Friday, February 22, 2002

Change of Outlook

Meetings, meetings, meetings galore. My calendar runneth over.

Am seriously thinking of using Lotus Notes calendar, since Notes is the e-mail client at office. Yeah, it sucks big time, but its better than having two e-mail clients (Notes and Outlook) open at the same time. One more advantage is that I can access my calendar even on my laptop if I use Notes.

I'm off to Manipal for the weekend. Need to help Sindha with her thesis, its at the last stage now. I've learnt quite a bit of Excel over the past two weeks. Chi-square, anyone ?

Tuesday, February 12, 2002

Back in business

Updating L-J after a long time. Was busy with my back. Then with work. Right now both are under control, so have some moments of breathing space. (take a deep breath...)

Hunted all over Bangalore for the second and third parts of Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy. Finally found the second, The Subtle Knife, in the unlikeliest of places - Gangarams ! My opinion of this bookshop went up marginally after this. Was so happy I picked up a couple of other books too - Peter Carey's Booker winner A True History of the Kelley Gang and Terry Pratchett's Guards ! Guards!

I read in a web site that the Carey book doesn't use commas. Interesting.

Terry Pratchett's Guards Guards is the 8th in his Discworld series. The book is dedicated to all the guards who appear in movies around the 10th minute and are summarily dispatched by the hero. Poor souls.

Completed 2/3rds of The Subtle Knife. Quite good. Comparisons with Tolkien and JK Rowling are inevitable, according to critics. To my mind though, I don't think Pullman should be compared with Rowling - they are in two different leagues altogether. Not to pull Rowling down, but her books are targeted primarily at children. Pullman is also classified as a kiddies writer, but the two books I've read can be appreciated at multiple levels. Tolkien however wins the battle hands down for the sheer depth and range of his writing in The Lord of the Rings. Suffice to say that I think all three authors have their own space and market. The good part is that both Rowling and Pullman are alive and continue to write !

Tried to see Robert Altman's Gosford Park, but the audio was quite bad. Didn't like it much and switched off without bothering to find out who the murderer was.