Street Art

The past few days have been a blur with work taking up most of the time and the rest of the time I've been watching stuff. 'This Way of Life' is a stunningly shot kiwi documentary and it is a great watch but at the same time it does raise some fundamental questions about the whole documentary as key incidents are never told or shown - which makes you wonder about what the film maker is not telling you and that to me is a fatal flaw in the doco. 'Food Inc' on the other hand was informative, taut, and a scary doco to say the least. It is a recommended watch for anyone and everyone.It again highlights the point of how greed is wrong and the fundamental cause of a whole lot of evils that we inflict on each other and on ourselves.

I've had several people tell me over the years that I needed to watch 'The Wire' but it never caught my fancy and I never got around to it. This time around I got it out on a whim from the video store and the only thing I can say is 'Holy Shit'.....it blew me away from the get go. It is brilliant and I finished off season-1 within 3 days and managed to get my hands on season-2 a few hours back.

As I went to return the DVDs I saw this guy getting ready to paint a wall and I had a quick chat with him as I found the art he was creating stunning. Sparrow - the guy who was doing the artwork is an interesting person and is part of Cut Collective - who do street art for the love of it.  Hats off to these guys for doing such great work.

Sparrow checking out what he needs to do next

Making it happen

And as I was returning from work the new Mini showroom on Ponsonby Road caught my eye and here is what stopped me. There is nothing special about it but it is still an eye catcher for some reason.

 Thats me for now
Amit

Shoot him again, his soul is still dancing

Thats a classic line from 'Bad Lieutant: Port of Call New Orleans'. Nic Cage turns in a great performance in this one and it is worth seeking out at the video store. The other recent movies that I've got a chance to watch have been 'The A-Team' which turned out to be pop-corn fun with Sharlto Copley giving a great performance as Mad Murdoch. 'Balibo' about 5 australian journalists and a NZ cameraman murdered by the Indonesian invading army in East Timor on even of their invasion in December 1971. Its heart wrenching to watch and again an indiction of the fact that governments are just made up of people doing things for their own advantage. 'Happy Go Lucky' which was a quirky but fun film brimming with great performances from everyone especially Sally Hawkins

SDGNZ has organized some great workshops and I attended the most recent one which was 'An evening with Tom McSweeney' - a casting/decision making workshop with Tom McSweeney who is a casting director based in Australia. Turned out to be a really informative evening and the biggest thing that came out was Tom's message to never give up even when you feel like it.

Yesterday I volunteered for directing a scene in an acting workshop conducted by Peter Sweeney, as the opportunity came up through SDGNZ and it turned out to be an awesome experience. I got to work on a scene from 'Sunshine Cleaning' with 2 young actors - Ally and Emily and the performances turned out to be amazing after a few rehearsals. I guess what both of these workshops have done is restore some of my confidence in my own abilities.

Internet can throw up the pleasantest of surprises - I was chatting with Chandan the other day and it turned out that Sapna and him were visiting Simmi {another good college friend} and her family. So I ended up chatting for an hour or so with them. I got shit for not giving them a ring when I was in US and I also got shit for my accent -which is weird as I still think I have an Indian accent. Nothing like a good chat with old friends to keep you grounded in reality. It was fun talking to them.

Chandan, Sapna and Simmi

My lower back is still coming right - I finally visited a physio on Monday & had a follow up appointment earlier today - as it's been a week and half since I hurt it and it was still causing me grief. I hope it'll get sorted by end of this week as now it's almost 2 weeks without any exercise and it sucks. It's been super early starts at work this week because of FIFA world cup but have 2 days off and hoping to jump start the remainder of work on 'The Moments In Between'.

Thats me for now.
Amit

Time back

So it's coming close to a month since I've been back and how do I feel - still disconnected. I am slowly getting back into things but it's taking much longer than anticipated. We've got new couple as our flatmates - Chris and Naomi - and they are very cool and easy to hang out with unlike the last couple. Also Tai, Lance's girl friend is here and staying with him for 9 months. So it's a full house and mostly everyone likes hanging out together. We've had a few awesome nights of playing UNO together (Lance keeps winning...grrrrrr....) and all of us even went out drinking together.

The drinks at Tanuki's Cave turned out to be one helluva night - it was all our flat and Lydia brought along Nick - the guy whom she is currently dating and then we also had Benji and Shuzhen there. The food was amazing as usual and the warm sake is such  a great drink.

At Tanuki's

Naomi and Tai

Shuzhen and Benji

Lance, Tai, Me, Shuzhen, Benji, Naomi and Lydia

Lydia, Nick, Lance and Tai

Shuzhen, Benji, Chris and Naomi

Lance, Tai and me

The 1 litre beer handles are a bad idea - when you've had 2 of those. By the time Lance joined us after his work, Benji, Chris and me and Tai and Lydia had already gone through a handle each. Benji and me ordered another one while Chris ordered some more sake. It didn't help me cause that I drank some leftover butter from a steak that we'd ordered.

The 2nd 'killer litre' beer handle

In the bathroom

Naomi in supporting role while I become a tree hugger

I got pretty sick as soon as I finished the second handle. I'll spare the details but all I can say is that I spent a lot of time in the toilet and then hugged a tree and threw up on the road while Lance was driving us back home and threw up everything else once I got home. I wouldn't have made it home without the generous support from everyone - Naomi and Lance especially. That's probably been the most I've ever been drunk. Luckily, I didn't wake up with a hangover the next day.

At home - there is the issue of a small leak in the lounge and have been trying to co-ordinate with the landlord to get it fixed and it still hasn't been fixed. It kind of sucks - especially since it has been raining a whole lot of the time. Getting back into the gym routine has been hard as well with every part of my body aching at one point or the other. Current injury status is that I pulled my lower back after my first kickboxing class last saturday + 2 of my knuckles have been cut open from the new boxing gloves that I bought myself. Another week or so and I should be able to get back into the flow of the workouts again.

Work has been busy as usual and nothing much to report on that. Work on rest of the movie hasn't started yet as I am still settling back into things. It's getting colder and I don't mind winters on their own but when combined with rain - it sucks. It definitely doesn't help in vanquishing the post holiday blues.

Time to snap back to reality. Or not.
Amit