Day 80 - Homeland season 1 - episodes 1 to 8 - a COMPLETE RE-WATCH

I rewatched the first 8 episodes of Homeland season 1. The character development of Carrie, Saul, Brody and David Estes (whom I totally ignored when I first watched it) is mind blowing.

Specifically, the relationship between Carrie and Brody. After their first meeting, leaving each of them smiling and mystified by the other in the rain, they go for the weekend to her cabin. Here, one of her dialogues makes you really doubt if this time was real or she was still just doing her job. My guess is that, Carrie Mathison was confused. Carrie has always been bipolar, this kind of thing would have been the perfect, subtle hint at how she would be if she didn’t take her... Read More

Day 79 - Cruising Attitude - Heather Poole

(May 9th, 2317 GMT+5.5)

I read Cruising Attitude today. I did that the whole day, I read about 53% of it. It is a book by Heather Poole about her foray into the Airline industry and talks about a lot of the intricacies of the flight attendant job, the training, the appearance that is almost always impeccable, the language, their body language, their walk through the terminal (!!).

The book featured in a recent NY Times article about what flight attendants learn about at de-escalation training, and at 260 pages, it seemed like a really good idea to start reading that book and finish it off as soon as I can. (I am running 3 books behind schedule on my... Read More

Day 78 - Re-watching Homeland season 1; Claire Danes <3

I have been rewatching Homeland episodes. Season 1, starting right from the pilot. I can’t get enough of Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin before they became infinitely more matured and started handling actual, credible threats instead of gut feelings about someone who is off.

Those are the last few moments of Homeland 1.4: Semper I. Carrie just met Brody for the first time alone. Her smile says a lot here, she was struck by him right from the first time they met. I never noticed the subtlety with which these episodes were shot.

They way being a voyeur into Brody’s life made her feel bad, but she watched anyway because she still... Read More

Day 77 - Next book that I am going to read, List of TV series to catch up on grows

Cruising Attitude (Heather Poole) is my next read. It’s about a flight attendant’s view into making a flight work right. She had 15 years of experience before she penned down this book. This book also featured in a recent NYTimes article about conflict de-escalation, published in the aftermath of the United Airlines fiasco.

Several TV series are now running at the same time. Handmaid’s Tale, Silicon Valley Season 4, and Veep season 6. Lucifer’s Season 2 is resuming in two days! Prison Break’s season 5 started a few weeks ago, in a surprising turn of events, Michael turns out to be alive. Extremely strange! Sucre and T-Bag are still in the story, that should be a good watch.

I am... Read More

Day 76 - I have nothing to write about

I have been staring at an empty markdown file for the past 10 minutes. The difference between going to college and working a day job is that you are at your day job for 8 hours a day. Then, you come home to have dinner and chill. There’s no other time to read something or find something that is actually worth writing about. I must inevitably fall back on some of my reserve, can always write about topics.

Now, after 75 days of (almost) daily, (certainly) regular writing, that list of topics stands at [ ]: an empty list. My last post was about nothing, the post before that was about a book I read and quotes from... Read More

Day 75 - (Day 1 at Elanic) Books are being made into movies, left and right

In the latest (April, actually) news, there are a few more book to screen adaptations that are scheduled to come out this year. Gillian Flynn’s final novel which hasn’t been adapted yet, Sharp Objects, is coming out as a series on HBO starring AMY ADAMS! After Arrival, she probably needs to step up her game to play the frontwoman.

More Stephen King with It and Dark Tower. It is HUGE, it’s about 1000 pages and I am not going to commit to that book anytime in the near future, which is reason enough to be excited for the adaptation. I don’t know how long Dark Tower is, but if it is anywhere more than 400 pages, I am going to... Read More

Day 74 - MISSED; DONE WITH EMMA (AUSTEN)! - Favourite Quotes (some)

This is long overdue now. This post was supposed to be out two days ago.

I took 1 month and 5 days to read that book! It was 450 pages. THAT IS UNACCEPTABLE. Softening my stane a little bit though, considering how much stuff happened in the past two months (BTP Presentation, End term exams, looking for an internship) it isn’t too bad.

The book was GREAT. I get why Amy Dunne wanted everyone to read Austen. I am going to wing it for this post and put in some of my favourite quotes from Emma. This involves me (painfully) scrolling through my Kindle and reading the stuff I have highlighted. Especially in Volume 3, when... Read More

Day 73 - Day 1 in Bangalore; Anticipation

I am now in Bangalore. An interesting fact: The past three days, at 4 pm, I was in three different cities. 29th April: Kolkata, 30th April: Chennai and 1st May: Bangalore. I bet this is how Perry Wright (from Big Little Lies) feels.

There is a line in that book that stuck with me. There are several quotes that I still remember, because of the whole book + TV series thing, this one is definitely my favourite. They are speaking about Perry in general, and Celeste mentions how much he has to travel for work, and how he has to go around the world. And the other character replies, “Perry lives a rather exotic life, huh”. Travel suggests an exotic... Read More

Day 72 - BHIM Aadhaar pay lacks a second factor; Elliot's paranoid nature

Churning out two in a row, today. I am 3 books behind schedule, as of this writing. Today was perhaps the cut-off day for the third day!

Recently, I read this article about Aadhaar and how the core biometric database of a lot of Indians that is now held by UIDAI is secured, and will be handled in the future.

I have been reading a lot of material about Aadhaar, UID, UIDAI lately, and all of it has been pretty grim. With the introduction of things like BHIM Aadhaar Pay which requires the merchant to enter the Aadhaar number, and the customer to use their fingerprint for making a payment, it seems like Aadhaar will be a part of... Read More

Day 71 - A mad dash to the boarding gate; Where is Emma (the book) going?

I am now in Chennai. 1 mad dash to the boarding gate later. The fact that boarding gates close 25 minutes before departure totally skipped my mind. I was strolling happily through security when Indigo ground staff called me on my phone and asked me to rush to the gate as the flight was going to leave!

I was the last person on the plane, and as soon as I walked in, they announced on the PA “Boarding Complete”. It was a slightly harrowing experience, but CCU is not a large enough airport and I am fairly familiar with it, so it wasn’t too harrowing.

I safely made the flight to Chennai, and in the past few months although I... Read More