My dear friend Jagadish who has also been a guest blogger of my blog in the past, who comments on my blog by names Deva and Anonymous is bitten by philately off late. Or should I say, his craze for it has grown exponentially in the past few months [Jagadish, correct me if I am wrong]. Every time, I chat with him, he proudly passes on the URL of the stamps he has recentlybought online. He also shares the collections of other passionate philatelists. One such is a dude named Karthikeyan from Chennai who has some amazing collection of some rare stamps, which he has shared here. Though I still have preserved few stamps that I had collected during my school days, I can not call myself a philatelist when compared to Jagadish and people like Karthikeyan who are more serious and are passionate about this hobby.
Every time I see a collection of stamps, what interests me is the theme of the stamp, rare shapes of it and most of all, the geographic details of the unheard of countries they belong to. I can boast of identifying many such remote islands and countries on the world map now because of this quest of mine. One such island is privately owned island called Sanda Island with a total area of 0.58 square miles (!!), situated at the south of Scotland. Below are the stamps of that island owned by Karthikeyan.
Surprised to see the pics of Gandhiji and paaduke [wooden slippers] on it..!? Though I could not find any information on why Sanda Island is having stamps of our dear Baapu and paaduke, but what blew my mind is that Sanda Island's population is 1!! I mean a single bloody person is living on that island. This sole resident being the European tycoon named Michi Meier who bought this island very recently on 30th March 2010. It seems that the previous owner of the island Dick Gannon, 59, was owning this island for past 20 years! It is also reported that Michi Meier wants to use this island as his bolthole and may not encourage tourism unlike the previous owner Dick Gannon. Read the complete story here. Now you might wonder why some one would release stamps for this one manned island? Find the answer in Wiki here.
This is the first time I am mentioning Himesh's name in my blog! Let me confess, I have liked his music in movies like Tere Naam, Humraaz, Run, Namastey London, Kyon Ki.., Aksar, Aashiq Banaya Aapne etc etc until he went overboard with his nasal singing and forayed into acting. Albeit the whole world hates him, but there is some thing about his music and singing that is extremely inflicting and deeply penetrative. Or should I say, once you hear his music, you can't get rid off it however hard you try. You try harder and harder to forget that one song and those catchy repetitive words, but the song is going to loop infinitely in your mind for days together. The tune displaces your favourite and often hummable song without your knowledge and the song spills out from your mouth involuntarily! Then you suddenly become conscious about if any one around heard you humming Himesh's latest tune. A recent article in Sunday supplement of Deccan Herald rated Himesh's tunes as one of the top guilty pleasures of Indians!!
Remember the title track of the disastrous movie 'Shakalaka Boom Boom'? Yes, I confess again, that irritating tune had run in infinite loop in my mind for days together. Now is the turn of the tune, 'Rabba luck barsa..' from his yet to be released movie 'Kajra Re'. Watch the video and start singing 'rabba luck barsa... rabba luck luck luck.. rabba luck barsa' :)
This is my first Telugu film reco for you guys. I was prejudiced that Telugu films are only about mass masala run of the mill movies, but I was wrong. I saw 'Ye maya chesave', the Telugu version of VinnaithaandiVaruvaayaa. Let me confess that I can understand Telugu in bits and pieces only; I was able to get the complete meaning of the dialogues only when the main characters uttered some lines in English. Forget that, I don't even know exactly does the title mean! I just know, it means some thing similar to 'fascinate me' or some thing of that sort. But there was some thing magical about this movie which surely mesmerized me. Just finished watching it and cudnt resist myself from writing this post.
I wanted to watch this movie badly after reading the review by Hemanthhere. A simple 'yes-no-yes' love story is made extremely believable and adorable by GautamMenon. Hemanth had said, Naga Chaitanya is unlike the other Telugu star sons who are miles ahead when it comes to the screen presence, dancing, stunts and other heroic mannerisms. I totally agree with that. This guy worked for me in this movie, because he does not look like a star! He is 'the perfect' boy next door. He is not great when it comes to acting, but a good director like GautamMenon can brush his weaker virtues under the carpet. I mean I cudnt think of any hero who could do the role of boy next door so convincingly. Portraying Karthik who is 22 year old mechanical engineer and an aspiring film director - he is not the bravest character who can do any thing for his love, at the same time we get to see his foolhardy traits play peekaboo throughout the movie. He hides inside his house when heroine's parents come to his parents smelling some fishy things happening between Karthik and their daughter. He sheepishly and helplessly sits in the church when his love is about to get married to another guy. He looks coward in those moments. At the same time, this guy follows the heroine all the way till Alleppey just to say sorry! He is even capable of hitting heroine's brother when you least expect him to do it. Though he is just 1 film old and not a gifted actor, but Naga Chaitanya pulls it off!
Coming to Samantha playing Jessie in the movie, she seems to be better equipped with acting abilities than Naga Chaitanya. Samantha looks pleasant on screen and ravishingly beautiful when she is saree clad! How can a guy's heart not skip a beat when she wears all those green and orange sarees. Samantha is made to speak in husky voice in the entire movie (not sure if her voice is dubbed by some one). The way she checks if any known person is checking them out when she is talking to Karthik or the way she pulls back strands of her hair behind her ear lobe, I simply loved it. I was smitten by this lady! Just not the screen 'pleasance', her character is also carefully etched by Mr Menon. Her reaction to Karthik when he proposes her, her mood swings, her tantrums over his profession is all made to look so natural.
Camera work by ManojParamahamsa is awesome. The best scene for me is when Jessie calls off the relationship with Karthik in the night near the compound of their house - the light and the shade playing on the faces of Jessie and Karthik and the hand held camera zooming in and out slowly during their entire conversation is amazing. Add some classic background score bits in this scene by ARR - this is my favorite scene in the movie. Talking about the music, few weeks back I had argued with a colleague that ARR's music is not so great in this movie. I eat my words now after watching this movie. I know ARR's music is slow poison, but this is one of the movies where I have liked music more after watching the movie. The frequent bits of violin and guitar being played in the background in many scenes is so apt, just adds to the mood of the scene. I do not remember any recent Indian movie, where the background music is used so effectively. Kudos to Menon for perceiving this and kudos to ARR for proving his brilliance yet again.
This movie is a refreshing tale about first love... Dont miss it.
PS: Now having seen this Telugu version, I am curious about how Simbu and Trisha would have played these roles in Tamil version. I also want to watch it for the sad ending in Tamil version of the movie.
As the battle was heating up with the 16 pre-quartet finalists in Roland Garros for this year's French Open title, I had changed my wallpaper of my comp to the below one.
Federer was cruising through until the quarter finals which ended just few minutes before. Soderling avenged for the loss in last year's French Open finals by defeating Federer in a four setter match. I was left shattered to see Federer losing it so easily to the big serving Swedish giant. This is going to be the 1st grand slam in past 6 years where Federer will not be playing in the Semis! He had appeared in 23 consecutive Semis after 2004 Wimbledon championships. That indeed is sad news for Federer fans.
Being a die-hard Federer fan, I am not looking for excuses for his loss. But this rain hit match was interrupted many times and it is easy for the players to lose concentration and to lose the momentum. Moreover when the match resumes in such conditions, it becomes easy for the big serving guys like Soderling where the ball becomes heavy. It was evident from the serve speed of Soderling which even reached upto 240kmph in last few games. Whatever are those reasons, we have to admit that Soderling adapted well to the conditions and gave no chance for the Master to come back into the match.
With Murray being ousted by lesser known Berdich, Nadal seem to kiss French Open trophy yet again this year. Let's see if Djokovic or Soderling has any plans of devouring the run of 'The Bullfighter'.
