Life of Pi – The movie

Long time ago, I remember reading the book “Life of Pi” and being thoroughly impressed by it. I don’t think I ever thought that some one would venture to make a movie out of it and that too it will turn out this good.  In my experience, there are only few movies that I could say the movies surpasses the books they are based on and I am more than willing to accept Life of Pi is one of them.

The book in case one has not read, is the story of a boy named Pi who for some reason  gets stuck on a boat with a Bengal tiger in the middle of the pacific ocean, how he managed to reach the land and the bonding he made with that tiger forms the rest of the story. I loved the book for it offered different perspective on life, on the life of animals at zoo and the funny narratives about how the boy was named Pi Patel while the rest of the family had normal Indian names.

The movie has gone a few steps beyond and I loved the way they have added Irfan Khan’s character (playing the adult Pi Patel) as a wrapper to the whole story. The narrative is amazing and the photography is mind blowing. I must admit parts of the movie were too real for my taste, but that’s the way the book is written. Every single actor is in their true elements. The ying and yang with father and mother playing the head and the heart roles is brought out really nice. In short it is a master piece and is worth the time.

To describe my own experience of watching the movie, after a hard day on Saturday. I was pretty tired and wanted to sleep off but on insistence of Sandhya (who had seen it before) I sat to watch the movie saying to myself that I would watch for just half hour and then sleep, but little did I know that I would be so engrossed and occupied with the movie that I sat through the whole movie of nearly 2 hrs and few mins. Keep in mind, I have read the book and I know the ending and there is no suspense element involved in the movie for me. 

ps: I should have caught this movie in an IMAX theater but as luck shall have it I saw it at the comfort of my home.

The magic of Disney

Sometime in May 2013 my company announced a mandatory week long shut down during the July 4th weekend. I was confused as to what to do for a whole week and where to head to and Sandhya suggested Disney world, Orlando. We deliberated for a few minutes and decided to head there for 4 days with 2 days extra for travel. I am glad I did this, at the end of 4 days, none of us wanted to come back and had to literally drag our feet to the airport to return to Austin. 

In my stay in US, I have been to several theme parks (couple of six flags, couple of sea world’s, Hollywood studios and also the Disney Land LA) and before we reached there my impression was this place probably is a mix of Hollywood studios and Sixflags. I was wrong, it was as the name said a magical place. It is probably the one and only theme park that I felt, I wish I had more time to spend here.

As the title of the blog goes we spent more than half of our time in Magic kingdom and the other half was split between Disney Hollywood studios Disney Animal kingdom. My 2 and a half year old was thrilled to meet the characters of Disney like the princesses, fairies, the Mickey the Minnie and Buzz and Woody. She also had a lot of fun dancing in the street parties and also watching the shows. In short she had a blast and so did we. 

One thing to admire Disney is their transportation logistics. To reach magic kingdom we had to go drive the car, raid a tram and then ride a mono rail. All of which was well manned and was very very efficient. I remember coming back one night after the fire works (~10:30PM) and the place was really crowded but it didn’t take us more than 15 mins to reach our cars and the drive out of the parking lot was also real smooth and no congestion what so ever. Considering the scale of operation they have in Disney world, makes me wonder how many people and contractors and temporary workers they need to employ for a smooth operation of the place. Their fast pass system also deserves some appreciation, if utilized properly can save a lot of time (Keep in mind they have fast passes for most but not all shows and rides).

The one and only crib I have about Disney is their lack of good food inside the park. They have lot of ice-cream shops but 1 or 2 burger places and 1 or 2 restaurants which typically have a wait time of 45mins or so. If you are a vegetarian like me then the options reduce drastically.      

One piece of advice, if you consider a Disney vacation then do not spend the extra money on options like park hopping and all, from my experience it was a useless thing for we did not have time or energy to jump from park to park.   

I can’t end the blog post without mentioning a word about the FL weather, the months from May to October is what they call the hurricane season and out of the 5 days we were there we had rain on 4 days. The rains won’t last too long but are pretty intense while they last. So, if you are there buy a poncho and keep moving. Also, pick a rainless night and watch the fireworks from magic kingdom and the show right before that (can’t remember the name).

In the end there is no denial it is an expensive vacation, it is a place where you will spend a lot of money on stuff toys and plush toys and all such stuff. Not to exclude the flight tickets, park tickets, the stay and so on but a worthy visit.