#10, art - appreciating the darkness

For a while, I was wondering which subject to learn shadows and light directions from? Because, you take a real person picture and start sketching, it’s not perfect. Unless you’re talking about a very professional photographer, the quality of the picture is going to be substandard. You can never adjudge the direction of the light from the picture. This in turn leads to error in a sketch, or at least for a beginner artist. The face might have light falling from right and the rest of the body having light from the left.

But, you take the photo shoots. They definitely take care of the lighting issues. Either they have unidirectional lighting which you can deduce from the shadows, or they block out all the shadows. Either way, this kind of picture leads to a better sketch, or so I’d like to think. This one was straight off from a photo shoot, and took me to my pencils immediately. Roughly took me all night and believe me, every little detail came perfectly within the first or second go.

#9, Irene, how I’d like to have you here

Well, there’s last week laundry to be done. My lunch and breakfast today has been Um.. not much. So with all this, it’s already 4 in the evening. All my work for the last two days has been operated out of my comfy cosy bed.

Let’s look at how the week went by.

Anna goes without Anna: My stomach keeps grumbling if I leave it to rest for at least 10 minutes. And Anna has been on and on with his fast for 11 days. At least the Parliament and the decision makers had the mercy to do something at this point. I’d really like to give credit to Anna. Not any one shouting against corruption can bring about such a nationwide movement.

My guess, Indians are really comfortable with Anna’s credibility and his ability to lead the nation against corruption.

At this point, Anna terms the progress as only half success. I pray

the neta’s spirit continues and fulfils the entire agenda. For the last 11 days, all the channels covered, nothing but, Anna’s fast. Would really hate to see a third episode of this kind. And did I mention, for some days on my drive and back from office, could spot lots of attention grabbing banners along the NH7 highway (Look for the one on the top of the building)

Sushma goes Swish,Swoosh against MMS:For the entire time, I was half expecting someone from the other side jump and grab her throat. For one, the points raised her were entirely valid. Liked the one were she exclaimed, “”The honourable PM speaks less, and even when he does, even his party members don’t listen!” Did I just notice a smile leaking at the corner of MMS’ lips?

Parking lot issues start again at office: Jumping from national issues to mine. Just when I thought, I was free from all the parking issues; it hit me in my behind. God, I just can’t spend time just standing outside the parking lot waiting for some space to clear up. To think, out of the meagre time I spend at the office, at least half goes away waiting for the parking. (Notice the huge line of cars behind the one you visibly see)

Only this much? Yes, as for me, this isn’t one of a momentful week…

#8 The hard earned weekend

To be honest, yes, I worked all through the week to get this lovely two day weekend. Yet, these two days suck. They are too good to last longer. It was like minutes before I walked out of my lonely cubicle, thinking TGIF and now, half the weekend’s gone. Before you know the Sunday would be gone too, and I’d be back to the lonely cubicle of happiness killers. Exactly the way, the dementors suck out all the happiness from Potter. Well, nothing’s going to change the inevitable.

#7, Rewind button, Dingy ride and my beloved friends

As someone rightly longed for, Life would be great if there were a rewind button.

All good things come to an end faster and so did this short vacation for me. Anyways, this whole week turned me a little lazier than ever. With just hours left for the travel back to my second home, frenzied packing is yet to ensue. What’s next to me?

Farewell to family. Well, here family doesn’t mean father, mother and sibling. It means the extended family as well. The power crazed extended family. It’s hard to ignore them, else things can get pretty messed up family wise.

The dingy bus ride back home. As Always, I fail to correctly calculate the Wait List movement of our beloved railways. Charts done and I have no other go than to travel in the dingy bus. Six hours! Let god be with me.

The moronic drone of a work that awaits me. God, guess I need you for more than just that six hours of travel!

Although there are many good things that I can look out for apart from all these:

I expressed my interest to volunteer for Gul4Change [a.k.a G4C is a sub program of The Col. Shamsher Singh Foundation.] Looking forward to a good time working for a social cause with the organization.

My friends, like the new Airtel Promo sings, “Har ek friend zaroori hota hai!” They do make the moronic work fun with their trusted antics.

And a lot more. Till the next post, do follow me on twitter for, well, some non-sensical updates from me

#6, What’s in a name?

Yes, I’m talking about the new Poschim Bongo!

For the unaware, West Bengal has been renamed to Poschim Bongo. The name on first count seems weird at least for a person who’s not familiar with the language of the state. Secondly, how does the name of a state, in any possible way, aid to the development of the state?

Consider the downside of renaming a state. How many government records need to be renamed? How many other records, railways, transport and anything that remotely use the name need to be renamed? Hundreds of hoardings, banners, advertisements need to be updated. All of this headache to just keep up the spirit of the language in words?

Or maybe I’m just reluctant with a positive/welcome change?

Same goes with Bengaluru A.K.A Bangalore, Puducherry A.K.A Pondicherry and an even longer exhaustive list.

Check out the opinions/tweets of the hundreds across the nation.

#5, now I have doubts!

Wonderful evening it was, to watch the perfect play. As it always goes, I started for the event at the 11^th hour and with all the traffic, idiotic drivers, and the signals, I somehow managed to reach the venue on time. After quickly exchanging my e-ticket printout with the actual ticket, I walked into the auditorium and took my seat. The seating was made in three categories based on three different pricings, I conveniently had bought the middle category and that was the one that was sparsely filled. Both the least expensive and the most expensive ones were packed.

As I took my seat, a gentle tap on my shoulder. The older gentleman in the aisle behind me remarked, “The ladies here are really appreciating your height!” and smiled. This was followed by a series of giggles by the ladies themselves. Just to be polite, I slouched a little.

After a series of introductory speeches by the organizers and some glorified thanks to the sponsors, the lights dimmed for the play to start.

Father Joseph, played by the famous PC Ramakrishna, walked in the eerie focus light, slowly and took the centre stage. The actor, perfectly chosen for the character gave a very captivating speech, on Doubt! Thus he set in motion the doubt, about which the play was. Once he left the stage, the audience left longing for his next scene.

As the play built up, the various characters were beautifully depicted. The school principal who is very arrogant, doubtful and always establishing her superiority over her sub-ordinates. The very gullible Sister James, who at first is very kind teacher and a History enthusiast; Finally turning into a doubtful person who takes a simple thing with suspicion and at one point even realising how much she hates her new self.

The play is about doubt, and how it is equally powerful to being sure. How a simple act of kindness gets misinterpreted by sinister eyes. Finally, penalising an innocent person who has done no harm.

The main antagonist, after prosecuting the innocent, breaks down saying she has Doubts!

The play was originally awarded Pulitzer Prize and has been reproduced in a commendable way for the Indian scenario.

Kudos to the director, cast and the crew. Thanks for the wonderful play!

#4, Five gadgets I’ve my “I” on:

Well, after years and years of thought, I hastily brought a laptop couple of days back. The one system at the office can’t always be used for all my technology needs. Every software installation needs an approval. How appalling! And I can never answer why I try to learn android when I’m working on a web-development project. Or why I am keen on open source software when my entire project is a proprietary one!

So after the purchase, now goes the list of accessories I missed to buy along. Some are very trivial in general, but very needed and some are indeed my long cherished gadgets.

· Mouse: Yes, a mouse. May be a wireless one. This damn touch pad is so irritable and it keeps misinterpreting what I want. Almost got killed playing counter strike!

· Keyboard: Again, yes. The laptop’s keypad is so delicate. Very scared to even touch it with a little extra pressure. Last time, I very much sent the ‘R’3 centimetres inside

· Wacom Tablet: Now we’re talking. Long-time desire to start some serious CG work. Can’t wait to do some good art on the new Wacom

· External HD: I guess a good 1TB HDD should suffice! Earlier, I dumped all my collections into DVDs, and now everyone knows they are eating dust. Those cheap DVDs get struck every 5 minutes when trying to play. At least this time, I want to make sure my hard work (all the midnight downloads) is not thrown away.

· And finally, a very good Data Card for some mind-blowing internet: Just don’t want to spend any more time looking at those walls. Time to get back to college days, were every waking minute my laptop was engaged in downloads.

Any more interesting add-ons I’ve missed?

#3, Coconut dress-up, Doubt and Anna Ji

As like any holiday, the day broke reluctantly by 9 AM. Well, people broke it otherwise left on its own it would have broken well 3 hours later.

The thing with an Indian household is, you never know which day is auspicious. Turned out today is very auspicious; a good day to dress up a coconut and take pictures of it. House swarmed with loads of relatives who almost kicked me out of bed. For God’s sake, today is a holiday, I cried and all my cries were drowned in loud bells ringing across the house.

Now that I’m up, and filled with two cups of coffee, I thought, ok why not write another blogpost!

Few weeks back, missed a wonderful opportunity to attend three good plays on three great holidays. Luckily, today there’s one (Doubt) happening right nearby, so didn’t waste any time in booking the ticket. Check the play out. (Pssst, really skeptical about the play but just going for the cute girl on the promo adJ)

As the whole country, and few abroad are busy tweeting about Anna ji and his movement, I feel compelled to write something about it.

· Anna Hazare, the Septuagenarian bachelor, has successfully arrested the attention of the entire sub-continent.

· I stand with him on the protests, although how would it be if everyone tries to arm-twist the government in similar way?

· Always prided to be part of world’s largest democracy, but is a 15 day long fast a price to pay for the democracy’s citizen voice to be heard by the government?

· And someone, please teach governance to the government. If it keeps working with paranoia, any tom dick and harry could threaten the government. But as it feels, with every new day, current government’s lifetime keeps getting shorter!

To end, here’s a very nice comic thought on the current scenario:

“What do we learn from Anna Hazare and A. Raja? Corruption and Honesty lead to the same place. But honesty takes you there quicker. :)”

Do follow me on twitter (@Jyothikarthik)

#2,With little more efforts, here's next post

Ah, it’s good to be back home!

Travel is not as tiresome/boring as it used to be. With more freedom (and of course Money), you can afford to few more choices. Such a short, sweet trip! Enjoyed every last minute, well, except for the part where there was an accident on the highway on the way back. (Hope there was no lasting damage to the affected)

Last week, there was this hilarious (yet thought-provoking) Xkcd. Although, half my recipients couldn’t understand what it meant. Anyway, check out this Password Generator, inspired by Xkcd’s particular comic strip. In summary, our current complex passwords involving multiple cases and symbols are prone to be broken by the machine sooner yet hard for us to keep in mind! But, a simple four letter random phrase like umm... “Correct horse battery staple” might be easier to remember/recollect, yet a real difficulty for the machine to break!

And finally, new additions to Oxford English Dictionary! The words newly added are: Retweet, Sexting, Cyberbullying. Good to note, all have their strong roots in www, and children of quite very recent past.

Do follow me on twitter (@jyothikarthik) , for my insanely mundane mutters J

#1, it all starts with just ONE!

Yes, Happy Birthday to my blog. With each new blog, my writing gets better (or worse)

“The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.” – St. Augustine

Well, that means I keep skimming through all the pages. There’s travel for fun, travel for work and then there’s my kind of travel: Gun in the head travel. Well, that was metaphorical with the gun missing. But yeah, the scenario holds good. If not for the arm twisting, I’d never make this trip on a beautiful god-given holiday.

Speaking of travel, Anna Hazare ji is going places and for a while now, he’s gonna stay put in Tihar. Very valid signs, the big brother has gone paranoid. Otherwise why would someone keep a corruption crusader behind bars and that too alongside two corrupt!? Paranoid, or more paranoid that LokPal given teeth would bite back their own behinds. With good support, Anna ji would grow stronger in time.

Travel bag – Check!

Clothes – Check!

Magazines – Check!

Tickets – D’oh?

Will be back for #2, keep an eye out for my tweets.