A sight for sore eyes

I was shocked this morning to see NYC streets not painted in the harsh yellow of cabs.....but instead large colorful flowers!! I thought I was going mad till I saw 100's of these colorful cabs. I googled to arrive at the following: -
http://www.portraitsofhope.org/git/about_git.php

Portrait of Hope's non-profit program - "Garden in transit" is a large community art project underway in Manhattan.

"As part of this groundbreaking motivational art, education, and creative therapy project, thousands of kids in schools, hospitals, and community institutions are painting vibrant flowers -- symbolizing joy, life, beauty, and inspiration -- on adhesive weatherproof panels that will be applied to the hoods, trunks and/or roofs of thousands of New York City taxis. Beginning in September 2007 and until year's end, New York City will be visually transformed, as the ubiquitous yellow icon becomes a mobile artistic canvas or -- "Garden in Transit.""

I think this is uber-cool. Cheers to this amazing idea...
-Amrita

Only in NYC....

...do stores have DJs playing loud music. I was amazed at this spectacle last weekend at the AX store in SoHo. The DJ was fantastic and the created ambience was so peppy that you wanted to buy everything in the shop. Good ploy!

subway cheer

Seen/Heard in subway stations in New York city yesterday....a Monday! The day when the mood levels of New York City are at a precariously impatient high.

~ * ~

Subway conductor announcement on the 4 train heading downtown....

"The next stop is City Hall. The time is 10:45 a.m. Have a lovely day. And
remember, no matter what the destination, happiness is the way!"

The whole car erupted into giggles and wide grins :o)

~ * ~

At the 57th St NRQW station -

On the station super's whiteboard, there was pleasant image of birds over mountains and rivers. And scribbled in the center was - "Smile! Have a great day! :o) "

~ * ~

It was a rainy Monday. There is this pair of African-American old men, who frequent the 1-2-3 subway line. Every time it's raining in the city, they go from car to car and sing a lovely little acoustic bee-bop number. Their act is complete with finger clicking, heel tapping, Ray Charles-y fanfare. Love them!! So needless to say, they made an appearance yesterday....couldn't have been better timing.

~ * ~

Wassup wassup? Movies!

You know the feeling when you keep piling up things to do and nothing gets done? That's the way I've been feeling about blogging over the last month or so. I have so many stories to recite from my trip to India and life in general....that I keep thinking that I'll sit down one day and just post them. But it just hasnt happened. So what the fuck...I'm just going to blog anyway cos I'm missing it. I'll slip in all my stories now and then. Cheers!

I saw Blood Diamond today. What a movie?! Action packed - Moving - Well shot - Beautiful people - Excellent acting. It covers the story of lives destroyed during the war over conflict diamonds in Africa. I wont reveal the story here of course...no worries. I did learn a new acronym though - TIA (This is Africa) - very negative feeling. (I'm trying to keep away from ranting about that issue)

Anyway, back to the movie...I've had a crush on Leo DiCaprio since...well...Titanic. Now, now, stop shaking your heads. I was in high school and completely entitled to fall in love with him then ;-) So the crush continued over the years and Leo has vindicated me. You can see his amazing acting in movies like Catch me if you can, The Aviator, The Departed and now Blood Diamon. I reckon he'll win an Oscar this year! :-D The other beautiful people in the movie were Jennifer Connelly and Djimon Hounsou. So quite an excellent movie to watch on a Tuesday night ;-) heh.

Other movies that I caught up on - all Indian of course as I'm still on a 'des' induced appetite.
- Guru - Abhishek Bacchan and Mani Ratnam - great piece of work!
- Salaam e Ishq - Too long but funny and Govinda was hot!
- Nayagan - as part of a Mani Ratnam movie bonanza
- Roja (for the 20th time) - ditto.

So yeah. Movies, friends and work - that's what I've been upto since I came back. The weeks are melting away and it's already time to say goodbye to January 2007. Jeeez!

I did break the jinx and finally visited a New York museum! :-) I went to the Museum of Natural History and also saw an IMAX movie there. This one was called 'Roving Mars'. My favorite though will always be 'Grand Canyon - The Hidden Secrets'. That one's just amazing.

Think I've rambled enough for now. I'll be back again...with stories and pictures this time.
Cheers...and happy hump day.
Love,
-Amrita

It snowed today

In Manhattan....and it actually collected on the streets! :-)

I woke up to a really dark day. I couldnt figure out why it was still so dark considering it was 6 a.m. I looked out the window to see tiny snowflakes falling and the street covered in a thin sheet of whiteness. That made my day.

A little later, I could see the snow coming down hard. So I opened up my window to catch a few flakes and the wind blew a few hundred flakes in. I giggled. It was beautiful. Have you ever stuck your tongue out to catch a flake? Try it...It's the most childlike experience you could have.

(And yes, I'm back. I'll post a few pictures and give you all my stories hopefully soon)

Music to rise to:
The Strokes - "You only live once"
The Strokes - "Razorblade"
Shamur - "Gonna make it"
Ustad Sultan Khan - "Leja Leja Re"
Atif Aslam - "Mahiya Ve Soniya"

Love,
-Amrita

Doused

Little anecdote to share with you...

It had been raining in NYC for the most of last week...with Thursday night turning into a full fledged storm! The rain is beautiful and nice and all that....but the charm is lost in the wind tunnels of New York. All you care about at that time is to hang on to your already tattered umbrella. You're soaking wet, but still that umbrella is like your ray of hope.

I was really happy to wake up to a dry, bright and sunny morning on Friday. I got ready to go to work and made my way to the subway station as usual. I was walking happily down a street when I'm suddenly blinded by a shower of some liquid. My first reaction was fear...cos it wasnt raining, I wasnt close to a puddle that a car might have run through...this was some alien source. I couldnt even open my eyes for a good 10 seconds cos the 'liquid' was spraying into my eyes. I ran to the other side of the road in order to figure out what the hell was going on. Everyone else was walking along as normal...and I had a secondary universe feeling.

....Then around the corner comes a guy holding a freaking huge hose pipe...cleaning the sidewalk!!! The wind had caught the water jet and sprayed me with it!!! I was mad at the guy for 0.1 second...but it really wasnt his fault. And I was really just releived that it was only water! :)

All I could think of after that was Murphy.....
"If anything simply cannot go wrong, it will anyway."
...seriously the bastard ruins my life everytime! Jeez.

Stay dry,
-Amrita

Inspi(red)

No, this is not another commercial for the RED campaign. Though I should probably have a post about that soon. This post is about a normal human being like you and me being inspired enough to run 26.2 miles on a chilly New York City day.

On Sunday, Nov 5th...37000+ people from all over the world ran the ING New York City marathon. Excluding the professional and elite runners, you still have at least 30000 regular people. This is just astounding to me. The sheer level of commitment and determination it takes for a non-runner to train and run 26.2 miles at a stretch is just mind boggling.

Coming back to the marathon story. I volunteered this year and was assigned to the Family Reunion unit. So I was part of the team that received the runners as they exited Central Park and helped them find transportation and their families. It was a great experience. The high fives and the exhausted smiles...I'll never forget it. I must have chanted "Congratulations, Great job done!" and "Felicitations" at least a 1000 times. In turn, a lot of the runners gave me hugs and said "no, no...thank you!". Such happiness!! My cheeks hurt from smiling all day. :-)

A lot of runners ran for causes like cancer research etc (like one of my good friends). So it made the hard work totally worth it for them.

Now i'm Inspired to pound some asphalt baby!

Dont feed the flamingoes!!

:-) More awesome photographs from the Chihuly Glass Art installation at the New York Botanical Garden here

LIC Art Tour//The Departed//The Killers

Hello Hello Hello!

Another weekend's ended and the cold winter is rolling in. This weekend was beautiful Fall weather though. I completely enjoyed it :-) I did some new things...like taking a studio art tour in Long Island City (LIC), going to bed early on Friday night (12 am...GASP!) etc. Here's the lowdown...

LIC Art Tour

The Queens Museum of Art has the Queens International 2006 exhibition going on right now. As part of the festival, they'd organized a free bus tour this Saturday to various artists' studios. All these artists have their work featured at the QMA. So we went to Long Island City and visited 10-15 studios and chatted with the artists. Most of the studios we visited were inside the 5Pointz building (pic below). This building was covered in graffiti...inside and out! Just mind blowing. The artists we met were all extremely nice and it was great to see their work up close. A very unique experience indeed :-)


The 5Pointz building. I never could guess that this sketchy looking building housed great artists!!

Here's an amazing painting by Debra Hampton.

More pictures here. Check it out.

The Departed

What a movie?! Completely badass! The language leaves nothing to the imagination of course. It's awesome! This movie justifies my crush on Leonardo Di Caprio since I was 16. His acting is perfect and he looks totally hot. Matt Damon was his usual sauve character...pretty good. And Jack Nicholson...Jack Jack Jack....mad....100% insane. What acting?!!!

Go see it! Fuckin A movie. ...oh.....and the music was great! ;-) A unique number was celtic mixed with rock.


The Killers

I finally purchased Sam's Town last week and i've been Hooked!! On first hear I wasnt impressed at all....but it's caught on...and I cant stop listening to it. Am sooo excited about the upcoming concert on 25th. So it's going to be only The Killers for the next 10 days!! Album review will be up on itsamusicaljourney soon.

Songs of the Day:

- "Black Hole Sun" by Soundgarden
- "When you were Young" by The Killers
- "Uncle Jonny" by The Killers
- "Bones" by The Killers
- "So sick" by Ne-Yo
- "Sexy Love" by Ne-Yo

Cheers to a good week. Dreaminess,
-Amrita