plants@home anyone?

I was riding the usual 10.30 AM BMTC Volvo to work watching a TED video about living in a biosphere and started thinking that it's high time I started nurturing something environment friendly.

Then I remembered an older TED video that I had found fascinating. This one (4.04 minutes long)was about indoor plants and came with the tagline

With only three varieties of plants, we can “grow our own fresh air” indoors, to keep us healthy.

Now that's what I need to get ahold of this weekend. Anyone in Bangalore know a nursery (preferably near Koramangala) where I can get these?

death knell of the FDFS?

Almost everyone I know has at one time or the other (but primarily during college) bunked office/school/college with friends to watch that great (er, well marketed) movie on the "First Day First Show".

Even though I am not that big a fan of watching movies in the theatres, I myself have bunked college during my engineering days in order to watch quite a few movies including Matrix and DCH at the old Swagat theatre in Jayanagar. An essential part of the charm of the FDFS was to 'volunteer' a lucky few who, fortified with magic potion beforehand, would stand in the long serpentine queues in order to book the tickets 2 days in advance.

Last week there was a new phenomenon in the Bangalore movie calendar with Ghajini which released on 25th of December, that in itself is somewhat nonconformist to the Friday release tradition, and was screened in multiplexes across Bangalore in what was termed as a "Paid Premiere" show on the 24th of December. With each multiplex screening Ghajini on multiple if not all screens it seemed successful enough a ploy(?) to be used by other big banner releases in the future.

So, does that sound the first toll in the death knell of the idea of the FDFS?

packing for the trip

packing for a trip to anywhere- be it a long weekend at Gokarna, a longer trip to my hometown, or even for an international trip- is such a pain in the ass, especially if you are a obsesive compulsive packer like me.

 

i normally end up overpacking big-time every time, with quite a few backups, the usual just-in-case-it-rains-and-(all)-my-jeans-get-wet-at-the-same-time phobia, and some esoteric items that i might need when the sky falls on our heads.

i think i have inherited this trait from my mom, though without the normalizing ability to pack an elephant very neatly into an overnight bag.

to complicate matters i know that i am an obsessive packer, and so after lining up everything i go over a few iterations to find the balance between removing stuff so as to not appear too weird and adding stuff to satiate my compulsion... 

and then usually there is the nagging feeling that have left something out/behind... 

Smoking in public banned in India

The ban on smoking in public is to be implemented all over India starting tomorrow. Personally i welcome this move, as i hope it will help me quit, <fingers-crossed>.

However, on the numerous occasion this topic has come up for discussion: usually at the smoking corners where smokers have lately been starting off the conversation with a request for a light followed by a countdown statement 'XX days to go', there normally is one prevalent train of thought expressed by most people. 

"How will they catch me smoking on the premises of my company company <MNC/XYZ>?"

When we will have the mental shift to accept a law as it is instead of immediately trying to calculate the possibilities of breaking the law without getting caught and also factoring in the ability to get off the hook cheap (at most 50% of legally mandated fine) by bribing the said officer of law when actually caught? To them i always reply

"If I were not a smoker I would call the authorities and complain about you!"

To end, one of the very rare intelligent words from our Union health minister Ramadoss 

"This is a social movement. First there should be an increased awareness of the new law... This will improve voluntary compliance."

re-blog: new library in whitefield

my friend Guru recently blogged about a new library in whitefield which is very exciting news for a bibliophile like me.

i tried calling them and asking for some more info (as I am lazy enought to expect all info in the world to be available via interwebs/phones) but couldn't get through... so even though i have not been there myself, am blogging it so that the info is out there already :)

now what?

after leching at the apple iphone for the last six months, lusting after the new 3G and cheering the announcement that it will be release in india by both vodafone - it took some time for the prices that they are being retailed at to sink in and then on was a continuous stream of expletives ...

so, now that i am definitely not buying an i-frikking-expensive-phone, now what?
- a new high end phone (i dread to think of the comparison hunt between the almost-same nokias, samsungs and sony ericssons)
- or a low end kaam-chalau phone and an EeePC 1000H
suggestions people?

Bengaluru Bleeding

I just signed the petition on bengaluru bleeding.com .
You should sign up too if you think that citing rising crime and the police's inability to handle it should not and cannot be the basis of imposing abritrary bans- be it time of closure or type of entertainment allowed!

Live bands are what the next generation of artistes/rock bands will be from. Help them to be able to live their passion of music so that you may not have to depend forever on the intermittent appearance of international bands once or twice a year to get your music fix.