How is Chess similar to life?

If you don’t move, you lose by default.

If you move, you should think deeply about it or someone may push you over.

If you move well, you can protect the pieces you hold dear besides you.

If you’re too far from your beloved, you may not make it back in time to protect them.

The path of survival and comfort takes great planning.

Brilliance and success comes to those that are most observant.

Adapting to the situation is the key to success.

Knowledge and experience are keen advantages.

You have a limited number of moves. Make them good ones.

What We’re Looking For

It’s that thing when you’re with someone and you love them and they know it, and they love you and you know it, but it’s a party! And you’re both talking to other people and you’re laughing and shining and you look across the room and catch each other’s eyes. But…but not because you’re possessive or it’s precisely sexual but because that is your person in this life. And it’s funny and sad but only because this life will end. And it’s this secret world that exists right there in public unnoticed that no one knows about. It’s sort of like how they say that other dimensions exist all around us, but we don’t have the ability to perceive them. That’s…that’s what I want out of a relationship or just life, I guess.

So There.

E.E. Cummings had to borrow $300 from his mother in order to publish 70 Poems, his 1935 collection of poetry. Vindictively he changed its title to No Thanks and dedicated it to the 14 publishing houses that had rejected it:

Their names form the shape of a funeral urn.

Things learned from The Lord of The Rings & The Hobbit

1. Pretty, shiny things are hazardous to your health.

2. Hobbits state the overly obvious

3. Chocolate is non-existent in Middle-Earth.

4. Beer and Tobacco seem to have a beneficial effect on hobbits

5. Never make fires in questionable caves.

6. Kick a troll, and your foot will break.

7. Elvish accents are low and whispery.

8. Imitating voices can come in handy.

9. Being good at riddles can save your life.

10. Giant spiders freak out elves big-time.

11. Elrond should have pushed Isildur into the crack of doom.

12. Sauron once got pawned by a girl

13. Legolas is NOT blonde.

14. Elves have the amazing ability to make up songs spontaneously.

15. Don’t ask Gandalf questions when he’s grumpy.

16. You do not want to make Gandalf mad.

17. There are surprising similarities between the movie-version Elrond and Spock.

18. The eagles always did provide a convenient Deus ex machina

19. The favorite color of most elves is grey.

20. Locking up your daughter in a tree house and expecting her to stay there is just simply naïve.

21. Make sure your master is mentally healthy before you swear fealty to him.

22. Saruman does not need a microphone.

23. Nargothrond snipers can (apparently) see an insignia on a tiny ring from ten yards away.

24. Elves can count reeaaaaally fast.

25. Having seven sons in a row is not necessarily good luck.

26. A shiny object about an inch in diameter caused the destruction of the kingdom of Doriath.

27. Dwarves hoard secret recipes

28. There are more parallels between Gandalf and The Doctor than you think.

29. Before you discuss confidential information, check to make sure no one is trimming grass under the windowsill.

30. The word “holiday” means something else to Bilbo.

31. Singing wildly while dancing on top of a table is not exactly a good idea.

32. If you see big green mounds with bits of stone sticking out of them like teeth…get as FAR AWAY from them as possible before nightfall.

33. Try not to separate from your friends, especially in heavy fog.

34. Knowing how to write songs makes you beloved amongst the elves.

35. Gender bias cost Sauron his most trusted servant. (a.k.a. the Witch-King of Angmar)

36. If guys  in black hoods riding black horses start sniffing around your neighborhood… take that as a sign that it’s time to move.

37. Even Fat dragons gan pack a punch.

38. It is a good skill to distinguish between numbers 30 and 31.

39. Everyone in Middle-Earth writes their ‘a’ s with three dots above it.

40. The Orc sergeant in Mordor has a very limited insult vocabulary.

41. Shiny glass balls can drive you crazy.

42. Gollum has severe vitamin D deficiency.

43. And 500 years in a cave didn’t improve his grammar either.

44. Never trust young men who simply cannot take constructive criticism.

45. Be very, very suspicious if 13 dwarves suddenly invite themselves to your house and seem to know exactly what is in your pantry.

46. There are several meanings hidden in “good morning!”.

47. Be sure to compliment a forest whenever you enter it.

48. The more tragic your death, the more it will be sung about.

49. Elves sleep with their eyes open.

50. “Never laugh at live dragons!”.

RUSH – Movie Review!

As a film I’d give it 4/5. As F1 history it has to take a knock down to 3.5/5. Hunt and Lauda’s rivalry is portrayed as antagonistic rather than the friendship of real life, which was inevitable as supposedly that makes for a better film and plot development as they eventually come to respect each other.

A few things are omitted, such as Hunt’s disqualification from the British Grand Prix and a few small things are added in to develop the plot and to keep up the film’s pace, which is one of its best features; it doesn’t drag in places like so many films do nowadays. The only thing that grated me was that the Monza scenes are blatantly Brands Hatch, but all the other racing scenes are either authentic or indistinguishable from where they’re meant to be.

Chris Hemsworth as James Hunt and Daniel Brühl as Niki Lauda

Daniel Bruhl steals the shows as Lauda, he gives a fantastic performance and you don’t see anything but Lauda. Chris Hemsworth plays Hunt very well but he doesn’t have the voice down as much as Bruhl. The Hesketh team is very well portrayed. It’s a shame more drivers don’t make an appearance outside of the cars and helmets, the characters in this film are very much featured as necessary, though there are a few good look-alikes in scenes, including a very obvious Graham Hill in one scene.

A side note, at first I thought they’d brought in a Murray Walker impersonator to commentate the race scenes but it’s actually Simon Taylor!

Overall the film is very well-paced, there is very little filler or unnecessary exposition, a few niggly things to annoy the diehard fan but plenty to entertain the average movie-goer. I’d certainly place this above “Senna” as a good F1 film, though direct comparison is obviously difficult as they have different approaches. There is a sense of Lauda being the villain but it’s hard to make Lauda a more likable character. His views and philosophy on racing are given as much time as Hunt as is his personal life; there’s no one-sided character assassination like Prost in “Senna” and after the Nürburgring crash if you want Hunt to win the championship it’s not out of hate for Lauda.

The final scene is very moving; I won’t spoil it but prepare to fight back a few tears.

 

Niki Lauda and James Hunt

I Miss School..

I still remember our Farewell day. I knew what the day meant. I knew what it represented. I knew it was the final page of a novel much longer than a J.K. Rowling classic. I also knew that, come April, I would not be returning.

I think we are all familiar with the lyric: “You don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” This is true.

Well, the following verse reads: “They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” I feel like my parking pass has expired.

I miss my friends.

I miss walking around campus.

I miss texting my friends and making plans to meet somewhere.

I miss having to apologize for being a “few” minutes late.

I miss hearing people complain about their marks.

I miss the morning chapel.

I miss having people tell me about their problems.

I miss sitting at a table cracking jokes with friends.

I miss kicking people on their birthdays and vice versa.

I miss wearing a tie.

I miss going to my friends’ houses and being served food.

I miss playing football every morning.

I miss breaking my glasses. (I haven’t broken one in over 16 months!)

I miss following a routine.

I miss navigating my way through crowded hallways.

I miss walking up to the Park Street/Maidan metro station.

I didn’t write this entry so people can feel sorry for me. Nor did I write it so people can tell me to look forward to the future. I will be fine. I wrote it because I thought it was important to get this off my chest. I wrote it for the people in my position who might feel the same way – and if you don’t, I hope to be where you are one day, soon. I wrote it for the people currently in school, so they can cherish every single second of the experience.

Cheers! 🙂

Richard Feynman’s letter to his departed wife : “You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.”

 

In June of 1945, Arline Feynman — high-school sweetheart and wife of Nobel prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman — passed away after yielding to tuberculosis. She was only 25 years old. 16 months after her death, in October of 1946, Richard Feynman wrote the following love letter to his deceased wife and sealed it in an envelope. It wasn’t opened until after his death in 1988!

 

October 17, 1946

D’Arline,

I adore you, sweetheart. 

I know how much you like to hear that — but I don’t only write it because you like it — I write it because it makes me warm all over inside to write it to you. 

It is such a terribly long time since I last wrote to you — almost two years but I know you’ll excuse me because you understand how I am, stubborn and realistic; and I thought there was no sense to writing. 

But now I know my darling wife that it is right to do what I have delayed in doing, and that I have done so much in the past. I want to tell you I love you. I want to love you. I always will love you.

I find it hard to understand in my mind what it means to love you after you are dead — but I still want to comfort and take care of you — and I want you to love me and care for me. I want to have problems to discuss with you — I want to do little projects with you. I never thought until just now that we can do that. What should we do. We started to learn to make clothes together — or learn Chinese — or getting a movie projector. Can’t I do something now? No. I am alone without you and you were the “idea-woman” and general instigator of all our wild adventures.

When you were sick you worried because you could not give me something that you wanted to and thought I needed. You needn’t have worried. Just as I told you then there was no real need because I loved you in so many ways so much. And now it is clearly even more true — you can give me nothing now yet I love you so that you stand in my way of loving anyone else — but I want you to stand there. You, dead, are so much better than anyone else alive.

I know you will assure me that I am foolish and that you want me to have full happiness and don’t want to be in my way. I’ll bet you are surprised that I don’t even have a girlfriend (except you, sweetheart) after two years. But you can’t help it, darling, nor can I — I don’t understand it, for I have met many girls and very nice ones and I don’t want to remain alone — but in two or three meetings they all seem ashes. You only are left to me. You are real.

My darling wife, I do adore you. 

I love my wife. My wife is dead.

Rich.

PS Please excuse my not mailing this — but I don’t know your new address.

Outrage. Protest. Wind-down.

[NOTE: This was written on the 20th of April, 2013]

A five-year old girl was raped In Delhi yesterday.

Yes, you read it right! A FIVE year old girl!

“We found a 200ml bottle and two-three pieces of candle inserted into her private parts. This is the first time I have seen such barbarism,” said R.K. Bansal, medical superintendent of Swami Dayanand Hospital. [1]

Father of the 5 year old rape survivor was offered 2000 rupees by police to “keep quiet”. For desi cops R-A-P-E is just another four letter word. Shame in the extreme! This country is going doom-wards!

What happened to this girl is inconceivable, but she is not even close to being the only one. Shudder to think about the unnumbered untold rapes across the country every day that are met with apathetic cops & sissy laws. And the horror of what was done to her is compounded by the fact that she was a child – there is no earthly way in which we can blame her. But for every child that is raped, molested, there are also hundreds of young women like us who are molested, groped, raped, and harassed, and we never hear about them because the second one of their pixel-ated faces come on tv, 80% of the country will sexualize her, fetishise her, moralize about her, and no-one will be able to empathize with her, or offer her anything beyond advice on what she should have done differently. This is why there are laws about anonymity.

A girl liking a Facebook post gets immediate arrest but a gang rape requires “due process”. The law here is a cruel joke. The very fact that we in India call molestation and rape, eve teasing is a clue to what we think of it.The disconnect between the masses and the governing elite is the biggest failure of the Indian democracy. The incongruity between what society preaches & does is glaring.

Candlelight vigils mean nothing if all you want is to hang three people. Right now I feel like we have to hold vigils every day, in what we do and say, for thousands more. Momentary outrage & short lived memory CANNOT catalyse change!

Here are my two cents. I hope I’ve succeeded in lighting up the fire in your heart. Let’s step down from our pedestals, and admit that we are all responsible. Lets take the shame away from them, lets share it, diffuse it, subvert it by being ashamed of ourselves and the culture that we have created. We all sit at home and dream of monsters, but don’t realize that there is always something we can do!

 

This is the least I can do for my little sister. My thoughts go out to the her and her family. Hope she gets well soon.

 

“Kaash ye sab ek khwab hi ho, aankh khule toh sab theek hi mile…”

THE Problem.

It is not about the government, not about the education system, not about social ethical codes; it’s about how we perceive India. How many times have we heard somebody saying “Ye India hai, yahan sab chalta hai” (this is India, everything is OK here) or how many times have we ourselves said “India ka kuch nahi ho sakta” (no good can happen to India). India is us and we are India, the sooner we understand this the better it is for us and the nation. The solution to most of our problems lies within ourselves and our outlook. A simple change in our own mindset will change how we look at our nation, and how others related to us look at our nation. That is how we spread the 6 letter word, change. So next time when somebody would ask about the problem/problems of India, I would smile and say I have no problem! What about you?

Who is the main antagonist in Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire?

 

It is not any of the humans. There are some characters that people love to hate, namely: Lord Tywin Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Joffrey Baratheon, Sandor Clegane, Gregor Clegane, Lord Walder Frey, the Boltons. You may like some characters more than others, and we’re rooting for the Starks for the most part, but George R. R. Martin is very careful not to let anyone be too good and even when we’re pretty sure someone is bad, he turns them around and has us rooting for them. All humans are shades of grey.

The title of the book series hints at what’s really going on in this world – A Song of Ice and Fire.  We can clearly see 2 great forces at work, Ice and Fire. In the first book, the Others appear north of the Wall (forces of Ice and cold) while the dragons are born and Daenerys Targaryen discovers her power (forces of Fire and heat).  Ice and Fire, both rising in power simultaneously. 

The antagonist is…

The Great Other

The Great Other is the god of darkness, cold, and death in the faith of R’hllor. His true name is never spoken. He is considered the enemy of R’hllor, the Lord of Light. Followers of R’hllor believe that there are only two gods, R’hllor and the Great Other, who wage an eternal war over the fate of the world. All forces of darkness, cold, and death are believed to be only servants to the Great Other.

The Great Other somehow resides north of The Wall, in the Lands of Always Winter.  He (or she?) created The Others (The White Walkers) who in turn create the zombies who plague the Wildlings and the Night’s Watch. The Great Other is probably responsible for the strange cycle of Winter that covers Westeros at random times.

Dracarys!

The White Walkers/The Others!

   

R’hllor represents Fire, and his forces are not just the Red Priests like Melisandre.  The dragons are also powered by R’hllor, the Targaryens contain the blood of dragons and probably the blood of R’hllor, while Varys & Illyrio Mopatis are somehow scheming for the return of Daenerys Targaryen and her dragons, probably to counter the rising threat of The Others north of the Wall.

 

The primary purpose of this post was to put forward a perspective so as to people stop branding every character as good or bad and enjoy the show/book better without having to search for the real antagonist. I hope I succeeded in doing so.

Thanks for reading!

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