Xin Chao!

It's only been 2 days but already I've seen a world heritage site and eaten the most amazing food so I can't wait for the other 8 days remaining! Halong Bay is just stunning beautiful - the calm water, the limestone formations - I was too chicken to swim after being warned about the massive jellyfish but still awesome - the only thing was the 3 hr bus ride there and back for jsut 4 hrs there but still definitely worth it! There are some phenomenal pictures and a video but will edit all that when I get back! till then....google!
The people on the tour seem nice tho predominantly from the southern hemisphere - NZ, Oz and SA as well. I'm the lone ranger from a country above the equator - Sorry! the tour guide is from France so with all the different accents, I'm barely talking.
Looking forward to a more relaxed day today with a massage, water puppet theatre,a cycle tour of vietnam and of course - SHOPPING! I am going to make a list of all the things I bought and then if I go shopping during the rest of this year - kill me!

Holiday - Celebrate!

It's been 5 days already and I'm loving every minute of it! Of course, I'm broke by now - I was supposed to have $200 in 'reserve' - it has now been spent and I might be breaking into money for 'Nam! Luckily for me, against my mother's extremely sensible advice, I carried the credit card so if I like something, Charge it, baby!!

I have only reached HKG as yet so spending quality time wit Cousin, baby, BFF and the bride [this time in person, not on chat!]...done loads of shopping, eaten yummy south east asian authentic cuisine, hit the clubs, saw the red light area - I'm just going to list it all out!

• Dinner at the Bride's friend's house
• Snack at Thai hut
• singaporean lunch
• Wan chai market
• Prince Edward Market
• Lunch at the football club
• Sneaker street in Mong Kok - spent 3 hrs over her looking for Onitsuka tigers and no they are not big bugs as suggested by my cousin in law!
• Wan chai clubbing area - also the red light district
• Lang Kwai Fong
• Causeway bay
• got my hair straightened
• North point

So many things!! So much fun! and tho I am missing home  - it's a l'il bit! I would rather like to have the boy here with me than be at home with the boy!

Jaane Tu Yaa Jaane Naa.....

butI jaano one thing - I want Imran Khan - I'm dying to put him in my showcase - Ideally I would like to do more but having certain restrictions due to the boy - I have gotten permission to put him on display - Still it's one step on the ladder - who knows where it can go from here? He makes me want to stalk him!
but Certainly, the movie is certainly feel good!The setting, the clothes, the people, the story and the music...is fantastic. I've seen the movie twice in one weekend and I have to admit, the first time I might have focused more on 'Jai Singh Rathore - Ranjore ka Rathod' than the movie but still enjoyed it. The second time I saw it with the boy and he loved it - he is counting it in his top 20 and if he says it, then it must be good. It is really well made from the dialogue to the clothes to the acting. I cannot enthuse more about this film - I put up the photie of Imran Khan so you can see how drool worthy he is! Hee hee - there is this gujju character in the film with oakley's and parakeet hair! All the boy needs to do now is dye various parts of his hair blond on different days!

I attended a friend's engagement in Delhi on Saturday and he was dancing up a storm in his joy. The girl is really sweet and I suspect they are going to be extremely happy together. However I was in awe at the transformation over the years - he came from what he terms a small town to campus where he thought most of us were strange espescially the women - my god! we drink,we smoke and we wear clothes like that!! And that day, his general demeanour reminds me forcefully why it's wonderful that we live in an India of today, where we appreciate our small town roots and sensibilities and can still embrace a 'western' culture. It's no longer shameful that people speak Hindi instead it's infra dig if you don't!!I love living in a world where we cross a chasm of difference like it's a crack in the paving - it can be viewed by some people as bad luck but for most people it's just another step!

Back in the day...

I have just taken an enforced walk down memory lane - friends, and I use the term loosely, have put up photies of us from college and all the mad things we used to do. As I saw them, I had a pinch of nostalgia for the fun times we had , intense amusement at the clothes we used to wear but more than anything else,I felt extreme and utter horror at the hair we used to have!! I for one looked like a boy in quite a few of the snaps - the short hair and the jeans look does not work for me at all - even girls who have beautiful hair had these haircuts that do nothing for them!
The fashion statements are extremely hysterical tho - checks were obviously the coolest thing, we had them in all the colors and one girl in particular had them in every single color! The next was the bright colors - I'm still partial to them but not the colors and the prints at the same time - a friend had bright orange with smiley faces - I'm still convinced she wore her nightsuit out in public. We also had reflector glares - those shiny mirros don't transalate well in photies!! But one thing does come out in those photographs - the good times we had still generate enough goodwill that 12 very different girls who have had their fair share of fights, still manage to get together and laugh over who they used to be and enjoy who they are now with each other! In the very many comments that the girls have posted on the photies, there was a very true statement made, we were like grapes back then and we have all matured into very FINE WINE!

The Unbelievable Hulk!

So I did see 'The Incredible Hulk' yesterday as planned and the title is apt - it is absolutely incredible and not in a good way - the proportion is all wrong, the pace is too slow and generally the ending with Stark in it prompting the thought of a triquel or whatever the hell you call it is just unbelievable!

I was most amazed at the lack of constant proportion in the movie - in some scenes,the Hulk is shown as massive dwarfing buildings and in other scenes, he is shown as only 1.3 times taller than the average human which makes him roughly the same size as a basket ball player in the NBA.

Unlike in Iron Man, I cannot complain about the lack of action in this movie - there was more than enough fun chase scenes through the very pretty slums in Brazil, there was violent face off in the middle of New York and the villains is really excessively ugly - I am not looking forward to evolution if the human species is going to look like that in the coming millenia!

Actually coming to think of it, a movie combining the thought and wit of Iron Man with the mindless action of the Hulk coz there is obviously no brain behind it just might be the best bet after all!

In the Hulk, another point that escaped me was the inability of the green monster to communicate - I mean he was/is a cellular biologist for crying out loud - he finds it impossible to string together a few words - he was able to string together DNA easy enough to change himself! and if I were the Hulk and Liv Tyler had to literally whimper 'Bruce' one more time and that too unintelligibly, I would possibly forget that deep within, there is a source of love and strangle the living daylights out of her!!! I find these actresses so wasted in action films - Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts - she has enough acting credit to her name not to need to be seen in a non challenging role like this - unless she was a fan in which case it's completely excusable! I'm not sure what Liv Tyler's acting credits are but it seems to me that love interests in comic book movies can be done by aspiring actresses rather than these known names. though Jennifer Connelly did the previous Hulk after being seen in a Beautiful Mind - go figure!

I suppose seeing the movie in a preview theatre that seats 30 people altogether may not have helped my experience which would have been vastly improved by watching in complete comfort in a red lounge! Let me clarify though - not a bad film, worth a watch but not to the standard I was expecting espescially from an Edward Norton!

I got Smart in Brugges

So After very many moons, I saw 2 movies this weekend - one being the extremely funny 'Get Smart' starring the extremely gorgeous Anne Hathaway and the extremely comic Steve Carrell [ I read this review about how Steve Carrell makes every character human and it's true from the office to the Ewan Almighty] and the second being 'In Bruges ' with Brendan Gleeson, Colin Farrell and the extremely hot Ralph Fiennes [tho have to say in this film, not hot just old!!]. Was really happy with both movies, but 'Get Smart' cracked P up way more than me and for once I agreed with the boy that wikipedia could possibly help with 'In Bruges'!! I had seen 'Sex and the city' a couple of weeks earlier and I had found that experience a bit lacking coz tho I had seen it with a whole bunch of girls, they possibly weren't like my close girl friends so there was no giggling about the film or the similarity to our lives or lack thereof espescially in the range of clothes and shoes - Men surprisingly weren't that fabulous though I did see some similarities between Mr. Big and the boy! I have a whole list of movies planned for this week since I seem to have missed the good ones recently - excessively annoyed since Indy seems to have disappeared from theatres! Anyway, the movie list for this week is:

• The Incredible Hulk - Wednesday hopefully
• Persepolis - looking at Thursday
• Made of Honor - Saturday for sure
• the Nanny Diaries - optional - have a feeling one can see this on TV + have not read the book as yet so hate watching movie first, classic example of the Devil wears Prada, I could not use my own imagination for anything!!

and this is not even taking into account the Bollywood releases which are due - really looking forward to Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na which has the fabulous song ' Hey Aditee!!'

Also this weekend, met up with adoptive parents from A and went for a birthday dinner too!Yay! I bes productive after ages!

Another one bites the dust!

Just back from yet another wedding - this one in the distant hills of Uttarakhand, Dehradun! I have realised though that I do the most travelling for my closest friend's weddings! For R, I took 11 hour flights, travelled a day and a half each way to be present at the wedding and in her adopted hometown for a mere 6 days. In this case too, mega travelling involved - taking trains after centuries and here too skipped the bachelorette or in this case, the most fun party with the overflowing alcohol!
I had been having doubts about this wedding and the reasons behind it - thinking that parental pressure and easy options were the motivating factors. However, seeing the 2 in action after a long time, all apprehension has disappeared - I don't know about the chemistry or the grand passion but they are each other's best friends and I believe that is most necessary to make the marriage a surefire success!
So we started on a tuesday evening after working the whole day - caught the 8.30 flight to Delhi, which surprisingly took off on time, caught a cab to a friend's house where 4 of us were congregation to catch the early morning train to D'dun. However, with one's flight delayed and the other's bus breaking down, we weren't all in till around 3 a.m leaving precious little sleep till 6 when we had to catch the train. Once we boarded the train and reached the destination, we needed baths asap having had the brilliant idea of not changing the night before and staying in tuesday's clothes for 24 hours+!! After what seemed like the annual bath, off to the parlour we went where I died of boredom during the blow out of my hair!! then to the cocktail where we slimily kept sending the boys to the bar to get us the booze! The next day we took a drive to see a bit of the place where I really learnt the meaning of small town - the town is 15 mins across with one main road and not much to do! then dressed for the wedding where my ex-flatmate looked gorgeous and talked all through the ceremony including making faces at every oath of which she did not approve! In between the 2 ceremonies, we sneaked off to do a little celebrating of our own which included looking through photies of the wonderful times we had as students in Pune which resulted in nostalgia for the days gone by and regret for the thought that we would never be as young or as carefree again! After the event, we proceeded to 'KaalRaatri' where the bride's sisters/friends keep the groom away from the bride whole night till the bidaai the next day.
Post this last occurence, B and me proceeded to Mussoorie where we rejected hotels, were rejected from hotels, finally found literally a flea bag motel and then proceeded to drown our sorrows through retail therapy! The next day was spent sight seeing, being awestruck by the beautiful valleys and the perennial mist/fog, the fantastic view from Lal Tibba the highest peak of the ' Queen of the Hills' and we discovered this quaint hotel which is actually a residence converted to a hotel with wonderful food and such lovely character! we met the charming owners and wondered how their grandparents were smart enough to buy property and tons of it! and might I add, his grand father and mine had the same profession - law!!
The last day saw tons of travel again - the previous routine reversed - the train followed by a flight both of which were delayed which means I reached home rather late and cranky!
I was a little cribby about the distance travelled but I am feeling rather refreshed and all in all I think the joy I got from seeing D peaceful and calm in her choice of lifemate was worth all the effort - after all that's what marriage is about - a lifetime committment to someone else's happiness!