Saturday, February 14, 2009
DREAM CATCHING(UP)
I am not sure if I have had dreamed about anything for such a long time other than thinking about studying abroad. Five years, and it is still burning inside. Those who know me, and have followed my blog for the past few years would understand what I am saying. Well, you can’t say owning Manchester United Football Club to be a dream; it is more of a fantasy.
I gave GMAT on August 2008 to kick of pursuit of becoming an MBA graduate. With an average score of 680/6, I had to put all my effort on projecting my application through my essays. Fast forward to February 2009, I have an admission offer from one of the premier institutes in USA. There is only one catch though; I need $110,000! Almost everyone I know keep telling the same thing; “it is not worth it.” Perhaps, they don’t understand what this means to me. This is not just an MBA. This is my dream personified. This is the source of my belief, which proves to me again and again that I can capable of realizing my dream through hard work and dedication. I may not be born with a golden spoon, but I hell can make one of my own!
Never expected this day to come sooner; or perhaps has it come a bit late? I always had taken my finances for granted, living everyday on its merit, and with almost no savings. But even if I become a miser from today, there is no way I will be able to garner that much amount in a year. Heck! That is the amount I dream of having in my bank balance when I retire.
Now I am left to ponder my next steps in life. May sound cheesy folks, but I really feel a sense of accomplishment! If I can alter Pierre de Coubertine’s Olympic mantra for a poor student’s dream, “Studying does not matter; getting admission is a big deal in itself.” HELL YEAH!
Saturday, February 07, 2009
Movie By Chance
It was a nice cozy Monday evening when men were men and the sky was blue (bluish grey actually! Damn you pollution). I thought enough was enough and decided to grab a movie which was long due. (I haven’t seen a movie in a week. Now that’s bad!). Since the news papers were “slumdog millionaring” about Zoya Akhtar’s “Luck By Chance” movie, I decided to check that out.
To start with, well, we missed the first half hour of the movie. Which means, we missed Aamir Khan’s cameo, and one of my favorite songs of the movie, “Yeh Zindaghi bhi…” Even then, it wasn’t hard to pick up the story line. The story revolves around two protagonists: Farhan and Konkana Sen, who try many things to gain a foot-hold in bollywood. And it is about how their paths collide and diverge. I must give credit to Zoya, it is very rare to find a meaty role for the heroine nowadays where bollywood is making mindless movies such as CC2C.
Hrithik Roshan is at his charming best, giving a memorable performance as the super star Zafar Khan. When you see him, you may even fail to recognize whether he is playing his character or himself. Never thought I would say this, but I guess Sanjay Kapoor could act too!! Of course, how could I fail to mention Isha, the ice cream girl, Sharwani. She looks gorgeous!!!
Of all the people who had made guest appearances in this movie (and trust me, there are loads, including Manish Malhotra and Karan Johar), Shah Rukh Khan remains in your mind forever. His dialogues with Farhan epitomizes what the whole movie is all about, “when you have everything, don’t forget those who were with you when you were nothing.” So true SRK, so damn true!!!
Even though the story is not hard to understand, it is how the story flows which keeps you engrossed. It is not hard to reflect the emotions and feelings which the characters go through; they are very realistic. Although, I feel that the movie is a tad lengthy, a movie connoisseur might tell that the extra scenes are required to provide a concrete screenplay and to establish the characters. I do not want to reveal all the details here; just go to the theatre and watch it. It is worth a try, and trust me, it you had seen CC2C, you might even recommend this move for an Oscar.
It would be wrong if don’t comment about the fantastic music of Shankar, Ehsan and Loy. Even though you may feel like having a “Rock On!!” aftertaste, the songs are excellent nevertheless. I simply can’t get “Pyaar ki Dastaan” out of my head!!
My opinion: Good movie, very much needed at this time of the hour. You can relax, and enjoy the movie without uttering “what the f$%k, how’s that possible!”
My moment of the movie: There would be a scene where Rishi Kapoor will go about asking all the leading actors such as Abhishek, Vivek Oberoi, Akshay Khanna etc to act in his movie. There was this girl behind me who was going, “wowwwwww Abhishekkkkkkkk wowwwwwww Viveekkkkkkkkkkkk wowwwwwww.” Man…chooooo kuteeeeee!!!!!!! She came with her parents, so that ended there :(
To start with, well, we missed the first half hour of the movie. Which means, we missed Aamir Khan’s cameo, and one of my favorite songs of the movie, “Yeh Zindaghi bhi…” Even then, it wasn’t hard to pick up the story line. The story revolves around two protagonists: Farhan and Konkana Sen, who try many things to gain a foot-hold in bollywood. And it is about how their paths collide and diverge. I must give credit to Zoya, it is very rare to find a meaty role for the heroine nowadays where bollywood is making mindless movies such as CC2C.
Hrithik Roshan is at his charming best, giving a memorable performance as the super star Zafar Khan. When you see him, you may even fail to recognize whether he is playing his character or himself. Never thought I would say this, but I guess Sanjay Kapoor could act too!! Of course, how could I fail to mention Isha, the ice cream girl, Sharwani. She looks gorgeous!!!
Of all the people who had made guest appearances in this movie (and trust me, there are loads, including Manish Malhotra and Karan Johar), Shah Rukh Khan remains in your mind forever. His dialogues with Farhan epitomizes what the whole movie is all about, “when you have everything, don’t forget those who were with you when you were nothing.” So true SRK, so damn true!!!
Even though the story is not hard to understand, it is how the story flows which keeps you engrossed. It is not hard to reflect the emotions and feelings which the characters go through; they are very realistic. Although, I feel that the movie is a tad lengthy, a movie connoisseur might tell that the extra scenes are required to provide a concrete screenplay and to establish the characters. I do not want to reveal all the details here; just go to the theatre and watch it. It is worth a try, and trust me, it you had seen CC2C, you might even recommend this move for an Oscar.
It would be wrong if don’t comment about the fantastic music of Shankar, Ehsan and Loy. Even though you may feel like having a “Rock On!!” aftertaste, the songs are excellent nevertheless. I simply can’t get “Pyaar ki Dastaan” out of my head!!
My opinion: Good movie, very much needed at this time of the hour. You can relax, and enjoy the movie without uttering “what the f$%k, how’s that possible!”
My moment of the movie: There would be a scene where Rishi Kapoor will go about asking all the leading actors such as Abhishek, Vivek Oberoi, Akshay Khanna etc to act in his movie. There was this girl behind me who was going, “wowwwwww Abhishekkkkkkkk wowwwwwww Viveekkkkkkkkkkkk wowwwwwww.” Man…chooooo kuteeeeee!!!!!!! She came with her parents, so that ended there :(
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Saarang 2009!!! Where were you?
Were you at IIT M for this saarang? Dun tell me you weren't there, because you missed a great time of fun and frolick (or frocks!?? I am not sure :D)
I had absolutely no idea to be at saarang because of my extra-tight schedule at office (Deadlines deadlines!!). But no, my fairy godmother had different ideas altogether. I made Zaheer (the one at the right extreme) to go to IIT to atleast even try to get one ticket for the Sonu Niigaam (yeah, numerology!! et tu sonu?!) and Benny Dayal show on 23rd Jan. He wasn't able to get one, so he told me he decided to come to home! wtf!! I can't give up just like that! We have been visiting saarag for the past 4 years, and I am definitely not gonna miss Sonu's show! Anyway, I told him that I am almost there, and we could go back once I come to IIT.
Meanwhile, Ramkumar (2nd from left) along with his friend Madahavan(next to him) also came to IIT on Zaheer's request. So there were we, four guys longing to get into the OAT to catch a glipse of the rocking atmosphere. As luck would have it, there were few guys who decided to sell their tickets as they were already an hour late. But they were selling 300rs ticket at 400! After some hard-ball bargaining from Zaheer and Ram, we found ourselves with four tickets for just 200rs a piece! Do I even have to tell what happened after that! Btw, we look really subdued in the picture, that was AFTER all the rocks and rolls!!!
Btw, can you guess who I am???
Windows 7!!!! damn you!!
My new laptop was working jussstttt fine until I gave a thought about it working "just fine." Then the Murphy's law came into force. An overview, mine is a dell 1520 inspiron 2007 vintage (cost me 62k!!! with all the upgrades) with a fantastic configuration and a cool insurance cover. I was told that if anything were to happen to my sweet lappy, I can get it replaced! Yeah baby! replaced! Anyway, that insurance cover was for only one year, so it got lapsed last December.
I was caught in the buzz of Windows 7 beta testing, and I decided to give it a try. A little overview, my laptop came with installed windows. However, I am a fan of Ubuntu, so I got Ubuntu installed with a dual-boot option. Little I knew at that time, any kind of installation change will break the master boot record of Dell.
All I did was mount the Windows 7 cd, and my whole boot record got corrupted! Like a deer caught in the headlights( a line I picked from the serial "XIII", one of my favo comic book story of all time!!), I tried to fix it, but in the end I just made it worse.
I had to do a fresh install of my OS!! I was feeling damn pissed about that as I had my machine really customized. However, I was sane enough to put all the data in a separate partition, and also to have periodical back-ups on DVD drive. So all i had to do was reinstall the OS, reinstall the drivers, update OS definitions (easily the most irritating part!) and regenerate links! And tada!...I got my laptop back!!
So guys, some lessons from my experience
Drop in a comment if you need any specific answers! And yeah, don't forget to read the dell's manual and its EULA so that you don't complain about it later :)
p.s: Currently I am using only XP as my OS. I have installed virtualbox from sun, and inside virtual box, I got my Ubuntu running. Try virtualbox sometime, it is awesome! Enough of all that dual-boot nonsense!
I was caught in the buzz of Windows 7 beta testing, and I decided to give it a try. A little overview, my laptop came with installed windows. However, I am a fan of Ubuntu, so I got Ubuntu installed with a dual-boot option. Little I knew at that time, any kind of installation change will break the master boot record of Dell.
All I did was mount the Windows 7 cd, and my whole boot record got corrupted! Like a deer caught in the headlights( a line I picked from the serial "XIII", one of my favo comic book story of all time!!), I tried to fix it, but in the end I just made it worse.
I had to do a fresh install of my OS!! I was feeling damn pissed about that as I had my machine really customized. However, I was sane enough to put all the data in a separate partition, and also to have periodical back-ups on DVD drive. So all i had to do was reinstall the OS, reinstall the drivers, update OS definitions (easily the most irritating part!) and regenerate links! And tada!...I got my laptop back!!
So guys, some lessons from my experience
- Any kind of repartitioning the hard drive(s), dual-OS, manual changes to boot records will erase the factory shipped MBR of dell. This means that you cannot press ctrl+11 and expect to have your factory shipped image of your computer restored.
- Windows 7 doesn't recognize many drivers! You have to run it in vista compatability mode, or sometimes even at XP compatability mode.
- If you are doing a fresh install on the same hardrive or even in a different hard drive, and you want all the dell's factory settings restored take a look at the following links.
To restore dell's media center partition:
Drop in a comment if you need any specific answers! And yeah, don't forget to read the dell's manual and its EULA so that you don't complain about it later :)
p.s: Currently I am using only XP as my OS. I have installed virtualbox from sun, and inside virtual box, I got my Ubuntu running. Try virtualbox sometime, it is awesome! Enough of all that dual-boot nonsense!
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