Post from July 28th, 2007 -

I admit, I’ve been excessively obsessed with this song. Partly because I think Selvaraghavan made a crappy video of a cool song. The camera and Ravi Krishna eyes are fixated on Sonia’s bosom and I think thats a cheap thing to do, given the realistic lyrics and a great rhythm.

I propose someone to re-shoot it and make a pretty good video. Maybe with available resources, I would even re-shoot it myself at Seattle and edit it using Final Cut . Imagine this, as the electric guitar plays, a tall desi guy with a hooded black t-shirt, the mountain ranges on the backdrop, walks on a bridge while its raining. Cut it to a mall, a desi girl with her American teenage friends, walking past this chap with a wink in her eye, eating baskin robbins. Cut back, to the raining bridge. Cut again to wide angle shot, the guy walking on the alki beach with a backdrop of seattle downtown. I’m sure it will do justice to Yuvan’s cool beat. Some day…

I’m still obsessed with this idea of re-shooting the song. Currently looking for camera(!), help with shooting/editing, a desi guy, 2 non-indian females and a sunny seattle day. Coming this summer…

It’s been raining the whole of the weekend. Was tied to the home, being lazy and watching television for a good portion of this long weekend. Something that I did after a long time.

Its a very bad movie season at Hollywood and Kollywood. Recently I moved to the sitcoms. Completed the third season of Desperate Housewives. Currently watching the first season of NBC’s hit show, Heroes. Also started to watch Friends from it’s first season. I completed a round last year. This is a second trip to the Friend’s galaxy.

By the way, unlike many of the fans, Ross Geller and Phoebe Buffay are my faves.

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Director Vasanth has a cool interview on kumudam.com alongwith Nitin Sathya, the villain of his latest movie, Satham Podathey. Vasanth is one of favorite directors of Kollywood. However, I have to say that he wasn’t so careful on choosing his film subjects. Probably Nerukku Nerr was a start to that carelessness. His next film Rhythm had a great subject but also had a pretty uninspiring script. Hey Nee Romba Azhaga Irukka was a classy film with a great script. I don’t think anyone even cared to watch the film.

Vasanth’s uniqueness is to allow his characters speak their natural language and be themselves. Having introduced some of the movers and shakers of kollywood from Simran to Jyothika to Surya, Vasanth still has very low profile. And that’s probably why he is a misfit to Kollywood.

Am still waiting to watch Satham Podathey hoping its probably one of the better films of what can be called as a continuing diastorous year for kollywood.

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Being on the subject of this year’s best films of kollywood, my list is currently restricted to two films – Chennai 600 028 and ‘Muthazhagu’ fame Paruthi Veeran.

Kamal’s Dasavatharam has all qualities to join the list. Probably Tamil M.A too. I watched the trailer of this Jeeva starrer Tamil M.A and I am already wanting to watch the film.

This year’s biggest let down was undoubtedly, you know what :)

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Watched Sivaji over the weekend for the second time. No word on how the movie fared the second time around.

But here is something that Shankar should do before he starts to make the next hype at the bollywood level, watch just two movies.

a) Mel Gibson’s Apocalypto
b) The Lives Of Others

These are certainly not the only best movies now. But this is what the contemporary cinema has to offer. And creators should atleast watch these movies before they start yapping about their so called tight-scripts.

Was surrounded by mountains at the Olympic National Park. Inspiring !!

Its been sometime since I stopped drinking Mochas with an overdose of sugar. A good friend introduced me to the drip coffee at Starbucks and since then its been, a drip a day.

Drip Coffee beans are coarser than the espresso ones. They are made in the same way as the South Indian coffee but the concoction is just a tad thicker. So even as the drip coffee powder is made to stay alongwith the water for a longer time, they seem to have more caffeine when compared to an espresso.

So if you planning to gulp a drip, the best combination is half & half milk(which contains 40 calories including 32 calories of fat in just 2 teaspoons) and sugarless sugar(whatever that means).

Last time around it was a strenuous search for two whole months. And as other fellow desis adviced I ended up with a 90′s Toyota Carolla.

Just today when I was thinking to car shop, I ended up in a Honda showroom. I was looking to buy the post-2002 Honda Accord in it’s magentic grey color. And I found one with moon roof and stuff. So that was a used one and costed more than some of the new ones they had in stock. Confused with the dynamics of US car market, I wanted to really look-out few more places before I nailed down on something. On the way home, I decided to drop into a Toyota showroom.

Driving the Corolla for a year, I started liking the Toyota brand and their service. And they are much flexible in terms of accessories than the Honda guys. But the dark greyish honda accord was mesmerizing me on the another end. The latest 2007 model of Camry was in the showroom. Though I didn’t have a big liking for Camrys, the latest model had some of the best curves and an affordable price tag to it.

So I found a magnetic grey Camry. Unfortunately(!!) it was loaded with some amazing accesories which I wouldn’t like to pay for. It had moon-roof, surrond sound bluetooth, 8 speakers which spilled 440 watts and mp3/wma compatible 6 CD changer. I made no sense to me to have mp3 and 6 CD changer together. Being the latest version, released just over a month back, they didn’t have enough of the metallic grey that I liked. They convinced me with a loan option. What else ? I bought it and drove home listening to Kaathal Ithuthaan Athuthaan Endru Ketkumaa.

Was it a good decision or not ? Let me see what I feel like tomorrow morning.

Last night, atleast half of the America public, lifted their heads to stare the twilight sky as 4th of July fireworks drew interesting geometric shapes. It was only then I had myself looking at the American sky for such a long time. The Independence day celebrations at the eastside of Seattle, is one of the popular ones. Its the biggest community gathering in Seattle. Other than fireworks, there was a fair and a live music show going on.

While the fireworks was on, The Bellevue Philharmonic played the theme of Mission Impossible. And yeah, it was so cool. Enjoyed the fireworks, had some elephant ears topped with cinnamon sugar and came back home.

Today is the longest day at Seattle. Sunrise was at 5:11 a.m and the tireless sun finally decided to set about 9:10 p.m. It’s summer starting today and as the sun peaks out, Seattlites freak out.

One couldn’t guess what he/she can find in a library. On a sunny day like yesterday, I found a rack of tamil books in the Seattle Pubic Library. I had to literally discover them located in one corner of the library. So I picked a bunch of those books. More Info overload.

The bunch included Neela Padmanaban’s Therodum Veethi, Suprabharathi Manian’s Appa and Matrum Silar and Ka. Na. Su’s Thomas Vandhaar. The most interesting find were two books by Ashokamitran. One was En Payanam, sort of an autobiography on his writing career. Donno if they included these articles on Ashokamitran Katturaigal book. The other one was Iruvar, a double novel published as a single book. I haven’t heard about Ashokamitran’s Iruvar before yesterday. Seems like its a long forgotten book.

Kush !!

Had been to the Seattle Tulip Show[Skagit Valley Festival] on a rainy day, two weeks ago. The muted climate proved worthwhile for photographs, even with a pathetic sony camera. Here are some of them.

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It takes a year atmost for an unassuming desi to become wary of calories. While some 10-20% of them are already calorie conscious right from India, most of what-the-heck-is-a-calorie desis take atleast 12 months before they are soaking wet in the world of calories, fats, 2 % saturated fat, carbs and so-so. Amidst reading Pudumaipithan and Ashokamithran books, I recently found myself trapped with a book, The Bread for Life Diet : The High-on-Carbs Weight-Loss Plan. Mind you, I’m was the kind of desi who was once throwing a big damn towards all these calories and carbs.

I have to say I’m hugely impressed with this bread for life diet plan. Written by Israeli nutritionist Olga Raz’s this is a innovative diet plan that tries to control your brain from hogging food, rather than controlling the physical YOU. By taking regular courses of light bread which has carbs, it aims to raise Serotonin levels in hypothalamus region of the brain are raised. Brain is often called as the hunger center of the body which initiates and processes the feeling of hunger. Serotonin is a chemical that influences the mood and hunger.

Raz says adopting to a diet fails for most diet-watchers because a crash-course diet usually advices low carb foods and hence serotonin levels decrease, incresing the hunger more and more. With regular carbs intake, through light bread and other vegetables, the Serotonin levels are raised and hence hunger is controlled even in the brain. The diet plan is actually dealt in detail but the crux of the plan is to intake as much as 16 slices of light bread for men and 12 slices for women. While even reading this book makes you think this is a radical idea for diet, the diet plan claims to have reduced the weight of thousands of people already. Following this diet plan, the average weight loss among healthy people is said to 10 to 20 pounds, which ofcourse may vary from individuals.

What ? Am I trying it ? Donno but the book was well written and was certainly high-carbs food for my calorie conscious desi-mind.

Go Seahawks !!

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Aranmanai Siruvayalil is a play sponsored by Seattle Tamil Sangam on the account of Pongal celebrations at Seattle. Though Pongal completed a week back, on Sunday Jan 29th, this play will be staged in Sammamish High School, where the Gujus play Dandia during Dussehra.

Incidentally there are two bloggers out here, who are playing a role in this play. A long time blogger Swami and his wife Lakshmi are the bloggers who are playing play roles in Aranmanai Siruvayalil. Both of them have prior experience in stage plays, given their experience in staging S. Ve. Shekar’s Thattupillai, and acting alongwith him. If you are around Seattle, do take a spin.

After graciously failing in attempts to get Sun & Vijay TV, the only option was to get connected to Chennai was through Jaya TV. So I subscribed to Jaya TV through Num TV. Sometime back, Uma and few others recommended Jaya TV but I wanted to watch the tamil channel on a television. So I didn’t pursue that seriously. Left with no options, I succumbed to watching TV on the PC.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t a bad deal. The streaming video is at 300 kbps with good clarity, good enough for comfortable viewing. It doesn’t match the TV-on-TV quality yet it ain’t bad. The good news for me is that kollywood has moved nearer to me through Jaya TV. And I could see Kushboo and the jacket design on Jack..Jack..Jack…Jackpot. So much for missing Tamil Channels. Anything written here in relation to satellite channel, hereafter refers to Jaya TV, unless otherwise specified. So if you start smelling too much of kollywood here, you know why.

This morning, I got see Simbhu‘s pongal special program, with clippings from his latest flick, Saravana where he was trying to acting like Rajini and even like Vijay. He claims to have done comedy for the first time. Deja Vu or is it me. He said the same stuff during his movie Trisha named Alai. Alai never got to see even 25 days in theatres and this ‘i’m doing comedy for the first time’ seems to be coming around. This whole thing seems to be a big comedy itself. For the kind of opening he go and the oppurtunity he gets, Simbhu should just act for the character given instead of developing his ‘own’ style. Given KS Ravikumar and Jothika in the movie, I’m hoping Saravana would be a bearable watch. Or is it not ?

This is the 23rd consecutive day of rain in Seattle. The record is 33 days, set in 1953, reads the headline in Seattle PI. Another 10 more days of rain and Seattle will break its own record which is set to 33 consecutive days of rain in 1953. CNN has more on this marathon rain.

And now you know why there is not much spice in the blog. Before I could tackle the windy downtown rains and reach home, a Netflix DVD awaits me. So there goes the blogging spirit. Jokes apart, coming from chennai(I mean the Chennai before the monsoon of 2005), this Seattle rain was like heaven, when I first reached here. I still enjoy the drizzlings especially the early evening drizzles are a cheer to the bored souls. Last saturday, while walking to Subway, my umbrella just broke due to heavy winds. Its then I realized that the rains have started to be a daily affair.

Being locked in the house, due to this rain, I planned to get the ‘amusing’ SUN TV via Dish network. Guess what. No Signal. Two trees standing right in front of my apt are blocking Sapthaswarangal and Selvi entering my home. DirectTV broadcasts Vijay TV but I’m not sure if the trees would allow its signal. So I went ahead and booked the suite of HBO channels today combined with a digital box. With the 8 HBO channels and numerous On-Demand movies through Comcast, I hope to wade through the rainy days. I hope.

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On a new year day like yesterday, found some time escape from the usual and drive to Snoqualmie Pass, a skiing facility. Snoqualmie Pass is located some 52 miles east of Seattle and is also called as Snoqualmie Summit. The northeast of Seattle, is filled with mountain ranges and shopping malls(they are there everywhere). These mountain ranges get snow throughout the winter and hence serve as a perfect skiing escapade(read as vazhukki vizhara area). Because I wasn’t prepared to push myself from the top of the mountain and keep falling down like the Roja‘s Arvind Swamy, I was playing with the snow, like a Mani Ratnam heroine. Though I had been to a skiing resort once in Chicago but it was only yesterday, I got myself amidst mountains, covered with snow. Am planning to plan for another week of this slipping down(read skiing) exercise.

As you hear the priest say, after giving you three sips of the theartham, ” Please keep moving !!”, you know you are in a desi temple. Common language. The temple at Bothell was overfilled with people and was full of chaos. Amidst all the chaos, I found some time and place(!!) to meet Raj Kumar, a fellow blogger from the other side of Seattle. We had planned to meet since March but were able to meet just yesterday. What else. Had the lemon rice served as prasadham and drove back in the drizzling rain.

Watched The Polar Express. Being a big fan of Robert Zemeckis and especially being aware of his enthusiasm in animation, I was expecting a gala fare. Zemeckis widely known for his Forrest Gump, was actually the guy who revolutionized the animation industry in Hollywood by having animated characters act with the cast in Who Framed Roger Rabbit.

If Sin City was re-telling of the teenage comics, The Polar Express is like opening a children’s book. I was reminded of some russian comics, I read during my childhood. The animation isn’t the same as other hollywood movies. The characters are extremely real. Tom Hanks looks exactly like him. From the wrinkles in his face to his expressions, its just Tom Hanks. Seems to me that all the characters were performed by a cast including Tom Hanks and then they converted the film into animation.

In a time where the spirit of Santa Claus getting diminished, year after year, the movie expresses a noble motive by trying to keep the spirit going. Contrary to the name, the movie doesn’t travel in express speed except for the beginning sequence. That should probably be a reason for the movie failure. Also in a world of Incredibles and Shrek, where animation movies feed the adult, Polar Express is for kids. To keep them as kids and induce the belief of Santa. Certainly a treasure in your house, for the kid in the house.