused in me such emotion I was forced to disengage, stop and just think on what I had read and felt.

My sister made a comment once I finished “ATSS”. She said that she felt more for the characters in this book as opposed to “TKR” because “ATSS” revolved around women and their pains. I must confess to not having that same reaction. For me what impacted me was the absolute way he had managed to capture the evil within nature’s worst animal..MAN. The obvious flaws in each character made them identifiable and perhaps a mirror of what was within to some degree or other.

The movie….well….I’m not a fan of any movie adaptation. I like the full-length, full-colour version I see in my mind much more than the invariably abbreviated one that makes it to the big screen. The one big problem I had with the movie was the casting of ‘Baba’. The larger than life man who could wrestle a bear and take up the fight for others was done, in my opinion, little justice by the actor selected. Though charismatic he failed to capture the joie-de-vivre that I had come to expect from my reading of the book. An interesting watch none the less.

One catch-up post down…a million more to go.

Enjoy the rest of your week

Paintball/Pain-ball?!

Spring showers etc were drowned out by a healthy (read hectic) work schedule and my sister falling so sick she was made to rest at home for a week by the doctors!

In the midst of all that excitement the folks at GetIT decided we needed another one of our quirky group activities where we don’t care about building team-spirit etc but instead focus on fun. I don’t have all the pictures but I did manage to copy (read steal) these from AB’s post on the same for our corporate blog.

Some of us sported bumps on the head and very bruised bottoms from being shot at in odd spots!

For anyone who is interested please head to www.weplaypaintball.com and check with the staff there on how to get a package for yourselves. The guys there were funny, very safety-conscious and were kind enough to not laugh too hard at us novices

Enjoy the pics!

The crew arrives – we had to hire one of the mini-van cabs to get all of us there.

The undisputed better team!

Peace is restored

My souvenir of the event. I got hit on my right bicep twice in 2 minutes. Major Ouchie!

Movie Review: Taare Zameen Par

Aamir Khan’s directorial debut has had much written about it. I put off watching it for quite a while having heard it was a “sad” movie and i didn’t much feel in the mood for a cry.

I did get around to watching it and i can truly saying it deserves all the laurels heaped upon it and its young star, Darsheel Safry. The little boy made me feel for the young child struggling with a learning disability and a society and parents who are too overly concerned with being the best to consider the best for the child might not be the most economically sound options.

This movie at the heart of it addresses differences and uses in its narrrative the example of a learning disability. The inherent inability of people to accept the differences of our fellow man be it in the form of colour, creed, sexual orientation, religious beliefs etc is at the crux of many of life’s avoidable problems. The need we have to force a square peg into a circle just because we are circles and are uncomfortable with expanding our boundaries makes us the ones with the problem and not the so-called different folk.

I sincerely hope this will be a movie that stays with people and the next time we judge someone harshly for being different we stop, pause and think about the so-called problem and quesiton if there really is one.

Plucky Ducky

Due to the infinite grace of the cosmos my sister and I coincidently had occasion to celebrate in the past month. As is our tradition celebration to us means duck confit and with the closing of our favourite Le Troquet we ventured to where the chef had gone: Makarios Cafe Bar located on the 3rd floor of the National Library Building at Victoria Street.

We skipped the appetisers and instead had some of the best bread I’ve ever tasted. Freshly baked bread bursting with flavour in each bite

The duck confit was par excellence and I was in gastronomic heaven when the first bite caused a burst of flavour to roll around my mouth and bathe my senses in pure delight.

The evening was rounded off with profiteroles…a fitting end to a most satisfying meal.

Throughout dinner we shared excellent conversation and the house wine…a nice white which went quite well with everything we had.

 

Till the next celebration

Ted|Talks

Once every year revolutionary thinkers and doers of great and unusual things come together for an exchange of ideas thats food for the minds of those of us who haven’t been quite so blessed in terms of gray matter. AB mentioned that this years talks are out and encouraged me to have a look as there’s something thats bound to catch your eye.

Within the first 2 minutes i found this performanced by Kenichi Ebina who displays the most remarkable control over his body that i have ever seen. The minutiae of his every movement and the breakdown of each action boggles the mind….i only wish i could move the way he does whatever name his art-form takes.

Another talk i want to share is one AB had shared with me last year. Anthropologist Helen Fisher shares her research and perspectives on love and its various stages. Her witty delivery enables her to leave you with some interesting new insights into “Love”

For those of you who are interested head over to Ted|Talks and find something else that tickles your fancy. I’ve already seen a couple of topics i’ll be checking out

Men, Marriage & Malarkey

I’ve just returned from my long over-due vacation and dived head-first into work. The post on my impressions and adventures will have to wait for the weekend when I hopefully get a moment to breathe in peace and just ‘be’.

This post came to mind while I was travelling. I had just finished Vikram Seth’s “A Suitable Boy” and the book had left a profound impression on me, so much so, that I picked up a copy for my own during my travels. The one point I kept returning to was that the boy she deemed most suitable was not the one who aroused great emotion in her but rather the one who made her laugh. I think that in most romantic relationships we over-estimate the fiery flames of amorous feelings and underestimate the warmth and steady glow of a good companion. The ideal you may think would be to have a balance of the two, and I think thats possible in a long-term commitment that sees the ups and downs of life, but not necessarily a possibility in the form of a perfectly packaged individual.

I pondered over this some and some personal interactions of my own have validated this for me. I’ve met people who have elicited great emotion from me and vice versa. Thats fine and dandy because noone on earth can possibly object to those wondrous highs of being in love and being loved in return and as such noone reads the fine print about the dastardly lows and highly irrational behavior. I’m guilty of some irrational behavior of my own and been subjected to some as well. All I can say is if the 2 people involved are not mature enough to communicate through the chaos to the real issues underneath and commit to resolving them it can get really ugly. I personally don’t like myself when I’m so choked up with emotion that I can barely string a coherent sentence and am just lashing out…so I figure I need to find my very own funny man. If he can fan the flames as well that will be the icing on the cake

With all this squared away I was resting easy until I picked up an issue of Marie Claire. The editor wrote a piece on the many single and seemingly eligible women in their late 20s who just can’t seem to find Mr Right. She raised some interesting points of how we may be so fixated on finding the ideal man, intelligent, successful, and handsome, that we pass up on people who don’t obviously fit the bill. What we may not realise, she said, was that the intelligent, successful and handsome Mr Right may not be looking for us. Most of us stabilise our personalities and our careers in our mid-to-late 20s and in the process may become quite boring! She also raised the point that the man we meet and reject at 28 will probably be the man we meet and accept at 38. Now I don’t know about you but that gives me major heebie-jeebies!! By that standard the guy i crushed on at 16 is probably the closest to the ideal man i’ve ever met and even he wasn’t the same ideal as his 16yr old self when i met him again years later!!

From the highs of funny man to the lows of 38yr old i’ve settled on a nice medium as aided by Shobha De. With all this men & marriage thoughts going on in my head I picked up her book “Spouse” in which she analyzes her own marriage and that of those around her. She doesn’t profess any magic cures but rather a few pointers from the rough roads she’s travelled. What I’ve liked most about her book is her approach…only marry if you really believe in marriage and in making that commitment to stick it out with your partner. That gives me hope because I truly believe in the institution of marriage and for keeps. Now I just need to find someone who thinks that and is tall, dark, handsome, highly successful, witty, intelligent, likes to be a little adventurous with food…………..and on and on. LOL!

Have a good week!