I have been reading, I have been playing Grand Theft Auto 3<\/b> every night until 1 AM. Vineet comes in pretty late from the office, and I have to stay awake to open the door when the bell rings. ( Abhishek is getting married, so he’s leaving. Vineet’s moving in with us ) Or maybe I just love the game too much. GTA2 rocked, but the view ( topside) was a bummer. GTA3 takes the same concept a little further. You’re a goon who has to rise up the crime ladder by working on “missions” for different gangs. The missions are wacky – supplying fresh (female) meat to a police ball, escorting a Mafia hitman as he goes about extracting protection money from laundry shops( and later, whacking laundry trucks, when they refuse<\/i> to pay.) delivering a rival gang’s hitman to the car-crusher. I have completed 7 out of 75 missions, so a long, long way to go, pardner.<\/p>\n
I have also discovered that Enter The Matrix: the game<\/i> does not play on my system. It requires a graphics card. Wish-list updated accordingly. The latest Tomb Raider<\/i> game makes Lara look real cute!!!!!<\/p>\n
Finished reading Neil Gaiman\/Terry Pratchett’s Good Omens<\/i> and Jamyang Norbu’s “The Mandala of Sherlock Holmes”. Both pretty much red-heat reads. <\/p>\n
Good Omens: Really<\/i> funny ( as the reviewer says “it reads like heaven, and you will laugh like hell ) Pokes fun at God, the Voice of God, the Antichrist, angels, assorted dukes of Hell, the four Horsemen of the apocalypse, publishing trends of the sixteenth century, witch-hunting, Atlanteans, Tibetans, and other strange species ( which includes “Americans”) The book is all about the End of the World, the big row on Meggido, only that the End comes from a small village in England named Lower Tadfield, where a boy named Adam Young lives with his family and a dog (very imaginatively) named Dog. The latter happens to be a hell-hound (who’s tempted from his duties by dogly desires, chief among them being chasing cats. ) And Adam, of course, is the Antichrist. <\/p>\n
There are times when the humour gets repetitive, especially in the conversations among the kids, all precocious and William-like, something I thought went out of style in the 1950’s. <\/p>\n
Mandala of Sherlock Holmes: Bought this quite sometime back, Vasu did a Mandala on it for 2 ( or was it 3?) months. ( note: To do a Mandala<\/i> – To abscond with unread book for undefined period of time. ) Highpoints: faithful reinterpretation of Sigerson’s exploits in Thibet and India, ably narrated by Hurree Chatterjee, MA, FRCS, OBE. Quaint language, major attention to details, especially aspects of Tibetan history and mythology. Low points: 10 pages of the book were blank!!!<\/font> Just when the story starts getting interesting…..something wrong with the publication. And yes, the climax requires you to stretch your imagination quite a bit.<\/p>\n Google is getting interesting, day by day. Led me here<\/a><\/b>. Among other things ( ahem), this contains Neal Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon<\/b>, which I had been looking for in the first place. Couple of Umberto Eco books, Clifford Stoll’s The Cuckoo’s Egg<\/b>, and a number of assorted oddities. Worth a look.<\/p>\n