We are back....

Aah yes.. We are back.. After a month long hiatus. We were little busy with our family and work. We will try to be more regular. Gosh.. how long has it been since we wrote? India were number one team,  Yeddi was still the CM, Reddys were ruling, Anna was on hunger strike, Amar Singh was a free man, Diggy Raja was the craziest politician.. Whew boy. World has changed hasn’t it? India were made to drop their pants and given sound thrashing by Pommies. Except Rahul that is. Yeddi and Reddy are both are going down fast. Reddy’s are already inside. Amar Singh supposedly has mental issues, Anna is hero for few not so much for some others.. Everything has changed. Except Diggy. He rules doesn’t he? With a crazy heart pumping crazy blood and crazy brain with crazy thoughts and a crazier iron fist. He rules.

What did we do last month? So many walks, won the Charlotte cricket cup (we were MOM in finals. Ahem.) Went for a long drive to Miami and Key West, got the house cleared of bedbugs, cooked some delicacies, watched some movies, and worked our ass off, watched loads of TV etc. We did think of writing but then decided not to. Don’t think we are apologizing.

We read about this Tomatina festival being arranged in Bangalore. We were so astounded and pissed off at the same time. How much can you try to emulate other cultures? Did some people lose their commonsense somewhere in MG road while marching and shouting slogans for Anna? A huge waste of money we feel. Is this organized by some morons who were “inspired” by what they saw in ZNMD? Why waste so much money on an event like this? Why can’t they ask people to donate the whole amount?  Why throw tomatoes at each other? What do they mean when they say “we make sure tomatoes are not edible but not rotten”? What kind of tomatoes are they? One of my friends made a wonderful statement. “I want to see coconutina. No wastage only cleanup”. True. We would pay to see that.

There was also this news about Kannada movie star Darshan. We read and thought WTF. Challenging star has become mentally challenged star. And his fans have truly behaved like how a mentally challenged fans should. I’m sorry but in what world is he innocent? Why would throw stones are vehicles and protest against arresting a guy who abused his wife and kid?  And Kannada movie Industry heads were even more thoughtful. He had an alleged affair with another actress and tortured his wife and kid. What’s the most reasonable thing to do? If you answered ban the “other” girl from movie industry. Way to go. You can be next president of kannada movie industry’s association. They had to take it back because of the doyenne of Sandalwood, Mrs Parvathamma Rajkumar (Not to be confused with Hindi Daayan).

The last news we have for today is about our all time favourite cricketer. Rahul Dravid is playing his last international limited over match. We are sad that he is retiring. We wanted him to go on and on. But we are going to console ourself with the fact that he can now concentrate on the best cricketing arena, tests. He has not been the greatest ODI player. Agreed. But is truly one of the game’s greatest because how much he has contributed to the success of Indian team. We are going to forgive him on 2007 world cup . One request to Dhoni. You people won a world cup for Sachin. Just win one friggin’ match. It’s his last game and Indian cricket owes it to him.

Alas, the lucky bastard is still alive..

Finally the last movie of Harry Potter franchise released after much hoopla. Everyone raved about it and wherever we read we found good reviews about the movie. We, being a fan of the HP universe, had to watch this movie. We just had to. We were not expecting much from the movie after reading the book. We were disappointed about how the story ended. How is it that a boy who can get beaten up in every Chloromint commercial beat the greatest wizard of all time? How much luck does a nerdy pasty looking teenager need to beat the person who was supposed to be the lord of the entire universe? Yes. We are Dark Lord’s followers. We hate the potter kid. We were a huge follower of Severus Snape when he was mean to Potter.  He was number one in our favorite list. Once we realized that he tried to save the boy, we had to move him out to second position. We still like Snape for the six and a half books were he was mean to him. 

Everyone starts their review or blog talking about Harry or Voldemort. We will not. We will start with one person who made it possible for us to watch all the movies. One person who we admire. It’s Alan Rickman. We hereby acknowledge Alan Rickman’s contribution to make Snape look so evil as the best part of Harry Potter series. Ever since we heard the line “Clearly Fame isn’t everything” we had sworn our allegiance to Snape. No one else could have portrayed the role better. It has to be one of the most marvelous roles we have seen. Role of a life time even. He made us like Snape more than the Dark lord himself.  Also, don’t forget that Snape gave Potter the ultimate bitch slap even when he was dying. His last words to potter were about “mother’s eyes”. If you know Hindi, you know what he actually meant.

OK now we will get back to the movie. What can you notice from Harry Potter movies? Apart from the fact that the Harry Potter is more nerdy looking than JK Rowling wanted him to be. Everyone can agree that there is only one point to note. Emma Watson is hot. She is. And she does not disappoint in this movie either. It was sad that she got that ginger haired whiny one as a boyfriend. You will also notice that the story/movie becomes increasingly adult oriented as the story progresses. It still has the fun fantasy parts for the kids but it’s very hard to ignore the backdrops of mature/adult themes. No We are not talking about shakeela type adults. You know, normal adult types. Love and feelings etc whatever ruins a normal teenager’s life.

The movie as any normal part two would, starts where the first one ends. Voldemort gets the elder wand. The movie shows you how three horcruxes are destroyed (The cup, the diadem(What the hell is a diadem), the snake) and how Harry being one horcrux sacrifices himself. But sadly he comes back and in what is one of the most shittiest endings in movie history, defeats the Dark Lord. We were so pissed with the ending. We will not tell you how it happens. Don’t beam that you have read the book. You would be upset too. The director tried to save few minutes and some million dollars worth of effects we guess. But it’s sad. Even sadder than the fact that the Potter boy survives.

We don’t like Potter. But that is not why we would say Daniel Radcliffe is not that good an actor. He just doesn’t cut it for us. The fact that he has to share screen with likes of Michael Gambon, Maggie Smith, Alan Rickman, Helena Bonham Carter, Ralph Fiennes  definitely does not help him. Rupert Grint even though twice as annoying, turns out to be the best of the trio. Emma Watson is hot. We will not say anything more. Neville is heroic which is refreshing to see after being the comic relief for most part of the series. But show stealer as we mentioned earlier is Alan Rickman. That guy looks like he was born to portray this role. Ralph Fiennes as Voldemort is wonderful as usual. It’s hardly surprising actually. He played Amon Goth in Schindler’s list after all. The scenes where he faces Harry, he outshines the boy pretty easily.  

The movie for most part was pretty impressive. We are not telling this because we are a fan. Except for third and fourth movie, we liked all others a lot. Now we have another reason to hate the fourth movie. It has that vampire Edward in it. Although he dies, we still don’t like it very much. OK what we were talking about was the graphics and the adventurous mode of all the movies. Aided by excellent supporting cast, the movie is a visual delight to watch. Even this movie doesn’t disappoint. The dialogues make you chuckle at times and  there’s Emma Watson. The movie cannot disappoint. Till the end comes that is. Voldemort’s last moments are pretty poorly covered. No thrill. Nothing. He just disappears like how originality does in Pritham’s presence.

We would rate it 4 stars out of 5. Somehow the ending ruined it from becoming one of our favourites. We seriously wish that there is one more horcrux which Rowling has not revealed yet. We are fine if there are more.

One English movie and some Kannada songs.

Right. Let’s start this with a paragraph movie review.  We saw Cars 2 this weekend. We have to say. We liked it a lot. The detailed analysis of the world from a car’s eyes is truly awesome. Here Lightning McQueen plays a supporting role. The movie revolves around Mater, the bumbling tow truck best friend. How some old cars play villains and how Mater is mistook for a spy and in the end how he saves  the world is the story. Without discussing about story line much, we will tell you this. Very rarely a sequel is better than the first movie. Here is one such movie. Larry the Cable guy is totally delightful as Mater. We give this movie two thumbs up and a 9 out of 10. This is like your childhood dream come true. All your Hotwheel cars and all your yeeeeoooowwww’s.  Watch this movie.

We came back and we were not feeling sleepy. So we thought we will listen to songs. Kannada ones.  One song was from Hudugaru.  It was an item song called Pankaja. Somewhere between “Akka nim maneyalli naayigu Dancu barutta” and “Nim ooralli thamaTena hodyakke chancu sigutta” , we started thinking about how Kannada songs have gotten back their mojo. There was a phase where Kannada songs were qualitatively poor. Once Ravichandran and Hamsalekha kinda broke up, the Music became more to the mass than class. Apart from some movie exceptions, most songs did not catch our fancy much. But then suddenly it seemed like all is well again. What happened?

If you think about it, this seems to have begun from Mungaru Male. Everyone tends to agree that Mungaru Male really started this upward trend. It increased the listener count by many folds. Many of our friends who were not really fans of Sandalwood music started listening from then. And then the quality started improving. Not just the lyrics. If lyrics are outrageous, tunes became catchier. It was like the music industry picked itself up and decided, “Right, We need to show others what we are about.” We like this new trend.  We do not mind listening to nothing but Kannada songs.

After that almost every movie that has been released, has had at least one beautiful or catchy track. Even movies which were pretty horrible had one nice track. We don’t want to start listing the songs we like. Because there are plenty. Our phone has hundreds of new Kannada songs. And every day we get to add some song or the other from a new movie. We, being a Kannada movie fan, absolutely love it. Kannada Industry has always had people who make some really good musical movies. But in late 90’s it was limited to Ravichandran. He had his way with the leading ladies and always had flowers and fruits and honey around and on them. But it was not just about visually pleasing his male audience. He made sure that the songs were melodious. He was immensely talented when it comes to picking songs.

But now the number has increased. Every other director, every other producer, every other actor seems to crave for quality. There is some flip side to it as well.  The local talents seem to have been neglected. Sonu Nigams and Kunal Ganjawalas started hogging the space and have replaced Rajesh and Hemanth. Shreya Ghoshals have replaced Pallavis and Nandithas. Sure the Bollywood singers are talented. But shouldn’t these songs go to the local talents? We are pretty sure any good Kannada singer can sing the same songs just as well. Why do we have to go to Bollywood and pay more money? Pallavi Arun is the best and most versatile singer in Kannada industry. Give more chances to her than Shreya. If the songs are as good as they have been for past few years, audience will listen no matter what.

It’s all about love in the family...

We have news for you.  No. Not about Aishwarya Rai telling Abhishek “Main tumhari Bacchan ki maa bannewaali hoon”^[1]. Although there have been pretty curious reactions to the news. We have seen more people congratulate BigB on being a Grandpa than Abhishek on delivering his first successful solo hit ^[2]. Also, Kiran Rao supposedly asked Aamir, “Kab tak Perfectionist bante rahoge?” ^[3]. OK we are not going to say anything more as we do not bother about Ash. We personally feel she is more plastic than the Barbie she tried to endorse. 

It’s also not about Arindam Choudhary trying to sue the search engine Google for being a.. search engine. He said that it is promoting slander by showing bad stuff written about him. So if websites do not like him, so he will sue the company which.. just searches for the information? What kind of dick does such a thing? Arindam that’s who. Google searches for the popular pages. People like reading about him. How is it Google's fault? We are not sure why he did not sue internet itself or people in general. By trying to be a smart ass, he just became fodder for little more news. And he is promoting his anti-slander compaign via youtube which is by, you guessed it, Google.

OK topic. What is the greatest gift that can be given to a man? We all know it’s a tape of Scarlett. But if you ignore that and say love of a lady, we will grin and agree. No. Correct it. We will agree but after laughing at you. No, one more correction. We will agree after sometime because we will be busy rolling on the floor laughing and calling you a wuss. But yes. We will agree. Because our lady would be damn pissed with us otherwise. KJO, you know that misspelt coffee show man person with a lie-o-meter, once said it's all about loving your family. We just modified it a bit. Another quote we want to use is by Dr Seuss, that weird love one which you might have heard about. It’s just that we got the news that our elder brother is in same situation as we were few years ago. You know. Love and stuff. We are a victim of love marriage you see. Our lady doesn't like it when we say stuff like that. Now our brother has fallen into the net as well. By making fun of love, we start the blog with the mental preparation to sleep on the sofa for a week.

We at the risk of sounding sentimental, will admit that we are very happy for our brother. He has been having some tough time personally and professionally. We are glad he has found happiness. But any sensible, not just married, man would say, marriage is not the solution for tough times. It may be beginning for some. But definitely not the end (Warning one). Actually, we wanted to give a sarcastic lecture starting with “love anthe love. It’s aal stupidity my baay. Thatsall means thatsall”^[4]. But we would have a very unhappy lady to calm down and calming down an unhappy lady is a very difficult task, as any married man knows (Warning two). When our brother told us that he and our future Bhabhiji have agreed to leap the leap, we were excited. Not because a love is being consummated to marriage. As they say, all marriages are made in heaven like thunder and lightning (Warning three).

We were one off love marriages in the family. Now it seems like we have set a precedent. When we propositioned our marriage situation to our family, everyone had lot of fun discussing about it. We did not have all the Telugu film drama, which we regret. We were sad that we cannot make speeches about undying love and eternal flame in our heart etc. Instead everyone agreed without fuss and we and our lady ended up being butt of many jokes as we were the youngest in the family and were not really considered what you can call responsible. Everyone thought we may not be able to handle the responsibilities we felt (Responsibilities. Warning Four). And now that there is another couple being readied to be institutionalized (marriage is an institution, right?), people look at us as mature experienced couple. It’s very interesting how tables turn. Now we are going to attend the marriage with big smile with our heart and mind going BMwuhahaha. Unless you are in our position you will never truly understand the joy of sadism.

We wanted to tell few things to our Bhabhiji. So, if you are not our Bhabhiji, skip this and move to next paragraph. We and our brother have never been the similar ones except for our interest in current affairs and GK. We have been fighting almost always. We still have the memory of him chasing us with a wicket when we had some argument in cricket. No, no need to worry. We also want to assure that he has sobered down (We still have our fingers crossed). He may chow down on his colleagues but he is not the one who can yell at you. At least, for now. Also, He means good. We may fight a lot, but first time we were away, he had to seek medical attention. No not the wrong kind. He had fever etc because he missed us. (It always made us happy to know that we controlled his health. Sadly as we grew up the grip vanished). The point to be noted is not that he gets angry easily. It’s that even though he acts all angry, he still will care for you a lot. We do not want to repeat the sobered down bit. Anyway, what we actually wanted to tell was, we are happy that he found you and you found him. You make a good pair. We have one more thing to tell. Sorry, we are making this paragraph long but we had decided to dedicate only one paragraph. That was not the thing. This is. We also heard from our lady that you were silent in front of parents. We hope you are not the silent type of person. When we make fun of Aishwarya (Yes. We sneaked into your Facebook profile.), we want a proper response. Else it won’t be fun. If you notice, there are some references in the beginning of the blog.

Non-Bhabhi readers, let me guess. You read the previous paragraph even after we told you not to read right? Bleddy… As a punishment, we are going to bore you now. We want to write some philosophical things. As per some lady from some website, there are four kinds of love needed to make a marriage work. You need unconditional love, human love, tenderly love and physical love. When all four types of love operate in a marriage, the marriage is complete. We did find it on the net. We can't make such things up if if we wanted to. Although we felt it was too boring to read through all that we understand the gist. It’s just that you should love each other. Also we feel that whatever institution they say marriage is, can be successful only if the people constituting the institution work on it. (Word play. We are becoming smart). Also, let us tell you another thing. This is again our train of thought on why we prefer love marriages. We do not think people can fall in love after marriage. Yes. Occasionally we do hear stuff like that. But normally, it’s just mere adjustment to the other person which can be misunderstood as love. 

Edward Carpenter says that behind every marriage stands the life-long environment of the two sexes; an environment so different from each other that man and woman must remain strangers. Separated by an insurmountable wall of superstition, custom, and habit, marriage has not the potentiality of developing knowledge of, and respect for, each other, without which every union is doomed to failure. We did not the heck of it. But we decided to copy paste it nonetheless just to show that we search for some serious stuff too on the net. Also we read somewhere that a girl who loves makes a man from a selfish idiot. But if she leaves he will become even bigger selfish bastard. That brings another question to our mind. Do all love marriages happen because of luck? Sometimes it is destiny too, right? Some love cases end well. Others result in marriage. 

We are in a practical age. A new age. But still the time when Romeo and Juliet risked the wrath of their elders for love has not disappeared. If young people allow themselves the luxury of romance they are taken in care by the elders and advised till they become sensible. It’s not very often that parents happily agree for a love marriage. At least in many parts if India. We and our lady are very much aware of the fact that we are one such couple who got very lucky to have sensible parents who agreed without worrying about anything else. We are glad trend has remained same and they have happily agreed for or brother too. Good luck for them and God bless. 

But what made us even more happy was the fact that Rahul Dravid scored a gritty classy century and deserved the MoM award. When most others failed and could not grasp the pitch, Dravid stood for more than six hours to build an innings worth its weight in gold. That was a mature innings played by one of the greatest batsmen of all time. This innings reminded us of his second innings heroics five years ago one the same pitch. Which had reminded us of his first innings heroics in the same test. Words cannot describe.. OK you know what, sometime we totally get why our family considers us second best.

P.S : Personally we still think Scarlett’s tape is a better gift. But we are expected to support being in love, we will not discuss the matter further. For now.

Note to God: Thanks for the blessings, big guy. You are not always an a**hole. Now, coming from us, that would be a compliment for you. Cheers! 

[1],[2], [3] – Citation needed. But we don’t have it.

[4] – There is a sher for this. Babbar sher actually

Jaldbaazi mein shaadi karega toh zindagi bigaad lega

Soch samajh ke shaadi karega toh bhi kya ukhaad lega.

The Wall, The Fortress and The Gentleman.....

Fifteen years ago, this day at Lord's, India had lost early wickets and a left hander made his debut. A left hander who was hugely talented but just as arrogant. People had lot of expectations from him. He hit a century. People were happy. He hit another hundred in the next test in Edgebaston. People were ecstatic. They claimed that the future has arrived. It had. At Lord's another lanky 23 year old was playing as well. He was known to be a steady bat. He played his part very well. But missed out his hundred and an opportunity to create history by just 5 runs. Next test where the left hander scored another hundred, he scored 84 and missed yet another hundred. People pitied him. We did too. But more than pity we liked the way he played. He was wristy, elegant and watchful. We were 12 then but we devoted ourselves to be his fan. As people said, future of Indian cricket had arrived but it was that right hander who would carry the country's hope for more than a decade. 

Little did we know the luck, which eluded the 150th Indian test cricketer in his first two matches, would play hide and seek with him throughout his career. Luck made him spend entire cricketing career as a second fiddle to him. People never seemed to be really happy. He is slow they said, he is not fit for limited overs they said. He took every criticsim in his elegant stride. He showed them why he is one of the greatest ever players in the modern era. He showed why India needs him at number three. For us he is the greatest Indian player and stands just behind Lara as the greatest player we have seen. We have sworn our devotion to the greatest supporting act in the history of Indian cricket, perhaps world cricket even. Yes. You know whom we are talking about. Rahul Sharad Dravid.

We think rather than telling why he is a great player, we will just give you some high level overview of the stats. 10000+ runs in both formats of the game (Only 3 others have done it), 200 catches in tests, 200+ dismissals (including keeping) in ODIs, 90 50+ scores in tests and 94 in ODIs, only player till date to score hundreds in all test nations, 80+ century partnerships in tests. 50+ in ODIs, two 300+ partnerships in ODIs, one of only three batsmen to hit Test centuries in four consecutive test innings, to add to this the countless number of times where he rescued the team and lifted it to safety or at least a par score.

Life was never been fair to him. His whole career he has been marked as a second fiddle for other players. Whenever he scored a hundred, there would b someone else as well and snatch the deserved MoM award. He has spent his career as a shadow to him and we feel sad. Indian fans never did treat him right. There have been quite a few moments where people simply ignored the fact that RD reached a milestone. We always gets pissed off when that happens. How is it that the entire country is grateful to only one person. Sure he has done whole lot more than anyone else. But shouldn’t the real cricket fans be fair?

We being a test match fan, do not prefer T20s or ODIs as much. So we will list the five best test knocks by the Wall. This is our personal opinion. We do know that listing five is not the proper justice. The list where he played an important knock would go on and on. So we will stick to five best according to us.

148 vs SA in 1996, Jo'burg : First century by Dravid. Playing against powerful SA attack lead by Allan Donald, this was a masterpiece.

180 vs Aus in 2001, Kolkata : For us it’s the greatest test match of all time. VVS scored 281 and everyone went nuts. The fact that nobody else could have lent a better helping hand escaped many minds. We are naming this the greatest supporting knock in history.

177 vs Srl in 2009, Ahmedabad: We feel this was his most fluent innings. He kept finding boundaries and we absolutely loved watching him in this innings.

233 vs Aus in 2003, Adelaide : This test belonged to Dravid. That's all we can say.

81 & 68 vs WI in 2006, Kingston : The greatest knock for us was not a century or a double century. When the entire batting of both the teams struggled, the wall weaved magic. He led the defense and made sure that India is in a commanding position. These two innings' are why India needs Dravid.

People have been trumpeting his achievements so much that we feel kind of disappointed. We are not against him. No. We just wanted al to know that there are some other players who have given their everything for the game as well. It has been 15 years. You have provided us inspiration, entertainment and hope so many times. Thank you Rahul Dravid and God Bless.

Oh Please.. Stop.. No really... STOP.

How dumb can you be? No. Don't feel offended. We are not asking you personally. Relax now. You can keep that secret to yourself. We just wanted to cite an incident that happened. We have a regular call with our client manager. You know what one of our team mates discussed for whole 15 minutes? His Piles problem and how he cannot do his morning work properly. While we do understand that it is a very unfortunate situation, what we cannot understand is how someone can discuss about it. Let alone with client managers. He went on and on about how it has been occurring from past year. We sat fidgeting in our very seat (pun, if anyone notices, is intended). Its something for which you are not responsible but you are embarrassed nonetheless. It was like watching Fardeen Khan act.

Now that we have given today's blog a humane start, We should warn you. This is a dirty blog. we mean dirty dirty. Not that dirty which makes guys sit up and notice. Let us talk about how we embarrass ourselves. When we say we, we mean general public. That's right. "We" includes you lot too. There are so many situations where people don't realize they are embarrassing others. We have lot of examples.It almost makes us feel as if we are a country of self centered people. Since we are writing about the stories, we make sure that none of our stories are included here. Well, it can also be because we are not a dimwit and we watch ourselves.. Ahem. Aren't we a role model.

The main thing we have noted here is loud talking on cell phones. Some people simply cannot realize that they have cell phone in hand. It will be their mother tongue and since they feel that no one can understand what they are talking, they feel free to use lot of expletives. What's that? Isn't that a "cool" thing you ask? No. For us its not. We are not against talking in mother tongue. We very much prefer it ourselves. (Now we want make a bad tongue joke here but we are bound by the contract we have.). We use expletives when people are around and understand it. Its like bling. What is the point of using it if no one knows you are using it? You clearly shouldn't be ashamed of letting people know that you are using it. General public may not like it. But then if you are someone who uses such words, why fear the general public?

Another thing we noticed is how the some people clean their lunch boxes in the sink and dump the leftovers in the sink. That makes sure that water doesn't drain and everything gets clogged. You want to imagine how bad it can get? Think about variety of foods eaten by Indians. There is a trash bin man. How tough is it to dump stuff there? Before you know it, all the foren peepuls are looking at you as if you are the culprit. We may be of the same colour as the person who did it my dear lady, but we are not the same character. We did try telling someone about it and we got a sly grin. Now we have a notice there (put by foren peepul no doubt) saying don't wash your dirty dubbas here. Some foren peepul make sure they discuss such stuff when Indians are around. Just to rub salt to the wound.

We want to talk about our accent issues as well. Oh boy. Aren't we a diverse nation. Mallus, Tamils, Telugites, Kannadigas, Punjabis, Bengalis, Oriya, Bihari, North-east, Gujjus. Every one has their own accent. When we join any meeting nearly half the time goes just to decipher the accents we feel. Plus people treat grammar like that kid who stole your toys. We want to give you two examples. Imagine a Oriya/Bengali accent. " itj a bhird dokyumaint. Bhee need microsopt bhird". Most Indians have trouble understanding when they hear the sentence. Imagine how gora's felt. He had to repeat thrice and then type it over chat session. Thank god that our accents don't carry over to the chat sessions. or how about this for a conversation between two of our guys in a call including clients. "We are did the testing. We naat getting what result we wanted." "you caantacted yuvar subject myatter expert aa?" "Hmmm. we did told Smith John but he busy. so weeyar waiting". Take that grammar. Everyone knows that you are a bitch.

There are lot of things which people need to sort out. From Using text lingo in emails and chats to using aa to form a question. From using regional language fillers to trying to explain songs in movies, From scratching your privates when in public to opening the fly when one enters the restroom without even checking the urinals. There are lot of things which we are embarrassed about. When you are in India, people tend to ignore such things only because most people tend to follow it. Not because its accepted as social norm. And when people enter another country, shouldn't they realize that everyone is representing the country here? (We wanted to include From Akshay Kumar to Sharad pawar, but apparently some people actually like Akshay Kumar. So there goes one example.)

We have just noted couple of things we observed here. We are not against our country or our country people. We believe that our country has a great culture. We feel good when someone explains about the how great it is or about how diverse it is. We really do. But there is always some minor thing that ruins the fun. Imagine how proud you are when you tell how beautiful is the morning there or how you played cricket during last weekend and how your team won. And someone bursts the bubble by telling how you were stuck in traffic jam excluding the fact that major traffic jams are due to gazillions software engineers coming to work every morning Or a very 'talented' software engineer tells about how he couldn't do his morning stuff due to piles. Yes. That's what we want to avoid.

Weekend update... Delayed.

Aren’t we a bit late on telling u what we did on the weekend? Even if you say yes, we would ponder for a moment if we give a rat’s ass about what you think and then will go ahead with our story anyway.  But before we start anything on that, we want to tell you that we got our driver’s license. We have not actually got it but we have cleared the test and will get it in ten days max. It was a huge burden lifted. Also it looks like it lifted the bad luck we have been having. See. We planned to go there three times before and actually reached the DMV two times. First time, our roommate damaged his back. Second time the photo machine in DMV was broken and third time, they said we need to get a proof that we exist here legally. We did not get it. We had our learner’s license. Why would they still ask for passport or I-94? Finally we had everything ready, spent three hours waiting and finally completed the test successfully. We were so happy we could hug anyone. Actually, no we take that back. We were just happy.

But we have told you countless times that all we do is sit and watch movies on our laptop and occasionally play cricket. It seems we have been watching too many movies lately. Our friend circle here has doubled (another person has newly come to Charlotte). So we go to many movies and since our ex-roomie is getting married, we are doing plenty of shopping too. All in all, good times are happening.  So are expenses. This past month has been the most costliest here, apart from our HK trip. Haven’t we told you about our HK trip? May be we will. Soon. We won’t post pics though. We have it in our picasa page and will give you link. OK? Ok. Anyway, two movies we saw this weekend.  Both were sci-fi. One was a master class and one was very ordinary. We were amazed at both the movies. Considering the hype for the movies and way they turned out to be.

The first one we saw was X-Men: First Class. As the title says, the movie was well and truly first class. If you have seen the rest of X-Men movies and not comic reader, then you would wonder how the entire premise was built. This explains it. Who are they and how did they become what they are. It is wonderfully crafted film which keeps you engaged. The Cuban missile crisis has been interwoven very well with the story. We see Charles Xavier and Erik Lehnsherr before they became Professor X and Magneto. Erik being the victim of Nazi cruelty when the SS officer kills his mother to exploit his powers, wants to take his revenge on the Nazi officer who is now planning to rule the world. Erik does not know that the Nazi officer is a mutant himself. Charles meanwhile becomes a professor and leads a better life with his childhood friend Raven. The chemistry between the two leads is a delight to watch. We already knew that James McAvoy is a good actor after watching Last King of Scotland. Here he does total justice to the role. But the actual highlight of the movie is Michael Fassbender as Magneto. He emotes himself very well and we have to say we were totally awed by him. We hope he gets a Oscar nomination at least.

We actually did not plan to watch the second one. We actually went shopping to a mall and mall closes at 7 PM on Sundays (very Hip. We know.). But we could not come out as it was raining cats and dogs. Not literally. It means very hard, rain. So we decided to watch Super-8. Turns out drenching in rain would have been a equally good/bad option. The brain behind the movie is J J Abrams who is also the creator of the series Lost. The movie started ordinarily and end was also expected. There was no moment in the movie where it tried to be different. You get bored and would fall asleep if not for the ear splitting sound effects. Its about how a kid and some of his friends accidentally record an alien escape and then how that alien wreaks havoc in the town and in the end how he flies back to his homeland. There are efforts to bring some family drama and romance into the picture. But nothing that interests you. The kids have done a good job. But overall the movie just doesn’t have that ‘something’.

We also saw two Divya Dutta movies. We saw Monica and Haat, the weekly bazaar. She is one of our all-time favourite actresses. We always feel sad that she did not get enough opportunities in Bollywood. She is awesomely talented and we want her to act in more movies. Of course we saw them streaming because not many Hindi movies are screened here. Ready is beng shown in a theatre here but we do not want to watch that. OK That is pretty much what we did during the weekend. We would highly recommend X-Men: First Class to anyone who wants to watch a movie.  We wasted plenty of time watching junk stuff on the internet (No not porn. It may be a surprise but we don’t watch porn. Anymore).  We also managed to lose yet another cricket match. We managed to reach semifinals. There were only four teams. But come on. Semifinals.

P.S: Did you read about Delhi college cut-offs? Sriram College for Commerce? 100%. They want to make sure no unworthy candidate joins. Is it true SRCC? Its not just them by the way. All colleges have increased their cut off by pretty huge margins. So either we will see lot of fake caste certificates or there will be lot students taking the unwanted courses which nobody with high marks usually takes. Like languages. We wonder what we would have done if we faced such scenario. 100% cutoff? We were lucky we cleared 60% cut off. A good point to note would be, we believe our intelligence cannot be measured by the education system we face.