Goodbye 2009

Another year has come to an end. Time really flies; I can still recall the post I had written on New Years' this year! 2009 was a complicated year- a mix of both good things and bad. 


2009 was THE year of Twitter, Web 2.0, tweetups, Bar Camps, Wall Projects and the like. Twitter is really a huge source of information and an awesome way to keep you updated on "what's happening" in and around places. I attended BCM6 (BCM= Bar Camp Mumbai), the Wall Project, the Kalaghoda festival, (almost) attended the Sapling project all because of Twitter! If there is some controversy or a riot happening, or there is a particular train that is going to be delayed, you just come to know of it by logging in to Twitter and either looking it up or just asking fellow Twitterers! It's so far the best medium for exchange of information- in less than 140 characters! I met a lot of genuinely awesome people on Twitter too. Okay, I'm just going on and on about Twitter, but seriously, I can write a whole post on this (maybe I will!)! 


It was a year of flop movies but Rajkumar Hirani made up for it very well with the release of "3 idiots"! :)

On a personal note, it was a year full of promises never kept. I thought I had found my "prince charming" and my dream-job but I was wrong with both. It only made me realise that what you want can be far different from your fascinations, and all your heart REALLY wants is to feel safe and be loved. It taught me that happiness cannot be sought. The more you seek it- the more it slips away.


I came across too many new and different things. Until last year, I was of the opinion that life had nothing left to offer, but now, I say it offers much more than we can take!! I stepped out of my comfort zone and explored a lot of different areas and environments.


I got my own domain! :)


I cast my first vote! :D


I learnt "Yoga". I never thought yoga and philosophy was my cup of tea but circumstances somehow led me to it and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience! :) 


I stayed over at a blog friend's place (in a whole new city that too) for the first time! :) Online friendship (Blog friendship especially) is a different experience altogether and I wish all would experience it! Please don't blindly believe anything that people say till you experience it for yourself. 


My brother came down from the States after a year and a half! It was fun having him over for a month, it flew very quickly though. He gifted me a digi cam and a lappie! :D 


I lost my grandfather; had never experienced the loss of someone before. This was deep and I was with him when he passed away. I'm thankful he didn't suffer much. I have a few regrets though and maybe I'll never get over them...


My cousin got married and it was the first Manglorian wedding I was part of. The music and dance that followed was pure fun. It was awesome to see close family letting themselves loose on that day!


I came a little closer to family than before and I am glad. Friends keep changing with time, and the friends that usually take leave early are the ones who promise to be with you forever. 

I set out to build a career and ended up making a few mistakes. I know I can't undo them now, but I know I have to be more careful next time and choose wisely. I've ignored my studies and a lot of my other duties. I need to get everything back on track now- and I will !


All in all, a year full of mixed emotions, new beginnings and endings and a bag full of lessons learnt!


"Year's end is neither an end nor a beginning but a going on, with all the wisdom that experience can instill in us." (via @aditipatel04)

3 Idiots.

Amir Khan has done it again. 

After reading reviews from Reema and Harsh, taking opinions on Facebook, coming across tweets declaring the movie to be the biggest blockbuster of 2009, I finally decided to watch "3 idiots". 

Not being a movie buff, I wasn't all that interested initially. I usually wait for movies to air on TV, or I just borrow them from friends and watch them at home on my computer. My opinions on movies usually differ from the masses. Just once, I had gone for "Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na" after people telling me it's "simply awesome" and was hugely disappointed. This time though, since I had read the book (which, by the way, is not like the movie at all), and since Amir Khan was starring in it, I decided to take a chance. One of my friends even told me I'd get an answer to what I want from life if I watch the movie. I wondered how a movie could determine my life but, nevertheless, decided to catch this one.

Aditi and I had been making plans but putting them off everyday because neither of us could get up in time for the 11:30 a.m. show and couldn't really afford the late evening shows; they went "House Full" anyway. Today, however, we were determined to watch it. 

We went to the first theatre in Dadar and found that all the shows were booked  and the booking office would open only at 4, and we'd have to book in advance. We decided to go to to the next closest theatre, which we had always thought was totally sad because of the "crowd" that most people said it attracted. There was a saree-clad aunty standing outside saying "100 mein le lo.. 100 mein le lo". We assumed that the show was House Full here too. The security guard at the gate let us in easily but as we had guessed, we found the booking office closed. We asked him when it would open and he replied, "Madam house full hai sab shows (All shows are House Full)". So, we turned to go back, and he stopped us asking us how many tickets we wanted. We promptly replied, "Do (two)". He said, "Side mein khade raho (Stand at the side)". We wondered if he was involved with the aunty outside who was selling those tickets illegally. A man in a maroon formal shirt came towards us saying, "Kitna chahiye? Do na? Aao mere saath (how many? two right? Come with me.)". We got scared. I nudged Aditi saying, "Abbe yeh black mein de raha hai shayad.. aaj tak kabhi black mein nahi khareeda re, kya karna hai.. (I think he is selling them illegally, what do you think we should do?)". We followed him slowly and silently still re-considering buying tickets from him. After about two minutes, as if he had read our minds, he said, "Arre darte kyun ho itna! Same rate mein de raha hu booking office se hi!! (Why are you so scared? I'm selling them at the same rate from the booking office itself!)". We chuckled. He was just leading us to the back entrance of the booking office where he worked and gave us two balcony seats at the same rate. He added, "Special seats hai. Milta nahi hai (They are special seats. You don't get them so easily)". We wondered why he was being so nice to us, but were happy that we bought them clean! :D

We entered right in time for the national anthem. There was a mushy-but-sophisticated couple seated next to us. The crowd was decent enough- not like we had expected it to be at all ! The seats were indeed "special" like he had said; they offered the best view of the screen! 

And so, the movie began.

My first ever movie review! :D

Rancho (Amir Khan), Farhan (Madhavan) and Raju (Sharman Joshi) are three bright students of the Imperial College of Engineering, it's Director being our very own Boman Irani -- Prof. Veeru Sahastrabuddhe. 

Raju is the only son to his paralysed father and poor mother. He has an elder sister who is 28 and still unmarried because apparently, the guy's side demands too much dowry!! So, basically, Raju is responsible for his family, and he would be the sole breadwinner of the family if he clears with good grades, which inturn would give him a good, well-paying job. He feels too pressurised by his college though and the pressure affects his performance, which goes down considerably.

Farhan is passionate about wildlife photography but he gives in to his dad's wishes, and goes on to become an engineer. His unwillingness and lack of passion towards engineering leads to him always standing last in his semesters, barely scraping through his exams. 

Rancho, on the other hand, is genuinely smart, an out-of-the-box thinker with ways of his own. He is very passionate about machines & engineering and thinks practically. He criticises and challenges the education system, but in the end, successfully makes the Director realise he's actually killing his students by pressurising them too much instead of nurturing their talents and leading them in  the right direction. His love interest, Pia (Kareena Kapoor) is the Director's daughter who is about to get married to a rich snob Suhas who cares much more about his own wealth and social prestige than her. Rancho makes her see for herself the snob that he is. He wins her heart at the end of the movie.

The movie keeps you on your seats all throughout. Every scene of it is very real and very entertaining. The end is a tad dramatic as Reema and Harsh pointed out, when Pia's sister Mona (Mona Singh) delivers her baby which does not cry at all after it's born leading people to think he's stillborn but kicks Rancho when "All is well" is said. Amir is the show stealer all throughout as always! :)

The movie brings out one valuable message: Follow your heart.

Songs are good too; they are placed at the right times in the movie. "Give me some sunshine" and "All is well" are two tracks everyone will enjoy.

The movie, however, is totally different from the book that it's claimed to be based on- "Five Point Someone" by Chetan Bhagat. The only similarity that I could see was all three of them were engineering students and Raju's character in the movie matched Alok's in the book. So I don't think the movie should be compared to the book in any way.

Lastly, I won't say it's a "one-time" watch. This is the first time I actually wouldn't mind seeing the movie again tomorrow! It's truly an eye-opener, a must-watch! Kudos to Amir Khan and more so, to Rajkumar Hirani.

Dashing through the snow... :)

Christmas time always takes me back to a night long ago (around 11 years back) when Chinky and I were little. We hung stockings outside our windows and stood waiting for Santa to arrive and fill them up with gifts! We kept waiting for hours and were disappointed when we couldn't spot a single sleigh in the sky coming towards our houses! Next morning, however, we were pleased to find gifts in them and then started believing that Santa comes only when we are asleep; he doesn't like to make his presence felt; he likes giving surprises! Why then does he come in big malls & fancy restaurants and seat kids on his lap? There were a lot of such questions and no one really answered them. And all of a sudden, one day, we come to know that Santa doesn't exist after all and all this while, we believed in something that wasn't even there! We were old enough to accept it then, but Christmas wasn't as exciting anymore. We knew that there wouldn't be anything to look forward to on the morning of Christmas! We'd find our stockings empty- hell, why would we even hang them! It got too disappointing so thereafter, even though we knew he doesn't exist, we wanted to believe he does and just carried on with the belief only to keep the excitement alive! :D And so, we happily dreamt of little elves, reindeer, Santa and his sleigh! And that's how Christmas taught us to believe in things in order to be happy.. :)

When I think of Christmas, I think of snow. I've always dreamt of a Christmas with roads all lit up and covered in snow. I wish I could experience that one day!

Christmas brings with it a lot of cheer, goodwill, harmony, loads of sweets (chocolate cake my fav!! :D) and lots of beauty!

May Santa fulfil ALL your wishes!

Merrrryyy Christmas and Happy Holidays!

P.S. Make sure you line up enough number of stockings at your door :P

Santa: I want a two wheeler, a smartphone, an acoustic guitar and a job!! :D

Dazed

The last week's been crazy!


Of late, I have no idea of what I've been doing. I quit my job at an MNC because it made me unhappy for some reason (a lot of reasons actually!). My family's been supportive, I'm lost now though! It sucks being at home all day. Each day, I want to be something different. It feels like I want to paint one morning, and write the next. I feel like working on my next website one minute, and find myself abandoning it completely to read my unfinished novel. I wish I was a little less impulsive, because this way, I'm never going to figure out what I want. 

I know I did what I thought would make me happy but now I am scared nothing would ever come my way!! 


Life's complicated. 

Avant Garde Bloggie Awards

The Avant Garde Bloggie Awards are here again (all thanks to Poonam)!! :)

It's a competition where some of the best blogs from blogosphere get recognised and appreciated! :) A fun competition where a panel of judges (some of the best bloggers around) will judge your posts that could be nominated by you or your friends!

Official video by Publicist Nikhil :

The last day for sending in nominations is 20th December 2009 ! You can have a look at the categories here. The rules for nominating your entries are all mentioned here. You could enter nominations in the comments section of this post.

Get all the other info you need on Poonam's blog:http://alchemistpoonam.wordpress.com

So hurry up!!

Nominate yourself, fellow bloggers, start campaigning for nominations, spread the word !!

P.S: You could do me a favour too :P

I wish...

I wish ...

I could laugh/cry my heart out for no reason at all.

I could keep running to no specific place, till I can run no more.

I could dance on the roads like crazy and not feel a thing.

I could fall in love madly and express it freely.

I could go on an unplanned world tour.

I could ride a bike as fast as possible and go nowhere.

I could sleep on a beach listening to the waves looking at the stars above me without a care in the world.

I could fall in love with life all over again.

Yayyy!!

After a lot of thought over what it would be, what it should be, how I wanted it to be, I just went with my own name.. for my domain!! I FINALLY got one for myself on my birthday! And it's --> anubhabhat.com
Super cool, I know! :P

I configured it two days back. By configured, I mean I simply forwarded it to my blog. Yet to buy hosting and work on the site properly, don't know when that'll happen though! I've been too busy since the time I switched jobs; trying to juggle between work, coming online, friends, learning to ride a two-wheeler and studying (almost forgot I was studying too! :D). I'll still try to be as active as I can here. :)

Meanwhile, you can access my blog from both the links now- anubhabhat.com and anubha-bhat.blogspot.com. Both are the same anyway! :D

I'm so happy! :)

What have you done?

Okay, this should ideally have been my first post in the coming year (like some new resolution post)! But since there is a lot of talk happening over the world ending in 2012, I got so paranoid; I thought I might as well put this down now.

For those of you who are still clueless about Dooms Day-

Our planet is coming to an end on the 21st of December, 2012. The poles of the earth are supposedly shifting.

The iron core of the earth is magnetic. Because of the switching of the magnetic core, the earth will start to rotate in the other direction! Because of this, the outer earth's crust will break off! In other words the outer layer will be "floating." It will be on the loose, no longer attached to its "master." If you are on the planet at that moment, it will tilt some thousands of miles in a couple of hours. Looking up in the sky it will seem as if "the sky is coming down," as it is described in the old scriptures!
Giant quakes will occur. Earth plates will be moving, mountains will be rising where first there was nothing, land masses will break open and collapse, mountains collapse, land will sink into the ocean, volcanoes erupt in many places. In short, the most terrible nightmare cannot be terrible enough to describe this world's destruction.

source: http://www.crawford2000.co.uk/patrickg.htm

I used to keep getting email forwards and messages, most of them asking me to forward the same to 11 others- like THAT will stop the poles from shifting, and the sun from aligning itself with the earth and the moon! I ignored them all just like I ignore mails which tell me to hit F6 after forwarding them to 20 other people just so that I would know the name of the person I'd get married to! :D
So, anyway, getting back to the point, I kept hearing of the world ending from so many different sources; my mentor in my previous company even told me of this book called "The Orion's Prophecy" which proves that the world should end by 2012. And after the movie (2012) that has just recently hit the theatres, I'm starting to get worried all the more! I haven't watched it yet, but the fact that so many others are taking it seriously is creepy..

As always, a hundred thousand thoughts raced through my mind. So what if I die in the next three years? What have I done so far? Have I done all the things I ever wanted to? Have I done ANY of the things I wanted to? None at all!! And when the time comes, I'd regret it to the core. When I breathe last, I don't want to have any regrets.

And so, in the middle of my Java class as twenty others were dozing off and as I was on the verge of falling off the chair sleeping-- I sat right up and made a list !! So here I am presenting a list of all the things I'd like to achieve before I close my eyes forever, and I'm planning to start achieving them slowly, starting today!

1. I'd like to write professionally once-for anything! Be it a magazine, a newspaper or a book! Would also love to write a book someday- it'd be so cool! :)

2. I want to paint my house downstairs all by myself. The house would fully depict me.
(One wall could have paintings of tea, bombay, friends, music. I'd arrange all my novels together, paint a seperate wall for them too with alphabets maybe!! It's the "Fountainhead" effect I guess ;))

3. I want to work on two sites (can't really reveal much right now).

4. I want to learn SOME form of dancing- be it jive, salsa, waltz, hip hop, anything!! I want to stop feeling so shy of dancing!

5. I'd love to play some form of musical instrument, a guitar maybe!! Would sing too!

6. I want to travel- A LOT, go to new places, meet new people, click a lot of photographs and enjoy different cultures!

7. I want to buy a scooty for myself and a car for my family. The traffic in Bombay explains why this one was last on the list!

Most of all, I want to break free once- with no one to answer to, nothing to feel scared about, nothing to feel worried about, going where my heart takes me and doing what it tells me to. No rules attached!

Imagine if the whole world were ending in a week's time for certain- wouldn't there be a huge chaos? People would hurry to chase their dreams, to do all that they always wanted to. The problem with us humans is- We take life to be permanent when it's not. We think we can live our lives anytime later and "later" never comes.

Wouldn't it be great if everyone could just pause and think about what they were doing and pursue their dreams? The only good thing that would come out of the Dooms Day is - people will finally realise we won't be here for long. Mistakes will be forgiven, ties will be made stronger, emotions will no longer be hidden! Everything would be truthful and transparent.

So let's start living each day as if it were our last. Let's not waste even a second.
That way, even if the theory is faulty, and if the world won't really end on the 21st of December 2012 like it's supposed to, we will still have found what we truly desire and what makes us immensely happy, no?



I tag Nikhil, Sakhi, Reema, Scorpria, Calvin, Aditi, Mona and Ashwin to make a to-do list too and post it!! Just realised, it's been really long since we did tags! :)