I had never thought that there would ever be such time in this busy world when I will be able to shortlist my favorite books. But I have realized with time that you are provided with option to do everything in life and so I grabbed opportunity to do few things I always wanted to do but could never get out time for them.

Finally I finished reading this book titled The Google Story written by David A. Vise. And in this way, I found two more favorite books.

I always prefer to read at-least one programming book in parallel with another non-programming one so that my interest remain balanced. It has been like that since I came out of grad.

In 2005, it was J2EE training along-with Five Point Someone and after a gap of year, I again stinted for reviving my offline reading habit. This time, I chose Sun Certified Programmer & Developer for Java 2 Study Guide by Kathy Sierra and Bert Bates along-with The Google Story by David A. Vise. I liked both of the books specially because they happened to be opposite to what common perception goes about such books.

The SCJP book was much fun than serious programming stuff and it kept bringing grins over face again and again - Kathy writes so beautifully that she never lets you feel like dipping into serious things at all. By the time, you start realizing that you have to be serious while reading book about such an important exam, you find that you are already finished with it.

The other book which is about one of the funkiest companies of our time which goes quite seriously investigating into the details of the building of Google and deep into its business. David keeps you glued to the book and never makes you realize that you have understood so many things about business in such a short time. Once you start reading book, you find yourself unable to take a break before finishing at-least the present chapter. It is made so much interesting.

Both of the books went above my expectations and hence, the are the recent additions in my Favorite Books library. I could never like Five Point Someone although it gave me some unnecessary advantage .

One reason for not liking it was that there was unnecessary introduction of exterritorial and unrelated material. For example intentional insertion of sex to attract more readers even knowing that most of them are going to be conservative Indians (who wouldn’t like book not because they aren’t inclined towards western trends but because book introduces vague & unrealistic cultural as well as moral values). And the whole act performed by and Indian passed out from top Indian Technology and Management Institutes. Perhaps that’s why, because of over-learned management fundas, he mixed lot of sex with study just as a good mix of God, Sex, India and China sell like anything in marketing arena huh. This was one reason, despite being interesting, FPS couldn’t inspire me to read his next book - One Night @ The Call Center, which failed very badly.

Another post going along series of The Gurgaon Summers of 2007.

A weekend which started with a heated up cricket match against players of Cricket Academy on Saturday noon at cricket ground of ITM College, Gurgaon (Institute of Technology and Management, Gurgaon). It really doesn’t feel like 44 C (112 F) over ground when you have support of your mates / colleagues and also I like wandering under sun .

Then there was a meet organized by a dear friend about another Multilevel business. This time it was quest.net. I didn’t want to even go for listening about it but sometimes, you can’t just avoid it. Of course, you have the last word and so I went out to have good time calling for long sleep after a hot day’s match.

On Sunday, it was MOVIE TIME - there were few best and others, the worst. I wouldn’t be going much into details but writing about them in short.

Blood Diamond - After watching this movie, I have found 10 other reasons not to gift diamonds in my life but of course, you can never understand a girl as she can be the only reason for you to buy a diamond, ever. It moved me just like anything. It justifies the 5 Oscars including Best Actor given to Leonardo DiCaprio and Best Supporting Actor to Djimon Hounsou. There is mention of India but in wrong context. Here are few dialogues from movie which just shake you up -

• Sometimes I wonder…will God ever forgive us for what we have done to each other? Then I look around and I realize…God left this place a long time ago.
• So what is the point…haan?

In this movie, the guy wonders how brutally his own countrymen were killing their own people but this game is still in corrupt countries including India where dishonest officials and politicians let their people starve filling their own houses. I wonder the way Black Economies sustain in those countries.

Rating - 9.5/10

Ghost Rider - Just a time pass movie and I was expecting much from Nicolas Cage (I still like watching movies of few wonderful actors which include Nicolas Cage, Bruce Willis, Tom Cruise, Tom Hanks and Leonardo DiCaprio). Here are few nice dialogues which I liked -

• The thing about legends is… sometimes, they are true.
• You cannot live in fear…what did you get in return.
• He may have my soul but he doesn’t have my spirit.

Rating - 6/10

Fool N Final - A movie made to fool you. Only noticeable thing in movie is music. I wonder, how director managed such big cast.

Rating - 2/10

I wish one day, only my ratings could speak and I have started practicing that from now .

The CashEdge cap. It is specifically released for the CashEdge Cricket team members.

Proud to be a CashEdge Cricket Team player. We won the first match while wearing this cap against Simcom.

And on the other side, Prabh/Prabhjot Singh (our dear Sardar ji) has started a poll for the best sport-person of our batch - the batch of B.Tech. 2004, DCSE, Punjabi University (or Punjabi Junibrashty as Pankaj Dev spells it !)

I watched Matrix one more time on this weekend. If not hundreds of times, I have watched this sequel (The Matrix, The Matrix Reloaded, and The Matrix Revolutions) for at-least tens of times. If you love technology, action, thrill, romance and what not, you believe that Artificial Intelligence can do wonders, this is the The Sequel to watch out. First time, I had watched The Matrix during graduation when in next semester, we were going to learn AI. After that, it became my favorite movie specially when the fiction seems quite possible and realistic to you. If you get bored of watching your favorite movie again and again, watch it in other language you know and you will know many new things especially when it is quite complex movie. This time I watched it in Hindi - all three parts (thanks to bro. Yes I was at my hometown on this weekend) and I discovered lot of new things which I didn’t know before. I would like to watch this movie in all the 4 languages that I know. Every time, I watch this movie, I find few more interesting facts which I couldn’t understand previously, somethings which I never knew before, just like I discover new meanings when I re-read some old issue of Digit (:)) or Gita, Koran or Bible (well that doesn’t mean at all that I am quite religious specially when I don’t go to any religious place. I read these scriptures for self-improvement.) I always wished such movie to be created in Bollywood than just copying it.

Free your mind

Here is a transition that I went through few weeks ago and I swear, it was too difficult to have this experience!

And if you still have some time that you can spend on reading similar interesting stuff, Mandar has made a quite “interesting post” (The Love Shtory) for first time in ages over his blog .

Opposite to a Screwed Weekend, an outstanding weekend is one when you spend a lustrous time. And this was the one.

On Saturday - first day of weekend, everyone wants to do as much rest as much one can. And when I got up at 1400, what can be better than a thrilling strike by Indians in first test match against South Africa. It didn’t seem to be a test match at all when Indians were taking out the RSA wickets like anything. Sreesanth was on full swing and hit RSA to the deepest level by picking 5 wickets. It was first 5-wicket haul of his test career. We forgot the Nel when we watched Sreesanth roaring over RSA batsmen! Then Zaheer was in complete josh, partnering with Sreesanth to make RSA send back to pavilion on that day only. And then started the Indian Inn started with Sehwag thrilling the bowlers after Jaffer went for nothing special. Wall (Dravid) was also broken for nothing. Laxman and Saurav kept Indian hopes alive to give a big target to RSA. And for whole day, we were sitting in front of TV watching this test turned into ODI. By the time, match was called off for day, it was time to go to bed. But before that, if you get to watch Kicking and Screaming on HBO…man it was so hilarious with me and Anuj going to sleep laughing all the way. Still there was some room to watch Elektra on Star Movies for some time in late night.

On Sunday morning, when you know that you are going to have a great dancing day, you already in mood to stick to your decision of watching TV for whole day. It was telecast of all previous episodes of Nach Balliye…err Nach Baliye 2 on Star One. So if you don’t like to watch those Ekta Kapoor dramas mixed with the dance on every Monday night, this is the one day when you can see the real juice of all the episodes - one day before the grand final between Jodi No. 02 (Yash and Gauri) and Jodi Number 08 (Hussain and Tina). It was great time watching the TV couples dancing on the screen, laughing, screaming and the big dramas of judges, showing  the steps, dance and much more. In parallel, you start watching the cricket match and then the thrilling six of Sreesanth to make Andre Nel go shut up. Who can forget that awesome break dance of Sreesanth in front of Andre Nel? And umpires were all the way going ga ga on that dance and admiring his steps. Also it was told that he is the one from South, a great break-dancer who also teaches dance to his team-mates and can be a threat to Rajnikanth! If you missed the steps, here is the video of the pitch dance by Sreesanth from YouTube -

First thing first – For me, it appeared to be a movie which is inspired (or copied ) from different Hollywood movies as well as Hollywood characters. So, it didn’t worked for me at all.

To start with, as every movie-buff in India knows that movie wasn’t shown in any PVRs/DTs/Multiplexes in India , on Friday, except one at PVR Grand Surjit , Aligarh UP ( the latest PVR), so one had to manage with the local theatres if one has to watch it on Friday. So were we. Chunky found the theatre playing Dhoom: II/D: II/ Dhoom 2 after waiting for long till 1900 if any DT or PVR is going to play movie. So, we all were going to watch it at Payal theatre. It was going to be second theatre experience for me in a year and first at Gurgaon after the one at my home town. We, the group of 10 were there at Payal to get the tickets and tickets were still available – 10 minutes before the show. After all, not everyone manages to go down upto that level . It was the biggest crew of ours went to watch movie together…me, Pankaj, Anish, Kanav, Rajat, Kunal, Deepak, Vikram, HR (Hritik R…) plus one. Movie tickets were arranged but everyone had impression that we have the seat numbers on tickets until Kanav found that there were no seat numbers at all. So we had to rush for capturing 10 consecutive seats in balcony and after some struggle, we got 10 seats in a row. Now, I wouldn’t be explaining the inner ambiance of theatre…it wasn’t much different from my previous experience . All I would say that there were no girls. Only guys all over in the theatre.

Movie starts with a robbery in a pleasant desert of Namibia with A/Aryan (Hritik) coming down to the running train using parachute and stealing the crown with the trickery of camouflage…but then when he stops the bullets…rather the shot-gun shots with his skates, it gives feel of some typical Rajnikanth/Mithun movie. Then, where have I seen desert skating before?…nowhere!! The second scene of Ali (Uday Chopra) and karela cop Jai (Abhishek Bachchan), appears to be another larger than life act when Ali is standing in front of mobster and he isn’t firing him at all, rather looking at Abhishek to start the fight scene…HA and came out of my mouth – “Good that I didn’t go to watch this movie in PVR.”

Movie is all about the chase game between a Cop and a thief specially when you don’t get to see the bikes all over the movie – the expectations which most of the viewers had with them while going for watching the movie. There are no more much bike stuff and for the first half, you have to adhere yourself to the thief running of skates while being chased by the cops. But one thing which you really like about him is that this is a burglar equipped with tech gadgets and machines plus he is an artist. He likes to hear songs and drinks coffee. He is a high profile guy who thinks big and hence manages to steal (or should I say…strike) big deals .