A Tsunami triggered by an earthquake in Indonesia killed thousands. It felt sad to know that hundreds died in the city of Chennai. I lived there for 17 years. Strollers and joggers on Saturday morning in Marina beach in Chennai would have seen 30 feet wave heading towards them. I can only imagine their panic. I am wondering why they weren't able to predict an earthquake of such a high magnitude (8.9 on Richter scale).

I watched "Lemony Snicket's A series of Unfortunate events" on Christmas eve. 4 of us went and had the whole movie hall to ourselves. The movie was good, maybe a little too dark for kids.

I watched "House of Flying Daggers" yesterday. Pretty good. Great visuals, every shot was so vibrant and colourful. As in earlier movies of the same genre like Hero or "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon", the martial arts scenes were exaggerated but they were lyrical and blended well with the visual poetry. I kept wondering when will Indian movies reach this standard. I mean the Chinese movie industry is not much older than Indian industry, and Bollywood churns out hundreds of movies every year. But very few of them could compare in technical standard with Hollywood or Chinese movies. Maybe its the money involved or maybe its the problem with Indian audience, the Indian directors are giving what they want.

I finally scratched my long standing itch about wanting to buy a digital camera. Thats a supposedly funny way of saying I bought a digital camera. The final choice was between Canon S500 and Sony DSC-W1. I heard good things about both. Sony's is a little larger, but its LCD display is full one inch bigger. Canon's comes with proprietary batteries while Sony's works with standard AAA cells. Sony's costs about $50 less than Canon. But Canon's storage is (more) standard Compact Flash whereas Sony's storage is their Memory Stick. I checked the prices and Memory Stick costs almost twice as Compact Flash. Also among my friends circle, I knew at least 3 owning a Canon (2 of them have S400 and one has S500) and all of them seemed happy with it. I knew no one having a Sony digital camera. I think its the Memory Stick thing that puts most people off. Anyway, I bought the Canon S500 from Amazon. Here is a mugshot of me shot in front of a mirror. You can see how small the camera is. I like its metallic body, gives a sturdy feeling in hand.


My new Camera 


I watched Ocean's Twelve on its first day of release. Read this review. I agree with everything it says. You would too, if you waste $10 to watch the movie.