Another (Damn) Birthday

Please Sing : (In Chorus) It's another Birthday, Just Another Birthday. Now Rap : I am, What I am, What I'll always be, A worker bee....
But seriously that's the limit of my poetical talents. Let the verses cease - the rest of the post shall be in normal engelese.....
I just completed another chronological year of my existence and as I now stand here and look back over the last year or so - I find quite a few changes I have willingly made. To confess a few :
1) A trip alone to Goa - vacationed alone last year for the first time and it turned out to be not a bad experience at all. I kept my own timings, went to wherever my fancy took me and was eternally vigilant throughout the trip to avoid being ripped off in strange places/by strangers who prey on lone travellers. Result - I realized that travelling alone through life reuires the same courage and foresight and I'm upto it (though its damn hard- you only play with the cards you have been dealt with by life).
2) Ran a Marathon (Chennai Marathon)- Again I ran my first marathon last year- alone, unprepared and out of sheer bloody-minded will-power. Running kilometer after kilometer with nobody but your thoughts to accompany you forces you to take a good hard look at yourself and all your misgivings and shortcomings. You measure up yourself as a man and pass judgement on yourself - so that if you collapse on the end of the run with a cardiac arrest (a posssibilty - if you are not fit enough) you atleast have the satisfaction of knowing that you are a Man (In Rajnikant's diaogue- Ambala!!!)
3) Went Swimming - This is another of the foolhardy things i did last year - I went to the pool at a time when there would be no one around to watch my exposed body (which I'm still ashamed to exhibit in public) and jumped in to try and learn swimming (all by myself)- and fortunately am still around to tell the tale. luckinly for me - the depth of the pol wasn't much - just comes upto my nose - so i could breathe with my face tilted up. And Oh, I now go swimming regularly every sunday and I've progressed enuough to do both breaststoke, backstroke and simply lying on my back in the water - floating calmly - no more panic at the sight of water. And achieved all by my self.
4) A few minor things like - going to dance class, learning kick-boxing etc were also attempted over last year with minor success.
MY Failures - The one major regret I have for the past year was when I abandoned my quest for that elusive "Six Pack Abs" halfway. It really took too much effort and time and halfway through I despaired of ever achieving it given all my professional and personal commitments -when time became a constraint and I felt I really could not do my normal/routine work half-starved daily.
A few other less noteworthy incidents like trying to chat up a few girls and getting snubbed too happened - not worth talking about.
And Finally - The Resolution for this year - THAT DAMN NOVEL- always on the tip of my tongue/touch of my fingers - this year I am definitely going to write it and complete it - its been waiting too long. Bye Cheeerio.............

Apocalypse Now

I have been hearing a lot of Dire predictions of Doomsday scenarious in recent times. And just thought I'd like to share a few scary thoughts for you to chew on.....
1) The Large Hadron Collider - The brainchild of CERN - the European paricle physics reseach institute's newest particle accelerator - what used to be in the good old days (when I was in high school studying physics) called a Cyclotron, is a behemoth of unimaginable proportions and when it is switched on in a couple of weeks - a lot of people have said that it will result in a Singularity/Event Horizon - in simpler terms - a blackhole - something which can swallow our planet and end our civilization. Though this may sound far fetched - if you know (personally) any particle physicist and ask them what do they hope to see when two interesting sub-atomic particles collide - The answer is "Something interesting" but meaning "No Idea". Yes, these people crash two things together and see what the leftover pieces are made of. And you shouldn't (atleast they wont) be surprised if we end up with a blackhole in Switzerland. Now if you dont call that irresponsible... I don't know what is.
2) A.I. - Aw shucks I hear you crib- Not The old Terminator Movie/Skynet artificial intelligence thing again. But please stop and think a minute. The only thing stopping us from developing Artificial Intelligence right now is not the software- its the Hardware -which is failing to measure up - Moore's Law, Anyone? Come to think of it- with all its inherent hardware deficiences and glitches - we already have a highly diversified, planet-wide, distributed network with Quasi-(self) awareness available to us - Called the Internet. We are just a step away folks....
3)Robots - Again something from Sci-fi stories, you think- but stop a minute to think about your latest handheld mobile communicator with so much computing spare power, impressive isn't it? and Mobile phones only took off in the last 10 years. Think what Nokia could do or God Forbid, Apple could do in say another 20/30 years if Robots really took off as a best selling consumer technology?
4) Finally - The Loser Climate Change - Seriously I don't think climate change is going to pose much of a challenge to humanity as Al Gore thinks - we have/will have most of the technology we require (in the near future) to beat climate change easily and restore our planet to equilibrium- regardless of the pessimists.
Anything else I left out? please feel free to comment....

Kuselan - The Review

This can be the shortest review I have ever written - if I could just plagiarize myself from my previous post on the Dark Knight- when I went to see waht I thought was a Batman Movie and couldn't find Batman in it. Similarly, I went to watch Kuselan under the mistaken view that it was a Rajni movie - but it was not. Its a low-brow comedy movie, of obvious malayalam origins, filled with a group of has-been comedians chanting Rajni's name every now and then - just to amke you think it was a Super Star Film. But Fool Me - They did not.

I rest my Case, Ladies & Gentleman.