de[sign]terminus

Pakistan and Freedom

admin — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:43:52 +0000

Times carried another article on how new-age, modern, successful women of Pakistan interpret freedom.

> Being free is about making bold choice - personal and professional (Nabila, celebrity image maker)
> Freedom is about making the right decision (Umera Ahmed, writer)
> True independence is not brought about by diminishing each other, it is found by celebrating each other (Sonya Battla, fashion designer)
> The challenge is to translate reality - that’s freedom (Mehreen Jabbar, film director)

God, Religion, Faith or Whatever

admin — Sun, 17 Aug 2008 15:32:45 +0000

This is perhaps the first time I found something interesting to read in the Sunday Times Life edition. As usual the story pinned on celebrities to sell the idea, but the idea itself was nice. It was about finding one’s faith in life. Some good lines/ quotes: “The focus of praying has now shifted from being religious to coping with life situations successfully.” Or, “Seekers are no longer happy with blind faith; They need practices that help them understand life”. And ending with one of my favorite adverb: “What you give is what you get”. Some points to ponder.

Living with Modernism

admin — Sat, 16 Aug 2008 07:29:07 +0000

I am looking to buy this rocker. Sells on eBay for $249. Is it possible to locate one in India? Anything molded, and what people call, old, is what I am looking for. I hope to get them cheap as well.

Saving the world

admin — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 07:15:15 +0000

At work, no one bets on world peace. Let me explain. You may want to do the right thing, though at times it is not possible. So as Kafka said, we all want to start with what is right, not what’s possible. The PM or Director will then say, “Let’s not aim for world peace…”, or “In a perfect world, yes. But…” So who else is trying to save the world? Apartment Therapy. Their tagline says it all — saving the world, one room at a time.

Washing Machine

admin — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 05:05:39 +0000

If you are disillusioned with your life/ work, dont aim to be a manager. After each day (or worse, week) looking back on what you *did*, managers tend to draw a blank. Meeting a deadline is a task. It will come and go, to come back again. Another regular task is to resolve issues (read fights). Someone or the other has a problem with another. Or someone had a bad day. Manager’s job: Listen; Resolve; Repeat. Much like a detergent. And tumble around.

Involved vs Committed

admin — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 06:59:26 +0000

If you havent heard of it already: On your breakfast table, having egg and milk make chicken and cow involved in your meal, but when you have ham as well, sure, the chicken is still involved, but the pig is committed. Managers were always the seagulls, now they are chicken as well. No need to guess who the pigs are, right?

Oscar Rejects

admin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 18:57:10 +0000

Of the three movies I watched over weekend, two, I am told, failed to reach the Foreign Language category at the Oscars. The eventual winner, Lives of Others is a superb movie, no doubt. I may have found the movie a tad longer than it should have been, but still excellent. I want to write about the two that lost out.

One, failed to get nomination because more than 50% of the dialogues were in English! I found that rule silly- how else will Egytians talk to Israelis? It is a simple story of how a police band from Egypt, invited to play in an Arab cultural porgramme in Israel gets stuck in a wrong town for a night. Brilliant direction, considering the bleak situation with a bleak desert background. It should have got an entry. Well, Oscar isnt everything, right? Oh, the movie is ‘The Band’s Visit’

Second one is Akin’s ‘The Edge of Heaven’. Interwoven stories of Turkish immigrants in Germany, and some German folks in Turkey all of them are connected by some thread. Sounds like Babel? Not so overdrawn, this was a bit smaller. The movie revolves around 3 families, and mainly about parent-child relations. The characters were beautifully developed, and the most interesting aspect of engaging audience in the story was the chapter titling. It plainly said, A’s death or B’s death. And in the chapter, we get introduced to A or B, and since we know their fate, the entire sequence becomes a little edgy. Beautiful. The third chapter is the title of the movie, were the parents/ children realise that ultimately the bond transcends across languages, or cultures, or fate!

Dont miss either of them.

Ah, the third, another not to miss movie, is a new French thriller, Tell No One. Finally, a good thriller with an original story. Will write later about that. Check RT for details. Or may be, just catch it up. The more one reads about a thriller, less intriguing it becomes, right?

Blogger’s Block

admin — Sun, 15 Jun 2008 09:19:20 +0000

(Phrase): Delay in working on one’s blog for a long period and closing the login window every time. Usually occurs to someone who is neither a blogger, not a block. See also, Hello World.

Dreaming of the making

sinoj — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 12:03:44 +0000

I used to keep a paper and pencil at the bedside to write down whatever that I may remember of an early morning dream. This was more than a decade ago, and the paper has stayed blank all this time. (I vaguely remember converting a dream into a poem, I think it turned out to be horrible)

Yesterday, I had a dream about making a film — choosing the story, script writing, the casting, the narration, shooting locations, well, almost all the aspects of film making in a very detailed way. Even the film. This time when I woke up, I didnt have to write anything down, I had remembered most of it. The film is about a middle class woman whose husband one day doesnt come home from work. The story revolves around her search for husband, and what she discovers. The story needs some more work. But it has kind of given a fillip. Is this the definitive thing for life?

I am budgeting for, er, more dreams. Let’s see what comes in tonight

Gender Equality

sinoj — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 10:05:59 +0000

According to CP Surendran, gender equality exists in the higher societies, as in, the dog and the bitch gets the same biscuits! All this while.

I was browsing through the latest Femina at the dentist and paused on CP’s name. What’s he doing in Femina? Anyways, if one thought that the issue is with the lower societies, it apparently is not. Scientists have discovered that this faster growth of humans as compared to other animals is due to the fact that we chose to split the workload between genders — men to hunt and get food, women to grunt and feed the family.

I am sure we are not the only species to settle into this arrangement. On cosmetic difference, I think lions are better example than men. But having started writing for Femina now, I think CP definitely is trying seed some thoughts into the women of substance.