Happy New Year.

I make an annual attempt to resurrect this blog around New Years. So here is the 2012 version.

I don't want to jinx it, but this vacation has been excellent so far. Despite the many reasons for it not to have been.

My resolutions for this year are:

i) finish the last 40 pages of War and Peace

ii) start working my way through Shakespeare alphabetically. If I move at the rate one play a month I should be done with him in 3 years. Just as I enjoy knowing that I can name and locate every single country in the world (am still working on the capitals) I shall be happier after I know what happens in every single play. And just to be sure I shall make notes. As I do not think I shall be reading Richard II a second time, assuming I make it through a first time.

iii) be less lazy about writing. Academically, and otherwise.

iv) travel more on long weekends, instead of doing silly things like homework.

v) figure out how to keep a plant alive. I want a cat. But if I can't care for a plant the cat has no chance. This is a trial run. 2012 plant, 2013 cat.

vi) stop watching That 70's Show reruns. Enough is enough.

3.12.2011

on days like this, when its cold and rainy outside, when i have a mad amount of work to complete, and when i feel horribly sic fresh white sheets and oranges are making a big difference.

i must put up pictures of my room. it makes me so happy.

easter

so for the easter holiday i did what so many others did- followed one sugar-high with another. one chocolate mousse cake thing, box of macaroons (form my lovely neighbour) and chocolate easter bunny down i think i might be over this though.

on the last few days my i'm catching up on some of the movies on my list ethta i have been wanting to watch.

1. teeth.
i loved this. was hysterically funny, and briefly wanted similar mutation myself.

2. letters to juliet
bah. but then what was i expecting.

3. flipped
i really enjoyed easy a. and i liked this one a lot too. and somehow despite how cutesy it was it managed not to be annoying. which is no mean feat.

4. unfaithful
now.. in general i dislike films about cheating spouses, because i find that they make me terribly judgemental and unforgiving, aspects of myself which i would like to ignore a smuch as possible. but this one i really enjoyed. and the film was so pretty. i loved the way the windy new york day was shot, and how lovely the whole thing looked.

and the new doctor who episode.
so they've taken him to america and shoved an fbi agent in. and nixon. well obviously. i'm still loving this series though.

in other news- egg curry happened with some success last night. and today- kadhi.

song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3rDMJERl64

More movies

The best film of the last few weeks has been Les Meilleurs Amis du Monde (The Best Friends in the World). I loved this one so much. It made me cry big fat tears; the guy sitting across the aisle from me in the flight was most amused. It was funny, and sad and sweet. This one is about two sets of married-couple friends: one couple+son is visiting the other(+son) in their shiny new holiday home. While on the way the visitiing couple accidentally hear what their hosts really think about them when one of their phones redials by mistake. The weekend is a series of plotted and then later un-planned disasters. I would definitely watch this one again. Plus it had a llama. I like movies with llamas.

Last week I watched Phas Gaya re Obama. Which I'm glad I went to, despite my misgivings. Except for the female-Gabbar Singh gang bits, where all these women had sex with men to torment them (where do I even begin to talk about how annoying this was) the movie was pretty funny. It could have been a bit shorter. But the end was great. And I haven't enjoyed the second half of a Hindi film as much as I enjoyed the latter part of this, in a really long time.

In comparison Band Baaja Baaraat had much less going for it- one very pretty girl, with lots of pretty clothes, a very attractive scruffy boy, lots of Delhi-city references and one catchy song are more than other people are peddling these days (Tees Maar Khan?!)- but it could have been a much much better movie. I am partial to movies that reference Delhi University. I could also watch a whole movie about DU hostels and faffing about north camous; and this movie started off with this which is why I have decided to like it, despite being most annoyed with the patchy end. And the heroine's propensity to try and solve all her problems by calling the hero an ass. I oculd also have done without the overlong body-glitter song shot against the Jodhpur Palace. Jodhpur and Delhi are my two favourite movie locations, and I love it when they get worked into the story in the way this film did. For this I will overlook the boring yellow-flower petalled song. But there are only so many trades that one can make before categorising a film as vaguely disappointing- which is what this one was.

In Transit

It took me 34 hours to get home- from Geneva to Bangalore. 22 of these were in Doha- at a most pleasant hotel not far from the airport. Exhausted from two weeks of exams and two days, post exams, of drunken revelry I decided to stay in the hotel room for most of the day.

Enid- which I saw just before leaving for my Bangalore bound flight was very good. It made me detest Enid Blyton, and want to punish her for being evil to her children. But me enjoyment of the Faraway Tree tales, and the rest is quite secure- as the books have magically remained perfect in my head despite their author's apparent evilness.

On the flight from Geneva to Doha I watched three movies. Usually I like to eat and fall asleep but as I was stuck between two very twitchy men sleeping was impossible.

Weddings and Other Disasters was alright. Nothing special, but I don't watcha lot of Italian film- specially not recent stuff.

Heartbreakers- with Vanessa Paradis was very entertaining. It was a bit of a French lesson, which was good, and the dance bit was fun. I would recommend this one.

I also saw all but the end of Step Up 3- which I would not recommend to anyone. It was a foolish movie. And even though I love So You Think You Can Dance, there was no getting beyond how ghastly this movie was.

On Christmas morning I watched The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Why does Brad Pitt make these slow and tragic movies- where everything seems to be on an epic scale- but is just - ... movies like a River Runs Through it; or the other where he plays the guy who steals is brother's wife- the woman who makes with all the men in the family. That particular kind of Brad Pitt movie I am getting very tired of. Maybe he's just so beautiful that they don't know what to do with him, except stick him in these frames with the endless sea, or grass, or mountains. (Is it showing that I don't like him much? I don't.)

And then theres all the stuff I watched this week- while at home- which I shall do a separate post about.

Happy New Year everyone

geneva

so i wouldhave liked my first post about geneva to be about the snow, or the food, or the st bernards (but i have not seen any yet)
instead it is about an argument that consumed my saturday night. about quotas and reservations. though i had promised myself that after lsr i would stop having these.

it was a v long conversation with another indian girl, mediated by an excitable italian boy. who kept the conversation civil by interjecting when either of us got snippy.

it was about about caste, identity politics, reservation and education. i think economists should be put in reserved areas and not allowed to make policy decisions. they should do research and allow other people to decide how the world is run

it is impossible to convince someone who tihnks otherwise that the benefits of quotas and reservations outweigh negatives caused by the potential for misuse
and that saying that the govt 'should' do more by investing in education instead of having quotas is pointless as there are many things the govt should do but that having protective legislation makes the govt obliged to do some things.
increasing the number of things it has to do as opposed to making a wish list of shoulds.
which is really pointless as unless you are exceptionally placed the system is beyond repair for one or a group of 20,000 individuals
but economists live in a bubble. it is composed of the terms growth rate and development. and this is v problematic. they should be made to visit the real world. i dont understand why we keep studying the model of perfect competition. as we have all decided that it is never going to happen. we study not the perverions of the system; instead we keep thinking about what happens when it is perfect. it will never be perfect. it is pointless to keep thinking of what should happen.
but then perhaps it is no less utopian to imagine a less unfair world, than a perfect one.
it ended inconclusively.