May 2006

Definitely a very special month because of the awesome time we spent hearing and repeating aloha, mahalo, mahalo, aloaaaaaaaaha

I never finished my last travelogue. Hopefully this one will be better. Our flight out was at 6:00 am and I had a lot of errands to run the evening before. And that meant I ended up not sleeping that night at all. Before Vegas trip I had slept for an hour or two. Anyway, I made up for that in the flightS and by the time we reached Maui at 3:00 pm local time I was pretty much able to drive. After being very fussy about the color of the Jeep Wrangler at Alamo, we finally got the one that we wanted. The code name for that color is Xterra Yellow. Here it is standing next to a roadside Sugarcane Juice stand. Other colors are taken off to concentrate on this Jeep as it played a big role in making our Maui stay fun. I could pretty much drive that thing anywhere and nobody could overtake me. A couple tried and failed (much of that I owe to single lane roads but a little bit of dramatization helps.)

Click on the images to see a larger version of these pictures.



Priceline blessed us with a nice resort (tennis courts/swimming pool/one of the finest Luaus etc) and we had a garden view room. That typically means you can view some trees and maybe some ocean but it is not guaranteed. Here is the view from our room balcony. First the trees and then the ocean.






Sorry! Thanks to the red-eye, I am exhausted. Rest will have to wait. Enjoy the sense of humor from Maui.

V for Vacation

Tomorrow we leave for our weeklong vacation and luckily I am not tied up at work. In fact I spent some time decoding Jason's morse code message from the Sunday strip.

Most of the weekend was spent in shopping and packing and yes the never ending work in the yard. The million dollar (actually 40 dollar) question is do I ask my neighbour to turn on the sprinklers(and more importantly turn them off) or do I buy a timed sprinkler? I am running out of time and I think I will end up buying the timer and ask my neighbour to step in, if the timer does not behave itself.

Saturday was a bit depressing because of the 1-run defeat. For the whole game I was hopeful that India would win and was constantly in touch with a not-so-optimistic friend. I did the stupidest thing. I called him to say "NAh-Nah-Nah-Nah NAA NAA" after Yuvi hit the first two boundaries and the only thing he said was "Still 2 runs in 3 balls with one wicket in hand is tough".

As a protest, I am not uploading any highlights for this match.

On a positive note, I am very glad to see a coach who wants to win so badly. It was all over Chappell's face and you could read his lips ("Come on!") after the first of the two fours (a mistimed shot past the WK actually). We are in for some fireworks in the next match. I will try to grab the scorecard somehow.

And since I was in a prankish mood, we watched a "Gags: Just for laughs" DVD yesterday. I loved it. Simple practical jokes that are very funny at times. No voiceovers, no laughtracks, just plain pranks with a simple background score. My favourite was when they hide a couple of speakers on a sidewalk. These speakers play the sound of an incoming car, applying sudden brakes and skidding just behind the victim. As soon as it is played, four people in front of the victim, walking in opposite direction, act totally horrified and run in different directions to avoid the "car". The reactions from the victims made me roll on the floor laughing, literally.

That is all from me for now, I will be back soon.

Nice Pranks

Gas Station Prank

Pranks Compilation

Scarecrow Prank

I love these photo booth pranks too. The last one is the best.
Photo booth prank

There are more but I haven't had the time to check them all.

from www.uglyjackass.com

Notes to Self

1. Advise people who indulge in sports betting to put money on Fed for French Open. People usually do not like to predict a result for fear of jinxing/woofing your guy, this time it is different. I am angry and upset but the more important thing is, I know, that he is angrier. Watch his game this month end.

2. Do not have dinner while watching CSI.

Some Musical Inspirations and some cricket

Update: My bad! Anand has already blogged about this. I somehow missed that post. Now I must credit him for finding that site otherwise I might turn into one of those guys I am complaining about :)


After complaining about inspired movies, let me complain about inspired songs.

I found a great site that lists all the inspired songs and the originals. For most of the songs, it has some samples of originals and the bollywood versions.

I knew that many songs are copied, but some of them really surprised me. Do browse the list as you may get surprised too. Mehbooba-Mehbooba, Om Shanti Om ... I could have never guessed. From the newer ones, "Chanda Chamke" from Fanaa and that song from KKrish are also not originals.

The site is:
http://www.itwofs.com/

And I am watching a cool DVD of Ashes '05 highlights in a "Sunil Gavaskar presents" like format. Trumps the last 5 movies I saw at least!!

LA Calling

How I wish to be [sniff]in LA for Nintendo's keynote tomorrow at E3? It should have a lot of interesting announcements.

Maybe I will upgrade my satellite [sniff]package so that I get to watch G4 [sniff]TV? (Since we rarely watch TV, we have a lowest tier package currently.)

Derby is over and thanks to this stupid cold, we even forgot to watch it on TV.

Aaaaa..chooooo!

"Inspired" Movies

No wonder how good a movie is, if it is "inspired" by some other movie and the director refuses to acknowledges it, I just don't like the movie. This happens even if a few scenes are copied. I know that I should consider that it is a good way to bring quality foreign movies to Indian etc etc., but I guess "plagiarism is bad" is engraved so deeply that I cannot help it (Pity that Kaavya Viswanathan does not read my blog).

The last three Bollywood movies that I watched were all inspired by some foreign movies.

1. Bluffmaster
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0325805/plotsummary

2. Taxi No 9211
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0264472/plotsummary

3. Malamaal Weekly
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0166396/plotsummary