No India

It's been a long time coming but I still find it hard writing about India - I don't know why. Maybe it's because I don't want to offend anyone by writing my thoughts about my trip back home or maybe because words can't describe the experiences that I had in India - some of which have been life changing experiences for me. Life changing experiences don't have to be major, dramatic events but even small, relatively insignificant events can lead to a change of perception and world view and I think I experienced a few of those during this trip and I am really in no mood or of any particular inclination to share with the rest of the world. After much deliberation and procrastination about the whole thing I decided not to write about my Indian leg of the holiday. But needless to say I would like to thank everyone back home for making this trip wonderful - friends, acquaintances and especially my family. I will upload pics from India to the web sometime soon and then link it up.

Things have been busy otherwise at work and I will be a happy man from next week once my boss comes back and I hand over his responsibilities back to him. I enjoy higher responsibilities and I think I did much better than last time dealing with stuff but it is draining when you are trying to do two jobs at the same time.

In the meantime I finally managed to make some critical decisions about the music video that I wanted to do for Sora Shima and we finally shot it. The first step for me was getting Benji involved and he came up with a cool concept and then I contacted Claire [friend and acting classmate] to help out by appearing in the music video and we shot it over 3 hour time frame for 2 days at different locations. It is all shot on Benji's digital camera and this will be an interesting experiment when we finally finish it. The shoot went really well and the photographs look amazing, so I am pretty confident that it will be a good music video. Here are some behind the scenes photos from the music video shoot.











I've managed to sneak in a couple of movies in all the hectic time I've been having and both of them turned out to be good: Slumdog Millionaire and Gran Torino. Slumdog Millionaire is beautifully shot and nicely edited but it misses a fair few emotional beats and thus for me was a good movie - not a great one. Gran Torino on the other hand was very captivating and draws you in slowly but surely and is funny, dramatic and emotional at the same time. I finished my week of free gym trial at Bodytech and planning on doing a week's free trial at Les Mills before deciding which one I want to join over the long term period. We have a house warming party at our house tomorrow night and it should be an interesting night - mainly because this is one party I can't avoid going to.

And that's about it from me for now.
Till later,
Amit

Scanned

It's sunday and the days are flying past real quick. Thursday was fishing day and Tina/Chris - Lance's parents took Lance, Max, Kyle & me fishing in their boat and it turned out to be an awesome day and an awesome experience even though we didn't catch any legal fish. None of us caught any fish whatsoever except Lance who managed to catch 6 but unfortunately all of them were undersized, so had to put them back into the water. It is illegal in NZ to catch fish which are below the legal size and if you do take them into port then the fisheries department can impound your boat, your vehicle, your house and even put you in jail- so people don't do it. On the trip we saw a few penguins, a sea horse, Lance spotted a shark and all of us spotted a nudist on an isolated beach and we also saw a bird with a big fish right in it's beak while we had no luck catching anything. It took me a while to get used to the different kinds of fishing rods and I got my line all tangled up a couple of times and Chris helped me out. After the long and unsuccesful fishing morning, we decided to stop over at a bay to have some lunch and it was a beautiful spot. Kyle - who is a chef/cook by profession cooked us some fantastic lunch and it was one of the yummiest pastas i've ever had. All in all a very enjoyable experience and something I wouldn't mind doing again at some point in the future again and maybe next time I might even catch a fish.

Max in the driver's seat while Tina, Lance and Kyle look on

Chris instructing Max on some finer points of navigating a boat

Beautiful landscapes

Waiheke Island and in the distance you can see Coromandel ranges

The navigator

Chris takes over the driver's seat

Enjoying the boat ride

Lance with another one of his smaller catches

Kyle kissing the fish hoping it will turn into a mermaid

A beautiful bay where we anchored the boat and had lunch

Kyle enjoying the ride back home

I came in to work on Friday to find that Brendan has left me a guest pass to Big Day Out and it was exciting holding it in my hand - lots of people would kill to have a free pass to the event and here I was holding it. Big Day Out is a huge gig where international and local bands play to music fanatics and it is eagerly looked forward to year after year. I was feeling a little feverish and considering that it was a very hot day I decided that maybe it was best for me not to go. Jo is a music fanatic and she also rented out my room when I was away travelling, so it made her a prime candidate for the ticket. I rang her up and asked her if she wanted the guest pass and she was thrilled. In a way it is bad of me to just pass on a guest pass that was given to me but by the same token I did not want to waste the ticket and for me the gesture of someone actually giving me a free pass for helping them out was more important than the pass itself. You might think I am mad but to me it made perfect sense and so I went home instead to the BDO.

Buying a standalone flatbed scanner has proven to be such a pain but thankfully it is a thing of the past now. I wanted to buy the scanner on the 10th but it took me till Friday evening to finally get my hands on one. I also managed to get a good deal by simply asking for it {I got about 30 bucks off the retail price}, just shows that you've got to ask for things otherwise you might not get them. Armed with a Canon Lide100 scanner I promptly went about scanning the polaroids that I had snapped. I am pleased with the scanner and I am pleased with the polaroids, so I was a happy man. I had problems uploading the photos to the image gallery on my website so I have uploaded them to my flickr account. Con the airport photograph to check out the polaroids from thailand and click on the car parking photograph to check out the polaroids from india.

Click above to check out polaroids taken in Thailand

Click above to check out polaroids taken in India

Later in the evening, I decided to cook one of the thai dishes I had learnt in Thailand and went to the local asian supermarket and found all the ingredients I needed except for a stone grinder to crush nuts and stuff, so I went and bought a mixer/blender. The dish turned out fine and was edible - I think I used 1 tablespoon too much of palm sugar and so it was a little sweeter than I anticipated but it was pretty close to how it should taste. I wished there was a gas stove in our house because cooking on an electric stove is not the same.

I am working over the weekend,so don't particularly have any free time per se but I did have the first acting practise session of the year. I was doing a scene with Zoe with Caren directing the scene but then I had a brainwave and asked Caren if she wanted to play the part that I was doing and I would direct them instead to which both Zoe and Caren agreed. So I went over yesterday evening to Caren's place for the first read through to check out the dynamics of the scene coming about through the change of gender of one of the characters and it was awesome. It totally changed the scene and it was a good read through. The light in Caren's room is awesome and I took a few photos - there are some classic ones in there but I can't put them up as I have only permission from Caren and Zoe to put only a couple of them up. So here you go.

Zoe doing her magical hand trick

Caren doing the line read through

The lonely girl

Our house now has a professional sized table-tennis table. Lance bought it off an auction website and got a real good deal for it. So now our lounge is occasionally turned into a table tennis room whenever we feel like playing. It is slightly inconvenient moving things around but still heaps of fun when the table is actually out like last night where Lydia's friends came over and we were playing it in between eating and talking.

After work I wanted to just chill at home but Ainsley called and we went to the tennis courts to have knock about the balls a bit and now I am home ready to retire for the night. I have got lots to do before things even vaguely get on track with all the things that I've planned to do this year but I am still enjoying the challenge of it all.

Till later,
Amit

Whirlwind Update

So much for trying to update things about India straight away. I was hoping to slip back into work mode in a controlled manner but the first day back at work I was made Acting Team Leader since our current team leader, Adrian, is on parental leave. It was kind of unexpected but still a pleasant surprise. It has been very busy doing my own job while also doing other stuff related to the department. One of the first things I got for being the team leader was a free pass to watch a couple of matches at Heineken Open Tennis later in the evening, by one of the managers in another department that we constantly have dealings with.

So in the evening (of Monday) I made my way to ASB Tennis Centre and as I was walking there I bumped into Andy- one of the cast members from 'FIVE', whom I hadn't seen in a while and had a quick catch up with him before proceeding to the tennis. TVNZ had a box seat, so had a great view of the proceedings from there plus has good food and good company to accompany - so it was a perfect start to the work year. In addition to that I might also get a free complimentary pass to 'Big Day Out' which is this huge annual international music gig as I helped someone out of a difficult spot - so I feel very lucky right now [the tickets to the gig are pretty expensive].

End of the first match

Start of the second match

In between the return and now I have snuck a couple of movies in - 'Vicky, Cristina, Barcelona' and 'Frost/Nixon' - both of them turned out to be surprisingly good and Rebecca Hall is now my favorite actress as she played 2 very different roles in both the movies extremely well plus she is gorgeous. I have slowly unpacked my stuff and settled into my room but the house is in a state of flux with all the visitors and short term flatmates and now waiting for the new flatmates to move in.

I have started walking to work and back and it feels good. Lance, Dan and me have had a few games of tennis and I seem to have forgotten how to play since I am playing bad - hopefully it'll come back to me sooner rather than later. My 1 week trial at a local gym starts next week - I think I'll try and stick to the gym as much as I can to shed off the extra weight I put on during the India trip. One of my old friends, Barbara, is in the country for a short while,so caught up with her yesterday and traded stories and views since she has been working in China for the past 6 months or so and is planning on a trip through South East Asia during her 2 month break.

The acting classes start soon and I am trying to get back into the flow of things there. On the movie front - Simon Ward is on board to work as writing partner for 'Rejected' and we'll start working on that from next week. There will be some radical changes to the script - mainly brought about by my indian influence on the trip this time around. It should be heaps of fun.

Tomorrow i'll be going fishing with Lance's parents, Lance, Max and some of his friends. It'll be an interesting experience since I've never ever fished before. And I'll try and buy a scanner to scan the polaroid snaps from the trip. And i'll sneak in the update about India within the next month or so. :-)

That's me for now.
Amit

Back

I am back in Auckland and loving it. I slept through most of my flight from Bangkok to Auckland and don't feel too jet lagged. I'll update the blog with my India experience soon and it was a very different experience but a good one at the same time.

That's me for now.
Amit