Yesterday, I got home by 9:30PM. It marked the end of very long week. In the past week, Monday to Thursday, the days were long and emergencies cropped up every which way, and burning bushes needed fire fighting. So, really at 9:30PM last night, I should have been dog tired, and should have gotten into bed and stayed there at least for next 8 hours. But, alas! at my door step was a movie from Netflix.... and I made the mistake of opening it!

The movie: Archangel.
The actor: Daniel Craig!

I scrambled some eggs with some asparagus for dinner and stared at the Netflix white sleeve at the dinner table. All the while I was eating, I debated whether I was so tired that I should sleep, or I was so tired, that another 2 hours & some odd minutes is not going to make me more tired. I asked kitties for advice, they responded with Meow and Purr.... heavens knows what that means. I voted at the end of dinner to get some sleep. As within next 24 hours, I will be zooming off to Nashville, TN (for work) for the next five days and the more work, when I get back. So, next relaxing day will be next Saturday!

As I walked upstairs to the bedroom... each step was successively harder. I thought I was tired, and resolved to get to sleep. Finally half way up, I stopped, turned, walked down, put the DVD in and turned on the TV and decided to watch half the movie and then watch the other half in the flight to Nashville. I settled happily on the couch with comfy pillows, with a nice throw at my feet, and confused kitties (I am not a night person, so it throws off my kitties, when I do something weird....like keep awake reading or watching movies) to watch the movie.

Ten minutes into the movie, I found myself sitting up straight up, bent forward and completely engrossed by movie. Forget seeing just half of the movie, I would have been devastated, if I could not see the whole movie. I watched the whole movie and finally around 12:30 the wee hours of Friday finally got to bed, but this time I was not tired!

Archangel is a gripping thriller novel written by Robert Harris adapted into a drama series by BBC. I think the editorial review on Amazon captures it beautifully:

"Fluke Kelso [played by Daniel Craig] is a middle-aged scholar of Soviet Communism with a special interest in the dark secrets of Joseph Stalin. For years, rumors have circulated about a notebook that the aging dictator kept in his final years. In a chance encounter in Moscow, Kelso meets Papu Rapava, a former NKVD guard who claims that he was at Stalin's deathbed and says that he assisted Politburo member Beria in hiding the black oilskin notebook just as Stalin was passing. Before Kelso can get more details, Rapava disappears, but the scholar is energized by the evidence Rapava has provided. As Kelso begins to pursue his historical prize, however, his investigation ensnares him in a living web of Stalinist terror and murder. It soon becomes clear that the notebook is the key to a doorway hiding many secrets, old and new"

For some absurd reason I kept thinking I have come across the name of Robert Harris somewhere before. And, further research led to the fantastic discovery that he also wrote "Enigma".

So, if you like thrillers, do see this one. It is like a great book you have to keep turning pages. A fantastic thriller and so darn beautifully filmed in Russia (I think). And to top that, it is Daniel Craig... the current favorite! 

Alrighty people! Here is your chance to win two Loews premium tickets from me! [Edit] Ah! for those who are not in the US, or where Loews is not in your neighborhood, equivalent gift awaits your answer)

Answer this question: What do you think, I should do with my Tax Refund this Year?
Hmm... I was hesitant to put any dollar amount to this, but my friend brought up a great point. The suggestions could be vastly different based on the the amount involved. So, without further much-a-do, the amount = $2,000.

Rules:

• Email, phone or post in this cool blog. If you call in or email me independently, please note that I reserve the right to post it in this blog.
• Entries, should be submitted by March 31st, Midnight. (Alright, April 1st morning).
• You can submit multiple entries and no limit on the number of entries.
• April 1st, I and (of course Duke and Amber) will make the decision on the best entry and the party will be notified.
• If you are my financial comptroller/financial advisor or tax advisor, then sorry your entries do not count! But don't let that stop you from suggesting.
• If there are no entries, then by default.... I win!
• If there are more than one 'Best' entries, then...... Duke and Amber get the final say.

Definition of Best Entry: I think I am going to say that the best entry is the entry that would make me think about it, perhaps laugh, perhaps implement. :)

Psst: By no means the two tickets imply that you have to take me to the movies!

Daniel Craig is insanely gorgeous! Ever since, I saw him as Alex West in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, I knew I liked the blond dreamboat with blue eyes.

I watched Casino Royale in theatres in January and could not wait to get my paws on.... er....the DVD. The 2-disc version would be released on March 13th, 2007, 8-week wait. It was weird! I have wait patiently for many a DVD, but this one tried my patience like none other. Perhaps it was because, I was getting out of hibernation and wanted things to move a bit faster. For the past week, I have been visiting Amazon frequently, hoping that it would ship faster! Finally, Amazon shipped it on the 11th, I received it on the 14th. Of course, last night became the movie night of the week and it reflects today.... I am half asleep and half in dream world. (A great day if you want something from me..... in most likelihood won't be turned down!)

My very own: Layer Cake, Lara Croft: Tomb raider and now, Casino Royale

In netflix queue: Archangel.

Awaiting eagerly: Bond 22 (releasing sometime 2008)

Other insanely gorgeous actors: Gerard Butler, Matthew MacFadyen.......

(Interestingly, all these yummy actors are across the pond!)

Wow! It has been 10 years since a jet-lagged, slightly tipsy, wide eyed kid was transported from Bombay to Beantown!

Year: 1996
This kid was given six-month loan to make it this country. Perhaps a tall order, but then perhaps not so. This kid starts school at Northeastern, picks two easy courses to get couple of A's and applies for Teaching Assistantship. It is indeed a frightening and interesting time, as future is unknown (perhaps the one and only time this kid has gambled!). Kid talks to Dean and other professors and is amazed at getting small odd jobs at school and the first earnings of $12.00 was a day to remember! This kid also gets Teaching Assistantship! Kid cannot help think: "Somewhere in my youth or childhood, I must have done something good" (quote from Sound of Music). By the end of the year, courses are picked, homework is completed and submitted, bunch of 'A's received, loan repayment is well on its way, friends are multiplied, enemies are divided, apartment rents and utilities are paid, new apartment is found, move is done and life is good! Teaching graduate school has settled into routine. One fateful December evening, kid attends a graduate school pizza party, and is hit by the thunderbolt and now kid hates pizza with a vengence.

Year: 1997
The student year continues for the kid, with more courses, more homework, more teaching, and now something new preoccupies the mind ;). It is weird and confusing and danged depressing time. Some friends are good as gold and some are plain idiots. Kid's elder sister gets married in summer in Maryland and their Uncle's place. This starts a whole bunch of travel. Before the wedding celebrations, the kid and the sister drive from Boston to New Jersey to Maryland, doing a whole bunch of touristy things. Whilst in Maryland, they visit the US Capital and the Mall and Museums. Alongside, enjoy the company of uncle and aunty and the little niece, and plan for the wedding. After the wedding, the kid travels for six weeks to India.  In India, there is packing and moving the parents from a huge house to a rental space, while their new home is getting built. This is bittersweet farewell to the place always known as home. The new place wouldn't be the same. Back to Boston via Amsterdam, this kid dreams one day to visit Netherlands and picks up liquors, chocolate and brochures. Returning 'home' the kid jumps in headlong into the job hunt. Folks! This is 1997, and the demand for computer engineers is insanely high. Many interviews are done and flights are taken to Seattle, New York City (multiple times), North Carolina, and San Francisco and of course within Massachusetts. Many trips are taken for the trip sake and not for interview (shhh!). During this year, Beantown is explored in all available free time, Museums are visited, Freedom trail is walked, North end is explored and Beantown is adopted as home!

Year: 1998
The student graduates, and becomes an employee! The student takes one week vacation before starting new job, mainly to get clothes for the corporate-consulting world. Family (sister and brother-in-law) come to celebrate graduation. All outstanding loans are repaid and closed, and promptly a new loan is taken out (welcome to the American way of life). The new loan is for a car! Yes, the kid learns, researches, and negotiates for six hours to buy a brilliant blue pearl Toyota Corolla, with the works (well, most of relevant ones anyways). The first few weeks of owning the car are petrifying, simply because the kid never owned something that expensive (until then at least) that sits out in the cold hard rain. Kid moves once again, sans any dopey roommates to a studio apartment. Life is vastly improved with financial independence and emotional too! A new motto for living is born; live life, repay loan and save for a house.

Year: 1999
The year starts and ends as a employee. The office moves to from Wellesley to Cambridge. The commute is now on T versus driving. Kid decides and starts the process to get permanent residency in the country. Kid stumbles into stain glass art and invests time and energy into developing the art.

Year: 2000
The kid becomes an aunt to a little one (kid's sister has a baby boy). Kid's mother visits to help taking care of the little one and is based in California. For 10 days, when autumn is at its peak, kid's mum and kid take a road trip in central New Hampshire. The best 10 days ever!. Life on the other hand continues with its nuances and its ups and downs and sideways.

Year: 2001
Wacky and scary year, the dot in the dot-com world is going bust. 9 layoff later, the kid is still gainfully employed, but goes into work each day to give 100% and the neck in a live guillotine. Who knows when the axe will fall?

Year: 2002
This was the year of perpetual darkness! Halloween! Kid's mother passes away. Nothing good, bad or ugly matters in this year.

Year: 2003
This is the second year after 2002, to be the year of turmoil; September brings sad news of kid's grandmother death. It is also the year for job jumping! Finally the axe falls on the consulting company and one morning the company heads swarm down and decide to close the office. Funnily enough the office is 'officially' closed, but no one is asked to leave, no doors are locked, no security access cards revoked! Nothing! Simply because there is too much work to be completed before the office can be closed. So, twenty two odd employees are given all different dates when their last day will be. Interestingly during those days/weeks, all these employees are hired. This kid decides to take a weekend off before starting the next job. The next job is brutal, messy and worst and kid jumps ship and goes to the third company. All this jumping around and no vacation, leads to a emotionally frazzled kid, but solid bank balance for buying house and research is started in earnest. This year will also be remembered as the year, when this kid finally blooms into a more confident, strong and self-reliant, simply because Homeland Security blesses the permanent residency application. Kid is free to flip burgers for a living (not that the kid would want to)! Kid also begins to believe that there is a dawn after darkness. Kid's father decides to visit the family.

Year: 2004
Kid uses the 5-year savings to buy a house and sets plans in motion to make the house a home. The home life takes adjusting financially, emotionally, physically and whatever other -ally's you can think of. This is year of settling into the new job, new commute and new house.

Year: 2005
Life simply just is! A planned trip back to India happens, and a week in Lakshadweep (one of the coral reefs) is just what the doctor ordered. Once again as flight takes the kid via Amsterdam, thoughts of travel in Netherlands prevail. But the commitments of home, are still settling so no planned trips until more of the house and garden is settled. Work is just it work! Thoughts sometimes revert to the fateful December pizza party (yes, still hates pizza!). Stain glass work comes into its own as a home based business. Commissioned work, restoration and couple of craft fairs are done. Simultaneously, old craft - knitting is resurrected. Creativity is at its all time high. Kid becomes an aunt for the second time round.

Year: 2006
Kid plans for home and garden renovation. After emptying some of the savings, the yard looks better, and following year schedule for planting is figured out. Kid accepts invitation and goes to board game parties (something not done in a long while) and actually has fun. Kid goes out with friends again! This one is huge, step back into some social life! Against most the family's disapproving emails and conversations, Kid adopts two kitties and showers them with loads of love. The year of living life, growing up, and setting up and accomplishing goals.

Year: 2007.... and many more
So, wherever you are, whatever you are doing, if you read this, raise a glass and wish me (the kid) luck for the next 10 years, wherever it finds me.

A few blogs back, I mentioned I was heading out from a winter hibernation. And today was the second day in a row, that I was in a happy state and needed to celebrate. Perhaps, it was the thought of the early day light saving or perhaps it was end of an internal project or perhaps the sun and stars were all in alignment, or perhaps.... oh! who cares! I was happy and needed to get out. So, I did and dragged a few of work colleagues out to lunch. We went to Grendels Den, in Harvard Square.

Grendels Den, located at 89 Winthrop Street, Cambridge, MA I really do like the place with its half price food with drink orders between 5-7PM and specials for every day at $3.95. Personal favorite is the Turkey & Harvarti on a toasted Baguette with Pesto-Mayo and a light white wine. Hmmm!... a perfect friday! Today the wine was Rudy Wiest Riesling (Mosel River - Germany) I must go back and find out more detail about the wine. I was wonderful.

Yep, The travel plans for the next few months are getting confirmed!

MARCH: 5 days in Nashville, TN (confirmed and tickets bought)

APRIL: 11 days split in Barcelona and Haro (La Rioja), Spain (confirmed and tickets and blessed by the Consulate of Spain)

MAY: 4 days in Montréal, Canada (unconfirmed.... but getting there very rapidly, needs more planning and blessing from Consulate of Canada)

JUNE: 6 days (back) in Nashville, TN (confirmed, nothing booked.... as there is no budget after having booked the March and April trips.... hee hee)

Whew! Looks likes a year of trips! Most of the trips are work related trips. But after work, I am planning to stay on at the new place and wander around in that neck of the woods, exploring, eating (hopefully exercising) and enjoying!

More than 30 days and no blog! Shame on me! Was I lazy/tired/bored/annoyed? or Was I cold? I really don't know. Perhaps it was the month to hibernate!

Every year sometime during the tail end of winter, I hibernate, away from public view. Mostly because, if I don't I can become quite crabby! But I see that winter is receding (although not today) but last week we had some warm days and the upcoming week is also going to be on the warmer side. So, the outlook is brightening.

So what have I been up to the past month?

In short, I was playing host to my father, who was visiting for couple of weeks. Unfortunately it was too cold to take him around and there was not enough snow to take him skiing somewhere. The problem was that I was at work and busy at that, and he was probably bored out and yearned to get back to warmer weather. Unlike my sister, who has two kids, that can be quite entertaining, I have two cats, who are really not entertaining as kids.

I moved desks space at work. And went from being comfortable to miserable. But my office lot is cool and they have organized to have it more comfortable. Ah... well... it remains to be seen when it will get done.

Whilst hibernating, the best thing to do is eat, watch movies and read. I highly recommend not starting anything that is critical or crucial or has long term repercussions. So, I did exactly that.

So, in the last 6 weeks, I put on 5 lbs! (Dang! Now to work on getting it down!)

Along the journey of putting on 5lbs, I read The Last Templar. If you liked Da Vinci Code, then this is a good read too. I just disagree with ending. It would have prefered if the author had left it open ended. That is everyone can make up their own mind to believe in the Templar or not. Also, mindlessly read,  If Tomorrow Comes (Sidney Sheldon) and currently reading some other random book whose title eludes me right now.  [Edit: The book currently in hand is The Jester by James Patterson]

And I watched movies such as Coma (1978) (did not think it was too frightening, book was of course better), The Family Stone (eh! ok!),  The Sentinel (mediocre at its best), Mission Impossible III (actually liked it, but I think the first one is really the better one, to think of it, I have not see Mission Impossible II), The Lavender Hill Mob (Awesome! with a capital A), Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights (dark as the book, pretty good), Flightplan (2005) (Wanted to watch this, for Sean Bean, pretty decent, but nothing to write home about), Snatch (again.... I needed the laugh, and boy does this deliver!), The Queen (Helen Mirren is awesome), Prime Suspect 6 - The Last Witness, Breach (left me wanting more details), and I have no idea what possessed me to watch Tenerife, but I did.

Oh! I also did a bit of running around, getting paperwork done for Taxes (groan!) and travel itineraries for Nashville, TN and then, of course Barcelona, Spain!

I have never seen a Dutch movie, much less the one that won the Oscars (1998) for best foreign films. It is definitely not a movie, I would have picked myself. But then I usually pass on movies, only to return to them and enjoy them tremendously. Karakter (or Character) should really be called Characters, because the movie contains one too many 'characters'. Or is it meant to say 'building' character?

Summary: Based on the novel "Karakter" by Dutch novelist Ferdinand Bordewijk, the story is set in Rotterdam during the 1920s. The love-hate relationship between the father Dreverhaven (played by the Flemish actor Jan Decleir) and the son Jacob Katadreuffe (Fedja van Huet) works very well. Both have extremely strong characters and their ambitions make them blind for the possibilities of love. Right from the early childhood, Jacob feels the abandonment from his father, his mother and school friends. The estrangement, slowly deepens into hate and strong will to fight every step of the way for Jacob. At almost every step of the way, Jacob finds himself checkmated by his father. But he is not willing to throw in the towel. Against all odds, he strives and struggles to become a lawyer and succeeds in it.

It was wonderful to watch the characters develop, and in a word - 'strangle' each other emotionally, until the end.

Perhaps the best moment is when early in the movie, Jacob storms into Dreverhaven's office and address the latter:

Jacob: Today I have been made a lawyer. You no longer exist for me! You have worked against me all my life!
Dreverhaven: ...... or for you!

I loved that exchange, because the exchange completely captures the resentment and hate between the two and also the strong undercurrents of character building by fire.

It was indeed powerful. Watching this movie comes at a very interesting timing. I think, I want, a vacation and I think it is going to be Netherlands. This movie is set in Rotterdam, Netherlands. So, maybe that is why I was receptive to watching this movie in the first place. Definitely a good movie to watch, but not a Friday night flick.