I was addicted to it like it was Heisenberg’s blue meth.
News.
I had to have it. Frequently and in solid doses. Without it for a few hours I would get withdrawal twitches. At its peak around the last decade I used to subscribe to the TOI, ET, India Today, Businessworld and listen to the BBC, CNN and NDTV. Every day. I now look back and shake my head at my own stupidity and poor judgment. Oh the waste of all those good hours. The sheer pointlessness of it all. But for the last few years I have not had cable, I haven’t really touched a newspaper or a paper magazine. And I don’t miss any of it. Oscar Wilde once cynically noted “The public has an insatiable curiosity to know everything, except what is worth knowing” and rags like Evening Standard, Metro, TOI, Cable News and Daily Mail seem to exist to prove him very prescient.
Luckily for me there are 3 things that can help you fill the vacuum once you swear off newspapers and TV .
1. Twitter
2. Longform Articles (recommended via Instapaper)
3. Podcasts
Here is how I get my ‘News’ now : I follow about ~100 smart, articulate, well informed people on twitter who keep me posted on anything worthwhile in real time and with fewer words and with less of an ‘agenda’ or angle. And Longform Articles and Podcasts allow me to delve deep into a subject much better than a 300 poorly crafted editorial. A 2000 word essay allows for the talented writer to really get into the nuts and bolts of a subject. Current best example: Caravan Magazine’s fantastic essays. And when it comes to Podcasts, the well-designed Instacast app on iOS allows me to get to podcasts that are very good in quality and content. Favourites currently are NPR’s ‘Planet Money’ Podcast and Slate magazine’s ‘Culture Gabfest’.
I am going to bet the future of Twitter, Longform journalism and Podcasts is much much brighter than cable news and newspapers and I urge you to get the former three a try today. And get off the useless news meth you are addicted to.
I bought this book at 5 PM on a lazy Saturday afternoon at a charity bookstore in Kilburn Park. At 1 AM I was checking with my wife if she minded the bedroom light I was reading this by. If she did I said I’ll go to the kitchen. Because there was no way I was going to bed without finishing the book. I finished the book at 2 AM.
Yes. It is THAT good and gripping. Dava Sobel has done a very good job on the story. The book I nominated as the best I read in 2012 was read furtively over many late nights but Longitude is on a league of its own. I have read best selling fictional spy thrillers where I was yawning at the climax scene. This book actually fits the cliched description ‘Unputdownable’. Best 2 pounds I ever spent at a charity shop too. To those disinclined to read….ewwww…”books!” : Please. This book is a short, almost breezy, 175 pages. 3 days of easy trundle and you are done. To the hardcore bibliophiles : 12 hours on the outside of a lazy rainy day if you take long meal breaks.
“Longitude: The True Story of a Lone Genius Who Solved the Greatest Scientific Problem of His Time” by Dava Sobel
What in this book is so compelling ? What is it about ? Here is the short Amazon summary:
Anyone alive in the eighteenth century would have known that “the longitude problem” was the thorniest scientific dilemma of the day–and had been for centuries. Lacking the ability to measure their longitude, sailors throughout the great ages of exploration had been literally lost at sea as soon as they lost sight of land. Thousands of lives and the increasing fortunes of nations hung on a resolution. One man, John Harrison, in complete opposition to the scientific community, dared to imagine a mechanical solution–a clock that would keep precise time at sea, something no clock had ever been able to do on land. Longitude is the dramatic human story of an epic scientific quest and of Harrison’s forty-year obsession with building his perfect timekeeper, known today as the chronometer. Full of heroism and chicanery, it is also a fascinating brief history of astronomy, navigation, and clockmaking, and opens a new window on our world.
Here is the total kicker that I did not know until last night but thank to the curiosity provoked by this book I now do: A prime meridian is a meridian, i.e. a line of longitude, at which longitude is defined to be 0°. This great circle divides the sphere, e.g. the Earth, into two hemispheres. I live a 90 second walk from the prime meridian!!!. I feel akin to a devout christian who finds out by serendipity that he lives 90 seconds away from the barn where Jesus was born. #MINDBLOWN
This is the kind of book that once again does well what our dry boring schooling failed to do but had an obligation to : Make history, geography and science alive and interesting, Because as Longitude proves… they all were! I am so fascinated by all the little facts and details in the book that I am today taking advantage of the fact that I live about an hour from the famed Royal Observatory here in London (which played a major role in the book and is best known as THE location of the prime meridian) and so I am going to the hill in Greenwich Park to see some of the instruments mentioned in the book. Also John Harrison. What a man. We all need to know about this genius. His story needs to be spread. A carpenter who changed the world. That is pretty much this book in a nutshell.
Go to Flipkart/Amazon, buy it and it just may be the best thing you read in a long while.
We all love it. The Shortcut. When employed with intelligence it is called a ‘Hack’ and when it is used with the wrong intent it is called ‘Jugaad‘. For those unfamiliar with the South East Asian part of the globe, that strange word is the lingo of the lazy and callous when they pass of a flimsy solution of mostly spit and prayer as a workable way out of a problem.
Mental shortcuts, a subset of the above, is used by all of us a hundreds of times in a day to arrive at that needed quick decision and they too could be either nuanced or naive, depending on the intellect of the individual. We employ so many, no one could ever write down everything they have in their arsenal of the mind to arrive at X thought. And we use it every waking hour to arrive at the station of Judgement as swiftly as can be possible.
Today I am going to show you a mental hack you could use to vet a company if you ever are thinking to working for it or hiring from it or giving business to it. In these 3 situations you usually have limited time or, even worse, limited information and the asymmetry is usually not in your favor so any hack that helps is a good hack.
Ask the executive/interviewer/interviewee sitting across the table from you what is on their Outlook Inbox ‘My Garage’ Folder. As I just coined that phrase, they will ask what the heck that is. Elaborate.
Everyday most of us come into the office, fire up the laptop and head straight to the inbox. We are all mostly short term, task driven firefighters. But while in a fire fighter those are admirable traits, as mid level and senior executives we need to understand those are not aspirational tags. But unfortunately they are irritatingly real and getting out of that swamp is tough. Some worthy souls take a noble stand and make time to not just be driven by their inbox alone. They create a ‘My Garage’ folder where resides, for now in their mind and this folder alone Potential Ideas germinating that could be game changers. Ideas in gestation that could take their function/department or firm on a very different trajectory. The Amazon challenge to the Barnes and Noble.
Think for a minute what having a folder like that implies about the firm and the individual. It’s a very good signalling beacon. That there is a space, a encouraging culture, a mind behind the suit, a explorer behind the drone business title. That is the person you want to hire, the firm you to engage, the guy you want on your team. Outlook Inbox ‘My Garage’ Folder : A mental shortcut worth adding to the judgmental arsenal.
The world is grim. The news mostly leaves you wishing you were Superman only so you could fly AWAY from this cesspool. And the papers read more like a telephone Directory of Scams and Horrors.
So today I am going to just wade in and tell you have 10 recent things I heartily endorse because I liked them and you will too if you tried them. They range from movies to hardware to random experiences. All come with the hash tag #You.Sir.MUST.try.this!
1. Movie : Blue Valentine : Saw it yesterday. Wow. What a brilliant painful movie to watch. It’s the fantastic excellent exposition of a relationship gone sour and the way it juxtaposes that with how it started. And it makes this movie very very good but also guy wrenching to watch. But do. And it has Ryan Gosling ladies.
2. Buying and assembling an IKEA Furniture : Do it to enjoy ‘the Ikea Effect’ : “The name for this psychological phenomenon derives from the love millions display toward their self-assembled furniture (or, dare we say it, their badly self-assembled furniture) from the do-it-yourself store with the Scandinavian name”. I recently assembled my chair, work desk and drawer and I admit I have a fondness for these inanimate things that rivals fondness for a lot on animate ones.
3. TEDx/TED talks : If scored smartly and early, you too can, for a very reasonable price, experience the thrill of listening LIVE to some very smart and very perceptive people (and some rare tone-deaf fools too) who will open your mind to the possibilities of the human imagination and intelligence. TED talks happen all over the world and if you are smart with Google you can find one near you fast/
4. Movie : Searching For Sugarman : Brilliant documentary about a the search for a ghost singer that just warms your cold cynical dead heart. One of the those movies that deserved the Oscar in every sense. It did. Watch with friends who are that extra into music or good documentaries. Preferably in an open air show in a public garden so you can make a picnic out of it.
5. Rainmeter : Google it. This one is for my nerdy friends and readers. Rainmeter displays customizable skins, like memory and battery power, RSS feeds and weather forecasts, right on your desktop. And you can customize it to your heart’s content. After which your desktop looks mega-ultra cool.
6. Hoegaarden White Beer : Belgian Beer. Spiced with coriander and orange peel, unfiltered with a cloudy appearance and hints of citrus and apple by the rich warmth of wheat and spice. After a hard day at the office or sleeping in the park under the sun, this is what the doctor would order for you. Ask for a years prescription.
7. Dual Monitor Setup : Stop squinting your tired eyes at the shit laptop screen and go big. Spurge on a 27″+ monitor and jack it to you laptop and enjoy videos and word docs on the glorious large screen. Your eyes will thank you and so will your productivity.
8. Group exercise classes : For some of us who slack off when working alone, nothing beats the kick for a group exercise class. You can rest when you are working alone but in a group exercise class the shame of being the only guy standing still does wonders for your motivation to continue with the horribly painful moves and keep from giving into the ‘I-want-to-curl-up-and-nap’ cop out feeling.
9. Amazon Prime : This endorsement is, for now, aimed at folks in US and UK; Look we all know Amazon rocks. And we shop there ALL the time. Why not pony up the £49/year and have most of our shipping free and fast. And also accrue a ton of other benefits like Kindle + Prime membership = Borrow lots of Kindle books for FREE.
10. DIY Classes : Hiring help is overrated. Buy a 18v cordless drill, see some YouTube videos on how to do some basic DIY chores and get cracking. If you can afford the time on the weekend, enroll in a DIY starter class. You’ll get to practice on a random wall before you get working on yours. Worth it.
There you go. 10 things I heartily think most of you will surely enjoy if you tried it. No refunds will be asked, guaranteed.
So who I would invite for dinner if the genie was generous. Caveat : They can be anyone, dead or alive but not fictional. And I could ask them 1 QUESTION they cannot answer dishonestly.
My 10 are :
1. Christopher Hitchens, brilliant author, orator, polemic, intellectual and journalist (question for him : “After debunking The Almighty, who were the next three people/institutions you would have loved to take down ?”)
2. American cartoonist Bill Watterson who sketched Calvin and Hobbes (“How do you personally view the world that we inhabit with all it’s fissures ? Is there hope for us ? “)
3. Author Naipaul (“If you were asked to re-draft Nehru’s Tryst with Destiny speech, what would you have penned?”)
4. Roger Ebert , American film critic (“I did not ‘get’ the brouhaha over 2001: A Space Odyssey . what am I missing ?”)
5. Bill Bryson, a best-selling American author of humorous books esp on travel (“Tell me the most interesting thing you stumbled into off late Bill!”)
6. Late night comedy hosts John Stewart and Stephen Colbert (“Tell me what you guys would do and enact in Year 1 if you guys were elected President and VP of USA ?”)
7. Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and June Thomas, the three people who run the ‘Slate Culture Gabfest’ (“what 3 things the current culture over-rates all the bloody time”)
8. Gandhi and Nehru (“Here is the current updated book of events that transpired from 1947 till today in India. Now, you guys still think we were ready ?….and oh, that gentlemen across the table is an author called Naipaul. He has a few words for you both…”)
9. Al Pacino, actor (“What’s the one role that you saw onscreen, thought was very good and also that modesty aside YOU could have nailed it and done a better job of onscreen ?”)
10. Sidin Vadukut, a columnist, twitterer and blogger (“Where does this all lead to in India ? what is the end game you foresee ?”)
Update 2018 : Not interested anymore in Sidin, Nehru, Gandhi, Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and June Thomas or Colbert. Would replace with > AA Gill, Musk, Tim Urban, Dan Carlin, Sam Harris.
On our way to pick groceries in Lisbon from our rented Divisão near Castelo de Sao Jorge I came across this etched on a wall:
Such a wonderful sentence that at once comes across as both profound and perceptive and not in the cheap bumper-sticker way either. This is maybe why I do it.
2012 was not a bad year. Wait. What am I smoking ??……….. 2012 was not ‘not a bad year’. 2012 WAS A FANTASTIC YEAR!
This whole blog ‘Just Another Customer’ has one overarching aim: To judge experiences and services from the point of view of a Customer. And then draw hopefully intelligent interferences, judgments (and sometimes get prescriptive on what could make the service or experience better). But the consumption occurs in the context of a my everyday life and this year-end review post aims to distill key experiences over the year and make some judgments about the best and worst.
I find the whole process of planning for and writing this kind of post thoroughly enjoyable and can’t recommend it enough. Colette, a French novelist and performer, once said “What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it sooner” Every single time I start sketching and then eventually writing this blog post, I stop often to rethink of Colette’s words and realize, with an immense sense of gratitude, that life is a wonderful cake indeed and I am lucky to be getting such delicious slices.
I am a big fan of Twitter and early last year I read this inspiring tweet :
I liked that tweet. It seemed to get at the heart of a good life, well lived and the essence of what the French call ‘Joie de vivre’. Anyone who indulges in those three activities with unbridled gusto will rarely end up being bored or boring, two cardinal sins. And thanks to cheap 4 mbps internet connections, being bored or boring is MORE difficult than ever and so even more inexcusable.
In 2012 I went to loads of new places in 6 countries, I read 26 books, most of which I really enjoyed, I saw some fantastic world cinema and relished a ton of new cuisines and dishes that would have made any epicurean envious. And on the beautiful city of A Coruna in the western Spanish coast, on a clear day, under an azure sky, overlooking the Bay of Biscay, I proposed to my girlfriend. She agreed and later in the year, on a mercifully sunny autumn day in London we got married.
So, yes, 2012 WAS A FANTASTIC YEAR.
Last year my ‘Best of 2011′ blog post ended with the open ended self-challenge, asking what I would do if I wasn’t afraid. Wellllll…..looks like COMMITTING was the answer.
OK, let’s break it all down. This blog posts attempts to advise you, when you do your bit of traveling or buying or consuming, what you could do or taste or buy or in some cases, avoid.
#Best author discovered in 2010 : V.S.Naipaul. Christopher Hitches.
#Best author discovered in 2011 : J.M Coetzee
#Best author discovered in 2012 – This is not an endorsement of a book. I did that a few days ago, in a detailed separate post. This is an endorsement of an author who has hopefully written multiple books and the endorsement is a self promise to engage with more of the authors works. For example, since 2010 I have read a lot from those two authors I discovered in 2010 – Naipaul and Hitches. Coetzee is still a procrastinated to-do (he is so depressing and I already live in India so why ask for third helpings). In 2012, among the contenders, Tony Judt stands out. So does Cowley. Dan Simmons looked hopeful but fizzled out after the tepid ‘Fall of Hyperion’. Bill Bryson, who I adore, cannot be honestly counted as a DISCOVERY, since I have been an ardent fan of his books since a few years ago. Same would apply to Michael Lewis. All things considered, my 2012 ‘Best author discovered ‘ is Iain Banks. His Culture novels seem to be a very richly drawn tapestry and I can easily see me visiting more of his work.
#Best website you probably don’t know about on the net in 2012 : http://www.rememberthemilk.com – rtm is a nifty website for managing tasks effortlessly. Seamless integration into any mobile platform. Brilliant at helping make your life a little bit easy. A GTD Mindset with RTM working as a execution platform is a very powerful weapon in decimating complex goals and projects. Try it.
~ (I am merging two categories I used to do – Most reliably consistent product and Product of the Year. For 2012, I am collapsing the two into on category : Product of the Year. It made sense to me)
#Most reliably consistent product of 2010: The BlackBerry Bold 9000
#Most reliably consistent product of 2011 : Omron Pedometer
#Product of the Year 2010 : Amazon Kindle
#Product of the Year 2011 : Timex Heart monitor
#Product of the Year 2012 : iPad [solid interface, unbelievable clarity and apple’s polished apps. Except maps. In a bold more, risked taking only the iPad and not the laptop on the Iberian holiday and never once regretted it.
# Best New Brand I came in touch with in 2010 : Air Asia
# Best New Brand I came in touch with in 2011 : Chipotle
# 2012 Nominations:
~ San Miguel brewery for some of the most delicious beer I drank in 2012
~ Caratlane.com for making jewellery buying for guys so stress free and easy, almost like Amazon shopping
~ Wok to Walk. We have visited this establishment in 3 separate countries and everywhere we went they were ‘easy as 1-2-3’. Their menu is clear, simple and gives you complete freedom to customize. While not exactly cheap, they are consistent and sometimes when you are in the mood for exactly that, Wok to Walk delivers.
WINNER ~Pinkberry for theire delicious and healthy offerings and also for hiring some exceptionally committed customer service folks. Pinkberry wins on three critical counts : Great product. Fantastic customer service. Competitive pricing. You can do a lot worse and sadly, most firms do. So hurrah for Pinkberry!
# Best Value For Money 2010 : Street food in Bangkok, Thailand
# Best Value For Money 2011 : Full body Thai Massage, @KIM at Phuket, Thailand
WINNER of # Best Value For Money 2012 : It was between ‘Lisbon by Segway’ and The fat tire bike tour in Berlin. Fat tire won. ~ For 6 hours Justyna and I pedaled around central Berlin on a cool but bright autumn day and for the little money we paid we really really got out worth (40 Euros). Our biking guide was engaging, his pre-tour and during-tour banter was funny and absorbing. The weather held and although Berlin was in the middle on a renovation that was a bit irritating, for the most part we really had a fun time. FAT TIRE operates bike tours in Barcelona, Berlin and London.
Category : Sh*t VALUE FOR MONEY (combined two separate categories into one for 2012)
# Most overpriced service/product not worth repeating 2010 : The GMAT exam as ‘sold’ by gmac.
# Most overpriced service/product not worth repeating 2011 : Phi Phi Island Cabana Hotel, Ko Phi Phi
# Worst Rip off at a tourist trap 2010 : The visually inviting street side restaurants near the common tourist spots in Rome.
# Worst Rip off at a tourist trap 2011 : Meal at Las Iguanas at SouthBank, London
2012 Nominations :
~ This unassuming cafe near Castelo de Sao Jorge in Lisbon that gouged us on the bill for a very forgettable meal.
“Winner = Loser” ~Mirablau, a ho-hum restaurant at the top of a hill in Barcelona. Great view of Barcelona but stunningly bad service and very forgettable food. The kicker : Prices you would be hard pressed to find in a celebrity restaurant. I was unsurprised to find most of the reviewers on tripadvisor has the exact same feedback.
#Best FREE service 2012:Twitter – 2012 will go down for me as the year I really learnt how to rock twitter. And once you do it’s like riding a well behaved and powerful dragon. Also an incredible time suck. But don’t listen to the Luddites who accuse twitter of just being all about Kim , Kutcher and Beiber. Point them towards @brainpickings. And unlike Facebook, I don’t feel guilty of spending time on twitter because the feed is oh so interesting and enlightening. Now waiting in line, waiting for the elevator or just passing time is so very easy. And it’s all free. Twitter clients I use : On my BlackBerry, the native twitter app. On my iPad, twitterific.
#Product I had the most ‘love hate’ relationship with in 2010 : Facebook
#Product I had the most ‘love hate’ relationship with in 2011: Facebook [again]
#Product I had the most ‘love hate’ relationship with in 2012 : Apple. Because the a******s took away my beloved Google map from the iPad and replaced it with that turd ‘Apple maps’; but still, you have to pry away my iPad from my cold dead fingers.
#Most irritating company to deal with as a customer either by telephone or on their website in 2010 : Lloyds Bank
#Most irritating company to deal with as a customer either by telephone or on their website in 2011 : Ebay
#Most irritating company to deal with as a customer either by telephone or on their website in 2012 : O2 in UK. Just repeat this to yourself when you get an O2 chip, “I will never try to speak to a human. I will never try to speak to a human. I will never try to speak to a human.” Because Sir, you just can’t.
Now for FOODie awards, which was a big theme all year round. This collage below recorded most of the interesting and memorable dishes we relished in Iberia. Click on it to see details.
#Most anticipated Good Meal that delivered 2010: Cu Cha (sea food like you will never taste again or have before) and W.A.W (world’s best chicken wings) on Jalan Alor St.
#Most anticipated Good Meal that delivered 2011: Steak at Ruby’s @ Cincinnati, Ohio
2012 Nominations are plentiful because pandering to the taste buds was a PLAN this year. 3 places stand out.
1.Lunch at La Pepica in Valencia consisting of Paella, Mussels, Squid and cheesecake. This old Hemingway haunt, established in 1898, looks a little worse for wear, but it’s still going strong. Lunch was a tad bit crowded but the Paella served was delicious and our view was primo.
2.Dinner at Celler de Tapas in Barcelona. We went for the ‘tasting menu’ and were treated to a tapas meal that was so good, for the first time in my life, I asked the waitress to invite the chef out so I could shake his hands. He came out. We chatted and would you believe it, he was an Indian from Chandigarh. The world is flat indeed Tom Friedman.
The Winner : Dinner with friends at ‘Chafariz do Vinho in Lisbon‘ Here is the NYT on this gem : “An 18th-century stone aqueduct has been transformed into one of Lisbon’s most intriguing wine bars: Chafariz do Vinho. The enoteca prides itself on offering wines of small, unknown producers, changing the list often and charging rock-bottom prices. But this is more than a place to drink. The kitchen serves its wines alongside lovingly prepared small dishes such as smoked sausage with cabbage, shrimp with mushrooms or smoked codfish with grapes” Thanks to Joao and his lovely girlfriend, we had one of the best evenings of the year with wine, tapas and company. NYT was spot on. This was an unforgettable meal.
#Most Unexpected Good Meal 2010 : A very unassuming bakery in Rome that served the most orgasmic lasagna I have yet tasted.
#Most Unexpected Good Meal 2011 : The Spicy Tom Yum Chicken soup at a beach side restaurant at Kata Beach, Phuket
2012 has a rich pool of nominations. (What a fantastic year it has been for my taste buds and unfantastic year for my waist size); I am almost tempted to pick all of these as winners : That magical Tejana pizza slice with queso, salsa ranchera, bacon and carne picada y cebolla from NAM NAM in Valencia | Almost everything we ate at that food market Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid | That delicious glass of Trinidade beer at Lisbon with Joao| KIESKO Burgers in Barcelona | Salami Sandwich at Granja Camprodon in Barcelona | And those yum chicken and egg rolls served at ‘Roll King’ in Noida |
2012 Winner :
1. KIOSKO Burgers in Barcelona. Because I have not tasted anything before or after THAT GOOD. Because I was so enjoying it, I made Justyna take pics of me enjoying it and I then made a GIF of it. Fresh ingredients, good ambience, affordable prices and the meat is …divine. I still dream about this burger some hungry days and once tried eating their business card to re-live the flavor. Failed
2. Mercado de San Miguel in Madrid. This unassuming wrought-iron-and-glass-facade building, set right in the heart of the Austrias district just below the Plaza Mayor is rightly called the ‘center of gastronomic recreation,’ where separate stalls sell fancy meat, fish, fruits, and vegetables alongside specialist goodies, while an equal number of new, pricey bars offer everything from traditional sherries and vermuts to imported French champagne and oysters. The atmosphere is busy and amazing and the place does seems to invite you to stay there and get lost in time while discovering an amazing variety of “tapas” and great quality of worldwide wine brands. You walk around the labyrinthine kiosks. You eat. And repeat. We ate and eventually made our way to the Parque del Buen Retiro and collapsed into a happy nap.
#2010 Most Welcoming Experience : Being allowed INSIDE Harvard Business School’s famed Baker Library AND its underground book depository collection without being a student or bring escorted by one.
#2011 Most Welcoming Experience : Stay at Hotel CasaBlanca, Phuket
#2012 Most Welcoming Experience : Airbnb Host Kai Försterling in Valencia. Our host in Valencia. Discovered through Airbnb.com. All we expected was a bed to sleep in for the 3 days there and instead we got the most gracious host till date on Airbnb. Kai and his wife treated us like friends and trusted us like family and that house we rented. man…It was so spacious, central and well furnished. Their tips on making the most of Valencia was spot on. for 40 euros a night this house we got was a total absolute steal.
Category : Free City /Travel Experience
#Best FREE city experience 2010 : free view seats at Jardin des Tuileries, Courtesy the municipality of Paris & Everything free at the Edinburgh Festival, August 2010.
#Best FREE city experience 2011 : Pier Seats at Boston by the Charles River
#Best FREE sublime experience 2010 : Crowd watching parked on the fountain footsteps near the Pantheon, Rome.
#Best FREE sublime experience 2011 : Watching sunsets over Goa
#Best FREE experience 2012 :
Runner Up : Crowd watching at El Retiro Park in Madrid.
Winner : Running a 5K by Barceloneta Beach. I ran the full stretch of this vaunted beach and it was a real treat and welcome into Barcelona. Loved it for the views. For the facilities provided at easy distances. For the general friendly atmosphere.
Category : Underwhelming experience – Park Guell in Barcelona ~ Because really….what’s the big deal ? It’s just a funky park. I just didn’t get this one. Really sorry to all those people who are ‘moved’ by the place. I just wanted to move out and be on my way. Thankfully we had loads of good spanish wine and cheese to kill time and stuff ourselves. We did.
# Best Travel Customer Service Experience 2010: Virgin Atlantic, @London Heathrow.
# Best Travel Customer Service Experience 2011: ‘Tickets episode’ with Thai Airways
# Best Travel Customer Service Experience 2012: Seeing Ryan Air in action turning around a plane. It was awe inspiring. I wrote a whole post on this episode.
# Worst Travel Customer Service Experience 2012: Transiting through Kuwait International Airport. I had a transit stop here and this place is one sad depressing waiting room to hell. No wi-fi. No facilities. ‘Shitty’ toilets. Sour people. Could not have been happier when boarding started and I got the hell out of this nightmare.
#Most stunning good discovery 2010 : At the ‘will be crowded soon’ I.G.I-T3 Food Court, 4Fingers.
#Most stunning good discovery 2011 : Hotel Casa Blanca, Phuket
#Most stunning good discovery 2012 : City of Arts and Sciences, Valencia. I have not seen an area like this. Or even heard of this before I stumbled across this one. I always loved architecture but this was architecture at a whole new level of stunning. Maybe this is the reaction foreigners have when they see the Taj for the first time. Because when I saw El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía, my jaw dropped and that line from the movie Gladiator came to my head. When that slave friend of Maximus looks at the Coliseum for the first time and says, “I didn’t know Men could build such things”
#Experience I regret rushing through 2010 : The Met in NYC and the Louvre in Paris.
#Experience I regret rushing through 2011 : Lake Shore Drive Area, Chicago
#Experience I regret rushing through 2012 : To my eternal shame and regret I passed through Porto and missed seeing Casa da Música, a major concert hall space in Porto, Portugal designed by one of my favorite architects Stefan Sagmeister.
Shout Outs – People who made our travel so much more than just the sights (and all these people I met on various journeys. all unplanned)… Joao I met on a train ride from Bratislava to Budapest. Ka and Chau Bhi we met when we went Scuba Diving to Ko Phi Phi.
Joao in Lisbon, showed us a side of that city we would have surely missed as raw tourists, including taking us to that divine dinner at ‘Chafariz do Vinho in Lisbon
Ka Wai and Chau thanks for spending that lovely day in Berlin and making it all the more memorable. And also that really good Chinese restaurant you guys found for us in the heart of Berlin. that was awesome!
Thanks to them we also got one of our all time favorite travel snap at the Brandenburg gate in Berlin 🙂
#Experience of the Year 2011 : Diving at Ko Phi Phi
#Experience of the Year 2012 : (Not counting proposing and getting married) Watching the film “Hubble 3D” screened on the Hemisfèric IMAX theatre of the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia. L’Hemisfèric is an Imax Cinema, Planetarium and Laserium and is meant to resemble a giant eye. Justyna had never been to an IMAX show in her life and I loved the fact that I got to introduce her to it. And that too with my favorite subject of SPACE! And there were moments in the show when every single person in the hall was in awe. The majesty of Space is unparalleled when experienced on an IMAX screen and we both walked out totally totally floored. ‘Life is not measured by the number of breaths you take, but by every moment that takes your breath away’. And this experience absolutely did.
#2010 Location of the Year : Soi Rambutri St, Bangkok.
#2011 Location of the Year : Ko Phi Phi
#2012 Location of the Year : Valencia
I used to think of Valencia as ‘that place where the F1 happens every year’. It also is the third largest city in Spain after Madrid and Barcelona. The city, while big, feels cozy and ‘doable’. We had initially planned to hit San Sebastian from Barcelona but on the day we were to go to San, we saw the weather report wasn’t that great. But Valencia was reporting happy weather and we decided why not!Best Decision Ever. Valencia gifted us some fantastic memories like..
…A happy cycle ride in the Turia gardens. The Jardines del Turia, once the bed of the river that flowed through the city, which was diverted in the 1950s due to regular flooding. It’s now a big public park with a series of sports grounds, green spaces and children’s’ playgrounds. I loved how smart the idea seemed and looked and turned out. Read more about it here.
…A good meal and nap at the Las Arenas beach boulevard. Little crowd and it was next to that famous F1 track where Justyna and I cycled at 5 kmph later in the day. On the same F1 track where Schumacher hits 200 kmph every season.
…The view of City of Arts and Sciences. A sight to behold and experience. It is an entertainment-based cultural and architectural complex designed by Santiago Calatrava and Félix Candela, It is also rightly the most important modern tourist destination in the city of Valencia.
…The emotional high from the film “Hubble 3D” screened on the Hemisfèric IMAX theater of the City of Arts and Sciences in Valencia.
…The architectural majesty of El Palau de les Arts Reina Sofía. Probably the most awe inspiring building I have seen in my short life.
…Bird watching in the boat in Albufera Natural Park. As relaxing as it can get…
Sometimes the road not planned is the road best taken.
A year where I managed to visit Barcelona, Valencia, Madrid, Lisbon, Porto, A Coruna, Helsinki, Berlin, London and Konin (in Poland). Other than London, every other place I visited for the first time. Writing this blog regularly every year helps me with a personal goal. I have always wanted to avoid being THAT guy who travels to a lot of cities and countries in an uncurious, air-headed-air-hostess way, without ever really bothering to introspect about the experiences intelligently. Twain had warned that the man who doesn’t read good books has no advantage over the man who can’t read them. I would re-chisel it in the travel domain and warn that the man who doesn’t engage with his travel experiences has no advantage over the man who stayed home.I also had the good fortune of meeting my travel inspiration in person. Chris Guillebeau. Chris is almost done traveling to all the countries in the world. Read about it at his blog. Buy his book here.
Around Reading, I think I set a new personal record, thanks to goodread.com’ 2012 reading challenge. I read 26 books, the majority of which were reviewed as enjoyable. I saw many movies and among them I nominated 14 movies that I recommend you should see. 2012 is going to be a hard year o beat I think. But then it’s so much more cleaner and fun competing with yourself! But it is 10x more fun competing with your past self when that guy got a lot right and raised the bar 🙂 And hey, it could be worse. Your competition could be this guy:
Every year it becomes more and more obvious to me the world is an endlessly vast place for exploration. And the more you travel, read, see and taste the more ground you realize you have yet to cover. Make every year count.
I hope you and I get to cover some more in 2013. Happy New Year!
In late 2011 I ended up at THE digital HQ of book lovers online : Goodreads.com | Earlier, I used to mostly read book reviews on amazon.com before I bought a book. After Goodreads.com, Amazon was history. GR’s iPad app works well too and I like their tagline when the app loads (“Meet your next favorite book“)
GoodReads has a nifty idea I enrolled in: 2012 Reading Challenge. At the start of the year you set yourself a goal and then try hard to hit it. While holding down a job (and in my case, getting married in the same year). Like most stunts on TV and youtube, this is more difficult than it appears, especially if the target is not too low. But unlike those stunts, this one ought to be tried at home. In my case, I aimed at 26 books for 2012 thinking less along the lines of the Nike’s famous old motto and more along the lines of Leo’s encouraging line ”If you reach for the stars, you might not quite get one, but you won’t end up with a handful of mud, either.’ 26 was stars for me. Mud was anything less than 10 books read in 2012.
But to my happy surprise, I achieved my goal today. 26 books read in 12 months!
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This, while juggling 4 on-going transition projects and getting married in the year (and all the logistics THAT happy project involved). The Key: Try and read wherever and whenever you can. In the loo, in the subway, in the office cafeteria, in bed before sleeping, in bed on a lazy Sunday, when you are eating alone, in the airport lounge and in the flight later, on the bus and even when your niece is climbing you to grab your short hair (true story). A few of the books mentioned here I had on my kindle, on my ipad and a hard copy simultaneously. Because complete access is the key to wining this game. Not having kids to look after helps too.
Last year I managed to read 18 books so 26 read this year feels like a good step up over that non-inconsequential number. The best movies of 2012 were reviewed a few days ago. Below is my hopefully crisp and short summary of the books I was a ‘customer of’ in 2012 and my top 3 recommendation to you from these 26. I have arranged a few by authors and a few by subjects.
Hitchens:
My mini-review of – Arguably: Selected Prose by Hitchens, Christopher is this : A collection of superb essays written over the years by the polemic with a prodigious output and a point of view on a range of subjects. All conveniently collected in one place. Some topics will not be familiar to you so you can either choose to educate yourself on it or skip the essay. I found myself doing both over the course of reading these essays. Dense? No doubt. Raises IQ by a notch ? No doubt either. Buy this for when you really really can read with patience. Not an easy book to conquer in one sitting. Or A Holiday. A really dazzling read.
My mini-review of – The Monarchy: A Critique of Britain’s Favorite Fetish by Hitchens, Christopher is this : Hitchens. When his claws are sharp, his appetite for blood is peaking and when he has found a convenient target that riles him, his prose acquires that deft sickle chop that is pleasure to behold from a distance. Old book but still feels fresh and relevant after the recent media swoon over the coming Kate baby. Good read.
My mini-review of – Mortality by Hitchens, Christopher is this : The last days of a legend chronicled. And to the end he was still so lucid. Here he shows the world how to face the grim reaper and not surrender to pathos. An exemplary achievement and read.
Bryson:
My mini-review of – A Walk in the Woods by Bryson, Bill is this : Funny. Educative. Details his walk across some bits of the American Appalachian trail. Book detours, like the author, on some excellent history of the trail and America in general. Absolutely loved this book. Buy it the first chance you get.
My mini-review of – At Home: A Short History of Private Life by Bryson, Bill is this : Also funny. Also very educative. While the previous book was on America, At Home is like a mini class on UK and how our modern way of living came to be. As usual and as expected, Bryson is at his curious best here too. This book can be slowly read over a stretch of time as the chapters are self-contained. An excellent read.
Lewis:
My mini-review of – The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Lewis, Michael is this : The 2008 financial collapse is so deftly covered here, you can read this book and not bother with reading anything else. The highest praise I can shower on Lewis, after reading Big Short is that he is David Halberstam’s true heir on the post event analysis. An excellent book written like a taut thriller. Was it not ?.
My mini-review of – Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour by Lewis, Michael is this : Lewis is a genius at the long essay format and here he shows you why. He reviews various places hit by the crisis ( Iceland, Ireland, Greece etc) and how and why it happened there . Some countries are profiled so very deftly. Greece esp was well done. Buy for a long flight out to any of the countries Lewis mentions to better understand it. A very very good book to read almost anywhere.
Military History :
My mini-review of – Constantinople: The Last Great Siege 1453 by Crowley, Roger is this : History is fun to read when it is written this lucidly. The book covers the way the city was conquered and the background to all the players involved. A mini education on the middle ages is inevitable and appreciated. It never gets too dense or boring but does gets repetitive in some parts. Still, I recommend you buy this to start your ‘Well written history‘ section of the bookshelf.
My mini-review of – Empires Of The Sea: The Final Battle For The Mediterranean, 1521-1580by Crowley, Roger is this : The Middle ages were brutal. Read gripping account on why it was so. Buy this to start your ‘Well written history’ section of the bookshelf
Modern History:
My mini-review of – Postwar: A History Of Europe Since 1945 by Judt, Tony is this : The densest, best modern history book I have read in my life. Some of the prose is sheer genius phrasing (“In Western Europe the same fault-line found many intellectuals on both sides; but enthusiasm for Communism in theory was characteristically present in inverse proportion to direct experience of it in practice”)
Sci-Fi:
My mini-review of – Foundation and Earth (Foundation, #5) by Asimov, Isaac is this : Asimov. Foundation Series. The BEST Sci-Fi In the world. Buy the ENTIRE Foundation series for a long holiday read
My mini-review of – Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #1) by Simmons, Dan is this : That story of the priest. Jesus. I had nightmares. Buy this and stop. This is the best of the lot
My mini-review of – The Fall of Hyperion (Hyperion Cantos, #2) by Simmons, Dan is this : Sorta OK. Some parts were too stretched and boring. Borrow if you are a total Sci-Fi nerd only
My mini-review of – Consider Phlebas (Culture, #1) by Banks, Iain M. is this : Sci-Fi. Was good. Got dreary at some bits but held together. Borrow this one when someone else is done with it
My mini-review of – The Player of Games by Banks, Iain M. is this : The world he spun here sucked me right in. Brilliant Sci-Fi. LOVED IT. Buy it to read a great Sci-Fi book
Management:
My mini-review of – Why Your Boss Is Programmed to Be a Dictator by Dhruve, Chetan is this : While his solutions are naïve I think, Dhruve’s collected anecdotes in support of his theory is pretty interesting. Buy it in your quest to be a good boss to your directs or to understand why some bosses are dictators.
My mini-review of – Do the Work by Pressfield, Steven is this : Self Help book. Was Ok. Borrow this one when someone else is done with it
Cinema:
My mini-review of – Your Movie Sucks by Ebert, Roger is this : Ebert is a Pulitzer Prize winning author and some of his reviews here show you why he won it. Buy it on a long flight to a international film festival maybe.
Travel:
My mini-review of – Previous Convictions: Assignments from Here and There by Gill, A.A. is this : I read his Vanity Fair grenade at Dubai. Right after I went and bought this book. Did not disappoint. Acerbic wit and prose. Places covered were just an excuse to demonstrate it I suspect. Still, a good book.
Autobiography:
My mini-review of – The World is What it Is: The Authorized Biography of V.S. Naipaul by Patrick French is this : The most refreshingly honest biography of a flawed genius. Brutally honest and very well researched and written by French. The for me is the gold standard of how someone’s life should be chronicled. Naipaul is without any doubt a great writer and fearless and honest observer of cultures and a pucca absolute ungrateful douchebag in real life. Maybe one flowed from the other. Who knows. Maybe there is a price extracted from the world for Genius. His first wife paid most of THAT bill I suspect. But so did many many of his betrayed friends. But the book is such a brilliant read and I was totally sucked in.
Illustrated Books:
My mini-review of – Pride of Baghdad by Vaughan, Brian K. is this : Brilliantly illustrated book about the fate of a pride of lions in the eponymous city when the US troops move in and bomb Baghdad to the stone age. War is ugly not just for the humans. The ending was so so depressing (Thanks Vivek!). Masochist ? Read it right after you see Lion King for extra punch!
My mini-review of – The Little Book of Hindu Deities: From the Goddess of Wealth to the Sacred Cow by Patel, Sanjay is this : I admit I initially ought this one for my 5 year old niece. For the excellent illustrations of Hindu dieties. But adjacent to the said pictures, which she loved by the way, were essays on the said diety. And i am ashamed to admit, although born to Hindu parents, I know little about the mythology of the religion. And it is one batshit crazy mythology. The mini-essays were so very educational and Hindu religion does have some rich characters and mythos. Read it to know the quality weed our ancestors (must have) smoked and the output thereof.
Non Fiction:
My mini-review of – Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Demick, Barbara is this : Unbelievably riveting account of 6 escapees from that hell that is North Korea. This book slowly builds to a climax when all of them flee the modern penal colony that is North Koren. I dreamt about the characters in this book. I obsessively googled about North Korea after reading this book. For a while I started appreciating all the things I enjoyed of and in the civilized world with renewed rigor. This book had that kind of effect on me. The prose is accessible and doesn’t get preachy or high fartulent. I have read countless thrillers which was not even a tenth as gripping as the tale of these surviors and how they logistically managed to escape the gulag. North Korea. A true shop of horrors. The most memorable line ? “dogs in China eat better than doctors in North Korea”
My mini-review of – Everything Is Going to Kill Everybody: The Terrifyingly Real Ways the World Wants You Dead by Brockway, Robert is this : The author covers the various real genuine things in the modern world that can kill us. Does a good job too. Helps that his tone is funny but als the math and science behind it is not. Helps you realize how fragile it all is.
My mini-review of – Maybe Baby: 28 Essays by Leibovich, Lori is this : Essay by mostly women writers on the decision to have a baby. or not. Some advise yes, some no and some are ambivalent. A few essays in this compendium were good. Some were Meh and not a few felt like the authors were just posers trying to sound deep and smart(but failing). One essay by Kathryn Harrison about her grandmother was truly well written. Recommended to any couple trying to make an informed decision about having babies.
Fiction:
My mini-review of – The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo (Millennium, #1) by Larsson, Stieg is this : Probably my only mistake in trusting good-reads reviews. I was mislead and this is by a long margin one of the shittiest book I have read in a while. What a boring prodding lame book. The language is wooden, dead as a dodo and I could not give a shit about the various listless characters and was half hoping the killer got them. If I wasn’t on the 2012 RC, I would have thrown this one away way way before I finished it. Read it to only know what a shit fiction book reads like. On second thoughts, just avoid.
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
So if you are going on a holiday and decide to buy and read only 3 books from these 26 books above, I would heartily recommend these three :
Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick
Boomerang: The Meltdown Tour by Michael Lewis
A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson
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And here is my fave picture of me browsing books! Taken by the talented wife, in Madrid, in summer this year. When the snap was taken she was my girlfriend (and in less than 100 hours of this picture being taken, she was my fiancée! I am NOT implying a connection….but…)
On most days it is impossible for me to come up with an original blog idea to bring to life. But some days, in between the dreary unsuccessful ones, it is difficult and but not impossible to capture on paper that ephemeral output from the collision of disparate ideas in your head, like atoms smashing into each other in the LHC. An event that you fervently hope produces something unique or interesting, truly worth sharing with the wider world. Lightning in a bottle when the mental cadence is captured with skill on that blank page in front of you. In the last 760 days, I tried it many times and on 84 tries I managed to capture proof of this effort. I say ‘capture proof of ‘ and not ‘succeeded’ consciously. For the effort is best judged by the reader and not the writer.
Who is going to appreciate it? Writing is HARD. Coming up with something original to say is HARD. Making an original remix is HARD. The fields you and I will toil on, our blog a lone digital raindrop among the millions, will give little in terms of immediate return, if by immediate return you mean wider recognition from a busy world. Did you know at the end of 2011, there were 181 million blogs, compared to only 36 million in 2006. At best a few close well meaning friends and strangers will drop by and give your blogpost a cursory polite ‘LIKE’ click and even fewer will maybe subscribe, hoping your future output gets better than the preceding lukewarm ones. At worst, for a long dispiriting stretch, you will write for an audience of one. You.
But I am not here to argue the downside. But you needed to know it.
I am really here to argue that that lone audience is worth writing to. Even if you start writing a blog that till your dying day is never seen by anyone but yourself (the very definition of a personal diary) you should relentlessly persist.
The reason came to me on a run, when I was feeling a bit underwhelmed with my blog view metric. I was hoping to close the year with 10000 views and had not even crossed 5000.
The Reason to blog : The best thing a blog does is force you to rise above the daily cacophony of life and people and all the mundane minutae that is urban life, even if briefly, into that wondrous cloud of IDEAS. And that reason alone, that brief visit to the world of ideas, makes all the toil worth it because that idea cloud is the pinnacle of your own intelligence, the REAL reason for your education, inside and outside of school and the genuine proof of your original analysis.
It’s succinctly captured by this below admonition :
Harvard Business Review says that people who are serious about ideas are blogging. They also added “..Writing is still the clearest and most definitive medium for demonstrating expertise on the web“. So in 2013 I urge you to stop being average and small and force your way into the better club.
Flight Control is a game for phones and tablets developed by this cool sounding company called Firemint and was it first released for iOS on March, 2009. I first started playing it in August 2010 when I got my iphone. Big mistake. A video game review service, Pocket Gamer, correctly warned that “…if you could put Flight Control in a needle, it’d be considered a Class A drug. That’s how simple and addictive it is.” Bloody damn right. Let me just say I was spending way way more time on the loo than I needed to ‘just to finish one more round!’ The app was a number one bestseller on the App Store in 19 countries and has been the number one downloaded paid application in over 20 countries. It has sold over 4 million copies worldwide.
What is the game all about? : Well, players assume the role of an air traffic controller at an extremely busy airport. The airport features a runway for large red jets, a runway for small yellow planes and a helipad for blue helicopters. Players draw paths along the field to direct each aircraft to its designated landing zone.
Each successfully landed aircraft scores the player one point, and as the player’s score increases, so does the number of aircraft that will appear on the screen simultaneously.
The game ends when two or more aircraft collide. Players receive a high score for the most planes landed, which can be uploaded to online leaderboards.
I can already hear your question. “What does this have to do with having fewer priorities and me stopping my multi-tasking habit ??”
Well, first off, you need to know this if you don’t already: Multi-tasking is a myth. Many, many, many people now have come out and shown why multi-tasking is counter-productive at work. It’s not unlike those horrible 80’s clothes that now we look back on and cringe at whenever we see pictures of ourselves in them.Look at what Google auto-completes when you write the phrase:
And about having fewer priorities? In the best management book ever written, The Effective Executive, the Father of Management, Peter Drucker, said on the subject of having priorities in the chapter ‘First Things First’, something along the lines of “….most great executives can chase ONE priority. Some GENIUSES can do two. Three is a CIRCUS ACT”
When you start playing FLIGHT CONTROL, the planes on the screen: few and flying in slowly. Ample time to land. You know the planes and their relative positions well. You are relaxed. It’s all good. Then slowly and ominously they start piling onto the screen. Your heart beat increases. Your eyeballs dart all over the screen. Those warning beeps telling you of imminent collision become frantic. You become frantic. And then in a few seconds, inevitably, COLLISION!
So many times in new roles I start in, life follows a sadly similar script. Start chasing one or two things the boss tells you to. And then they pile them on. Next thing you know, between clients, bosses in a matrix structure and daily operational fires, you are chasing 19 ‘priorities’ and multi tasking 14 tasks on the BlackBerry and the wheezing laptop, wondering just how did you land up in this messy airfield of your real life.
Because of two lethal traits universal to a lot of us climbing the career ladder.
1# Inability to say NO to the boss or colleague when more is piled on to an already full plate
2# Inability to REMOVE/ELIMINATE/THROW AWAY a goal/task/priority when a new one is piled onto the plate
But underneath these two lies an even more insidious lethal misconception:
3# that ‘I can do it all’, that ‘I can juggle these balls successfully and do justice to all my 12 priorities’
That last one is the reason couples drift apart, managers burnout, marriages flounder and kids have ‘shadow parents’; Flight Control, a Video Game, only viscerally demonstrates how one finds oneself in the quicksand of mistaken and failing priorities.
You know what it a good start? Stop using the plural of the word.
2012. As a avid cinephile I can confidently say this: What a treat this year it has been. 3 entities deserve the lion’s share of my grateful credit for guiding me to the right movies in a world that abounds with the wrong ones.
1. Roger Ebert ~ He remains the final word on movie reviews for a lot of people. Before I even downshift a movie into a contender to join my ever increasing ‘Stack of Shame’, my first conscious act is to go to google.com with the search string “EBERT [NAME OF MOVIE]”; I even managed to read one of his books this year : “Your movie sucks” | A gem of a review from that book : “The movie has the hollow, aimless aura of a beach resort in winter: The geography is the same, but the weather has turned ugly” & my favorite funny line : “Wolf Creek is more like the guy at the carnival sideshow who bites off chicken heads. No fun for us, no fun for the guy, no fun for the chicken. In the case of this film, it’s fun for the guy”
2. Metacritic.com ~ this site aggregates reviews from all around and displays a score on a 1-100 scale. Anything above 60 is not bad at all. Above 80 is approaching awesome and above 90 is in the territory that is more distant from RA-ONE and ROBOT than Triangulum Galaxy is from here. While it has never been easier to become a cinema autodidact, Ebert and Metacritic go a long way on the helpful road signs to getting there.
3.Torrents ~ Because the local theatres will still play Dabang, RA-ONE and ROBOT and Netflix is yet to take off in India and because Airtel’s broadband plans are affordable and because I am a lazy bast**d. And because not in a million years will a theater in this banana demockcracy play ‘4 months 3 weeks & 2 days‘ or ‘Still Walking‘.
Great News is it has never ever been easier to get to know about and download good non-Hollywood, non-Bollywood cinema and this trend is hopefully going to get more mainstream. And once you take the blinkers off, WORLD cinema really really opens up to you. And from that non blinkered world, here are my favorite 2012 movies that I absolutely totally relished.
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Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy: The only movie I watched where I used the ‘bookmark’ feature of the VLC Media Player. Because I had to revisit some key dialogues and scenes to understand others. So not your average popcorn flick. But patience is richly rewarded. Surprisingly this movie was panned by Ebert as a ‘Meh’. I can see why though. If you don’t engage with the plot very actively, then this one has little to offer and will come across as dense and slow. But if you do engage, it is dark, rich and brooding and I was biting nails just dying to know who the mole in MI6 was. And also appalled at just how depressing 1970’s England was. TTSS’ soul sister is “The Usual Suspects” I think. If you liked that, you will love this one.
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Exit through the Gift Shop: Shows you how cultural snobs can easily be manipulated into rah-rah’ing utter trash. Or… is it trash ?? Had my fave 2012 line in a movie too. And oh, we here need about a million Banksy’ies to undermine the humorless institutions ripe for the undermining here. Is cloning legal yet?
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A Separation: The very best cinema I saw in 2012. Period. Iranian cinema always has a special place after ‘Children of Heaven’ but this one had me on the cliched edge of my seat. And also so so thankful I live in a sham democracy at least. Those guys over there in Tehran. Sad. Reading Presopolis before this will help you understand this movie a lot better. And it is such gripping, well made cinema about a minor altercation gone wrong. A true masterpiece by Asghar Farhadi. 10/10
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Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter. And Spring : This movie is visual meditation. Only more enjoyable than the real thing. The Oh-so-nuanced pacing. So very different from what you normally expect. This Korean movie by Ki-duk Kim shows you how CGI still doesn’t negate plot and characters. Micheal Bay, are you listening? All the tolly molly bolly etc woods’ here. Pay attention.
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Still Walking: Still Walking is a family drama about grown children visiting their elderly parents, which unfolds over one summer day. You may fall asleep just reading that line. And ADHD afflicted jackasses raised on WWF and MTV will. But those who jump in will savor an excellent Japanese movie that is sublime and truly well made; it’ll shake their world that holds ‘Armageddon’ as the cultural high point of the Hollywood experience. The mother character in the movie especially has some cutting lines and the father-son conflict was so well attended. Try it.
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Atanarjuat : A story based on Inuktitut legend. First you start doing what I did. Googling to find out what the heck ‘Inuktitut’ is. I will probably never see a movie quite like this. Chances are neither will you. Although the movie is technically Canadian, the language is Inuktitut. Here is a review I read online that best mirrors my own experience accurately: “I saw this movie last night and went to bed without words. After having a chance to sleep on it, it is now starting to sink in how truly amazing this movie was. You will be first blown away by the fact that this movie even exists. It is truly unprecedented in every sense of the word…The scenery is astonishing. Almost everyone who participated in this production was full-blooded Inuit. It is a beautiful story based on an Inuit legend that exists on many different levels and subplots”
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Spirited Away: Guilty admission – I never cared much for ‘Alice in Wonderland’. Too convoluted. There. I said it. Sue me. But if you too didn’t ‘get it’ and carried some sedimentary guilt, redemption arrived in 2003. Spirited Away is that wonderland and its main character ‘Chihiro’ is a way way cooler Alice I wager. Hayao Miyazaki has imagined and crafted a world that sucks you in and I could not help but me amazed by that crazy bathhouse and the characters that filled it.
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The Raid : One of THE best action movies of all times with the most astonishing one-on-two hand2hand combat you will EVER see in movies (between the brothers and the evil henchman). True story: Actually found myself holding my breath in some parts of this movie. I thought that was a figure of speech till then. Thanks mihirfadnavis for guiding me to this one.
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35 shots of rum : This movie is the anti Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) production. There is no plot, only poignancy. If someone of the type who enjoys Transformers and ‘Son of Sardaar’ was strapped into a seat and made to watch this, spontaneous asphyxiation is possible. In which case the movie would have 2 achievements to its credit. Instead of one. Getting rid of a useless cultural gnat AND being a superb meditation on letting go. Alex Descas is so so perfect in his role as a dad who realizes he has to move on. This is fabulous casting indeed. No, PERFECT casting. And words anyway don’t get top billing here. Body language is all.
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Drive: The most stylish movie on this list. Some (not all) reasons to love it: It has Cranston from ‘Breaking Bad’, busty Christina Hendricks from ‘Mad Men’ and the divine Carey Mulligan from ‘An Education’. And oh, Ryan Gosling. And one of the best car chase scenes this side of Ronin. AND a look at L.A with unbelievable camera deftness. And that track by Kavinsky, ‘Nightcall’. Haunting. And Perfect. At worst, you will enjoy this as a good thriller. But at best, this is drama done very competently.
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4 months 3 weeks & 2 days: The thing with reading about Communism is that the medium does not do justice to the mundane horror that was life in those unacknowledged prisons behind the Iron Curtain. ‘4 months 3 weeks & 2 days’ is about friendship and the price one friend is willing to pay to be just that and also what both pay as victims in that gulag that was Communist Romania .The bland horror of Nicolae Ceaușescu’s rule and how wretched it was especially for women is artfully told here. It is true that real evil is bland and boring and without pity. And the movie shows you why. While the movie is about the horror of late abortion per se, like a great movie, it is soooo much more than that limited ugly subject.
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Elite Squad 2 : Another gripping thriller from Brazil and while this is no ‘City Of God’, it’s subject, corruption, is universal and how the main character struggles with it is an abject lesson on why corruption is so hard to erase. Also India needs 1000 battalions to BOPEs to clean up.
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Dr.Strangelove: Rightly claimed by many to be Stanley Kubrick’s THE Masterpiece. Well, it sure holds your attention from the get go. And those lines. “I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids “. I did not know until post viewing that Peter Sellers’ was doing multiple roles including the eponymous one this movie is named after. And here in this movie you also get to see THAT immortal line by President Merkin Muffley. “Gentlemen, you can’t fight in here! This is the War Room!!!” Black comedy at its finest.
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The Dark Knight Rises: The Joker in the pack. get it ? Joker ? No? …awww.. why do I bother. Yes I agree. The movie was littered with a shit-ton of plot holes but Bane was just brilliant and the story really gripping. So the hype machine was justified for once. Dark and gritty, TDKR packs a wallop and you will likely leave the theatre happy you got your money’s worth.
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Serpico: I am almost 3 decades late to this party. ‘Dog Day Afternoon’ was excellent but I think Serpico is BETTER. Lumet’s take on the true story of an honest cop trapped in a corrupt system did the smart thing by getting Al Pacino to play the cop. I can’t think how anyone else could be so convincing. Especially his slow dissolve into the muck around him and how it breaks him is painful to watch. Painful but very absorbing. Great direction and genius action. Many movies limp well with one of these two. Here we have both.
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So there you have it. 2012. Fourteen excellent pieces of work. Totally good year. Very happy with the cinema consumed. Try a few from the above if it speaks to you. Each one a gem.
Summary:
2012 Favorite Movie: A Separation
2012 Bloody disappointment of the year: That overhyped turd ‘Prometheus‘
2012 Best Movie quote: From ‘Exit through the gift shop’ Banksy: “Uhmmm… You know… it was at that point that I realized that maybe Thierry wasn’t actually a film maker, and he was maybe just someone with mental problems who happened to have a camera” (So much on cinema around here feels like it was made by Thierrys so this quote was a home run)
Third Eye Observations 