My useful links

Designing Logos using Photoshop:

http://www.garysimon.net/logotutorial/

Food chronicles

Some of the food items we had eaten in the past with our ratings for each of them:

	Mango Mousse Cake Location: Chez Alice Gourmet Cafe & Bakery Princeton, NJ www.chezalicecafe.com Rating: 4.5
	Almond Croissant Location:Wegmanns Foods Rating: 4
	Chocolate Croissant Location:Wegmanns Foods Rating: 4
	Cinnamon Raisin Bagel Twist Location: Dunkin Donuts Rating: 1 (very chewy)
	Our breakfast @ Panera Bread Jalapeño cheese Bagel, Chocolate Pastry, Veggie CreamCheese (top left) Everything Bagel, Veggie Cream cheese (bottom) Hot Chai Latte (right)
	Maui Punch Location: California Pizza Kitchen Rating: 4
	IKEA desserts Left: Almond cake with chocolate and butterscotch pieces (Rating 4) Right: Swedish princess cake : Cream cake with raspberry jam and vanilla custard filling covered with pink marzipan (Rating 2) Location: IKEA Conshohocken, PA
	Baklava Location: Cedars Cafe, Malvern, PA Rating: 3
	Chocolate hazelnut tart   Location: Starbucks, Exton, PA Rating: 4
	Hot Panini veggie sandwich   Location: Starbucks, Exton, PA Rating: 4
	Chocolate Lava meltdown Location: Coldstone Creamery, King of Prussia mall, PA Rating: 4
	Chocolate truffle cake  Location: Hot breads, Exton, PA
	Mediterranean Focaccia bread served with Olive oil Location: California Pizza kitchen, King of Prussia mall, PA Rating: 4
	Grilled Vegetable sandwich on herb cheese focaccia bread and Tortilla soup Location: California Pizza kitchen, King of Prussia mall, PA Rating: 4
	Grilled Vegetable sandwich on herb onion focaccia bread and Smashed Pea and Barley soup Location: California Pizza kitchen, King of Prussia mall, PA Rating: 4

Contemporary Indian Cinema - a Critic's view

Most of the people in India know, but consciously ignore the fact that Indian movies are more commercial than creative. In India, movies are the most sought after means for entertainment, one of the major hobbies, one of the major industries, one of the major discussion topics in social gatherings and one of the most preferable and affordable weekend get away for the poor and middle class - which probably constitutes at least 20% of the world cinema audience.

The Indian movie casting still follows mostly a hereditary monarchy as the leading roles are mostly cast to the sons, daughters and relatives of the previous generation of movie stars, irrespective of their education and acting talent and thus eliminating the need for a fair audition. It appears as if the directors of some movies don't seem to care much about the justification of the characters, the wording in the scripts or the context of the story. Some south Indian movies portray strong violence and feudalism, and the hero of the movie is usually more powerful and violent than any other person or character in the movie and acquires inexplicable strength brought in by the Hollywood stunt technology.

Bollywood as the name suggests, imitate western hip and pop culture with stories either inspired or copied from Hollywood or other movies. The music is adulterated with western music. It's probably time for the movie directors to take a pause and think if filming songs is really a tradition worth to be followed in every movie? In what way does it make sense to show a song in a foreign country as soon as the chemistry builds between the hero and heroine in the story?

Majority of the Indian movies showcase - the immaturity of the directors and over-dramatic actors in entertaining the audience, their incompetency in both inventing and adopting the technology, their lack of creativity, their non-sensible stories, their plagiarism, their willful exaggeration of emotions and sentiments - both religious and non-religious, their unrealistic fights and not-so-thrilling special effects. I wonder how much of a film strip or electronic media had been or being expended on these countless commercial movies with just the intent to earn cash from all classes of Indian society and NRIs. We could probably use that money on roads and infrastructure.

True entertainment motivates, educates, thrills, awes and brings laughter to the audience. Very few movies in India have attempted to do this and have given way to the talented and budding movie staff. But again, movies are made for people, aren't they ?? !!