Movie...finally!!

Finally got a chance to watch a movie!! :)
Watched Underworld: Evolution.



The movie is definetly not outstanding. But is pretty okay watch. One time see, I would say. Word of Advice - Watch the first part before you go for this one. It will make this one even more interesting.

My rating: 7/10
Good action.
Good graphics.
Okay Story.
Good acting.
Good cinematography.
Not a lot of dialogues.

Bluffed!?!?

I was on my way to catch a bus. It was raining. And the Rickshaw driver seemed to be inspired by Micheal Schumacher. Nonetheless, I was happy. Because I was getting late and this guy would probably help me reach in time.
On the way, he stopped outside a Police Station, waved to a guy and in a very serious tone said, "Abhi paanch minat main aata hoon!" (I will come back in five minutes!) And then he moved on. After a few minutes, he told me what was one of the few very amusing stories I have heard in a long time.
The guy whom he waved at was his friend. A rickshaw driver himself, he used to live in a small 1BHK apartment and barely managed to scrape a living for him and his family. One day, while driving his rickshaw, this guy hit a car. It was not a big accident but the car nonetheless suffered a few scratches. The owner of the car asked for a compensation of 500/-
This guy not having that kind of money on him, asked the car owner to keep his license which he promised to collect from him once he could arrange for the money. The car owner agreed. Gave him his address and left, taking the license of this guy with him.
After a few months, bank officers and police came to this guys house and arrested him for being unable to repay the 15 lakhs loan he had taken from the bank.
It was later learnt that the car owner had used the license to get a ration card issued on this guys name and later took a loan from the bank on the basis of this ration card. The postdated cheques that he had given to this bank bounced and the bank came to arrest the guy at the address on the ration card which would be the same as the address on the license which unfortunately was the rickshaw owners address.
The rickshaw owner is completely helpless. He has absolutely no idea how he is going to repay the bank what he had never taken.
The bank manager was also called for questioning but he claimed that the person who had taken the loan was the rickshaw owner. Maybe he wanted to save his own job. Because if he said it was someone else, not only would the rickshaw owner be released, but the bank would loose the money and the blame would come on the manger for ignorance.
My rickshaw driver said that this guy was too much of a simpleton to do something like this. And even if he had done it, he would have fled by now since he knew he had given his own address to the bank. Maybe.
Maybe what the rickshaw owner said was correct. But these are the points against him -
1. How did the rickshaw owner come to know that the car owner had done all this. I mean for all we know, the car owner might have not done anything. How did the rickshaw owner trace the incident to the car owner?
2. Making a ration card, even a duplicate one, would need a few days. Atleast one day. Why did he leave the license with this guy for such a long time?
3. What if the rickshaw owner had indeed done this and not run knowing well that this would be his perfect alibi?
4. No bank would issue a loan just looking at the ration card. There are a lot of formalities. Including address verifications. How come the bank never suspected the car owner?
5. Any bank would send a lot of documents including loan statements to the loan taker. How come this guy did not get any such correspondence? If the address was different, then how come the police found this guys address?

In any case, I hope someone gets into the bottom of this matter and finds out the truth. But a lesson for us - take care of all your IDs. You never know which ID or photograph of yours is used fraudulently by someone. Be extra careful in case of people posing as bank agents or credit card agents. These people collect enough proofs from you to use them in any way they like. Always check the ID of these people and if possible, verify their existense with the institution itself. Maybe taking a xerox of the form would also be a good idea...

Bored...

I do not know what chemical, hormonal, or biological processes trigger it but when they do you are taken over by a wave of sheer boredom.
That's exactly what I am going through right now. Sitting in office and though I have work, I just cannot fire today. For no particular reason. Maybe it is that I would have preferred to do something else or be somewhere else.

Maybe watch a movie.... :( :( :(

No New Movies!!

I have not seen a new movie in a theater house for months. Years maybe!
I know. Its very sad. For a movie buff like me, it is! But the fact is that there was hardly any time! People who know me will definetly agree. For people who don't...well you can notice the long breaks I have taken in between the blogs. That itself would say a lot.
Neways, not being able to watch a movie does not mean I have not watched movies at all!
Yesterday I watched My Best Friend's Wedding.



Very good movie I must say. For starters, it looks just like the Hindi adaption - Mere Yaar Ki Shaadi Hai. But a little into the movie you realise that it is quite different.

The movie is pretty well made. Although my reason for watching it was because Julia Roberts was once upon a time my favourite Hollywood actor.

Wedding Invite

No I am not getting married to her. Its a portfolio of a lady whom I do not know. So why is it here??
Its because of her husband. To be husband actually. You see this fellow was sitting a row ahead of me in the Chair Car Boggie in a train. Since it was an early morning train, people who know me would appreciate the effort I must have taken to catch it and how much I deserved a good sleep during the journey. But this guy just did not seem to understand.
His marriage and engagement were fixed with the poor girl I have mentioned below. Now this guy apparently must have been out of invitation cards or maybe he wanted to save money or for some other idiotic reason had decided to call everyone and invite them over for both the functions. So far so good. But for some reason he was shouting out his lungs on the cell phone during each call he made. So much so that I was woken up from my deep slumber and all fellow travellers were giving him dirty looks. Some foriegners traveling in the row ahead of him even asked him to shut up! But everything was useless.

Anyway having woken up and having nothing to do now, I decided to write down whatever I could understand from the conversations he was having. Soon I realised that he was pratically repeating the same things in each of the calls he made.

So here goes the information I collected -

"Ritu tiwari
MCA from Hyderabad
Hometown - Raipur since the last 6 months
Has on elder sister-already married
Stayed 7yrs in hyderabad
Unemployed
Ring ceremony 19th Feb at Raipur
Marriage 18th June at Indore."

I had almost forgotten about this guy. But I just came across this Note I had saved in my cell phone which reminded me why I had saved it in the first place - to blog it.

Now wait a sec! Before you thrash me for being so rude as to not only eavesdrop on someone elses conversation but also publish it, I have an explanation:

1. I never wanted to hear any of it. He was so loud that even covering my ears would not help.
2. Trying not to remember anything is also out of question since he had been repeating the same things so many times that I think everyone in that boogie must have got all of it by heart.
3. The fact that I published it. Well it has a purpose. For him and for all those who will read this blog - If he ever happens to read this blog, he would immediately realise the damage it caused him. What the foriegners could not do, this little blog will do. Further, to all those jerks who like to yell into their cell phones...beware. Someone is listening and God knows how they will use the information!
   

Ciao
My fones ringing ;)

Confused...!!

This is an excerpt from the Google Terms and Conditions that you need to accept before using the New Google Page Creator...

"Your Rights

Google claims no ownership or control over any Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services. You or a third party licensor, as appropriate, retain all patent, trademark and copyright to any Content you submit, post or display on or through Google services and you are responsible for protecting those rights, as appropriate. By submitting, posting or displaying Content on or through Google services which are intended to be available to the general public, you grant Google a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to reproduce, adapt and publish such Content on Google services solely for the purpose of displaying, distributing and promoting Google services. This license terminates when such Content is removed from the Google service to which you originally submitted. Google reserves the right to syndicate Content submitted, posted or displayed by you on or through Google services and use that Content in connection with any of the services offered by Google. Google furthermore reserves the right to refuse to accept, post, display or transmit any Content in its sole discretion."

I wonder what it has to do with the title - Your Rights!
The paragraph is filled with Irony. And if you think seriously, you would understand the consequences of this paragraph.
So Ladies and Gentlemen...let me reinstate - Look before you leap. Because Leap it would be...if you use Google services!

Yahoo OCR at work??

I recently uploaded a few pics of my new car on Flickr. Wat i noticed today really amazed me.
The Yahoo Ads side bar was churning out Ads of new & used cars.

So? Wats the big deal? Obviously it would, considering the fact that I have named my set - My New Car!
But the deal is that it is only showing Ads of Hyundai Accent - the model I own. But hold on. Thats not all. Wat amazed me was the fact that nowhere on Flickr or Yahoo did I mention that my new car was actually a Hyundai Accent!!
The only explaination I can come up with is that Yahoo does an OCR (Optical Character Recognition) on all images uploaded on Flickr to churn out context-specific ads. But if u look closely, you will find that just one pic of the car has the words Hyundai and Accent together. And its taken at an angle which would make any OCR algorithm's job pretty difficult. As it is the glare from the sun makes it difficult to recognise! So my bet is - since I have a pic in there which would give the word "Accent" to the OCR quite easily, it would have combined the name of my set with this word to get context-specific ads i.e.
My + New + Car + Accent
And these keywords when put in the Yahoo search engine, sure enough gets me pages from dealers.
But in any case, I am impressed :)