Musings From New York

YAGW

Yup, it was Yet Another Great Weekend.

Friday: I cooked a meal! Yes! Me! Cooking! And buying wine glasses and wine! And cheese and crackers! The frou-frou-ification of the Axeman has begun! But it was a great time with The Lady, so it's all good.

Saturday: The Lady treated me to brunch at the B B King Blues Bar & Grill, specifically to a Beatles Brunch. The brunch itself was very so-so, but the music really did make up for it. Four Americans - apparently stars of the "hit" Broadway musical Beatlemania - dress up like the Fab Four and sing their songs, with a few non-Beatles songs thrown in. The only one I could recognize was Chuck Berry's Roll Over Beethoven, and if I'm not mistaken The Beatles did a cover (either sung live, or recorded, I'm not sure). The show was split into two acts - representing the pre-Revolver   and post-Revolver   days.

Now, the Gods know how much I love The Beatles. But I have two dirty little secrets muddying those clear waters ... one I'd admitted to earlier. The other is ... (drum roll) ... I don't like most of the stuff that came out post-Rubber Soul. I like the raw energy of the rock 'n' roll days ... the psychedelic stuff is all well and good, but it's waaay too mellow.

After the brunch, we headed over to Union Square, for what appears to be an annual bizarre funfest, the Pillow Fight. Essentially a bunch of people (mostly NYU students, I'll warrant) hitting each other with pillows until they burst ... at which point, everyone's covered gentle, feathery snowflakes that get everywhere. Honestly, I'm still picking out little bits of down out of my scarf & jacket!

Sunday: Not so great. I was working for half the day ... watched the Oscars at night. A quiet day.

But all-in-all another great weekend of new experiences in this crazy city. :-)

My Picks

Well, the last year's been a bit better than the preceding year, in that I've watched a few more of the nominated pictures. Even so, my "picks" are more like "guesses". Here goes ...

Best Picture: The Departed

Best Director: Alejandro Gonzales Inarritu, Babel

Best Actor: Forest Whitaker, Last King of Scotland

Best Actress: Helen Mirren, The Queen

Best Animated Feature: Happy Feet

Best Visual Effects: Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest

Best Cinematography: The Illusionist

A couple of people have asked me if I plan to blog the Oscars again this year. Unfortunately, it was more of an experiment last year ... and I ended up concentrating more on my laptop than watching the show ... a strange experience, to be sure. Somewhat like missing the joy of a moment because you're too busy looking at it through a camera viewfinder. And so this year, I plan to fully enjoy the show, with my back to the PC!

Public Service Announcement

From this year onwards, Daylight Savings Time (DST) in the US will now be marked on different dates.

DST starts (clocks will be moved forward 1 hour) 2nd Saturday of March - this year, March 11th
DST ends (clocks will be moved back 1 hour) 1st Saturday of November - this year, November 4th

Apple has just released several patches to OS X to accommodate these changes ... I'm not sure if Microsoft has followed suit yet.

Daaaaaaamn!

I really like some the apps on my iMac. The last couple of days, I've been fooling around with GarageBand, the music creation software.

I haven't really spent too much time drilling down every command, function, loop and mix, but I put this mp3 together in 15 minutes, using the program's built-in guitar, bass, and drum "loops".

Groovy cool, eh? :-)

Good News (edited)

She said "Yes".

The ring is on the finger. Repeat, the ring is on the finger!

So now for the details ... The Lady has already given her own account, but I thought it'd be nice to write about it from my perspective ... that is, not like a teenage girl at a boy band concert :-)

The whole operation was planned 2 weeks ago. The biggest variable (and ultimately, cause for complaint) was the weather. Seriously, it was cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey.

The Lady had told me ... way back when, in the misty dawn of our relationship, that she'd always wanted to go to Tavern on the Green. Apparently, it's considered a romantic spot. She'd always talked about how going to Tavern on the Green, followed by a walk in the park would be the most romantic setting she could think of for the proposal. Honestly, I don't know how she didn't see the proposal coming when the taxi dropped us off at 67th & Central Park West. :-)

I'd booked a table for two for brunch, along with what I thought would be a pink strawberry cake (you know, romantically pink). Turned out to be a sponge cake with strawberries in a layer, but the lettering ("Together, Forever") made that glitch quite trivial. Brunch itself was decent. A photographer even comes around to take a photo of the occasion (and then sells it to you, but who can put a price on a romantic moment, eh? Tavern on the Green can, that's who!). I apologize for the shocking clarity of the photo scan but my HP Scanner doesn't seem to be able to produce a good scan on the Mac (good scans on Windows though).

Post brunch, we stepped out to find a horse carriage ready and waiting for us. We had a nice romantic trot around the neighborhood. As I'd said earlier, it was pretty damn cold, but what better weather than to snuggle in, eh?

At this point, I was pretty much stumped for a convenient location to go down on one knee. I was pretty sure that there was no way she would take a walk in the park. I had (unwisely, perhaps) chosen to wear my new suit ... which was 110 count wool, and hence pretty darned thin. Well, we were only a few blocks from Strawberry Fields (the John Lennon memorial, for those wondering), and since I'd never actually seen it (dunno why, it just never struck me to go over there), I asked The Lady if she minded heading up there. Luckily she knows what a big Beatles fan I am, and agreed.

We were both miserably cold once we got there, and we sat down to take in the scene. There really isn't much, you know. Just a circle in the ground with the word "Imagine", some Japanese tourists taking photos (hey, I don't make the stereotypes, I just report them), and a guy on an acoustic guitar singing Beatles & Lennon songs ... but then again, I was a few minutes away from hypothermia, so excuse my disdain.

The Lady by this point was throughly fed up with the cold (-3 C or 27F, if the reports are to be believed), and begged to go home. Just as I resigned myself to proposing to her in my apartment, serendipity came to my rescue, as the hippie started up "And I Love Her". What more could a guy ask for?

I went down on one knee, to her complete shock and surprise. Very classic Hollywood scene. Once she said "Yes", I put the ring on her finger, and the gathered crowd applauded. Another couple came over to congratulate us, and take our photograph. At that point, alarmed by the lack of feeling in our extremities, we went up to the street and hailed a cab back to my apartment.

So that's the story behind that magical moment. A moment in time to treasure and savor for years to come. :-)

Well, I finally took the plunge ...

... And ordered an iMac.

20" iMac, 2GHz Core 2 Duo Processor, 2 GB RAM, 250 GB HDD, 256 MB ATI Radeon X1600 graphics card, wireless keyboard & mouse, and Final Cut HD. All with Apple's measly 6% discount through the Employee Purchase Program.

It should be with me by the end of the week.

I'm a first time Mac owner (used my friend's a few times, to surf and such). I shiver in dreaded anticipation.

Long, lazy days

I've postponed my trip by a few days - leaving Tuesday night now - which at least gives me a chance to unwind a bit at home. What with one thing and another, that's been lacking in this trip over.

Mom's a bit of a Raymond fan, and over the last couple of years, I've been gifting her season-pack DVDs. I've spent the last couple of days watching some of them. Raymond reruns can be seen on TBS & WB, and I've never really figured out what season each episode was from (and that can be figured out from the introductory piece during the credits). I'm surprised how much of Seasons 1 & 2 I've actually watched. But no matter, they're well-written funny episodes, and a delight to watch.

I'd also visited a bookstore and picked up a few comic books - "Asterix and the Class Act", "Tintin in the Congo" (technically, I have the original comic in scanned format that I'd downloaded years ago), and "Valley of Cobras".

It feels good to settle back with an Asterix or Tintin comic again. While Tintin books are available in the US (usually in the small size compendium volumes), there's something about reading these comic books in larger editions. Maybe its nostalgia for childhood here, I dunno. But whatever the reason, I've decided that I am going to have a collection of Asterix & Tintin comics in a few years.

On the subject of comic books, I would trade my 25 grams for English (translated, that is) copies of "Leonard" and "Lucky Luke" comics, but alas they've been out of print for years.

Attention Comic Book Lovers!

Attention true comic book lovers! LXG:III is coming out next year!

Be warned, LXG (the comic) is not meant for the faint of heart. It's probably not meant for anyone under the age of 18, either. It can be pretty ... umm ... intense, unlike the sanitized, bastardized Hollywood movie.

Pick up a copy ... or two ... and see for yourself.

PS: I also found this while fishing around Amazon.com

Found via Wil Wheaton.

An Evening With Friends

I finally got round to meeting some friends a couple of nights ago ... this, a week after arriving in Bangalore, and 3 days before I leave for the US, too!

First stop, KLA & Priya's post-modernist abode , a delight to architects everywhere. Very open and airy in construction, with a few interestingly new (to me, at least) designs , such as clay pots in the ceiling. I also got to meet Maya , their two-month old (almost) bundle of joy & tiny waving fists (of fury?).

Next stop, Rubal & Mona's place ... which you know is going to be a lot of fun once you enter their converted living room. We went out to a place called Jukebox, in Koramangala, just down the road from Raheja Arcade. Good food, I must say. The quirk to this place is the incongruity between it's decor and the music played. The joint has numerous pictures on the theme of jazz - photos of artists, scribbles & sketches of instruments, and so on - yet played only classic, hard, and prog rock while I was there. But nonetheless - good meal, good company, and good music. What more could a guy ask for?

Wouldn't you know it?

Whenever I travel to India, I always come down with something. On this trip, it's been a slight viral fever ... until this morning.

This morning, my upper right wisdom tooth took it upon itself to cosy up to my lower gums. I had to part ways with it later. Now the question is whether or not I can travel back as planned tomorrow night. Doc says today's going to be a bit of a bother, but I should be back to normal tomorrow.

The extraction affair was interesting, to say the least. Very different from the American experience. It was a numb-and-yank job, taking all of 15 minutes. 15 conscious minutes. I don't think I'll soon forget the grinding noise of bone being pulled out anytime soon. No stitches either ... just a big gaping hole where there was once none.

The anesthesia's just worn off. What joy.