Memoirs of a geisha

I just completed reading the book. Quite an interesting read; The movie comes out on the 9th of Dec; Hope I can see it before I fly to India on the 10th. I loved the imagery. Zhang Ziyi looks really nice. I like "Mameha" too.

I saw the GoF a couple of weeks ago. It WAS the best Harry Potter movie shot so far, without doubt.

7 more days of co-op, and then off to India for a nice winter break!

Friendship!

I dedicate this post to this universal relation. Yesterday I was wondering about the exact definition of this term, which we use so commonly in our everyday lives.

So what exactly is this friendship? Are all the people whom we know our “friends? Or is it bounded by some special limitations like “You can only refer to a person as a friend, if you have at least had two or more conversations with him/her? “

I multitask a lot, and I do different sets of activities with different set of friends. The person whom I shop with is not the person whom I see a movie with, or the person to whom I grumble to at the end of a bad day or the person with whom I fight for no reason at all.

Of course, I have friends with whom I do all of the above. I call them “best friends” – An elevated status of friendship.

But most often, we use the term friend to represent a person with whom we have shared one or more conversations. We may not anything more about the person except his name (say) and his apartment number, or the route he takes to work (If it coincides with yours), or the place where his dad works (It may be the same place where your dad works ;-) ). i.e. We just know the one/more details that makes us call them “friend”.

Should me have a more intimate term for people we know better (best friend, bestest friend) ; or do we find our relationships too complicated to categorize neatly into labeled boxes?

What do you people think?

Fantasy worlds

Watched the full trilogy .. LOTR. I read the book about two years ago, and I must say that the movies were not a let - down. They were as interesting as the books themselves, if not more so. The imagery was wonderful, it seemed to have been created straight from one's mind.
I had gone to see the Lord of the Rings exhibit at the Museum of Science last year, but sadly I was not able to connect it to the movies back then. I wish it would run for a second time. It would be interesting to see Narsil, or Galadriel's flowing gown :-), or catch a glimpse of boromir in the boat (I remember that quite well).
Orlando bloom looked great as Legolas, much better than the sorry figure he cut as Paris in Troy.

I'm reading prince Caspian now, the fourth book of 'Narnia'. Narnia is not as dark as our other wizarding world. I noted some striking similarities to HP.

Striking Similarity between HP & Narnia

1. The last name of the Narnian kings/queens was "Pevensie". They go to the inbeween world, which has pools to enter different lands.... Reminding me of the "Pensieve" which is an anagram of Pevensie!!!!


Similarities between LOTR & Harry Potter (This is a long list.. with spoilers)


1. In HP, Voldemort splits his soul into 7(likely) horcruxes.. In LOTR Sauron puts his soul into the One ring.


2. Character similarities:

1. Harry ====> Frodo. Frodo has to destroy the ring, Harry the horcruxes.

2. Ron =====> Sam.

3. Dumbledore =====> Gandalf. (Gandalf appears to have died but returns.. can we hope the same for dumbledore??). They are similar in appearance as well.

4. Dementors =====> Nazgul.

5. Wormtail =====> Wormtongue.

6. Both Harry's parents & frodo's parents are dead. Both of them are brought up by their uncles.


more to follow....................

Books & Movies

Read the first book of 'Narnia'. A good read, but was more for the children. I saw flight plan this sunday. It was good. Jodie foster however bored us to the point of irritation in the first half, with her olympic sprints through the flight. One of the trailers was interesting - "Memoirs of a Geisha". Came to know that it was based on a novel. I looked it up on Wikipedia (My dictionary of sorts). Hope i'll get to read the book first.

30th September

More than a month past. Time I started to pen (or keyboard) something down. It's a friday and I had gone out for lunch, as per the customary practice. I had a good buffet lunch at Chennai Woodlands, with Bisibela bath and Kovakai. Reminded me of amma's great cooking back in India.
Our topic of discussion was the Indian gods, and I was saying that I like lord Krishna better than Rama. Rama was too Idealistic for my taste. And I can never get around to forgiving him for his "so called duty" of testing/ Banishng his wife when he felt like it. It sounded too chauvinistic, and was therefore (I Guess) cherished by our Junta. Obviously, none of the desis there shared my feelings on the topic.
Then our conversation moved on to Harry potter; and there came the inevitable comment; "It's a children's book!"
As always, this kind of comment comes from someone who has not read one book of Harry Potter in his entirity. People always express their opinions very strongly when they have no idea about the subject. I challenge one of those "children's book" opinion holders to read the 6 books and then give me the same verdict!!
Another thing to note, some of the best works in Literature have been children's books. To date my favourite books like Heidi, Alice in Wonderland and Dickens' David copperfield were written with children in mind, but they retain their classic appeal among childen and adults alike after all these years!!
Speaking of books, I bought the Chronicles of Narnia (A major motion picture for the holiday season). Must see if matches Hogwart's Standards!!

- Mithra

15th Of August

Independance day. Opened this B'log. More to come soon.