Pope's comments on islam

There was much furore yesterday on comments made on Islam by the Pope. The full text of the speech is here (http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/benedict_xvi/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg_en.html). The following sentences are what incensed the muslim world. In his speech he quotes a Byzantine emperor as telling his persian interlocutor - "Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached".

 

The statement is understandable as the Pope was making a theological speech to an academical society. But what the Popal advisosrs should have remembered were two things:

a) He represents and is the supreme spiritual leader and that each and every word that he speaks will be taken as the representative of the whole Christian community and that his words would be broadcast and reviewed by a large amount of people.

b) Muslims are very sensitive to Prophet Mohammed and any words spoken against would truly hurt their feelings. Even though he is just quoting the arguments between two people, when he quotes it, it going to be seen by the world as being said by the Pope.

 

My advice to the Papal advisory is that they should be much more careful, infact extremely careful, when dealing with such sensitive issues.

 

Vettaiyadu Villaiyadu - movie review

[Other transliterations for this movie name could be "Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyadu", "Vetayadu Vilayadu", "Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu". Added here so as to make search engine searches for any of these terms shows this page.]

 

I believe that the story of the movie for the director to unveil during the process of the movie, and hence knowing the story, or part thereof,  beforehand would strip you of the whole movie experience. Hence you wont find any details of the story, let alone any spoilers.

 

I see Tamil movies only when it is made by a good director. This time it was Gautham Menon, whose Kakka Kakka had impressed me. As mentioned at the start of the movie, this movie is about "an episode in a police officer's life". However, this episode spans a couple of years, I guess.

 

Though at times the frequent cuts and zooms does distract you a bit, Gautham has been very successful in telling a story, where one can identify with the characters involved. Since you feel so much attachment to the characters, every scene and every dalogue builds up the tension during the latter part of the movie. This is one of the very few action movies where I really bited my nails - not much because of the action itself, but because of the good story telling. In fact, in my opinion, for a movie the story telling is primary. Everything else is secondary.  

 

This movie is not for the feeble hearted. It contains lot of graphic violence and gory sequences. I guess this movie would have been rated with an "A" certificate. Even though there are a couple of holes in the plot, everything else outweighs that. 

 

I was just meserised by the performance of Kamal Hassan. His emoting is so subtle that you never feel that it is Kamal Hassan, and you would never feel that he is "acting". To me, that is the quality of any good actor. On the other extreme is Prakash Raj, who only has a small role in the movie. In my opinion, he is one of the most overrated actors. His emoting goes to the extremes of overacting that by watching him on the screen, you know that he is acting, or trying to act. Everyone else is some where in between these two extremes.

 

Some of the songs are likeable. I particularly like the frequenlty recurring background jingle, although it remind of one of A R Rahman's songs.

 

Overall, this movie is a must for the action movie buffs and serious moviegoers as well, but the feeble-hearted please stay away. 

We were in Korea for a business trip last week. We went to a Korean restaurant for dinner. The problem with such restaurants is that it is difficult to convey what you want. And you would be in a total fix if you happen to be a vegetarian. Since I am a non-vegetarian, who is OK with eating wide variety of meat, we ordered some meat dish. The waiter bought some raw meat onto a grill which was kept on top of the dinner table.

The thing is, it didnt look like chicken, nor did it look like beef. It felt a bit scary, because we all know that dog meat is supposed to be a delicacy in some parts of Korea. (It seems it all started when there was scarcity of meat, the residents of a particular province started to cook and eat the next available thing around - the dog).

Now, coming back to ourstory, we had only a few couple of choices with us:
(1) Eat it assuming that it is chicken.
(2) Even if it is dog, it is all a combination of atoms and molecules, and it doesnt mean a heck to the body whether it is dog meat or human meat.
(3)

We decided to choose (b). After a couple of minutes, the meat starte to cook, and the waitres came and cut it into pieces. Finally, it looked like this:

Proof that there is no God

If there is someone out there as God, I challenge him if he can delete this blog entry off this page. If you still see this post, then you know the conclusion....

Upcoming trip

Well due to official reasons, I am not supposed to reveal who I am or what my name is. Anyway, what really matters is not who I am, but what I do.

In a couple of weeks I am supposed to make an official trip to South Korea. They want me to deploy some nuclear warheads and vapourise those North Korean bastards. Well I am thinking of bringing back some bombshells too(blonde ones that is).

From a friend who had been recently to Korea, I heard that Korean women play a dominating role in the family. They control the financial matters. There are cases of domestic violence too - of wifes battering their poor husbands. Whatever happened to the male lib !! There was this Korean friend of his who was given a daily allowance of 1000 wons for buying cigerattes(One pack of cigarette costs 2500 wons). There was this other guy who had one peg too much of booze and went home in a less than balanced condition. His wife refused to let him in and he had to spend three nights and five days with this friend of mine.

For all of you who are wondering why this is so, this is probably due to the fact that a lot of male population perished in the frequent wars with the N Koreans(N for north or nuclear as you may wish to interpret), leaving less than a male for every female. The result is that even if a female breaks from a relationship, she will find another mate, but the same is not true for the males. So they have to keep their mates happy.

Ever since I heard about this grim situation there, I decided to hold off my plans to find a bombshell from Korea. The last thing I can have is a money sucking machine at my home.