Kishor Krishnamoorthi’s WebsiteKishor a.k.a Mjuboy’s Blog

Wikipedia informs me that more than 5000 Tamil movies have been released since 1931 when the first Tamil movie was released. What Wikipedia fails to mention is that approximately 95% of these movies (4750 for the number geeks) have the same basic plot.

Typical Tamil Movie Poster

The Plot
Traditionally one would assume that the plot and story of the movie would be instrumental in deciding the success of the movie in the box office. But welcome to South India where all international practices fail miserably in the face of the common Tamil man. Infact, there is only one widely known plot which can result in a profitable outcome. Read the rest of this entry »

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Yesterday, I paid the princely sum of five hundred British Pounds to wait. No, not to get on a plane to India but just to wait. The journey to India was just a bonus for waiting patiently. If you add together all the time I spent waiting, it must be equal to the time spent on the actual plane here.

Even though I used their new fancy website to check-in online and print out my boarding pass, I still had to stand in line to drop off my luggage. One would have expected that I would just literally drop off my luggage and be on my way to the plane with my printed boarding pass. But no, wouldnt that just make things simple? I had to stand there for 10 minutes while the woman at the check-in was deciding whether to fine me for that extra 100 grams of weight or not. Finally, I suppose she felt sorry for me and let me go. Not on the plane but to the next waiting list, security.

I had been reading on the news about a year ago how they had invented a system wherein you just walked through a device and it did all the necessary scanning. You’d think that they would have implemented this ingenious system in the airports but they refuse to. I still need to take off my shoes and jacket and walk with my arms outstretched as though I’m about to hug the security guard who grimly nods that I may pass by.

Then the plane? No, that would be way too easy. After navigating my way to the correct gate, I spent another 10 minutes trying to convince the women at the counter that the kid in my passport was indeed me. She asked me to take off my glasses first, as if that would help, then stared at my face and the passport alternatively for abut 20 seconds each and shook her head unconvincingly. I thought she was going to ask me to go get a shave but fortunately, she didnt and said that I may go through but not before I smiled at her and told her she had the most beautiful eyes that I had ever seen. I guess she did not consider the fact that I wasnt wearing my glasses and would have probably called Quasimodo the hottest person on the planet but nevertheless, the simple trick worked and I was going to get on the plane.

And there I sat on the plane, waiting for it taxi down the runway when our wonderful pilot’s voice comes on the PA. Apparently, he missed the slot allocated for our plane for the runway and now we had to wait an additional 20 minutes for the next free slot. How could he even miss it? I mean, he’s paid to sit there and wait for our slot and then start the plane. It sounds like the perfect plan, nothing could go wrong, in theory. But welcome to the world of reality where he was probably trying to chat up the air hostess and ended up missing the slot, and possibly the air hostess too. And thats women for you.

After all the hullabaloo, we were up in the air waiting for the food to be served and I felt bored. There was no more excitement in flying. Sitting in a big metal box for 8 hours while it makes whirring noises is not the most pleasant experience I’ve had. And this is coming for me, a person who flown about 10 times in the past 5 years.  For someone like my dad, who has spent half of his life at 35,000 feet, I imagine a plane journey is about as exciting as a walk in the park. And even with a walk in the park, you can see expect to see something unusual while on the plane, its the same boring thing. Again and again and again.

And to add to this joyous experience, I had Mr.Flu to accompany me. I dont where he came from and how he got there but he was there with me through the entire journey. I have walked in -2 Celsius on frost at 3 in the morning, walked through snow so hard I couldnt see 10 metres in front of me and absolutely nothing happened to me. But I get on this ruddy plane and I’m hit with a cold. I dont know how it happens and dont even want to know.

After some sleeping, reading, eating and more reading, the majority of the trip had passed and we reached the last half hour. The last 30 minutes are always the worst, even after you spent 7 hours trying to count the number of stitches on your armrest. You stare blankly at the GPS showing the current position of the plane and by looks of it, you’d think we were in Hyderabad already. Then they slowly dim the lights and I feel like I’m a restaurant and start expecting food to turn up any moment. Even though we were served dinner about an hour ago, but then again, I’m always expecting food to magically appear in front of me. Following this, they announce that they will be taking away the headphones and that you must switch off all electronic equipment so that you are left in complete and utter boredom staring at the blank window.

And just when I thought we were about to land, we here the pilot on the PA again saying that there is too much air traffic so we have to hover around for about 10 more minutes. It was precisely at this point of time that I made my mind to travel by a supersonic jet the next time. Unfortunately, even if I am willing to pay any amount of money, it cant be done since they retired the only passenger supersonic jet, the Concorde about 5 years ago. It was a beautiful piece of machinery, and since it doesnt fly anymore, my only choice to travel supersonic would be to follow in the footsteps of Joseph Kittinger who jumped off a hot air balloon from a height of 100,000 feet and reached a speed of Mach 0.9 and to this day, holds the record for the fastest speed achieved by a human being without a vehicle.

However, not all of us have the balls of steels that Kittinger had so I had to stick on the plane till we landed and chose not to jump off. After landing, I literally ran to the immigration counter and was the 3rd person off. But then came the next nightmare – Baggage Collection. I spent another 30 minutes waiting for my bag and a majority of the time, I was given false hope by half a dozen similar looking bags which were probably made in China and was sold for 1/10th the price I paid for mine. After some observation, I realized almost nobody had got their baggage and the belt carrying the bags was quite full. Which made me wonder – whose bags are these? But before I could finish wondering, I saw my black bag hunkering down the belt so grabbed it and made my way to the exit.

As I saw my parents’ smiling faces, I grinned like a kid and realized how great it was to be back home and forgot about all the delays and troubles that I had gone through to get here.

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So there we were, happily eating our lunch at this lovely restaurant in town when a strangely familiar song started playing on the music system there. It only took me a couple of seconds to realize that we’d just been rickrolled along with about 30 other people who were having their lunch as well. However, by the looks of it, it seemed like I was the only person geeky enough to know what had just happened. Everyone else was quite engrossed in their meal and appeared to enjoy Rick Astley and his music. Nevertheless, it is quite possibly the most exciting Rickroll that I’ve witnessed.

For those innocent characters out there who dont what rickrolling is, I suggest you read this article and then watch this video. It’ll probably come across as something stupid to many people, but hey, welcome to the internet.

The weather has been pretty rough over the past week. As my housemate Jack said, “you’d think we live in Siberia” and I agree with him. The wind has been pretty insane and we face sub-zero temperatures almost every night. Of course, yesterday was the worst weather, or the best if you see it differently, since we had a nice flurry of snow early in the morning till about 9.

Apart from the fact that it cancelled our planned Gliding trip, it wasnt too bad since I managed to get some nice photos of snow. It was something that I hadnt properly photographed before and was quite fun. My camera got completely wet but it still managed to click on and survive. Yet to upload the photos but I’ll probably do that sometime tomorrow.

I’ve also been using the darkroom quite a lot. After processing my first film, a roll of Ilford HP5+, I started making some prints of it and there has been no looking back. I’ve spent about 2.5 hours in the last couple of days making prints. Its not as easy as it sounds, I’ve tried about thrice to get one print just the way I wanted and I gave up with another photo because I just couldnt be bothered to try more. It is an exciting experience and I’m tempted to spend some more time there today but I need to shoot more film soon. I’ve got some Ektachrome slide film loaded in my camera now which I plan to get cross processed and I’m need to finish shooting that before I can shoot some more Black and White Film.

Shooting film is definitely more fun than digital but digital does have its conveniences and now I know what people mean when they say that both are completely different and you cant really directly compare them with each other. If you have been shooting digital only so far, I would strongly recommend that you try shooting film atleast once to get a taste of it. And since film cameras are cheap as chips, you wont really be losing much if you dont like it.

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I miss celebrating Diwali at home.

I miss the sound of the firecrackers, the trays of sweets, the horde of guests, the great shows on TV and spending quality time with my family at home.

Obviously, we have none of these here in England, but what we did have was a Diwali Party organized by the Asian Society at Essex. The party apparently had fireworks which I could hear from my room but could not watch because of the damned rains just before it. Nevertheless, it was still a decent night out.

One thing the party definitely did, was to bring out the huge Indian population at Essex whom I’d never seen before. It brought out all these people who had been previously hiding in all the nooks and crannies of Essex. It was a bit daunting at first, to be faced by this bunch of Indians I’d never seen before but existed in the same square mile as me. It eventually got better and they almost made me feel like I was at home. I cant say that they were all nice people, some of them were visibly dodgy characters but a good quantity of them seemed like decent chaps.

For me, the night was basically an alcohol fuelled dance session. I say ‘alcohol fuelled’ because if I’m not slightly intoxicated, I feel that dancing is a waste of time, energy, and effort. Of course, after a couple of drinks, you wave your arm and leg randomly and people think you’re dancing and you believe you are dancing as well and think you’re having a good time. But once the effects of alcohol wear off, you look around yourself and wonder what the hell everyone else is doing. Seriously, without the drinks and the music, everyone would look like a very strange crowd of people.

I also use the term ‘alcohol fuelled’ very lightly because I prefer not to get drunk but drink just enough to make me slightly unaware of the stupid dance moves that I do. However, others think different, as we saw with some people who were just too drunk to be healthy and did not know their limits. What a bunch of idiots, I mean, each to their own.

The music was decent with few occasional good Hindi tunes, however the DJ was bad, he kept repeating songs, played some songs way too long and Windows Media Player could’ve done a better cross fade than him. I’m not complaining too much though, it could’ve been a worse night.

As for the rest of the day, I didnt have any lectures but that didnt mean I could sit at home, I had to go and take care of things regarding the massive event we have planned for the US Elections Results Night. If you are on Facebook, you can view the event here otherwise, you can have a gander at the poster I made for it.

As you can see in the poster, it’ll go on all through the night, and will be at Top Bar (University of Essex) with free entry for everyone so feel free to drop anytime during the night to give everyone some company and watch the results on the big screen.

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After my 2nd driving class today, I have come to the conclusion that driving a car is probably easier than it seems. Note that I only mentioned the phrase ‘driving a car’, because driving a car on Indian roads is a whole new concept in itself.

Since the day I turned 18, I’ve been eagerly waiting to get my hands on my own drivers license. After a couple of weeks of experience of being an 18 year old, I finally decided to go down to the neighbourhood driving school and signed up for a month of classes. They also informed me that they would arrange for my learner’s license on the very same day.

Now, I had heard from my friends that you were required to take a theory test to acquire a learners license and since I didnt know a thing about what they would ask, I was slightly nervous. But as I would learn soon, there was no need for me to be nervous as upon arriving at the RTA office, I was informed that they would take my photo and then give me my learners license. Although this sounded a bit too simple as they didnt mention the test, I decided to go along with it.

Few minutes later, I heard a man shouting my name and I walked into this area filled with some computers. I was instructed to sit infront of this camera and before I realized it, the guy had taken my photo which expectedly came out quite horribly. I was trying to explain to him that I wanted my photo taken again but before I could get my message across, this other guy tapped on my shoulder and pointed towards one of the computers. I moved to the PC and sat in front of it, wondering how the hell I was going to do this god-forsaken test but before I could ponder over the idea, a man who was supposed to be assisting me in taking the test did an excellent job and took the entire test for me. I understood that this was part of the entire agreement and finally got my learners license with minimal time and effort from my side.

Yes, that's me pretending to drive for the photo.

I’m allowed to drive 8 kilometers for each driving class. So far, I havent really been driving but only using the steering wheel while the instructor controlled the brakes, accelerator and clutch. And before your mind boggles to figure out how he was able to manage such a thing while I was driving, there is another set of pedals at the passenger side of the car to ensure that I cannot run amok with the car. Anyways, I’ve been happily turning the steering wheel left and right while the instructor watches me, occasionally telling me that I neednt turn it so hard. Its been fairly easy so far and I havent faced any insurmountable situation yet.

Another added advantage of the driving class is that I’ve had the opportunity to meet some of the most incompetent idiots I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing. My fellow students in the class are surprisingly bad at driving even though they are easily a few weeks ahead of me.

I should also add that ‘driving class’ is the wrong word to use since rather than teaching me how to drive, the instructor teaches me how to get from location A to location B in the quickest time possible using the shortest route available. In my first class, he did not even bother pointing out the various parts of car, and just asked me to hop in and take control of the steering wheel. At various point during the class, even if I try to stay within lanes, he asks me to go left and right to avoid the potholes in the road. Only twice have I ever heard him actually mention the rules. Hell, he doesnt even ask me to wear a seat belt. This, my friends, is an authentic Indian driving school which teaches you how to maneuver through the tricky Indian roads and not drive according to a set of rules which would only make you spend twice the time to get to the same place. I’m quite happy with it since I’m more bothered about getting to the party rather than spend time trying to decipher worn out speed limit boards.

Anyways, lets not get too much into the topic, I still have 24 classes left till I get my license and I dont want the man who’s going to be testing me for license to read this.

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I’ve been ardently following the semi-finals of Britain’s got talent over the past week along with my friends. One hour, every night for 5 days lead to a lot of swearing at the TV, swearing at each other and making fun of innumerable auditions. Its been good fun and the finals of the show were held on Saturday.

As always, all of us had our favourites, the people who we wanted to win. My personal favourites were ‘Signature’ a dance group of two Indians, who had a combined style of Michael Jackson and Bhangra which proved very effective and popular. I quite liked their style and the fact that they were Indians was a huge plus point. The other group who I liked was ‘Escala’, a troupe of 4 beautiful girls who played the violin in a pretty spectacular way.

I watched intently to see who the winner would be, and when they had cut down the participants from 10 to 3, only one of my favourites remained, Signature. I cant say I really liked the other 2 of the final 3 so I hoped that Signature would win. Then, when only 2 remained, the final winner was to be announced. However, as fate would have it, Signature did not win, and the winner was this 14 year old kid named George Sampson who was quite good at his rain dance act. I was shocked that Signature did not win, probably along with thousands of others who would’ve been heartbroken.

I am very proud of Signature, for the tremendous efforts that they would have put into their dance, for the unique style that they created, for making all Indians proud, and for not giving up without a fight. I’m sure that they will have a bright future ahead of them.

You can watch the first audition of Signature here, their performance in the semi-finals here and their dazzling finale here.

And for those who’ve already watched the audition and want to listen to the mix they used, you can listen to it here, its called Nachna Onda Nei by Tigerstyle with Kaka Bhania.

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Day before yesterday, Apple announced their new Macbook Air, which is supposedly the thinnest laptop ever made, and I must add, one of the most incompetent too. Although it looks quite sleek and fancy, it hasn’t got much power under the hood and as a result, is quite useless for the average daily user. And the price is another shocker, retailing at $1,799, which isnt exactly anyone’s cup of tea. Honestly, I could get a much better laptop for a much cheaper price. And along with the extreme portability, you also get extreme fragility, meaning you have to take much better care of it. I don’t know who their target market is, and who they exactly aim to sell this to, but I also know that it will sell, simply because its from Apple and its claimed to be the worlds thinnest laptop.

Picture this, you’re sitting in a cafe with your Macbook Air, browsing the web, using its wifi and a friend pops up next to you. This is the conversation that I think would happen -

Friend – “Hey man, long time, whats up with you?”

You – “Duuude, Check out my new laptop.”

F – “Wow, that looks pretty sleek.”

Y – “Yea, its the worlds thinnest laptop and it’s from Apple.”

F – “Sounds pretty impressive, what can it do?”

Y – “Well, for starters, its got a battery life of 5 hours with everything running.”

F – “Thats amazing, now I can watch 2 entire DVDs without needing to recharge.”

Y – “Ahem, it hasn’t got a DVD drive, so you cannot play any discs.”

F – “Maybe I can plug in my external drive and watch movies”

Y – “You can, but it only has a mono speaker so you wont have the best sound.”

F – “That sucks, so what else does it have?”

Y – “Its got a solid 2Gigs of RAM and 1.6Ghz Dual Core processor!”

F – “Neat! That means I can do a great deal of video encoding on it.”

Y – “That might be a possibility, but its only got 144MB of shared video RAM.”

F – “Oh, well, atleast I can browse the internet all over my university now, without needing to lug around my heavy laptop.”

Y – “I hope your university has Wifi all over because this does not have a Ethernet port.”

F – “What the hell? No Ethernet port? Anyways, I guess I can atleast use it to transfer pictures from my camera to my external Hard disk”

Y – “It only has one USB port, so you cannot attach more than a single device at a time.”

F – “I suppose I could run Photoshop on it, to edit my photos.”

Y – “Yea, this baby can run photoshop like a breeze, but the display is only 6-bit so you wont have the best colors.”

F – “Ah, hope you got a good deal on it”

Y - “Actually, I paid $1,799 for it”

F – “Thats a freaking ripoff, anyways, I’ll catch you later, have *cough* fun with your new laptop”

Y – “Wait, it has a built-in camera and multi touch pad and…and……”

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I didn’t even realize that it was 2008 last night because I was too busy watching a classic Kamal Hassan movie, ‘Thevar Magan‘. Only once the movie got over, I looked at the clock and realized I had already spent more than an hour in the new year, and it felt like the same ol’ 2007.

I don’t understand why people make such a big fuss about the whole new year concept. Its just another day in your boring life. It doesn’t not make it more exciting, except for the movies on TV. I think its just a huge marketing ploy just to increase sales of all the goods, and cheat the people by giving discounts along with 5012 Terms and Conditions. And New Years Parties, what a rip-off! An outrageous amount of money just to watch random people get drunk and fill your lungs with smoke. I can honestly say that I had a better time yesterday watching the movie at home than I would’ve had if I went out.

2007 had its own positive and negative aspects but when overall, it seems like a pretty good year. It had the formula for a near perfect year, with its own ups and downs, miseries and joys, jokes and insults and I just hope that 2008 turns to be atleast as good as 2007, if not better.

I’ve also done some updates to my wishlist, but these updates would seem insignificant to the common man since they are all about more and better lenses for my camera. If you are camera savvy, please do take a look here for some great lenses and if you are not camera savvy, still take a look here so that you know what to get me for my birthday.

Oh, and for the sake of obligation, I wish all of you a Happy 2008.

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…you buy a lens that is as much as one months rent.

…you own a $600 car and a $4000 camera.

…you look at a beautiful view with the woman you love and a voice in your head says “f8 at 1/250″.

…you have more photo hardware and software than most Wal-Marts.

…you can’t walk past a camera store without walking in.

…you have thousands in gear but arn’t as happy with your pictures as people with a $100 P&S.

…you can tell what what kind of camera that guy’s using from 30 ft. away.

…your family members and friends start referring to you as “the paparazzi” .

…you spend hours at one spot to get one picture.

…you’re more interested in what the photographer is doing than what the bride and groom are doing.

…the first thing you notice about a pretty woman is the camera she’s holding.

…you base buying a new car on seeing if your light stands and background stands will fit in it .

…your cat sees you pulling out a camera and runs and hides.

…your friends have a tan from all the flash pictures you’ve taken of them.

…you feel naked if you’ve left the house without your camera and you’re sure you’re going to happen upon the big one.

…your wife begs you to stay in bed for a little something special but you insist you have to get to the lake before the sun rises.

And finally,

…you look at this picture and try to figure out which lens she is using.

Several of the above have actually happened to me, so I consider myself to be obsessed with photography.

Many thanks to all the members of PopPhoto.com who participated in this topic, for contributing their thoughts and ideas.

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Yes, its a ripoff of Koffee with Karan minus the gay jokes. I plan to start shooting the first episode on the 12th of August, this Sunday and if all goes well, I should have an episode ready soon. I still haven’t finalized the guest list so I really don’t know who will be on the show. There are still a lot of things to decide but hopefully, everything will fall into place.

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