Tuesday, December 25, 2007
Monday, December 17, 2007
Continuing education ...
By the slimmest of chances, a colleague and I happened to meet a friend of his at the IISc Canteen today, ( I work inside the IISc campus) who was planning to apply for a short course on "Unix Internals" at the Computer Science department,IISc. On looking at the prospectus, my colleague and I -who are in the process of applying to B schools - were pleasantly surprised. Surprised that after having been in the campus for all these days , we had nt found out about this opportunity to learn right under our noses... and pleasantly so because this was a piece of serendipitous luck! Building a resume is hard enough working in software where there is hardly any recognition for hard work ... thats when chances like these are important to show prospective employers or colleges that you are willing to go to some trouble to learn new things.
And so we are now on the way to enroll for one or more of these courses ... from among "Intellectual properties " , "Software management" , "Unix internals" and several other technical and managerial courses. Further updates on successful registration!
And so we are now on the way to enroll for one or more of these courses ... from among "Intellectual properties " , "Software management" , "Unix internals" and several other technical and managerial courses. Further updates on successful registration!
Friday, December 14, 2007
Stranger than fiction... better than I imagined
An increasingly hopeless case of not being able to write in this blog has prompted me to take to the keyboard for reasons other than chatting and "working". I am sufficiently inspired at this moment to talk about this movie I just watched ...its called " Stranger than fiction". I would put it in the same league as movies such as "The final cut" and "The Truman Show". The reason being all of them deal with a variant of the "third person omniscient" kind of narrative . The final cut is about how life would be if every living moment was recorded in its entirety in the form of video and audio. "The Truman Show" is relatively more popular ... its about how a tv series uses a baby's life as the subject and makes him a guinea pig of sorts.
Now whats so special about "Stranger than fiction" (STF)? Its unpredictability is one thing for sure. This is one movie which has been lying in my hard drive for ages and not watched. Today when I was searching for a movie to watch, something about the title made me pick it... probably because all the other movies kind of promised what they had to offer. Why is this movie unpredictable? In the first half an hour or so , it seems like some kind of a weird comedy movie , this thought being reinforced by the fact that the lead actor Will Ferrell has acted in some comedies earlier. Once I got through the introduction which was vaguely similar to the introduction of the main protoganist in "American Psycho", it got interesting in that as the main character Harold goes about wondering whether his life is a comedy or a tragedy, I too was wondering what the hell could this movie really be about?
Simply put this is a feel good movie in the end... because it could have easily been be a real dampener if it ended differently. You know how some movies insist on killing the hero or the nicest person in the movie.... eg. 7G Rainbow Colony, Paruthiveeran and innumerable others. Its a conspiracy I tell you, to make money out of making people cry or feel sad. I do agree some particularly powerful performances in tragedies make them unforgettable, but some in some corner of your heart you know that you want that character to live, love and be loved. Just like for yourself , you hope the best for the character you love ... not for him to be hit by a bus, or for her to be gangraped and murdered gruesomely. You must have been able to infer from this little digression that the end must in fact be a happy one, it is and it kind of managed to get a sigh of relief from me because frankly I am tired of the KLPD/Kelas I am having in life and would rather not see more in a movie!
The key points I enjoyed in this film are :
1) The idea that a book's character is actually living life as his story is being written ... presented in a reasonably convincing manner, with an excellent performance by the lead actor. The attention to detail makes it believable.
2) It made me reflect on the many missed opportunities I have had to make friends , do important things because I could not step out of the "comfort zone". It also made me realise that life is again only what you make of it... no matter how much you gain with material comforts, money and what not, if you are not really happy, its all one big waste.
3) Interesting information about how a writer works, how to deal with writer's block and the fact that people take years together to write a book! The fact that I dont in more than one or two stretches really makes me realise the effort needed to actually write a book!
4) Another love story embedded in that main storyline... which really strikes a chord with the sincerity and simplicity of approach. And also that neither of them are particularly "good looking" , but are nevertheless attractive.
5) The mechanical life led by Auditors in the movie really resembles to a large extent that led by software professionals in India. Yeah , you might say I have a lot of fun , I check mail, I chat ... I do that and this...but there is one thing which you cannot remove from all of these activities, the PC. Yes, you are married to your computer , its a window and all you do is stare at it for the better part of the day. No wonder I dont know that many girls !
6) And the last but not the least ... it reminded me of a poem I had written in college. It was about how I was a character in a book who was confused and wandering in search for the answer to the question of life. Watching this movie just made me feel like it was something of an answer to that question and amazed me that I could have had a similar thought as the guy who wrote this story.
Worth the time and thought provoking!
Now whats so special about "Stranger than fiction" (STF)? Its unpredictability is one thing for sure. This is one movie which has been lying in my hard drive for ages and not watched. Today when I was searching for a movie to watch, something about the title made me pick it... probably because all the other movies kind of promised what they had to offer. Why is this movie unpredictable? In the first half an hour or so , it seems like some kind of a weird comedy movie , this thought being reinforced by the fact that the lead actor Will Ferrell has acted in some comedies earlier. Once I got through the introduction which was vaguely similar to the introduction of the main protoganist in "American Psycho", it got interesting in that as the main character Harold goes about wondering whether his life is a comedy or a tragedy, I too was wondering what the hell could this movie really be about?
Simply put this is a feel good movie in the end... because it could have easily been be a real dampener if it ended differently. You know how some movies insist on killing the hero or the nicest person in the movie.... eg. 7G Rainbow Colony, Paruthiveeran and innumerable others. Its a conspiracy I tell you, to make money out of making people cry or feel sad. I do agree some particularly powerful performances in tragedies make them unforgettable, but some in some corner of your heart you know that you want that character to live, love and be loved. Just like for yourself , you hope the best for the character you love ... not for him to be hit by a bus, or for her to be gangraped and murdered gruesomely. You must have been able to infer from this little digression that the end must in fact be a happy one, it is and it kind of managed to get a sigh of relief from me because frankly I am tired of the KLPD/Kelas I am having in life and would rather not see more in a movie!
The key points I enjoyed in this film are :
1) The idea that a book's character is actually living life as his story is being written ... presented in a reasonably convincing manner, with an excellent performance by the lead actor. The attention to detail makes it believable.
2) It made me reflect on the many missed opportunities I have had to make friends , do important things because I could not step out of the "comfort zone". It also made me realise that life is again only what you make of it... no matter how much you gain with material comforts, money and what not, if you are not really happy, its all one big waste.
3) Interesting information about how a writer works, how to deal with writer's block and the fact that people take years together to write a book! The fact that I dont in more than one or two stretches really makes me realise the effort needed to actually write a book!
4) Another love story embedded in that main storyline... which really strikes a chord with the sincerity and simplicity of approach. And also that neither of them are particularly "good looking" , but are nevertheless attractive.
5) The mechanical life led by Auditors in the movie really resembles to a large extent that led by software professionals in India. Yeah , you might say I have a lot of fun , I check mail, I chat ... I do that and this...but there is one thing which you cannot remove from all of these activities, the PC. Yes, you are married to your computer , its a window and all you do is stare at it for the better part of the day. No wonder I dont know that many girls !
6) And the last but not the least ... it reminded me of a poem I had written in college. It was about how I was a character in a book who was confused and wandering in search for the answer to the question of life. Watching this movie just made me feel like it was something of an answer to that question and amazed me that I could have had a similar thought as the guy who wrote this story.
Worth the time and thought provoking!
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