The Second Mahabs....

... photo-blog post.

This one's exclusively a sunrise post. I also had some shots of the Mahabs beach under a full moon, but cameras on phones aren't up to catching those too good. (Reminder to buy a real camera)


Cross-posted on Traveblogs.

A Weighty...

... issue, isn't this? They have a weighing scale bang at the entrance of Imperial (in Indiranagar, this picture). I sort of find it ironic that they have this right outside an ideal place for stuffing one's face. This reminds me of this other example.

Blog...

... Alert.

My man Zeta has let loose his poetry on the world. Check it out here.

I've been asked to get the 'toons on the blog back. They'll be back, people. Let me finish this round of photos.

The First Mahabs...

...photo-blog post.

Here are some photos I took with my phone earlier this year, when I did Mahabalipuram with family. There's a text part to it, which will follow shortly (Watch this space)

This reminds me of some painting, Van Gogh, I think..


The main Mahabalipuram beach

The Shore Temple (Check out full moon rising)

Dead Turtle.

A stern warning

There's a series of snaps of a sunrise following this...
Crossposted at Travelbogs

Quizzing Innovations...

... once again.

This weekend (earlier today, really) was the only KQA quizzing weekend of the month. The good Doctor's untimely death contributed to the Lone Wolf etc being postponed.

Both quizzes today were, relatively speaking at least, innovative. First up, was Arul's quiz on "Love, Sex & Perversion", which if nothing else, was thoroughly entertaining. The quiz was refreshing good fun for a Saturday morning. Though Nannie and I made a mess of it in the finals, competitively speaking.

But the next one, the open quiz for teams of four was, in my opinion, a admirable move. The Ruckus Tangdi Open, as it's called, is truly an example of what, to me, KQA quizzing stands for - quizzing for the sake of it, as opposed to commercial trash (a la Derek etc) or RG-ish competition. I have nothing against competition really (it's all good I say) but I just like the fact that the lower prize monies and general camaraderie make quizzing at the KQA very enjoyable. In this regard, I wanted to expand/respond/contribute to Cow's thought on Quizzing (though in a slightly different context), but I'll do so after I gather my thoughts on it, since I feel this is something that should be discussed and written about in proper detail.

Sorry, back to the Ruckus Tangdi. (Ruckus Tangdi was some village which held out against someone in some theatre of battle; I forget the details). So there we were, Nannie, Thatha and I, having found a fourth teammate after much searching, and the moment every team had registered, they do some random number shit on everyone's names and shuffle all the teams to form new four-member teams. There were some resultant inequities (I ended up in a less experienced team, some big guns got bunched together, etc). However, on the whole, everyone had fun, I felt. The scores were very tight (three teams, including mine, lost out on stars). The finals too were tightly fought. It's probably not something I'd want every time, but it's definitely an interesting twist.

Oh, and please don't ask me for all the questions and some such. All of you who know me also know of my pathetic memory. I'll be happy if I remember the correct answers the next time any of the questions turn up. (Yes Kwonch, Diana Ross - Donna Summer, won't forget that one again). At best, if I can, I'll filch the ppt files from the concerned people and get them to you.

A Change...

... might do us a good?

Given the lukewarm response to the toonblogs thus far, I'm shifting focus to some photoblogs for a couple of days. One reason for this is the fact that I've finally uploaded three months of photos from my phone. Thanks to El Nannie for the technical support on that.

Here's something from the Baskin Robbins parlour across the road from my workplace. Oxymoronic, wot?

A Compilation...

... of cartoons on Outsourcing. This one's dedicated to our very own home-grown Maverick who's being annoyed by Indian call-centers, while on holiday in Toronto.

Le Cartoons...

... about the goings-on in France these days.

Red Meat...

... is quite an issue in these health-and-wellness-aware times.

La Nannie, for instance, doesn't consume any red meat. This one's dedicated to him, shocking though, I find it.

All this amidst the discovery of a rocking new pork place, on Residency Road, called Wild Spice. Good for some kickass authentic Coorgi pandi curry.

I Dislike...

... Tom Cruise, and most of the movies he comes in. In fact I still wish they find someone else for the Mission Impossible series.

So here's some rocking Tom Cruise AND Scientology bashing, in response to South Park having some fun at their expense. You can watch the episode here.


Also, there have been some allegations of sporadicity regarding my putting up of cartoons, so will try to make up for that today.

More Immigrant...

... Cartoons. They can't have enough of it!

Meanwhile, Amit Verma of India Uncut has linked to some slightly more erudite thoughts on the subject here.

The Eternal Fog...

... of my eminently spotted mind has found itself a quandary to quandar for some time to come. That of the economics of running a bookshop.

All of this transpired the previous week, when I took a few hours off work to go hang out at the beleaguered Premier Book Store and to spend my spoils of a 2000 buck book coupon from last KQA Open Quiz Sunday. (For those who don't know, We Are Like That Wonly were without member, and I guested ('whored' in Arul's pointless opinion) for them upon Satya's request. Prior to that Kwonchie, Mammo, Rajesh Meher and I came first in the unseeded Open)

So I'm at Premier, deciding between books and listening to Mr. Shanbagh be despondent about why he's shutting down. For the more inquisitive among you, the entire strip from MG Road to Church Street on that side of Museum Road used to be owned by a gentleman who passed away in the mid-nineties. He bequeathed the property to his children, and Premier was in the portion that came to one of his two daughters. She refused to renew his six-yearly-lease in 2003, upon which he negotiated a two year extension. The property owner has given her two choices, of either doubling the rent (from the 15,000 or such to 30,000) which he feels he will be unable to do, or leave the premises, which Shanbagh has consigned himself to. Oh, and he also mentioned that he had started on a rent of Rs 750 way back in the day.

So I'm walking to Koshy's to have me a coffee, struggling with my booty (the new found one), when I chance upon a board (backlit glow-sign) saying 'Book World', on the first floor next to that place which has a Chinese board which 'Shock had much delight reading and explaining to us sometime back. It's like three buildings down the road from the magazine store. So I go in, and here we have a guy who's started off last month, selling (mostly) second-hand books in what I would term a fairly spacious shop with a small collection. The shop would probably be half of Premier is terms of floor area. He probably has a fourth of the number of books Premier has.

My question is, how does he manage? His rent cannot be very different from Mr Shanbagh's. He's selling books too. Are second-hand books are a better proposition for a bookshop? (given the rapid rise of Blossom and Bookworm, it's possible). Is Mr Shanbagh not managing the finances of his store well? (Sourcing? Pricing? Poor Sales?) Why does Premier, who has an firmly established loyal customer base and many well-wishers have to shut down while new book guy can open a shop in pretty much the same area? Is it more than just the difference in profitability between second-hand books and new books? I wonder...

More Movies...

... have been watched this weekend, making this quite a cinematic week by my usually paltry standards. Notable are the Wachowskis' 'adaptation' of Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, and the 'geo-political thriller' Syriana.

V for Vendetta is as Orwellian and dysptopian as it gets. While I quite like the Matrix-esque ultra-cool feel of the film, it does run contrary in a way to the graphic novel. V, in the film, is a hero and a martyr, as opposed to Moore's perpetually reborn anarchist; "an IDEA, not a man". A lot of Moore's subplots have been dispensed with. It's far less extreme and hard-hitting than the book, but I guess that had to be done to make money. I heard that they were trying to release on the 5th of November to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the Guy Fawkes's Gunpowder Plot thingie. Which would have ben quite some touch, except that political forces stepped in, in the aftermath of the London blasts. Sheesh. Two touches I really like about the film are the mass-mailing of the masks, and the Stones' 'Street-Fighting Man' during end credits (which the bastards at Symphony turned off, half-way through). Did it fit right in, or what. No anarchist film is complete without the Stones, I say.

The 'terrorism' and big-brothering continued into Syriana, which is like a modern day John Le Carre tale, with (naturally) the oil industry for backdrop. This is a good watch, with a twisted hypertexty film plot and some far-out dialogue. Steve Soderbergh, George Clooney and Steven Gaghan (scriptwriter also for Traffic, and turned down offer to adapt Da Vinci Code trash (ha!)) are names I will continue to keep an eye out for. And Matt Damon continues to get on my nerves.

Watch both films, if you haven't. They're worth it.