Today during my flight by Japan Airlines from Tokyo to Singapore I watched A Good Year by Russell Crowe. While selecting the movie my expectations was very limited. Having seen Russell Crowe in Gladiator, I didn't expect him to perform well on a love story (don't ask me why) and the story line of a London Banker going to France Wineyard and finding love was sounding slow and boring. By the time I made my mind, the movie was into its 20th minute or so, but the movie went very interesting and I was hooked. I saw it once again throughout to feel the entire story line in one go. A good movie to watch if you are in a mood for a slow story.  

Trailer can be seen from here.

Yesterday, while in Singapore for transit to my Japan trip, I had few hours to kill - this was after doing all the eating and shopping in Singapore. With my maternal uncle, we went to "Ghost Rider" in the multiplex inside Plaza Singapura (Wikipedia has the history about this mall). Honestly, we haven't heard about the movie before, had very little expectations other than "Nicholas Cage" name.

I am not a fan of ghostly scary movies, but this movie was not scary but comedy. Comedy because someone like Sony Pictures will come up with this story line and then waste their money filming it. I am not complaining the story line is unbelievable, but it had nothing worth mentioning or even seeing what so ever. Total washout from my perspective. Having said that Kids and Teenager might find the movie interesting, for the action by Nicholas Cage - but even for that there are better action movies.  

You can read more reviews here, but I am surprised few of them rated this movie 4 out of 5!

If you are travelling to Singapore, you can enjoy Free Wi-Fi access at StarHub Access points in Changi Airport, Suntec City and Coffee Bean Outlets. I have used during my trips to Singapore in the last few years and find it most of the time working fine. Today while trying to use it in Changi Airport I couldn't login, after few frustrating moments I realized I was doing it wrong - StarHub please improve your User Instructions in the SMS you send.

Steps:

First you select StarHub as your Mobile Phone Roaming Service Provider. Then dial *9434 from your phone, you will shortly get a SMS with UserId and Password. Then connect to "StarHub" access point from your laptop. Open Internet Explorer, you will get the above shown Login Screen. In the screen, select Mobile/Cellular Phone Roaming Customers Checkbox, before entering the UserID and Password in the Step 2 area. I missed to select the RadioButton - can you believe how dumb I am

In the Jet Airways flight from Chennai to Singapore I watched "Lage Raho Munnabhai". Since I got a Business Class upgrade, they gave a Personal Video System - which was a small Fujitsu Lifebook laptop with customized hardware and software.

I don't understand "Hindi" beyond the basics, so I was skeptical on how much I will like the movie and understand the jokes. But the English Subtitle really was useful and well done that I enjoyed the movie 100%. I laughed and laughed, that I had to control myself during several instances from being heard by my fellow passengers. I didn't know Sanjay Dutt could do this well a comedy performance, I always imagined him to be an action hero (pardon my ignorance of Hindi Movies). The director "Rajkumar Hirani" has done a fabulous job of giving a movie of world-class quality in the presentation style.

Though it is sad that "Gandhian" philosophy has to be shown to be followed by a Gunda, it was given in a nice fashion. And finally, Vidya Balan was looking beautiful throughout the movie!

Today I travelled from Chennai to Singapore by Jet Airways. Though MAA-SIN has several flight I picked this one, as it is conveniently leaving Chennai in the morning at 11AM and I wanted to try Jet Airways International Sector. Jet always has been my favourite airways and I wanted to see how they do in International sector. In short, I loved the flight and Jet's impeccable service.

The ground staff was efficient, and they impressed me most for two things: First for they gracely upgraded me to Business Class (though with a Jet Upgrade voucher but that is valid only on Domestic Sectors) and Second for a very small thing but a gesture I loved - the Immigration Card they handed over already had the flight number filled up. Think about service and this is service - the ability to anticipate little things and do it for customer. Let me stop here I am sounding like their spokesperson . 

Lastly, I am happy that I will get few thousand miles credited to my frequent flyer program, Jet when will you fly to USA?

I recently read Bill Bryson's book "Neither here Nor there" - travels in Europe. A very hilarious book. Bill has made little effort to make it a travel guide, so you will learn little about Europe. Bill's style was very lively, once I picked the book, I couldn't keep it down without finishing it.

Last week while in London, I saw a very good programme in BBC TV titled "How to be Slim?". The programme contained scientific study results and common diet myth debunkers. It included suggestions on adding non-fat Dairy, Visual Clues to reduce in-take, under-sizing, eating filling foods like soups, etc. Check out the webpage here at BBC.CO.UK website.

Unfortunately the accompanying video of the programme only plays for UK Visitors. If you are adventurous you can pretend to be from UK and view the Video content from here [the link uses an UK Anonymizer Proxy Service to do this].

Related Link: Seven common diet myths

Here is the scoope on I got my free Zune Player from Microsoft.

I never owned an iPod and my last brush with a MP3 player was about 6 to 7 years back with now ancient Creative Nomad II Player. Nomad had an extremely limited space even after adding 64MB Smart Media Card (which at that time costed me a fortune). I found limited use for the device, as anywhere I went I had my laptop - whether the trip was for business or vacation. So Music and Video was always there. I considered this as the perfect Digital Media Nirvana - with no need to buy myself an iPod or equivalent. In the mean time, I gifted my sisters with iPod Nano's and they were thrilled - which I couldn't understand why?

So when I got the Zune players (I got two - one I gifted right away) I was very skeptical on how useful will it be for me. Few weeks after I got Zune, I was to do my business visit to USA. Normally I rip few of the new DVDs and VCDs into my laptop - which in past trips, I hardly had time to watch and will delete on return with wasting the time spent in ripping them in the first place. This time I decided to give Zune a spin - so I was out looking on how to rip the videos to Zune format. After lot of research, trials and discussions with other RDs, I narrowed to "PQ DVD to Zune Video Converter Suite". The software certainly was fast, gave good quality video output and was worth the US$40 I spent on it. I just wish they have slightly a better User Interface and their website worked (now they seem to have a new website). If you are using this software, for better results with DVDs set the frame rate to 24 fps (in more options dialog) and Video Quality to Good (in main window).

 

I carried few Tamil Movies, Cho's Drama சாத்திரம் சொன்னதில்லை, EveryBody Loves Raymond and King of Queens. Zune was god sent when I had to kill my time in Airport waiting lounges and with British Airlines' boring In-Flight Entertainment selection. I just hope no one in London Airport thought I was crazy - when I was laughing funnily while watching King of Queens

Zune's battery was decent, I could get over 2 to 3 hours of video inspite of several pause-and-play situations. I just wish they improve it to last for few more hours to last for a full long flight. While in US, I bought Zune's Home A/V Kit - that consists of a AC Charger, Remote Control and TV Cable from Amazon for $75 against the full price of $99.  The TV Cable was really handy to connect Zune to a TV in the apartment and enjoy the videos I carried on a larger screen. I found the TV Cable to be useful at home as well for showing my parents the trip photographs from Zune.

If you own a Zune, I highly recommend the Home A/V kit for a complete experience. While on that, don't waste your money by buying the Zune FM Transmitter - I bought it as well and found it totally useless. The reception was bad everywhere - I am saying this after trying in the USA and also in Chennai where there is huge available non-used FM Spectrum, but still the signal strength was pathetic.

This probably is the first book that I finished with in days of buying it.

I bought the book "One Night @ the call center" by Chetan Bhagat during my visit to the Annual Chennai Book Fair 2007. Bhagat is a graduate from IIT Delhi and author of Five Point Someone. Though I haven't read his earlier book - I got interested by the story line which as the name suggests is about working in a call center and a phone call from God.

With in days of the book fair, I had two long flights [Chennai to London, London to Seattle]. I finished most of the book in the two flights and the balance pages over the first day in Redmond, WA. Completing a book is probably the only good thing for me of doing these long flights. If in town, I would have never finished a book so quickly.

Anyways, coming back about the book. This is a light reading book and I liked the way the author has made no attempt to make it a literary work. Bhagat has tried and captured largely the pulse of India's call centers - though he has dramatized by a bit of artifically added romance and sex. The phone call from God, was more an anti-climax for me, I wish Bhagat could have continued the tempo by handling this bit a little better.

A enjoyable read and definitely worth for Rs.95 (Two Dollars) !

My family owns The Little Flower Co. - a South Indian book Publisher. Apart from LIFCO Dictionaries, our popular titles includes Hindu Sloga books, Personal development and other vernacular titles.

Last month, while I was in America I was thrilled to learn that our title "How to Cook" (a South Indian Cook Book) featured in Saveur magazine. Saveur has listed How to Cook  as one of their top 100 Favorite List of foods, restaurants, drinks, people, places and things. 

 

(Image Courtesy: Saveur Special Issue)

 

"How To Cook" is also available in Tamil Language as "சமைப்பது எப்படி" ?

Microsoft is sponsoring a project to be built by my fellow RD and good friend Tim Huckaby's InterKnowlogy and The Scripps Research Institute (A Non Profit biomedical research firm). The project is to build the release 2 version of an application built on the .NET Framework 3.0 with WPF, Vista and Microsoft Sharepoint giving scientists a powerful tool to visualize and annotate research results for cancer treatment.

If you think you are a good .NET Developer and have some time to spare - you can enroll. You will be paid for the time.

For details visit:

• My fellor Microsoft Regional Director - Stephen Forte's post here
• The post here by Microsoft's Eileen Rumwell announcing the program
• Video about this project

If you are doing Webpages in Indian Languages like Tamil, Hindi, Punjabi, etc. and you want to embed dynamic fonts (fonts that are shown without being installed in your PC) you need two items:

1. A tool to create Dynamic Fonts (EOT) - this can be done by the free Microsoft WEFT Tool. Netscape's Dynamic Font technology Bitstream has been discontinued few years back.
2. Apart from WEFT, you need the actual Open Type fonts for the language. Unfortunately the fonts that ship with Windows XP or MS Office or MS BhashaIndia.com sites are copy righted and cannot be used without explicit license from Microsoft. So you need free Indian Language fonts to do this.

Govt. of India has released free Indian Language Software and Fonts CD for about 10 languages (and growing) in its ILDC.in website. You need to register here and download the fonts for the particular language you want.

Related Links:

• Read about my presentation on stage during the release of Tamil Free Software CD here
• Microsoft Office 2003 in Tamil Language