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
Nuit Blanche 2007
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A Bad Day For Limousines
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Nuit Blanche - White Night is an annual art and design festival in Toronto and it was held on the streets of downtown T last night. Roads were cleared of traffic and it was OUT there. SO many people were out on the roads, a novelty for Canadians and commonplace for an Indian!
(Photo by WordFreak on www.Flickr.com . You can see Ricky and me talking to the corseted girl)
Here are some of the things I did -
Walking in a Red Light Area that had been created by some artists. The entry was very morbid as my friend Ricky and I saw a girl walking around in a bridal dress with a goat's carcass. The carcass was complete with head and hooves and tail. It was skinned. She was holding it in her arms and caressing it, then raising it over her head as the internal organs of the goat threatened to collapse over her head. Next we saw she was playing with its intestines.
WHALES & Goldfish
These days I am studying Economics and in doing so, I am getting a large picture of the world how it is. From Delhi to Toronto, I can see the differences between a developing nation and a developed nation.
The developing nation- India is full of spirit and energy because they need that optimism to grow. Victories like the recent 20-20 cricket World Cup are such Boosters! The nation goes mad. Its frenzy as we burst firecrackers, dance shirtless on cars and gedi around India gate!
In a developed nation like Canada,
iPod – Why a celebrity?
Does an iPod actually play better?
I don’t know! The buzz certainly gives that impression, but some of us don’t like to like a product unless we really know what goes into it that makes it better. Sure, it looks good. You don’t press any clunky buttons, its just about soft touches. But what about sound quality. Is there a difference? I researched a bit and looks like the iPod is one glorified mp3 player, unless you are an interface design junkie.
While you will get a 1 GB mp3 player at $30 to $70, the cheapest iPod 1 GB is at
SWOT that PEST
Porter introduced the business world to SWOT and PEST. These are two techniques that companies use to analyse themselves and then decide what actions they will take in future in order to progress.
I think that SWOT and PEST should be used by individuals. People can use them to see what they want to do with their lives, especially when they are choosing their career paths or the next step for professional progress.
SWOT is your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats
PEST is