And the Nobel goes to.....

How ironic, a few months back I came across the name Orhan Pamuk, read up a little on the Turkish writer, mostly about the Armenian genocide controversy and decided to pick up snow, for this is what the economist review had to say about it " The novel is an account of the tensions between Turkey's urban secularist elite and their long-derided (and vastly underestimated) Islamic-minded opponents. It is also a tragic love story, a thriller and, more broadly, a dark journey into familiar Pamuk territory: faith, identity, betrayal and solitude”. Having never read any of his works, I did not know what to expect and to be honest, the book was good, but that’s about it, so many writers around the globe write good books, but for it to be an extraordinary piece of literature it has to be special, something which you read time and again. Last night watching the news, I heard that Pamuk has been awarded the Nobel Prize in literature, which came as a surprise. I do not know what the ground rules for the prize are, but when it says "for literature" I am inclined to think it does stand for some extraordinary literary achievement. Pamuk's work does not justify his being awarded the prize, again to reiterate I have read only one of his books, but going through his bio on his personal site, I did not see any of his books having caused a major impact anywhere. On the other hand Pamuk has been an activist promoting the Kurdish cause, free speech and has spoken up against Turkish ultra-nationalism which is great but then my question is why is he being awarded the prize in "literature"??
Politics lays the ground rules for everything in this world and the Nobel prize is no exception,,,, how ironic is it that the French Parliament passed a law today that denying the Armenian genocide is a crime!
To conclude i do not know if the Genocide happened or not, if it did, then i think what pamuk/european governments are doing is justified and i admire pamuk for being outspoken in championing the Kurdish cause and speaking his mind out, but i honestly do not think he deserved the prize in literature because there are far more deserving candidates whose works were probably not even given a look!

But then again what do I know!

Small town life...!!

Its been 10 yrs for me in the land of snow and beavers (no pun intended):-)....Canada that is, to be more precise, its been 10 yrs for me in Fredericton, New Brunswick. Bet you have never heard of it, unless of course you are an erudite geographer. I did live in other cities because of job requirements but on the longest span of time spent in one city list, Fredericton comes in second for me after Bombay aka Mumbai where I spent my first 18 yrs. Coming from a city of 16 million or so to a town of 50,000 was a big change, I mean even villages in India have more people and here we have a capital city with 50,000 people out of which almost 10,000 are university students, so essentially i should say 40,000.Initially I thought it would be hard to adjust, not so much culturally but more so on the thought of adjusting to life in a place with more trees than people:-).But as time went by I think not only have i adjusted, but I don’t think i would be able to live in a big city anymore. Here are some of the advantages/disadvantages of small town life. Let’s start with the negatives (also i am being specific to Fredericton here, not trying to generalize; other small towns may have a distinctly different flavour to them)
1. Not a lot of 24 hr joints esp. eateries(we have 2 in town, for those who fancy a drink, most bars close at 1:00 am on weekdays,2:00 am on weekends, but most food places shutdown before midnight), also on public holidays nothing is open, the town is practically a ghost town.
Well that’s pretty much it actually, not more i can think of on the negative side.
On the positive side,
1. Get to breathe clean air, pollution is virtually non existent
2. No traffic jams, no overcrowded malls, movie theatres, though bars are packed most weekends
3.For a small town its definitely a technologically advanced town, practically all of freddy falls under the free wifi zone
4.Its safe to walk out on the streets even in the middle of the night, crime is virtually non existent, i think that’s more so because its definitely a white collared town, with only the provincial government and the university being the major entities.
The list of positives is definitely longer, but i have a meeting to attend, so have to run but yes small town life is not all that bad:-)