Planned morning schedule in the night: Wake up at 9.30 AM, call up clients, finish up replying to emails, calling designers and programmers. Finish all the stuff by 11 AM. Start working on the layouts.  Work till 1.30 PM. Have lunch and leave for the meeting at 2.

And this is what happens: 10 AM - I wake up (I sleep at around 3-4 AM), 2-3 Missed calls on the phone - call them, 8-10 emails, reply them. Attend other calls. Prepare couple of quoations. Call designers, programmers for update. Call clients for payment. Beg few client for pending payments.

Oh I still have few emails left to reply, I still have to finish couple of small changes in few sites. (Unexpected site changes - it happens daily)

11. 40 AM, still have to reply to few emails, still have to finish couple of small changes and yeah, I have to write this blog post too lol

I might finish the stuff and by 1.45 PM I will have to finish up lunch and all. Leave for the meeting.

And the layout work gets delayed to evening from the morning.

So this is how things get delayed. But again, the delays are for me only, client gets the stuff on time. Almost on time (Few hours here and there)

Well, that is what I have been doing for last few days. Almost new layout every 2-3 days. Today I finished one tricky layout and infact one of the pages took me 4 hours just to code and make things look like PSD file. I consider it one of the most difficult CSS / XHTML work I have done. It also included tables in it (there was tabular data to be presented) but stylizing the stuff ate lot of my time.

I do not see any chance of my CSS / XHTML train stopping. I have to work on one more layout tomorrow (Due date is 22nd) and after that there is one more (Due date is 27th) and there is one more after that (or along with that). (Due date is around 27th)

And apart from that, I had a meeting today with a client (Fort, VT) and there is one more meeting tomorrow. (Bandra)

I must say, handling business is not an easy task, specially when you have to do lot of things yourself. But whatever it is, I am really enjoying this period. There is joy, there is sadness, there is tension but more than that, there is FUN. And that is what I look in everything.

Well, time for farewell for my PIII desktop machine. New Core 2 Duo replaced it today. I used it for approximately 7 years and now its time is over and it died today. I tried to save it but due to heart attack it died. (Issues with mother board)

RIP PIII

and welcome my new baby haha…

The config of old machine:

PIII 450 MHz
Intel Original Motherboard
256 MB RAM
120 GB HDD
4 MB Internal Video Memory

New Machine:

Intel Core 2 Duo 1.86 GHz (E6003 E6300 If I am not wrong)
Intel Original Motherboard (D946GZ)
1 GB RAM
160 GB HDD
128 MB Internal Video Memory

Now I feel this new machine really fast.. I don’t have to wait for opera to load haha

I don’t use my desktop machine for work purpose but for downloads, ripping it is used. And yea, my sister too uses it. So in short, it’s her machine now.

I was waiting for this movie when it was getting delayed for the release and now when I have watched it, I wish, this movie never would have released. It is very difficult to narrate agony of the movie reviewer and other 13 people in the theatre who were sitting just for the sake of their 150 rupees.

But let me try to express my agony through this review. This one is going to have spoilers too but I am sure you are not going to blame me for that, I am just trying to save people from watching the movie.

Hero is a boxer in the college, he is in love with the heroine. Heroine is rich so her mom does not agree for the marriage and in between, heroine gets to know that she is pregnant. Hero leaves his boxing behind and marries her. Now, they have a 4 year old kid. Hero is working somewhere as TV host, heroine is working as a VJ. Hero interviews his old pal cum rival - who is now national champion boxer - but he ends up fighting with him for some reason. Hero looses the job, he has nothing to do, he fights with his wife. Wife leaves the house but wife wants hero to be happy so she asks hero’s old trainer to make hero join boxing ring again. Hero agrees but misses his wife. Hero Vs. friend aka rival in national level final match, hero wins the match, yells around the name of heroine and they hug each other. The movie is over and there is relief on everyone’s face.

Oh yea, I missed the songs in between. There were 3-4 songs too.

I could not find anything new in the movie. The movie is mixture of various movies like Rocky (Sylvester Stallone) and Rishtey (Anil Kapoor, Karishma Kapoor).

To cut my agony into one line, I would say, the movie is total waste of time and money.

Let me sum up the things before it gets as boring as the movie.

Story: Yawn!

Music: Not bad, couple of songs were good. Janeman and It’s a beautiful day were very nice.

Acting: Sohail Khan did his job very well by maintaining the same expressions throughout the movie i.e. blank face. But Sneha Ullal beats him. (There was a tough competition between them) Sneha needs some acting lessons and I have no idea why they have to show her as a mother, she is a kid, 20 year old kid. Her character should be some college going girl not a mother of 4 year old kid. Rest of the cast was hopeless.

So overall I would give this movie — stars out of 5. No, I did not forget to add the stars but this movie was so much hopeless that I cannot give even half star out of courtesy.

Predicto Meter: Disaster.

I did not know that you get to see Afghanistan for only 2 hours for Rs. 100, I really wanted to watch more .. I was enjoying my journey to Afghanistan so much that I did not want it to end. Amazing place I must say. We generally expect movies to be cut shorter but I think this will be the first movie which I ever wanted to be longer.

The movie is about 2 journalists from India, Jai (Arshad Warsi) and Suhel (John Abraham), visit Afghanistan to cover story on Talibans (Talib) and they go to various places to interview Talibs but all goes in vain but a Talib, Imran (Salman Shahid), gets into their car and asks them to drive towards the Afghanistan / Pakistan border. This is where the story begins. A journey of 3 journalists with a Talib. (Jessica (Linda Arsenio) from America joins them halfway through their “journey�. )

The movie also covers many aspects like views of Pakistani Soldiers towards Talibans, views of local Afghans towards Talibans and views of 3 journalists towards Talibans, specially towards Imran. The movie also has good share of humor too. And when it comes to Humor, the name which comes to our mind is, Arshad Warsi. Great actor.

The movie has many shocking scenes which will keep you thinking. I really liked 3 scenes particularly. 1^st is very much in the beginning when Jai and Suhel gets lift in the tank. 2^nd one is when Imran meets his daughter, there was not even a single word exchanged between them but the body language said it all. And lastly 3^rd one is in the end, which unfortunately can’t describe here. (Don’t want any spoilers)

There are few more things in the movie which impressed me a lot. Cinematography, excellent is the correct word. They have shown Afghanistan so well that you really feel like visiting that place and staying there. The background music was very impressive. And on the acting front, I really liked Salman Shahid, I somehow saw Pran in him. A strong but emotional man who does not let his feelings come out.

Let me sum up the movie:

Story: A very different story, it is basically not meant for bollywood, it is meant for the international audience.

Music: Though the soundtrack music is by Raghav Sachar but there were no songs in the movie. The background score by Julius Packiam was impressive.

Acting: All did well, I was impressed by Salman Shahid. Arshad Warsi was good as always. John Abraham was good too. Linda Arsenio had nothing much to do but I am still not able to wipe the face of this beauty from my mind. Hanif Hum Ghum did his job well as Khyber. (Their guide)

So overall I would give this movie 4 stars out of 5. But again, these stars are totally from the critic’s point of view. The normal public might not accept the movie.

Predicto Meter: As mentioned earlier, this movie is not meant for the Indian audience, so I do not see any chances of this movie being hit in India. But this movie is surely going to get very good appreciation abroad and is surely going to bag few awards. The man who will most benefit from this will be the director, Kabir Khan. Excellent job. We need more of “good cinema� like Kabul Express.