Toast, butter, banana and coffee with the weekend edition of Politiken, (Danish national newspaper) is morning ritual during weekends at my home. Politiken usually has photo-series in their Kultur (culture) section which i keep a keen eye on. And on todays newspaper  (23July2011), they did have a series on people hanging round my neighborhood beach – Amager Strandpark, even though it was not exactly a Bondi-beach weather. The photographer managed to capture odd entities in the series. But then, this picture turned up !

 This photograph woke a series of questions in me. A girl, gladly exposing her breasts to the photographer. Now, nudity is not a taboo on this side of the planet, but it happens on sunny days on beaches and parks, preplanned (photo-session) or in a state of drunkenness (music festivals or weekend parties). Since, neither was the situation on a random day at the beach, my next curiosity was to find who the photographer was.

Yes, my fears were true. It was a lady photographer (Miriam Dalsgaard). Can you imagine me, or any other man (well, unless your name is Terry Richardson and the girl is a wannabe Kate Moss) get a chance to shoot a picture like this?…. Seriously, ask yourself that question twice !

The next picture kind of made me sigh in misery in the behalf of all the photographers of my gender. A picture of a random girl on the beach, completely relaxed and uninhibited (That too, a girl from USA!)

This photographer has earned several photography prizes, and i just can’t overlook the factor that her gender has played a factor in it as well?

And yeah, i’m not complaining…. its just a thought !!

A remarkable chapter has begun in my life. I do try to mark those moments on my body with tattoo ink.

Right about now, i’m dedicating immense amount of time and energy to excel in the art of FILMMAKING.  And so, i believe that it is about time it gets etched to my body as well. My fantastic girlfriend had noticed how much i was wanting a new one, and she gave me ‘the tattoo fee‘ as a gift for my birthday.

Now begins the design state. I’m an artist and am creative enough to make my own designs.  This was what i came up with as the first draft.

The two hands with the thumb and index finger in 90 degree angle, is a filmmakers pose for visual framing of a scene.

The three words You Better Believe are actually separate elements that works as a cross check to my film projects.

• YOU: The project must me yours, your own, and must come from you. Getting inspired is fine, but never copy !!
• BETTER: The project you are starting must be better that the pervious project. Have you learnt from your mistakes?
• BELIEVE: There comes a time when every artist gets into questioning mode, is it good enough? Well, if you taken care of the first two points, then it is good enough. so, believe in it.

This design was what i decided finally.

I got it done at BABY LOU TATTOO, and Chicho, a spanish tattoo artist worked on my arm.

• iPhone it’s the KING!!!! Bitch!!
• that statment makes no sense
• This is a test. Thus is a test. Iphone just lost.
• the droid has multi touch
• what is multitouch..?
• lol i was trying to multi touch my droid …
• ya i’m gay for robots but ya now i know it’s incappable of my multi fingers
• who gives a fuck about multi touch
• Look, dick-faced, cum guzzler. You can stop trying. Your every comeback attempt is a fail and makes you look that much stupider. You’ve already been owned… By me. Hahaha. Go back to your dads basement and continue to use your iPhone the way it was intended to… Sticking it up your ass. BWAHAHA. And remember to do what your dad said… Keep your ass oiled and loose for his small dick. LOL. You are one sick fuck, you barn animal fucker, horse cum drinker, daddy-fucking fucker. Ewww.
• I was eating noodles at this restaurant and there were 4 people at the table next to me arguing about which was better. Two had droids, and the other two had iphones. They both decided to test the phones by looking up the local bus schedule. One of the people’s iphones froze, so one person with a droid looked up how to fix the iphones problem while the other got the bus schedule. The other iphone guy was trying to find how to fix the iphone but his phone was too slow. Just from what I saw, I think the droid would be better for me, because without those droids there, the people with the iphones would have definitely been screwed.
• The Motorola Droid would be like FUCK YOU to the iPhone and kick its ass. It will pull a Chuck Norris!
• I wish to GOD all of you dumbfuk morons would stop typing “your” when you mean “You’re” (YOU ARE) and “There” then you mean “They are” (They’re) etc. How can you criticize anything when you can’t make a literate post? “The droid (Droid) is far superior THAN the iphone ??? WTF is that? You mean “to the iPhone”. You can’t be “superior than” something. Idiots.
• WHAT IS MY FINAL WORD? R U BLIND OR UNALFABET? CANT U READ? For all of you who think iphone is a good phone i say AGAIN. IPHONE IS A PEACE OF CRAP!!!! AND THE OWNERS ARE IDIOTS FOR BYING IT!!!  thats my point of view and i am sticking with it.
• Flamers should be banned from leaving any feedback of any sort on the internet. (And by “flamers”, I mean people who type in all caps and have no semblance of an open mind.)
• I make a lot of money so I have both. I could care less about which one is better than the other. Having BOTH…the iphone 3gs camera takes much better pics. The droid is marginally faster overall. So who cares. Cant wait for the iphone 4 and droid 2 cause im gonna upgrade both. LOL!!!
• Call my Droid! It’s better than iPhone any day! I’ll text war about it! Call me!
• I can’t wait until AT&T loses their contract with apple. Oh, what a great day it will be for me and my verizon network 

I was at my lunch break at the canteen with my colleagues. The canteen is usually well served with loads of free newspapers like Metro, Urban and 24 Timer. We bury our heads in these tabloids in search of topics for conversation. Someone usually breaks the silence by a laughter, or “fuck, what the fuck is going on, man?” or “check this out”. And suddenly, there is a conversation for the next few minutes.

We dread the day when canteen has no newspapers. Where can we hide?  what conversation can we bring up? Damn, thats a hard one !

Yesterday, as usual, one of my colleagues bursts out into a man-laughter. A ‘man-laughter’ is usually a laugh at a the opposite gender. We men (women have their own table) eagerly wants to know what that was about. It was about this advert for a TV channel for men called Canal9, which usually broadcasts Bruce Willis, Football and cars, about their special World cup football special. The advert has a picture of a dildo and says “And so its the World cup, girls”. You are not going to get your men for the next whole month.

"its the world cup, girls..."

But strangely enough, i was at a sports pub with my friends out to watch the opening match. I was amazed by the amount of girls that turned up there as well. I did notice that they were not there to watch the game on big screen. But instead, they were rating and assessing potential “boyfriend material” while all the unwary men were dumb fixed on to the Big screen.

Let the games begin…., girls !

The "other" dj?

I was invited to enter a Dj competition for Copenhell, a Rock festival happening around the weekend. The invite kinda cracked me up.

They wanted 3 people to participate as a team against other teams. Since the electricity will be generated manually, one of the three will foot-pedal a cycle-generator and create the juice for the machines. while the second person of the team will spin vinyls or CD’s. the third person, yes the third person… well we don’t know what he does, and so does anyone else know! But we know there are always 2 people on the stage.

True, the wannabe, amateur Dj scene has this “other” person next to the Dj extending…. moral support?!!…. i don’t know.

i have been Dj’ing the last 15 years, and the only person i ever needed besides me were my groupies or friends.

Freakin amateurs !!!!

Block party in copenhagen

Its been 6 months since i quit Dj’ing. I quit just as Keisha released a “hit” song “Tik Tok”. I have been behind the decks for almost 14 years, seen many  venues, seen many party people, and enjoyed the game. I quit Dj’ing to concentrate on my film making career. As a Indie filmmaker, most of my films are made during the weekend. I just wouldn’t have enough juice to multi task.

Copenhagen is wonderful clubbing city. I recently came across a clubbing photographer whose photos made me miss the scene. Well……

check his pics here at http://www.r2cph.com/

One of the prime reasons for coming to India was to attend my beloved cousins wedding. Now I wanted to attend their party in some decent clothes packed away in my ‘lost’ luggage. And so, decided to hit the closest mall, Spencer plaza. That mall is the labyrinth of small shops and some big ones. I didn’t want to buy new clothes for myself as I was hoping for my baggage to get back to me at some point of time. It wouldn’t bother me a lot, since have an insured journey (the benefits of having a better half). It would bother me about my favorite clothes, they are what make’s me. It makes me the superman. Ever seen Clark Kent fly?

I then decided that my shopping would be basic. A local telephone number, Toothpaste, toothbrush, underwear, socks (footie’s) and a ‘decent’ shirt. Why just a shirt? There are going to be nothing less than a thousand people at the wedding party. And so that my lower half (grunge solid jeans and Adidas sneakers) would drown in the human pond, and will not be visible at all. Clever, ..yeah?

Obtaining a cell number was a breeze, even though the guy at the counter flipped every single page of my passport (I.D.), to read through the visas to all the countries I have visited.

The ‘decent’ shirt was a Wrangler cowboy checkered one. Hey, this is India, where a cotton or polyester shirt with no color restrictions, but tucked in your pants tied around the waist with a dark colored belt, defines ‘decency’.

The body shop had more useless attendants obstructing passage than customers. But one of them actually made and attempt, and just for the sake of that, I did buy an “Adidas Ice Dive” deodorant as well.

The shoe shops didn’t have a clue about footies, but the Nike store did have them, in the ladies section. The salesman simply refused to sell them to me warning me that those were ‘girl’ sock’s. Well, excuse me, mister salesman, I don’t want to know how you use the ‘European closet’ (w.c.), either. Oh btw, wet tissues from the body shop works wonders after a chillie dump.

Yet another ‘prepaid’ taxi takes me to the wedding party venue. Pure madness, and chaotic traffic at 7 pm, on a Sunday afternoon? I later found out (once again) that an Indian weekend is just one day, the Sunday, when people are out ‘shopping’. I regretted taking the front seat after seeing the reckless driving of just about everyone. The 20 minutes of driving felt like a ‘bee migration’, with the speed, chaos and honking. As we enter a narrow lane, stuffed broad with two cars, 2 motorcycles and pedestrians, I catch a glimpse of 2 children on a bicycle travelling at the same speed. As I watched closer, the kid who was riding was about 14 years in age with another kid aged about 11 on the back seat. The kid who rode the bicycle had just about fair control of what he was doing. The kid who was sitting on the back seat was in his own world. A mis-calculated obstacle can without doubt end their lives fatally. And yet, as I watch them in the safe comfort in my car, my heart in my mouth, these kids were living ‘just another day’- the value of life in India.

The wedding party was loads of fun, simply because my cousins are great fun. I decided not to be a ’Wrangler’, but instead wore the t-shirt I wore in the plane, which I had washed earlier. This trip was so important to me, just to remind me how beautiful Indian family relationships are. No, we do not shake hands or dodge fake kisses. Yes, we grab and pull and talk a lot. An Indian relationship has only two well marked lanes, a love lane and a hate lane. And that is a traffic you won’t mistake the turn.

The grand ceremony ended at my cousin’s parents place at around 2 am. The boys offered to drop me at my hotel. I saw lesser traffic but fatal traffic at that time of the night. It was like people have never seen open roads before. With no crossing controls, any miscalculation would end fatally.

Day 3,

One of my days plan was to fix my Nikon of its dusty mirror. Chennai had an authorized service centre, but now i have to find out where. And for that, i needed to find internet. Recalling from my memory from when i last was in Chennai 10 years ago, I walk it down to Alsa Mall at 10am and 40+ heat. The internet was faster than 10 years ago. Google maps printed out 4 pages of route map to the service center and I decided to walk it. Public transport?, Nah, not with the senseless rolling marquee with names of destinations longer than the actual distance to it. ‘Senseless’, is the word used in India only when it relates to ‘cost of things’. And in the case of rolling marquees on the public transport on the move, is pure ‘bling’. Taxis?, Nah, I’d rather be my own stupid by walking that heat.

And so, I take long strides over the 4 pages from Google maps. But one thing the maps could not teach me was on how to cross the street avoiding the mad traffic. A pedestrian-crossing seemed ‘utopia’, but with a little practice, I found the mantra to crossing Indian streets – “Risk it !”

I walk kilometers through normal Indian life, but I didn’t bother to indulge in one thing I love doing while in cities – taking pictures. What is it of Indian cities that I could take a picture, of that you have not already seen? The poverty, chaos, the madness, the nature, the colors, the celebrations, the festivals? Nope, nothing felt new to me. But one picture I really would like to have shot of, was the shrine on a Chevy.

Yup, you read me right. Car sales boom in a city without crossing control. This Chevrolet drove past me,  pimped out Bollywood-style and a shrine on the dashboard complete with floral garland, incense, and disco lights. I would have loved to send that picture to the designers of that car.

P.S. my lost baggage just arrived. This journey will continue….

I have been asked a couple of times on how i feel about the whole Mumbai-terror situation.
yes, my feelings about this situation are in reference and comparison with the place i now reside, a first world.  All the things i say might be non-patriotic to a resident Indian who knows no better. but anyway, here is my answer : i feel ashamed.

Ashamed, from the cause of the incident to the way it was tackled. The nation is now busy pointing fingers in all different directions but themselves. it was a shame that in spite of the threat and several successful terror attempts, the government ignored any security measure to prevent such an act. And when it happened, it was a shame to see that the people who were in charge of national security had no charge of the situation for nearly 3 days. It was a shame to call the elimination of the terrorists a ´success´ after the death toll of 175 lives.
Ashamed to see how the police of India operates with locals running around all over the scene of crime. Misinformed police constables guarding the scene with no practice, info or clue on how to react.
The so-called elite forces were the biggest joke of it all. The Indian men in black, a bullet proof vest and a primitive gun, no glove, no helmet!… i am pretty sure they still use – jai, bhajrang bali – as their war cry. so primitive!
A helicopter drop-off made the Bollywood nation skip a heart beat. “Wow, just like in Hollywood movies“. It was embarrassing to see the first soldier trip and fall on landing. All that stunt just to discover 5 dead bodies…shame.

the drop off

The terror target were not random places in Bombay. these were places frequented by western tourists, specially Leopold café and Taj Mahal hotel. the other spots were aimed to hurt the locals. Not any random Pakistani who just sailed in, can figure these places out. They have been there for a very long time. they took their sweet time to work out this plan while the Indians were blowing their own trumpet with a space program .. shame.

With all due respects to all those lost their lives and relatives and the injured, i hope that this is wake up call for India. But I’m pretty much sure that the state of affairs will continue unaltered in my life time.. shame.

Yesterday, as the default page of my web browser pops up, I was confronted by a message that never had been so full of power, especially from the front page of Google.dk. The google front page was all black as it was representing the Earth Hour campaign. I didn’t have to google ‘earth hour’ to find out what was going on, as I have had enough invitations on the Facebook to find out what it was all about.

Did I shut out the lights for an hour at 8 pm? ,  No!  Neither did I send moms and dads day cards, nor did I celebrate Halloweens and Valentines Day. I think I spread enough love to my parents once in month, give my girlfriend enough love daily and scare every one else every other day. Likewise, i don’t need ‘earth hour’ to switch off the electricity when not necessary – the PC being an exception. Don’t you people know how long a PC takes to start up, and just by the time its up and running, I have probably forgotten what I was about to surf.

Europe is gripped with this UH-HAH (yes, an Al Pacino expression) about environmental conservation, which I  think is so damn overrated. The whole CO2 issue, but wait a minute – What happened to the Ozone layer issue? Has it all patched up yet? I’m sorry I lost track of it all, will someone explain it to me?

I couldn’t help it as got lost in other campaigns like, save the rain forest, save whales, save the panda (are they still around?), save dolphins, save tigers, save elephants, save polar bears, save christiania, save ungdomshuset and the list goes on.

It is so damn easy to be an activist now a day, as all you need now is to join a Facebook group. Yes, you tell the world what you believe in or pretend to, but do fuck-all about it. No thanks; I have passed that chain letter a thousand times followed by remorse.

I’ll fly that jet plane to Amsterdam because I love holidays. I’ll buy that SUV when I can afford, because boys like big cars. I will drink canned beer at Roskilde festival as it reduces the risk of broken glass pieces on the ground. I’ll buy more electronic gadgets because I love them. And I still know how to conserve nature, environment and energy otherwise…. Want tips?

If I take a peek into my own telescope of retrospect, I see visions of American soldiers fighting the German soldiers with their strangely shaped helmets and screams Achtung Achtung! These were from a collection of black and white comic books which my uncle, a botanical professor, used to treasure back in India in 1975.
Now that I’m within hour’s flight to that nation where those comic book drawings were actual life, I decide to see it for myself using my Easter vacations.
As well suspected, the travel agency had booked us a hotel at the cleaner side of Berlin. So we decide to go bit further looking for traces of the history. Well, all we saw were new buildings, very unlike Europe. They say that 70 % of Berlin was destroyed during the war. True, but shouldn’t there be traces of it? Like dead tanks, airplanes watchtowers or buildings… none! Ok, then how about museums… hmm. So we head for the History of Berlin museum. 10 euros and we get to climb three stories of a building with history of Berlin from medieval times to present. 1932 to 1943, where the most of the gruesome but yet powerful part of the German history was compressed to a wall of one of the rooms of the museum. A room measuring less than 70sq meters in size.
The Holocaust museum. aah.. There should be something that I’m looking for, like the dungeons, cells, or tools used to torture. Hrmmm…. Well, you are still in Germany though, so one shouldn’t mention the war.
At the Holocaust museum, we spend half a day learning the history of the Jewish community in Germany…. WTF!!???…
The place did surely make me smarter by learning that Albert Einstein was a Jew and half the world still hates Jews. The latter conclusion was based upon an interesting opinion-survey-gadget located in the Holocaust museum. The question was “do you have a friend that hates Jews”. Now that is a politically corrected version of “do YOU hate Jews”. Now, all you had to do is press a discrete red or a green button. Astonishingly, in a Jewish museum surrounded by Jewish guests, the percentage of people who said YES was 46% and 54% said no. Assuming the fact that at least 30% of the people who voted “NO” had lied, I had to ask someone… “WHY?”
Now a few blocks away were the “guarded” remains of “The Wall”, because the rest of the wall has ended up in souvenir shops, at CHECKPOINT CHARLIE.
CHECKPOINT CHARLIE, another Mecca for tourists, is so extremely overrated. So overrated that I believe that ranting about it is a pure waste of time.
Now, I had spent almost a week in this concrete jungle searching for World War 2 traces, fuelled with DUINKIN DOUGHNUTS and STARBUCKS COFFEE, which apparently is at every street corner. But back at the hotel, TOM CRUISE and RENÉ ZELLWEGGER ware made to talk German in Jerry McGuire for German television. And not many television channels to opt from though.
The war might have been over, the surveillance equipments might have been put to rest, the control post might no longer exist, the city might have been cleaned of the blood and damage, but I could still hear the eerie whistle of German mind control. Mr Faulty make perfect sense to me when he mocks the German tourist by saying “but don’t mention the war”