Monday, December 28, 2009

3 idiots - Movie and Music Review

3 idiots was one of the most awaited movies of the year and it surely came with a bang!  Amazing movie, great performances and brings lots and lots of laughter with it.  Rajkumar Hirani has done it again after Munnabhai MBBS!  Two masterminds, Aamir khan and Rajkumar Hirani, came together to produce the best film of the year!  I wanted to see this movie for 2 reasons: 1) I had heard that the movie is based on the Chetan bhagat's book "Five Point Someone" which I have already read.  I loved the book so I couldn't wait for the movie and 2) because it's an aamir khan film.  His movies come once a year but they're mindblowing.  Last movie I saw was Ghajini and he was playing a macho man in that film, completely opposite of what he played in 3 idiots.

If you read my book review on Five-point someone, I had some doubts whether the actors would do justice to the characters of the book...but they exceeded all my expectations.  And oh my god...how did Aamir khan manage to look like 22 year old college kid...I mean really!  Let me be clear that the movie is NOT same as the book.  Movie has taken the concept and some of the story-line of the book but you'll find the movie different from the book and you won't be disappointed.  Obviously there is a interesting twist in the movie which is not in the book which is what keeps you on your toes.

Well since I have read the book, I was constantly making similarities and differences in my mind as I watched the movie.
SO DO NOT READ ANY FURTHER IF YOU DON'T WANT TO SPOIL THE MOVIE BECAUSE IT MIGHT REVEAL SOME OF THE SECRETS OF THE MOVIE!!!!!!!

Similarities to the book:
------------------------
-  The college "Tanki" (Water tank) where the 3 friends hang out.
-  Character of Raju (played by Sharman Joshi in the movie) is consistent with the character Alok in the book about his personality, and his family condition.
-  The simple fight between Raju and other two friends and the patch up between them is also similar to the book.
-  Raju (played by Sharman) jumping from the 3rd floor since he was being rusticated but the difference is that he jumped from the "Tanki" in the book.
- Stealing of the exam paper is similar but for different purpose than the book.
- Also how the boys get caught via a phone call is in the movie but little different from the book.
-  The cause of death of Boman Irani's son is revealed to him but little different from the book.  In the book, Neha (played by Kareena) first tells Hari (played by Aamir) that her brother didn't die of an accident but instead committed a suicide and then Hari reveals this to Boman Irani.  In the movie, Pia (played by Kareena) reveals the death of her brother herself to her father.

Differences (a lot):
-------------------
-  The characters of Rancho (played by Aamir khan) and Farhan (played by Madhvan) seems to have interchanged a little from the book.  In the book, Ryan (aka Farhan) is from rich family and is really into learning new things instead of following the rules; he is someone who is the most creative and Hari (aka Rancho) wants to be like Ryan.
-  There is no mention of a dhaba in the movie where Alok, Hari and Ryan use to always go and eat parathas.
-  There was no mention of an ice-cream place where Neha (played by Kareena) and Hari (played by Aamir) used to meet all the time.
-  There is no Professor Veera in the movie which I would have loved to see since he always supported the 3 idiots.
-  Also Pia (played by Kareena) didn't have any sister in the book.
-  Ryan (played by Madhvan in the movie) also had a scooter which all 3 friends used to commute where as in the movie Pia's (played by Kareena) scootie was used.
-  In the book, Ryan (played by Madhvan in the movie) doesn't get any job and ends up getting an assistant position with professor Veera doing something he really enjoys (somewhat similar to Madhvan's track since he doesn't go for interview in the movie and instead convinces his dad to let him go into photography).
-  The biggest difference is the climax of the movie, where the ending is kind of open in the book where Alok and Hari get the job in 2 different cities and Neha (played by Kareena) is in touch with Hari and she's trying to find a job in the same city as Hari.  In the climax in the movie, Farhan and Raju get the job and Rancho ends up with Pia.  Originally Rancho vanishes after graduation which sets a complete different mood for the movie and marks the journey of the two friends looking for Rancho and main point of the movie.

These are some of the main points I noticed and there might be more.  I loved the movie and could recall some of the scenes being exactly similar to the book.....the movie is definitely more hillarious than the book and the performances are mind blowing.  Two of the surprise packages were Boman Irani and Sharman Joshi.  Boman Irani, playing the mean, rude director of the college, has a new look and will surprise you with his great acting.  On the other hand, Sharman Joshi gives outstanding performance.  He has improved a lot more and if you loved him in rang de basanti, you'll love him in this one too.  Aamir khan, Madhvan, Kareena kapoor are great as usual and a new guy who plays "Chatur (aka silencer)" is really funny as well.  I think I have said enough about the movie and the rest is up to you to go and watch it!

Music of the movie is nice too.  Two of my favorite tracks are "All izz well" and "Zoobi Doobi".  All izz well is sure to become the new antheme of the industry, I call it the "mastiful" song.  Zoobi Doobi on the other hand is romantic, danceable song sung by none other than great duet jodi, shreya ghoshal and sonu nigam.  The picturization of this song is very colorful as well.

Enjoy!

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Tum Mile - Music and Movie Review


It's been a whlie since I have written any movie or music reviews.  Well I have a lot of songs in mind that I have been listening to lately and trust me music is the best source of relaxation or if you want to get your energy up, music can do tricks!

Tum Mile stars Emraan hashmi and Soha ali khan.  It's a love story with backdrop of 2005 July Mumbai floods.  I'm not a big fan of Emraan hashmi but he is definitely improving day by day.  His last release was Raaz 2 and the one before that was Jannat (really nice movie).  Both of their performances are good and the movie is nice too....I kind of missed some parts but not bad overall.

One thing you won't get over is the songs of this movie.  They're mind blowing and you'll start humming them as soon as you hear them.  There are 5 songs of the movie from which I simply love 4 of them from which 2 of them are sung by KK.  The lyrics are superb with the music of each song.  Let me give you a tour of the songs:
1) Tu hi haqeeqat sung by Javel Ali: Flawless, Romantic, Mind-blowing, great music, soft and soothing.  Some of the great lines of the song are:
      "tu hi haqeeqat khaab tu, dariya tu hi pyaas tu
      tu hi dil ki bekaraari tu sukun tu sukun"
      "aa tujhe inn baahon mein bhar ke aur bhi kar loon main kareeb
      tu juda ho toh age hain aata jaata har pal ajib"
      "uff yeh teri palakein ghani si, chhanv inaki hai dilnashi
      abb kise darr dhup ka hai kyun ki hai yeh mujhape bichhi"
100% recommend to listen to this song!
2) Tum mile sung by Neeraj Shreedhar: Nice foot-tapping song with disco backdrop.
3)  2 of the best tracks:
Dil Ibadat and O Meri Jaan sung by Fabulous KK: These two songs just won't get out of my mind.....flawless, amazingly sung by KK.  These two songs are emotional and I think KK tops this category when it comes to singing emotional songs.  Just superb!  110% recommend listening to both of these songs.

One thing is for sure with Emraan Hashmi's movies, no matter how the movie is the music is sure to hit the charts and get you moving.  Jannat, Gangster, Raaz 2 are just some of the examples with mind-blowing music.
Well hope you get to listen to the songs if you haven't already done so.  Hopefully will come back with more music reviews!

Monday, December 14, 2009

Twitter - Is it another addiction like facebook or myspace?

So I know that twitter has been out for a long time now but I just recently found out what it actually is.  I have heard about twitter from a lot of people but never was anxious to know what it was.  Honestly I didn't know what twitter was until this semester when my project required to do little research on twitter.  For my high performance networked computing project, we got an idea from someone to use Hadoop as the backend process for twitter which can process tweets in parallel.  Well I can't really explain what hadoop is because it took me and my team almost a semester to get it in our system, but the idea was that when tweets come in they get processed through hadoop to find the trending topics.  That is when I had to research what the twitter is and what are these "tweets".  I find out that twitter is used for status messages (140 characters tweets) that you can update every now and then.  You can follow people and other people can follow you.

I recently read in one of the articles that Shahid Kapoor (Bollywood actor) has a twitter account and when I googled him up, his twitter account came up.  I went on his account and found out that half of the bollywood is on twitter.  Shahrukh khan, Abhishek bacchan, akshay kumar, preity zinta, imran khan, sonam kapoor, konkona sen sharma, vivek oberoi, lara dutta, ritesh deshmukh, priyanka chopra, karan johar, shreya ghoshal, vishal-shekhar, and the list is endless.  I must say that once I followed shahid's tweets, I have been quite addicted to twitter and have been reading shahid's tweets along with vivek oberoi, abhishek bacchan, ritesh deshmukh, and just follow some other ones from the list of their followings.  Now the question is do I want to open my own account on twitter and follow these people :P....I'm so tempted to open an account on twitter just to follow these celebrities ;)......You'll know if I get on twitter!

Saturday, December 12, 2009

I'm back!

Hello People!

It's been loooooong time since I have posted anything.  In fact, I had started to write the posts on my Caribbean cruise trip but unfortunately I could only write the first day experience and the other 6 days got cornered.  I have not gotten any time to do anything other than studying because of my classes.  My weekends' routine have mostly been visiting campus for group meetings or working on projects trying to meet the deadlines.  And trust me, those have not been very exciting.  In fact the last week of school, when I had a project report and project presentation due, I have gotten less and less sleep :(.  But thanks to Thanksgiving break and a mandatory 1 week off at work which gave me (no relaxing time, but) plenty of time to work on a project that hardly had any future of completion.  Me and my team members put some hard work in the last two weeks to get the project running.  So that's good enough for me....but we did the entire project report the night before it was due and prepared the entire project presentation 1 night before it was supposed to be presented...so that's quite an achievement.  Now I just need to wait and watch out for the grade...I'm really concerned about this course and wondering what I will get.  Ohh....I didn't even tell you which course I'm talking about...I'm talking about High Performance Networked Computing.

Well long story short, I am done with this semester (until the next one starts :(....I'm not thinking about it right now) and now I'll have some time to do other things such as write some more blog entries, draw some sketches, get some things done around the house and help out my mom whom I owe my entire masters degree.  Without her I wouldn't have been able to get where I am right now with 4 semesters done in masters degree.  She is the reason I have been able to focus on school without worrying about anything else.  I totally owe her everything!  She is the best!

So watch out for some more updates in the coming weeks before 2010 kicks in :-).  Well I've already got some things in mind that I want to talk about, some movie reviews, a lot of good music reviews, hopefully my rest of the caribbean cruise stories and anything else that comes in the way.

Till then, Tata :)

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Caribbean Cruise - Part 1

Hi Friends,
I finally got some time to sit down and write in detail about my Caribbean cruise vacation. So where should I start? I'll start by how and why we decided to go on cruise. My uncle and aunt have already been on 3 different cruises before and they were planning to go on one this year so I had told them to let me know once they decide on a location. Me and my brother were interested in taking a trip on cruise ...doesn't matter what location. My uncle decided on the Western Caribbean Cruise (via Carnival cruise line) which was from July 26th to Aug. 2nd, 2009 and cruise was leaving from fort Lauderdale, Florida. So there were 7 of us, my uncle, aunt, me, my brother and my 3 cousins. Since we had to fly to Florida, we flew in to Fort Lauderdale a day before our cruise since the air tickets were little cheaper that way and we stayed in hotel for a night. It was 7 days cruise and we visited Cayman Islands, Isla of Roatan, Belize and Cozumel (Mexico).

We got ready in the morning at our hotel and left for the port of Fort Lauderdale. Normally they start check-in around 12 and that's why we got to the port around 11:15-11:30 pm to beat the rush but guess what? There was already a line all the way out the door for check-in. First thing first, you have to tag your bags (with the tags the cruise give you), so when you reach the port, first thing you have to do is give your bags to the porter so he can transport them directly to your rooms and you don't have to carry them with you through check-in. There were two points of check-in. At first stop, they check your registration and passports and make you go through the scanner (just like at the airports). This was quick but then the real fun is the second stop for check-in. This was LOOONG. We could see the ship from the windows of the check-in register. Excitement was building up :). Once we got to the check-in desk, we again had to show our passports, and the lady gave us our room cards which was also our visa card on the ship. You don't use your credit card on the ship. Instead when you sign up for the cruise, you give your credit card number and they give you something called "sail and sign card" to use on the ship. If you want to buy anything, you use your "sail and sign" card.

Done with check-in, we proceed to our rooms, but unfortunately the rooms were not ready yet so we had to go straight to the deck (9th floor). We were hungry and as first time cruisers, I was excited to see the deck. Music, food, drinks, pool, slide, and bunch of kids! Yes, that's right! There were about 2 - 3 separate pools and they were all full with kids and their parents. But it was amazing! Tip #1: There will be waiters all around asking you if you want a drink (alcohol) and once you take it, they'll ask you for your sail and sign card to charge you on it! So make sure that you ask before getting a drink because drinks (soda and alcohol) are not free on the cruise! We got something to eat. My biggest concern on the cruise was food! Being a vegetarian, you don't get many choices...in fact, there are hardly any choices. All the food on the deck is free and all you can eat!

So after while, we were able to check in to our rooms. We had a 4 person cabin. Let me tell you one thing about these cabins! They're not big at all. 2 beds on each side, 2 small cabinets, 1 dresser, 1 bathroom (very small :(...hahaha) and 1 fridge (don't drink anything from that fridge because you'll be charged on your card later). I guess all of us hit our heads on the bunk bed once and if that wasn't enough, I even hit my head on the mail box stand outside our room :P. Luckily my uncle had an ocean view cabin and their room was twice as big as ours. So we were in their room most of the time :) enjoying the view of the ocean. It was time for the cruise to sail but before that the cruise manager made an announcement for all of the people to go outside on the 3rd and 4th floor for a quick life jacket training session. It was crowded like CRAZY! I could not see anything besides the 10x10 inch square area I was standing in.

Now before we can relax, our first task was to look through the excursions/tours of each island and decide what we wanted to choose. Tip #2: It's better to look at the list of excursions before you go on the cruise, this way you can book them right when you get on the ship or you can even book them ahead of time before getting on the cruise. Reason being is that there are limited spots on each tour and if the location is popular, they go fast. So it's better to book them as soon as you can. Since it was first time for me and my brother, we were having hard time choosing because half of the excursions...no..almost 75% of the excursions had something to do with knowing how to swim and both of us didn't know how to swim. Looking through all the tours and analyzing for almost 2-3 hours, we came up with the following excursions:
On Cayman Islands, we took the tour of "Best of Cayman Island tour".
On Isla of Roatan, we took the tour of "Pirates, birds, and monkeys" (my favorite excursion).
On Belize, we took a holly crap 6 hours looooooong tour of "Altan ha and River Wallace".
On Cozumel, Mexico, we took the "Adventure park, zip-line and snorkeling combo" excursion (another favorite one).

So after tiring 2-3 hours of discussion deciding the excursions, it was already time for dinner. Wow...the dining hall was just amaaazing! Each table has two waiters, head waiter and assistant waiter. They were very nice and friendly people. My uncle had been on carnival before and they have gotten indian food on request so I was hoping it would happen this time too. We were told that every night there is at least one vegetarian dish on the menu and luckily the first day we had an indian vegetarian dinner :) :). Just thinking about the dinner makes my mouth watery. We talked to the dining manager lady who was also super nice and told her if we can get indian food all 6 days. She said that most of their cooks are indian so that shouldn't be the problem. I almost jumped in my seat hearing this because believe it or not, food makes big difference in your trip...well it does in my trip :P. Dinner was amazing the first night and it made a great start for our trip that had not began yet. To welcome everyone on board, there was a welcome show by the musical crew of the cruise and welcome from the cruise director Tex. Really funny guy. He told us about the excitement coming up on the next couple of days with exciting performances from comedians, juggler, magician, and of course, from a hypnotist. It was night already and I wanted to go on the deck to take a look at the view at night. Apparently, the deck looks pretty at night since everything else around it is solid dark. You can't see anything...not even a single wave! Our first and last day was going to be on the cruise, so there was a lot coming up the next day. We called it a night earlier that day and went to bed.

Soooooooo if you're still awake and not bored by my introduction of the first day, stay tuned for the coming posts of island experiences! Tata!

Saturday, August 15, 2009

Five point someone by Chetan Bhagat

I recently went to dinner at one of my friend's place. I don't know how but we got into conversation about reading and what books she has read. Her husband has read couple of Chetan Bhagat novels and recommended reading "Five point someone". As you may know from my previous post that I'm not a reader but I said why not give it a try because if the book is interesting, I might read the whole thing :P. I borrowed the book from her and finished reading it in 1 week. 1 week??? That's a record. But I must tell you that the book is really good and really funny. According to the author, the book is about IIT (Indian Institute of Technology) and what not to do at IIT, but I think it's about these 3 best friends who go through a roller-coaster from the time they get admitted in IIT to their last day in the institution.

Each main character has their own space. The 3 main characters, Alok, Hari, and Ryan, are completely different from one another, yet they become best friends for life. While reading the book, I came across some really funny sentences, that I jotted down and would like to share them here with you all. Note that there were many funny moments, but I only noted down few ones because I was busy reading the rest of the book.

"Ryan was elated, and he drove us back to Kumaon at speeds that made the traffic police dizzy. No one stopped us, or rather, we didn't stop. I covered the number plate with my foot, so that cops could not take it down."
"It is hard enough to say no to pretty girls or to ice-cream but when it's offered together, it is well nigh impossible."
"Alok recalculated his score, hoping for some miracle to happen on the calculator. But miracles never happen in IIT, only crap grades do."

I really enjoyed reading the book. In fact, Rajkumar Hirani is making a movie called "3 idiots" which is loosly based on this book. Aamir khan will be playing Hari, Madhvan will be playing Ryan, and Sharaman Joshi will be playing Alok. I'm eagerly waiting for the movie now since I can't wait to see how hillarious it turns out to be. I'm sure there will be some twist in the movie which is not in the book. I think the 3 actors are brilliant and they'll fit the characters perfectly. In fact, when I was reading the book I can totally picture the actors saying the same dialogues in their own ways :). One thing I'm not sure about is that the actors will be playing IIT students, but they'll look older than their age to look like 18-20 years old IIT students. We'll just have to wait and see. If you like reading, I definitely recommend reading this book.

Five point someone is Chetan Bhagat's first novel and he has done a brilliant job on it. He has described each and every crazy moment of the IIT hostel in a very simple way, yet it's very humorous at the same time.

Tata for now :)

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

"Almost Single" by Advaita Kala

I know a lot of people who love to read. My brother reads a lot. He has read all the Harry Potter books and plus many more. I know all of my friends like to read as well..at least they would consider reading an option if they're free. One of my office mates reads a lot and she likes to read any kind of books, whether it's suspense, romance, or just storytelling novel.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, I'm not a reader. If I'm bored...reading won't even be an option to kill the boredom. The truth is that even if I consider it as an option, as soon as I start reading, I start to fall asleep. One day I was talking to my office mate (the one I mentioned above) and she told me about this novel she read. The book is "Almost Single" by Advaita Kala. She was asking me if I have read it since it's written by an Indian Author and the story is based in New Delhi. I told her that I haven't and I don't read at all. She said the book was very interesting and funny and since it's related to Indian culture, I might enjoy it. Again, I told her that I will fall asleep as soon as I start the book. She did not back down and still suggested that I give it a try reading it.

I said why not? I got the book, and once I started reading it, I finished the first two chapters without a single yawn!! Wow! That's a Miracle! Not really :P. Well I realized that I got so interested in the topic that I didn't realize the time and before I knew, I had already finished two chapters of it. And honestly, my office mate was right. The story is based in New Delhi, India, so I could understand the different points of view from the story is being told. Not just that, the environment, the traffic, the neighbors' attitude....everything was so familiar :). New Delhi is very well developed and very westernized too. I found the book very funny and at times romantic too. I would definitely recommend it. And if I can read it, you can too. It turns out that I only fall asleep if the topic is not interesting to me. I guess I'll only find out which books I like after I start reading it :).

Wednesday, August 5, 2009

Experience traveling with Southwest Airlines

Hey friends,
So this is a start to telling you about my Caribbean vacation journey. We had to take the cruise from Miami, Florida...so my brother and I had to fly there a day before the sailing date. We were going on vacation with my uncle and his family. He booked our tickets through southwest. This was first time for us flying through southwest airlines and there are some good and bad things about it.

Good thing is that southwest doesn't charge you for the bags :). You can take two bags for free which is great because most of the airlines now charge $15 for the first bag and more for the second. Also on board, you can get snacks and not one, two ...but if you want more, you can just ask for it. Same goes with drinks.

Bad thing about southwest is that you don't have assigned seating. You can see this from two different point of view. If you're traveling alone, you'll find a seat easily in the first couple of rows. But, if you're traveling with family, it's hard to find seats together, specially if your checking group is B31-60 or anywhere in C. See, what southwest does is that instead of giving you a seat number, they give you seating group number. So there are 3 groups (A, B, C) and the boarding processes from A1-30, A31-60...and so on. So the earlier your group number is the better chances you have of getting your desired seat with your family seating together. One thing is for sure that no one likes to sit in the middle seat (if there are 3 seats together). As I was walking to find a seat with my brother I noticed that all the middle seats are empty because everyone has either taken an aisle seat or window seat :P. Well, that's just a down side...so to prevent that from happening, just check-in at home as soon as the check-in process opens up because if you wait to get your boarding pass until you get to the airport, you'll most likely get a seating group in C.

Well that's my evaluation of the airline....more to come later :).

Tuesday, August 4, 2009

My Adventurous Vacation!!!!

Hey friends,
I know I've been away and returning to my own blog after loooooong time...long 5 months. Well what can I say, I was terribly busy with school until first week of May and then once the school was over I was busy with work. I must admit though that this summer break has gone by so fast. I can't believe my school will start again in 2 weeks :(. Well I've enjoyed my time-off from school and able to focus on just work.

Now if you don't know, I just returned from a beautiful vacation from 7 day Western Caribbean Cruise. It was the best vacation ever......and a great experience. It was my first cruise so I was really excited because I didn't know what to expect and at the same time I had so many expectations. It was a 7 day cruise but the days just spoofed by that I didn't want to go back to work the next day :(. Friends, I have so much to tell you about each day that I spent on cruise or at the different ports, starting from when I flew in to Miami to the point when I got back home. I will probably break down the blog into sections because I have a lot to write about the cruise experience itself, the service, food, the different places we visited, a lot of tips that I could give to first-time cruisers :) and much more. I took like 3 GB worth of pictures and videos so I won't be able to show you those here...but I'll post some pics to give you guys an idea of how much fun it's been these past 7 days. All I can say is that it's a lifetime experience and one should take the cruise vacation at least one time in their life...because if you take it once, you'll love it so you'll take it again and again :P. I think the cruise experience also becomes more memorable and fun if you choose the right cruise and I think Carnival was the best option for first-time cruise because they pamper you a lot with great entertainment and service they offer on board.

So folks, stay tuned and watch out for my next couple of blog posts. I will try my best to post everything by end of this week (if time permits), so bear with me!

Tata for now... :)

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Tuesday, February 24, 2009

Go Slumdog Millionaire!!

Wow!! This was one of the best Oscars!! Why? Because A.R.Rehman performed "Jai Ho" and "O Saaya" on stage and it was fantastic! Plus 8 awards sweeeeped by Slumdog Millionaire!
- Best Film
- Best Director
- Best Music Score
- Best Song - Jai Ho (really good song - fast, foot-tapping, great music and will stay in your mind once you listen to it)
- Best Adapted Screenplay
- Best Cinametography
- Best Film Editing
- Best Sound Mixing

Isn't that Fantastic?? Congratulations to the entire cast and crew of Slumdog Millionaire!

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hey Everyone,

Happy Valentine's Day to you all! Today is the day to express your love to your loved ones :). I wish a Happy Valentine's Day to all my friends and family members and hope you all have a rocking day!

Love,

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Eventful December 2008

Bye Bye December 2008 and Welcome January 2009!! :)

Being so busy with school and work, I finally had some time to relax in the month of December after my finals which ended on Dec. 11th. First on the event list was a family friend's daughter's surprise birthday party in Boulder on Dec. 14th. Then the week after that we had our Jain group gathering on Dec. 21st. There was an open house on Dec. 24th at my work where employees bring their family members/kids to work and take pics with Santa, get balloons of different shapes made by the balloon master and there were all sorts of activities. Because of this there was hardly any work and honestly I was really bored since there was no work and everyone seemed to have left by noon. My Christmas holidays were going to start on Dec. 25th so I was happy about that. We had a Christmas Party at a family friend's house on Dec. 25th evening which was a lot of fun. On Dec. 26th I had planned a movie night with my friends to go watch "Ghajini". And I got to see one of my friends after 8 months :). On Dec. 28th, we went to a one year old's party so that was a nice hangout with some of the friends. The list is not over yet...I spent the New Year's Eve at home with family and on the 1st January, we went to a friend's surprise birthday party in Aurora, so that was fun :). That was the summary of my holidays and I had great time. It was nice to get some time off after a stressful school and work. From Monday, back to normal routine, back to work on Monday morning so not looking forward to that. But I'm thankful for whatever time I got to spend with my family and friends during these holidays.

I wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous New Year!