I want to watch them all!!

I was surfing through YouTube a few days back and stumbled upon their Movie Trailers section and started browsing through them. I came across few movies whose trailers kept me wanting for more! Let me share them with you:

Alice in Wonderland – Johnny Depp never ceases to amaze me! From Edward Scissorhands to Pirates of the Caribbean, he is now the Mad Hatter!!

Inglorious Bastards – though I am not a huge fan of Brad Pitt (yeah!!) I kind of liked his acting in this trailer and am waiting this one to hit the big screen!!

Sherlock Holmes – the ever lovable mad detective, I have been reading his adventures right from my school days and have loved every one of them!! Even the TV serials based on his adventures have been followed by me religiously!! “It’s elementary, Dear Watson” being one of the most famous and recognizable phrases it will be fun to see the new Sherlock Holmes on the big screen! And I never knew that Sherlock wrestled!! :)

Surrogates – one of my all time favourites Bruce Willis comes in all sorts of roles!! Right from the angry cop in the Die Hard series to the ghost in Sixth Sense I have loved him in all his “hatke” roles!! And this is one more!!

The Princess and the Frog – on a lighter and funnier animated note this movie does not really follow the original story but looks like fun!!

My Web/Online Presence till today..

I visited some friends a couple of days ago and one very dear friend asked me if I was on Twitter. When I replied with an “Of Course!” he grinned and replied “Why am I not surprised!!” :)

While chatting with him I realised, Yes, I do have a presence on the World Wide Web!! And am proud of it too!! Today the whole world has congregated together on the Internet and is reaching out to people all over. As we progress, in time, each individual with access to a computer and an internet connection will be present online.

As I started getting introduced to the infiniteness of the internet, I decided to make my presence known to all around me and beyond.. :) I started off (years ago) with signing up for a yahoo mail id, a hotmail id and an Indiatimes id which then graduated to just having 2 mail ids – one on Yahoo and the other on Gmail. After this I got onto the social networking bandwagon and signed up onto Orkut. After getting bored with the site (yeah I know… u don’t understand that!!) I graduated to Facebook where I am more or less settled – for the time being at least ;) till something more fun comes up!!

On the professional networking side I signed up with the lesser known Ryze network years ago but I must confess that I didn’t find that very user friendly and now I am more active on LinkedIn!

Blogging caught my eye and the fun that I have had blogging has been awesome!!!! As you can see by this blog – have 75 posts and counting and have been around only 1.5 years – which may be less compared to those that write every day – but what the hell.. I enjoy writing and what I write!! Hehe Personal blogging aside I decided to get into blogging about my profession and started my HR Blog – it’s still only 3-4 posts old but I think I will get to 75 posts soon!!

I then wanted my own domain name and went out and bought that too which gets directed to my personal blog. I am in the midst of getting/setting up a website too wherein all the links to me will be present – cool nah?

Click! Click! Then I wanted to share my pics with my friends, so I signed up for the then popular Yahoo pictures – loved the interface and could uploading pictures was as simple as A-B-C!! After Yahoo shut down their service I went on the hunt for another online photo sharing site. Amidst all the ones out there, kind of liked Flickr but soon gave that up when I stumbled onto Picassa! This prompted me to start off my very own photo blog and I did! Though it is young too I don’t doubt that it will soon grow to be full of manyyyyyyyyyyy pictures taken from my camera and phone!

Twitter happened recently and it’s not too bad.. Have been getting the hang of it now and keep trying to tweet regularly! Spied one of my friend’s signature sporting his Google profile and now have one of my own too!

So I think for an HR person I am quite present on the Internet!! What do you think? ;)

My Best Friend’s Birthday Adventures

No, this is not like one of the Famous Five’s adventures!! This is about a night out with my best friend on her birthday last night. It all started out well, and we left her place for Juhu in her car.

With the windows rolled up, we waited for the air conditioning to kick in but to our disappointment it refused to do so and we had to roll the windows back down – not too bad as there was a cool breeze blowing. After filling up petrol we got on our way with the FM radio belting out the latest Hindi movie songs. We decided to take the Worli-Bandra Sealink and turned towards Worli seaface.

We suddenly heard a thump-thump noise and were wondering where it was coming from…. As we racked our heads to figure out the source of the noise we became aware of the car not performing the way it should. We pulled over on the side and discovered we had a flat!! Ok!! Two of us stuck on the side of the road with a flat tyre!! As we debated on how to get to the nearest petrol pump our eyes fell on couple of men changing a tyre on a car and we looked up to find that we had stopped right outside a small-time car alignment garage!! Luck was on our side!! We got the tyre changed and made our way towards the Sealink.

As we approached the Sealink the excitement grew and we were soon driving over the sea!! As we crossed the Sealink, I started taking pictures. The sights that greeted us were amazing and the journey was awesome!!

We made our way to the restaurant at Juhu without any further adventures and settled down to a yummy Italian dinner at Del Italia.

Grant us Independence today!

“Independence” a word that we take for granted at times but makes our hearts swell with pride as the tricolor flutters in the clear blue skies! As we all prepare to enjoy and celebrate our 62nd Independence Day from the British rule, I would like to ask for Independence from some other chains that bind us!

Grant us Independence from the terrorists who think it is their birthright to make our lives miserable by indulging in killing innocent people just so that they will go to heaven!! Don’t they realise there is nothing like that! Why are they getting away with all that they do?

Grant us Independence from the H1N1 virus that is making us suspicious of everyone we interact with, travelling with masks and handkerchiefs wrapped around our faces, and taking the lives of innocent children and elders.

Grant us Independence from the drought that we are facing in the country; send those rain laden clouds to us please! I recently saw the state of the fields on a TV channel and the dry, arid landscapes have been imprinted onto my mind… it is indeed a sad state of affairs…

As this year’s Independence Day passes I am thankful to be living in a free and independent nation. For whatever its quirks I love this country with all my heart!!

HAPPY INDEPENDENCE DAY TO ONE AND ALL!!

Flu – Pls fly away!!

As the H1N1 virus enters our living space there is wide spread panic among all individuals. These individuals consist of educated ones like you and me and uneducated ones like my rickshaw driver today who was wearing a handkerchief around his nose and mouth. Surprisingly the authorities are quite chilled out in their responses to the general public, their reasoning being that people die of more of other diseases every day than from the H1N1 virus. That may be true but they need to understand that for those “other” diseases there is some treatment, some vaccine and for the H1N1 virus the jury is still out on that one!

What has really upset me about this sudden biological attack is that the ones who are suffering the most are the children!! :( Which brings me to another controversy that is moving around – are closing down schools and colleges going to make a difference? Maybe yes, because of the near proximity of the children. Here authorities are playing safe and precaution is better than cure.

Indians are tolerant about a lot of things but when they are faced with something they do not understand they do tend to panic. This can be seen on every station, every bus stop in the city these days. Like someone said – it looks like everyone has turned into surgeons overnight with masks covering half their faces!! Everywhere you turn you see an assortment of masks – white ones, green ones, blue ones, even yellow ones! I too got my green ones! But got fleeced in the bargain!! The guy at the chemist charged me Rs. 20 per mask instead of the reported Rs. 5 – 7!! After I came home I realised that I was not the only one being fleeced the TV news brought it up too with the Health Minister. And kudos to him I actually liked the reply he gave the TV channel – if you are so upset with being fleeced and have proof of the same, file an FIR and the State Government will resolve the issue and take the chemist to task!

Hope that the deaths get curtailed and that everything returns back to normal soon!!

Take care everyone!!

Parsis!!

Received this mail and so wanted to share it with all of you!! :)

BusyBee on Parsis

The first Parsis I knew were statues. There were scores of them, all over Bombay (now Mumbai), most of them wearing glasses: Dadabhoy Naoroji, Pherozeshah Mehta, Jamshedji Tata, Cowasjee Jehangir, Bomanji Petit, the Khada (standing) Parsi at Byculla Bridge.

Later, I met other Parsis, at the Central Bank, Cusrow Baug, Rustom Baug, Albless Baug, Cama Baug, Godrej Company (find me a Parsi house and I will show you a Godrej steel cupboard in it), Colaba Agiary, Bombay House, piano recitals by Austrian pianists at the NCPA, Ripon Club. Most of the Parsis I know are Bombay Parsis, the older ones born at Dr Temulji's lying-in hospital for Parsi ladies, the younger ones delivered by Dr. Rusi Soonawala (Aapro Rusi). But there are also Delhi Parsis, Calcutta Parsis, Udwada Parsis, Toronto Parsis, one or two Mhow Parsis, Karachi Avaris, Minwallas, Sethna, etc. They are spread all over the world.

Whoever says that the Parsis are a dying community does not know what they are talking about. The Delhi Parsis are mainly Bombay Parsis now settled in Delhi, such as Soli Sorabjee and Fali Nariman. The Bombay Parsis themselves may be divided into further categories. There are Colaba Parsis, Tardeo Parsis and Dadar Parsi Colony Parsis. The Colaba Parsis work in advertising agencies, act in Hosi Vasunia's (now with The Indian Express Newspapers) plays and have relations in Toronto. The Tardeo Parsis would like to be Colaba Parsis. The Dadar Parsi Colony Parsis are Dadar Parsi Colony Parsis.

Their language is Gujarati, with a generous mixture of English or English with a generous mixture of Gujarati. Some people say that they borrowed the language from the Gujaratis, others that the Gujaratis learnt it from them. I have not resolved that point yet. But the Parsis have certain Gujarati words that are exclusive to their language. Putting aside the abuse words, I refer you to 'faragaat'. It is what a Parsi does when he returns home after a hard day at the office. He has a wash (Godrej or Tata soap), removes his clothes, and gets into a 'sadra' and 'lengha' and settles down in the easy chair with his legs stretched along its extended arms, sipping phudina tea. That is being 'faragaat', changing into sadra - lengha and relaxing. Say the words slowly and gently extend it: 'fara-gaaat'.

There are several other such words and phrases: kit-pit bandh ker, dahi na kar, doodh pau. Doodh pau is a somewhat goody-goody person, a bit of a sissy. I invite the members of the community to add to my collection. That takes care of the language, though most of them use English.

They are very fond of things English and particularly the English royalty, though that does not mean I am questioning their loyalty one bit. On that score they are unimpeachable. When I first visited London, a Parsi friend took me to see Buckingham Palace - from outside naturally, in those days they did not issue tickets to wander around the palace. We stood at the gates, he pointed at the palace, and said, "Aapri rani no mehel."

A lot of things are 'aapri' or 'aapro' or 'aapru'. For instance:
Apro Zubin Mehta, kevoo majehnu conduct karech.
Aapro Sam Maneckshaw.
Aapro Nani (Palkhivala), bahuj intelligent and bholo che.
Aapri Bachi Karkaria, soo lakhech, soo lakhech.
Aapro Dorabjee of Dorabjee's of Pune
Aapra Oliaji of Duke's Hotel, Devka
Aapri Princess Street ni Parsi Dairy Farm, bilkul pani nahi doodh ma, bilkul nahi.
Aapro Cyrus Broacha, ketlo comic che.
Aapro Adu (the late and lamented Adi Marzban).
Aapro Rusy (Karanjia), ehni toe soo pen.
Aapru Taj te Taj, choro Oberoi.

Every Parsi takes a proprietary interest in the Taj, in Baliwalla & Homi, Bombay's opticians since time began, and Air India when JRD Tata was the chairman. Even Rajiv Gandhi was aapro from his father's side. Aapro Rajiv aaje hote toe he would have ,,,,, (add your thought here).

On Parsi New Year, one of the 3 or 4 New Years they have in a year, in the morning, a couple of Nankhatai Bands will come over from Pydhonie to Cusrow Baug and with a great flurry play "Sare Jehan Se Acha" and Colonel Boogie's March in front of whichever flat (apartment) pays them. There will be prayers at the two major fire-temples at Dhobi Talao and vermicelli- Sev and sweet curd with rose petals, marghi na farcha and dhan dal and kolmi patia at home.

And there will be drinks, the Parsi pegs. A Parsi peg is the largest peg in the world! You may measure it by your palm - it extends over 5 fingers. The Patiala peg is also 5 fingers, but in the Patiala peg the fingers are held together, in the Parsi peg they are spread out!!

Chalo, Saheb, salamati lev.
-- Busybee.

Some definite MUST DOs every monsoon!!

Monsoons have arrived and it’s time for some fun, some frolic and some masti ;) !!! Some of my favourite must-dos in the monsoons in no particular order..

Curl up near a window with a hot mug of tea/coffee and watch the raindrops slide against the window pane

Inhale the perfume of the first rains

Dress up in shorts, an old t-shirt and sneakers and your windcheater and walk along the promenade of Marine Drive, sneakily cheating the waves which come onto the sidewalk

Curl up on the bed with a thrilling book while listening to the rain drumming on the roof

Go for a loooooooooong, never-ending drive in the rain and watch the sunset

Be a child and splash and jump into puddles – guaranteed a lot of fun!

Eat garam makai buttas in the rain

Stand under the shade of a tree to dodge the rain and sip hot cutting chai with still hotter bhajiyas.. yummmmmy!

Put out your hand to feel the raindrops on them while travelling in a train/bus/car

Curl up with your better half and …. ;) hehehe

Look up to the heavens and greet the raindrops, letting them slide down your face

Have I forgotten any of your favourite must dos? Share them with me!