Posts

I saw OK Kanmani recently and have been itching to write about it for a while. The movie was a breeze and a nice watch. It doesn’t try to persuade you one way or the other. And it has very little content. But for Nithya Menon, Prakash Raj or Leela Samson, the movie would have fizzled out too fast. I know Nithya Menon is a fantastic actor from her role in 180. But this one is probably a crown jewel. Her eyes speak so many dialogues that are best left untold! Hats off to her for bringing the character to life. ...

I wrote about needing a good exercise timer here. I am using the yoga timer app that I downloaded and am reasonably happy with it. I hate quite a few things about that app. I could give feedback and make it better, but the app has a paid version. So chances are the paid version has these fixed already. Besides, it doesn’t do many things it claims to. So am quite unhappy with it. ...

Our house has a weird problem. There are 4 air con units in the three room house and some aircons are so close to each other that if you need to turn one ON without turning the others ON, you will need to defy the laws of physics, and sometimes even the laws of quantum mechanics and/or law of conservation of energy. Usually we end up switching one air con ON and then take a trip around the house to see what else got turned ON and then turn them OFF using our own algorithms. ...

Last weekend I had a very bad tooth ache. Clove oil wouldn’t work. And it got so bad that I actually went to a dentist. Oh! And getting a dentist appointment in Singapore is next to impossible – I guess every one is fixing their teeth at all times. After quite a few failed attempts, the wife managed to land an appointment in one clinic. Dental treatments in Singapore are a luxury. It has a reputation for being overly expensive. Maybe people are mostly getting their tooth to look good than fixing aches or root-canals. And usually dental treatments are not covered by group medical policies or insurances. ...

One of the things that is uniquely Singaporean is their hawker centers. Cheap, good quality food. Of course, being a vegetarian, my options in a hawker center are quite limited. And you can find one in every other block – basically you are never too far away from good food. Perhaps why services like Food Panda are not a major hit. Besides the hawker stalls don’t cost you any more than $3-$4 for a good filling lunch. I don’t think anyone can quite beat that deal at all. Also, delivery services are quite expensive across the island. Perhaps just the cost of employing personnel wouldn’t really help you cut down the cost any further. Maybe this space is open for some innovation, but that later. ...

I came across a post on Facebook that requested people to refrain from reviewing movies critically simply because they may not have the technical know-how to review one. True. Most of us are not screenplay writers, dialogue writers, story writers, haven’t taken even a single good selfie with the phone camera let alone shoot a good video, have no idea editing a video, no idea what goes on with dubbing, clueless about direction, post processing etc etc. True to a very good extent. But is that reason enough to refrain from reviewing the work? ...

A lot of people have been recommending Malayalam movies to me. I used to catch a few Malalayalam movies on DD long time back. They usually had good stories but were a drag. You know, at that teens you really want action (both kinds, yes). And then there is the stigma of watching a Malayalam movie as a teen. It can’t do you much good. I still managed to catch a few very good ones and mostly from the Mammotty stable – Iyer the great, New Delhi, Oru CBI Diary Kurippu etc. Of course, if I think a bit more I can locate from other major heroes as well. What always attracted me to their movies is their no nonsense movie making, again the stigma is what kept me away 🙂 ...

Noni is at her parents’ for a couple of weeks. I don’t have the luxury of a work-from-home for that long, so I stayed back. There was only one thing both of us were worried about – my food. I could barely cook, forget preparing lunch and dinner amidst all the dish washing. But before Noni took the flight she prepped me up for a full week to be able to cook – more than curd rice and puliyodharai paste. ...

I have recently got on an exercise regimen to fight my back pain problems. It is sort of like Yoga but in a controlled manner. I don’t know if its fun, but it definitely helps to keep pain away. Typically, I’ll need to do 4-6 exercises twice a day. Each exercise is repeated three times and lasts 30 sec each time. Pretty simple, right? You need to keep aside about 30 minutes twice a day to take care of this. So far I am able to keep up. ...

I never thought I’d ever say this of a Kamal Hassan movie: Uttama villain is a brave story. And I loved it. I think the last such movie was “Anbe Sivam”. That was a classic and I truly appreciated Kamal Hassan in that role: It was a brave story in multiple ways and had a truly appreciable philosophy backing it. TL;DR – Go watch Uttama Villain without expectations. You’ll love it. ...