HP 7

Yay! I have the E Book.

Email me any1, if u need it - its real good quality PDF and it aint doctored or something, as far as i can see (l.abhilash@gmail.com)

I've done about 4/5 chapters

**Spoiler**

Mad Eye Moody went Six Feet Under pretty early on. No one else, not YET :)

UPDATE: End August

The darned download did not have 2/3rds of the book. So I finally did the most Dastardly thing that cud av ben done - I went down to the harry potter shelf at Crossword Tnagar and read the last chapter. Frankly, i dont care about who kills who etc. I was more interested in what happend in the End (The 'happily ever after' part) - After i read the last chapter - i dunno - i wasn't like too impressed. It was pretty ordinary.

LOL - Lupin's Son was called 'Teddy' - and there was a lot of 'snoggling' mentioned. There was a lot of name calling, 'Bastard' etc. Tut, tut such is the state of children's books these days.

UPDATE: Mid September

I capped all my cheap deeds concerning HP7 with this one - I bought a superb looking fake in T Nagar and completed the chapters in between.

One thing that struck me - Rowling is pretty smart to have hung up her quill and give Potter a final 'Happily ever after' - It *started* getting a bit boring with the last 2 editions - Half blood prince & now this.

But hey, yum yum, i cant wait to look at Emma Watson in the new movies ;)

Lots of unrelated stuff !

I am just coming in after a really long Saturday evening walk. Nice, pleasant, drizzly weather - a rarity in this part of the world.

The walk lasted from "In Dinon.." to "Last Kiss.." a total of about an hour and a half of music on my iPod shuffle :)

[ A slight ramification from the original post's content - Last Kiss - the Pearl Jam version is one of those songs which really,u know, makes an impact when you listen to it closely - like on personal stereo or something:

" Oh where, oh where can my baby be,
The Lord took her away from me.
She's gone to heaven so I've got to be good,
So I can see my baby when I leave this world.

We were out on a date, in my daddy's car,
We hadn't driven very far,
There in the road, straight up ahead,
A car was stalled, the engine was dead.

I couldn't stop, so I swerved to the right,
I'll never forget the sound that night.
The screamin' tires, the bustin' glass,
The painful scream that I heard last...

When I woke up, the rain was pouring down,
There were people standin' all around.
Something warm going through my eyes,
But somehow I found my baby that night.

I lifted her head, she looked at me and said
"Hold me darlin' just a little while."
I held her close, I kissed her our last kiss,
I found the love that I knew I had missed.

Well now she's gone, even though I hold her tight,
I lost my love, my life that night."

Its a phenominal example of how a real beautiful song works - simple, wonderful lyrics and sung/delivered with as minimal fuss as possible. ]

One really funny incident that happened and an analysis of a related issue:

Somewhere during the walk (I remember it was during "Yeh Fizayen..(Main hoon naa)") i suddenly felt like i wanted to pee, real bad. I somehow held on till the um,urge, passed and walked on ok. There was always the option of the street corner - where theres always the garbage dump to pee into - which thankfully i did not have to excercise because of my,um, urge being moderate.

I remember in the same context walking one evening Last November along the Left bank of the Siene, trying to walk all the way from the Notre Dame to the Effiel Tower. I saw atleast 2 separate acts of,um, guys peeing on walls along the embankment - it wasnt like late in the night or something and those guys werent exactly tramps - and there wasnt any shortage of Toilets - all one had to do was to climb up back on to the Road from the river bank and walk into a public loo. Still one or two chose to pee,um,on the pavement.

I got into one public loo near the base of the Eiffel tower - sure enough - there were broken toilets, overflowing ones and shocking stench - maybe it was one of those 'bad hair' days ( :) OR maybe it was swampled due to this great horde of Indian tourists milling around yelling in Gujrati, Telugu and what not!)

Now, Proper Paris, the sprawling Metropolis that it is, has a 2 mn population - density roughly equal to any indian metro - maybe slightly lower in density. And in some cases, some rough neighborhoods werent any better than any Indian small down in terms of cleanliness etc.

Its true the infrastructure in superior in every sense - but it isnt the heaven that some people assume & as some of these columists portray it.

Elsewhere outside Proper paris - just 20 miles out - the absence of people came to me as a major shock - there simply isnt anyone visible on the road - there are quaint hamlets every 10/15 miles and roadsigns all around - but the absence of people is HUGELY visible.

France has a TOTAL of 64 mn people of which 61 mn of them live in 'Metros' for eg.ONLY the region designed as paris metro has about 12mn people living (Paris + 75 mile radius or so) inside a Total Sq.Km area of the whole country of roughly 6.50 lacs.

Now INDIA - total area 31 lacs (Less than 5 times France's land mass) BUT a population of 1150 mn (20 times France's population) consequently India is MUCH crowded & there a MUCH bigger stress put on the natural resources, governments & the general peaceful life is THAT much more difficult.

I sometimes wonder how we manage to exist - ruled by some old puppet sardar thousands of miles away - still paying taxes, getting work done etc. I guess theres always an element of self governing, religous/cultural tolerance etc, in-built in the Indian ethic or something :)

And hey ! Back to the old issue in hand - if some wiseass is thinking of mouthing off about building public loos in every street - think of all this too !

$$$ and :) :) :)

Sep 7 Shanghai, China
Oct 3 Milan, Italy
Oct 31 Northampton, UK

A lot of $$$ and a lot of fun !!

Sivaji !!

It has been a VERY interesting last week - several of my medium term financial, professional & personal goals have been put in to much clearer perspective.

Terminology like: Rapidly changing business practices, Industrial climate, excessive dependence on one business model, financial discipline, consistency etc. are showing their true significance.

Now heres something fresh, finally watched 'Sivaji' on Thursday. Incredible, its been running 9 shows housefull for 4-5 weeks now !!

10 observations:

1. Sivaji is an out and out Rajini Movie. No logic, its all, u know, Style

2. The quality of each frame shows - Great technical work - It HAS to be said

3. It is said that 'Sivaji' is the MOST expensive movie ever made in India costing in excess of 90 crores & so far, it has generated revenues of 350 crores worldwide - nearing/near surpassing 'Sholay's' TOTAL collection. Whew!

4. The Music - BGM is good. But with all Rajni music - the music does not appeal to you immediately - it sort of grows on you - after watching the visuals on screen and all - its true for 'sivaji' as well.

5. The Music videos are great - possibly with the exception of "Oru Koodai sunlight". The money can literally be seen being thrown. For eg. the recreation of some kind of a babylonian harem in "Vaaji vaaji.." is probably the best looking, best lighted set ive ever seen (vis-a-vis Devdas etc.)

6. Shankar movies use graphics a wee bit too much - which often ends up making the whole effort cheap looking - Its ok in 'Sivaji' - but sometimes, this 'white skin' etc.. is not too funny and appears somewhat clumsy.

7. This new RAP lyrics thing in all new Rahman's Tamil movies is becoming a wee bit repetitive & irritating - with the exception of the climax score in 'Sivaji'

8. An interesting analysis of the economics - Pirates of the Caribbean - At the World's End - is the BIGGEST movie ever - and it made roughly 949 Million USD worldwide - and it cost - 225 USD to make. Sivaji interestingly costed 22.5 Million USD to make and has made 87.5 mn USD to date.

Pirates made roughly 67.5% abroad and the rest 32.5% in the US. And considering the scale of promotions, number of screens and the potential worldwide audience pool, English language etc. it has made only 10 times the amount of money 'Sivaji' has made and has costed 10 times what Sivaji has costed.

It also goes to show why theres more scope - The biggest chinese film ever- Crouching tiger hidden dragon - made about 213 Mn USD Worldwide

- I dunno - maybe some Hollywood studio must meet up Rajini and THINK of a nice storyline, a Great script - which can make a movie with Inherent merit AND something which can leverage Rajini's inherent 'Style'

9. I am however, going to be a buyer of Media stocks like Adlabs films, Zeetele, TV18, NDTV whenever the current market slips :) looks like good longtime fun.

10. Coming back to Sivaji - If i watch Sivaji for a second time - it will be ONLY for Shriya - Her provocative costumes & more provocating,um, shall we say, 'dancing' carries most of the songs and finally made my day.

:))

Roger Federer & More..

Just saw Roger Federer lift the 5th consec wimbledon trophy beating Rafael Nadal - A nice 5 setter - which Nadal cud av won easily - as Federer admitted - "I told rafael at the net that you equally deserved the victory, i got more lucky today"

Rafa is no longer awkward on grass like he used to be - he is Phenom !! :) Gud luck to him!!

I did a marathon session of Mario Puzo's works concerning Vito Corleone, Micheal Corleone & a related, more recent work titled 'the sicilian' - also watched GF I and II back to back on DVD last night.

If at all - theres a lesson that can be taken from these characters (and to an extent from Al Pacino's powerful portrayal of Micheal) is how seriously they are portrayed to be taking their work, ethics, u know, the other sicilian stuff like omerta, 'Don' 'The Godfather thing' etc.

For a slightly superficial reader of this kinda sicilian stuff - it actually will appear stupid, funny because these guys - as the usual americans in the books say - 'Smooth guineas' 'sicilian simpletons' - appear to overly glorify even cheap, lowly stuff they do - and to be fair a reader has every right to just treat it as only that.

But in my opinion - this 'glorified treatment' of mundane, often 'chickenshit' work can do real good to the person and his organization ('company' as in sicilian 'family') in the long term.

My father has one quote made out on a wooden cutout - " The secret and priceless ingredient of every product & service is the honor, diginity & integrity of the one who makes it" - one who stops realizing that and treats regular work as 'chickenshit' subject to endless Gaali & procrastination - is in a deep pile of shit himself - no sustained 'organization' / 'business' can be created by such people.

I'l try and be consicous of this analogy when i actually do work in the coming days, i thought about it real hard today and it really makes some sense.

Monica Mania !

*Sigh*

A really nicely worded article on the above captioned subject. :)

Here

Nother *sigh*

Nameless - due to lack of energy to think up a name :)

Somehow, i really dig Johnny Bravo, u know.

I spent the better part of my day - unloading my old comic book dabbas from the top of the bookshelves & reading them one by one.

Asterix & Obelix, Tarzan, Archie, Disney stuff (Donald, Uncle Scrooge, Mickey, Goofy & friends), Amar Chitra Katha, Mad Magazines, Phantom & my other favorite - Rani Comics "Lucky Luke" series (The stuff is illustrated in Tamil and each copy costs about 10 bucks for about 40-50 pages) - real good stuff [ Might sound stupid - the idea of reading illustrated tamil comics - trust me - its fun ]

My mom's giving way one dabbafull to someone and all that'll be left will be the more expensive, glossy stuff :(

*sniff* will miss the good old times

Song of the Week: Doorie (Atif Aslam). Man ! these Pakistani rockers sure do know how to write, sing and play the guitar !!

So long! and So much for serious blogging !! :)