Out of the Box...

The  'experiential fine dine' place in Hyderabad.  Most of my messages/conversations are around food recommendations, asking for places to eat mentioning the occasion and when a message from those friends come saying How are you Arvind, my Restaurant Recommendation System mode is activated. So here I'm throwing out an open recommendation to the world - A fine dine place that has always had that wow factor that not many restaurants can replicate and is truly fit for a celebration.  It was my friends birthday and I tried the Vegetarian set menu - which is called 'Green Fables'. There are 3 specialty menus apart from the A'la carte menu. The Deccan Tales(Hyderabadi) and Indian Epics both predominantly non-vegetarian fares were tried by my friends.  The menu is well curated and rightly portioned. If you are a food enthusiast each dish has a local inspiration, an ingredient doing a crossover which sparks your curiosity to the infinite possibilities to innovate with ...

Devara - Part 1 Finally, the faithful audience of Jr.NTR get to see their hero as a solo lead in a movie after 6 long years (The last one had my name mentioned in it ;)). Very few people are as versatile as Jr.NTR with an exceptional command of language, great range in acting, an impeccable body language, enviable dancing skills and not to forget he is TFI royalty. If #Pushpa ruled the jungles, #Devara rules the sea and hills. ( A potential crossover idea maybe :D ) Devara - My expectation Vs My experience. Let me start off by saying - Devara is a big screen watch for the rich production and design values they have put in to create this world which makes it a pleasant to watch movie. The frames, the audio quality, the Vfx department have all done a good job and glad big budget movies are embracing technology to tell stories better. This one is being dubbed in multiple languages too but the most effective watch will be in Telugu. I love commercial cinema but I absolutely admire st...

Oppenheimer.(The movie)  Watched on July 21st,2023at Prasadz IMAX, Hyderabad  Cinemas in India are hugely for entertainment and many times the important human moments are traded for crowning glory moments. But for many storytellers cinemas present an excellent opportunity to narrate a perspective that makes us read about history, invest emotionally into the characters that we are transported to that world effortlessly. It takes immense amount of self confidence and meticulous planning to show that world which we do not perceive. That's where Christopher Nolan bhaiyya enters making the quietest moments the loudest ones. He has successfully made a generation read before going to watch his movies and  also re-watch it to understand it better He has made some of my favorite films and also the movies I did not want to watch one bit like Tenet. Oppenheimer - This movie is about the most significant invention which changed the course of future wars, meant to stop the great war...

Ahh! The world of bloggers! After a gap of nearly 2 years and 6+ kgs , I'm back!!! Heavier, stronger and kind of wiser to enter the world of blogging again ;) The internet has drastically improved the speeds of communication , information passing , entertainment etc but at the same time it has faded away a few of the basic things we all did well in our 90's and 2000's! Handwriting  ( I was so proud of my calligraphic skills where my strokes in cursive writing would be so smooth that those 'curves' would make any Hollywood actress jealous :D ) Now all I can do is choose fonts ( my handwriting variation) to watermark my pictures or write emails or  documents which are read by humans and bots. Out of the other things that has advanced to advanced stages of extinction is  our attention span!   I don't think anyone is willing to read beyond a smart punchline or not more than 140 characters thanks to Twitter ( A person with over 8K tweets and a winner of ...

So What's happening guys ? I'm still staying alive in the world of blogging with this post(My only post of 2010!!) :D 2010 was rough isn't it?( Earthquakes, floods, violence, Economy) - Still waiting for some things to happen fast for me( or rather have to make it happen!) Almost dying to go to India to visit family and friends. It's been a while and I almost have been dreaming about Hyderabad for the last 6 months. So here are some highlights of 2010. Its been an amazing year for me as a Photographer. Great works concluding as a researcher ( soon..soon to be told..) Learnt a lot of things by experimenting and travelling to many places. Thanks to the wonderful friends( whose phone calls I don't pick up, but still give them the best profile pictures :] ) with whom some great road trips have happened!! I had this wonderful opportunity of shooting a wedding at Boston and New Hampshire(Yes I was the trusted Photograph...

Dear all, (sounds like a E-mail ?? ) This is a reminder that Arvind still blogs and is wide awake in the blogging world ;-) Apart from writing articles, clicking Million Photographs I was leading a group of very motivated individuals in organizing a wonderful event for the Indian Student's Association at ASU which happened this Sep 19th '2009 . It was called Jhankaar - A welcoming party to the new Students who had arrived here @ASU that year. There were lot of thoughts, creative ideas thrown in the air and it needed some meticulous planning, infinitely long email threads and innumerable number of phone calls to make up for a wonderful time 3+ hours and a lifetime of memories. Its attracted over 500 people for the past 3 year and in short says what College Entertainment is all about !! Its been the 2nd time I've danced (yes yes..in one of the most popular dances of the evening where I am the lone guy and surrounded by 6-8 girls ranging from Radha kaise na jale...

1. Last movie you saw in a theater? Read as l(o)st movie - The Bank Job :-| 2. What book are you reading? Am I exposed..reading Algorithms by Cormen 3. Favorite board game? Scrabble on weekdays chess on weekends ;) 4. Favorite magazine? Sportstar - I love the posters of the week in it ! 5. Favorite smells? Nothing to beat adulterated Indian petrol smell ;) 6. Favorite thing to do in weekend? Racquetball + Volleyball + Talk with parents back home :) 7. Worst feeling in the world? Make that falling short of people's expectations 8. What is the first thing you think of when you wakeup? Simple - Sleep again :D 9. Favorite fast food place? You said fast its Extreme Pita - if fastest My kitchen ;) 10. Future child’s name? I need to take my wife's advice on it ;) 11. Complete this statement --- 'If I had a lot of money' Spend it on my dear ones,travel,invest and ofcourse donate. 12. Do you drive fast? If its online racing, definitely yes ...

At last I decided to break the jinx and thanks to some randomness and some useful late night conversations that I decided to post this work. This is also a special occasion as it’s a start of a New Year which is always filled with dreams and hopes for making things better. I would like to say a special thanks to Munmun for the needed motivation :-) So here is the idea, someone gives you 5 random words and you make a story out of it. It can be in any order and verb forms can also be considered in place of the word itself. My 5 words were: Admire, Loathe, Road, Search, Girlfriend The writing: ( You can post your compliments in the comments and e-mail your critiques :D ) As children we always admire the stars who win public’s heart with display of their special skills. Every child dreams to be a star one day by doing something fantastic. But later in life there is a realization that they have lost their way by taking the road which was taken by most and end up as commoners and cannot ...

Hey people, So time has come again for a Arvind special :D so here I start again in my patented style...Its been a long time since I posted blah..blah..and YES !!It again took a special day for this post !!The day is Vinayaka Chaturthi this time. Looks like my blog has become a bi-monthly event ! So some updates from my side..a lot in fact,can publish a book(which will be the last one for the publisher though :D) on the days I had from the airport send offs till the time I arrived here ) I am not in India now and I am in the place of dreams(not Mumbai..for the people who thought I was going to be the next big thing in Bollywood :-)..United States of America it is)..for pursuing my Masters in at a reputed Institution called Arizona State University. Its been some 10 days here and I get to learn many things like cooking(in "bold"),managing my resources and all importantly trying to get accustomed to the new environment.Its been a nice 10 days so far with lots o...