The wars of the twenty-first century will be fought over parking spaces.
-Suketu Mehta, from Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Saturday, August 23, 2008
City of Angels - Review
I watched City of Angels yesterday. Its about a city that is full of angels, who observe 'human' life with the curiosity of child & do their job (i.e. to take dead people from Earth to God ). I liked the storyline. It has a mystic feel.
The story revolves around an angel Seth (Nicolas Cage), who falls in love with pretty, blond-haired and blue eyed 'human' Dr. Maggie Rice (Meg Ryan). Maggie, who is very emotional and diligent medical professional and considers saving a patient on her operation table to be the ultimate goal of her life. She gets frustrated when she sees her patient dying, despite her utmost efforts. She takes its blame on herself and feels powerless & depressed because she realizes that there are some things out of her control. Maggie has a doctor boyfriend, but she does not (try to) understand whether she loves him or not. Seth, the angel, comes to her rescue, partly because he loves her. When Seth 'shows' up, (generally angels can't be seen by humans & they can reveal their identity on their own will) she thinks he is a human, but is equally amused by curious (or quirky) questions like 'how does pear taste like to you?', 'what do you feel like when you are in love?'. This is because angels can't 'feel' human emotions like pain, fear, hunger, thirst. They live eternal life & take pleasure in listening to the music of sunshine (This scene where all angels gather near sea shore at the time of sunrise or sunset, to hear music of sunshine, is shot with amazing artistic sense). Slowly Maggie starts thinking he is 'weird' and when she sees he cannot feel pain from the cut of knife, she completely freaks out and dumps him out of fear. Later on, one of her patients, Nathaniel, who is a fallen angel, tells her he can become a human if she wants him too.
So Seth chooses to become a human by falling down from a building (something on the lines of 'fallen' angels living earthly life). Camera wonderfully captures (human) Seth's amazement towards human emotions. He feels pain, gets drenched in rain, gets mugged too. Now Seth meets Maggie and they dream long & happy life.
This is where movie slumps from its mystic feel. Maggie meets an accident & she dies and you feel it was waste for Seth to become a human, now that his has lost his love of the lifetime. But Seth justifies his being human by saying that a day with Maggie was worth thousand lives. And the movie ends with Seth swimming in waves & enjoying the sea-shore in 'human' way while his fellow angels are listening to the music of sunshine.
I would rate it about 6 out of 10. Because the movie doesn't reach the climax of movies like Titanic. But the picturization is amazing. There are few side-stories where we get to see human emotions in different circumstances. For example, the scene in which a robber is looting a grocery shop. When he holds cashier at the gun point, what robber is thinking & what poor old cashier is thinking.
Overall, movie wins because of its novel concept & soft dreamy, romantic theme but loses its momentum at the end.
The story revolves around an angel Seth (Nicolas Cage), who falls in love with pretty, blond-haired and blue eyed 'human' Dr. Maggie Rice (Meg Ryan). Maggie, who is very emotional and diligent medical professional and considers saving a patient on her operation table to be the ultimate goal of her life. She gets frustrated when she sees her patient dying, despite her utmost efforts. She takes its blame on herself and feels powerless & depressed because she realizes that there are some things out of her control. Maggie has a doctor boyfriend, but she does not (try to) understand whether she loves him or not. Seth, the angel, comes to her rescue, partly because he loves her. When Seth 'shows' up, (generally angels can't be seen by humans & they can reveal their identity on their own will) she thinks he is a human, but is equally amused by curious (or quirky) questions like 'how does pear taste like to you?', 'what do you feel like when you are in love?'. This is because angels can't 'feel' human emotions like pain, fear, hunger, thirst. They live eternal life & take pleasure in listening to the music of sunshine (This scene where all angels gather near sea shore at the time of sunrise or sunset, to hear music of sunshine, is shot with amazing artistic sense). Slowly Maggie starts thinking he is 'weird' and when she sees he cannot feel pain from the cut of knife, she completely freaks out and dumps him out of fear. Later on, one of her patients, Nathaniel, who is a fallen angel, tells her he can become a human if she wants him too.
So Seth chooses to become a human by falling down from a building (something on the lines of 'fallen' angels living earthly life). Camera wonderfully captures (human) Seth's amazement towards human emotions. He feels pain, gets drenched in rain, gets mugged too. Now Seth meets Maggie and they dream long & happy life.
This is where movie slumps from its mystic feel. Maggie meets an accident & she dies and you feel it was waste for Seth to become a human, now that his has lost his love of the lifetime. But Seth justifies his being human by saying that a day with Maggie was worth thousand lives. And the movie ends with Seth swimming in waves & enjoying the sea-shore in 'human' way while his fellow angels are listening to the music of sunshine.
I would rate it about 6 out of 10. Because the movie doesn't reach the climax of movies like Titanic. But the picturization is amazing. There are few side-stories where we get to see human emotions in different circumstances. For example, the scene in which a robber is looting a grocery shop. When he holds cashier at the gun point, what robber is thinking & what poor old cashier is thinking.
Overall, movie wins because of its novel concept & soft dreamy, romantic theme but loses its momentum at the end.
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Compilation Error!
Today's fortune on Orkut: You and your partner will be happy in your life together.
[Compilation Error]: Variable 'partner' should be initialized first. :)
[Compilation Error]: Variable 'partner' should be initialized first. :)
Wednesday, August 06, 2008
Guru
I just finished my summer finals and am resting in my bedroom listening to some soft rock. Looking back at the exam I just gave, I really didn't care much about how much I would score in it. Because the course itself wasn't much of value addition, contrary to what had thought earlier. Though the course was 'advanced algorithms' and the syllabus was quite 'advanced', professor ruined it completely. He would never tell us why he is doing what he is doing, always relying on meaningless theoretical deductions. For a course related to algorithms, this question becomes extremely important. He killed our interest in the subject. Anyways this actually prompts me to write about the best teacher I have encountered in my student life, till now.
I have to go back back to the days of my 7th grade. We have something called state level 'scholarship' exam in 7th grade. Its an optional exam that assesses your mathematical, language & reasoning skills. I always knew that I would be appearing for it, because I had performed very well in previous such exam in 4th grade(34th among 100,000 students). And so I joined Bhagwat Madam's tuition.
The tuition started in the beginning of school year, every morning 8 to 10:30 followed by 11 to 5 school. For initial 2-3 months, I didn't have much interest, or I wasn't enjoying the tuition very much. First because, I had to get up quite early (7 AM), when my other classmates were still in bed. Secondly, there used to be daily homework and regular tasks like memorizing tables, cubes, squares (for math skills), reading proverbs, idioms (for linguistic skills). And even though there were lot of new things to learn and I was (and still am) good at grasping them, it wasn't clicking.
But afterwords I somehow started enjoying it. May be because I realized, I can do it and can do it really well. There were challenging questions almost everyday, and it was real fun learning something new and understanding learned things in a new way. I happened to be really good at languages, despite my pathetic hand-writing. I would really enjoy writing essays, letters and to include relevant (sometimes irrelevant ;) ) idioms & proverbs, in them.
By the end of that year, a news came that our the scholarship exam, which was suppose to happen in coming February, was postponed to April, just before 7th grade finals. It was both good & bad news. That meant I had very less time to prepare for finals, but I could spend and enjoy more time at class. By the end of March, madam's confidence in me was so increased that she declared that if I top in languages paper, she would give me some cash reward. My handwriting was my weak point. No matter how much I tried to improve it wasn't as good as that of toppers. For all other papers, hand-writing wasn't an issue because it was an MCQ exam.
I distinctly remember the exam day. I had done my best & I just had to go there and deliver it. First was languages paper. I wrote essays first and started solving MCQs. After sometime, I realized that exam supervisor was standing behind me and is reading my essay. I was startled, but that lady was all praise for my essay. Such a thing is kind of a morale booster in those tense moments.
Math, and reasoning papers were also good. Math was bit different that time, which surprised many, but not me. I was pretty much prepared for anything. The exam was over, and I started preparing for my finals.
Results came somewhere in June or July. I knew that I hadn't done bad. But just to be prepared for worst results, I didn't hope much. As it turned out, I was fourth in my school and 16th in entire Mumbai city, among 100,000 students appeared that year. And no, I didn't top languages paper, but as a consolation I had topped Math, at least in my school. Needless to say, we were overjoyed and our madam was very happy to see her efforts bearing fruits.
Now, you would think, whats the point in remembering so small and old moments. But these moments are precious for me. They have helped me coping up when I was down and out. They told me that I had done it once, I can do it again.
The role of Bhagwat madam here was to bring the best out of me and to help me find out what I really liked. Such should be every teacher. A teacher you think of when Guru-Pournima comes.
I have to go back back to the days of my 7th grade. We have something called state level 'scholarship' exam in 7th grade. Its an optional exam that assesses your mathematical, language & reasoning skills. I always knew that I would be appearing for it, because I had performed very well in previous such exam in 4th grade(34th among 100,000 students). And so I joined Bhagwat Madam's tuition.
The tuition started in the beginning of school year, every morning 8 to 10:30 followed by 11 to 5 school. For initial 2-3 months, I didn't have much interest, or I wasn't enjoying the tuition very much. First because, I had to get up quite early (7 AM), when my other classmates were still in bed. Secondly, there used to be daily homework and regular tasks like memorizing tables, cubes, squares (for math skills), reading proverbs, idioms (for linguistic skills). And even though there were lot of new things to learn and I was (and still am) good at grasping them, it wasn't clicking.
But afterwords I somehow started enjoying it. May be because I realized, I can do it and can do it really well. There were challenging questions almost everyday, and it was real fun learning something new and understanding learned things in a new way. I happened to be really good at languages, despite my pathetic hand-writing. I would really enjoy writing essays, letters and to include relevant (sometimes irrelevant ;) ) idioms & proverbs, in them.
By the end of that year, a news came that our the scholarship exam, which was suppose to happen in coming February, was postponed to April, just before 7th grade finals. It was both good & bad news. That meant I had very less time to prepare for finals, but I could spend and enjoy more time at class. By the end of March, madam's confidence in me was so increased that she declared that if I top in languages paper, she would give me some cash reward. My handwriting was my weak point. No matter how much I tried to improve it wasn't as good as that of toppers. For all other papers, hand-writing wasn't an issue because it was an MCQ exam.
I distinctly remember the exam day. I had done my best & I just had to go there and deliver it. First was languages paper. I wrote essays first and started solving MCQs. After sometime, I realized that exam supervisor was standing behind me and is reading my essay. I was startled, but that lady was all praise for my essay. Such a thing is kind of a morale booster in those tense moments.
Math, and reasoning papers were also good. Math was bit different that time, which surprised many, but not me. I was pretty much prepared for anything. The exam was over, and I started preparing for my finals.
Results came somewhere in June or July. I knew that I hadn't done bad. But just to be prepared for worst results, I didn't hope much. As it turned out, I was fourth in my school and 16th in entire Mumbai city, among 100,000 students appeared that year. And no, I didn't top languages paper, but as a consolation I had topped Math, at least in my school. Needless to say, we were overjoyed and our madam was very happy to see her efforts bearing fruits.
Now, you would think, whats the point in remembering so small and old moments. But these moments are precious for me. They have helped me coping up when I was down and out. They told me that I had done it once, I can do it again.
The role of Bhagwat madam here was to bring the best out of me and to help me find out what I really liked. Such should be every teacher. A teacher you think of when Guru-Pournima comes.
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