An adieu to my much-loved

I thought I would release at least 3 blog posts this week, but I haven’t released even one till now. I perhaps got too much into the ‘relaxation mode’, and felt too lazy to do anything.

I’ve been moody for the past two days, the reason being I had lost something which was extremely near and dear to me. I should’ve expected something like this to happen this year, as I already mentioned in one of my previous blog posts, this year isn’t that great on the personal front :(

What I lost was one of my precious, sweet and cute star-shaped ear studs- presented to me on my birthday 9 years ago.

Since then, the ear studs and I were inseparable…the only exceptions were when I had to attend weddings, when I used to grudgingly replace them, though only for a few hours (no other lesser occasion could detach me from my beloved ear studs).

Once, a friend in engineering happened to notice that I always have the same ear rings on me and asked me if I ever change them. I said no and even joked that they were my ‘kavacha kundalams’. So just imagine the plight of losing one of my ear studs, which I held dear for the past 9 years. And also, this happens to be the first expensive item I lost in my whole life.

Hopefully, I should be out of my depression by the weekend, although I’m sure I’ll have little drops of tears whenever I look at the stars or for that matter, anything star-shaped :(
Sigh!

Book Review: The Lost Symbol

When I saw this book in the bookstore, I was thoroughly overjoyed at the bulkiness of this book. If the comparatively tiny Da Vinci Code could incite marvel in me, just imagine what this book had to offer! :D :D

I had enjoyed reading the Da Vinci Code; the thriller like narrative, and the startling secrets it revealed- a perfect cocktail for an enjoyable book.

I expected the same and more from The Lost Symbol...the book seemed to promise a more enthralling experience.

I must say that after finishing the book I was a tad disappointed. The book hit the bull’s eye when it came to creating nerve-wracking suspense with its gripping storyline, but the book did not rouse any ‘omg!’s or ‘wow!’s or ‘awesome!’s, when it came to revealing secrets as was expected.

The book does make for a good reading; make time for the book when you are absolutely free, coz it may be hard to set the book down once you start reading it. I must say it was one of my ‘read without eating-sleeping-doing anything’ kinda books.

The book falls a bit short of its expectations only because it did not reveal any controversial and unknown facts; otherwise, this book is definitely a must-read for its plot and is much much better than many other best sellers.

P. S. : I found the last few chapters a bit senseless though. After all that the characters in the story have been through, they leisurely discuss about paintings and buildings as if nothing happened :P

Books in 2009: The God of Small Things, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari and The White Tiger

My very first novel in this year was The God of Small Things, which I started reading in May as soon as I was done with my final semester exams. One reason why I chose to read this book was mainly because the author, Arundhati Roy is an activist and articles about her keep popping up now and then in the newspapers and I was curious to read the very first novel she wrote. I kind of anticipated that she would write something totally unconventional, bold and probably enlightening.

I must say the pace at which I read the novel was too slow, somehow I couldn’t get beyond 10-20 pages at a time (which is very curious in my case as I’m the type who reads a novel continuously without eating-drinking-sleeping till I finish it). I somehow wasn’t interested at all and forced myself to read the first half just for the sake of not leaving a book unfinished. As I came to the second half, the story began to take a shape and it was only then that curiosity arose in me and I quickly completed the second half.

The way the story is weaved by switching the narration recurrently between the past and the present is commendable. The story seems so ordinary initially, as you read all the tragic and shocking elements creep into it.

Though it was quite a good-read, it’s not my kind of novel.

The next book I started to read was The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. I think there is a lot of hype surrounding this book, I dunno why though. Throughout my engineering I would always find someone or the other deeply engrossed in this book, in the college bus, or in the bus-stops.

Naturally, I had very high expectations on this book even though I did not know what it was about (I usually don’t try to find out about any book, I just pick a book by instinct or choose the award-winning ones. Maybe it’s high time I changed this habit and go for any book only after taking someone’s opinion.) To tell the truth, I thought it was a novel a-la The Da Vinci Code or at least a bit adventurous! Poor me :(!

No sooner had I begun to read the book filled with enthusiasm and zeal, than I realized what the book was actually about. Even though I was disappointed, I continued to read it with the hope of getting some enlightenment out of it, something which I could apply to and improve the quality of my life (!!! :P).

I have to say that it was an ordeal to read even ten pages at a time! After the Herculean task of reading about 57 pages (omg!) of that book, I finally decided to call it quits.

Now, I plan of catch hold of someone who already read that book and get from them the message that the book wanted to convey!

For the record-this is my first unfinished novel :(

My most recent book was The White Tiger, which I completed just yesterday.

A dark tale told in an intriguing manner- this aptly sums up the content of the book.

This is yet another novel I picked to read simply because it won a prize (The Man Booker Prize). And ya, also coz the cover page looked funky and cartoonish :D.

The author solely depends on the ingenuity of the way the story is told to captivate the attention of the reader; he makes no attempt to build any sort of suspense as the turning-point is revealed in the first chapter itself.

It was a novel that was quick paced and managed to keep me glued to it.

After a long time...

I’m back to blogging after a long long time :D. It’s not that I didn’t have the time or didn’t have the mood to write, it so happened that I wrote a series of blog posts, but never released them. I’m glad I didn’t, else I would’ve regretted it sooner or later. I filled up many word files with stuff I would’ve liked [then, not now] to release on my blog. But then, the posts were too personal and I chickened out from releasing them.

With the advent of 2009, I’ve realized that things are going quite good in my college (and now professional :D) life, but things are awful big-time personally this year. Maybe it’s just my feeling, maybe it’s true.

Life had been sort-of like a giant, precarious roller coaster ride a few months back….now I can sense a calming down of the turbulence….but hey, I can’t be too sure- this is 2009!

I now resolve to write blogs regularly coz I feel rejuvenated and back to my old self and it’s time I start to hone my long-lost writing skills again.

Prized Memories

It is with a heavy heart that I’m writing this blog post. My heart feels heavy because I’m soon going bid farewell to my college, which has been my second-abode for the past four years. I’ve become very attached to my college, the environment and most of all to my friends, and the very thought of leaving it all soon, brings tears to my eyes.

I remember the first time I stepped into the college; I was awe-struck at the size and beauty of the campus! The very first year of engineering was spent getting used to the long-distance travel and the very-new environment and thinking about how to escape the seniors. I must say I’m happy that I’ve never had to face any uncomfortable situations, I was only asked by a few seniors to tell my ‘BD’ and wish them whenever I see them. I did make a few friends in the first year, but they were just friends with whom you sit in the class and listen to the lecturers. That had always been my definition of friends. What I enjoyed the most in the 1st year were the labs-seriously!

Come 2nd year and it introduced me to some of the most fascinating inventions of man- Orkut, yahoo messenger and google talk! They made communication much more easy, made me feel that my friends were always within reach. I made many more friends in the 2nd and 3rd years, life went on like a dream, so pleasant, so happy, I enjoyed each and every day and looked forward to going to college. I enjoyed the subjects too, as studying computer science had always been my goal and was not an obligation.

During the course of these 2 years, I changed a lot. My grumpiness gave way to humour, I learnt to be more cool and speak from my heart, to be myself and enjoy each moment in life, in fact I learnt a lot about my own self. Most importantly, my friends became an inseparable part of my life.

Working for Qubit-’08 as the event coordinator of the Online Treasure Hunt and again for Qubitrix as the designer of the souvenir (and I designed some banners too for the event) taught me many things and simultaneously instilled confidence in me.

4th year has been even more enlightening for me. It made me stronger, increased my confidence levels drastically and I’ve done things which pleasantly surprise me when I look back.

With only a few days of college life left, I feel happy as I know that life has a lot in store for me, but moving on is not going to be a piece of cake as I also know that I will never get such wonderful days back again.

Something Amiss

I’m a huge fan of online games. I recently found a genre of games that was new to me- “point and click games” and instantly took to liking them. These games usually involve escaping from a particular room or situation and the games proceed by clicking at various places in the scene, finding various objects and how to use them together to escape. Some involve even mini-puzzles that should be solved to move further.

I came across one particular series of point and click games- the “Something Amiss” series, which I found to be very intriguing. The series has 3 parts- Chapters 1,2,3 which are interlinked. This game has a story and is actually a kind of mystery, which gets unraveled slowly as you play the three chapters. You have to pick up various items and use them to perform a task or escape from a place and the usage of objects in this game is quite logical most of the time, unlike many other point and click games I’ve played.

The graphics in the game are quite good, and the scenes are designed with detail. I played all three chapters and thoroughly enjoyed it. It does consume a considerable amount of time, given the length of the game. But, I recommend that you do play the game; I feel it’s worth the time.

Here’s the link:

http://www.somethingamiss.com/

2..2..5

Weird title huh? Well, I think so!

2 blog entries in August, 2 in September and 5 in the first half of October…what does it mean? It means that I’m wasting more of my time in October! Somehow every other thing seems to be more appealing than studying, especially before exams.

Remember the funny pictures blog entry? The other day I was searching for funny images on the Internet with a view of releasing a ‘Funny Images-2’ blog entry (kinda sounds like The Mummy-2 or Spiderman-2!), but most of the good images were copyrighted.

I found this picture though:

Initially, I found it to be quite funny, but as I looked at it a second time, it reminded me of…………exams!!!! Hence I quietly closed the preview of the image, dismissed the whole thing as a bad idea and thought of another topic to write a blog on.

Then came the marvelous idea of writing ( and at the same time boasting) about the novels I read. But then I just couldn’t get the flow (I’ll do that sometime or the other though).

Suddenly I want to write so much in my blog! I still dint decide as to what to post in my blog- whether to write my day-to-day experiences and use it as an online diary or choose a topic and write my views on it, Well, I guess I’ll do both and use the blog for many other things too.

The reason for this particular post is to tell myself ‘No more blog entries for a month from now'. Hope at least this will make me open my books sometime in the coming days.

But, who knows, you MIGHT find a new entry within a month, or in fact tomorrow itself, well, that’s me!