The most easiest way I pass time is by watching movies and loads of movies. Am a movie buff and language is no barrier(i prefer movies with english subtitles though). Being alone, not really alone I have a roomie who is almost occupied with his net browsing activities, and with access to a pretty fast wireless internet connection, I get access to loads and loads of free movies.
I must apologize or not sure if I need to, for I watch movies on the internet and not in theatres. But of course expecting to watch an English movie in prague is as tough as getting vegetarian food in czech as well, it is near to impossible. If I just stretch that comparison a bit more, what you get is a localised version of vegetarian food, and hence a dubbed version of english movies.( I hate them unless they are dubbed to Tamil, the dialogues make them funny).
Ethics apart, this is one trip where I have watched more movies in a week than I have ever done in my entire life. My movie library is fully loaded, a pretty fast laptop with my headphones on and the explorer/ firefox browser on, I have a virtual shopping mall filled with movies. I do not wish to disclose the names of the sites on which I watch movies(being truly loyal to my service provider :) ), but it is just amazing how these sites manage to have the latest movies on the very same day or the next day, loaded in their sites. It was also amazing and extremely pleasing, as a user, to know that these sites even provide us guidance on the quality of the print ( classification such as low quality, DV camcoder quality, DVD quality, HD ready and what not), a brief synopsis of the movie, the genre to which it belongs to, the cast, the director, the year and so on. Loads of efforts go into maintaining such sites. It is funny and silly to find disclaimer in one corner or bottom of these sites which state that " This site is perfectly legal. We discourage users from uploading illegal content. We are in no way responsible for any content that users may upload" and so on. Lets get real, a site which provides free access to movies giving such a disclaimer only goes to show how honest they are :)
Back to the movie maniac that iam slowly becoming. I got the opportunity to catchup with couple of excellent movies by Akira Kurosawa (hidden fortress and yojimbo), couple of excellent ones by guy ritchie( revolver and rock n rolla), the ever green carry on series of movies, latest english flicks and latest tamil and hindi flicks too.
No wonder, I hardly find time to write reviews of the movies that I watch, the primary and possibly the only reason being that all the time that I get, apart from work, I spend in watching movies(of course time spent on catchup with family back home is excluded, something we call as sunk in relevant costing terms, accountants may appreciate it).
It was quite a feeling to be watching these movies, sitting alone, staring at my laptop screen, no one to disturbing you, and of course the inability to share your thoughts on the movie is there, but by then the next movie starts :)
Just wanted to scribble something in MS as soon as this amazing feeling struck my mind.
Carry on watching should I say!!!
