Chivalry is dead

Chivalry is dead, they say.
No one holds the door open for you,
'After you' is a forgotten phrase.
Giving up your seat in the bus?
Are you nuts?
Kids don't mind their P's and Q's,
Teenagers scowl all the time,
Young people don't respect their elders.
Chivalry is dead, you say.
I say, you get what you give.

Ta da! Another sem is over. (Cue: Applause)

You know, it's weird. There's still an entire year of college left. Till 8th semester that is, when I will only have to show my face in college for two days a week. That's something to look forward to, at any rate.

In the more immediate future, guess who's all set to have fun. That's right. Moi. I'm going to spend ten glorious days having as much fun as I humanly can.

I have plenty of things to do. I might be doing my in-plant training these holidays and there's still the matter of turning twenty. So far, I've struck a couple of things off my list but there's still so much I want to do. It includes some impossibilities like going to a Linkin Park concert but there are other things which aren't so impossible. For example, I want to finish writing at least one entire book. Just a small one. I'm thinking of calling it 'Turning Twenty'. Yes, very original I know.



Christmas is less than a month away and I'm looking forward to it. There's something different about it this time. I can feel it already. I spent all of yesterday evening downloading carols and Pride and Prejudice(the movie). Now I can't stop humming 'God rest ye merry gentlemen'.

My room is crying out for attention and I will have to spend a considerable amount of time on that. I don't mind. I actually like cleaning my room. I never know what I'll discover. For example, today I found a whole bunch of friendship bands from way back when and I couldn't throw them out. I couldn't. I'll just find them a new home.

Life is looking good. I'm going to meet my friends, my family, I'm going to be doing things I love and blogging all about it in the most annoyingly comprehensive way. Have fun, folks. I know I will.

The vampire-human conundrum

Enough's been said about the weird yet wildly popular Twilight. The world seems to be divided into two types of people: Those who talk about Twilight and those who don't give a damn. Guess which one I fit into. Ha ha.

I'm not going to bore everyone by summarizing Twilight. I'll just get to the point. As much as I like Stephanie Meyer's style of writing, the movie just refuses to cut it. Let's face it, the vampire theme is frankly, being abused. You want a good vampire movie? Watch Underworld. And Rob Pattinson? No offense to the dude, but he looks like Kate Beckinsale can kick his butt on a bad hair day. The term bad hair day takes on a whole new meaning with Edward Cullen's ice cream cone head.



Now that New Moon is out, I will not lie to you guys. I'm definitely watching it, if only for the Volturi scenes where Pattinson gets his butt kicked. Romance always has its allure but like all vampire-human romances (Blood Ties, True Blood...I won't include Underworld because not only did it decently refuse to let Kate be excessively romantic but also turned that Michael character into a hybrid)the whole plot just gets too mind numbingly mushy for a rational mind at times. If they start quoting poetry, I'm so out of there.

About True Blood, don't watch it unless you have nothing better to do. Blood Ties actually has a plot and everything(albeit a much used crime detective angle, but hey it's better than no plot at all). I'd still tell you to go watch Criminal Minds instead, if you're into that though.





In conclusion, Twilight's more of an accidental success spurred on by adolescent, teenage girls who just don't know what a good movie is. Romance is all very well but let's not lose our taste over it.

P.S: I watched most of them anyway. So never mind.

The Ebook Reader is Here

Ebook readers are slowly but surely gaining a foothold in today's technology driven world. When Amazon's Kindle first came out it didn't take the world by storm. It was a novelty and bibliophiles around the world eyed it with interest. It was apparent that others would soon follow in its wake and they weren't disappointed. Today, Sony has its own range of readers and there are others like Foxit's Eslick and the iRex digital reader vying with each other in a rapidly growing market catering to large number of consumers.



On a more personal note, I'm in love with my new Sony PRS 300. It is by no means the best reader in the world but it can hold up to 350 books, it's very easy to handle and it's mine. Perfect. It also sports the epaper feature so it looks exactly like a printed page which makes reading easier.
I just about had a heart attack when it froze today. But after a couple of hours of freaking out I noticed the reset button which set things right again, thank God.

I've got to get back to 'Mostly Harmless' now. Excellent book. Douglas Adams is a genius.

No roads left

As I get swamped down with the pressures of exams...ok, I'd probably feel a lot less pressurized if I had actually attempted to study something ahead of the last day before said exam. But that's not the point. The point is, as I battle it out with my textbooks, I can't help but think whether it's really worth it. Not the studying, just the cramming and stuff.

I've often thought, 'what if I had been in a better college? Would I have been more interested in what I'm doing? Would I be conquering the world right now?'
And the answer is no. Yeah, that's life.

Anyway, I was just looking for a few tracks by my favourite band, Linkin Park and I came across a few interviews by Chester and Mike. What a contrast. Chester was your typical high school rock punk who played gigs and did drugs. He's been in rehab, he's had a divorce and he still struggles with drug and alcohol addiction. And he's got the most beautiful voice. I swear, no one can scream like Chester does.



Mike went to Art school. He spent years painting and somewhere down the line switched over to his hobby, music. He writes, he plays, he sings, he raps, he paints...one interviewer even went on to call him a modern day rennaisance man. I came across a few paintings he's titled 'Glorious Excess' today.


So these are the people behind the music. But when the music takes over, you don't think about any of that, do you?

Will I ever be perfect? I doubt it.
Will I change the world? No doubt about it.

P.S: I'm getting addicted to crossword puzzles. I haven't finished an entire one yet but it beats studying.

Floods, chaos, disaster. And it's only the monsoon.

Ask anyone and they’ll tell you that I’m nutty about the rain. I can sit and stare at it, if not for hours, at least for reasonably long periods of time. But even confirmed rain lovers like me have their limits. Mine was reached today as I waded through dirty, ankle deep stagnant water to get to my bus stop.

The very thought of what might constitute a majority of that water makes me shudder. Chennai, as usual, does not have the ability to sport a dry patch of land as soon as it gets some decent amount of rain. Blame the government, blame the drainage, blame whomever/whatever you want but the fact remains that it’s a safety hazard to walk the streets during the monsoons.
Just another one of the woes of the people who love 'singara chennai'.

Why can't I find the cornhusker vortex online???

I can't believe this. I've tried everything. I've tried to watch it online, I've tried downloading it and I can't. It's supposed to have been aired yesterday! Whatever happened to stuff leaking out on the internet before it's officially out, damn it?
I guess I'll have to wait.
'What is the world coming to?' she wonders, as she butters her whole wheat bread with a disappointed sigh.
Yeah, ok fine. I'll stop whining.

Matter matters.

Okay, my library’s been shifted to Tambaram and that effectively leaves me with nothing to read. I’m entirely dependant on the net and old issues of the National Geographic to tide me over. Of course, I have my semester exams in a week and I’m pretty hopeless. So I guess I should start reading my textbooks for a change. But they don’t have stories about killer whales and the Dongpo Pa and the Pecos River. They have no humour. Life is hard.

Yesterday, I saw a play called ‘Death’. It didn’t impress me very much. But they tried, I’ll give them that. I enjoyed spending time in French Loaf after the play with my friends even more where we discussed burning issues like, ‘who wants the last bite of the croissant?’


Oh yeah, there’s something else I wanted to say. In today’s papers there were at least four articles on social networking, all of them basically saying the same thing in different ways with attempts at humour which ceased to be funny by the time people stopped checking their orkut account.
‘Brave new worlds beckon’
‘What’s your love life status?’
‘Be what you want to be’
And this is just from today’s papers. Give it up already. Everyone already knows all about face book and twitter and second life. It is no longer a novelty which you need to milk for all it’s worth.


We know all the dangers, we know the perks and we know about the perverts out there who will use your phone number and address if you’re stupid enough to put it up on the net.


I’m getting tired of reading articles where the writer informs the world of the uninitiated, in tones a Mayan priest might have used to tell people why the gods needed the latest human sacrifice, about status messages in face book and how it can range from the mundane (‘Kavya just ate an apple’) to the boring to the occasionally informative or humourous. Stop writing about it and start writing about something we don’t already know! I realize my rant adds another article to the wide array of rants about networking sites but hey, someone has to point out that we need better articles in the newspaper.


Talking about articles, check out today’s TOI (Sunday Times), page two for ‘Go easy on the pitch, buddy.’ It’s hilarious and very well expressed.
Go on, get off of that chair and get the paper.