Naan Kadavul - movie in parts

Bala- inexplicable phenomenon, proves that again in naan kadavul, the dichotomic worlds of 2 humans, one who thinks he is everything and the other, who thinks she is nothing is depicted by him in the reels. Bala's world is always different, he sees the people who are unnoticed by majority of us, in Sethu, he depicted the world of mentally ill, in Nanda, a son who loves his mother very much that he kills his father, and in Pithamagan, a man who has not had any social life and raw in all counts. Here he is, again shows us a world most of us do not know.

One is the world of aghori babas, who worship kala bhairava, lord shiva's third face. They believe that they are the gods, and they are the ones who can liberate a soul from the vicious cycle births and deaths. They have no atrtachments to anything in the world, they mediatate all the time and have their own world, which is not governed by any law.

Other is the world of physically deformed persons who have no choice but to become beggars, and are controlled by mafia who takes away the earnings and provide them just food. Bala shows that they have a life too and they keep themselves happy by pulling each others' legs and form a group of close friends. Their physical disability keep them away from doing any aactivity that a normal person does, but their minds are the same and they have aspirations too. But the world is so ruthless that a normal person gets lost in its myriad spaces and in fact very few can make it too the top, and these beggars have no choice but to live a life of misery.

But, one problem is the introduction of these two worlds that became very lengthy, that till the interval, the movie has not started yet, and people cannot digest the raw scenes, censors had cut a few scenes, possible that thoes scenes could be more raw. Then after the interval, the movie, starts, but it becomes something of the routine stuff that when you reach out to the God, God will extend help and take care of baddies and one thing new here is, the one who reaches out to God does not live a happy worldly life, but is given salvation and the baba continues his wolrdly, but non-materialistic life.

Lot of lose ends, like the father, recognising his son after 14 years, but still, the films depicts that the world is a nice place to live only for the haves and not for have-nots, world as such is one place, but there are a hell lot of real worlds within, isolated world of babas, mafia world, beggars' world. Brutally honest!

Searching for 'Search' in search engines!

The Search results for the term "search" in the three search engines resulted in these results.
Google returns "Live" as its first result, Live returns "Yahoo" and Yahoo returns itself.

Yahoo search for 'search' recommends Yahoo itself, so some tweaking required for the other two, eventhough this won't happen in a real world scenario, no body would go to a search engine and ask for which is a better site for a 'search' in internet.

Slumdog millionaire - oscar prediction

Slumdog Millionaire(Slumdog Crorepati in hindi, did they not get a hindi term for Slumdog or just want to cash in on the new 'slumdog' brand) was nominated for 4 Golden Globe awards and bagged as many. Now, the oscar nominations have come, and it is 10, a big number, so trying to predict how many of them will be converted. I am keen on A R Rehman bagging the awards, would be proud that an Indian finally got the elusive oscar, for an Indian subject, eventhough technically a British film.
Now, out of the nominations:
BEST PICTURE - Chances are high.
BEST DIRECTOR - Chances are high
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY - may not materialize
BEST FILM EDITING - Good, but not sure
BEST MUSIC SCORE - Critically acclaimed, should get this one,
BEST SONG - Sureshot with 2 of the 3 nominations and Wall-E is the other, it would get best animated movie award, but this will be A R Rehman's
BEST SOUND EDITING - TDK, Wall-E are there
BEST SOUND MIXING - TDK, Wall-E are there
BEST WRITING (ADAPTED SCREEPLAY) - sure again

Going by the views in the net, it is kinda sure that, best pic, best music(both), best director, best screenplay would be bagged, so 5/10 is done, for the remaining 5, if we take the 1/5 probability(nominations), then 5*1/5 = 1, so 6 is what the prediction.

Let us see if it gets 6 Oscars.....

Tata Crucible 2007 Bangalore Prelims Questions

Happened to attend the Tata Crucible business quiz in Bangalore this saturday.
Noted down the prelims questions, and they are here:

1. With which movie the Happy Meal programme in McDonalds started?
2. What is the world's most expensive spice by weight?
3. What name suggested by Dhiraj ben Ruparel in a contest held in 1962 for Rs.5 which is famous brand in India?
4. Danjaq LLC holds the copyright trademark for this famous character.
5. BUSINESS AS UNUSUAL, the journey of ____ represents a lady. Identify her(in the world of business)
6. Fashion Designer, named her famous design after her favorite brand of car, even predicted that the pubic hair would be great fashion accessory.
7. Who's final book, published in 1993, is titled 'The New Economics: For Industy, Goverement, Education'?
8. From, LEGO, what are Mindstorms?
9. What was the name originally registered by Apple for internet kiosks, but never used for that?
10. Crown Logo, for a beer brand, clue: top selling beer in Mexico.
11. We all know about Air Force 1, Marine 1. But what is the US presidential limo called as?
12. Which Indian hospitality group has collaborated with CNN to produce a TV series called 'The Eye of India in the world of Hospitality'?
13. Which organisation was the first to place an order with TELCO?
14. Fund raising for Amazon.com took place in the coffee shop of which store?
15. Visual: 3 runners(actually 1 in 3 positions) and the words: 'I am the bullet in the chamber'
3 legendary words follow in the other side(not shown), Identify the brand?
16. Airtel is launching something called WAYF? what is it?
17. Before and during WW-II, which company designed the attire for Nazi German Govt Off? Famous brand.
18. Which is the oldest continuousy produced brand name in recorded sound dating back to 1888?
19. Titan Eye wear range, name it?
20. Identify them. 2 dogs-visual. legendary name is business, Think of a mascot?
21. Which film production house has celebrated 60 years, started in 15 Aug 1947, has Goddess Saraswati in its logo?
22. live.com - search engine - who's?
23. "Flying Sun" logo, in the world of Indian Aviation?
24. Some question about Donald Trump's 'The Apprentice', the phrase 'You are fired' is used in it, What is the equivalent phrase in the Martha Stewart's verion of the serial 'The Apprentice:Martha Stewart'?
25. Video:Identify the advertiser. Some video on penguins, and finally the Tagline, "Fortunately, some species have it easy"


Answers:
1. Startrek
2. Saffron
3. Lijjat Papad
4. James Bond
5. Anita Roddick
6. Mary Quant
7. Edwards Deming
8. Computer Programmable Bricks
9. i-pod
10. Corona
11. Cadilac-1
12. Oberoi
13. Ind Rlys
14. Barnes & Noble
15. Nike
16. WAYFINDER
17. Hugo Boss
18. Columbia Records
19. Eye +
20. Nipper and Chipper
21. Rajshri
22. Microsoft
23. Jet Airways
24. 'You are fired'
25. Denim

Blog on India Current Affairs

Came across this blog http://indiancurrentaffairs.blogspot.com/

Nice digest on the India current afairs scene. Blogs such as these will help people spend time a bit usefully in the net. The contributors are doing a good job.

Blogging is really helping people to be their own editors and put content without any worries about the layout, form an so on. Its like free journalism.

Even I had blogged after a long time, without worrying about the frequency of the posts, or content for that matter. Its kinda cool, can blog only if I feel like, no commitments at all.

Some Vetti Study abt Orkut - Indian actors...

Orkut is getting popular day by day in India, so thought of finding which south Indian actor, mainly tamil (as I know a bit more abt them than bollywood actors or others) is popular in orkut, by searching for a community in that actor's name.

A simple guess would be Rajinikanth, after all his recent movie Sivaji rocked the box office and without doubt the most popular actor in Tamilnadu.

So, a community Super Star Rajini Kanth showed up with some 39800 members, then looked for Kamalhasan, the next most popular hero in Tamilnadu, and the result Dr.Kamal Haasan , showed some 35000 members.

Not satisfied with the numbers, I kept on searching for some other actors and surprisingly, the most popular actor in orkut is ......................

Surya This community has 45000 members and could be the topmost one (someone correct, if I am wrong)

[NOTE: There are many duplicate communities in the names of the actors, but the topmost in the results(in terms of numbers) is only taken into account]

Other actors fared:
★ Ilayathalapathy Vijay ★ - 26000
Madhavan - 23000
Ultimate Star ~ Ajith Kumar - 12800
Vikram (chiyan) - 8500


TRISHA - 30700
Jyothika - 21500
Shriya fan club - 8000
Simran - 4300 (do u guyz still remember her?)


ok, study done, but vetti time is still there, so thought of seeing some telugu actors, then malayalam, kannada, and bolly....

Megastar Chiranjeevi - 35.5k
Mahesh Babu Fans - 13.5k
Nagarjuna Fans - 10.7k

other actors, I'm not much aware of, some other tollywood fan can do a vetti study on this, the scope is always there..

Mohanlal - 38k
­ PRITHVIRAJ -7.7k
mamooty fans - 2.1k

even here, I'm not aware of newer heroes, someone can lend a hand in finding the popular hero in malayalam.

Dr.Rajkumar - 4.9k
Upendra - 2.4k

And as usual, someone...

Finally, moving to Bollywood, guessed that the competition would be between Shenan Shah (AB) and Badshah (SRK) and but, the results are always against my guess, am not a good guesser:

Hrithik Roshan - 128k
Aamir " The Ace " Khan - 94.5k
Shahrukh "The King" Khan / SRK - 87k
Kajol - 81.6k
!Abhishek Bachchan Fanz! - 77.7k
Salman 'The Adorable' Khan - 63.5k
Priyanka Chopra - 61.5k
Amitabh Bachchan - 50k
Ash - Aishwarya Rai - 29.1k
Akshay Kumar - Khiladi No 1 - 21.2k

Kareena has 25k fans as well as 21k haters, type kareena in orkut search communities and see for yourself.
Vetti time can be used to study more and more of these, can come up with other creative/imaginative themes....


Then, who is the most popular Indian in orkut, my guess was A.R.Rehman or Sachin Tendulkar.

A R Rahman fans 203,059 members
Sachin Tendulkar 222,513 members


So, I could find that Sachin is the most popular Indian in orkut. (could be someone else as well, and the numbers are as of 31 Jul 07 and could change as well)

If it is someone else, that could be pointed out....


Vetti study comes to an end.....After all you can't be vetti all the time, I hav work to do, man my eyes are eyeing the bed, no vetty work anymore, signin(sleepin) off....

"Tell me about yourself"

Killer question, the most dreaded one that everyone is likely to face in an interview.
And if you start "I am ___(profession) working for ___, looking for ____", you are jeopardizing your chances of further being interviewed honestly. Your CV tells all this, hence, you have to be a bit imaginative and the problem is that there is no correct and definitive answer for this question.

What the heck the interviewer is looking for, or is this just an ice-breaker, you never know.
For a technical guy, this is just an opening question, he would be more interested in grilling you on the tech stuff. But, for a HR guy, this is a decision making question, and would be more interested in your response.

K.I.S.S (Keep It Simple Stupid) is the key, Do not begin with what is there in the objective column of your CV. Project yourself as someone who is looking for a change for a genuine reason and not trivial reasons such as more salary(is it really trivial:)?, yes, atleast in the context of the interview).

What you are professionally, what have you done and how efficiently, and what are you expecting and how do you fit into the new role are the questions you need to ask yourself before answering this question. Stress a bit more about the recent assignment and how you can carry forward that experience to the new assignment.

Now, coming back to the question "Tell me about yourself", answer something like,
'Well, myself a(n) ___ , performing____ for the past ___, gained a lot in this area like______. In my recent asignment(s), I am doing/have transformed/responsible for bringing down/responsible for improving____ which I had done/am doing/is progressing in the right direction successfully. What I want more is _____ and it(new role) seems to be perfectly aligned with my career goals and I love taking up newer challenges(if the role demands a bit more than your skillset in your CV and could be higher role)"

Provide some examples, and develop a curiosity in the interviewer, so that he will start asking about that and that way you can take the interview in your direction.