Poem of the week: "Remorse" by Borges

It's time for another edition of Poem of the Week. I have been reading some more poems by Borges, and have realized two things:

1. The man writes about very somber, depressing stuff

2. He's a damn fine poet

Here's "Remorse":

Review - Sherlock Holmes: A game of shadows

I went to watch Sherlock Holmes 2 with some degree of enthusiasm. The inevitable "sequel letdown" phenomenon notwithstanding (Godfather 2 and the Star Wars sequels are some rare exceptions to this phenomenon), I was expecting a good performance by RDJ, whose portrayal of Holmes in the first film I thoroughly enjoyed.

However, I was disappointed by the movie, not because it is bad (in fact, it is an entertaining flick on the whole) but because it bills itself as something it is not. It purports to be a Sherlock Holmes movie, but apart from character names and very loose plot points, it does not resemble or faithfully represent any element of the original stories. The Holmes I grew up to enjoy and worship is a Holmes who solves cases by thinking. He listens to his clients and shuts himself up in his room, emerging only to use Watson as a sounding board. He does not like to leave his apartment and detests most forms of human contact, and engages in both of these activities only when absolutely necessary. Although an accomplished fighter, he never fights and I vaguely recall only two (maybe three) stories where he chases someone. To be fair, the first movie did away with a lot of these character traits mostly because of pragmatic and commercial concerns (a movie showing RDJ brooding on a divan playing shitty violin wouldn't be as fun, nor would it rake in half a billion dollars), and I understand that. When you make a movie, your primary goal is to broaden the audience for the story you are basing the movie on and make money.

Poem of the week

I may have mentioned somewhere on the blog that I don't read much poetry. I will read the occasional good poem I happen to stumble upon, but I don't systematically sit down with a collection of poems and blaze through them.

I am making a conscious effort to alter my reading habits and include more poetry. In the past, the barrier was always finding good poets. Recently I found out that one of my classmates here is an avid poetry reader, and a big fan of T.S. Eliot. I struck up a conversation with him and he recommended a few good collections. In fact, he lent me a copy of a collection of sonnets by Borges.

So here's the plan: as I go through these poems (and hopefully more in the future), I will copy one poem a week, and maybe say a few things about that poem.

Here's this week's poem:

Homestretch

Just like that, first semester of med school is almost over. Only histology stands in the way of unbridled bliss. This past week was a very typical exam week: dazed looks on people's faces as the clock raced toward midnight and beyond, the alarmingly nocturnal lifestyle most of us adopted, gleeful food runs to the cafeteria where we out competed one another in choosing the least healthy foods.

I really didn't study with other people in undergraduate, so I never got to experience the communal studying environment until now. And I like it a lot. It helps that all of us are taking the same classes and are going through the same sorts of problems in trying to learn/retain the material.

That's all I have to say for now. I need to go clean up the apartment and pack my bags for my trip back home for the break. No post about academics is complete without the cliched "I can't believe how fast time flies" sentiment. So there you have it: I can't believe I am done with first semester. Pretty crazy. 

Vladimir Putin is a man of many talents

Russian Prime Minister (and soon to be President again) Vladimir Putin is a man of many talents. A super master spy, martial arts expert, political manipulator, Siberian tiger hunter and so on. Add pianist and singer to that list. I spotted this youtube a while ago. Putin and other glitterati were attending a charity concert when he was invited to sing on stage. Epicness ensued:

Sunday saxophone

I am a huge fan of the saxophone (wish I could play it). It has a very soulful, evocative tone that stirs deep emotions and induces a blissful reverie. I could spend hours listening to the great John Coltrane on the sax.

Although the guitar doesn't usually match up to the sax in terms of depth (with a few exceptions - see Hotel California), the combination of these two wonderful instruments in famous rock songs has produced some very legendary tunes.

The first one is Pink Floyd's "Money". Apparently it is the only song with a 7/8 time, whatever the hell that means (I am ignorant when it comes to the theory of music). The guitar work is impressive, but it's the brief sax interlude that steals the thunder. Absolutely mesmerizing:



The Rolling Stones abused their fair share of guitars during their heyday to produce some classic tunes, and they also produced this kickass track with a very characteristic sax part. The sax in "Brown Sugar" is irreverent and flamboyant, much like the Stones themselves.



Finally, here is Bill Clinton playing a surprisingly good rendition of Elvis Presley's "Heartbreak Hotel" in 1992. Clinton, the young, charismatic governor of Arkansas, was running for the presidency and made an appearance on the Arsenio Hall show to woo the youth of the day. Look at him rock those stunner shades:

Updates from under the pile

My last post was more than a month and bucketfuls of optimism ago. Back then I believed I would be able to keep up with this on a very regular basis, both because it is relaxing to post stuff on this blog and because I thought I would have time to think of new and creative things to talk about. Like many times before, I was wrong.

I got buried under a pile of schoolwork. Anatomy (as I indicated in my previous posts) took up the most time. But of course I can't abandon this blog. So here are a few rapid fire updates of my non-spectacular life over the last month or so:

• One of the coolest things I learned in anatomy was the organization, function and innervation of muscles in the upper and lower limbs. While I knew the basic outline of the major muscles (biceps, triceps etc.), it was very neat to learn about the muscles that move the hand (wrist, thumbs, fingers). There are about 50 muscles in the upper limb, and an astonishing 28 of them work to move some part of the hand. Finer movements of the hand are very important to our day to day life and allow us to perform many amazing feats that other animals cannot (think about Hendrix plucking the string of a guitar or van Gogh painting one of his many masterpieces) These are movements you are not even conscious of performing. Like for instance, just now, I typed out a sentence of the laptop without even realizing I used, among others,(I am gonna show off a bit now) the lumbricals, abductor pollicis longus, opponens pollicis, and a whole bunch of flexors and extensors. 

•  I have taken up cubing. If you are going "huh?", cubing is a sport (any activity that has a word organization to regulate it is a sport) that involves solving the Rubik's cube (allegedly the best selling puzzle of all time, and the lazy film writer's prop of choice to depict nerddom).I was a bit into those cubes about 5-6 years ago and was able to solve them by following algorithms, but never really bothered to memorize them. Now I am determined to memorize the algorithms. Solving the cube is not that hard, really. The simplest method probably involves memorizing just about 6 algorithms. That's it. You could probably solve it in about 3 minutes with the simplest method. To get fast at it, now that's a whole different game. That takes amazing pattern recognition skills, very nimble fingers (there's those pesky muscles again!) and superhuman spatial skills. The world record currently is 5.66 seconds. People who can solve the cube in less than 25 seconds typically memorize about 60-80 algorithms. I am currently working on an intermediate method that involves only 15 algs. Will gradually progress to more advanced methods to improve my time. 

• A year ago, the Niners were the laughingstock. In a otherwise shitty NFC West, they were the champions of shit. They unceremoniously sacked their coach mid-season, (one of) their quarterbacks had a spectacular meltdown on the sidelines, and they looked like a cause very much lost. And look at them now. 8-1 and sitting at the top of the freakin' world. On the flip side, the Eagles were supposed to be legit superbowl contenders this season: a string of high-profile off-season acquisitions, an explosive quarterback aided by eager receivers, they had it all. They are 3-6 now, and will be incredibly lucky even to win a wild card spot. 

Finally, a word about this blog. I seriously intend to keep it going, and while I can't promise daily updates, I can promise this: I will post something substantial at least twice a week. Look out for at least one more post later this week.