I nicked this idea from one of the blogs that I read – Gypsy. But, what the hell…everyone can have their own list. I’m amazed why this didn’t become a tag though. So I’m gonna make this a tag. This, as the title says is a list of superlatives. You can add any list of superlatives of last year, but keep it to a maximum of 5 items per list. (For eg: Books I struggled to finish is my invention)
Top 5 moments of the year:
- I “apparently” hurt my right elbow while doing pull-ups and had to undergo a surgery, and the funniest part was that it was not for any injury.
- My hard disk crashed a week after Times of India wrote that whoever had 320 GB of hard disk space were terrorists, depriving me of a place in the coveted list.
- My cousin Kavita appearing out of thin air and getting in touch after about 10 years. I should thank Orkut for that.
- My car was hit by another car on the side, deforming the left rear door. This made me think that whoever buys new cars in Bangalore should be mentally tough enough to see their car turn into an ugly piece of metal. Ladies, sorry to say this. Guys, please keep some distance with vehicles driven by ladies. There may be some good drivers among the ladies, but the truth is that a majority of them don’t know what to do under stress while driving.
- Ahh..the marriage proposals…how can I forget that? It seems my relatives are more eager to see me caged than anybody else. Thank God that my parents are understanding. Let me count… I got 4 marriage proposals, all of which were rejected rather mercilessly even before the topic gathered heat.
Best 5 movies that I watched: (Released this year)
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (This might be highly biased)
- Ratatouille
- The Bourne Ultimatum (Except for the shaky camera at some places, which almost gave me a headache. The story was well paced and just good.)
- Die Hard 4.0 (A good action movie after “True Lies”)
- Chak De India (Need I say any more?)
Best 5 movies: (Released earlier and watched from home)
- The Departed (DiCaprio proved that he is not some chocolate boy who spits the farthest.)
- The Shawshank Redemption (Yeah.. I got around to watching it only last year)
- The Prestige (Another well-crafted movie from Christopher Nolan. Amazing performance from Christian Bale.)
- Rear Window (Hitchcock all the way! Believe it or not, all scenes except the climax were shot from a single room!)
- Sin City
There are more (Amelie, Run Lola Run, Das Boot, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso) but the list says only 5 🙁
Worst 5 movies:
- Ghostrider (Why, oh, why did I watch a movie with Nicholas Cage in it? He just sucks. Period.)
- Wild Hogs (Comedy which made me sick.)
- Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
- Billa (But it was worth the money because of Nayantara *EVIL GRIN*)
- Om Shanti Om
Best 5 books:
- The picture of Dorian Gray – Oscar Wilde
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – JK Rowling
- The Argumentative Indian – Amartya Sen
- Three Men on the Bummel – Jerome K Jerome (Not quite as good as it’s prequel, but still utterly hilarious)
- Cryptonomicon – Neal Stephenson (This is an amazing book. Became a big fan of Stephenson after reading this book)
5 books which I struggled to finish (Because I fell asleep before completing a page)
- Crisis – Robin Cook (I think this will be my first and last Robin Cook book. I don’t like his writing style)
- Cold Mountain – Charles Frazier (A really sloth novel with too much detail about the surroundings than the characters.)
- Asterix and the Class Act (Class Act is not an Asterix story. It is rather a collection of Asterix short stories. This was not remotely as funny as the stories.)
I don’t think there are more 🙂
Top buys:
- My new T-shirt (okay I bought it this year, but I like to cheat) which reads:
Alcohol and Calculus do not mix…Never drink and derive.
- The 160GB Seagate Barracuda hard disk which crashed.
- My personal web space.
- Rubik Cube from CMH Road while at the junction. Bought it for just 30 rupees (He started from 60 rupees and I started from 20 rupees. Quite a bargain, ain’t it?), but I am becoming increasingly addicted to it nowadays. My fastest time: 7 minutes 13 seconds. (Nowhere near Ajith‘s abilities, but I think it is good enough for an amateur with 1 month of Rubik Cube solving experience) Later, I went to Landmark in search of a better Rubik Cube, but I found the exact same make which was worth 90 rupees.
I now throw this tag open. I don’t like being partial. Anybody who likes can take it. Only condition is that you have to let me know by commenting here. :p
Top 5 moments – impressive number of marriage proposals!
Movies – Of course Harry has to be No 1 – I am currently re reading all the books!
Moves 2 – Das Boot – an amazing film.
Worst Movies – Thank you for the list – I shall avoid them like the plague!
Now, with regard to the driving comments – I can’t park for toffee – sshhh… don’t tell anyone! 🙂
Books – Nice to see Dorian Gray in there 🙂
I’m not going to write my own list or anything (I had that trouble with the tag-it thing a while back), but I will comment on some of the items (?) in your lists.
a) How’d you manage to crash a 160 GB hard-drive? I have a 500GB WD, it’s still going VERY strong 😉
b) Why on Earth is Om Shanti Om last on that list?
c) “…chocolate boy who spits the farthest.” Did you come up with that all on your own? Or did you see it somewhere else? 😉
d) ‘Ghostrider’ wasn’t bad because of Cage, but because of the story. Cage is a very good actor.
e) Why is ‘Rise of the Silver Surfer’ in that list?
—
I might write a list of my own … but unfortunately my personal blog isn’t as celebrated as yours 😉
@Miladysa: Overwhelming, rather than impressive.
@Aditya:
The answers:
a) I was too lazy to repair my UPS which was having some trouble. Plus this one was an external hard drive, so there was no regulation from the SPMS either. I paid for my laziness!
b and e) The list is of the worst movies that I was stupid enough to watch. I didn’t have to pay for OSO, saw it only for 1 hour, but it still was a waste of time.
c) I am referring to “Jack Dawson” of Titanic.
d) Ghostrider is bad because of both the story and Cage. Gone in 60 seconds is bad because of Cage and the story. I didn’t like Conair because of Cage. Cage was the only bad part of The Rock. I don’t like Cage. I think he overacts.
i was also impressed by Ratatouille… and, yes, the Prestige and pretty much anything else with Christian Bale is good too.
Bourne ultimatum was superb..I loved it..Fast paced, great action ..and a neat script.. ..
4 marriage proposals ? Too good :D.. I got only one 🙂 – ofcourse rejected.
And yeah, rubik’s cube speed is all about practice.. but, tough to crack th3 3 miinute barrier consistently.
Practice and a smooth-turning cube! And the algorithms 😛
This craze started one particular day, and I spent all night till 5am learning and practicing different algorithms from Youtube. 😛
I think I can improve by about 2 minutes if only my cube doesn’t get stuck in the middle.
Of course, I’ve been mathematically analyzing the algorithms when I was not playing. Quite a lot of interesting papers are there. 🙂
nice to know your superlatives…
Cage overacts? You kidding? 😛
For once, he’s one actor who shows more emotion with a flaccid face, which is good since you can garner your own thoughts on what he’s feeling. I’ll suggest you see ‘National Treasure’ now that it’s out. The first was an awesome movie … let’s see what you have to say about the second one 😉
Also, in your ‘live-comment-preview.js’ file, there is no definition of hex_md5 being called at line 98. You can get it from here if you can’t find one to edit.
Cheers!
Actor who shows emotions? Come on! He shows the wrong emotions at the wrong time.
Flaccid face and bulging eyes is his expression for any emotion, if you ask me. A good movie like the “The Rock” lost it’s value (and I don’t care about the money it raked in) because of the substandard acting of Cage. It is obvious when you see Sean Connery acting in the same frame. From what I’ve inferred, Cage doesn’t change his acting style at all. He has no range.
About, live comments…I just put that plugin.. Let me have a look into that
I have just two things to say to you … ‘National Treasure’ 🙂
Probably the reason it isn’t a tag is because it’s way too long ‘and requires too much time and effort (Which you seem to have achieved.. congrats! 🙂
nice post…n how was ur arm “apparently” hurt 😀
n that stt about women drivers was sexist man..damn…n do i agree 😀
@Sanjiv: Lazy ass!
@Anurag: No.. I’m not sexist. I respect and appreciate ladies in many matters. Women make men complete.(On second thought, Raymonds suit also does!) But this is just an empirical law.
About the “apparent” injury. I got hurt while doing pullups, went to the hospital, and I was diagnosed with something else, and the injury was just a side effect of the problem.
on ma god…wht am i seeing when i come back?? whole new blog. looks neat 🙂
i used to believe i read pretty much, but not one i saw the list up der.completed or completed, u tried a good number of them i see. 🙂
I hope you were thinking of me when you were talking about ‘some good drivers among the ladies’ 😀 As Dave Barry once said – ‘The one thing that unites all human beings, regardless of age, gender, religion, economic status or ethnic background, is that, deep down inside, we ALL believe that we are above-average drivers.’
I’ll do the superlative thing once I get back after uncluttering my desk of all pending work post winter vacation.
PS: I’m such a stupido – I got scared during the ghost scenes in Om Shanti Om.
@maneesha: Well. That’s just half the list. I read an average of 2-3 books per month.
@Rinchen: Actually, I was thinking about my aunt, who has totaled her car 2 times, have had another accident, and once drove to her office instead of home as she was busy talking to me! I was in the other seat.
Hehe.. Seriously, I wrote it because I didn’t want feminist ladies and pseudo-feminist-gentlemen-who-want-to-impress-feminist-ladies lashing out at me.
Drove to the office instead of home!?! That must have been very funny…
I missed the ‘Personal webpage’ Couldnt agree with you more 🙂
Nice tag..I dont watch enough films to incorporate this interesting list..infact I dont actually enjoy watching anything!!
Two thing stand out from your blog:
~Women drivers…do you know women pay less insurance in Uk atleats because they are better drivers (read more careful) and if men would just stop swerving around us and blasting their horns at the slightest excuse we could be a happy population of drivers!
~Your tshirt…interesting..the only wise crack ones I can find are in the US..I wonder who makes them in India..and UK..apart from Tantra I guess..
u “apparently” hurt ur elbow so bad that u needed an operation…hmm…interesting
n bourne ultimatum is the MOVIE OF THE MILLENIUM …long live bourne :o)
I did not know that thing about the UK government. How nice.
lol..i just dropped in to notice something n now plzzzzz forgive me for the no of errors in the previous comment! u know… 😀 i was sleeping for somewhile n when i woke up i realised i missed a lot of fun…so i was in a hurry commenting over it…
man….2-3 books in a month??? u work , eat, travel,take surgeries 😛 n still read dat much…dats a mega number n i really appreciate it
🙂 I love the Tshirt line!
I agree tht abt women drivers, but I also agree with men blasting their horns at every excuse- so darn irritating!!
And a real good book/ movie collection there..I totally like Leonardo in departed too, plus I think he’s a real good actor with/without Titanic…try – “What’s eating Gilbert Grape”- tht I think is a great effort…
How about TZP? Was that not on your best movie list?
@Maneesha: Yeah. I’m like that… A couple of permanent hobbies and a truckload of on-and-off hobbies.
@Upasna: Men honking…That’s true, I have to admit.
@Solitaire: I hate to say this, but I hadn’t seen TZP when I wrote this post.