Rain! Rain! Went Away!

Its official! Monsoons are over. October is almost here and the weather seems to know it. Clear blue skies, bright sunshine, fluffy white clouds and not even a hint of rain. And the colours all around, everything got such a thorough cleaning during the rainy season that its practically shining wherever the sun finds its way. Of course not everything came out looking squeaky clean, the roads are definitely worse for the wear and buildings have a very sorry look about them. But nothing that some repairs won't fix. And as for us, the inhabitants of this crazy city, we can finally go back to stepping out of our houses without an umbrella; leave the windows open without worrying about the rain washing everything away; traffic will probably ease up a teensy weensy bit (hopefully the 2 hour journey will turn into 1.5 but that is just wishful thinking); and best of all, maybe now with temperatures soaring again, we'll enjoy ice creams again.

On that note I'll end this rambling and wish everyone a very good day ahead! Cheers :)
Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

We come into this world with nothing, but as we go along our way we gather a lot of things but 'things' may be a bit ambiguous. What I really mean to say here is the people that we gather around us. The friends we make, our circles, our gangs, our groups, our lifelines, these are the guys that make life what it is. Everything around us is a testimony to this fact, from social networking sites which wouldn't even exist if not for the innate need in mankind to connect with each other to sitcoms which more often than not would fall flat without the band of merry men to boost along the story. So winding back to my original point, whenever I look around, I am amazed at the number of connections we make in our lifetime, people we meet at every point in our lives who somehow just remain with us long after that time in our life is gone. I feel doubly grateful when I see the number of people in my life who I will always always cherish.. Here's to you guys. Cheers!

Volcano

What is it about destruction that attracts us? Nobody ever wants it to happen to them but nevertheless everybody eagerly follows the news when there is a calamity (natural or man made). With connectivity getting better and better, news from all over the world has invaded our homes and lives. Its not just that these incidents are increasing by the day, we find out about them immediately and that is what adds to the shock effect. Even the silver screen realises this, evident from the movies where the end of the world seems to be the theme! What is it exactly that pulls us in? Is it just the drama? The philosopher Henry David Thoreau once said 'The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation and go to their grave with the song still in them'. Maybe we ease this desperation by feeling the adrenaline rush that comes from an event that threatens to destroy everything. The rush of emotions: fear, anger, pain, empathy all combine together and give us the feeling of being alive and from that springs the will to survive in any way possible, the proverbial fight or flight so to speak. But at the end of the day, when the movie is over or the crisis is past, we go back to the humdrum of our everyday lives...until the next time!

PS # I think I should mention here that I was watching this movie called 'Volcano' last night, I'll leave you to guess what that was all about :P. Cheers!
Sent on my BlackBerry® from Vodafone

Love Affair of a Lifetime...

There are many reasons to love the internet, I particularly like the fact that I can download sitcoms that I might not ordinarily have access to. There are so many sitcoms these days that one has their work cut out trying to follow them all on TV. Besides, the timings may not even be all that convenient, sometimes they even coincide and they almost always reach the TV half a year behind the original release. The solution: download them from the internet! And right there is an entire world of possibilities opening up before you, a world beyond the constrictions of the television set. My initiation to this wonderful phenomenon began even before I knew what it was all about, the TV series Lost was quite difficult to follow when there was a week between episodes aired on HBO, but a stack of DVDs with Season One and Two on them and I was hooked for 15 hours straight. All the flashbacks and the eeriness of the island and the fact that were stranded pretty much in the middle of nowhere, made it all very exciting indeed. It helped that it was summer and school was out and it was too hot to do anything else, but the journey had begun from where there has been no looking back. Strangely after the marathon run of the first 2 seasons, I have never managed to follow the rest of Lost, I eagerly read about the series every time Wikipedia got updated but never got around to watching it. I progressed from Lost to OC which most might agree was not much of a progression but I went through the whole of Seasons One and Two religiously anyway, it was a phase that one had to go through. Sometime later I caught bits and pieces of Seasons Three and Four when they were airing on TV but didn't really get hooked enough to download them all and watch them while devouring ice cream. I do however do an occasional YouTube search of 'Best of' OC videos and songs and that satisfies me quite enough. F.R.I.E.N.D.S. of course has been a part of all our lives at some point of time or the other. I began watching it on TV from the time they were airing Season 9 and went on to watch it till the end. After that, it was all bits and pieces of episodes as and when the channels decided to do reruns. It wasn't until college that I managed to watch all 10 seasons and it was always the best thing to do when feeling sick, I still have them all stored up coz it is definitely something to keep for the rainy day, the evergreen humour will never fail to make me laugh. The next sitcom of note to enter my horizon was the much debated about How I Met Your Mother (HIMYM). Having heard endless rave reviews of this one, I decided finally in my second year of college to check it out and I could not have picked a better time. It was the time when everyone was quite fed up having watched 5 seasons and yet not discovering who the mother was and here I was watching it for the first time. And not a moment too soon, coz soon after came season 6 and I was so new to the thing that I loved every minute of it. I'm not so sure about the upcoming season but HIMYM and I have had a nice ride. Another epic sitcom for me has been Castle. I accidentally began watching it on TV one day and I was hooked. The rest as they say is history, I have followed every episode with bated breath and still have all three seasons saved up on my laptop. In fact, I just spent an entire afternoon going through my favourite parts of Castle. I, along with a million other people wait in great anticipation for Season 4, which is coming soon (but really not soon enough!). Along the way I have also fallen in love with the eccentric geniuses of The Big Bang Theory and can watch all the episodes over and over again. The Mentalist also touched my radar but alas have only managed to follow it sporadically on TV but a big fan anyway. Grey's Anatomy is one other series that has captured my imagination over the years but I strangely never had the urge to watch every episode of this one, I was absolutely content with watching an episode every now and then with absolutely no idea what season it was from. In college I once discovered an entire collection on someone's laptop and filled in a lot of gaps in my knowledge. This series is also a target of my YouTube searches for all its beautiful songs and also for some really amazing compilation videos. Speaking of college I cannot help but mention the infamous Gossip Girl series, which I have never particularly liked but never managed to stay away from either. Indeed I only recently finished watching the remaining part of season 4 which I had begun in college and what can I say, it was one hell of a ride. Gilmore Girls too was something I discovered in college and have tried to follow it as much as possible because it really is such a happy show. Recently, I have become an addict of the TV series Bones and am avidly following it on TV these days. That about sums up my love affair with the sitcoms facilitated in no small way by the internet. I guess I miss all those times in college where I've just forgotten everything and lost myself in the world of sitcoms for hours at a stretch. Those days may be gone but the sitcoms, they will stay on, there are too many memories attached to them and I will treasure them for life. This in no way is the end of the journey, I am trusting that the entertainment industry will continue to thrill us for many many years to come. Cheers!