The Lost Symbol (Dan Brown) review

I have been a fan of Dan Brown since my first read of a novel authored by him. It was his best seller, “The Da Vinci Code”. But that was another day. When I picked up The Lost Symbol, I thought I knew what to expect, but I was in for a little surprise; as, I am sure, most avid readers of Dan Brown would be.

Dan Brown, in this book – as in all others – did not take much time to break the ice. A phone call to Professor Robert Langdon, from a very good friend, in the wee hours of morning starts the story. It takes the reader on a trip which is – to mention in the mildest of words – highly entertaining and culturally enrishing. It is also classical Dan Brown at his best. I would like to reiterate my admiration for the man. He has such an acute knowledge of occult symbology and even modern sciences that it sometimes becomes difficult to distinguish the real profession of the man.

The fast paced action that has been delivered in his most recent book at times takes your breath away. At several points in the book, the action comes in so thick and fast that you cannot wait to turn the page and find out what happens next. Along with some serious action and adventure, there is also a grandeous tour of Washington D.C, the capital of the United States of America; and more specifically, its Capitol building. For those people who have visited Washington D.C; on one hand, the book serves to clearly visualize the plot taking place in various parts of the city. On the other hand, it brings forward some very arcane information which might be utilized on the next trip there, to witness and experience the city’s grandeur.

Although the book trills to the core throughout most of the storyline; I personally felt that Dan Brown lost the plot towards the end. If it was rattling gunfire through the initial 250 pages, one would expect a mega blast in the last 50. However, it turned out to be a damp squib. The fag end of the book resembles more of symbology and occult lecture notes than a fiction novel.

I would still recommend this as a must read for all those waiting to satiate their thirst for a good action thriller book. For all those Dan Brown fans, read up and find out whether it is really the last adventure Professor Robert Langdon is involved in!!!

My Rating for The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown:
***1/2 (out of 5)

Please note that the views expressed here are solely my own and might differ from countless others who might read the book.

Liverpool v Hull City (EPL)

Five wins on the trot in all competitions for Liverpool and the fans were really looking forward to this game. The opponents were Phil Brown’s Hull City who are languishing near the bottom of the Premier League. Die hard fans will remember that Hull was one of the teams last season to leave Anfield with a draw. Not this time though. Fernando Torres, one of the most feared strikers in Europe got stuck into them and made them pay for every penny invested by Liverpool in him.
To see the goals scored in the game, click here.
(Videos courtesy: Empire of the Kop. Check out the website at: http://www.empireofthekop.com/)

The scoreline though, does not do justice to Hull City. Hull were pretty much in the game up until about the 50th minute. It was after this point that the fans got to witness complete domination by Liverpool. Goal#1 came up on the stroke of minute 12. How Fernando Torres got the ball into the back of the net from that acute an angle, only he can tell, but it nearly defied the laws of physics. Football is a funny game. It turns around when you least expect it and Hull got their equaliser immediately afterwards from a mistake by the Liverpool defence. Skrtel failed to clear effectively, leading to a simple shot from 12 yards out for Geovanni. Geovanni has been the most impressive of Hull players last season and continues to show the same form.

The third goal came from a very high pressure build up by Liverpool. Benayoun passed the ball to Torres within the 18 yard box and El Nino beat 2 defenders and the keeper to make it 2-1 for the Kops. What’s more, Torres’ third goal was even better. Beating one defender and scoring through the legs of the second defender. After this, it was pretty much a strategy of damage control for Hull, but they could not manage to stop the Reds. Rafa Benitez took of Torres and Gerrard, but not before Gerrard had scored a spectacular goal from long range. It looked like he was making a pass into the box, but the ball swirled high and floated to the back post and landed in the back of the net thanks to a defection from the keeper. 4-1 and more misery for Hull.

But, it was not to end here. Ryan Babel and Andriy Voronin (both subs) provided a real spark up front and a wonderful Dirk Kuyt ball into the box allowed Babel to get free of the defender and score the 5th for Liverpool. The sixth too did not take too much time coming and a lucky deflection off Babel leaped over the Hull keeper and into the net.

The match ended this way and ensured a convincing win for the Reds,. However, their weaknesses at the back were exposed again. Hull were not able to take advantage of the defensive frailties, but a better side might make the Reds pay dearly for such errors. With the Champions league game against Fiorentina coming up midweek, Rafa Benitez will again have to sit and decide on a strategy to create a balance between attack and defence. Maybe it is time, he changes the marking from regional to man-to-man for set pieces. Who knows, we might actually get to see that in the days to come…..

Till the next game, and the next post about the match review, I remain, a die-hard Liverpool fan

District 9 Review

We have all seen Sci-Fi movies involving aliens and whats more we are all used to seeing aliens attacking earth and destroying it and killing most of its population barring a few who then terminate the aliens. On the other hand, we have seen alien movies where the alien is a friendly being with special powers and helps some earthling. When I sat down to watch District 9, I expected more of the old themes. This movie though, is slightly, if not entirely different.

The start of the movie is kind of drab and not really what you expect to see in a movie which carries aliens. Where the plot differs though, is that the aliens here have been show as creatures more humane and vulnerable; quite similar to us. The story starts with an alien ship getting stranded in the earth’s atmosphere. Yes, you heard it right!!! Stranded. They did not come here to invade our planet. The aliens are brought out of their hiding hole (the spaceship) and moved out into an area called as District-9, which is basically an alien colony).

The plot revolves around this guy (Van Der Merve) who works with a corporation called as MNU and he has been handed the ownership of relocating the aliens to a new colony designed specifically for them. It is during this process that he ingests some alien stuff which starts transforming him into the alien kind. The stuff he had consumed gets confiscated from him. It also comes to light that he can use alien weaponry and just about when he’s about to be dissected in the bio-lab, he escapes. He runs and hides. Guess where? District-9 of course.

Here starts the journey to find a way to change back for our central character. He discovers that the aliens (two of them; one fully grown and a kid) have made enough fuel (the stuff he ingested) to start their spaceship and head back home. They also tell him that they can help change him back. He strikes a deal to get them the fuel to start their ship in exchange for being transformed back.

A very unlikely villain is an army commander who will leave no stone unturned to see our guy captured or even killed. Another group comes into the picture; a set of Nigerian drug-lords who want to get alien powers to use the biological weapons brought along by their kind. Stuck between these 2 parties, our guy leads us through a period of intense action to the end of the movie.

All in all, a movie which can be seen once. There some cool gadgets on display and not too much action. There is a lot of filth and some gruesome scenes. Make sure you do not take your kids along to this one. A pretty detailed storyline, but somehow i don’t see this movie creating any major ripples in the box office.

My rating: **1/2 (out of a maximum 5).

Jaipur diary – Day 1

Its been quite a while since I decided to travel anywhere. So, when my cousin said he wanted to visit North India, it did not take me much time to plan out an itinerary for Jaipur and Agra which would take about 4 days of travel. However, considering the time constraints, we had to give up on the Agra portion of our itinerary.

We were supposed to start our journey on the night of 17th and reach our hotel somewhere around 1 AM on the 18th. However, by the time we checked into our hotel, we could clearly see daylight on horizon. I started at around 8:30 PM to pick up my cousin who was supposed to arrive from Dubai at the Delhi international airport. The plan was to pick him up and head off to Jaipur directly. However, in a spur of the moment decision, we decided to stop over at my place in Gurgaon. This would give us time to pick up some soda and also give me a chance to show him my place.

By the time we were done in Gurgaon, it was 11:30 PM. We also managed to pick up some really delicious food from Karim’s in sector-14. We stopped along the way to catch a cup of tea somewhere around 1:00 AM (this was the time we were supposed to check-in into our hotel :-D). A warm cup of tea later, we started again.

We were in for a shocker some way down the road. Our driver almost fell asleep. This was when we decided to make another stop so that he could catch a quick nap. In meantime, we (me and my cousin) sat together for another cup of boiling hot tea, We struck up an interesting conversation and did not realize when another hour had passed. But when we did realize, we woke up our driver and started off again towards Jaipur.

Finally, at 5:00 AM we checked in to our hotel. We continued our stimulating conversation till 7:00 AM and when finally when we were too tired to talk, we went off to sleep. We slept like logs till 2:00 PM.

Our hotel was not every roomy or spacious for an old haveli (Umaid Mahal). However, the beds were really comfortable and we had our own private balcony. We woke up, glanced around thinking about what we should do and ordered tea. Sipping tea sitting on the balcony was just cool.

It was then that we decided to get ready and head off to Chokhi Dhani village. The welcome that they give there is a very traditional one. They apply a “tika” to your forehead and sprinkle rice grains and some flowers over your head. There are several things going on in there. There are ladies doing a traditional Rajasthani dance, a magician, folks playing rajasthani music, camel & horse rides and also a bullock cart ride. We also managed to get into the resort and have a look around. The place is really marvellous and the architect of the place needs to be complimented.

The place is just right to take your kids for an evening of fun and entertainment. At Chokhi Dhani, the entry fee is INR 300 per head and it includes a rajasthani dinner / buffet. We decided to go for the dinner served in a traditional manner wherein we sit on carpets laid out on the floor. The authentic Rajasthani food was so good and the service was so wonderful that we left the place really impressed.

This spelt an end to day-1 of our tour.

CL Review: Liverpool v Debreceni

MatchDay-1 (although I still dont understand why they call it day-1 when it is day-2) saw Liverpool host Debreceni VSC (the Hungarian champions) at Anfield. There were some other really promising matches lined up as well, but we will not cover them here.

After a pretty poor start to the new Premier League season, Liverpool have been able to prevent their campaign from stuttering and sliding any further by winning 2 matches back to back. Fans were hoping that they would continue the same scoring form that sa3w them slot 4 past Burnley the past weekend.

The match started with Liverpool clearly looking to dominate from the start. However, in the first quarter of the match there were hardly any chances worth mentioning. It was pretty even-stevens and Debreceni gave a pretty good account of themselves by stifling the Liverpool midfield. The match starting gaining in momentum after about 20 minutes with Liverpool starting to attack on a continued basis and exploiting gaps in the Debreceni midfield. There was a period from the 30-35 minutes when it was all Debreceni and they created a couple of decent chances. However, this spell ended fairly quickly.

Liverpool though, it seemed that left their scoring boots hanging back at home. They managed to score only in time added on (in the first half) and that too through a rebound off the Debreceni keeper after Fernando Torres’ shot was parried. Dirk Kuyt was there to slide the ball home and give Liverpool the edge at half time.

Debreceni started the second half in menacing fashion and looked ready to take the game to Liverpool. But, again it was a case of weathering the storm for Liverpool and they came down to dominating possession after about 10 minutes. The second half saw more chances being created by the home team, but somehow they were never able to take any advantage of those chances.

The game ended 1-0 for a mighty relieved Liverpool and their supporters. You could see that the fans were disappointed from the lack of goals. Debreceni will be happy to go home conceding just one goal at Anfield and will look to better their performance when these two teams meet up again on matchday-5.

Liverpool have to find the goal scoring form that saw them dominate every opponent at the fag end of last season. The player that most impressed in this match (and has made me eat my words) is Lucas, He partnered Steven Gerrard in midfield and was a really instrumental in creating a lot of chances that saw the Merseysiders almost score.

Its back to the drawing board for Rafa Benitez to try and figure out how they can improve on their performance yesterday, when they travel to Italy on September 29th to face a highly rated Fiorentina team.

To read the review for Besiktas v ManUtd click here

To read the review for Inter v Barcelona click here

Match review: Liverpool v Burnley

Liverpool have had a poor start to their campaign this season, losing 2 out of their first 4 games; which included a 3-1 loss at home to Aston Villa. There was tremendous pressure on the players,  and more so on Rafa to show that he and his team has the mettle to carry on and win the premiership that they so nearly won last season.Everyone was looking forward to how Liverpool would play this game.

The Liverpool lineup was missing the ever so reliable Mascherano who sustained an injury while on international duty for Argentina. That aside, the Liverpool lineup was more or less the same as the last game. As I had mentioned, all the teams Liverpool have played against this season have made it a point to man mark Stevie G and El Nino. Burnley however, were in for a surprise. Rafa moved Stevie into a more deeper midfield role and let Torres play as the central striker. However, he moved Lucas back into a defensive midfield position and allowed Yossi Benayoun, Dirk Kuyt and Albert Riera a free role wherein they could dictate the terms of the game.

This did not become apparent immediately, but it showed within a few minutes, and as it turns out, was an absolutely brilliant move from Rafa. Leave out the starting 5 minutes of the game,  and you will see that the remaining 85 minutes were completely dominated by Liverpool. Aided by the freedom given to them; Benayoun, Kuyt and Riera were able to play the free flowing game that we are so used to seeing from Liverpool. This also allowed Stevie to move in quickly into attacking positions and cause a problem to the Burnley defence.

Burnley are by no means pushovers, and you can see that from the way they handled ManUtd and Everton. However, they do have to improve their away form if they want to keep competing in the big league. Paterson was the player who impressed the most for Burnley. However, in the end they did not have anything more than a couple of shots on goal to show for their efforts.

Yossi Benayoun was the player of the day getting a hat-trick, which is a personal milestone for him. He has been in inspirational form this season and all we can hope is that he continues in this vein. Rafa is a good manager and fairly good at reading situations. However, if he desires to win the premiership, then he will have to keep conjuring up such strategies, enabling a more fluid Liverpool game. Only the coming days will tell whether Liverpool and Rafa rise upto the challenge that is the Premiership. Till then Liverpool and all their supporters can bask in the glory of another 4-0 drubbing.

In other makor games over the weekend;

ManUtd 3 – 1 Spurs

Man City 4 – 2 Arsenal