Photos from the Past

On this day which has me looking at the memories again, I will bring a few photos which reminds of a few things which I really miss these days. Some of them are clearly not going to come back, and the rest also might not return, and so I will post these pictures and keep thinking about it. We are planning to include a Vampire Butterfly for creating a Butterfly Effect and do what happened in the movie with the same name, but until then, we will keep this on the list of nostalgia.

1. The Random Search: There was always this random search as part of the continuous journeys. But it has completely disappeared right now. On the following image, you can see where we reached during one of our journeys with navigation using a printed map. It was the time when I had no internet connection on my mobile phone and there was also no Google Maps. Well, there was such a time, and it is good to remember.

2. The Legend of Kochi Tuskers Kerala: I will always miss Kochi Tuskers Kerala in the IPL. The games at Cochin were so much fun. I watched three matches of the IPL with seven different people. Out of the three, they only won one and that was against Kolkata Knight Riders. But it was good at that time. Nowadays, thinking about IPL itself gives a shock. Well, the past and the present are not even close in this case.

3. The Kochi Biennale Memories: There was that time when I visited Biennale four times during one season, and then there was the return of the Kochi Biennale two years which had me not visiting at all. I felt strange about it, but still couldn’t visit the program at all. Well, this is not the end, but for some reason, I doubt if I would visit it again. May be I am just doubting for no reason – may be there is a chance.

4. The Missing Ceylon Tea: During my visit to Sri Lanka, I bought a lot of packets of Ceylon Tea and distributed them among my friends. Well, what weighed more than the most of the other things during my return were those packets of tea. It is that tea world that I miss a lot! Yes, I have been to other places with a lot of tea after that, but nothing matched the tea at Nuwara Eliya in Sri Lanka.

5. The Cricket of the Past: I will define my lost love for cricket with just one picture. This was there at the Oberon Mall during the last Cricket World Cup, and despite not caring about cricket much these days, I wanted to think about some cricket. Yes, it was part of nostalgia, and this past will no longer come back. Considering the state of cricket these days, may be it is good to forget them all completely.

6. The Great Halloween Night: We have always loved those Halloween nights, because it was the time to get those costumes related to horror, get some collection and donate them to the poor. Yes, it was how our youth club used to work – not much during the other festivals or days of significance, but full power for the Halloween. Those were the funnier days, and we are glad that the horror was not contaminated 😛

***All photos used in this blog post were taken by me only.

TeNy

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Sharing Some Statistics

On this Sunday on which I choose not to go to a theatre because all people having work on the other days will be there causing rush, I shall share some statistics with you. So, if you don’t want to hear about my Facebook Page, you may run away right now when the opportunity is still there. It is a Sunday, and there is no shortage of possibilities. It is completely about my Facebook Page, and I hope you have all liked it at [https://www.facebook.com/Movies-of-the-Soul-378583758873946]. Even if you forgot and are going to like the page right now, I will love that 😀

I initially thought about starting a separate page for this blog, but that was to be totally unnecessary, because about twenty percent of the posts in this blog is also related to movies, and two pages will be a little too much for me. I also share the posts from here on the page as far as they remain related to movies. I started the page for the first time supporting my other blog, Travel Diaries: Of this world and beyond with only close friends liking it, and then changed it into a combined page for my blogs and finally into the Movies of the Soul Facebook Page and has kept it that way.

If you look at the statistics, it is not even close to being the same for my blog and the Facebook Page. Those posts which have become successful on the blog have done less at the Facebook Page and vice versa, even though there are a few which have done good at both places. I haven’t been someone lookng at Facebook Statistics, but I did that last day, and this post comes as a result. Well, you can read a lot about what I found there, and here are the statistics for my Facebook Page.

The three cities outside Kerala which have the most likes for my page are Bangalore, Delhi and Chennai. The three top nations other than India are United States of America, Saudi Arabia and Canada. About half of the people who liked the page are between eighteen and twenty four years of age. I hope that some of you will contribute to change these statistics so that your age group, city or nation will be at a better spot in my list of likes. I would surely like that on a lovely Sunday 😀

The top city from outside India is Toronto. The top language is the United States English as expected. With the best reach, the highest are Bangalore, Mumbai and Delhi. The reach for the nations has the highest in United States of America, United Arab Emirates and the United Kingdom. Other than United States of America, people engaged with the posts are very low, outside India. The most visits come from Piscataway as far as the visits from outside cities are concerned.

My most viewed, commented, liked and shared post on Facebook is the Premam review, which makes me wonder if I should have watched and reviewed that movie a lot earlier. It took me too much time to write on that one, and it meant that too many possible visitors had gone missing. Well, I did try, but the rush was too much for the movie. The second place goes to Drishyam which has claimed the Bollywood throne for the most viewed and engaged post from Bajrangi Bhaijan which overtook ABCD 2 which had temporarily been at the top of my Bollywood posts.

Papanasam comes next and has become the leader of the Tamil movies list on my blog taking over from I, and that makes three out of three reviews on the same movie’s different versions success for me. The earlier leader among Malayalam movies was Iyobinte Pusthakam, and Mission: Impossible 5 – Rogue Nation is on its way to take over from Terminator Genysis as the top Hollywood movie on the Facebook Page – it is already there with the post reach. The Hollywood movies have given me less views, likes, comments and shares so far compared to the Indian movies.

***If you have any tips for my blogs after looking at these screenshots, do let me know 🙂

TeNy

And then the Big Hug

This is father’s day and the need to hug dad is here. So before we go deep into the hug, there is the need to remember those reasons for which the same has to be done. I have come up with my own collection of things. It might not be something which can be related to, for most of my readers, but I am going to stay with this list of six things before the big hug happens on the father’s day.

The Sympathy: It is quite a lot, even though not that much for me. Simona the Kitty knows his sympathy and tries to make a cute fact to take advantage of it, but kitchen and the food was never anywhere near being his department. I have got a little bit of that from him even though mutual sympathy was never in the cards. But a good number of local people did get the selective sympathy effect.

The History: The knowledge of history has been nicely passed on. There has been a lot of talk about history as well as politics, which did define my path for the future, even though some relatives managed to interfere and divert my road to the future. Still, the history which was learned earlier has remained in my mind, and has helped me to make sure that I took my second degree in History only.

The Curiosity: He thinks that I always have problems, and due to the same, he keeps checking. One day, he looked at my grammar sentence which said “I do not sleep at night” as part of my grammar studies, and without checking the rest of the available information on tenses, he decided to take action based on my sleeplessness. That grand curiosity had given me some special attention, even though not that much of a fair one.

The Self-righteousness: This one has been there all the time, and on display. Well, it has helped me to remain a good person, because I knew that there was no other way to make an impression, because the genius tag of the childhood was fast disappearing and had almost gone by the time I got admission for the Science-Computer group for Plus Two. So, I had to be the good person while the others were to be the achievers. That helped me to not go into the wilderness of evil.

The Disbelief: Yes, I have inherited the same disbelief, even though I haven’t got that ability to trust relatives or old friends who speak sweet. I have been careful with people, and it has helped me not to jump into any pits of hopelessness. As time progressed, I have turned out to be more of a non-believer in people than anyone I know about. I might have been a bigger loser if Ihad believed in people, but I have turned out to be a lesser one with this special skill that I inherited.

The Preferences: His love for the engineers and doctors have meant that I learnt to love those people who were different, and I decided to get rid of all Science and Mathematics because I realized that my right place was not with them. I belonged with the creative thinkers and not those people who worked only on logic. I realized that I should be human first and that matters. Well, most of my relatives don’t think so as they are always after counting the money in job or in marriage – but I understood 😀 #HugYourDad

This father’s day, I am expressing my love towards my dad by participating in the #HugYourDad activity at BlogAdda in association with Vicks.

***The image used in this blog post is from the page of activity itself.

TeNy

FPFS4: Halloween Night

Vampire Owl: Why are we wearing the Halloween costumes? We are the vampire team and should automatically scary to the humans in our true forms.

Vampire Bat: It is how things should be. If we are not wearing those masks, this is no Halloween at all. Even Uncle Dracula is wearing a mask for this occasion. It is a human mask, and he has promised to shock us.

Vampire Owl: Shock is no enemy of the oldest of the vampire-kind. Wait! Is that the Vampire Crocodile? What a vicious mask he is wearing. It looks like taken right from a giant dangerous rat which can devour us all.

Vampire Bat: It is a mask of Jerry from the legendary cartoon of those humans which they call Tom and Jerry.

Vampire Owl: Well, it surely worked for me while staying inside the Halloween terms and conditions. The Jerry Mask should be made a compulsory part of each and every Halloween of these lands.

Vampire Crocodile: I have always been depressed by the evil deeds that the devilish mouse commit on the poor cat Tom. Even the Vampire Cat has acknowledged the same.

Vampire Bat: The second property, the mask of evil is acknowledged then. Let them be evil as well as scary.

Vampire Owl: I demand party after this.

Vampire Bat: The party is where there is the need for hope. We are doing this for charity. The finishing line is at two places, one at the nearby orphanage and the other at the home for the aged and the infirm run by the Sisters of the Destitute.

Vampire Crocodile: So, what is the plan?

Vampire Bat: We go to a door, knock on it, collect the money if given, or may be some old clothes, keep repeating the same, and take what we collect to the orphanage or the old age home. It is as simple as that. Uncle Dracula will come and lead the way.

Vampire Owl: Yes, we are like the cool vampire people doing some good things unlike the normal human beings.

Vampire Crocodile: Yes, it is cool. The others including the Vampire Cat, Vampire Alligator, Vampire Hamster, Vampire Crow, Vampire Raven and new apprentices will join, along with three werewolves from the Land of Anger. Lich Queen has also offered us two zombies from her kitchen team.

Vampire Bat: This has the goodness factor, and you are also going to enjoy these moments.

Vampire Owl: I had and still have that feeling that this was going to be awesome!

Uncle Dracula [entering the hall]: Let the Halloween begin!

I have been tagged by Maniparna to take part in the Five Photos Five Stories (FPFS) challenge. This challenge works like: You post pictures for five consecutive days (with possible discounts like sometimes changing to alternate days :D) and attach posts to it, fiction, poem or short write-up. It can be anything that suits your taste. I am also tagging my wonderful blogger friend, Tara on Day Four, as part of the challenge, and I will tag a new person on Day Five. 

***This writing is based on our own Halloween programme which was conducted on the Sunday closest to the October 31st in the years 2010 and 2011 bringing something innovative and inspiring hope. It was a voluntary charity drive organized by our youth club with permission from the residents association, and result was excellent. It had clearly exceeded our expectations. It happened only for two years as the club itself had ceased to exist because of people getting jobs further away and a few others getting married. May be it shouldn’t have stopped, but a continuation was never in my power even though I was the club secretary. We needed members, but there were not enough.

***The image used in this blog post is also part of the pre-programme preparations, taken on my Sony Cybershot DSC-W310. The Ghostface mask from the movie Scream is my own special mask for the programme, and the rest included Werewolves, Vampires, Zombies and a number of others including my personal favourites, the Hellboy and the Wolf-man. It was a programme from the youth, and so even in the absence of masks, we managed with all the horror that we could come up with 😀 May be you can try this some day – there will be people who won’t like this, but they are sure to be in a minority 😉

TeNy

Land of Perpetual Summer

It was called “The Land of Perpetual Summer”. It is not that the Vampire Bat didn’t like that title for the city which did a lot for him during his middle ages. It was going to be a major vampire metro centre soon, and it was the place which had given him friends and also a certain amount of happiness. It was where he lived for most of his life, and this was also the place where Uncle Dracula conducted the interview to take him into the Team Vampire.

It was the land of summer which never ended, and even though there were some summer showers, and the monsoon which came directly through the season of summer could only make the season more beautiful without making it any lesser kind of summer. It was always summer in the land of Aluvaites, as the sun was strong and still the rivers were full. The nature was beautiful throughout the year.

He remembered the time when he had known the summer better. The season was never the favourite for the vampire kind, as it burned them like nothing else; but the Vampire Bat survived in those lands, thanks to the summer rain and the monsoon showers. The Vampire Bat was one of those rare vampires who wished for the summer season to continue to be eternal.

What the summer brought back to him was the memories of the time he spent enjoying with his friends, and they used to go on a random trip everyday, as he prepared his Honda Unicorn and just started off to an unknown world, finding a new route each and everyday. This was like the usual programme, and they had spent the summer finding new places, and exploring new areas.

There was the risk of getting burnt, but no vampire cared for the same less like the Vampire Bat. He was a wanderer of the summer season. During his childhood, he used to find happiness in those mangoes on the trees which had always waited for him. He used to go to the church and prayed for a better world. He wandered around the streets and found new meanings under the sun.

Summer was a special boost for his soul, and unlike the others of his kind, the cold ones, he couldn’t stand too much of the cold. He was physically made to be a cold one, but at the soul, he was a child of the extreme heat. He was born in March, one of the three months of fire according to the Vampire Mythology Version written by Uncle Dracula. He was among the very few of the kind.

The Vampire Bat loved this summer which never really ended, no matter how much closer it came the end. He knew that it was not his season, but the soul told otherwise. Summer was the season of happiness even when it was burning, and up-to an extend, it had the effect of purification. He believed in summer’s ability to make him feel better, and as the child of the season of fire, he had every reason to think so.

This post is a part of Write Over the Weekend, an initiative for Indian Bloggers by BlogAdda.

***The images used in this blog post were taken on my Sony Cybershot camera and my Samsung Star Duos phone.

TeNy

Of Happiness and Optimism

There have been too many days which lacked the happiness factor in my life, and I often wondered why it was so difficult to find the joy which has been lost. It has never been my area of expertise. But I have found its opposite side with so much ease, and there has been absolutely no struggle associated with it. The absence of happiness is always present, and even when there is the most need. The reason was that there was no optimism, and the level of hope was so low!

Yes, being an optimist never came naturally to me, and it has been more about being a cynic all the time. Among them all, there was that November 28th which changed a few things. I was rather wandering around with no plans. Then there was something which came to me like music to the ears. It was the cry of a kitten from the canal in front of our house. From between the vegetation of the canal, a face looked up, and said the “meow” and again came up with another louder “meow”.

See who was waiting? Look at the smile there as optimism works out for her 😀

Then I was like, this one is in the canal, and this was going to add to my sadness with this one going to die there. There was no way to bring it up as it was too steep all the way. That was another point of pessimism there, and then I saw it trying to climb up, trying again and again until almost reaching that point from where I could pull it up and take it home. Kittens are optimists aren’t they? I wondered if it could have done that as a pessimist.

We named her Simona and she has been a fighter. She gave a valuable lesson with her struggle to be up with us. From then, she has been a symbol of optimism in a never-ending manner. Simona, the symbol of perpetual optimism continues to be with us at home. She has been very good at providing some moments of happiness, becoming also the happiness factor of the family.

I am an optimist kitty and I know clearly that I can get into that room 😉

The point was that what I have to do is to keep trying. Falling down has been another thing that came naturally to me, and the plan should have been to get up every time. Simona teaches so much, and the way she looks at you is optimism, and her knowledge that you will always be there to feed and look after her is the purest form of optimism. You can feel it in her eyes, and realize that you, the human is her best friend.

She needs her time with her humans, and she knows that they will always be there for her, whether to feed or to play with her, and to make sure that the necessary position on the lap is there for her. It is her optimism that we never want her to miss, as it is a contagious thing and she is a carrier of that beautiful factor. I have often wished that the optimism was a virus that could spread better.

She is Simona, or SI-MO in short, and she is our little cute optimism. Even as she has got bigger, everyday, she sits in front of the closed doors of the rooms of the house, letting us know that happiness as well as a positive approach towards life is not elusive. She has been proving that with each sunrise, making sure that the humans of the house never miss out on the joy of the beautiful day being shared with her. Yes, she tells us that the world is beautiful and better be optimistic about it and your own future!

The photos used for this blog post are the pictures of our kitten taken by me on my Sony Cybershot DSC W-310 during the time period between November 28th 2014 and February 28th 2015. This blog post was written as part of the Happy Hours campaign from Housing.com in association with Indiblogger. Do check this link for details: https://housing.com/lookup

TeNy

Terror of Advertisements

A few things that disturb me include the quality of the advertisements that we see on these days. Yes, there are a few nice ones like the Alphenlibe Anti-boring Ad which has been one of my favourites, and the Zoozoos of the Vodafone’s past were nice, the latter making me shift to Vodafone from the dead Uninor. Idea has been always eating my brain with those Sirji Ads and now they have come up with so many of their terrible Ads between the Malayalam version of Who Wants to be a Millionaire/Kaun Banega Crorepathi – Ningalkum Aaakam Kodeeswaran has too many of them! Idea Internet Network = University = IIN? Seriously?

1. The bakery drone maker of IIN: I am surprised that Idea could go this low. No, you are not empowering the youth here, but making them believe that only by studying in IIT that you can be someone who is of significance in this world – even the IIN (Idea Internet Network) is made to sound like IIT making the people who study in regular college seem like idiots. Yes, if you don’t get admission in IIT, you needn’t study more and they make it clear. Be an engineer, and you can use internet to make the best gadgets of India; that is all right there – you will be awesome that way.

See this Vodafone Ad? This is enough to make a good point without lying.

2. The IIN girls who never go out: Yes, they don’t send women to college, but nobody cares to change that and to make sure that the female members of that village also have equal chances. If you have a mobile phone with Idea internet connection, women can stay locked in their houses. The kind of land where women are not allowed to go to college and study, can have the best android phones and 3G internet which the girls can use without any restrictions. Good bye, logic. You were never even in the extended picture.

3. The IIN student who searches for brain: Why would someone need internet to decide what to study? What a student needs is the brain to make decisions for himself and he can always choose the books instead. If someone thinks that the not-so-authentic information in the internet equals or is better than what he or she studies at the university, Indian Government can just ban all universities and tell the citizens to come and write exams which can be conducted every six months or so.

4. The IIN teacher who uses internet to teach: Here is the dumb teacher who thinks that she can only use internet with Idea, and still she is not fired. She can’t read books, and therefore chooses to use internet to teach students. This internet addict thinks that everything which is found on internet is true and updates her classes according to what all that she can find there and not from the books. I am glad that I finished the school early and won’t have to learn from a teacher like her.

BSNL doesn’t need Ads. Yes, their Ads are not good either, but they don’t need it.

Did Idea invent internet? It seems to be trying to make people think so. Internet is not the best place to study, dear Idea – it has too much of abuse, porn, hatred, wrong information and everything which can make the place the worst university to study. Internet can help for some knowledge, but is no real teacher. There were those terrible Honey Bunny Songs, No Ullu Banoing, What an Idea Sirji, and now this. This is the lowest point. I have once been a customer of Idea before using Airtel and Uninor. I am now using Vodafone – until they outsmart Idea in making such disgusting advertisements. I also do keep a BSNL number. My whole house has turned Idea-free due to their advertisements.

There are other Ads like those of Imperial Blue which generalize or stereotype men, and those Pepsi and Boost advertisements which bring too much of the Indian cricket team without knowing any of innovation. The jewelry advertisements of Kerala are very much unbearable as you can guess easily. Those irritating bike Ads with stunts are the perfect examples of having no creativity at all. Then there are the people of the toothpaste who come into bathrooms after kicking open the doors – do they do any good?

***The images used in this blog post are from the Facebook pages of Vodafone Kerala and BSNL Kerala which are the network connections which I use. I really hope that there are better advertisements for Idea too, so that I can watch the television programs in peace. And please value books more than internet. Thank you.

TeNy

The Phone that Saves

Inspired by the powers of the new ASUS ZenFone, I have taken over the responsibility to transform my little mobile phone into something like a superhero in a world which needs a lot of saving, from the bad movies which are released in this world. Taking the situation in our nation, Bollywood takes the opportunity to unleash hell on its people, the poor viewers are bombarded with bad movies one after the other, and this chemical attack leaves the fans incapable of watching any other movie in any other language.

The grand superpower that my mobile phone will have is to save the good people who wish to watch nicely made movies rather than the nonsense that are usually fed to the viewers in the disguise of movies. The level of movies have been declining day by day. Even Hollywood has to depend on the remakes of the old good movies at times, and Bollywood has absolutely no idea what they are doing, with coming up with the worst movies of them all. We don’t deserve them, and the movies don’t deserve us as audience.

My mobile phone and the old UK DVD collection which deserves a check 😀

But even such cases have their own supporters, just like any political or religious moment will have their own people. They are the fans who are completely and blindly into celebrity worship. More people suffer in this world due to fake reviews posted by fan-boys and fan-girls than those who don’t really read the reviews. Each and every fan comes up with an opinion that the movie of their favourite celebrity is good, and this has lead to the rise of the worst movies which are liked only by the fans, but the rest are also forced to suffer the torture.

The word-of-mouth opinion can no longer be trusted. This is where my super-phone will come to the scene and save the movie watcher’s world. This is why this phone will consider a scan on the theatre, find the people who are already in the theatre, check their reactions and also their own mobile phones to find if they are blind fans of any superstar attempting to praise or bring down the movie for no reason. It will also go through their mobiles to see their interests and previous history. It will also have a look at the theatre ambiance give a rating to the place in a score between zero and ten. It will also find good movie DVDs by just scanning through the covers.

It will identify the keywords which have been used about this movie by the neutral viewers who have a movie taste that matches me, and will find out what the flick is actually about and give it a rating according to how much it will interest me. For example, a horror movie will surely have a certain boost in the points, and if it is a movie like The Cabin in the Woods which is more than a horror movie, or You’re Next which finishes with a message, there will be more points added. The mobile will have the ability to know what I have written about other movies and thus used to my tastes. This super-power as well as the hero is called the Truth-On.

The mobile itself is a movie lover, keeping its own movie wallpaper of THG 😀

An advanced version of the phone will actually come up with a few points about the movie which the user will find interesting. For the same, the phone has to travel through the portal which gave it the superpowers, the Portal of the Oblivion, which further leads to the world of Absentia which lies between this world and the Other, from where no phone has yet returned without losing its battery or keypad if present. Not really recommended for any phone unless it is as powerful as a Zenphone – it is a risky procedure, but one day, my phone will take that path too.

Coming back to the new Asus Zenphone, I do hope that I will be able to buy one when I get a job, and if I do get one. It is undoubtedly one incredible mobile phone there. Then there are the looks and the name – how can someone not like that name? I am writing this post as part of contest organized by Indiblogger and ASUS about “Taking inspiration from the super powers of the ASUS Zenphone, give your phone a super power and tell us how it would help you see what others can’t see and do what others can’t do!” and the details can be found here: http://www.asus.com/campaign/zenfone/IN/

TeNy