Sunday, November 27, 2011

Life in Oct 23 - Nov 26

I wrote a 3 page long life in series two days ago and then i dont know what key i pressed, but it closed the window and for some reason blogger didn't auto-save the draft. Alas, here is attempt 2 with 2 more days of update.

Last Life in series installment was little bit sparse, it didn't cover all things that happened to me. Hopefully this one is full of info.

~Boardgames - Yes, i have been a weekly member of office board games (With Maneesh, Brian, Dane, Heather and Sean). We have played Powergrid and other games which i dont remember (sorry about that). It has been a lot of fun and wed evenings were never so interesting before.

~Office move - Yes, our office moved from Mountain view to San Bruno. This meant many things. To start with, it now feels like a big company. Reminds me a lot of trilo days. Large office space, small cubes,  less communication and general lack of purpose :) The office move also brought back the commute, so now we (me and Nikesh) take that caltrain and ride the bike from Milbrae. We experimented with multiple time slots, now we take the 5:57 bullet from Mountain view and 4:24 pm on the way back. San Bruno is little hilly so riding the bike there is a decent workout. I am loving riding my bike again, its a great bike.

~Thunder soul (Kashmere stage band) - Thunder soul was the camera cinema club movie for the month. It is a docu based on a  high school band who under their prof - Conrad Johnson made funk/jazz albums which won many awards and festivals. The amazing thing is that not only it was a high school band but its a band of all blacks and this was 60s when the civil rights movement was very high. What make these documentary is so special is its sheer timing. What we see is that the band members reunite after 30 yrs to stage a concert to than prof who is close to his deathbed. A few band members have not played for the last 30 yrs, so it makes the whole process very interesting. A very inspiring and emotionally charged documentary. As Tim(club director) rightly said, this is a movie that you would not see on your own if it was released. The discussion with the director was very interesting afterward. This movie is not getting any theatrical release because its opening weekend on a test theater was not as expected. So, even thought it has won many awards, it still is not release worthy which is very frustrating for a director.

~Thunder thighs - From thunder soul to thunder thighs, this is the new album by Kimya Dawson. She was in SF, so i went to see her concert. It was great, i have not heard her new album fully yet but from the songs she performed, it seems that they are really good, it is basically poems set to a song like tune. And her poems have message, strong points of view which i agree to most of them. THere were couple of other performance as well and Aesop was there. Overall a good concert to attend.

~Music - a separate blog post coming soon :)

~Diwali was decent. Had big plans to cook Rasgullas and dahi vada  but nothing materialized... was lazy :)

~Crosswords/Nytimes - I wanted to read nytimes on my ipad and they wanted me to buy digital subscription. On researching online, i found out that buying print gives digital for free and print had a 50%off offer. So i bought it and its been great fun reading a physical paper since.  Its going to take a long time for humans to adapt :).  At the same time, Tom Macke from office told me that he solves crosswords every day and it takes him 5-10 mins to solve it. He even went (actually invited) to the annual crossword competition once and e said that he was no good there. I asked him to solve the crossword in front of me and it was amazing seeing him work. Anyways, so he sends me a crossword daily and even though i am no good at it, i like cracking my head against it. Even with google (used under restraint) i find it difficult.  But it is very interesting nevertheless. I spent 4 hrs last sunday at the sunday crossword which is supposedly easy but big. It was lot of fun. The whole community around it is also very interesting, its great to read the analysis of a crossword puzzle like in the Rex parker blog or at nytimes.

~Wordplay - I have been a frequent listener to NPR's wordplay on Sundays with Will shortz. So much that about year and half ago, i even ordered his books but never worked on it. Since my new crossword fascination, i have been trying to boost my learning curve with these additional materials, so i spent the last saturday working on puzzles in that book. So fun :)!

~Film making workshop - I bought a fb deal to attend film making day long workshop at SF school of digital film making. It was about two weeks ago on a saturday and i was in no mood to listen to classes. But still i went there but bunked after half way. It was okay, on the first half they covered roles/terminology directing 101, camera positions and showed us cameras that they use. Things that i missed were lighting, scripting etc.  Too many people showed up, it seems that film making is the new craze these days. After skipping the class, i went to Lulu and had an awesome french lunch :)

~Halloween - Halloween at office was less fan fare than usual. I went as a occupy wall street protestor. Also did pumpkin carving at Deepti didi's home with Siddarth and their neighbors.



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