anti-war rally, NYC

I spent the morning making phone calls and cooking - two things that go very well in the multitasking domain. Just as I was ready to sit down for a brunch and a movie, I saw what looked like hundreds of people walking down (rather, up, since they were going north) 6th Avenue with anti-war posters on display.

I rushed to the roof to find most of my building mates already there, and a professional photographer. What started looking like a few hundred people turned out more like thousands, then tens, and now that it's over, I think about a hundred thousand people crossed in front of my apartment.

I don't have political preferences - heck, I don't even know enough about politics to open my mouth. What I was enjoying is the sheer energy of this city and the people within. We had put up a couple of speakers, and had Michael Jackson music blasting away towards the crowd from the roof. People were wonderful - they waved to us, and were taking little dancing breaks as they crossed down below! I don't know words that can accurately describe the feeling when you have hundreds of strangers dancing and waving at the music you are playing from your apartment!

And what a rally it was - from people with protesting slogans, to what looked like professional performers, and Chinese(?) dancing bands, and bands with panpipes and "kanshor ghonta" - in brief, I have never seen anything like this before, not even in NYC.

Then the cops came up. They said they had a problem with us being on the roof of our apartment, and they could have us arrested. To make it clear that they were talking business, one of them even pulled his gun out and pointed at my building mate's dog. That sent the message home - didn't want to get shot or arrested, so we all came down.

We still had the music on from within the rooms for another half hour or so, until the last of the protesters walked past and a blockful of cop cars forming the rear rolled by.

At the end, what started like another slow weekend turned out to be a show exploding with sheer human energy!

no man's land

Today, the evening theater show presented a wonderful Bosnian War movie, called "No Man's Land". For those of you who think I am a part of some artsy film circle and watch foreign movies in the luxury of some spanky hall, keep on dreaming. This was just another movie from Netflix, watched on my wonderful iMac, started right after the fresh bread popped out of the oven.

What's this movie about? War, really. It's got just the right amount of action to hold on to my gradually waning attention span - yet probably falls into the category of character movies, since it was more about people than about the war in particular. Two guys from opposite sides of a war get trapped in a trench, along with a wounded man sitting on a motion sensing grenade. They interact beautifully to make this movie a gem of a piece, even to a person as ignorant of politics as yours truly.

Of course, the language makes no sense to me, but since dialogs are slow, the subtitles are easy to follow.

so then. Time to hit the bed with a Feluda novel. Last night, for a change, I thought I'd skip the bedtime reading and drop straight to sleep, since I was tired like crazy - but then that didn't work, and I was awake for about 40 minutes before I gave it up - and picked up the novel. From that point, it was blissful sleep in less than 10 minutes. I think I read somewhere about the relation of exercising the optic nerve and going to sleep. Yes - that's right - it's in the weekly journal of B.S.

spring cleaning

Have you done your share of Spring cleaning yet? I just did some - and thought a little break was due, so here I am, ranting away to no one in particular.

Then again, I have some new ideas. Most of which are created from the lack of space in my tiny little apartment.

Take refrigerators, for instance. Why do they have to be big bulky things that take up so much space? I mean, what's in there anyway - an insulated chamber with a cooling mechanism, right? So why can't you hide it into something else - like counter top cabinets, for instance - so you have regular cabinets, and one of them also cools. Or walls - make the walls inside the apartment a little thicker, and lets hide food away in them!

Or, say, cleaning fluids. I have so many kinds of cleaning fluids, the first thing I had to organize was the cabinet with these in it. There's tub and tile cleaners, decloggers, degreasers, floor cleaners, Pine Sol, Murphy's Oil Soap, hand sanitizers, dishwashing fluids, oven cleaners, counter top cleaners, Swiffer juice - and then there are refills for every one of them, just in case I run out of the juice in the middle of a cleaning spree.

Then, there are boxes. Of stuff I bought that I might have to return - shredders, vacuums, and the like - but they didn't break in the next 30 days, did they? Then the boxes are pretty pointless, aren't they? Why can't they automatically destroy themselves when left empty for more than, say, 2 months?

Speaking of innovations - let's get this idea in writing, that I have been bouncing off my friends for a few weeks now - car locking mechanisms. I don't like the ones that lock the car automatically after some time, because I can get locked out. I don't like those that you have to beep, because I forget whether I forgot to lock or not, and have to go back to the car to check. So this is my take on the topic - have the car talk to the key. Bluetooth, radio, whatever. If the key is so far away that the car can not talk to it, it's time to lock the car. If not, just let the driver handle it herself. What say? If you file a patent on this, will you please mention that you read it here first?

Well, that's that. Timeout-out. Back to cleaning.

blood, guts, bullets and octane

just finished watching a movie. well, that's not entirely true - finished, yes, just, no - was fighing with the settings at blogger.com and trying to get it to work with my website at caip for the last hour or so. which means I was done with the movie about an hour back.

ah, so you ask, which movie? "Blood, Guts, Bullets and Octane". there you go. twenty points to you and JK Tires for guessing the category to be "action and adventure". what's in it? all that is in the title. there's not much of a plot, nor acting, and hardly any special effects, apart from the jittery hand held camera used for the entire movie. that apart, it was a pretty interesting watch, specialy when I came to know that it was made on a mere $8000 budget, and made it to halls all over the country. indie movies, I guess, are made of these. interesting storyline, interesting development. given $8000 and the best of my friends, I sure won't be able to get anywhere close to this. would I recommend it to you? well, so you like indie movies, and would you laugh when someone gets shot in the foot trying to act smart when they are really very stupid?

there's a first time to everything

First start to my blog, like first starts to everything else everywhere I have ever made, is as sensible as pyjamas on an elephant. Or Oiliphaunt. Whatever.