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All in a day's work !

Today’s story
Jigs n reels – Joanne Harris
The best thing about the stories in the book are the short notes just before the stories – words telling you the inspiration behind each story.

The first story “Faith and Hope go shopping” is about 2 elderly ladies who escape from an old age home to fulfill their long-standing-utterly-wild-dreams , i.e to buy ‘Lolita’ and a pair of designer shoes. One’s bound to a wheelchair and the other is blind !

I’m in the 5th story in which a set of classmates from a magic school decide to meet after 25 years. The main protagonist arrives earlier than the rest.
She sees her friends arrive one by one – everyone, the hated and the loved alike, she observed had been practicing magic – one had become famous amongst the gliterrati, another had a shop, another was consulting..and so on. She’s afraid because, she is the only one who’s been out of touch and has lost her magic. As she keeps hoping that none would question her about it, the worst thing happens – someone asks her to perform the simplest of magic – lighting a candle !

Has a book caught your eye at the very first sight ? There are some books like that – a mere look at the book and you stop ! It is as though your instinct tells you – ‘here it is .. something that you’d love’. That’s how I found Jigs and Reels that too not at Barnes and Noble, not at the King’s library that I frequent, not in places where I could go and hope to find something of that kind, but at Costo !

Today’s movie
Mystic River.
All I knew was that it was an oscar winner! Which/who/when ? don’t remember ! I left quizzing long ago and don’t tend to remember facts well enough now.
The cover came from blockbuster a couple of days back but none of the guys seemed interested to see it. Saturday evening – K’d gone out to play, N’d gone to library, J’d gone out, T was playing Tennis in his laptop and I was sitting idly. Here we go – Mystic River.
The movie was a gem !
The best character that I’d like was that of Jimmy Markum.
There is this scene in which Jimmy rushes to see his daughter’s body and is held by the cops. As he struggles with the cops, the camera focuses on his face , you could see the broken heart, the deep anguish of losing someone whom you love most. Slowly the camera is pulled away and taken to the top. Here you see the crowd from the top – as though you were God watching the spectacle from high above, the cops in black and Jimmy in white struggling to getaway from them.
Who is this actor? Who is Jimmy Markum ? I wanted to know his name. I waited till the movie got over to get the name. Sean Penn. Sean Penn ? Madonna’s ex-H ? Gosh ! Is this how he looks like ? It was like knowing someone for long but not knowing him by face.

Today’s poem
“They flee from me, that sometime did me seek” - Thomas Wyatt
Just when I thought that I’d cast of my fickle-romantic-I’ll-fall-in-love-any-moment self and was becoming more tougher, more practical and normal, I found this audio book and am back into the old mood again. Back to that one year in Chennai when I had the most romantic people I’ve met, with me.
Classic Hundred All-Time Favorite Poems is a great collection. It’s got the best poems I’ve read. All of my favourite Donne and Shakespeare poems.
I’ve saved the poems into my ipod. Though I play it through the whole journey from home to office and back, I listen only while walking since I read something while in train. Can mind do 2 things at a time? Or is the subconscious listening to the songs while the conscious is reading the story ?
Wyatt ! the name inspires me ! Remember ‘Wyatt Oils’ in Atlas Shrugged ?
The title made me expect something else – something on the lines of ‘when to the sessions of sweet silent thought’ by Shakespeare. Thought it was about friends going away and someone reminiscing. In a way yes ! But it’s about a lover. I’d say it is more about the ‘hunter being hunted’ !!

Today’s work
Think of some questions to interview a couple of people tomorrow. duh !
Why do people know lesser and lesser and talk more and more nowadays ? Why are increasing number of people becoming better at managing / being shrewd / finding opportunities to take advantage of someone / playing politics / … than doing some actual work ? Or is it just that my circle of interaction has changed and am still the same ?
Digression ! What’s the question in the mind at this moment ?
Java - Say you land upon an object at runtime. Can you determine the class of the object? Can you determine its superclass or the interface(s) that the class implements? Can you determine its methods or attributes or their access modifiers ? Can you determine its constructors ? Can you create a new instance of this class? Simply speaking, can you get into the mind of the object and make it ‘reflect’ ?
A programmer is an investigator of truth.

UML – Is a class diagram static or dynamic ? How do you represent a class in a CD? What do the 3 boxes contain? How do you differentiate between members with different access modifiers? How do you represent an abstract class or interface ? how do you show association/aggregation/generalization? How do you represent one to many / many to many relationships ?
A designer is an artist .. of beauty.

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