Better late than never....

I admit, I have discovered Andrea Bocelli almost a decade after he made it on the international scene. Hence, the clichéd title to this blog. Céline Dion introduced him to America with "If God had a singing voice, he would sound a lot like Andrea Bocelli." I couldn't have come up with a better introduction, even if I tried.

Most of his music is in Italian (Music doesn't have a language – apologies for another cliché) but he's done some in English. The music is brilliant and the voice - divine. So, to experience heaven in your living room, pour yourself a glass of red, put on Vivere and sink into your sofa…

Click here for a sound/video clip

Bobby Fischer (1943 - 2008)

Robert (Bobby) Fischer - the greatest chess player of all times, died last week. He was a grandmaster at 15 and went on to win 20 consecutive championship level titles between 1968-71. He can truly be described as the eccentric genius, with chess being his sole passion in life - he had chess boards set up beside each bed in his Brooklyn house, ignoring everything outside to compete with himself. Never married, he did not do any other job but dedicate himself to the black and white board. He was the only American grandmaster but unfortunately after having played a game in Yugoslavia, he had to take asylum in Iceland, where he passed away.

Not known for his political correctness, he claimed most of the championship games were pre-arranged and went on to invent a new version - Fischer Random, where the back pieces are lined up by a computer generated program. I admit, I have never played this version, though I am a lilliputian-master in orthodox chess.

Car of the Year 2008

I am sure everyone knows by now that the Fiat 500 has won the Car of the Year 2008. It isn't easy re-launching an icon – much less winning a prestigious award as this (Neither the new Beetle or Mini got one). But this blog is not about the car itself.

I requested a brochure which was promptly delivered. I am not exaggerating when I say that it is one of the most ''interactive'' pieces (of print) I have ever got my hands on. I have seen classier/glossier and more premium brochures and DM from the Cartier's and Jaguars, but never this interactive. It let's you play with the wheels, colour combinations, stickers etc… I am sure the cost of the piece is significantly higher than other similar product brochures, but it does its job brilliantly. It has prompted me to book myself for a test drive as soon as it is available in London.

And that is exactly any DM/brochure is designed to do – salesmanship in print. Whether I buy the car or not, depends on the product and service, not on the marketing piece.

OGX 874E: Vish Dhamija's MG Midget

Yesterday was a good day - bright & sunny...so we picked up our Midget from Newgate and brought her home. Here are the pictures; I am sure you'll appreciate that she's quite photogenic...

She' now resting in the garage after the 40 miles run...

Morocco (Dec18 - 24, 2007)

Being married for many years now – I am quite used to the idea of being told where we're going for a vacation. Don't take me wrong – I do get consulted sometimes – though my views can be vetoed as they were this time and we went to Morocco in December.

The BA flight was a stopover in Casablanca which came as a surprise to me and Nidhi (my wife) – had we known that, we would have spent a couple of days there. We reached Marrakech late in the evening – but it was a disappointment even in the dark. The dingy by lanes in the old Kasbah district looks like a poor man's Chandni Chowk in Old Delhi. Thankfully, we were booked in Riad Alma (http://www.riadalma.com/) – a family owned Riad which takes care of everything from airport pick-up to meals to restaurant bookings to tourist guide to personal tours to in-house spa… It was our oasis (literally) for which I cannot thank Pierre (owner of Riad Alma) enough.

We had a guided tour to the Souk. Ignoring all the warnings, Nidhi bought a woollen hand-woven runner (Kilim) after bargaining hard. (It now adorns our dining room)

Pierre arranged for a cab to drive us to Essaouira – which is a coastal town. A must, if you go to Morocco. We were booked in La Maison De Artists, which was sold to us as a sea-view room and which was the only good thing about it. The place has not been cleaned for years – avoid it at any cost. That aside, the town is simply beautiful and the people are perfect hosts. If you are fond of food, do not miss Le Mechouar. It serves some seriously good French food. The town is quite picturesque with ramparts over the Atlantic; coloured doors on shops & houses and coffee shops where one can sit and read for hours.

We were back in Marrakech after two days and decided to take the tour to the Atlas Mountains.

The return journey was a nightmare. The flight was delayed by 6 hours with no BA staff to manage the chaos. My luggage got lost and reached me after 3 days. I came back with a sore throat and needed rest (after the holiday)

I know where I am going for a vacation this year – I have already recommended NY to my dear wife. No more exotic places for me please.

Heat (1995)

"Do not allow anything into your life which you cannot walk out on in thirty seconds flat if you spot the heat around the corner."

Al Pacino, Robert De Niro and the rest. One's a cop, one's a convict - outwitting each other.

Fantastic. Gripping - till the very end.

Rating: ****

Click here to see the trailer

Sholay producer GP Sippy dies...

If one was to ask a 100 Indians to name one Bollywood film amongst the millions released in the last 80 years or so, one name will dominate the poll – Sholay.

The movie was released in 1975 – and no one knew then how big a legend was being born. Everything in the movie came together perfectly. It broke all previous records and in real terms no Bollywood movie has ever come close in over 30 years.

Numerous movies still have references to the characters, dialogues and scenes of the movie. I am one of the die-hard fans who has an original 1975 poster of the movie adorning a wall in my house.

I recently saw the re-make of Sholay - RGV Ki Aag. All I can hope is that GP Sippy did not see it. I sincerely request all Sholay fans to avoid the same at all costs.

Rating: *****+

Click here for teasers:
One
Two
Three

Finally (still fingers crossed...)

I was a bit harsh on Allen Carr three months ago when I claimed that their therapy did not work. It certainly did - though it had a delayed reaction (on me). I did smoke for another day before I kicked the addiction in September.

It's been three months now and I have not smoked a single cigarette (or cigar or pipe or...). The fact that smoking has been totally banned in England in bars, pubs & restaurants helps.

On a recent trip to Morocco - I had everyone smoking around me in enclosed places (there is no smoking ban there), but I did not feel the need to light up at all.

I have succeeded, this time (I think). So for all those who really want to quit smoking, may I recommend the Allen Carr method. If it is not available in your country, please read the book. It helps.

10 years later....

We owned our first classic car in Chennai, India. It was a Morris 8 (1948 model), but due to our move to Mumbai (then Bombay), we had to sell it in 1997.

10 years later, we will soon be owners of the blue MG Midget (1967 model). We will be getting the delivery of the car after Christmas... I will post more pictures once we get it home in London...

Steve Jobs Stanford Commencement Speech 2005

Amazing speech...

...and the Oscar for the best orginal script of 2007 goes to...

..The Darwin Conspiracy.

If I had read this in a fiction, I would not shunned it as too imaginative.

"March 2002: A man vanished in the sea and his canoe was found after weeks of police search. As the body wasn't found an inquest declared him dead in 2003. His wife claimed insurance.

Nov 2007: The man (John Darwin) walked into a London police station and says: "I think I am a missing person" and claimed he does not remember anything after a family holiday since 2000 (A case of complete amnesia!) The police contacted his family, only to find that his wife (Anne) had sold off all their UK properties just 6 weeks back and emigrated to Panama.

As the story unfolded, the police discovered the whole fraud. It was planned from the very beginning - the vanishing, the insurance claims, the move to Panama....

Mr Darwin has been charged, while Mrs Darwin is still not back from Panama (she is selling her story to every tabloid in town before she gets arrested)

I am still not convinced that the story is complete...there is definitely more to it. Let's wait for Anne Darwin's arrest.

Click here for teaser
Script: **********

Does someone care what the consumer wants?

I own a Nokia N95 mobile phone, which is the the most technologically advanced phone I've ever had. It's a phone, a computer with wifi, a mp3 player, a 5mp camera with flash with a a memory card (available up to 8GB today).

As I mentioned in one of my blogs, I have a wifi network set up at home and I wanted my N95 to connect to the wifi network and access the hard drive (containing all my music files). But it would not access the external hard drive for some reason - either the two platforms are different or N95 does not behave like a host. Imagine if I could access my music library through my phone - my N95 would become a remote control for the whole music at home (see Picture)

May be I am imagining - but isn't it what every consumer would want?

Om Shanti Om

A wicked spoof on 70's Bollywood. To fully appreciate, you should have seen Bollywood movies of the 70's or you will not catch the satire. It has every possible masala you can imagine in a movie - romance, song & dance, reincarnation, action, comedy...

Shah Rukh Khan has done an amazing job. So has the newcomer Deepika.

Hat's off - making a spoof is easy, but to make it the biggest earner for Bollywood (of all times) is another thing.

Can I see it again? Of course, I WILL see it again...

*****

Click here for teaser

Flightplan

Saw it on Sky again... a 2005 thriller with Jodie Foster.

Imagine flying from Berlin to New York with your six year old daughter and your husband's coffin. When you wake up 2-3 hours into the flight, you find your daughter missing. An initial search fails. The pilot (Sean Bean) is called in to ask for a thorough search. The little girl cannot be found.
Add to it that you cannot find your daughter's boarding card in your jacket's pocket, you've been on calming-medicines, none of the fellow passengers remember having seen your daughter aboard, the flight attendant says she did not see anyone next to you before the flight took off....and when they call up the security gates back at Berlin, it is confirmed that nobody by your daughter's name ever boarded the flight.

Are you imagining things or has the whole world suddenly turned against you? How can a six year old disappear from the flight?

Excellent plot, brilliantly shot and Jodie Foster. Any more incentives required to watch?

*****
Click here for the teaser

Blood Diamond

A gory tale of how the diamonds from Africa travel to Tiffany's, De Beers and other stores in Europe and US. They change several hands, take a few lives before adorning the fingers in the developed world.

A well told story – built on harsh realities (by no means a real story). Leonardo DiCaprio has acted brilliantly – He was nominated for the Best Actor Academy award for this movie. Worth watching.

****

Click here for teaser

Home Wifi Network

I am quite impressed with myself. Over the weekend I built a wifi network at home. How does it all work? (See attached picture)

– Buy an Apple Airport Express

– Cable it to your BT Broadband Modem

– Connect printer and/or hard drive to the Airport Extreme

– Change your Mac settings to connect (via wifi) to the Airport Extreme for broadband access rather than BT.

Now you can access broadband, the external hard drive and printer wirelessly all over your house.

In my case the 500GB hard drive contains all my music, data and pictures – thereby releasing space on my iBook…and I can access iTunes or iPhoto

The new car...

I remember when my parents bought the first B&W television - it had three control buttons:
Switch on/off/volume, brightness & contrast.

I recently bought a Denon 7.1 channel AV amplifier. It has separate buttons to switch on and off. It has more buttons than I will ever use (or any normal non-geek will). I fully understand that the device is multifunctional but it does not have to compromise simplicity.

iPod wasn't the best portable mp3 player in the world - it was designed with a normal consumer in mind. Nokia is the market leader because it has not changed its user interface since the early nineties - That explains the millions of people who never buy any other phone.

I picked up my new car today. Without getting into the details of the make and model, I must confess that I ordered the highest spec series with the infotainment, SatNav, Adaptive Cruise Control et al. When I couldn't get things to work (they weren't intuitive), I reached for the user manual - it runs into 1200 pages and could be one of the electives in a management programme. I don't know where to begin and how to make everything (or anything) work. I guess that is why God created weekends.

Blow

Though I had seen this movie a while ago, I thought it was good to write about it. As I am planning to read my own blogs when I retire - it would be useful to have a record of what movies I would want to see again...

Blow (starring Johnny Depp, Penelope Cruz) is based on real life story of George Jung who commercialised cocaine in America in the 1970's. His operations were large scale enough to hire planes and professional pilots to bring in "stuff" from across the border. But all the money he made did not change one finality - it was illegal and the law eventually caught up with him. George is still in the prison and will be released in 2014.

*****+ This is probably Johnny Depp's best performance till date. A must-watch movie - a classic of our times.

Click here to see the teaser

All the technology....

Late last Friday night my wife and I decided to stay-in and watch a movie. After scrolling through all the Sky channels, we figured out that there wasn't anything worth seeing that we hadn't already seen. We browsed through our DVD collection – nothing worthwhile there too. The closet Blockbuster would have closed an hour ago. We've all heard about downloading movies so I thought I'd give it a try. The unlicensed P2P (Kazaa, Limeware) are hardly worth because of wrong cataloging, copyright laws, virus etc. and it can take a few hours for a movie to download (if you're lucky) and the iTunes store has limited titles.

So all the technology in the world could not help us get us a movie to watch. Shame.

I have heard of rental movies being delivered by post (www.lovefilm.com) but that needs advance planning too. I am not entirely sure if someone has looked into a way of delivering movies to consumers at the last minute.

How about a "hole in the wall" movie delivery system? There is no reason why movies have to be on DVDs. The movies can be recorded in excellent quality on SD/flash cards, which can be easily dispensed from the local movie points (just as cash points).

Someone from the industry needs to convince all television manufacturers to provide a memory card slot and reader in the televisions and presto – you've got what a consumer wants. Maybe someone is already working on the idea.

Apple, Sony – are you listening?

Inside Man

My wife & I picked up a great movie on Saturday...

Let me admit - I am a sucker for thrillers.

Four armed men take hostages in a bank in NY. As the police arrives and negotiations start, it seems like the captors are in no rush to escape. As the drama unfolds and the police bust the building - they cannot tell the hostages from the captors. What's more - there is no real robbery and no one can be convicted. Until, of course...

***** Must watch. Denzel & Clive are fantastic. Jodie Foster is amazing as usual...(I am biased towards Jodie Foster, though this is not a career defining role for her)

Click here to see the teaser