Industrial Tour :: [Aug 11-19]

Beautiful places were seen...


No industries were visited...


People were transformed...


Couples bonded...


Lecturers became our friends...


There was dancing...


And everybody had a wonderful time!

Eye On The TV

Mumbai has gone through a lot hasn't it? First bomb blasts, then rains, and now more bomb blasts. Was watching Times Now the other day and all they seemed to be bothered about was making sure we knew that the news coverage was exclusive. Almost every sentence began with "For the first time, Times Now has...". Oh and not to mention the police bashing - what do they expect, surveillance like in the UK?

I've been busy with events at college lately. First there was the National Conference on Ferroics on 30 June and 1 July, for which I did the front and back cover of the proceedings and the banner for the event (apart from the organising). Then there was a VLSI Workshop few days ago for which I made a banner. OK, so you were expecting to see all that stuff put up here right? You see the problem is that they were made under a million constraints, and hence they look nothing like my style at all. They're not great either, so not worth putting up here.

Yesterday I attended the Film Festival on Environment and Development at Indira Priyadarshini Auditorium, Public Gardens. Two short films (documentaries) made by a friend of mine were screened there - National Parks and Extinguishing Flame. Oh and there was this guy who would give his 'comments' after each documentary - he was so damn funny! Unintentionally funny, that is. I enjoyed him more than the documentaries (sorry Aditya!).

Later in the evening I went to Harahs (a disco/restaurant in Somajiguda I never knew existed). There were two guys who were doing caricatures of people there, so I got one done of me. He took about 3 minutes to draw this, and I think it came out pretty well! He asked me what my hobby was, that's how the camera ended up in the drawing.




Few days ago, I was generally browsing through videos on YouTube and I came across these. They're pretty good -

[ A Perfect Circle - The Noose ] - One of my favourite APC songs. Never expected that a live version would sound this good!

[ Canon - funtwo and Jerry C. ] - This guy has fantastic guitar playing skills! And I can't even play the first line of Happy Birthday to You (reading this Anil?).

[ Coca Cola Human ] - A cool Coca Cola advertisement.

[ Real Life Simpsons Intro ] - The title says it all.

[ Airtel - Express Yourself ] - The Airtel ad with music composed by A. R. Rehman.

[ Airtel - Express Yourself (New) ] - The new Airtel ad. Love the way this is filmed!

[ Mortal Kombat Theme - Anthony Padilla and Ian Hecox ] - This you'll find either silly or funny. Or both.

The Future Is Flux

Been ages since I did a drawing, so I wanted to do one. Took out the good 'ol exam pad (I use that to keep the paper on - habit I caught from Karthik) and the pencils, decided to draw something out of Æon Flux since I had that on my desktop.

I first tried drawing this pic, but I couldn't draw it at all! I'm used to drawing comic stuff where there are sharp cuts and definite outlines for everything - the nose, mouth etc., so was tough drawing a person where all the facial features are defined only by shading. As you can see, it was way too crappy for me to continue working on it. Charlize wouldn't be too happy if she saw it either.


So I chose this pic instead - much simpler. Also closer to the comic style I'm comfortable with. As you can see, this was coming along nicely...



I finished this on 20th morning at 1am (thanks to the people who kept me company on messenger while I was drawing).



I drew the logo and Charlize on two different papers. I scanned both, resized them to the size I wanted and pasted them on that background I made. Was supposed to draw the text also, but I was too lazy so I just typed it in some font. I think the end result is pretty cool. Comments welcome.

POTW - Waiting For Alms

Yours truly has won this week's photo contest at Bytephoto. Very few people voted this week, so not sure what to think. I guess I should start posting my photos elsewhere also, just to see how well they do there.

http://www.bytephoto.com/forums/t4489.html

Oh and it wasn't a close competition as I expected.

News and Movies

The Birthday

Secunderabad is 200 years old! Nice to see the city lit up again - last time I saw so many lights all over the place was during Diwali. If only I wasn't so busy with some work at college (you'd think I'd be free from college-related work during holidays) I would have attended a lot of the events and taken lots of photos. In fact, there was a pretty impressive lineup of events - you can see the entire schedule on the Official Hyderabad website. Unfortunately I'm free now, but all the celebrations ended yesterday.

Surprisingly, I couldn't find any photos of the celebrations. Only found this one page, but all it has are images of scary dancers.

The Protest

I attended the Anti-Reservation Protest on June 4 at Indira Park - first protest I was ever part of. The turnout was much lesser than expected and nothing sensational happened, so obviously the media disappeared after a few minutes. Sad that Hyderabadies are so lazy to voice their opinion. Sitting at home cribbing won't solve anything you know. Not that the protest solved anything, it can't because the issue is incredibly complicated. But one thing is for sure - reservation for the Other Backward Castes (OBCs) in the premier government educational institutions like the IITs, IIMs and other institutions of higher learning is not the solution.

To me, a solution can be formulated only once the government reforms itself and India's corrupt caste-based village structure is done away with. When (and if) that'll ever happen? Nobody knows. Especially since our ministers are a bunch of clueless people. Speaking about clueless people, if you missed the interview with Arjun Singh (Minister for Human Resource Development) on CNN-IBN, read it here.

Related article: Parth Dattatreya asks, "Reservations Immortalized?"

The Rest

Watched Æon Flux (7/10) - Charlize Theron looks gorgeous, loved the set design. Also watched Inside Man (8/10) - a little slow moving for my taste, expected a better ending. Was pleasantly surprised to hear the Chaiyya Chaiyya song from Dil Se playing during the opening credits of the movie!

Can't wait to watch Ghoom on MTV this Saturday. It's a 45 minute spoof of the movie Dhoom, produced under the banner of MTV Fully Faltoo Films. It ought to be fun!

New photo over at my gallery. My 'Waiting for Alms' shot made it to the weekly photo contest finals. Lots of great shots this week, so it should be a close competition.

Which Way?

The Travellers

Varun "Sore to the eyes" Abhiram, Rakesh "Rakeesh" Kumar, Rakesh "I'm a telugu movie hero" Kumar

The Journey

The journey started like any other. The bus came late and started even later. Watched a brainless telugu movie called Varsham in the evening (they had worse movies playing afterwards)... and ironically it started raining cats and dogs at night! So heavily it was almost like something out of a horror movie. I hardly got any sleep at all - the bus kept stopping along the way because there was this little kid in the bus who had a little too much Fanta to drink and he had to 'go' every two hours. And well, I can't really sleep on an inclined seat anyway.

[ Pic 1 ] :: [ Pic 2 ] :: [ Pic 3 ]

Last time our tour guide had been to the places we were visiting was 6 years ago (he said that when he was introducing himself), so he had as much knowledge about the places as we did. The bus driver was someone who couldn't drive faster than 30km/hr and had the habit of applying the brakes after crossing the speed breaker (each time there was a red suitcase sliding from one end of the bus to the other). Oh and he was also as familiar with the places as the tour guide, so we got lost almost everywhere. As a result we spent more than half the trip in the bus. But it was a lot of fun thanks to the Sri Chaitanya lecturers who kept mocking the tour guide. So much so that the poor guy reached his breaking point towards the end of the trip. Then there was a heated exchange which obviously ended with the guide shutting his mouth. Needless to say, we had an incredibly entertaining time in the bus.

The Places

I've already written quite a lot, so I'll keep this short. You can thank me later.

[ Pic 4 ] :: [ Pic 5 ] :: [ Pic 6 ]

Ooty is definitely one of those must-see places! If you haven't been there already, go there the first chance you get. Nothing much to see in Bangalore except traffic jams, the Vishveshwara Museum and more traffic jams. Hardly any tourist spots in Mysore either (unlike Ooty, which is filled to the brim with them), but the Mysore Palace is another of those must-see places. I haven't seen such intricate architecture in my life! The paintings on the walls are so amazing they make Karthik look like someone learning to hold a pencil. Each room is a piece of art in itself. No wonder they don't allow cameras inside. Photos just won't do it justice. Like Morpheus says, "You have to see it for yourself".


Few (very few, I know) photos from the trip above. The good ones you will find uploaded to my photo gallery, one every week.

Broken

Made this wallpaper on the day I left for the trip. And I hadn't even packed yet.



Comments welcome. Trip update coming up shortly. I need to sleep now.