the result of having a whole room to myself......

I am now a member of Hollywood videos – I can rent dvd’s for 15 dollars a month. This whole movie watching thing recently triggered an argument about how powerful a movie can be, if it were based on a woman’s life and experiences. My beloved friend believed that they cant be as “effective” – whatever that meant. Isnt the thought of a woman protagonist as powerful? Minus the testosterone surges - the guns in Munich, all the blood shed in Sparta, the craze for power in the Godfather, it is a very different world. The Shawshank redemption, one flew over the cuckoo’s nest, patch adams, the insider etc shall always be on my list of favourites but then I cannot downplay Erin Brockovich, Million Dollar Baby (Hillary Swank), Step Mom,Little Women, Jane Eyre, Color purple, Anastasia (Ingrid Bergman). Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday and My Fair Lady. How can you forget Scarlett O Hara in Gone with the Wind? The argument started because I was trying to describe how I felt after watching The Hours. Nicole Kidman’s oscar winning performance. I loved the movie and all the three women were amazing. I cannot understand why someone will think it was boring ( this was another friend). I would love to see Malika Oufkir's book being filmed.Somehow I cant turn my head away whenever the movie has a male protagonist and say oh, its boring. I found out that Kathreen Hepburn has the most number of Oscars as a best actress; she won it 4 times. While no actor has done so 4 times. Now my friend will say – that’s because they couldn’t find anyone else good enough and so on. Instead I would say it’s the continued strength and commitment of her performance that enabled her to win it. I would like to think of it as two sides of the balance without which there is no harmony. I wonder if everyone does that.

Couple of other interesting things -
Japan has the highest life expectancy. I found it strange since I thought Hiroshima and Nagasaki would have surely worked against it. The CNN website attributed it to their healthy diet.
And the fact that the largest supplier of weapons all over are the 5 permanent members of the UN security council. 190000 US supplied ak-47 rifles are missing from the war in iraq

exam fever

ok...i have an exam tomorrow....i have no enthu whatsover to study for it....its a closed book exam...damn!i have to "remember" stuff....names and things like that....about viruses...the thing about these courses is, they eventually make you believe you have at least one of those damn viruses in you by the time you finish it up!!!!and boy,by far;the best exams in such courses are the ones Dr.Das used to give us for "recombinant DNA tech" back in BITS....he had only open book exams...everything depended on whether you actually understood the course material..he would talk about an experiment and ask us to interpret some results....and in my neuroscience course here(btw this is supposed to be a grad course), this is one of my questions - what did so and so do to win the Nobel Prize and then there are 8 names staring at me!!!!how in the world am i supposed to remember all of them?????i managed a couple but seriously is that a question???not one but a lot of them were like that....so what is the sequence that does blah blah blah.....the bad thing is i dont even feel bad that i didnt do well in such exams....and i can only pray that tomorrow i will get lucky and remember all my answers.....the funniest part is that i made more marks than the instructor's grad student in the previous exam!!!

The Dawn Of Peace

I want to express what I feel

Like the minotaur of the labarynth’s darkness
The dark and forbidden emotion resurfaces
Sometimes its rage, other times it is hatred or even envy;
The feeling slithers all over like a creature evil and slimy
Along with the lovely pastels, shades of grey I shall paint
To hell with anyone reminding me that I must be a saint
No rain no flood nor any fiery tempest can put off the fire
And walk it will, along with everything else to the pier
Sadly I can never pick the shells without the sand
The pastels and the grey seem to always march hand in hand
Even if it is futile,I hope that the darkness recedes away
Letting the dawn of peace reign over, someday