Indian students going abroad
Here are things you should carry with you if you are going to study abroad
1. Adapter if you are taking your own electronics such as cell phone charger. The sockets differ, from flat to round plug-pins, in different countries
2. Software - esepcially in you are in design and use a big package of photoshop+flash+illustrator
3. Maggi (Unhealthy but..)
4. Stationary and books.
While a text-book costs $5 (Rs 200) max in India, it is $100 in Canada.
5. Hair Oil if you wish. Its possible to get it in Toronto, but with difficulty.
6. Dont take too many clothes. You can buy them in the new country.
Three’s a Crowd
I jogged through Deer Park and Rose Garden in Delhi with a fixed route, rest points, old and very active people, a miscreant who jumped on me in a lonely spot, strolling policemen, dry duck ponds, leafy avenues and red gravel moist paths that smelt nice.I remember the shy couples in the thickets. We have all crossed them one time or another. They are shy but eager to achieve something in their relationship on that quiet and private date, away from meddlesome mummies and daddies, disturbed only by joggers who were interested in their tightening musles alone.
The guy is sometimes brave enough to put an arm around the girl. She acquiesces with giggly reluctance.
Here is an illustration by Christian Cailleaux that brings back the memories.
Presentation DON`Ts
Group presentations are going on in my Business Class where 3 to 5 students present in front of 140 students. They explain a business proposition over 5 to 10 minutes to students who are supposed to be Venture Capitalists.
Looks like presentation skills are better at NIFT, Delhi, at least in the FC department, as compared to students at Ryerson, Toronto. To cut a long story short, here are things you can avoid while presenting -
1 Chewing gum. Its funny but more and more people think its ok to have that wad peeking out of your mouth as they work their words around it.
2 Saying "We plan to open a gym, a swimming pool and blah, blah, blaahh.."
You know which part of that is avoidable!
3. Finishing sentences in a question mark or trailing note. It makes the speaker sound uncertain. Finish at a definite flat-note.
Fixes
No people with weird noses left. No one with sunken eyes. No gnome-like stranger at the railway station. With crooked noses getting fixed, face-lifts and cheek contouring being done in the lunch break hour, everyone is looking 'good'. Everyone is looking the same. There is something not right here. Weirdos look good. I would never have my chipped tooth fixed. I like it. Its me. Its me dancing naked in a bathroom to imagined songs. It me falling on my face, cutting my lip and chipping my tooth while red red blood makes a pool on the white marble floor. Scarred knees. Its not that great in a lil dress. But its me! The dress is me and so are the knees. I like people on benches to scare children. I like celebrities that look different. OK, but then there is Barbara Streisand too. I guess I am not being fair. But there is still something wrong there.
Crash Dream
One day ago I had a dream. It was a long one - at least 2 hours if we estimate dream lengths correctly.
There was a huge crowd. I was with my sister. And I looked up to see an aeroplane crash. Just like that. That was the horror of it, that it should happen so simply, in one go. It was one plane made up of two planes. It carried lots and lots of passengers. Even that wing area joining the two blue parts of the plane was a square seating area.
The plane crashed very close by, behind the building. Just close enough for us to be safe from the emissions. Not many people saw it happen. They only realized it when it did. I happened to look up and see the whole thing. I wanted to scream and say STOP! but what difference would that have made? The rest of the nightmare was about running and hiding in places - I dont know why.
And then I woke up. Sadly, with no one close by and a lot of silence, the dream did not get out of me until I went down to the cafetaria an hour later. Students were laughing and talking. Lots of jelly and heaps of pasta were being worked through. The dream got out of me finally. Phew!
And the next day I saw a helicopter flying low, near the Toronto skyscrapers and i decided to set my eyes back on the paperwork I was at.
God & the City
If I were a city-God or a city-ringmaster or simply a have-it-my-way entertainer, what would I plan for people looking for fun? Maybe
SUNDAY
Puppet-show
The best death scenes by puppets
MONDAY
Play
A modern day Dr Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. The main character can be a girl who goes to college in the day time. She walks down Gerrard Street and Dundas to reach Ryerson. Her furry wuzzy hoodie is on and she takes quick steps in her flat-sole boots, attends college and returns to pizza and tv. Each day at 10 p.m she decides to finish emergency homework, due the next day. But sometimes, at night, she undergoes a change and is suddenly not scared to step out. This time her hoodie is pulled way down over her face to hide the madness in her eyes. This madness would finally erupt somewhere else that night - in the park, near a dumpster or in front of a closed shop shutter. She walks into night parties and nocturnal bars sometimes. She crosses the crack addicts and prostitutes showing off butt cheeks. The next morning, you read the newspaper and see - Here I send the newspaper boys out in the audience. Young boys with berets. They hand out newspapers fast and quick. You read the headline. You see what happened last night and you can understand what that girl on stage is. That college-girl blinking innocently is a MONNSSTAARRRHH..Ahh.. what a lovely time I will spend imagining the worst she could do - the ultimate act of gore - a hideous sin.
TUESDAY
History House - 3 D exhibition
The next place for people to visit would be a house where history whispers.
A humourless TV watcher in Canada
I have to admit, days pass fruitlessly with me staring at the TV and I have now absorbed the Canadian TV content. So much so, that anything new on TV looks like a repetition.
Oprah with all kinds of oddities - families where the father or husband changed into a woman. Dr.Phil with a Hobo who abandoned his family. The Hobo meets his daughter on TV after 17 years to face a lot of resentment from her. Child prodigies. Fighting newlyweds who try to solve their problems amidst hitting, pulling hair and sessions of talking. A tattoed one-armed guy talking to his ex-girlfriend who he left for a whore on the Jerry Springer show. A lot of talk shows where sympathy and sadism go hand in hand. Montel discussing infidelity in marriages and talking to people from www.ashleymadison.com - a website that offers romantic options to people who want to look outside their marriages. High Drama. After sometime you get immune to untimely marriages and pregnancies, weird occupations, anomolous families and magic grass mowers.
Then there is late night TV with young girls strutting their stuff and asking you to call on certain phone numbers to 'make new friends'. It's always girls. There is never a guy asking you to call up. One of the girls looked like a female version of Jerry Seinfeld
Technicolor – 49 Ontario Street
Today I went to Technicolor as part of my film workshop classes. Its a company where film-makers, people who shoot TV commercials and music videos leave their tapes for post production services.
Some of these services are film processing, tranfers to better video quality, editing, printing, digital imaging, dvd authoring and audio solutions.
Parts of movies like Ocean's 13, Spiderman, Miracle, Chicago have been edited there.
It was like entering the NASA of film. A lot of their equipment was the best in Canada and they boasted of technology which no one else could use in the world, as no one else had it.
They had facilities to have the director in Los Angeles and the actor and editor down in Technicolor, Toronto.
IMAX technology and all..
One of the rooms was going to be used as a storage room until they realized that it was a very special room – a floating room. This means that
Ontario Province Elections
It’s the Ontario general election day today and the air is electric with excitement. People are voting to elect members of the Legislative Assembly (Members of Provincial Parliament, or MPPs) of the Province of Ontario, Canada.
It’s interesting to see what elections in Toronto mean. What is it that the candidates promise to the public?
Health Care is turning out to be a huge issue in Canada with people complaining about wait times in hospitals and the fact that each citizen does not have a family doctor. It astounds me as I compare this to India where certain places, especially in the Himalayas, don’t have even 1 doctor for miles and miles.
What I did notice is that in 1 month of living in Toronto, the manifesto of each candidate is very clear to me. That is something that did not happen in 20 years of my life in India. In India, elections meant