Saturday, May 27, 2006

The Evolution of Dance

I came across this clip on the internet, which I feel would be a crime to all music lovers if I did not share this amazingly coordinated and absolutely remarkable piece of work.

Thursday, May 25, 2006

Times we forgot

It's only human to forget things. All of us have at one time or another forgotten stuff that makes us angry with ourselves when we remember too late. As all married women will concede, the most irritating trait of their husbands is that however many times an item is emphasized to be bought at the supermarket, the husbands always forget. As in a recent advertisement on TV, with some modifications by myself,

Wife: We need milk for the kids, butter for next week, and Taco Sauce for today's steak dinner.
Husband (on phone closing a 1.5 million dollar deal, and wearing jacket at same time): Ok. Got it. Milk, Butter, Steak.
Wife: NO! IT'S TACO SAUCE!
Husband (phone call ended): Oh! ok...sorry dear, wasn't listening.
Wife: REMEMBER to bring the Taco Sauce.
Husband: Don't worry. I got it....Taco Sauce.

Husband (on the way to store): Taco Sauce, Taco Sauce, Taco Sauce...

The husband then buys everything, plus some extra stuff that the family will need the following week. The cashier asks him whether he needs anything else. He answers in the negative. He reaches home, and his wife pulls out the provisions, until she reaches the bottom of the bag.

Wife: Where is the Taco Sauce?
(Cold chill envelopes room)

The fact is, that however reluctant we are to admit it, all of us have been in the exact same scenario at least once in our lives. I would like to digress a little at this point to emphasize that women have also been culprits of the infamous memory lapse (Believe it or not!). But unfortunately, men are somehow brainwashed later by the Secret Agency for Women (SAW) who erase the incriminating memory from their minds.

It is also a fact that the vindicating memories are remembered lucidly by wives in times of arguments with their spouses, and used as effectively in driving home advantages resulting in 90% of such arguments swinging in favour of the sisterhood. It seems that these memories seem immune to all ideas "forgot".

Which is why, I, on behalf of the silently suffering (and cursing) masculine populace, now appeal to all of the female species that it is only human to forget; and if possible to please forget the times we (the men) forgot!

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Some Good Books

Here is a compilation of some books that are, if anything, interesting reading. Some of them are ridiculously easy/entertaining reading while others are...well, also mostly entertaining reading.

Novels
The Five Find-Outers and Dog series- Enid Blyton*
The Hardy Boys series - Franklyn W Dixon*
Danny, the Champion of the World - Roald Dahl(and others by the same author including his autobiography)
Three Terms at Uplands - Angela Brazil (and others by the same author)
The Lord of the Rings - J.R.R Tolkien
The Hobbit - J.R.R Tolkien (most of his other books are boring)
The Biggles series - Captain W.E Johns
Rumpole of the Bailey - John Mortimer (and others by the same author)
Leave it to Psmith - P. G Wodehouse (and ALL others by the same author; none of his books are boring)
The Guns of Navarone - Alistair Maclean (and others by the same author)
The Labours of Hercules - Agatha Christie (and others by the same author)
The man who knew too much - G.K Chesterton (and others in the series)
The Father Brown series - G.K Chesterton
The Harry Potter Series - J. K Rowling (Although I believe that some scenes in the latter books were pretty lame)
Life of Pi - Yann Martel

Others
How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
Eats Shoots and Leaves - Lynne Truss
Emily Post's Etiquette - Peggy Post
Business @** the Speed of Thought - Bill Gates
Be My Guest - Conrad Hilton
Parkinson's Law - C. Northcote Parkinson
Vignettes of the Ceylon Civil Service - M Chandrasoma***
Assignment Colombo - J.N Dixit****


I'm apologize if "The Da Vinci Code" is not in any of the lists; but it wasn't a great book anyway. If anything, I would say that it was OK. I don't understand what all the fuss is about. It was, in my opinion, good fiction that entwined facts about Leonardo Da Vinci's paintings to a notion concocted out of thin air. Kudos to Dan Brown. Frankly, I think that the publicists are the real heros here.

* Just to clarify, I don't still read Enid Blyton. Thought I'd just include it in the list because it was entertaining reading... about 8 years ago.
** The @ symbol here is not an abbreviation for "at". That's the way it is in the book.
*** An entertaining book about the Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) Civil Service in the monarchal days before independance.
**** A very political 80's history of Sri Lanka.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

An amazing toolbar

It is indeed the bane of the internet today that every website offers free toolbars so that "you" are informed immediately when the url of the forums link is changed from "/forum" to "/forums". Oh! Thats important alright. After wading through the millions of useless toolbars of the internet, I "stumbled" upon the "StumbleUpon" toolbar. And until now, I have never regretted installing this particular bar. Very few toolbars have impressed me the way this has. I now have a total of 2 toolbars on my firefox browser. Namely the "Google" toolbar and the "StumbleUpon" toolbar.

The toolbar really is pretty interesting. Its basic function is to return interesting websites catered to your requirements. The toolbar first asks you to indicate the topics that you are interested in, and saves the information. After that, all you have to do is click the stumble button to literally stumble upon websites related to the topics that you indicated. Each time the button is clicked, you are directed to different websites, that you would never have thought existed in the world wide web.

Here's the link to the website of the toolbar, and I can guarantee that StumbleUpon will be one toolbar that you won't uninstall in a hurry.