Diary Of A Wimpy Kid

As I may have mentioned in few of my earlier posts as well, I'm currently in my reading phase. Have been reading a lot a books, the latest being the four books in 'Diary of A Wimpy Kid' series.

I first read about them on some blog, can't remember which one, and had ordered them long time ago. On my last India trip, was travelling quite light and hence managed to carry lots of books back with me. Anyways, I digress. Coming back to the book.

The book is very differently written, and its more of graphic novel with each page having pictures and only a few sentences. It deals with a middle school kid named Greg, and the world from his perspective. There is a good bit of humour in the book, and the cartoons add to the story greatly. Read it to relive your school days, these are very light reads with each book not taking any more than 2 hours at maximum.

Andre Agassi - Open (Autobiography)

I'm quite bad at writing about stuff, more so about movies and books.  As in, apart from the general writing skills which can't be helped much, I'm also confused about how much the review should be based on actual contents of the book/movie, and how much should be based on discussion over its quality. The problem is, unlike a professional reviewer, I'm not quite sure who I'm writing the review for. If by any chance someone stumbles upon this page, and reads about the story of a book/movie he/she was planning to read, then I would have just done a great disservice to both the person as well as the book/movie. So, let me stick with the format I'm more comfortable with - just a cursory discussion on the quality of the stuff, and recommendations. Actually, its quite easy to figure out the recommendations part as well - if I'm writing about something, it must be quite good in my opinion (or a small probability that it would be very very bad, which again would make it interesting as well). 

The other day, I had ordered loads of autobiographies when some of my relatives were coming over to Hong Kong for a trip. Mostly, I had ordered some interesting mix of autobiographies - Jeff Bezos, Andre Agassi, Steve Jobs, Kishore Biyani, etc. 'Open' by Andre Agassi was my first sportsperson biography, and I was not quite sure what to expect from it. I used to watch tennis earlier, in my school days, around the same time as Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi were at the top of their game. If only I had read this book back then, to better understand the game and what goes behind it. 

This book is not about someone's love for tennis or anything like it. Its about Andre's journey of self-discovery, and his rebellion. It may sound odd, but for a large part of his career, Andre hated tennis, and started playing the game only because his father left him no choice. It details his feeling at different points of his career, how he left like quitting after every loss, and how he decided never to lose to a few players ever again. Even if you have never seen an actual game, you may relate to the feelings, and will be cheering for him in matches played years back. 

The writing style was a complete shocker to me, and I was hooked onto the book from the very start. Written in first person, and present continuous form, it makes you go through his life as it happened, and not as an after-thought written 20 years later. This may be the first biography in such detailed format which I have read. Most others deals with events and their significance, this one deals with emotions and feelings at each point of time. Hence the thought that I wish I had read the book (or he had written the book) much earlier, while the matches were still on. 

Definitely worth a read. 

★★★★★

Superman!

On some days you feel like superman, full of energy and optimism. On others, you are just passing through life in a monday to friday ordeal. Why does it feel like this?

Under 30, working in a good company, shouldn't I be more hopeful about future. And have much more of superman days than the other ones? Is it just the global recession taking its toll, or I need to seriously consider a career change?

Priorities Of Life

Thanks to Facebook, now we all know the places people visit on their holidays. And sadly, it seems most people make their choices based on where others have been. I know of so many people who went to Maldives/Mauritius for their Honeymoon (myself included),or went to Bali on their long weekend trip.

There is nothing wrong with any of these places, and most of them are great holiday destinations. But what surprises me is the amount of time people spend on planning their trips. Most of them seems to book their tickets at the last minute without doing any research on their own. With information so easily available, I would have assumed people exploring new places and locales. And given most people take just one or two vacations a year, they ought to spend a little more time on the planning.

I too plan to make at least one good trip this year, for about four to five days. Lets see what place we finally decide on, but I would want to be a lesser known place. So that there is something new to be explored. Or even if its run of the mill destinations like Bangkok, would prefer planning it in a better way than most people seem to be doing.

Another Template Change

I'm back to the phase when I am cleaning up my life. There is so much junk flying around these days all over the internet, and on some days it intimidates me. Every morning when I reach my office, there are at least a hundred emails in my mailbox, most of which are irrelevant to me, but nonetheless I have to clean them up. Then there is the personal gmail where there is another 50 mails daily with most of them being marketing materials from airlines/banks/shops. And finally the 500-odd friends on the facebook who keep chatting non-stop, keep getting married, having kids and what nots. I needed a change, and I needed a break. So what do I do?

I can't make any changes to my office emails, so I let it be the way it is. On gmail, I have unsubscribed to most mass mailers, and its an ongoing process. But I am making some progress here. At the risk of losing out on the next great sale offer, when they would be selling tickets to swiss alps for 1 cent, I have risked blocking all such emails. On twitter, I have removed a lot of people I was following, including the great Big B (I really admire him, but there was nothing interesting in reading his tweets). On facebook, I have finally deleted scores of non-friends, and brought my friends count down to 400. Even there, I have created a smaller list of 'real friends and family', and its only there people whose activities I would now be seeing (and vice versa). I may be rude and things like that, but I'm not really interested in knowing about the daily life of some guy only because we did our engineering from the same college (come on, my college had some 2000 plus students at campus at any given time). 

In line with the theme, I have removed some clutter from my blog as well, and changed the template to this very simple one. A blog should be about the writer and his posts, and anything else is plain distraction. So, hopefully I would stick to this one for a little longer.