Cinema paradiso - the week tht was - movie special

These days movies are my fav pastime , and basically watching movies is all i do in life these days. After a point decided to spice things up a little .... now now dont get any wrong ideas .... naughty naughty ... just tht decided to make last week a 'Foreign Movies' week - of course all English movies are foreign movies - but in reality English is not a foreign language at all to me thts the language i use almost all the time in Mumbai ; Im deviating , back to my movie watching - aim was to see non-hollywood movies

There are lot of these movies which dont get usual hype in media , don't get released in theaters here , are not shown in movie channels on TV ... so its a bit tough to even know about these movies , let alone catch them ... over the course of time through arduous downloading or collecting movies through office network and personal networks established with great effort , i managed to a get a decent set of foreign movies

All these movies are not only good , but offer you a non-american view of the world ... so thought of sharing little bit bout these movies with all

Persepolis - This was a movie in French - It was a cartoon/graphic kinda movie , set in Iran of 1980-1995 . It was tale of a woman from Iran ... her life right from childhood to teenage to adulthood , examines many events in the country which changed the lives of people forever .. it doesn't show the events like - revolution against Shah of Iran or entry of fundamentalists or communists .. it just focuses of lives of ordinary families (slightly rich family actually in this case) how these major events changed the way they live. A very good movie.
This was actually a graphic novel which was converted to a movie

Diving Bell and the Butterfly - again French - Set in France this time , it was real-life story of Elle magazine editor , who became paralyzed after a stroke and had visibility in one eye alone but whose brain was working and hearing was proper. The movie is about how he manages to communicate to the outside world (by blinking his eye) and how he helped to write a book about how a person with his condition views the world. This is a true story , he actually communicated enough to make a book ! good watch , the best part of the movie is that it is totally non-manipulative and just presents the story without trying to reach to audience or make u like the character ,win ur sympathy etc ..needs to be saluted for tht alone ... tht really works and makes it feel genuine

Pan's labyrinth : its a spanish movie - set in arnd 1944 in Franco's Spain which was ruled by fascists and there was a civil war going on. The facists had taken control and a few rebels were resisting them in countryside .. tht is where the story is set. Its a tale which blends fantasy and reality .... the protagonist is a 12yr old girl whose mother had re-married a captain of fascist forces who is hunting down these rebels in countryside. Tale is set in an almost abandoned village near the edge of forest - a brilliant setting for such a movie

Without giving anything away , the girl reads a lot of fairy tales n fantasy stories and she imagines herself to be in one ... this is shown parallel to the story of how her cruel step father is fighting the good natured rebels ... both the tracks go on and somewhere along the way the line between them blurs ... fusion of real life and fantasy making this one really memorable movie for me - performances are top notch and direction is too good - MUST WATCH - a movie like no other !

Machuca - Spanish movie - this is set in Chile - yet another country which has been ravaged by civil war/ revolutions etc ... Story of a couple of kids , one a rich boy and another living in slums outside city , Communist party gets power in Chile and the long standing class divide seems suddenly threatened ... poor/underprivileged people suddenly seem to be raising their heads and are demanding equal rights in society. A set of poor kids are allowed to join the finest school for free ... this is a story of friendship between the rich kid and a poor boy ... how they weather the cultural/ political storm of class divide. In Chile ,Pinochet came into power backed by upper class and did a huge cleansing of the lower classes after this ... movie shows all this in background , with focus being how lives of people change with the changing times/ ideologies ... it looks at class divide without taking sides or sermonising

Nuovo Cinema paradiso - Italian - Set in some obscure town in Italy - This is the story of a director who returns to his hometown after 30 yrs ... it traces his story as a kid who was mad about cinema , his friendship with guy in charge of projector at local cinema. More than anything this movie is a celebration of cinema ... captures how cinema touches people .. a story of pursuing dreams.
Brilliant in all aspects ... Ennio Morricone's music is the icing on the cake ! yet another Brilliant movie

No Man's land - Bosnian/Serbian - set in no-mans land between both countries , its about 2 soldiers from opposite camps who get stuck in the no-mans land and need to depend on each other to get out alive , the attitude and beliefs and actions of the two mirror the countries from which they hail ... brilliant plot setting ... great movie which succeeds in bringing out the futility and insanity of war .. questions the role of UN ... looks at people in the war .. Fantastic movie

Trivia : This is the movie that beat Lagaan and Amelie to Oscar in best foreign language film category in 2002 !

Malena : Italian movie - set during WW II in a small town in Italy , spans the period when Italy was at its peak fighting war with ally Germany against rest of the world , Italy had great pride in itself
Then everything comes crashing down after a humiliating defeat in the war , the post war years are very terrible for Italians. This movie focuses on a few adolescent boys in a remote town and the effect of a super haaawwwttt Malena (Monica Belluci ) on them and infact of whole town ... on imp thing i read before this movie was that Malena in the movie represents Italy .. what Malena goes through is infact a representation of how Italy was used and abused -> my perception of the movie changed after reading this - earlier felt it was semi-porn ! But actually its a very good movie

Rashomon - Japanese movie -
Why you must watch it : Akira Kurusowa - Need any more reasons to watch this one ???

Movie is about a murder and account of 5 different witness of the same. Their accounts of the same event is different in some ways and all of them claim they are telling truth
Kurosawa makes a lot of interesting points and analyses human tendency to delude themselves and questions whether somethign called truth is possible .. i stop here and let u judge what he says after you watch .. brilliant movie

thts it for now ... again the reason for lumping together these movies are tht they are foreign language movies and I happened to have them in my harddisk this month ... this is no best foreign movies / 5 movies to watch before u do anything else or any such shit !

Tour de malaysia - Day 4 KL

Reached KL Sentral (the railway station of malaysian capital) by morning ...
Headed to our hotel which was in the heart of the city .. the name of the place was 'Serai Inn' .. regular bed and breakfast types place to cater to budget tourists .. the place was fully booked , luckily we had booked online. we checked in .. since there was 8 of us we had taken thr 8 bed dormintory which was damn cheap .. even by indian standards !
Then we headed for local sight seeing .. roamed around the city a bit .. most of the prominent landmarks were near from our hotel ... then headed to Batu caves

they are pretty old (4.5 million yrs acc to wikipedia) .. apparently the temple was built by a local businessman some 150 yrs back and its a famous shrine with a huge number of pilgrims visiting every year .. its got a pretty imposing Murugan statue about 150 feet tall!
there is a steep climb up to temple which is in a cave , there are about 300 steps !

we wanted to watch the qualifiers of the Race - which btw was the main reason of Malaysia trip !

so headed back by bus to KL and reached KL sentral station and found buses for as less as Rm 10 (about Rs.120) for a trip to Sepang track which was near the Airport .. it was really far away about 50 Km .. but the roads were fantastic and on the way we saw townships of CyberJaya and Putrajaya (new administative capital) getting constructed .. they are superbly planned and executed on a mammoth scale and will come up in a few years

The atmosphere at Sepang international circuit was like tht of a carnival with people from different nationalities , supporting different teams decked up in diff colors , waving flags of their nations / teams .. the Ferrari flag was most prominent and red attire was the most common one ... there were stalls put up by the teams selling official merchandise
Lot of buying/reselling of tickets were also happening unofficially outside ticket counter and was being carried out by Europeans not locals !
There was a huge European crowd , but lot of support for the local team one which local company Petronas was sponsoring ... it was called Sauber Petronas earlier .. now its just BMW Sauber .. but after Ferrari the local team had maxmim fans .. then came McLaren ... with a huge number of people sporting Hamilton caps ... then finally a sizeable contigent was decked in blue cheering for Alonso and Renault team !
we had hillside stand and since it was qualifiers the place was not fully packed ... we settled down and eagerly waited for cars to begin practice laps before qualifiers start ... the pure joy from live action .. seeing the Formula one car coming roaring in and pass right infront of your eye is somethiign which has to be experienced and no words can do justice to the sheer delight in this experience ... from where we were sitting we could view a straight sectiona and 2 corners ... the whole atmosphere and the sound of the cars made it an unbelievable experience ... the feel of the track is something u never get while watching it on TV
In the evening we went to Petronas towers , the building was simply brilliant with lights at night ... same for KL tower .. but petronas towers was something else
Finally headed to Chinatown and after roaming around quite a bit managed to locate a shop which sold F1 T-shirts cheap ... since there were frequent raids the guy took us to backside of the shop and displayed the merchandise and packed it and asked us not to open it till we were out of the place ! we were getting it for 10% of the price of Original T-shirts and they looked the same !!!

Tour De Malaysia - day 3 langkawi

We decided to go on 'island hopping' tour , there were lot of private boats which were available , since we were a group of 8 we got a boat of our own - (Refer pics) strapped on the life jackets and embraced ourselves for a heck of ride through seas !

We were taken to a couple of islands after 30 min high speed journey through the sea ... waters were relatively placid still since the boat was an open one and with the winds blowing fine spray of water against faces it was good fun ride ..

We docked at the first island whose name totally escapes me ! the place was supposed to be famous for watersports n stuff ... unfortunately we went on a local holiday and all the shops were closed.

Then we headed to another island after another 10 min ride through sea ... this one was another smallish island but had a freshwater lake in it !!!
the lake was on top of a small hill ... there were lot of monkeys all over tht place .. after trekking up the hill we reached the lake .. boating facilities were there .. u cud rent a canoe or pedal boat and go across the lake
Once tht was done we moved out of the island after 5 mins we reached a point between a set of uninhabited islands ... this was the place for 'eagle feeding' ... ppl toss food in tht place and eagles come in great numbers , swoop in and grab a bite !

after watching it for 10 mins we headed back to the main island .. the whole trip took about 3 hrs
By now we were running out of time .. there were lot more stuff to explore like the Bridge where the Hindi movie 'Don' was shot and a waterfall and couple of places like an island which had a marine park and another one famous for scuba diving ... since we were running out of time we drove around a bit ... had food and returned our rental cars and hung out near Eagle park and took the Ferry back to mainland Malaysia , from where we had to catch an evening train back to Kuala lampur

Tour De Malaysia - day 2 - Langkawi

We had planned to reach Langkawi through train and ferry instead of flying direct(which on hindsight was a better option ! ) Train was till a place called Alor Setor (they called it something like 'alor star' ) , we reached Alor Setor at 8:30 in the morning with a slight delay of 30 min , which was pretty common in Malaysia as a fellow traveller informed us. "Our Railways aren't as efficient as the Indian Railways" he added leaving us shocked , proud and at some level amused also !

We had to take a 15 min taxi ride to the ferry terminal at a place called .... There was a ferry every 30 min or so , but breakfast was a problem for us finding veg food anywhere in southeast Asia is a harrowing experience. But this was a small town and we had given up hope of finding food when we stumbled upon a 7-eleven store and managed to find cheese sandwiches ( thts about the only food vegetarians can get at that place as even ready to eat noodles are all non-veg)
We caught the ferry at 10:30 am and the boat ride went slightly below expectations for me. I had really looked forward to this 45 minute ride over sea as it would be the longest sea cruise for me.
we were seated inside the boat and the seating was just like a bus/flight and through the closed glass windows u look at the sea outside. Not being able to feel the sea breeze/smell the air was a dissapointment. However it was great looking outside and seeing just water all around and the sea was pretty placid and the journey was very pleasant.

We reached Langkawi islands at 11:45 , situated on Andaman sea Langkawi is an archipelago of about 100 islands mostly small ones and a few big ones , the main one biggest of the lot is called Pulau Langkawi ( i know it sounds like a food item for us ! ) and is reachable through sea and has an airport. The island dotted with trees is a proper desktop wallpaper material. A prominent landmark near the boat jetty is the big Eagle statue. Langkawi means land of Eagles.

We had booked rooms in a place called Eagle Bay resort , which was pretty close to Eagle square We had done booking over internet and rooms were just like the pics we saw online , good comfortable rooms and easy on our pocket also.
The first task after checking into the hotel and freshening up was to find a good restaurant which served Veg food.We talked to the hotel staff and got directions to an Indian restarant nearby.

There is no public transport on the island , cabs were available but werent tht cheap. The best way too move around on the sufficiently big island town was to hire cabs/bikes. Since it was very sunny and rains are always a possiblity in tropics we decided to get a car for 4 of us.All we needed to show was a valid license (even Indian one wud do !) and pay a deposit of 100 Ringgit (Rs.1100) and we took the car on rent for a day ; We took a Hyundai Accent and had to shell out just 70 for one day. We were given a map of the island , there sign boards at most places , the
roads were very good. The map however wasnt tht easy to follow as the locals had warned. But there are only 3-4 main roads in the island its not really possible however hard u try to get lost on the island. After 3-4 wrong turns we managed to locate an Indian eatery. It turned out to be a South Indian one much to delight of many of us(6 out of 8 guys in our touring party were from South India) It was our first Indian meal in 2 days and hence seemed to be pretty good despite the fact tht it was a low end restaurant. There was a Pakistani food joint also in the vicinity. We headed to the gas station next and filled the car with petrol. It was a Petronas outlet and was a self serivce one , the cost for 1 litre of Petrol in malaysia then was just Rs.18 for 1 litre when it cost more than Rs.50 in India !

We saw the list of attractions in the island and their location on the map and decided to tackle the White sand beach and black sand beach first as it was already late afternoon (3:30 pm ) . Both of these were located near each other on the North eastern side of the island and we were on the South east side. The whole strech of road was wonderful with trees and vegetation on either side we reached the entrance to White sand beach where public entry was from one end of the beach and the majority of the beachfront was occupied by a Star hotel/resort full of foreigners. The beach was almost empty but for tourists from the hotel facing the beach. There were a few shops selling trinkets and Tshirts outside the entrance to beach , but no local or hawker was present anywhere on the beach. A few small islands were visible and a few them seemed very close by from the beautiful white sand beach. We saw a group of European tourists wading theough the somewhat placid sea towards an island some half a kilometer into the sea and decided to follow the suit. Tht was one the best experiences on langkawi the walk to the island through sea with water at waist/chest level most of the time and occasionally reaching neck level( I didnt know swimming ) . So it was an exciting trip walking to the island through bluish green water.

Around 6 pm much against our wishes we decided to move out of the beach and head to the blacksand beach which was just a few minutes drive from there. But the few minutes drive became a really long one as we got lost and kept missing the entrance to the beach repeatedly and only when we drove extremely slowly we managed to find the beach. It was somewhat secluded and there was nothing around the place to suggest it had such a beautiful beach. There was absolutely nothing there no vehicles. people or shops selling touristy stuff etc.
Unfortunately sun was setting and the there was lovely pier and a lot of fishing boats on one corner of the beach and the other side had gigantic rocks and was simply beautiful. After clicking a few pics in the fading light we moved to their Pier and had a look at boats , there was a fishing community near the boats and there were a few houses with local fishermen.
After a quick shower to get the seawater and beach sand out of our bodies we headed towards Pantai Cenang Beach which was the more commercial beach supposed to teem with people and shops. This was supposed to be a popular hangout spot for all tourists and was supposed to provide best in shopping and food. After finishing our dinner we made up plans for 'Island Hopping' tour next morning

Dasavtaram - adding a whole new dimension

Kamal Hassan's grand movie 'Dasavtaram' opened in June atlast after a looong delay , the most anticipated movie left most of us confused too about the intent of the filmmaker as it was neither a full fledged comedy or light movie nor was it a very serious movie inspite of issues it endorsed.

" So how did you find the movie ?" ... this was the only common question in all conversation i had with my Tam friends across the country or rather world ( read Infy onsite ).
Many of my friends and lots of guys in Orkut communities etc thrashed the movie as dumb and just an excuse for Kamal to play 10 roles. But some thought otherwise , I reluctantly joined the latter group, which comprised mostly of guys brought up mostly on a diet of Tamil movies, who felt it was ok types and definitely worth a ' one-time' watch.

" People don't see movies for what they are " quipped another buddy of mine when i was talking to him about how Kamal's latest magnum opus was being soundly criticized for being very dumb. I noticed in a couple of blog posts on same topic where lots of people pointed out that this was kind of movie where you take something from what was on screen , your interpreation was what mattered. The movie has something for different classes of audience.

For almost a week most of the conversation with buddies would involve a question on what they thought bout the movie , a lot of people (again most of the guys living/raised in TN) were for the movie and a lot of people were against ( majority of these were from outside TN) . I may be wrong in generalising given the number of people i spoke to is very small ... but I guess its fairly straight forward why the movie was made the way it was ... It was meant to appeal to masses in TN and was made almost like a Rajni movie with the ' Universal hero' being the centre or rather everything in the package.

Whether it has fully succeeded or not Box-Office is not very clear , but so far it doesnt look like the film has bombed or suffered the fate of intelligent and critically acclaimed Kamal movies like Hey Ram , Anbe Sivam etc

My own take would be that a man who made movies like the above mentioned ones would be incapable of making stupid movies and whatever we saw on screen was result of toning down the film to make it palatable for masses. Come to think of it , the film had a lot of things which arent tht common in Tamil/regional cinema or i should say Indian cinema.

Movie had lots of themes like Atheism , religions conflicts , chaos theory , Biological weapons , role of America. It also touched upon the kind of impact man has on earth by highlighting sand quarrying etc. and con

At another level our Regional cinema (and Bollywood also) is very different from Hollywood where intelligent movies (atleast some of them) make it big in Box office , but it must be said that as they are made in Englsih they have a much bigger market than these regional Indian movies. Even in Hindi many good movies categorised as 'off-beat' or multiplex movies do find an audience and do well. But i guess if you spend 100 odd crores to make a movie which covers such a huge number of issued and has an actor who can pull of a stupendous 10 roles then obviously any filmmaker would try to ensure that the movie reaches the maximum possible people.

Make no mistake this is a movie for Kamal as an actor to showcase his ability to pull of such a wide variety of roles and hence its no-wonder that the movie had to 'dumbed down' to cater to masses. Once you get tht firmly entrenched in the mind , the movie pans out differenty and there is a quite a lot of enjoyable fare ! While playing 10 roles Kamal was also trying to reach all segments of audience with a film which essentially was a cocktail of lot of things.

One among the many postives of this movie is that it invovled a lot of issues of global interest which is very rare in regional cinema is our country. We usually see this kind of movies i Hollywood only where the entire world is under threat due to some strange weapon/alien or any such thing and am American steps in to save the day. But now a Tamilian has taken on the mantle to save the world and thts an interesting shift !

Perhaps it might lead to more movies involving global theme of Indians asserting their influence on the world , whether it leads to good cinema or not Im not too sure ... but the prospect sounds exciting. I just dont understand why we are always getting movies with college kids or people running around trees or in foreign locales. Perhaps the restricted environs of our movie themes had prevented some radical stories from turning into movies. But with movies getting slicker ( Billa , Sivaji et all ) and budgets getting better we should see more variety from Tamil cinema . So if this movie clicks then probably we would see lots of stories espousing different issues in a commercial format thus reaching a much wider global audience and with Projects like 'Robot' lined up future does seem bright and interesting !

Tour de Malaysia - Day 1 Genting Highlands

It was the first time all of us were going from one country to another by train and not surprisingly were asked to disembark just 1 hr into our journey from Singapore when we reached the malaysian border , we had to show our passport and Malaysian visa ( the train was being searched at tht time ) and then were asked to get into the train which took us to malaysian capital , Kuala Lampur.

We were headed to Genting resort on Day 1 of our trip ... In the morning we reached KL sentral ( the central railway station @ KL) which looked more like an airport than a railway station .. it was one single complex which had both long distance train , local trains(monorail) and bus station as well. Genting Highlands was a resort cum theme park about 45 min from KL , we got the tickets and the bus to Genting from KL sentral itself . There was a package deal which covered two way bus fare + 2 way cable car ride to top of Genting resort+ free access to most rides in outdoor and indoor theme park for just 42 Ringgits. It seemed to be a pretty attractive rate compared to what we find in India for similar theme parks where entry itself costs as much. There was 45 min bus ride and one could notice how neat the cit looked and the roads were very well maintained , we could see most of the important buildings enroute. We passed the Batu caves on the way and after seeing the gigantic Murugan statue and the caves , I made a note to myself to somehow fit it in our schedule when we got back to KL for sightseeing.

Genting was a resort cum theme park and also had a a number of huge star hotels and a a very famous Casino. The buses dropped us at the bottom of the hill and the remaining part of the journey was through ropeway .. it was the longest ropeway ride i had taken (about 12 minutes) and there was rolling mists across the hills and we passed literally through the mist. Journey through the clouds was simply awesome !
There was an indoor and outdoor amusement park .. with pretty decent rides (but nothing exceptional n all) and had attracted a good crowd of tourists esp from India ... Im not much of a rides person , still found myself taking on most of the rides and it was good fun. As we were moving around we seemed to be walking in the clouds ! I was sunny in the morning , but by midday it got kinda dark and there was mist all around us , sometimes we could hardly see what lay ahead of us and in the afternoon it started drizzling , however it rained only in patches , whenever it rained , most of the rides were shut down for safety reasons and after a point we decided to find a place servinf veg food . Finally we had 'veg' fried rice at a small eating joint over there , the menu didnt have any mention of veg fare , but the guy at the counter told us they make veg food for Indian tourists. Gotto mention getting Veg food is difficult in South East Asia!

we shifted indoors and started roaming around in the indoor amusement park , there were quite a few nice rides over there , best one was a sky-train kind of thing which had tracks pretty high up and went in loops all over the place and best part was when we whizzed past ( i should say above) starbucks cafe and a quite a few amused ppl over there waved to us. There were a number of attractions like rock climbing and snow world which weren't part of our deal. But overall the place was very crowded and wasnt as attractive as the outdoor one and we went back to the outdoor one inspite of sun playing hide n seek.

Though rain played the spoilsport and with the entire hills covered with mists at some points the visibility was extremely low esp when we did go-karting , visibility was so poor tht the ppl over there did not allow any overtaking spoiling all the fun . Still it was fun driving the slow moving kart with almost zero visibilty during the second round.

We returned by evening to the city , to KL Sentral (thts where the bus from Genting was headed) railway station which looked more like an airport with convenience stores and swanky shops and eating joints like McD , KFC , Dunkin Donuts .It also had a subway joint where we had our veg dinner we waited in the waiting area till we got the call to board the train to northern part of Malaysia to go to the island Langkawi ... we were taking a train to a place called Alor Setor and from there we had to catch a ferry reach the island. The train was at night arnd 9pm and we were supposed to reach next day at arnd 8 am at Alor Setor.

Though we had booked a/c coach and it was quite comfortable , i felt Indian trains were much better they have more space and one could talk/chat with friends and on the whole you could enjoy the trip much more. Here we started chatting n laughing but found that we seemed to disturbing most of the people who had dived into the bed as soon as the train started . In our trains we have this concept of lower berth where everyone in the coupe sit when they arent sleeping , in those trains the arrangement was different with a lower berth n upper berth on both sides and a common central corridor , which made sitting in a group difficult and ur sounds carried across the compartment and we were met with a few icy stares from disturbed occupants across the compartment and finally we also decided to call it a day !!!

Tour De Malaysia

In between a cramped MBA schedule peppered with various courses lasting a week or two we suddenly found ourselves with a weeks break with nothing to do ..so thot of hitting Malaysia .. planned a lot stuff .. but cud finally get away only for 5 days .. we had the tickets for Malaysian Grand Prix .. so fitted our tour around tht.
We left Singapore by KLM Train .. KL was an overnight journey from Sing ... train was like the ones we get in India ( AC coaches) but was running on metre gauge hence compartment seemed smaller and the whole experience wasnt tht gr8 as it shook a lot more than Indian trains.
Entire trip was planned thru minimal internet research ... the big learning i got from this trip ( as with couple of trips i had undertaken in India also) was tht all u need is spirit to roam and experience something new and once u pack ur bags n set out everything falls in place.
At the same time i have to mention tht basic planning is also a must for instance we had booked hotels and train tickets in advance , but rest of the itenary n places we covered were all decided after reaching the respective places.This trip also gave me a chance to experience a totally different nation , which is similar to our own country in some ways , but is marching
ahead in many ways and offers very good lessons for us. I had lived in Singapore for 4 months prior to this , but had not observed the nation tht much , but after malaysian trip when i came back , i started comparing both the nations and kinda improved my understanding of Singapore.
So will post all the happenings of our 5 day trip over here in a series of posts.

Sentosa Trip - part 2

My days in Singapore were slowly coming to an end but the 2nd visit to Sentosa seemed a distant possibility as we made grand plans to tour outside Singapore. But as with most well laid plans this one also came unstuck and finally decided to cap off my last week in Singapore with another Sentosa visit and try and cover things i missed last time ...

Wanted to cover Fort Siloso which i cudnt fully explore last time around but unfortunately by the time i reached the place there want enuf time to sneak in a visit .. this time visited by paying just $3 monorail 2 way ticket and decided to but the tickets for each attraction from the island itself ... (very costly option if u r visiting for the 1st time , as some of my friends discovered !!!)
This time we especially wanted to see songs of the sea program which happens @ 7:45/8:45 at night .. So we got the Songs of the sea tickets along with island entry ticket itself as the shows get full by evening time.

First stop was at cineblast the 4-D theater .. had seen the movie earlier tried the other attraction and found tht it was a very good experience but lasted only 15 min .. which was way tooo less
then the next stop was at Luge ... we get to go down a hill in a sled kinda thing which has got brakes and can be maneuvered to an extent and boy it was fun .. best part was tht for $18 ticket .. u get to do it 3 times !!! u go down the hill , come up in a sky ride (ropeway) and its one of the best things in the island ...

we were done with this by 7 and since we had another 45 min to kill thot to visiting the small beach over there and then spotted the beach bar !
the Bartender suggested a local cocktail called 'Singapore Sling' so we ordered tht ... he took an awfully lot of time to prepare it and we got our hands on the drink @ arnd 7:30 and there was less than 5 min to the show and we all were in a hurry n dint have time enjoy the drink and hence gulped it down in a jiffy and the bartender who had prepared the drink for over 15 min looked very annoyed with us for finishing it off in 15 secs !!!

the Songs of the Sea show features some local songs with dancing performers and spectacular laser show topped off with brilliant fireworks and was really good.

When you are done with each of these 'éxperiences' when move out u invariably pass through cleverly placed stores selling souvenirs/memorabilia connected to the show u just saw/other attractions in the island and most ppl ending buying something or other !
just for memory sake i bought a small singing statute to keep at my home and much to my chagrin found tht my parents (who visited this place a month back) had bought the same object !!!
Looking at the island u cant help admiring the way these ppl have turned a small island into such a brilliant money-spinner which gives the tourists a great experience.
But they arent done yet .. they have plans to build a casino on the island and a few other attractions are also being planned making this a place to visit for any tourist.

Private public transport (?)!

There comes a stage in every MBA students life where after being subjected to hundreds of business case studies and generating business ideas after ideas for course after course ... We end up trying to identify whatever we find wrong in the world around us and try to come up with some innovative ways to improve it. Only to come to realisation that many solutions do sound nice or look good on paper and thts about it .. as far as practicality is concerned. But in one way or other these things do make us realise how or rather why the system operates in its present form. That in a way is a great learning by itself for future, if at all we get to changing things in future !

While discussing several of these ideas , lack of effective public transport in India is something we have debated about passionately. We did discuss one day wide range of solutions right from metro to car pooling and all ... While discussing about this i was drawn back to my days as a techie in Bangalore when I observed how people overcame this lack of adequate transport problem easily ( even if on wrong side of law)

I used to visit my hometown every alternate weekend and would reach Bangalore early morning arnd 5am when the public buses wouldn't be available and I used to get down on the outskirts of the city at a place just about 2 KM from my house .. since it was early morning walking all the way was ruled out , the only other mode of transport was Autorickshaw ... here it was the case of monopoly and at times the demand would exceed the supply and hence they would charge exhorbitant rates for their service

After a few months i noticed a few people would disembark from the bus and would turn down the waiting autos and would walk further ahead and wait near the bus shelter . I figured there must be some other alternate method of commute and joined them. Then they arrived , the 'call centre' cabs ... these cabs come after dropping off people to offices/homes or from wherever ... essentially they were coming back on return trips and for a very nominal amount would drop you to your place provided its on their way. The driver makes a quick buck and we , the poor commuters , were no longer held hostage by the auto rickshaw wallas ...

In Bangalore , there are huge numbers of private buses, vans , cars used to ferry the estimated 2 lakh IT/BPO employees in the city. Now all many of these vehicles put in multiple trips and hence go empty half of the time.
I used to wonder why cant Govt legalize these people picking up passengers on their return trip , we talk about energy crisis and the fact that oil imports are hitting us hard n all ... we also talk about how to optimize our energy needs , so if private vehicles were allowed to pick up passengers for nominal charges then aren't we saving energy and benefiting the common men as well . We would not only provide support for the public transport , which inspite of our best efforts is lacking in many places , but also effectively make use of already deployed vehicles in addition to saving on fuel , cutting down on pollution as well reducing the overall costs for all parties concerned !

Also if Auto drivers are allowed to take multiple passengers with per person/km fares , then multiple people can share costs and probably the driver might get more revenue and more fuel can be saved.

So can this be done , is it worth the trouble ?

I'm still not sure about the answer .. there are many many angles to this debate , but essence of my argument is that we are wasting a lot in the current process and do need a rethink sooner or later ... But this being the age of Private Public Partnerships , why not ?