Sunday, August 29, 2010

Bachelorhood 2.0 Month 1

So its about a month now since i moved to Stavanger and yeah - being a forced bachelor.

How does one kill time, if the demarcation between your office and home is a walk of 2 seconds between the living room and bed room? The lines get blurred when you think of what are my "working hours" or "time for myself" and makes you at times feel all messed up and not enjoying anything thoroughly.

Well to take a step back, i not only invaded the local library (a la bibliotek in Norwegian) and keep getting a stack of Music Cd's, DVD's and after a lot of coercing from dad decided to borrow books too. So the past few weeks here is the dump:

Movies

East is East: Awesome movie on the mixed up nature of asians settled in UK. One can associate with some parts of the movie, if one has stayed outside his home country.

American Splendour: Nice movie. It was an accidental pick, but indeed inspiring so to say for a man who had nothing special about him, but yet was a rage in the "underground comics" movement in the US.

Umrao Jaan: Had pushed this movie off my list from the time i started watching movies (maybe 25 years??) and now that i have nothing else to do and my options are narrow, saw it. My mind lied that you wanna see this for Rekha, and my hand obliged and picked this movie up. At the end of the movie and now post 1 week realize that the sad ending in the story is what my mind yearned to see to fill in some peace of the loneliness in this quiet town. Glad the movie is down and off my checklist for now!

Elvis: Awesome movie! Really have more respect and love for Elvis's songs! The energy and passion evident from Elvis's foot tapping music is something that can not come easy for many singers. Elvis, you got a fan for your songs from this moment on!

Music:
Promised Land - Elvis Presley: Awesome songs. I decided not to return this CD and listen 1/2 more times.
Soul Dance Mix - some dhinchak bollywood songs out in the last 2-3 years
Bombshell baby of Bombay - some dhinchak bollywood songs between 60's - 80's.
The greatest film songs of lata Mangeshkar - good songs.
Trail of Memories - Randy Travis - listening to this now. unfortunately doesnt have "Three Wooden crosses" which is one of my favorites which i ended up loving after tuning onto the radio for n number of times while in Middletown, CT, US.

Books:
Read the book "The death of Vishnu" by Manil Suri. Finished 330 pages spread over 5-6 days. Not too bad knowing that i picked up reading after a long time, thanks to dad's motivation. Good book, but the end was kinda weird. Would have been good for the spirit of Vishnu to set Mrs. Asrani and her clan, cigarettewaala, paanwaala and Tall Ganga straight before being couriered to the heavens by Yama!

Grr - the pains of vacuuming, cleaning up the house are now no longer to resist and its time to clean this bachelor shack. Rest in next!

Sunday, August 08, 2010

Bachelorhood 2.0

Some updates from my end.

- Had moved to Oslo in Oct'09 for work. Had a heck of a time in the snow and great times when my wife joined me in Oslo - enjoying the summer's to the hilt. It was the end to an era of staying with roomies since the time i lived out of the suitcase in cities like Bangalore, Pune, Middletown, Mumbai (while in SP Jain) and finally in Oslo. End of Bachelorhood 1.0. More about those experiences in my next blog.

- Moved from Oslo to Stavanger in the last week of Jul'10 again for work. Wife moved back to India in 10 days after this and am now onto Bachelorhood 2.0. Bachelorhood 2.0 is more difficult, as you are pampered and spoilt. Its tough getting back to doing things for yourself and that coupled with the fact that you are staying all by yourself in a city with no friends and strange language. What does one do in that case? Well what i did was joined the local library and got the following CD's and DVD's to keep myself occupied.

Week 1#
Movies: Chokher Bali, Mother India, Ek, Pukar (all Indian Hindi movies)
Music: Tabla (Ustad Zakir Hussain and his dad) and Pandit Bhimsen Joshi's CD.
In the end, finished the music cd's (loved the tabla more than Pandit ji's songs. no offence to Panditji, but just that its not the phase of my life to enjoy his richness) and also Chokher Bali (good movie).

Week 2#
Movies: Renewed all movies from week 1 except CB, I for India ( a documentary)
Music: Best of ABBA, Golden memories - hindi old songs collection, Eagles - Hotel California album.
Its just the beginning of the week. Saw Pukar and finished the GM-HOSC. Kind of cool.

Also saw a lot of "How I Met Your Mother" clips from season 4. Kinda hilarious. In Bachelor 1.0 days was hooked onto Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond, That 70's Show, Bill Cosby Show, Sex and the City.

Enough for the nite - got an early morning flight to Oslo for a 3 day business trip. Rest in next.

Adios!