Travel in US/S.Korea

The Toronto public library system is a network of 60 libraries. The Lillian H. Smith library near our University in Chinatown has an excellent book collection. I am a avid book reader . These are the books i have read for 2008:

The Origin of the Young God: Kalidasa's Kumarasambhava (Paperback)
by Hank Heifetz (Translator)

One of the best classics. I still dont know how i stumbled upon it. Fortunately, it was available here.Many Tamilians may not be aware of this Kalidasa's Magnum opus.
Very small book with only 192 pages but the poems were FIRST CLASS. Its as good as our love classics like Ahanaanooru.

The Interior Landscape: Love Poems from a Classical Tamil Anthology, 1967
Translated by A.K.Ramanujam

Selected poems from Kurunthokai. Most poems were very short. Until now, this is the BEST set of poems i have ever read in my life. In spite of 1500 years difference,i can very clearly relate to the feelings of the protagonists in each poem.

Pillars of earth by Ken Follett

One day while i was browsing through the fiction category, the librarian asked politely if i need any help. I told about my search for history novels and she introduced me to another librarian who was well verse in this subject. While discussing with him,i asked his suggestion for novels on old english history with fiction interwined and he prescribed this one.
It was excellent.

Everything's eventual: A collection of 14 short stories
by Stephen King

1408 an adaptation from this anthology was released as a a film in 2007. I am not much into Stephen King. To be frank,i had seen only one movie based on his novel, the dreamcatchers. I have never read any novel. After seeing it in DVD, i wanted to see why people make such as fuss about this novel. WEll, it was fantastic. All the stories were excellent and my particular favorite was Riding the bullet followed by
The Man in the Black Suit. After this, i saw movies like IT and The mist, both were excellent thrillers. 1408, the movie sucked compared to the short story with the ending different.

Duma Key
by Stephen King

Finished it in one week, with 100 odd pages each day as i had to get this book from 1 week loan section. Average.

The Tommyknockers
by Stephen King

CLASSIC

Trading places:the East India company & Asia
by Anthony Farrigton
A small book with lots of illustrations,it gives a concise history with many tidbits which were very new to me. Especially, it spanned the Dutch east indies and how there was an international settlement with merchants doing business from all parts of the world including Tamilians and how initially the british had nothing worthy in their hand to trade!!! TRUE..

The Winter Queen
by Boris Akunin

I keep hearing of Akunin and his Erast Fandorin series. As i am die hard fanatic of European royalty history especially the 19th century Russia, i was curious to know more. I decided to go for his first novel as a test. I loved it. He has a peculiar sense of humour. The translation did not dilute the excitement of the original. Actually,i never realised it was a translation at all...Fandorin may not be your cool action hero but he is intelligent like Holmes.

Imperial Legend: The Mysterious Disappearance of Tsar Alexander I by Alexis S. Troubetzkoy

While surfing the web randomly as usual googling for Imperial Russia history,i came across a tidbit of Emperor Alexander's mystery death. This piqued my interest and while further googling i got so many interesting results that i went berserk. Immediatley,i put this book on reserve. This book is very interesting in that, it also had the FULL history of Alexander's life especially the relationship with his father, mad emperor PAUL.
So many juicy trivia about the Russian imperial family....

Good book but only for those guys really into imperial russian history.



Hellblazer
by Alan moore

Average. If u have seen KEanu Reeve's Constantine, then you will know how much diffeerent is he from the real constantine in Hellblazer. Reeves was the WORST choice to play this role. Alan moore's constantine is darker.

SIN CITY
by Frank Miller

My alltime Personal favotite movie after Badboys2.
Who can forget MArv and Nancy and Miho and JAckieboy?

Vol:1 The Hard Goodbye
Mickey Rourke was cooler than the original comics Marv. In comics, he is REAL ugly and violent whereas Rourke was a lovable rascal. Jessica Alba was SEXIER than the nude comics nancy!!

Vol:2 A dame to kill for

This is gonna be in the Sin city 2. Ava - the manipulative and nymphomaniac bitch would have suited Angelina Jolie. But, grapevine is that she didint take the role. I dunno who can do better justice than her to this role?

My apartment balcony. 8 AM..



************ Click all images to get Hi-Res photos ********

The green lawn was carpeted by fine layer of snow.
The swimming pool shown in the middle was closed long back in september.

Soon people will rent the private garage in the building basement for 50$ per month lease.

I was shaking out of control by the time i was snapping the third. The rest were rendered useless for the same reason.


To put more color in this dull winter,i tried to add more color in my blog interface.
Is the red and oriental fonts make it snazzy??

Desi Tamil Maridass Post doc fellow pdf S.Dakota Sioux + Falls Snow S.Korea Midwest Travel

Hurrhaaaah - i got my paper published in Macromolecular Research





What do i get?
Maris ordered Mexican Tortilla with chicken especially for me...(As a coauthor i fished out 7.5$ for my share:-))

A group of vietnamese students had fun lastfortnight for seeing off thier friend back to home. At midnight, they went to the toppest building in our campus and shot some snaps in their digicam. its an low end camera but these guys knew how to tweak it manual settings and for night effect they cjanged the exposure. Lo and behold!! a seemingly vvv ordinary campus transformed into a FANTASTIC location in thier hands.When one of this guy in our lab had this as his desktop pic,i was surprised to see the local landmarks. i got all the snaps and i post a couple of them here..

********Click the photos for Hi-Res images *******



The Univ. logo in front of the ENGLISH ONLY SPEAKING zone.
The building is uniqe. Its a dorm for Koreans where foriegn English teachers also have their quarters. No KOREAN language here.

The university library No.2..

Dorm..with the Cafeteria as entrance..

All the background buildings are outside the campus. They wer eunder construction when i arrived here. Now, all of them are occupied..

College of Engineering

More to come later.............