Bartimaeus !!!
I finished reading Bartimaeus Trilogy. It’s a series of 3 books which has got everything. Its an ideal fantacy series.
The plot mainly involves Nathaniel (John Mandrake) - a magician boy, Bartimaeus - a 4th level djinni and Kitty Jones - a commoner. Without doubt Bartimaeus steals the show with his witty humor and timely cracked jokes.
This is my view about the characters :
1) Bartimaeus - He is a 4th level djinni and the best character in the book (according to me). He is roughly 5,000 year old djinni. He thinks as fast as a super computer and his knowledge about the mgicians and their histroy is marvellous. He fought most of the great wars and did service to some great magicians. Here he is slave to Nathaniel, the magician boy. The conversation between Nathaniel and Bartimaeus is the most humorous one.
2) Nathaniel (John Mandrake) - Nathaniel is the birth name of magician. And every magician keep their birth name secret so as to remain safe from some kind of summoning (I quiet like this funda, wish I could have had a secret name too :)). Nathaniel is known as John Madrake in the magician's community.The story starts with a 11 year old Nathaniel. I don’t know why authors are obsessed with kids so much, the main character is always a kid in his teens, take Harry Potter, take Eragon and now Nathaniel. I found Nat's character a challenging one, as per the book. He is eager to gain more power and wants to be good in everyones eyes. He is thorne for most of the ministers and they try to overcome him and here the story gets interesting.
3) Kitty Jones - I feel this character has played significant role in the book. Though she is a commoner (like muggles in harry potter), she proves that commoners can also perfom magic. She is a strong character and has a high will power. She want to show the true face of magicians to the world. She fights against the magicians, against Mandrake. But still she saves Mandrakes life.
Do read Bartimaeus if u like reading humor, if u like reading nice strong plot.
Though I like Harry Potter better than any other books Bartimaeus has its own charm, and simply the best fantacy books I can say.
I will write Bartimaeus Vs. Harry Potter (comparison between the two novels shortly, I will need ur reviews for that so please read them all).
Advay
Thursday, August 17, 2006
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Football
Football.....
Football is my recent craze. Dont feel that its all due to the coming world cup. But my craze to football started almost 8 months back when the english premier league started. I never used to follow football so closely as now. I support ManUnited at premier league. And am glad to find my club standing 2nd at the end of the season. They cud have done better but Chelsea were amazing throughout the season. I like the style of English football, its played with lot of short passes and smart touches rather than Brazilian or Argentine football where long range shots and individual performance counts. Still my most favourite player is Ronaldhino of Brazil, at this moment no one can beat him. He is simply the best footballer currently in the world. My some other favourite players are Wayne Rooney, Christiano Ronaldo, Frank Lampard, Bellamy, Owen and the list goes on.
I guess India also should promote football. They concentrate just too much over the cricket and i strongly believe there are other major sports that are not properly looked after. Football is one among them. Maybe the sports minister should take some responsible measure towards developing a good soccer in india. I dont think its difficult to get atleast 100 players in the population of 100 crores. Hopefully some general awreness should be brought among indian people for promotion if football in india.
Football is my recent craze. Dont feel that its all due to the coming world cup. But my craze to football started almost 8 months back when the english premier league started. I never used to follow football so closely as now. I support ManUnited at premier league. And am glad to find my club standing 2nd at the end of the season. They cud have done better but Chelsea were amazing throughout the season. I like the style of English football, its played with lot of short passes and smart touches rather than Brazilian or Argentine football where long range shots and individual performance counts. Still my most favourite player is Ronaldhino of Brazil, at this moment no one can beat him. He is simply the best footballer currently in the world. My some other favourite players are Wayne Rooney, Christiano Ronaldo, Frank Lampard, Bellamy, Owen and the list goes on.
I guess India also should promote football. They concentrate just too much over the cricket and i strongly believe there are other major sports that are not properly looked after. Football is one among them. Maybe the sports minister should take some responsible measure towards developing a good soccer in india. I dont think its difficult to get atleast 100 players in the population of 100 crores. Hopefully some general awreness should be brought among indian people for promotion if football in india.
Monday, May 01, 2006
KERALA trip
This is my travelogue to Gods Own Country….KERALA… !!!
I had been to Kerala for 3 days with 6 of my other friends. We started on 28th April (Friday night) and came back on 1st May (Monday night).
The night was perfect for 7 of us to have a go at Gods Own Country. We all started off with a bang around 8:30 pm from Bangalore towards Munnar.
We had booked a 4 wheeler with an execellent driver who touched the max speed of 125km/hr on many occasion on a straight road.
Night journey was a bit painful but somehow we managed to get some sleep.
Morning around 6am we all got up, we were still in TamilNadu, some village in Madurai District. At this very morning we could see enough number of people to crowd the roads. I guess people of this part of country have severe hearing impairments as they couldn’t even move out of our speeding vehicle. Our driver had tough time managing them. We came to a place called Theni where we did a grave mistake of coninuing on same road and not going to Munnar which was on our right.
There was difference of opinion among us as few of us were voting for Thekaddy, which was 30km from Theni and others were in favour of Munnar, which was 60km from Theni. Actually Thekkady was also on our hit list but later we ditched it coz of lack of time. We continued on the same road and in mid way we decided that we will leave Thekaddy and continue for Munnar. But it was too late to take a U-turn and hence we continued on the same road. After reaching Thekaady at around 8am, we started for Munnar, now 108km from here with a hilly road and thick jungle around. We couldn’t see any animals except for the usual monkeys.
Thekaddy is in Kerala, the road was beautiful with thick forest. On the way to Munnar we passed between the thick clouds as well. We couldn’t even see who is coming from the front and it was a great experience. We all were so excited at the chill outside. All words would fail for the lovely description of the place. We managed to get out of the clouds soon and now we got caught by another beauty, the never ending greenary of tea bagans. It was one of the best sites, early morning sun rays falling on lush green hills,making it more lovely. We all could feel it, it was heaven, Kerala rocks !!!
Finally we reached Munnar by 12 pm (we were late by 4 hours) and had our lunch at a place called Patel, a perfect gujju food u can have. It was a great lunch and we started off with our site seeing. We had been to few tea gardens and view points. But the road way made our day. One would definitely like to see such a peace and calm atmosphere after coming from polluted city like Bangalore. We finally went to a place called Top Point, a place surrounded by hills on all sides and supposed to be the highest point of Munnar. It was certainly the most eye catching spot. Beauty of this place certainly can not be explained in words !!!
We were back around 7:30 to Munnar city. We booked the houseboat in Kumargam (near Allepy) in Munnar itself and went to have nice sleep.
Next day (Sunday), I was the first one to get up at 6am and got ready for our next venture for Kumargam. As others were yet to get up, I had nice walk in the hills. I was alone walking through the hilly roads of Munnar with the chilled air all around, it was the walk of my life.
We started for Kumaragam, and stopped in between near few scenic spots. Kumaragom came at around 12pm and we boarded our houseboat after half an hour. The weather in this part of country is a bit humid and the temperature was around 36 degrees celcius. It was a bit contrasting to Munnar but it has its own beauty. We wooed as we started our houseboat. Houseboat is a perfect house with all the facilities, name any u will get there. They had proper kitchen, 2 bed rooms,the hall contained TV, dining table, and small siting area.It had a great finishing and certainly eye-catching. The name of our boat was AQUA JUMBO(don’t laugh).It was the only boat which made hell lot of noise.I had seen backwaters several time before but this was the very first time when I was really experiencing it. The backwater is everywhere, like we have roads in city, they have small channels of water where boats can pass. After passing through busy streets(ooopppsss) channels of water, we reached to lake kinda place, where u can see water all over the place, it was like another sea in itself which has taken place inside the land. We were served lunch, I had fish and chicken and the nutritious Kerala rice with north indian fulka's. Lunch was too good, we all ate like dogs, really. We played some songs on DVD player they had, and talked for a long time. The boat finally halted near a place around 5:30pm. We had a nice time swimming in the water. Though there was current in water, we swam for 45 mins. We went out to get some Toddy (A typical Kerala wine made from a fruit called Tady, something like coconut).In between we were served with evening snack which was made of sweet banana, I forgot the name but it was good. I couldn’t eat much as I was already full with heavy lunch.
All the times we used to pull each others leg and did all sort of masti on the boat. It was definitely the most hilarious day on our trip. We all had drinks just before the dinner. I had vodka and the Toddy. I liked Toddy and all the other didn’t even touch it after taking a sip. We bought 1 litre of Toddy and I could manage to drink only 750ml :)…I was a bit high than others, we had good food, I guess there was some chicken and fulkas and Kerala rice. After dinner we again had some funny talks and we went to sleep around 11:30pm. Houseboat really made our day, it was a different experience and with friends around it makes things perfect. It was the night when we slept tight.
Next day again we got up around 7am and the morning wheather on the backwater was just a perfect morning one would imagine. It was a cloudy morning and a nice breeze added the finishing touches to the awesome weather. Certainly one of the best mornings I ever had. We got our breakfast served soon after the boat started. It had idly and idiappam (a noodle kinda thing made with the same base as of idly) and pineapple to make it more attractive breakfast. Like us there were many tourist on other boats. We used to wave hands when someones boat used to pass so did they. We clicked lots of good looking cheeks from other boats with our great zoom camera which came out to be very helpful:)….) (All those things u can do when u are a bachelor and when u are with right friends….). We came to our original place at 9:30 in morning. And we straightaway started for Banaglore. We were told that it would take 14-15 hours from Kumaragom to reach Bangalore but our driver did the hard work to reach Bangalore around 11 hours.
This was certainly one of my best tours ever !!!
And yeah I have decided to go to Allepy or Kumaragam for my Honeymoon… :))
I had to cut down certain hilarious things here coz this is already lengthy and it was specific to us.
Between following were the guys who were in this trip.
1) Advay - Myself
2) Shrirang Ballal (Balli) - My roomie and college mate
3) Sidharth Vishwanathan(we used to call him "mota" but now "James") - My roomie and college mate
4) Umesh Bude (bude) - college mate
5) Hariharan Iyer (hari bond) - college mate
6) Prayush (pratyush) - James's colleague - ultimate jolly guy..
7) … Gattani (gattu) - James's friend from BITS Pilani.
Driver : Sanish - Touched max speed of 125km/hr on certain occasion, really made our journey comfortable.
Regards,
Advay.
I had been to Kerala for 3 days with 6 of my other friends. We started on 28th April (Friday night) and came back on 1st May (Monday night).
The night was perfect for 7 of us to have a go at Gods Own Country. We all started off with a bang around 8:30 pm from Bangalore towards Munnar.
We had booked a 4 wheeler with an execellent driver who touched the max speed of 125km/hr on many occasion on a straight road.
Night journey was a bit painful but somehow we managed to get some sleep.
Morning around 6am we all got up, we were still in TamilNadu, some village in Madurai District. At this very morning we could see enough number of people to crowd the roads. I guess people of this part of country have severe hearing impairments as they couldn’t even move out of our speeding vehicle. Our driver had tough time managing them. We came to a place called Theni where we did a grave mistake of coninuing on same road and not going to Munnar which was on our right.
There was difference of opinion among us as few of us were voting for Thekaddy, which was 30km from Theni and others were in favour of Munnar, which was 60km from Theni. Actually Thekkady was also on our hit list but later we ditched it coz of lack of time. We continued on the same road and in mid way we decided that we will leave Thekaddy and continue for Munnar. But it was too late to take a U-turn and hence we continued on the same road. After reaching Thekaady at around 8am, we started for Munnar, now 108km from here with a hilly road and thick jungle around. We couldn’t see any animals except for the usual monkeys.
Thekaddy is in Kerala, the road was beautiful with thick forest. On the way to Munnar we passed between the thick clouds as well. We couldn’t even see who is coming from the front and it was a great experience. We all were so excited at the chill outside. All words would fail for the lovely description of the place. We managed to get out of the clouds soon and now we got caught by another beauty, the never ending greenary of tea bagans. It was one of the best sites, early morning sun rays falling on lush green hills,making it more lovely. We all could feel it, it was heaven, Kerala rocks !!!
Finally we reached Munnar by 12 pm (we were late by 4 hours) and had our lunch at a place called Patel, a perfect gujju food u can have. It was a great lunch and we started off with our site seeing. We had been to few tea gardens and view points. But the road way made our day. One would definitely like to see such a peace and calm atmosphere after coming from polluted city like Bangalore. We finally went to a place called Top Point, a place surrounded by hills on all sides and supposed to be the highest point of Munnar. It was certainly the most eye catching spot. Beauty of this place certainly can not be explained in words !!!
We were back around 7:30 to Munnar city. We booked the houseboat in Kumargam (near Allepy) in Munnar itself and went to have nice sleep.
Next day (Sunday), I was the first one to get up at 6am and got ready for our next venture for Kumargam. As others were yet to get up, I had nice walk in the hills. I was alone walking through the hilly roads of Munnar with the chilled air all around, it was the walk of my life.
We started for Kumaragam, and stopped in between near few scenic spots. Kumaragom came at around 12pm and we boarded our houseboat after half an hour. The weather in this part of country is a bit humid and the temperature was around 36 degrees celcius. It was a bit contrasting to Munnar but it has its own beauty. We wooed as we started our houseboat. Houseboat is a perfect house with all the facilities, name any u will get there. They had proper kitchen, 2 bed rooms,the hall contained TV, dining table, and small siting area.It had a great finishing and certainly eye-catching. The name of our boat was AQUA JUMBO(don’t laugh).It was the only boat which made hell lot of noise.I had seen backwaters several time before but this was the very first time when I was really experiencing it. The backwater is everywhere, like we have roads in city, they have small channels of water where boats can pass. After passing through busy streets(ooopppsss) channels of water, we reached to lake kinda place, where u can see water all over the place, it was like another sea in itself which has taken place inside the land. We were served lunch, I had fish and chicken and the nutritious Kerala rice with north indian fulka's. Lunch was too good, we all ate like dogs, really. We played some songs on DVD player they had, and talked for a long time. The boat finally halted near a place around 5:30pm. We had a nice time swimming in the water. Though there was current in water, we swam for 45 mins. We went out to get some Toddy (A typical Kerala wine made from a fruit called Tady, something like coconut).In between we were served with evening snack which was made of sweet banana, I forgot the name but it was good. I couldn’t eat much as I was already full with heavy lunch.
All the times we used to pull each others leg and did all sort of masti on the boat. It was definitely the most hilarious day on our trip. We all had drinks just before the dinner. I had vodka and the Toddy. I liked Toddy and all the other didn’t even touch it after taking a sip. We bought 1 litre of Toddy and I could manage to drink only 750ml :)…I was a bit high than others, we had good food, I guess there was some chicken and fulkas and Kerala rice. After dinner we again had some funny talks and we went to sleep around 11:30pm. Houseboat really made our day, it was a different experience and with friends around it makes things perfect. It was the night when we slept tight.
Next day again we got up around 7am and the morning wheather on the backwater was just a perfect morning one would imagine. It was a cloudy morning and a nice breeze added the finishing touches to the awesome weather. Certainly one of the best mornings I ever had. We got our breakfast served soon after the boat started. It had idly and idiappam (a noodle kinda thing made with the same base as of idly) and pineapple to make it more attractive breakfast. Like us there were many tourist on other boats. We used to wave hands when someones boat used to pass so did they. We clicked lots of good looking cheeks from other boats with our great zoom camera which came out to be very helpful:)….) (All those things u can do when u are a bachelor and when u are with right friends….). We came to our original place at 9:30 in morning. And we straightaway started for Banaglore. We were told that it would take 14-15 hours from Kumaragom to reach Bangalore but our driver did the hard work to reach Bangalore around 11 hours.
This was certainly one of my best tours ever !!!
And yeah I have decided to go to Allepy or Kumaragam for my Honeymoon… :))
I had to cut down certain hilarious things here coz this is already lengthy and it was specific to us.
Between following were the guys who were in this trip.
1) Advay - Myself
2) Shrirang Ballal (Balli) - My roomie and college mate
3) Sidharth Vishwanathan(we used to call him "mota" but now "James") - My roomie and college mate
4) Umesh Bude (bude) - college mate
5) Hariharan Iyer (hari bond) - college mate
6) Prayush (pratyush) - James's colleague - ultimate jolly guy..
7) … Gattani (gattu) - James's friend from BITS Pilani.
Driver : Sanish - Touched max speed of 125km/hr on certain occasion, really made our journey comfortable.
Regards,
Advay.
Wednesday, April 26, 2006
Are We Conservative ?
This blog is about how conservative is the indian culture and is it good or bad ?
Since my office is around 15km from my place i prefer to go in company bus because of
2 reasons... first being heavy traffic and second being its free of cost...
I generally give preference to the front seats, so i sit somewhere in front 4 or 5 rows.
Since last few days i have been sitting near a girl and we havent spoken a single word.
She is like an average girl with specs and rarely fahions as the other girls here do !!!
I happened to be thinking this morning that i have been sitting near this girl since a long time
but never tried to speak with her and vice versa. Whats the reason ??
She takes the window seat and i am next to her, sometimes i try to look outside, I get the impression that she feels i am staring her. She also keep looking outside till i look outside. But no one made any positive effort on how to start a conversation.
I guess most of the indian youth need to develop this skil as it is considered to be one of the PR related activity.
Do u really think its our conservative society to blamed for this ??
i think i should go and talk with her first but then i think what the girl wud say of i suddenly start talking with her...
Wierd kinda blog.... but suggestions are welcome.... !!!
Since my office is around 15km from my place i prefer to go in company bus because of
2 reasons... first being heavy traffic and second being its free of cost...
I generally give preference to the front seats, so i sit somewhere in front 4 or 5 rows.
Since last few days i have been sitting near a girl and we havent spoken a single word.
She is like an average girl with specs and rarely fahions as the other girls here do !!!
I happened to be thinking this morning that i have been sitting near this girl since a long time
but never tried to speak with her and vice versa. Whats the reason ??
She takes the window seat and i am next to her, sometimes i try to look outside, I get the impression that she feels i am staring her. She also keep looking outside till i look outside. But no one made any positive effort on how to start a conversation.
I guess most of the indian youth need to develop this skil as it is considered to be one of the PR related activity.
Do u really think its our conservative society to blamed for this ??
i think i should go and talk with her first but then i think what the girl wud say of i suddenly start talking with her...
Wierd kinda blog.... but suggestions are welcome.... !!!
Friday, April 21, 2006
My Life in 11th Std
This is typical life of a 11th class student in a average or metro city in india.
We had a craze of tutions during our time so going with the wave i too joined all top dude tutors in the city. Tutions timings were like a circus that time... i used to get up early in the morning for a 6:00am class... i had a two wheeler called as Luna (which i find the most stupid vehicle now)... i used to ride it like a moto gp driver... just manage to reach the class... as a studious by nature i loved to sit on front benches but there was a lot of competition so i had to satisfy with the last bench. But there was one more girl who used to always come late used to sit besides me, her name is Mukta Prasad and now heard she is in Harward..... oooopppsss.... hope she remembers me one day...This girl used to laugh on any damn joke cracked by the maths teacher (his name was Patthakine and supposed to excellent maths teahcer who has capability of making students mug the solutions for a given type of problem).
After the maths tutions i used to have secong lap of my moto gp to a Chemistry tution for which again i used to be late. sitting arrangement was so pathetic that one small bench wud contain 6 students... i still dont remember how i managed to take down the notes.... the timings were 7:30 to 9:00am ... i used to come home... have a quick bath and breakfast. I used to literally run for first lecture which started around 9:45am. Whole day i used to attend college seriously like a mama's boy and i hardly bunked my college. After coming from college at 5... I had to again go for a Physics tutions at 5:30pm... come back to home by 7:00 pm... had another tution of electronics at 8:00 pm.... from which i used to come back by 9:30 or sometimes 10pm...
the life was real busy... i guess busier than now.....
will write next blog.... explaing about specific tution class..... cio...
Adv
We had a craze of tutions during our time so going with the wave i too joined all top dude tutors in the city. Tutions timings were like a circus that time... i used to get up early in the morning for a 6:00am class... i had a two wheeler called as Luna (which i find the most stupid vehicle now)... i used to ride it like a moto gp driver... just manage to reach the class... as a studious by nature i loved to sit on front benches but there was a lot of competition so i had to satisfy with the last bench. But there was one more girl who used to always come late used to sit besides me, her name is Mukta Prasad and now heard she is in Harward..... oooopppsss.... hope she remembers me one day...This girl used to laugh on any damn joke cracked by the maths teacher (his name was Patthakine and supposed to excellent maths teahcer who has capability of making students mug the solutions for a given type of problem).
After the maths tutions i used to have secong lap of my moto gp to a Chemistry tution for which again i used to be late. sitting arrangement was so pathetic that one small bench wud contain 6 students... i still dont remember how i managed to take down the notes.... the timings were 7:30 to 9:00am ... i used to come home... have a quick bath and breakfast. I used to literally run for first lecture which started around 9:45am. Whole day i used to attend college seriously like a mama's boy and i hardly bunked my college. After coming from college at 5... I had to again go for a Physics tutions at 5:30pm... come back to home by 7:00 pm... had another tution of electronics at 8:00 pm.... from which i used to come back by 9:30 or sometimes 10pm...
the life was real busy... i guess busier than now.....
will write next blog.... explaing about specific tution class..... cio...
Adv
Thursday, April 20, 2006
Child Me
When i was a kid my parents or elders used to ask me "beta, what u want to be in life"..
i used to tell them i want to be a air pilot.... they used to say why not a doc or an engg.... Actually they didnt know that i saw a movie where a pilot saves his country... after a month down the line i saw another movie where a pilot dies... from the very moment i decided not to become a pilot.. again an elder asked me the same question... this time i didn't say air pilot... i said i dont want to be a air pilot as they die during the crashes... that time i decided to become somthing in life...
i always had fasciantion about IAS... but it never came from heart... i was like going with the waves.. which now i feel is so dangerous... i havent really done what i wanted to... i sometimes blame myself for everything but whenever i think about it i somehow compromise with my present. I dont know what to do... should i start fresh to persue my dream or should i continue with the present. I know its difficult to make a human mind happy but will try my best !!!!
i used to tell them i want to be a air pilot.... they used to say why not a doc or an engg.... Actually they didnt know that i saw a movie where a pilot saves his country... after a month down the line i saw another movie where a pilot dies... from the very moment i decided not to become a pilot.. again an elder asked me the same question... this time i didn't say air pilot... i said i dont want to be a air pilot as they die during the crashes... that time i decided to become somthing in life...
i always had fasciantion about IAS... but it never came from heart... i was like going with the waves.. which now i feel is so dangerous... i havent really done what i wanted to... i sometimes blame myself for everything but whenever i think about it i somehow compromise with my present. I dont know what to do... should i start fresh to persue my dream or should i continue with the present. I know its difficult to make a human mind happy but will try my best !!!!
Wednesday, December 07, 2005
Getting Started
i dont know till what point i will be able to post blogs here..
but i said to myself that atleast to pass some more time why not try this...
the best time to write a blog is afternoon just after the lunch when u are sleeping and trying to work ... writing a blog will make most use of that period... atleast i wont be pretending to do work while am actually in siesta....
anyways lots of things have inspired me to write something.... i never cared though...
writing is a good habit.... i used to write diaries.... but left it in b/n as i got bored of it...!!!
this blogging is a new ways of writing diaries.... rather than using a pen and paper u can use blogspots memory which comes for free of cost.... and its like u can write all crap that u want.
let me come up with a interesting topic tomorrow..... ciao till then...
but i said to myself that atleast to pass some more time why not try this...
the best time to write a blog is afternoon just after the lunch when u are sleeping and trying to work ... writing a blog will make most use of that period... atleast i wont be pretending to do work while am actually in siesta....
anyways lots of things have inspired me to write something.... i never cared though...
writing is a good habit.... i used to write diaries.... but left it in b/n as i got bored of it...!!!
this blogging is a new ways of writing diaries.... rather than using a pen and paper u can use blogspots memory which comes for free of cost.... and its like u can write all crap that u want.
let me come up with a interesting topic tomorrow..... ciao till then...
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