Happy New Year!

Wish you all a Happy New Year 2006!

What is the worth of anything we do?

The worth is in the act. Your worth halts when you surrender the will to change and experience life.

Interesting lines, from a book called Eragon by Christopher Paolini that I'm currently reading. Its a really engrossing read - refreshingly interesting and well written. The book is part one of a trilogy. Surprisingly for a book containing such existential lines, the author is 22 years old and started writing the book when he finished high school.

Kong - King of the Jurassic?

The film is great... till they reach the island. Then I guess Peter Jackson decided he liked Jurassic Park better than King Kong and made a scary collage with Jurassic era characters. The film has great cinematography and stunning levels of detail in animation, but lacks depth in the characters (that the original King Kong had) and is terribly long - somewhere around 3 and a quarter hours. If you want to enjoy the film, go without any high hopes.

Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery

The Calvin and Hobbes Snow Art Gallery. Positively hilarious!

(via scottcreynolds)

Aaru

The Regal theatre at Colaba plays regional language movies on Sunday mornings. This weekend, it was the turn of the movie 'Aaru'. Its been quite some time since I've seen tamil movies now, so it was really nice to catch one. We ambled into the cinema hall a little late thinking that a tamil movie in Mumbai would be running to a small Tam audience - it was quite a surprise to find the whole hall crowded leaving us with front seats. The startup song and Surya's entrance had the whole hall hooting and whistling :P

Surya and Trisha make a nice pair and the songs by Devi Sri Prasad are good, particularly the startup one. The photography is impressive - shot very slickly in some scenes. The storyline has a nice momentum and keeps moving from one theme to another (or one song to another). If you can make do with the gore, the film is a pretty good one. I must, of course admit, that a big part of the enjoyable experience was due to the gala audience :D

(Review of the film by teakada: Aaru)

The Aging Investor

You might become wiser as you age, but not in stock picking - conclusions of a study by two finance profs at the University of Notre Dame. While investors do seem to learn over time, fall in cognitive ability due to aging seems to override the wisdom gained from experience.

Article in the NYTimes: Aging Brings Wisdom, but Not on Investing

Museum Musings

The INS Vikrant museum has been thrown open to public at the Ballard Pier (Tiger Gate), till the 2nd of December. This is as part of the Navy Day celebrations, which happens on 4th December. I've never been in an air-craft carrier before (who does these days eh), so it was pretty novel. Lots of interesting stuff about India's maritime prowess. It would have been better if there had been a guide to show us around. Curiously, they allow cameras on-board but not mobile phones... wonder why!

The Monetary Museum is located behind the RBI building at Fort, right opposite the entrance of the road leading to the Ballard Pier. The best maintained museum I've seen till date, sporting motion-detecting doors and closed circuit cameras covering a collection that is sure to be a numismatist's delight; and a very well explained display, depicting the origin and development of money. The Indian coin collection is unparalleled - with coins of almost every era explained in great detail. A must visit. Sadly, the open timings are between 9am and 5pm and it's shut down on bank holidays.