New Year - A day to remember - 2

If you have not read the first part - CLICK HERE

"...OH NO NOOO NOOOO!!!"

Life is never so simple right?. So there was a small twist in this tale now. The tickets as expected were in the dashboard of the car, but then the main question now was, where was the CAR?. The car was on its way to Mangalore at this moment since my cousin had taken it the previous evening from me. Immediately the mobile phone was in action and he picked up the call. I asked him where he was now, he said he had just crossed NICE road and was near first tollgate of Tumkur. That was both good and bad news. Good news - He had just crossed the city and was not very far from city limits. Bad news - it was improbable to drive whole way back to our theatre to return bunch of tickets. Then again it stuck me, that one of my wife's relative was closest in distance towards city. I got my wife into action on another phone to call that relative and ask if they can collect the tickets from my cousin. This meant my cousin had to drive back 8kms towards the city. The whole purpose of riding on NICE road for my cousin was to avoid city traffic and that was undone now. They had to drive back all the way in traffic to the city to give that purse containing 20 tickets to our relative and delay their journey by an hour. Another small twist is that, both of them had never seen each other before....!!! But then there was always ways to identify people and the same happened. Thanks to mobile technology, this was not a big problem. So finally the tickets were back in city. Now the plan was to watch movie, and then go home, take my bike n ride all the way to other end of the city and come back to get my refund.

As planned, we came out after watching movie, took an auto to reach home. Had lunch and straightaway took my bike and left for the long journey. The bike was not in action for around an year now and the question was whether it will last the whole journey of 28kms and back to home. It took a complete 6mins to start my bike and then our journey started. During this journey, bike stopped at 3 places and had to spend 5 mins on each occassion to start the bike again.Finally we were at our uncle's place, grabbed the tickets and were on our way back to the theatre. couple more stops on the way to theatre and then finally at ticket counter. I produced that 20 tickets at the counter, the ticketfellow stared me as if I was robbing him of his money. Then he said, this is huge sum and somebody at higher level will come and give me my money back. 20 mins of wait and that higher level guy finally arrived. Then he asked few questions to know the reason for getting 20 tickets. Probably he thought, I had bought these tickets to sell out in black outside theatre. finally his interrogation ended and he looked convinced that I had no plans to sell tickets in black and then returned my money. With a huge sigh of relief, we headed to our home. It was 6PM. Our neighbour saw us coming and he came to give us a DVD which he told was a nice movie. I saw the DVD and a smile came out on my face. It was a movie DVD of "3Idiots". We had decided we will watch this movie in theatre only, but then since its an Aamir Khan movie, could not resist to watch it. OH, by the way there was another journey awaiting us. We had to leave to Kukke Subramanya that very same night. The bus was scheduled to depart at 10-30 meaning we had to leave home by 8-30. So we had exactly 2 and half hours. I immediately put the DVD in the player and again we were watching the movie. The movie was so awesome that none of us moved an inch. Finally when it ended, we hurried ourselves and got to our local bus stop at 9 and subsequently a the main bus stand at 10. The bus arrived at 11 and finally we were on that bus. During the journey, we wished each other a VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR just before the midnight. Never had we travelled 3 times in a day and watched 2 movies during the same day. For the very first time the complete 15 hours in a day was utilized. Probably the best and very pacy NEW YEAR with full of action, tension and travel for us until now, surely a day to remember for a long long time...

New Year - A day to remember - 1

"Happy journey, Have fun, bye." - I was in call with one of my cousin and his family was going on a trip to Mangalore, Udupi and nearby places for 3 days. After the call, I had to shout again -"Hey Common guys, get ready soon, we will be late". This was for my wife and other cousin. We had booked the movie tickets for morning show in a single screen theatre for AVATAR-3D. We were excited since this was first big screen 3D movie which we were going to watch in theatre. The show was supposed to start at 10 AM, it was 8-30 AM already and we needed atleast half hour to 45 mins to reach theatre by auto. Finally everyone was ready and we left home and reached theatre by 9-15. Now we had lot of time for movie to start, got the normal stares from my wife for getting here so early. I had to return her stare back with a wide smile. Then I realized something and went into the ticket booking counter and asked ticket fellow -

Me: "I have 20 tickets for the show which was cancelled, Can I get them on Monday for refund?"
Ticket fellow: "No sir, today is the last day for giving all refunds, We need to close our calculations by this weekend.
"Me: "Ok, then I will get it by evening"
Ticket fellow: "Sure sir, anytime before 6PM, you can get it."
"Thank you sir", I said and left the ticket counter.

***FLASHBACK***
Rewind a week back, we from our office had decided to go for a outing to watch this movie on a weekday in same theatre. 20 people had confirmed their participation and I had volunteered to book the tickets online. So as planned, I booked all 20 tickets for a wednesday evening show. One day before the show, I collected all the tickets from the ticket counter. The plan was to give individuals their own tickets so that nobody had to wait outside theatre before the show. So I thought I would give their own tickets on the day of show and everyone can make their own arrangements to arrive at theatre on time. Everyone was excited, and looking forward for this show. When everything is going according to the plan, there is always something waiting in store to disrupt the plans. So it hit as a lightning the next morning when all newspapers and television channels had only one news. "Breaking News - Kannada movie superstar passed away....". Because of this incident, city was expecting lot of violence and hence there would be bundh kind of atmosphere in whole city. Naturally, the theatres wont be screening any movies too. I called up the theatre and they said there will be refunds for the tickets booked. I told them I will collect the refund some other day and kept the phone. On same day, I booked 3 more tickets for the same movie to watch on new year day.

***Back to new year day-2010***
I came out of ticket counter and explained my wife about this -Me: "The ticket fellow says we need to get those tickets today itself for a refund. Else we wont get any refunds."Wife: "20 tickets is huge, lets go and get them after the movie"Me: "Yes... sure. After the show, we will go to home and get the tickets. I have kept the tickets in dashboard of our car...." The moment I said this, I realized something else...and had to shout again "....OH NO NOOO NOOOOOO!!!"....

To be continued... CLICK HERE

Movie - INCEPTION - My view

It all started on a friday night, when I was in a conference call with a US client and my phone rang. I had to wait till my conference call ended. It was 11pm when I called my cousin back.
Cousin: "Hello, how r u placed for tomorrow evening?"
Me: "No plans as of now, anything in your mind?"
Cousin: "How abt movie, night show? There is a new movie called Inception which got released yday."
So there it was, I had not heard of this movie, only thing I knew was Leonardo di caprio was the male lead in this movie. So was worth a shot, but was bit hesitant after his disastrous "Shutter Island". Then I checked for tickets online, but to my surprise the multiplexes were booked out. So I had to settle for a single screen theatre and booked 4 tickets( me, my wife and 2 cousins). First step done. Next day morning, I checked the reviews in the newspaper, and it gave a positive sign. Then finally the time came when we were in front of the movie theatre, and again the theatre was packed completely. There were few trailers which were good (including Harry Potter-7) and what followed them was awesome to say the least.
From the first frame the movie was gripping and the packed crowd roared in anticipation.The theme of the movie is well projected in the first 15-20 mins so that the audience is very clear on what is about to follow. This leaves the audience to think of various twists and turns that might come in the movie, but the director has bigger thoughts in the movie. Afterall his previous movie "Dark Knight" was biggest hit of the year as well.
"If you cant convince... confuse them" seems to the theme of director altough the movie posters say "Dream in a dream..". The concept of movie reminded me of MATRIX which was on similar lines, but the cinematography, editing and the direction are way too good. The challenging part in such movies are to keep your audiences interested in the movie all through 2hrs 45 mins, and the director does not miss a trick to keep up with this. Its so well architected that probably for the first time I felt bored during the interval. The movie is so pacy and fast moving, it gives you very little time to think and analyse on whats gonna happen next. Finally a fitting climax ends the movie leaving the audience in a superb state of mind where they cant decide if there is gonna be a sequel to this movie or not. The movie is all about living your world in dreams and when you come out of theatre, you feel as if you are already in a dream.... Finally a MUST WATCH movie for all creative and innovative movie lovers.