Seattle South Asian Film Festival (ISAFF) - Opening Night

Life: There's an opening night celebration for the upcoming Seattle South Asian Film Festival. If its even half as good as the fundraiser we went to, it'll be a blast. More info including the ability to buy tickets is available at Ticket Window Online. Here's an excerpted blurb:

September 27, 2006
Wednesday at 7pm
at Broadway Performance Hall
1625 Broadway at Pine Street

ISAFF kicks off with an evening of film and performance art. Dynamic host and performer D’Lo makes her first appearance in Seattle.

Shorts including:

All Roads Lead to Here (Richie Mehta & Stuart A. McIntyre, Canada, 2005, 6min) In this visually and acoustically fascinating video, a tabla player and a beat-boxer face off.

Right Here, Right Now (Anand Gandhi, India, 2005, 29min)
In life everything is about PRESENT. What happens NOW is what matters. 17 locations, 7 languages, 25 characters covered in just 2 shots.

Lucky (Avie Luthra, South Africa, 2005, 20min, 35mm)
Veteran UK director Avie Luthra makes a sensitive short film about Lucky, a South African AIDS orphan who learns about life through an unlikely bond with a racist Indian woman. Award winning short film screened at over 50 international festivals.

Relax and socialize with hors d’oeuvres, wine, and music.

Review of Goddess for Hire by Sonia Singh

Book Review: One of the things that happens since I have no TV, is that I get desperate for reading material. I'll read anything, and unfortunately, I can be pretty lazy about seeking my reading material. Often this means chit lit from my wife's book club lingering on a night stand. Sometimes friends visit and leave books lying about. The latter is how I stumbled across this Beverly Hills 90210 like book called Goddess for Hire by Sonia Singh. Its kind of cute though, in an after school special sort of way (I wasn't always TV-less). On the whole, I'll say I was mildly entertained during my first exposure to the world of rich spoiled Indian girls in southern California. I think the plot's almost clever. Re: the book, here's a little factual blurb from the author's site:

"A hip chick from Newport Beach, California, who's just turned thirty, discovered she's the incarnation of the Hindu goddess Kali, and happens to be unemployed and still living with her parents. Saving the world, though, may prove to be a curry-scented breeze compared to dealing with her extended Indian family. In their eyes she isn't just the black sheep -- she's low-grade mutton.

To make matters worse, despite frequent and therapeutic bouts of shopping and Starbucks, and the mentoring of a Taco Bell-loving, Coca Cola-guzzling swami, Maya has trouble just surviving, thanks to the attentions of a Kali-hating fanatic and a matchmaking aunt hell-bent on finding her a nice Indian boy. Maya has no interest in boys. She wants a man and she may have found one.

On the whole, I'd give Goddess for Hire 2 1/2 stars out of 4. I grew tired of the formulaic writing, the contrived metaphors, and all the vacuous details, but alas, not enough to put it down. For those with alternate entertainment opportunities, perhaps you should drop a star, and read this much harsher critique. Here's a snippet:

Perhaps this is the stuff teens and 20-somethings love to read or maybe it’s the kind of book the Sex in the City crowd seeks out, full of ‘intelligent’ dialogue (usually taking place in the heroine’s head) and bed-hopping, alcohol-guzzling females who want it all (but only if the rich guy pays for it). For them, Singh has come up with a 300-page caricature of NRI and ABCD life - the sit-com version. The novel is even full of commercials for practically every commodity available on the market. This may have made sense if Goddess for Hire actually were a television show in which characters conspicuously work in sponsors’ products, a Coke here, a BMW there or a bag of Doritos lying on the table. But, why is this necessary in a book? Take the publisher’s blurb on the back cover - Starbucks, Taco Bell and Coca-Cola mentioned in just one sentence alone. Read the book and it’s hard to find a page that doesn’t sound like a commercial - Carl’s Jr., Budweiser, Tommy Bahama, IKEA, California Pizza Kitchen, Manolo, Pashmina, Dolce Gabbana, TiVo and Pepsi. To name just a few. It doesn’t stop with products- if an item has a earned a spot in the American popular culture hall of fame, it’s mentioned, from movie stars (of course, Julia Roberts) and famous LA streets to Hollywood blockbusters and syndicated TV shows. One can only guess at the purpose of this name-dropping or why it’s essential to the plot.

Review of Hey Nostradamus by Douglas Coupland

Book Review: I recently finished a fantastic novel by Douglas Coupland called Hey Nostradamus. On the whole, I give this 4 stars. Its extremely well written. The novel's structure, writing technique, tone, perspective, etc. are innovative, yet well done. I need to read more Coupland given the critic consensus indicates this is not one of his great books. For my Vancouver, BC readers, the setting on the North Shore reads familiar and adds an engaging intimacy to the reading experience.

I ran across an excellent review by Rick Kleffel that pretty much jives with my take. Here's a snippet:

Coupland displays some serious storytelling skill in this novel. It's told in four sections, reads for the most part like lightning, and covers a wide range of human emotions with genuine empathy and more than few laughs. Getting those laughs is a pretty big deal because the kind of horror Coupland uses as the inception of his novel is all-too-real and all-too-tragic. 'Hey Nostradamus!' begins in 1988 with a Columbine-style high-school massacre. That's the un-smooth stone dropped in the choppy lake of a typical suburban community.

Coupland follows four victims of the massacre, each at an increasing distance from the event itself. The horror is described first-hand by one of the deceased victims, Cheryl Anway. She's writing in the immediate aftermath from a very vague afterlife, addressing her thoughts to God. Coupland then jumps eleven years into the future to 1999, telling the story of Jason, who was secretly married to Cheryl shortly before the killings. Rootless, cast adrift, Jason has never really left Cheryl or the murders far behind. Coupland skips forward again, to 2002, to tell the story of Heather, who has tried to love Jason but is having a hard time of it. He finishes the story in 2003 with Reg, Jason's strictly religious father. Along the way faiths and lives are shattered and rebuilt, or simply dissolved into the next hesitant steps in a world that refuses to offer a helpful user's manual.

Keep that manual in mind. Coupland takes us on this tragic journey with perfectly pitched prose. He's funny when he wants to make the reader laugh and poignant when he wants to make the reader weep. Fortunately, he finds more room for laughter than for crying. For those who might find events of this nature too upsetting, his "post-crime" orientation is an excellent approach. While not playing down the horror, he doesn't focus on it. This is not the story of killers and cops. It's the story of victims and survivors, inherently positive though tinged with great tragedy. He manages the delicate and rather amazing feat of keeping the ugliness and tear-jerking aspects of the story off-screen rather handily. He's not quite dispassionate. It's more of a wry focus on the nitty-gritty of living ever after. Happiness is optional, but it's not an easy option to attain.

Singing with the Birds

Life, Bike: We spent this lovely sunny weekend camped out in my friend Timothy's tree house up in Bellingham. The kids had a blast being up high in the cedar tree. We also had a hoot splashing around in Camp Cody's new pond. Our friend made a cool filter system by taking some Home Depot PVC tubing and routing water through some rain barrels filled with gradually increasing sizes of rock. The water stays amazingly clean with no chlorine or chemicals whatsoever. I also had a blast riding up at Galbraith. This used to be my regular ride when I was living up in Bellingham. Wow, has it ever been upgraded for the "new" mountain biking. The climb is burlier than I remember - perhaps my city slack ways are the culprit, but the top now has tons of tricks and free ride planked and jumpy fun. I was a bit bummed I didn't bring any armor and had to "settle" for some tight perfect single track.

The Amazing Efficiency of the Washington State DMV

Life: Many of you might assume, based on the title of this post, that I'm going to proceed sarcastically discussing the many pitfalls of the DMV. The truth is quite the opposite. Like many Americans, I'm at times swayed by the stereotype of an all pervasive beauracratic and bumbling government sluggishness. Today, I must say, is the first day in as long as I can remember, that I have been absolutely stunned by government efficiency.

I went this morning to renew my drivers license. I brought with me a good book, and left early so I could make it to work at a reasonable hour. I assumed I would be one of many trapped in a kafka-esque process, so I figured I'd entertain myself with some great reading. On entering the building, the hundred or so people I saw immediately re-enforced my fears.

I followed a very small line; I pressed a little button that said what I was there for. A piece of paper shot out with my number. I sat down, and proceeded to read. I was annoyed by the continuous announcement of the next number being called. What kind of bumbling beauracracy can rip through customers at the rate of 1 every 30 seconds or so? Within a couple minutes my number was called. Less then 2 minutes later I was told my name would be called for my picture. And a couple minutes later it was, my snapshot was taken, and I was shushed out the door, new license in hand.

So I've been told this is all due to Gary Locke and his obsession with things not so controversial. Apparently, he took it upon himself to make the DMV efficient. Wow! It truly is.

Tasveer Fund Raiser - Seattle South Asian Film Festival

Life, Art, Movie Review: Saturday night we went to a lovely fundraiser for Tasveer. Ameen and I both hung artwork at the event to help raise funds for the upcoming South Asian Film Festival Tasveer is hosting here in Seattle. It was a fantastic event, and Tasveer is a very sweet and dedicated group.

They showed The Little Terrorist, a short film by Ashvin Kumar. This was such a beautiful film about a little boy who wanders across the India/Pakistan border while chasing his cricket ball. Another film was also shown, which was equally , if not more amazing than Kumar's film. Unfortunately I can't remember the title. But it was shot in Mumbai, and basically follows this chain of events; some events are negative, and spawn a negative chain across multiple characters, others are positive, and spawn a moving chain of positive events. And there was some intersection of the events. The film also had great high tempo music, bouncing camera freneticness (if that's a word), and interestingly -- I'm told the whole film was put together from two long shots. After writing this, a bit more is coming to me, I think the title is something about a red cherry blossom.

Ameen Dhillon at Gallery 6311 Tomorrow

Art: For those who missed Ameen's opening reception, she will be at Gallery 6311 tomorrow, Saturday August 26th, from 11AM to 5PM to answer any questions regarding her work. If you want to read a bit about how wonderful the opening was, you can go HERE.

Photos of Artwork from 2005 and 2006

Art: I finally got around to updating photos of my art for the past 8 months or so. You'll notice each time you come to the website the thumbnails in the header have a lot more variety. I've also prepared some slideshows for all my work; you can see them by clicking HERE for 2005 and HERE for 2006. Much of the work for 2005 was created while we were in India in November and December of last year. If you are interested, and haven't done so already, you can read more about this trip HERE.

TrackMeNot - I Think Not

Search, Tech: Perhaps these guys who created TrackMeNot were at SIG IR and heard the presentation by Daniel Frankowski I mentioned HERE. Frankowski showed that its not that hard to link public anonymized users with a private users-not-anonymized data set. Basically, things boil down to our novel searches are far more revealing than our non-novel (ordinary) searches; in other words, the sheep are difficult to identify, but the "independent types" are not. In addition, Frankowski explored whether burying novel actions inside of ordinary actions would decrease the possibility of identification. Apparently it does, but not as much as one would hope, and nonetheless, identification is still very possible. TrackMeNot tries anyway, by periodically issuing random queries to the big search engines from a Firefox browser. Cute idea, helps a bit, but not really going to solve this problem for society at large. As security experts like to say: obfuscation is not a security strategy.

AOL data entertainment

Search, Misc: AOL released about 3 months of anonymized user traffic last week. They quickly retracted the data after facing a massive backlash, including, but not limited to significant hacker attacks. The data is still out there, and searchable at: http://www.aolsearchdatabase.com/ . The data is fascinating from a sociological/psychological standpoint. A fun little game is to search for some keywords of interest, then click on a user id for any interesting results; you are presented with a list of all queries that user performed over the 3 month time horizon. If you find any interesting user ids, send them our way.

This seems to be a popular past time on the web. Slate is running an article titled The records of AOL customer No. 16006693 - user 16006693. Here is the user trail:

16006693 nak
16006693 nack
16006693 sharona
16006693 knack
16006693 knack downloads
16006693 oakrige boys
16006693 oakridge boys
16006693 oakridge boys downloads free
16006693 jokes about dick cheney
16006693 jokes about dick cheney but not george bush
16006693 dick cheney creep
16006693 dick cheney dickhead
16006693 rummy dickhead
16006693 where is iraq
16006693 where is lebenon
16006693 his bullets
16006693 his bullies
16006693 shiits
16006693 shee-ites
16006693 bush appruval
16006693 bush approvel
16006693 bush drops below
16006693 dead reporters
16006693 dead reporters fotos
16006693 dead reporters pix
16006693 disembowled reporters pix
16006693 disembowled new york times
16006693 love thine enemas
16006693 love thine enemies
16006693 bible quote of the day
16006693 insperation from bible
16006693 george bush great president
16006693 george w bush great president
16006693 dream on
16006693 oakridge boys lyrics dream on
16006693 how to run country
16006693 how to run country when not really inerested
16006693 people to run country for you
16006693 over work
16006693 overwork
16006693 stress
16006693 best place to retire
16006693 places like crawford but without cindy sheehan
16006693 crawford the town not cindy crawford
16006693 crawford tx
16006693 like crawford tx but not so hot
16006693 best places to retire not hot
16006693 best places to retire global warming
16006693 global warming mith
16006693 global warming myth
16006693 crawford hot
16006693 cindy crawford hot
16006693 rice hot
16006693 rice hot not recipes
16006693 rice naked
16006693 rice nude
16006693 bible quotes resisting temptation
16006693 oakridge boys i'll be true to you
16006693 oakridge boys trying to love two women
16006693 rice and beans
16006693 tex mex
16006693 tex mex not music
16006693 tex mex takeout
16006693 tex mex takeout dc
16006693 heart burn
16006693 heartburn

Lemonade for 50 Cents

Life: The other day Nayan set up a lemonade stand in front of the house. We all had a blast learning the basic tenets of capitalism. At the end of the day, courtesy of all our lovely neighbors that played along so well, Nayan earned 7.80$, just enough to buy himself a power rangers action figure.

Ameen Dhillon - Opening at Gallery 6311

Art, Life: Last night we had a blast at Ameen's opening at Gallery 6311 in Ballard. There was a large steady stream of people throughout the show. Lots of folks milling about and asking all types of art and artist questions.

The feedback for Ameen's new work was extremely positive. Its also particularly exciting to hear from people who have never seen her work. And of course, its always nice when paintings sell. Both of us joke that we want to move this pile of art out of the studio -- we've got way too much art and need it out of our lives so we can make more. Fortunately, last night was a great step toward this vision. Ameen sold 9 pieces at the close of the reception!

The show is up till September 7th and Ameen will be in the gallery in a couple weeks for those who missed the opening but want to chat. Click HERE to see photos from the opening as well as many paintings that are in the show.

Another Day at the Beach

Life: Here are a few pictures from the other day at the beach. I found a great little trail by our house that drops right down onto a beach between Carkeek Park and North Beach.

SIG IR 2006

Search, Life, Tech: I just got back from a whirlwind few days at SIG IR. SIG IR is a rather academic conference on information retrieval that is renowned for having rejected PageRank. Here's a funny little tid bit:

"In a confirmation of what I had heard anecdotally, Brin and Page recount how their research paper on the link ranking feature now known as PageRank was rejected by the SIGIR conference as ‘‘disjointed’’ and ‘‘not IR’’ enough. (It would be interesting to find out who the reviewers were!) In hindsight, one can make a good case that the implementation of Web linking with anchor text was one of the major advances in Web search. Brin and Page’s subsequent paper describing this work (Brin & Page, 1998) has become one of the most cited papers in information retrieval. For those interested, see CiteSeer, ISI Web of Science, and Google Scholar for the citation counts. So, for the legions of researchers who have had papers rejected from SIGIR, take heart!"

Despite this, the sorely lacking keynote speakers, and the monotonous delivery of many a speaker (why oh why can't CS departments across our lovely planet make these PhD students take How-To-Give-A-Speach-101), I still had a great time, and heard some good talks. My favorite was at the closing session by Daniel Frankowski titled You Are What You Say: Privacy Risks of Public Mentions. Basically he showed that its not that hard to link public anonymized users with a private users-not-anonymized data set. This is something especially timely given the AOL public search data release.

Ameen's Artist Statement

Art: I mentioned Ameen's upcoming show at Gallery 6311 HERE. I've since been asked about where it is and a bit more about the show. I've included Ameen's artist statement below. The reception is Saturday, August 12, 6-10 P.M. at 6311 24th NW Seattle, WA - 98107 in Ballard. Hope to see you all there!

Ameen's Artist Statement:

At the end of 2005 my husband Deep and I packed up our 2 kids, Nayan and Ananya for a six week trip to Punjab, the north Indian state where both of our families originate. Deep was born in Madison, and I was born in Victoria. We’ve both travelled to India several times. The focus of this trip was to simply spend time with family, and for Deep and I to paint.

We lived with our cousins on their farm just outside the city of Jallandhar and went to town every day to our Masi’s (maternal aunt’s) house to draw, paint, photograph and absorb Jallandhar. Masi’s rooftop became our temporary studio.

When I begin a new body of work I am never sure what direction it will take. My previous paintings began with either colorful silk fabrics, family photos, or found papers randomly collaged. Perhaps the chaos of Jallandhar itself directed the calmness and loneliness in these paintings.

I have always been interested in everyday street scenes; our drive into the city every morning and the view from Masi’s roof are immedietly inspiring. The city itself and our families' ancestral villages are my focus -- the “raidee’s,” or street vendor’s carts, which offer everything from fruits and vegetables to parrot pundits that predict your future -- pastel painted concrete houses enclosed behind ornate iron gates and fences -- rooftops cluttered with water tanks, television antennae, electrical wires, drying laundry, folding cots and patio chairs -- fading yellow ochre walls with cerulean blue padlocked doors belonging to families long gone abroad -- fresh strings of peppers and a solitary lemon hung every saturday morning to protect against the evil eye. Welcome to Jallandhar.

Democratic Dorkiness

Politics: One of the reasons the democrats are losers in so many left leaning eyes is their bizarre grandstanding that is so GOPesque in style and substance. Why on earth do real democrats care that the Iraqi Prime Minister calls Israel an aggressor given that it is attacking indiscriminately en masse right now in a far disproportionate manner than it was attacked? Here's a passage from the CSM:

... US Democrats are calling for a boycott of the speech to Congress Wednesday by Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki after he recently denounced Israel's raids on Lebanon and Gaza. Last week Mr. Malaiki said it was time for "the world to take quick stands to stop the Israeli aggression." Maliki has also refrained from giving his opinion about Hizbullah.

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi of California said unless Maliki "disavows his critical comments of Israel and condemns terrorism, it is inappropriate to honor him with a joint meeting of Congress."

What on earth does this mean? Condemn terrorism? He does that everyday. Maliki has virtually the same opinion, if not one even more tame, than Kofi Annan. This is an obvious and calculated ploy to make Republicans look bad to their base.

While we're chatting about todays events -- I have some friends in the military who state it is very unlikely that a targetting mistake is made. An errant missile, that's possible, but selection of targets is checked, and re-checked, and checked again. I highly doubt the US didn't deliberately hit the Chinese embassy back during the Kosovo campaign, and I highly doubt the Israeli's didn't hit the UN on purpose. For what reason, I don't know. The Israeli's are hardly in love with the UN.

Al Gore's Movie: An Inconvenient Truth

Movie Review: We saw the new Al Gore movie last night. I admit, I am in a similar category to most folks I know - I believe global warming is happening, that it is bad, and that I can't really do too much about it. I highly recommend this movie, not only does Gore paint an undeniable reality, but it is truly shocking. And what is more shocking, is that society is not far more shocked given the looming disasters. I was really moved, and feel compelled to action, but have no idea what to do. Recycling and driving less just don't seem to cut it.

I'm also one of those people who assumed Gore was a wooden robot who inspired a bit too much to be president; I was, however, moved by Gore's passion and steadfast persistence on this issue despite becomed mocked as "Ozone Man" by our lovely leader of mass cranial prowess. Here's a classic quote from W on the campaign trail in 2000: "This guy is so far out in the environmental extreme, we'll be up to our neck in owls and outta work for every American."

The website referenced in the movie is: http://www.climatecrisis.net/.

Paradise Lost by Robert Fisk on Lebanon

Politics : An absolutely moving article about the destruction of Lebanon I encourage everyone to read by Robert Fisk called Paradise Lost in The Independent. Here's a rather large snippet:

For 30 years, I've watched this place die and then rise from the grave and then die again, its apartment blocks pitted with so many bullets they looked like Irish lace, its people massacring each other.

I lived here through 15 years of civil war that took 150,000 lives, and two Israeli invasions and years of Israeli bombardments that cost the lives of a further 20,000 of its people. I have seen them armless, legless, headless, knifed, bombed and splashed across the walls of houses. Yet they are a fine, educated, moral people whose generosity amazes every foreigner, whose gentleness puts any Westerner to shame, and whose suffering we almost always ignore.

They look like us, the people of Beirut. They have light-coloured skin and speak beautiful English and French. They travel the world. Their women are gorgeous and their food exquisite. But what are we saying of their fate today as the Israelis - in some of their cruellest attacks on this city and the surrounding countryside - tear them from their homes, bomb them on river bridges, cut them off from food and water and electricity? We say that they started this latest war, and we compare their appalling casualties - 240 in all of Lebanon by last night - with Israel's 24 dead, as if the figures are the same.

And then, most disgraceful of all, we leave the Lebanese to their fate like a diseased people and spend our time evacuating our precious foreigners while tut-tutting about Israel's "disproportionate" response to the capture of its soldiers by Hizbollah.

I walked through the deserted city centre of Beirut yesterday and it reminded more than ever of a film lot, a place of dreams too beautiful to last, a phoenix from the ashes of civil war whose plumage was so brightly coloured that it blinded its own people. This part of the city - once a Dresden of ruins - was rebuilt by Rafiq Hariri, the prime minister who was murdered scarcely a mile away on 14 February last year.

The wreckage of that bomb blast, an awful precursor to the present war in which his inheritance is being vandalised by the Israelis, still stands beside the Mediterranean, waiting for the last UN investigator to look for clues to the assassination - an investigator who has long ago abandoned this besieged city for the safety of Cyprus.

At the empty Etoile restaurant - best snails and cappuccino in Beirut, where Hariri once dined Jacques Chirac - I sat on the pavement and watched the parliamentary guard still patrolling the faade of the French-built emporium that houses what is left of Lebanon's democracy. So many of these streets were built by Parisians under the French mandate and they have been exquisitely restored, their mock Arabian doorways bejewelled with marble Roman columns dug from the ancient Via Maxima a few metres away.

Hariri loved this place and, taking Chirac for a beer one day, he caught sight of me sitting at a table. "Ah Robert, come over here," he roared and then turned to Chirac like a cat that was about to eat a canary. "I want to introduce you, Jacques, to the reporter who said I couldn't rebuild Beirut!"

And now it is being un-built. The Martyr Rafiq Hariri International Airport has been attacked three times by the Israelis, its glistening halls and shopping malls vibrating to the missiles that thunder into the runways and fuel depots. Hariri's wonderful transnational highway viaduct has been broken by Israeli bombers. Most of his motorway bridges have been destroyed. The Roman-style lighthouse has been smashed by a missile from an Apache helicopter. Only this small jewel of a restaurant in the centre of Beirut has been spared. So far.

Ameen's Show is Coming Up

Art, Life: Ameen's show is coming up for those who don't know. The reception will be Saturday, August 12, 6-10 P.M. at Gallery 6311. Her paintings are amazing and the show will consist of entirely new work. The images are primarily street scenes from our recent trip to Punjab. Mark it on your calendars!

Whistler Fun

Life: We just got back late Sunday night from a fun week up at Whistler. It was so nice to spend a week just lounging and mountain biking. I was thrilled to be able to take my new bike out for a week of bonding. Nayan had a blast too - usually he misses home, and mentions it a few times when we're away. Not once did he mention home, and when it was time for us to leave, he started crying. I also spent some days with Nayan in the mini bike park near the skate park. He had a blast. There's a bunch of dirt mound rollers that he would ride up and over and occassionally fall, and cry. I'd suggest perhaps they were too big, and he'd say between sobs, "but they're too fun, I can't stop..." On one occassion, I turned around and he was staring down a 10 foot wall that drops into a half pipe. I pointed at him and ordered him to get down. Next thing I know, he took the only slightly less crazy route, and wound up flying through the air and landing on his face in a pile of boulders. I realized my perspective as a father is so different on bike crashes - more fear, less laughing. Turned out he bounced up like a rubber band and while wailing that he never wants to ride his bike again, was able to ride home fine with no scars lasting more than a couple hours.