New Avenues for Security Check

The whole world now knows that a heavily armed lone gunman in Aurora, Colorado, went to the opening show of the new Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises. And, as soon as the movie started, he opened fire in the dark at the audience. In just a few minutes, he shot more than 70 people. 12 killed and 59 wounded (many of them critically). The newspaper reports say he was a PhD student. Huh!

Within minutes, after a 911 call, 200 police officers surrounded the area and he was captured alive. They are interrogating him. President Obama has ordered the U.S. Flags to fly half mast for 5 days throughout the world, as a mark of respect for the victims.

My question is where security checks would crop up again.

Before 9/11, we can go up to the gate in the airport to see off our relatives/friends. I even remember going inside a plane to talk to my wife for a minute when she was going on vacation to India. Can we go near the departure gate now? No way. So many kinds of security checks. Remove your belt. Remove your gold. Separately place your laptop. Remove your shoes. In some cases, remove your underwear (after the underwear bomber).

We recently visited India. We took train from New Delhi to Chennai. There was a security check at the New Delhi Railway Station. We had to hassle to get our baggage to board our train.

After this movie incident, should we create a thorough security check for the following places? Thorough means like airport or military style and personnel from anti terrorist squad doing their job.

Movie Theaters?

Offices? Government and Private?

Temples? Popular and not so popular.

Schools?

Colleges?

Restaurants?

Bus?

And, Finally

Your own home? Noooo. Not there.

These are only a passive thinking. We will forget this in a day or two. Because this tragedy did not happen in our home.

Anyone want to see this movie, The Dark Knight Rises? Come on down. The ticket is on me. Let us enjoy the movie and dinner after that.

Cute vs Handsome

Recently a blogger friend wrote a fictional story. In that fictional story, a few college girls were going gaga over a guy and thought he was cute. After reading that, I started to think about it.

As for as I know, you call a girl “cute”. And, call a guy “handsome”. Is it OK to call a guy “cute”? It is a social norm that men are handsome and women are beautiful and pretty and cute.

Let us take the easier one first. We should never call a woman handsome. Agreed?

I asked my friends and relatives about this. A little unscientific survey. Here are some of their answers:

Cute if you (man) have a childish look or if you are small in height.

Depends. Some cute can mean real hot.

A girl will call a guy cute when he is really cute; I mean a girl will find someone/something cute when she can play with it. No romantic intention.

If a guy is not that handsome, you say cute so that you don’t hurt his feeling.

Cute means she finds you hot and attractive.

Cute means someone who has child like looks. Like Lionel Messi is cute, Tom Cruise is cute. It doesn't mean hot or not so good looking.

Cute means you are attractive but not her type.

If I say a guy is cute, I mean he’s good looking and I find him attractive. Handsome is an old word to describe an old man. I would say my grandfather is handsome.

If an old lady calls a young man cute, it is motherly affection.

When a guy is cute, it's like he's more sensitive and sweet, and attractive in the way that he has this way of making you smile and saying romantic things.

Puppies are cute and babies in diapers are cute. They are small and attractive and fun to be with and you want one. So a guy can be cute to a girl.

The result: Split decision. Looks like “cute” is an acceptable word to describe an attractive hot guy.

My apologies to Revathi for trying to correct her.

What y'all think?

Submarine Ride

The whole of last year, I took a kind of sabbatical leave from blogs. I published only 2 posts in 2011. Lots of stuff I wanted to write was left behind. I am just catching up.

Last November, we went to Honolulu to attend a Tamil wedding. That in itself is a different hilarious story. In Honolulu, there are these usual attractions like Waikiki Beach, Pearl Harbor Memorial, Battleship USS Missouri, and Polynesian Cultural Center. I will write a post on these soon.

In addition to the above “must see”, we wanted to go on a submarine ride. We thought it will be an opportunity of a life time for us. This submarine has a seating capacity of 48 passengers. We went on a 45 minutes ride and enjoyed every minute of it. We felt comfortable and safe throughout the ride. A different experience.

This is the ferry that took us to the submarine

View of Honolulu from the ocean

Submarine surfaces

Passengers waiting on the deck

Looking out in the ocean 100 feet under water

Almost touching the ground

Turtle

Sunken plane

Sunken ship