🍿 Premalu (2024) - ★★★★☆
Malayalam film industry is operating on a completely different level than rest of the Indian film industry. How do you take a such a cliche story and turn it into something endearing and joyful to watch? There is literally nothing original in this movie and yet it works completely because of its stellar star-cast, acting and writing.
Dear Men: Listen up. Ditch your masculine old spice body wash for the winter and instead opt for the Dove body wash with micro-moisturizing droplets (yeah yeah whatever!) for the best feeling ever. Its like you are bathing in moisturizing lotion. Perfect for winter. Just take care to avoid fruity/flowery flavors-you don’t want to be smelling like a peach-mango-peony smoothie do you?
I had so many long-form posts to write in the last few weeks and I got to none of them. Now I am lazy and likely won’t go back to them. Oh well. I will try more in 2025!
In a surprising change of heart my kid says she is now “open” to the idea of moving to India but more like 20% open to it. This is a big change from her staunch no just a year ago and from last India trip in 2021. Of course I know she doesnt quite mean it, but fact that she even said it is a win!
The wind is crazy outside today. The walk with doggo was interesting because so many branches on road and I had to keep looking up to spot check trees. Joys of living in a tree studded community!
And lifecycle yearly is here! Going to dig through this but one metric stood out immediately: walking. In 2024 I walked nearly 207000 steps more than 2023. That’s a big increase and I got only Hobbes to thank for that.
Finished up what will be my last “art” work for holiday season. This was fun learning experience over holidays and I am glad I did it!
In hindi there is a term called manhoos saaya. This is my wish that America’s manhoos saaya does not befall rest of the world in the new years especially its obsession with killing people. What a society in decay this is, sigh.
🍿 Manjummel Boys (2024) - ★★★☆☆
Far too long at 2+ hours - this should have been a solid 90mins and it would have been edge of seat.
Sorry, the rest of the world can wish Happy New Year, but Americans already decided in November they want 4 miserable years. So yeah, Americans do not deserve a “happy” new year. Suck it up buttercups, things gonna get worse. I just hope America decides to implode inwards and not outwards to the world and spread their misery everywhere.
This 10 best Indian movies of 2024 list by Anupama Chopra actually looks very promising. We have seen a couple in this list and liked them. I started watching Manjummel Boys last night.
Thunderstorms in December is unheard off but then it’s been in 60s past few days. Not complaining. This could have been snow and then it would stay. As is snow is in forecast next week.
Just annoyed at the expense at very start of year this after I spent a not so significant amount just last year on this year replacing tires and all the shit. I think I am done with German cars for now. If I have to replace this car has to be Korean or Japanese.
Dealer got back about the benz and cost to repair it is multiple thousands because the electronic steering lock mechanism has completely failed. The cute part? Only dealers can fix this because a part has to be ordered through mercedez, and I have to supply my registration and license information because its tied to the VIN. So I can take my car to a secondary repair shop to have this fixed - this particular issue can be fixed only through dealers. Ugh! German cars are great to drive by my god they are the shittiest most terrible pieces of equipment if they need to be repaired. Now in two minds whether to say fuck it and just buy another car or put in more money in this sink pit. I should’ve replaced this car instead of my Acura! Blah.
🍿 Gladiator II (2024) - ★☆☆☆☆
Arrrrghhh!! I actually rented this complete piece of crap and paid premium $ to rent it. I guess at least I didn’t see it in theater and regret more. What a hopeless sequel to one of my favorite movies form youth. Yuck!
The car saga continues. This morning the mechanic where I left the car calls me and says they cannot diagnose the problem and it needs to be taken to the dealership. Then i found out chase sapphire actually covers towing for free for less than 5 miles; used it to tow the car to the dealership but not without its share of drama. The tow company driver barely spoke english if anything at all, and communicating with him was a challenge. Then he got lost trying to find the dealership and got there an hour later. Now the car sits in dealership and I am out 500 bucks for them to just touch the car to diagnose. What a great way to begin 2025 with the car!
I wonder if there is a service that digitizes your books or written words? I used to maintain a daily journal in my engineering days and I want to digitize it - I also wrote a bit about other things back then too. I know I can take photos of each page but that would be horribly time consuming and it just won’t do the job. Heck I scanned all my pictures from those days a decade back and haven’t gotten around to resizing and cropping them all to to be better, so there is zero chance I will do anything about this either. Has anyone used such a service?