Hmm

Beauty Queen as running "mate"

Funny the way this guy is desperately trying to pretend like he is playing the guitar. He ain't gonna win any awards for his acting here.

Walkin' away..

Choices..

Life is about choices. Not all of these choices are purely rational. We make some of them based on our emotional reactions.

We make choices every minute on what to eat, when to leave home, whether to watch that program on TV, whether to microwave stuff or eat out instead, or how long to delay that much needed laundry cycle, ....

That brings us to the interesting point. What place does emotion play? And should it be accorded so much importance in the scheme of things? And how does one deal with heart-versus-mind stuff, if you know what I mean?

Objectivists have an interesting viewpoint. In case you are not familiar with that term, it is the philosophy that is detailed in the books by Ayn Rand like the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged. Although I do not quite agree with some of their assertions, for example the claims about religion, I stumbled upon this article on it, and I found some of the writings about the role of emotions to be interesting reading, so I include some of that here:

"Objectivism holds that emotions are lightning-quick summaries of past thought. This makes them extremely valuable in day-to-day use, allowing an individual to make decisions based "on experience" or "gut instinct" without having to trace logical connections back to first principles every time. Emotions are also useful in life-and-death situations, where one must act quickly to get out of the way of a speeding car, or say no to a suspicious-feeling but otherwise friendly person offering a ride late at night.

Contrary to the popular notion that emotions are some detached calling from a higher power, some animal instinct, or some uncontrollable burden, Objectivism rejects the heart-vs-mind dichotomy and holds that emotional responses are useful derivatives of reason. This has enormous significance for those who cannot reconcile their emotional responses with reason; when the two are in conflict, one is obligated to oneself to think, to identify the cause of the conflict, and to reconcile the two."

That is an interesting viewpoint. I guess the book "Blink" also has some arguments along these lines.

But is it one of those things that look great in a book but not very intuitive in practice?

Something to think about.

Misc..

Looks like somebody in the high court needed a vacation...
Court to Ambanis: Let your mother intervene

Am I missing some key concept here?
New York Times equals Mukesh Ambani to Gandhi

Hmm..
Microsoft's new ad weapon: Seinfeld

City

I went to the city to look around over the weekend. I happened to be by the downtown area in the evening. Portland as a city in general has a nice feel to it.

I caught a bit of the independence day celebrations there. It had been a while since I went to an event like this so it was like going back in time a bit. However it wasn't a great feeling being alone.

Sometimes, though spending some time traveling alone can be good. I looked around at the crowd - there was a huge crowd, but then I thought - well this is probably 80-90% of the Indian population in the city, so maybe it was not that huge a crowd when considering that. There were a lot of Indian food stalls (with huge queues). I ended up having masala dosa at the stall with the shortest line - unfortunately that happened to be a restaurant that is just half a mile away from where I stay - but anyway looking at the queues, it seemed like that was the only way I would get any food.

I got a glimpse of some of the performances. There was a mix of classical and film songs and dances. Some of them were good. There were a few good Carnatic songs, and a few folk songs as well. Usually I am not too much of a folksy/classical music kind of person, but the selections were good.

There was representation from different states. And it occured to me that this is possibly one of the very few places and times that one gets to see this India - other than in the National Integration programs on TV, or the Mile Sur song on DD.

Anyway speaking of songs, they were playing some songs from the 90's and here is one of them, a song I like:

Some songs from years gone by...

Pics

MIT pics

Another review..

DCH:

It has some good character sketches, portraying the lives of three friends. It is a story of three friends (Aamir, Saif and Akshay) as they go through various ups and downs in their lives.

Aamir and Saif's characters are well-written. I like Preity and Sonali Kulkarni's characters. Preity looks pretty as always.

I guess the best thing about this movie is that parts of it hit you as being realistic. Also it does not sugar coat things. Although at times I felt the director could have cut down on the scenes between the three friends (seemed a bit excessive and unnecessarily sentimental to me).

The music is great (Jaane Kyon and Koi kahe have been my favorites for a long time. Tanhai is a rather dark song, but another great one).

Its funny too. There are some great lines - like the ultimate line from Aamir...... "Aaj Pooja, to kal koi Dooja". That was definitely the most hilarious line in the movie.

I suppose each one us can find a bit of ourselves in some of these characters - for example, the lonely and flighty nature of Aamir's character, or the foolish idealism and romanticism of Saif's character. Iam sure each of us have gone through phases in life where we have behaved like these two characters.

I know its a bit late for a review, but I would give it: 7.5/10.