It may appear as though I disappeared off the face of the planet for some time, at least as far as this blog is concerned.  The reason behind this is simple — the internet connection was acting strange.  For a week or so, on some days, no sites were accessible at all.  Other days, only Gmail, Google, orkut and my site would work (this was puzzling even to the guys at Tata Indicom, since it's usually all or nothing when it comes to internet access).  Anyway, they fixed it for a while, but after that the connection started behaving strangely again — on some days, sites were accessible only at certain times during the day, with no access at other times; and on other days, nothing was accessible at all.

Finally, two days back, normalcy was restored, and the connection is back.  So, what has happened in the recent past?  I'll present some highlights in bullet-points:

• Spent a few hours with my cousins Kiran and Maya last week after work.  My uncle and family had come to India after a long time, and it was great to meet them all.  Today we had Republic Day Celebrations at office, and after that got over, there was some other work to be done, following which I visited my cousins again, and had a very good time.
• At the TCS Sholinganallur Centre, where I work, a movie is screened every Thursday.  A couple of weeks back, they showed The Usual Suspects and I was, expectedly, overjoyed.  I watched part of the movie on that day.
• Nothing could contain my joy this past Tuesday though, when this Thursday's movie was declared — Fight Club, which is part of my all-time-favourites / best-movies-ever!  I was determined to watch the movie, and so I did, and I got my colleague Dilip to watch it also.  What an amazing film!  This is the first time I am seeing it on a big screen (well, it's not a theatre, but it's close... I've only seen this movie on TV or on a computer screen earlier) and it was certainly an experience.  Respect to those who recommended it, and respect to the people who actually went ahead and screened this gleefully subversive movie!
• Other movies I have seen recently include: Day Watch [Dnevnoy Dozor] (the sequel to the Russian fantasy/SF/action hybrid Night Watch [Nochnoi Dozor]), all three Taxi films (French action/comedy movies, all written by Luc Besson), the comedy Thank You for Smoking, the documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated, and the original Chinese Infernal Affairs.
• Today, I stopped off at Odyssey in Adyar before meeting my cousins, and bought the DVD of Rang De Basanti (I bought a VCD version before, but never got around to watching it — today I thought why not watch it on DVD itself, as the quality would obviously be better, and besides, the DVD is reasonably priced too, at Rs. 199).
• My uncle, cousins and myself went to Landmark today and I was glad to see that Night Watch [Nochnoi Dozor] has got an official Indian DVD & VCD Release (from Excel Home Videos)!  The DVD's price is a bit steep (Rs. 699) but it seems to be an import of the original Russian DVD (and not the US version).
• I also bought a book at Landmark today — Coraline by Neil Gaiman.  How I came to buy this is, I saw this article on Arrow in the Head, about a film version of this work, and I was hooked by the storyline (a girl finds a key that opens a door leading to an apartment that is a duplicate of her house, and inhabited by an "other" mother of hers).  So, when I saw this book, I decided to buy it.  It seems to be quite a short book so I plan to read it now, after posting this update!

Well, that's all for now, will be back with other updates soon.