It Starts ....

Its been loooooong, and I don't know when I will be able to write next just bcoz I don't know when I will be able to squeeze some free time and even if I do that, will I use it to blog.

Seniors used to say that 2nd year is tougher than the 1st and 3rd is tougher than the 2nd. Well, and every year we were like "It can't get worse than this". But then, it does :
Third year is finally here,and boy !!,did it start with a bang, rather it started with BANGS !!
This week we had 4 assignments (all one week long assignments). Now, each is supposed to take like 5 - 7 hours, but again notice the word "supposed". The coding takes only 2 hrs. But the damn debugging takes 2 days !!, that too after a combined effort from the entire departmental batch.
I finally found some free time today coz 2 of the 4 assignments had a deadline of today and are hence completed. One's due tomorrow and one day after.

Once u get such assignments, its not about hard work anymore. Its more like "the wheels are in motion". Once u start working on em, u won't know the time. It is very time consuming and at every step u r like "hust 5 more mins and it will be done". 5 hrs later, u r still slogging !!
That's 3rd year.
It becomes more like a machine. U start and it goes on till the deadline approaches and shuts u off, well, just to start u again, but that's a different story.

But yes, I still manage to average 5-7 movies per week and atleast one trip to Domino's :D (its due for tomorrow for this week :) ).
I m not gonna bore u again by reviewing the movies (and I sure don't want ansari to feel jealous :D ), but I'll just list em.
Ring 1, Ring 2, Three Kings, Enduring Love, Summer Of Love, The Insider (best of em all), My Wife's Murder (In theatre, but ya, I wish I had seen it on the comp :( ), unleashed, white noise, 40 days and 40 nights. Phew, now that's a nice long list :).
But seriously, all these happened majorly in just 2-3 days of last week when I was relatively free.
Another thing that 3rd year does is to get u close to ur "like-fated" departmental ppl. All suffering from the same epidemic :)
U suddenly start adding ppl to ur yahoo list so that they can help u out in time of despair, which is like, every 10 minutes I suppose :).
Enough of that now.
Adios.

The Halfness Of The Glass

Crazy post title but then, as of now, I am neither too positive nor too negative.
Lotsa things happened and undid themselves and happened again actually. It's been a while.

My project which had come soooo close to success (I know I wrote that it had succeeded in my last post but..) and then went almost down to nothing, but rose back again to a steady level. All in all, it went quite well and the prof was more than satisfied. So I guess, that settles it.

So, for those of u thinking abt y i didn't talk of movies yet, well, here goes :)

1. Kung-Fu Hustle: Saw this flick in the theatre. It's a goooood comedy but then it's very close to being animated. Lotsa stuff that will have u in splits immediately and lotsa stuff that comes close to kiddy_stuff, but then, I enjoyed it like hell, partly coz my friends who ver watching the movie with me ver very much into crazy comedies and ver havin a hell of a time. U know, sometimes, these things influence u a lot. What ppl u watch a particular movie with CAN actually affect ur view of the movie. Anyways, not in mood for psychological discussions today :

2. Dark Water: Saw the trailer while I was watching Kung-Fu Hustle and I must say, they did a great job making the trailer. The first half of the movie makes u feel that the trailers were infact, pretty close to how the movie felt till then, good, but slightly slow. The second half started to drag and lose out. At the end, the movie finished very well, but was kinda negative in nature. But then, at the end u wud realized that it was kinda OK, tho there were times when u ver totally glued to the screen, while at other times u felt like thrashing the ppl who ver involved in making the trailers (no offence meant).

Saw lotsa other movies too, but they ver mostly repeats of flicks I had already seen. Tum Bin, Kal Ho Na Ho, Fellowship Of The Rings, The Two Towers.
Will watch Return Of The King soon and finish off the trilogy. Then will watch City Of Angels soon too.

Oh and yeah, the new sem started, just today infact. Seems OK so far but I plan to make it hectic this time. Let's c if I can stand my own inflictions :)
I always start out the sem with great good resolutions and end up failing at each of them !!
Not even one even gets started man !! I have tried again this sem but by ensuring the resolutions before hand and made sure that I atleast legally signed the resolutions (I won't try to explain that).

Other things r going pretty well.

Now for book reviews. Three of them. Will keep it short here, tho will write in detail for my homepage http://home.iitk.ac.in/student/ganshul (the site is down as of now).

1. The Prodigal Daughter: Jeffrey Archer's sequel to Kane And Abel was not quite close to what Kane And Abel had achieved. KAA was very good. TPD comes close, but then somehow manages to lose its flair. I really cudn't understand y the story took the turns it did. It was good to know abt so many things, hence the book was knowledgeable and coz it was the first to enlighten me upon how elections and all go on at the internal level, it was pretty good. But no great and intriguing plots and gripping twists as in KAA.
I was happy to find that the main charcacter in the story faces many problems and tho with her best preparations fails at many times !! It wasn't like movies u know. So, in that sense it felt different and real-like. Some things were sooooo non-cliche that I was surprised at their happening and I was sure it wud be a dream and that the author would quickly replace the things. But, it was refreshingly good to see things go bad in novels :)
Overall, still a good book, but just as a legacy that sequels never manage to throw out, this one lacks the charm that KAA had.

2. A Painted House: My first experience with Grisham. I read the back cover and ppl warned me that it wasn't exactly the law-stuff that Grisham generally writes about and then they fooled me by saying that nevertheless, it was an outstanding book. Yeah, OUT standing. I think even Grisham would feel bad for me if he realized that I started reading his books by selecting this one first.
Positives: GOOD characters. they really leave an impression on ur maid. u can almost feel their presence around u. The characters ver indeed very well made.
Very realistic plot. Simple and localized.
Third, the story is told thru a seven year old kid's point and I must say at most points, u can almost feel the kid's innocent mind and his childishness and even his mischievious mind.

Negatives. Second half of the book is so damn slow and goes to sub-plots that ver not at all required.
I also felt that a seven year old kid wudn't exactly have responded the way this kid did, especially at hiding emotions. I don't feel seven year old kids cann hide their emotions so very professionally that even their moms' can't figure them out.

It lacked content and almost all things that a good_read require.
I will conclude with this - Never repeat the mistake I made and start ur Grisham Campaign with this book.

3. Shall We Tell The President: The last in Archer's trilogy of Kane And Abel, this one doesn't make the mistakes that TPD did . This was a really good read and the book is infact just some 250 pages and so the story proceeds at a very good pace.
Again, the flair of Archer's style of writing was more than evident in SWTTP. Very intriguing plots, tho slightly fictional u might feel. It is a very very good suspense thriller and the incidents are fairly good. The main characters are just too perfectly made but the side ones lack concreteness.
There was that something special abt KAA, like was special with The Godfather 1 and with The Matrix part 1. U know, the 1st parts are somehow special and get more credit. Sadly, it's true for this trilogy too. I don't know why, but KAA is slightly and only slightly better than this one, tho I accept I can't reason it out too well.

Will read "White Mischief", "Timeline". "Angels and Demons" and "Anne Frank's Diary" soon.
Keep checking.
B bye.