Tuesday, June 28, 2011

TRUST - A Movie Review

Trust, movie by David Schwimmer. Yes all time top ten  TV Series FRIENDS actor, fondly known as Ross Geller. He is the director of this film and he has done a great job. I knew he is talented actor and he proved it as a director as well.

This movie is recommended for many teenagers who are so caught up with Internet chatting. I would say this movie is not only for a teenager but every girl who has been tricked and fooled. Whose trust has been abused. For every girl who trusts, believes in people thinking that the world is a better place. Who has been emotionally and/ or physically abused.

Annie is 14 yrs old. She is not a stupid foolish girl. She is smart, confident and courageous. She is good at what she does. It is shown many a times in the movie that she loves volleyball and that she is a star player, who is treated dependable by her coach. Yet like any other girl, she  has to face the crude reality of life. She is assaulted and exploited sexually by a stranger on the Internet.  For only sin that she committed. Yes sin of trusting. A guy she meets online in a chat room tricks her with manipulative talk and involves her in sex. She is raped. Yes even though it happens with her consent it is treated as a rape when Annie herself realizes that he used her to have sex with her.

This film talks about trust. Inevitability of not being able to protect your loved ones. The agony that parents go through when they have failed in keeping their children safe and protected. The angst, rage that a Father goes through against the one who has hurt his little  girl. About how to deal with the child who is hurt.  And most importantly about how to stop whining over what is not in our control and how to be there to pick our loved ones when they fall.

It takes a while for Annie to realize that she has been tricked. Eventually she accepts it and tries to cope with life, though she knows that her life has changed for ever and it is never going to be the same again. Facing her friends her college, her family members who are sympathetic to her which only makes it hard for her to forget what has happened to her.

My favorite scene is towards the end when Annie's father played by Clive Owen, break down saying that he has failed in protecting his child. He is constantly obsessed with finding the  accused, tracing him. He imagines/ dreams of killing him. He even starts chatting on chat rooms as a young girl to trace this guy. Film captures all these emotions so beautifully. Clive Owen has done justice to his role as a protective father. Great performance by Liana Liberato( Annie ) and him.

This film does not offer justice to the damaged life's/ family. This does not give the vengeance that is deserved by the victims. It actually ends with a scene where in the pedophile is shown as a happily married, having and kid, yeah being a father himself. That's life. That is merciless world.

Pros: Direction by David Schwimmer, Performances by Clive Owen and Liana Liberato.
Cons: None I could think of

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Learning

Hiragana 
I was fascinated by french sometime back. Today, it is Japanese. I have a colleague at work ( Business Analyst - Shin Ohkura ), who is Japanese. I am very impressed by his working style. That added to the Anime( Japanese) movies that am watching lately got me interested in Japanese Culture. I have ordered few classic Japanese novels ( translated to English) which are yet to arrive.

Learning the language itself stems from watching this movie - "5 Centimeters Per Second". Such a brilliant movie. So poetical. So real. Reading English subtitles I wanted to know what those mean in Japanese. In the native language. So I started learning Japanese. I wanted to pursue this as a serious avocation. I tried to contact few schools in Bangalore. But to no avail.

So I started learning it online. I have finished learning Hiragana, Katakana Alphabet. I easily can write a spoken word in Japanese using these Alphabet. I can also read a word that is written with this alphabet. Yet to learn Kanji which seems difficult at this moment. I felt the same looking at Hiragana 2 days back.

Katakana 
Learning is something I enjoy very much. I love to learn new things. Just that it has to catch my interest. Not sure if this exercise of learning Japanese is also going to go down the hill like French. Hope not.

I was searching for desktop or online tools to practice more of what I learnt. Then I landed on this site LiveMocha.com. They link you with another person who knows the language that you are learning so that you both can converse and know the culture/ language.

So while I was browsing this website I see a pop up. A chat window from a total stranger on this site. It seems he is an Indian living in UAE and who is seeking friends. Friends on a language learning website? I am amazed at how guys try calculate your age by asking indirect questions :-P. Like, when did you complete your studies. Their rough estimate of graduation is 21 years. So if you say 2008 today, then you are 24 now. This guy asks me since when I am in Bangalore. And he was surprised or rather disappointed to know that am in Bangalore since 5 yrs. Not sure what his calculations told him. But his immediate next question was if I am married. I enjoy bashing these strangers online when they ask me such questions. How desperate men are! But well, I had registered with my original name and I was afraid to bash him ruthlessly. So I politely denied his so-called friendship request and escaped from this site.

But whole of this exercise of trying to learn something new, taking tests, writing down the alphabet which is the first thing I do as soon as I wake up in the morning, a guy hitting on you...makes me feel like a student all over again. I must admit it makes me feel young. Not young in terms of age, but young in terms of lightening up my heavy heart :-(. I love learning. Cause I am good at it. And when I evaluate myself at the end of each learning I feel good. The sense of accomplishment feels great. No wonder I loved being a student. No wonder why I was so happy in my college days.

Friday, June 24, 2011

My Recipe for Banana Cake

My whimsies continue...

I used to hate bananas. Until recently. Reason, my late night meetings which used to end at 12:30 in the midnight or 1 in the morning. After my meetings I used to feel damn hungry. Banana was the only food available at that time for me. So I thought of Banana cake. This has been my favorite since a long time. Since my Oracle days. The best banana cake I have ever eaten is from ICRISAT, Hyderabad.

Though I planned to cook Banana cake over the weekend, I could not wait till the weekend. Well, Friday evening, it IS a weekend. So here's my recipe for Banana cake.


Ingredients:

1. 2 Cups of All-purpose flour ( Maida)
2. 3/4 or 1 Cup of Sugar ( I don't like it if it is too sweet. Otherwise you can use 1 cup of Sugar )
3. 3/4 cup of Butter/ Ghee
4. 2 Egss
5. 2 ripe Bananas
6. 2 tbsp milk
7. 2 tbsp lemon juice
8.1 tbsp Baking Powder
9. 1 tbsp Baking Soda
10. Cinnamon or Ilaichi Powder for taste

Preparation:

 Mix ghee/ butter with Sugar. Add eggs to this and mix thoroughly. You can use a mixer for this purpose. Add milk, lemon juice to this. Add mashed bananas. Add baking powder, baking soda, and flour and stir well.

Once the mix is ready, apply butter to the pan and spread this mix in the pan evenly. Bake this using oven. It takes 45 mins for the cake to bake. So simple isn't it?

Thursday, June 23, 2011

My Recipe for Mixed Vegetable Soup

Whimsical Me! I wanted to prepare two things today. One Banana Cake. Two a hot simmering yummy soup. I realized I do not have all the ingredients to prepare Banana cake. So I settled for Soup. Bangalore climate this afternoon suited perfectly for a hot cup of soup.

Anyways my recipe for Home Made Mixed Vegetable Soup.

Ingredients:

1. Potatoes (2)
2. Tomato (1)
3. Beans (6)
4. Onion (1)
5. Coriander leaves ( for garnishing )
6. Carrot (1)
7. Sweet Corn ( As you desire )
8. Cauliflower or Cabbage Leaves ( As you desire )
9. Ginger-Garlic paste ( 1 tbsp)
10. Garam Masala ( 1/2 tbsp )
11. Pepper Powder ( 1/4 tbsp )
12. Salt to Taste
13. Olive oil ( 2 tbsp )

Preparation:

1. Cut Potatoes, beans, carrot and tomato into two sets. One to boil which can be 1 inch pieces. Rest of them finely chopped.
2. Boil the big pieces with enough water. I used pressure cooker.
3. Peel off tomato skin. Grind all these boiled vegetables. Due to potato this gives a thick paste which we are going to use as stock for the soup.
4. Cut onions. Whichever shape or size you desire. Long, thin pieces or 1 cm square shaped small pieces.
5. Heat Olive oil. Saute the chopped onions in this oil.
6. Add ginger-garlic paste and let it fry till its raw smell is gone.
7. Add rest of the finely chopped vegetables and let them fry for few mins
8. Now add the grounded paste to this and 4 cups of water to this.
9. Add salt, garam masala.
10. For those who like it to be spicy add Pepper powder.
11. Let it boil for 5-10 mins till the vegetables are cooked enough.
12. Finally add coriander leaves and the soup is ready :-)

Sunday, June 19, 2011

Alternate Life

When does your life start to split? You are an ambitious happy go-lucky person who is very enthusiastic about what life brings, and who is so optimistic and full of zest, who is very daring to dream. Who has so many plans of what to do, how to do, where to go, what to be etc. And suddenly you are this "I figured it all" person who seem to have understood life as in a complex system with boundaries. Who is calculative or pessimistic about every approach that you take. Who, to say, is just going with life. When does this happen? Or how does this happen? When do you start having two life's? After your college, when you have lost touch with those childhood/ college friends? After your first major trauma? After your first heartbreak? Once you start working?

Do you leave behind the life that you dreamt of and go on with the new life that you are obliged to live? Or do you have two separate life's one which is expected of you and one which you struggle to maintain in order to keep your sanity? No I am not talking about multiple personalities that people have with different people.

For some routine life of work, family, friends is life. Probably is the only life. For some their work like art, music, or any other profession which they  love and cherish is their life. Lucky ones. For some, there are two different life's. A secret life. Like an anonymous blogger, dance which they practice taking  time out of their routine life, writing, reading. For some this alternate life is also a life with a different set of people. Different set of friends.

To me this happened when I faced a family crisis for the first time in my life. Being an elder child whole responsibility was on me. That changed my life. That was when the split happened. I was no more cheerful, careless girl. I began to worry. I began to depend on people a lot. This took me away for a while from a life that I dreamt of. A life with no obligations, a life that is perfectly in my control. Life that involved art, travel, fun, friends, and writing. Even today to the people at my work, to my family am a successful woman who has come far. I am good or rather great at my routine job as a programmer having a steady successful promising career.

But this is not the life I dreamt of. I always wanted to be a student. A researcher. To study. To read. To know. I love reading. All this reading only made me more philosophical and pessimistic in my routine life. However, in my alternate life I still dream of impossibilities. I still believe that someday some miracle might happen and that I will find absolute bliss in what I am doing. My job as a programmer does make me high at times, but not always, because the kind of work that I get is decided by someone else. So in my alternate life I want to have a hobby or something to do which is totally under my control. Which I love doing. Which defines me. Which makes me feel the power of having your life under control. Which gives me hope. I tried blogging. I tried dance. I tried learning foreign language. I tried Photography. But I am unable to continue any of them. Not because I cannot take out time from my routine life. Not that I lack any inspiration or motivation. Books I read, movies I watch constantly motivate me. And I do have the fortitude to break free from the rut of routine. I do have friends or acquaintances who have these alternate life's where in they pursue their interests. Am glad to know their alternate life's. But I do not know what I miss.
May be someone who could appreciate all this? But isn't the point of having an alternate life is to keep you and only you happy. Is it not something that do only for you. Then what am I missing? Look at me, I have started this blog in 2003 and number of posts has not even hit 100. I understand that it is not about the numbers. But why do I loose track. Can I ever find a passion to life for?

Movies that inspire me, 


Books that inspire me,

   

People whom I know personally who are successful in pursuing their dreams,


I will keep updating the above lists. I am sure they would keep growing.