Trip to Orissa.. Day 4

Nothing was planned for the day so in the morning we decided to go to the Nandan Kanan Zoo. Its around 15 Kms from the place where we are staying in Bhubaneshwar. Nandan Kanan is well known because it’s the only place in India where breading of white tigers is done (this was told to us by the guide). The place was just like any other zoo that I have seen. It was sad to see animals in cages. The great thing about the zoo is that each animal in the zoo has been given a name, like one pair of tigers was called Madan and Mohan.

After the zoo we traveled to the other side of the city to a place called Dhauli. It is the place where king Ashoka adopted Buddhism after seeing the destruction caused due to the battle of Kalinga. There was nothing much to see at Dhauli other than the Buddhist monument depicting king Ashoka’s transformation from a king to a follower of Buddha. Interestingly it is also the place where some part of the bollywood movie Asoka was shot.

I spent the rest of the evening attending my friends wedding reception. Tomorrow plans are of visiting the Lingaraj temple in the city. It is a very old temple of lord Shiva. More about the temple in my next post. Tomorrow also happens to be my last day in Orissa, I will be leaving by the 3:30 Pm train…

Note: I had typed this on the 7th but was unable to post it.

Trip to Orissa.. Day 3

Today we had planned of visiting the Sun temple at Konark and the Jagnnath temple at Puri. At the end of the day we did manage to visit both the places. Both places are about 50 Kms away from Bhubaneshwar. We left bhubaneshwar a bit late in the morning, so we couldn’t visit the Puri beach which is supposedly very famous and always crowded.

Konark is a great place to visit if you want to see some great architecture. We had hired a guide who explained the architecture to us. There are lot of sculptures around the temple which reminded me of Khajurao and the Kamasutra. Our guide was not shy of explaining the poses and the meaning of the sculptures. One sad thing about the monument is its slowly eroding away. Our guide explained that it’s mainly because of the iron content in the stones that are used for building the temple. Since the temple is close to the sea the salt in the air causes the iron the rust and the stones erode slowly.

After Konark we headed to a small beach on our way to Puri. It was just like any other beach, white sand, lots of water but very few people. We headed to Puri and reached there in about 30 mins.

Puri is a really crowded place, well you can expect that regarding the fact that thousands of people visit the place every day. We were not allowed to carry cameras or cell phones inside the temple grounds. The Puri temple is surrounded by around 25 to 30 small temples. It takes around a hour to visit all the temples. The temple provides lunch to all pilgrims as prasad. Its called the Maha Prasad. We ha that at around 4:30 in the evening and then went for a walk to see all the temples. By the time we left the temple it was already getting dark so we dropped the plan of visiting the beach. We reached Bhubaneshwar at 8:30 and I am lazing around in the room since then. Plans for tomorrow are not finalized. We may go to visit some more temples in the city.

Trip to Orissa.. Day 2

The day began with me sitting in the waiting are of the CSI Airport Mumbai. That is where my last post had ended, so let me continue. I had to spend almost 5 hours on the airport, waiting for my flight. I almost fell asleep a couple of times while sitting. I guess I had not mentioned this earlier but I have never travelled by plane before this.

The plane was supposed to takeoff at 10:25 AM, but as with most of the flights and trains in India it was delayed by 1 hour. Well to summarize my first flying experience, really liked the view while takeoffs and landings, food was good and the air hostesses were really old. This was the only disappointing thing about flying by Indian Airlines. The flight reached Raipur, Chattisgar in about 1 hour 45 mins and then halted there for 40 mins. From Raipur it took us 45 mins to reach Bhubaneshwar.

After reaching the lodge it was time for lunch. Since I was already full with the food that I had had in the plane I chose to eat some snacks. Orissa like Bengal is known for its sweets and I thought of trying some sweet dish. I ordered the “Steam Cake”, had no idea what to expect but found it similar to a dish made in Goa, its called “Kharvs”. No time to explain about Kharvas now. After lunch I slept for a couple of hours and by the time I got up it was time to leave for my team mates baarat. Good thing is nobody forced me to dance (I cant dance). The food at the wedding was great. There were so many dishes that I had not tried earlier, and finally I had my favourite dessert, ice cream.. Yummy..

New dishes tried today – Dahi wada dum aloo, Steam cake and Rohu (Fish) fry

PS: Attached pictures of the plane that I travelled in and my team mates baarat.

Tomorrow I will be visiting the Puri temple and the Sun temple at Konark. Snaps will be uploaded on my picasa web album as soon as possible…

Trip to Orissa.. Day 1

The preparations for the trip began on the 4th of December early in the morning when I started packing for my 5 day trip to Orissa. The ocassion for the trip is my teammates (ex-teammates) wedding. In the evening after completing my work in office me and my other colleague left office in hope of catching the company shuttle to Aund (a location in Pune). We had planned of catching a bus to Mumbai from Aund since we have to catch our flight to Orissa from Mumbai airport. Unfortunately we missed the shuttle but fortunately got tickets to a volvo that was leavng for Mumbai from the Pune station area.

The journey lasted for around four hours and all the while we were totally confused about the exact location of the Mumbai domestic airport. We finally managed to reach the airport at around 1:00 AM in the morning.

Right now I am writing this post while sitting in the airport waiting area. My flight to Orissa is scheduled to leave at 10:30 AM, and I have no clue what I am going to do for the next 5 hours. May be i'll spend the time reading a book, or may be play a game on my PSP or may be watch a movie on my laptop :P. Guess I have lots of options to kill time, just hoping that I dont fall asleep while sitting here (I haven't slept the whole night :( )

One interesting thing about this airport is that there are 5 WiFi access points here (Kingfisher, Indian, Airtel, Tata Indicom and EZCOMM). Only the airtel connection is free but the credentials are sent by SMS to a cell number after registering the mobile number. I tried registering my phone but the SMS has still not reached me :(.

Hope I get to write a post tomorrow from Orissa. For now I am waiting for my flight and the SMS from airtel.

PS: Pictures attached are of the Chatrapati Shivaji international airport, Mumbai.

Worst travel experience

Here I am writing this post live from the shittiest bus that I have travelled by till date, and since lady luck has totally deserted me I have the worst seat in the bus. Well the bus is Krishna Varun and I am travelling from Pune to Goa, sitting on rightmost corner seat of the last row. There is no leg room, I can’t push the seat back, and once the seat next to me is occupied I won’t be able to move. This is by far my worst travel experience to Goa and I can't blame anyone else for this because I waited till the last moment to book the ticket, even when I knew that there would be rush because of the public holiday on 2nd october. Wait a second, may be I can blame someone, the guy who sold me the ticket. That *$%@ (insert the bad word of your choice) told me that he was giving me a seat on the second last row. Also this guy had told me that tickets of another bus that I preferred were over, whereas I found from my friends that the tickets for that bus were being sold upto 15 mins before that bus left pune.

The bus has just left pune, now lets hope I reach home in one piece. Home seems to be really far away. 12 hours away...

P.S. I have safely reached home and posting this entry from my home PC

Disturbia & Chuk De India

I am writing this post after taking a loooong break from blogging. The reason for my absence was work and exams which I am glad to say are over. Well this weekend I happened to watch 2 movies one was Chuk De India and the other Disturbia. Both the movies were great and if you like watching Hindi and English movies then you should not miss either. I guess most people out there have seen Chuk De India, atleast most people from my office have seen it twice. I was one of the few people who missed to watch it earlier, the good thing was that i didn't have to wait in a long queue to get the tickets and I got good comfortable seats.

Chuk De India is a story of a Hockey player turned Coach of the Indian womens world championship hockey team aka Shaharukh Khan, and his team of girls that has been selected from all corners of India. The movie basically shows how the coach tries to teach the girls to play together as a team and motivates them to win the world championship. The movie also touches upon the fact that cricket is given way too much publicity in India and sports such as Hockey is neglected to a great extent. I particularly liked the fights between the girls and the Haryanvi dialogs of the actor that played Komal Chautala. Its a must watch movie for any cricket fan who is disappointed by the Indian cricket teams performance in England and wants to turn a womens hockey fan.

The main reason I went to see Disturbia was that it had got a 7.5 rating on IMDB and I didn't have much to do on Sunday. The movie is a thriller which revolves around a boy who has been sentenced to a house arrest for 3 months for punching his teacher in the face. The story takes a turn when our hero finds out that one of his neighbor is a serial killer who kills women and preserves their bodies in the basement. I was told by a friend that Disturbia is similar to the movie The Rear Window. I found the movie as thrilling as Vacancy, although Vacancy was a better movie and had much less actors. I would highly recommend this movie to anyone who likes to watch thrillers and who liked Vacancy or The Rear Window (Which I haven't seen).

P.S. I have around 6 posts that I had started but never managed to complete. Hope to publish them soon :P

Barcamp Pune 3

After attending the BlogCamp at Pune last month it was time for me to attend my first BarCamp being held at Pune. According to Wikipedia BarCamp is "an international network of unconferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies and social protocols." For those who are still wondering what Barcamp is, It is a unconference where people discuss and present on technical topics. The BarCamp 3 was held at PSPL Pune's Erendwana center. Altough around 250 people had registered on the wiki I guess around 150 of them actually attended the event. I was especially looking forward to attend the sessions by Abdul Qabiz but unfortunately he was unable to attend the event.

There were some interesting talks like the one by Sudarshan where he used simulations to explain about the complexity found in nature. I also liked the session conducted by Devendra Laulkar on Rapid prototyping using PyQT.

In general all the sessions were gud and the event was organized very well. Unlike the BlogCamp this time the WiFi was working and that helped me in updating the Avast virus definition on my laptop. The only disappointing part was the food. Well most of the people found the food to be good but it was a stone crushing experience for me. I found one stone in the bhaji and a piece of plastic in the rice. Considering that the food in PSPL is famous for it's insect and worm content I was lucky to just find an inanimate piece of plastic.

Well it was definately worth the time and effort spent on attending the event. I am eagerly waiting for the next BarCamp Pune, but hope that the next time the quality of food is not the same...

Blogcamp Pune - II

Blogcamp pune, that’s where I am today. Its a gathering of bloggers from all over India. Well atleast bloggers from Pune and Mumbai are here. And there are representatives from rediff, sulekha and fropper, all here to promote the services that they will be launching soon.

Purplenova was one of the tool that was showcased here which can be used to host a site from your home pc. The Fropper team is going to show a demo of some product at 3 pm. There was a demo earlier given by the sulekha team. And rediff launched a new service called blogshowcase .

Till now the unconference has not been very impressive, all that we got to attend were talks by companies trying to showcase their products. I am looking forward to a few talks in the evening.

It was nice to meet Akshay Mahajan who is going to participate in the rickshaw run, check out his blog here http://trivialmatters.blogspot.com. Those who don’t know what Rickshawa Run is visit this site www.rickshawrun.com. Also the chick who I think was the CNN IBN reporter looked cute. So the event was not totally boring.

If I upload this post today then it will be from my cellphone. These guys were going to provide wifi access but sadly we never got to access the net :-(. Anyways it was a great day, I am with my friends Abhimanyu and Fritz who has come down from Goa to attend this event. For now this is it. I am getting back to the talks..

Blogcamp Pune - I

I came to know about Blogcamp pune frem my friend fritz who is visiting pune to attend it. Well Blogcamp is a unconference where bloggers will be coming together to share their ideas. Its being oeganized at SCIT Hinjewadi on the 16th of June.

Preparations to go for the event began on friday the 15th. Fritz was reaching on friday and all he and myself were planning to stay at Abhimanyus place for two days since Hinjewadi is closer to his place than mine. We had made plans of meeting at the SGS mall Mc. Donalds after office hours. This was just cause we wanted the Shrek toys that they are giving out wit the happy meal.

Fritz and abhimanyu reached late as usual and after some shopping at landmark we were off to have dinner. I got the Gingerbread man and ave still not figured out wat he says. After dinner we made a short pitstop at café coffee day on FC road and from there it was a walk back to abhimanyu's place.

The plan was to go to sleep early and wake up early in the morning to catch the bus to Hinjewadi, but we stayed awake till late. Luckly we managed to wake up on time to catch the bus and reach the venue on time. One bad thing that happened was that nobody else turned up on time.

To be continued live from the event...

Weekend in Goa..

This is an account of things that happened on my last trip to Goa. Let me warn you that this is a lengthy post. I had planned of taking 5 days off from work from the 28th April to 2nd May but due to some unfortunate circumstances I had to cut short my trip to 4 days. Due to nonavailability of bus tickets we chose to travel by train. Brenton accompanied Sudesh, Subodh and me this time. Journey was fun because Subodh was carrying playing cards. We went to sleep late at night after playing cards, naming each others top 5 on the most desired list and of course bugging Brenton.

The next morning we reached Margao station and from there 3 of us took a train while Sudesh preferred to travel by bus. I reached home and after having bath watched Chronicles of Narnia, at home I tend to spend most of my time watching TV because I don't get to do that in Pune. Then it was time to visit the University and meet some friends. We all went out for lunch. Someone suggested a place called Mi Casa on the Shiridao slope. The food was good, I was eating fish after almost a month so it was bound to taste good. Sudesh and Pritam unknowingly had pork but nobody puked so it was fine. Some of us spent the evening on the Miramar beach making plans for the night. The Plan was to go out for dinner and then go to Baga beach to watch the final of the Cricket World Cup on big screen.

At night Pele, Sid, Pritam, Sudesh and me met at Mapusa for dinner. Brenton ditched us as usual. After dinner at Ruchira we headed towards Baga as per our plan. On the way we stopped to watch a cricket match that was being played on the fields close to the Bodgeshwar temple at Mapusa. Pritam was very interested in the match and didn't want to leave from there but we forcefully took him with us. The World Cup Final was very boring. It was a totally one sided match and from the beginning everyone knew that Australia was going to win. Still we waited till about 1 for some miracle to happen and hoping that Sri Lanka would win but that did not happen. Bored of the match we finally decided to go home.

On the second day plans were to go to Colva beach for lunch. We left at 10 in the morning. I was accompanied by Fritz, Hamish, Jesni and Maria all of whome studied with me in Xavier's. The reason we had come to Colva for lunch was because Fritz had read a good review about Joseph's shack on some blog and in Goa I don't mind traveling if I get to eat good sea food. After a bit of searching and asking people we found that the name was actually Josefa. We were disappointed with the shack since most of the stuff that we wanted to eat was not available, so we just had some fish fingers and moved out of the place. We had lunch at Sun Sea Sand which is a shack on the Colva beach.

Next was the movie day. I went to see Ta Ra Rum Pum with some classmates. The movie was good for time pass. Typical bollywood movie with lots of songs. Adit and me had lunch at City Pride which is a small restaurant cum bar on the road running perpendicular to the Kala Academy. The fish there was really good, I especially liked the tisreo. In the evening I met some friends at Cafe Coffee Day Miramar. My cousins wedding was on the 2nd so there was some function at his place on the 1st, I spent most of the morning at his place. Other than that nothing eventful happened on the 1st. My bus was to leave Goa at 7 Pm but as usual it left at 8pm.

Since this was a long weekend most people who work in Pune and Bangalore were down in Goa. The sad thing is that once people start working such weekends are the only time when you get to meet old friends who work in other states. This time I managed to meet some people after a long time but there were a few who could not make it. Hope to see them the next time....

Kebabs by the road side

"Never eat stuff that you get on road side" I am sure your mother must have told it to you a thousand times. Well even my mom used to tell me this but its human tendency to do things which others tell us not to. I have always wanted to taste kebabs that are available at small stalls on the road. Stall wont be the right word to describe it, usually its a guy sitting on a metal chair in front of a sigree making kebabs. Kebab in case you didn't know is a Middle Easten dish made using Chicken / Lamb / Fish / Beef.

Well I had tasted kebabs earlier but that was in restaurants. So just wanted to find out the difference between the two. The first time I tried Seek kabab and there was not much difference in the taste, plus they were cheap, a plate of kebabs (2 kebabs) costs 10 Rs. A few days later sudesh and me tried chicken kebabs, these were a bit expensive at 30 Rs a plate and that is because chicken is expensive in Pune.

So if anyone in Pune wishes to try kebabs by the roadside my advice to that person would be to go ahead and try it..

Wish list.....

Here are few of the items on my wish list. I am definitely going to buy these when I win a lottery.

The Dell XPS M2010 Mobile Entertainment PC (4500 $)



The Sony PSP (13000 Rs)



The Nikon D80 DSLR (1200 $)



This list would have been longer if I had found the other videos on youtube.

Money Money Money....

This weekend my uncle was in Pune. His name is Uday Palkar and his hobby is collecting old currency. He was here to participate in an exhibition of old currency which was organized by the Numismatic society of Maharashtra at the Chatur Shringi temple premises. Well my job was to accompany him for 2 days during the exhibition because he didn't know anyone else in Pune who could help him during the exhibition.

I confess that initially I was a bit irritated at the idea of not spending the weekend according to my plans, but then this was something that I had to do. So as per plans I reached the exhibition hall at 10 in the morning on Saturday. Initially I was under the impression that my uncle was the only person who would be exhibiting his collection but I was wrong. There were around 20 collectors and dealers of old currency who had their collections on display. They had come from different parts of India and most of them were from Gujarat. As far as my uncle goes he is not a dealer of coins but he just visits exhibitions and tries to see if he can get items which he does not have.

We had hardly finished setting up our table and all the other dealers started crowding around the table to see if uncle had any coins worth buying. Within 15 to 3o minutes most of them had purchased coins from us. I came to know the reason for the rush. It seems that there is lot of demand for Goan currency in the market and since uncle was the only Goan who participated in the exhibition people didn't want to miss an opportunity to get some rare Goan coins. As the day passed by more and more people came inquiring about Goan currency and were disappointed that most of it was sold out early in the day.

The dealer sitting next to our table was very friendly. I asked him which was the most expensive coin he had got for the exhibition and he immediately showed it to me. It was a Queen Victoria coin with a price tag of 10000 Rs. Then he went on to explain why the coin was expensive, he said something about the size of the coin. The coin was slightly smaller in diameter compared to the same coins minted at a different mint, that made the coin rare and expensive. The guy even told me the rate at which he had bought the coin, it was just 650 Rs.

On the second day I got into the act of selling some coins. By mistake I sold a coin worth 10 Rs for 20 Rs [:P]. And with so many people buying coins even I felt like investing some money in old currency so I picked up some coins from uncles collection but he didn't take money from me.

Overall it was a interesting experience. I got to learn a lot about old currency from experienced people. Now I have developed one more hobby that I can spend money on. So if any one of you has some old currency that you don't need feel free to give it to me [:-)].

Over and out..

Hunt for the Black Spider..

The hunt began on Friday night at Gold Adlabs Pune. Sudesh, Neeraj and Myself had plans of going for a movie. The movie that we wanted to go for was Spider-Man 3, but to our disappointment we couldn't get tickets because the show was house full. I wanted to book tickets for the Saturday show but Sudesh vetoed against it [:-(].

Saturday afternoon we decided to try our luck at E-Square but again the show was running house full. Hoping to get tickets we traveled to Inox, but even there we were disappointed. But even after so many setbacks we did not give up hope. I tried calling a few friends (Yves, Gayle, Fritz, Abhimanyu) to get the number of Gold Adlabs. I got one number which Fritz found on the Adlabs site but it was a wrong number. Finally we managed to get the number from a newspaper but after calling we found out that every show on Saturday was house full and not just Saturday even the shows on Sunday were house full. Now this was the height of bad luck.

We were heading back home after booking a bus ticket from the station area when we saw a Spider-Man 3 poster at the Alankar theater which is close to the Pune station। Since Alankar is mostly never crowded we decided to check if any tickets were available। And to our amazement we got tickets. Finally after hunting for so long we had finally managed to get tickets. Even the tickets were very cheap compared to the Multiplex rates. We paid just 40 bucks for balcony seats. Things had just started going our way when Neeraj observed the poster properly. 'Spider-Man 3 Kashmakash' was written in big bold Hindi letters. We were so excited when we had seen the poster earlier that we had forgotten to check whether the movie was English or the Hindi dubbed version. But we had already booked the tickets and had no other work to do so decided to watch the Hindi version.

As far as the movie is considered it was great. The special effects are great. Besides you get to see Spidey in his black suit which looks too cool. Plus there are 3 villians (Green goblin, Sandman and Venom) in the movie. As Abhimanyu pointed out to me things do get a bit Bollywoodish in the second half with all the crying but its bearable. Overall its a good to watch movie.

So what if the seats were not as comfortable as compared to Inox or Adlabs. What happened if there was paan spit on the seat that Sudesh was going to sit on. Even though the fans (Pankha) in the theater were adding some extra sound to the movie soundtrack it was a different experience compared to the usual Multiplex experience. It was something different that we tried in Pune and it was fun.

By the way I am planning to go for the English version of the movie next weekend wit Abhimanyu.

PS: Abhimanyu you should try going for the Hindi dubbed version of the movie [:-)].

Over and out..

Old is Gold

Has anyone wondered what has happened to all to old adverts that used to come on TV? Remember the advertisements which were shown during Ramayan and Mahabharat.

Well if you'll have forgotten then here are a few that will freshen up your memory..

Remember this one "Ek Titli", I recently found out that the singer is Sadhna Sargam (The bollywood playback singer).



And this one "Mile sur mera tumhara".



The most famous.. "Hamara Bajaj", So many scooters were sold because of this one..



Remake of "Mile sur mera tumhara" by some Guys at MIT..



I hope everyone is smiling rite now remembering the old days..

Over and out..

The Longest Weekend....

Hi.. First of all let me introduce myself. My name is Sarvesh, 24 yrs of age. I am originally from Goa but right now I am doing my internship in a company called Symantec in Pune. I am basically doing my MCA final semester project/training over here. Well this is not a matrimonial advert so let me continue wit the actual post about how I spent the last weekend in Pune and all the exciting things that happened.

Well it started on friday the 13th, (nothing bad happened just in case you'll are thinking on those lines) I left office a bit early that day (at 7), just in case u'll r wondering about my actual work timings its from 10 to 7 but I normally end up being in office till 9 (and that is not because of the free food as some of my friends think). After leaving office I walked around 2 kms with my friend sudesh to a dentist (Sudesh was getting root canal treatment). Sudesh is my classmate and roommate in Pune. His treatment has been going on for quiet some time now, he has already visited the dentist 5 times and each time he had to pay 200 - 300 bucks plus at the end of the treatment the doctor will be putting a cap for the tooth which will cost him atleast 800 bucks. Now sudesh thinks that it would have been better to have the tooth removed for 100 bucks than to spend around 2000 for the root canal treatment.

We left the dentists office at around 8:15 and traveled by rick to the Gold ADLabs multiplex in Kalyani Nagar (I mostly go to this multiplex because its 15 mins walking distance from the place I stay). We were going for the movie "Bheja Fry" (For more details read my first post). We reached home at 11. I did a bit of reading after that and went to sleep at around 12.


Saturday morning began early as usual at 8 am. I reached office at 9:30 or 10, had breakfast and started surfing the net. I mostly go to office on weekends for time pass. Its the only time I get to read about things that interest me, plus the net speed on weekends is really good so I get to download more stuff. My friend Fritz (who is in Goa rite now) was telling me for some time to start blogging and since I had some free time I decided to start blogging (you can read Fritz's blog here).

In the afternoon another friend Neeraj came to office and the three of us (Sudesh, Neeraj and myself) decided to go roaming in pune. Neeraj is from Haryana, he has some degree in chemistry from IIT Kanpur and is currently working in Symantec as a developer. This guy has joined the company recently but when it comes to unix this guy is better than anybody in his team. I had to buy some books from a book store on FC Road (FC stands for Ferguson College) so we decided to go there first. From there we headed to the Landmark store on MG Road. The road that the rick driver took was unknown to us. On that journey from FC Road to MG Road we saw a different side of Pune. It was in contrast to the glamorous Pune that we are used to seeing every day.

One tip for anybody who plans to work in pune. GET YOUR VEHICLES WHEN YOU COME TO PUNE. I am saying this because unless you have your own vehicle traveling becomes very hectic and expensive. Most of the times especially at night rick drivers refuse to take you to some places and even if they agree you have to pay more than the metered amount.

Incidentally MG Road and FC Road are the two places in Pune where you would need to go if you want to do some birdwatching. From landmark we went to the Pyramid Mall and sat there for some time watching the crowd (Girls) . I took something for dinner from YO! China and Sudesh and Neeraj got something from KFC. We went back to the company and had dinner and then left for home. That night I saw the movie "Red Dragon" on my laptop.


On sunday morning I went to the company as usual. In the afternoon Sudesh, Neeraj and me went to a fast food restaurant close to the company, Neeraj had told us that they served good biryani, so we decided to try it (The biryani was good, if anyone wishes to try it the name of the place is 'Chop Sticks', its close to Pune Central). In the afternoon I had plans of going for a movie with another friend of mine, Abhimanyu. Abhimanyu works in PSPL Pune and he is the only person I know who spends half of his monthly salary on Music CD's and Movie DVD's (And the other half on Movie tickets). He is a unique personality, Has seen the movie 300 5 or 6 times (Abhimanyu forgive me if the count is wrong). I met him and his brother at Landmark before the movie. I was not surprised to see the book he was buying, it was the graphic novel 300 by Frank Miller on which the movie is based.

We reached INOX on time. We had gone to see the movie "Eragon". The only thing I knew about the movie was that it was something to do with dragons and magic. The movie was average special effects were good but the story was not that great. After the movie got over I witnessed my first rain in Pune (Actually it was my second.. First time it had started raining when I had left Pune while on my way to Nagpur, but that was 3 or 4 years ago). When the rain had subsided a bit we decided to go to Barista (Indian version of Starbucks) on MG Road. So we walked around 1 Km from INOX to Barista (It was still drizzling). It had hardly rained for 1 hour but the pools of water had accumulated on the roads (We had clicked a snap with Abhimanyu's phone but the snap was too dark).

Barista is supposed to be one of the place where you would find young and rich crowd of Pune hanging out. I had thought's of having a nice chilled coffee drink after the 1 Km walk but I was surprised to know that the menu in Barista was of not much use other than for killing flies, around 3/4 of the items were not available (I am exaggerating, it mite not be 3/4 but around 1/2) . So we went to Dorabjee to eat something (Its the second most crowded place after the Pune railway station). After that I headed back to the company where I had left my bag and from there I went home.

At the end of three days I realized that I had ended spending more than any of the previous weekends that I have spent in Pune. I had never gone for 2 movies on a single weekend (Abhimanyu's current maximum for 1 weekend is 5 movies.. And he is trying to make a new record by going for 6). I had a blast and hope that such weekends come more often.

Over and out..

"Bheja Fry" A must watch flick

"Bheja Fry"... Well for those of you who don't know what it is its a hindi movie directed by a first timer Sagar Ballary (Yep even i haven't heard his name before) and has stars like Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Phatak, Rajat Kapoor and Milind Soman. Tom Alter also has a guest appearance in the movie (Saw him act after a looong time).

If you'll didn't know this Ranvir and Vinay are Channel [v] VJ's. I should say that I haven't seen them much on TV but that may be because I don't get channel [v] on my TV :-(. But thats a different story. If you'll dont know Milind Soman he is the Captain Vyom guy. Captain Vyom the first Indian intergalactic super hero, Kicking ass across the milky way. Actually i don't remember if he was the first or Shaktiman. Ummm, i think i am drifting away from the main topic of this post. My apologies for that.

Well getting back to "Bheja Fry". The movie is based around the life of Rajat (who is a music company executive) and his relationship wit his wife (Sarika), his hot girlfriend (Bhairavi Goswami) and his friend (Milind Soman) and how it all changes when he invites Vinay for his weekly Bring-your-idiot dinner party.

The most interesting part about the movie is that it just has 5 or 6 actors and most of it takes place in one house and still it has turned out be such a great film. The other great thing about the movie is that there are no songs in the movie. And if you don't like the movie do not worry its just 1 and 1/2 hour long so you wont suffer for long.

Normally I hate watching hindi movies but there are some hindi movies which you absolutely have to watch and I should say that "Bheja Fry" is one of those. The movie has inspired me to write the first post on my blog and i thank the director and Vinay Phatak for that. Overall its a great movie if you want to enjoy yourself and relax over the weekend. So do make it a point to watch it.


Over and out.......