Don’t look at the camera

“When I wave my hand you both can start walking. You will walk towards this table, and sit down there – okay ?” Tina asks.

“Okay” my wife replies, while I nod my head.

With lunch trays in our hands we wait for Tina’s signal. She waves and we start walking, looking at each other and pretending to talk. After a few steps we reach the table. We place the trays on the table and sit down.

Tina walks up to us. “That was nice, but we’ll have to do it just one more time – I’m sorry.” She has a half a smile on her face, and the expression seems to convey regret at the same time.

“That’s fine.” I pick up my tray, full of dishes yet to be tasted. As we walk back to our starting position, I notice some faces in the tables around looking at us. Some are mildly curious; others are amused.

Tina waves again, and we repeat our actions right up to the table. This time the crew seems happy.

“Guten Appetit! ” says Helmut, the cameraman, with raised eyebrows.

We dig into the dishes.

The shooting is for a documentary about German Green-Card holders working for my company. Apart from us, a couple from Russia and an Australian are the other subjects. The crew has finished with the couple in the morning, and are now attempting to catch a glimpse of us at different times of a typical day at work. It is something unique for us, and we do not mind the takes and retakes.

“Its just the beginning, so you are still quite excited! ” says Petruta, who nominated our names for the documentary.

During lunch I am reminded of a couple of ‘rules’ Helmut had given us earlier in the day. “Don’t look into the camera! ” he had said with a low pitched voice that was almost a whisper. Then after the first shot he had followed it up with “I do not want to shoot your back – never show your back to the camera.”

Helmut takes his job very seriously. While others pick up their trays, he waits for all the lunch related episodes to complete. Tina is more the PR type : her pleasant, courteous mien puts us at ease and makes us relax. Together, they complement each other well.

After lunch, it is time for the interviews. My wife and I sit under a tree while the others set up the shot.

“It feels a bit like movie stars waiting in the shade while the crew sets up the shot.” I say.

“Maybe they should be giving you some drinks also.” says Petruta. We laugh.

Soon the set is ready. Tina comes up and asks “So, who is first ?”

I volunteer, and soon find myself facing Tina with the camera by her side. Markus holds the microphone near my knee, out of the camera’s frame. Tina explains that her questions are not going to be a part of the documentary – only parts of my answers will be taken. She then begins.

“Why did you decide to relocate to Germany ?” she asks, with a smile.

I answer, and she moves on to the next question. That surprises me; I had expected retakes during the interview as well. But the fifteen minute session moves in an impromptu fashion from one question to the next. That suits me very well; shooting retakes of spoken sentences can make it sound artificial.

After me it is my wife’s turn. She takes my seat while I move over under the tree and watch. It turns out to be a revealing ten minutes for me : I cannot remember another occasion where I stood watching, from a distance, my wife talking to another person. The distance makes her seem somehow…..different.

The interviews are followed by a few more shooting sessions – with many retakes – and at the end of it all we think we know a little about what it takes to face the camera. The key element is Helmut’s advice : Don’t look at the camera. Unless you intend to read news on the BBC, of course.

Feeling the heat

In a land where the amount of sunlight one gets each year is strictly rationed, the question of surplus does not arise. This was a fact until two weeks ago. While the European heat wave may be making waves in the news channels across the globe, people in Germany are meeting – and sometimes beating – the heat in their own ways.

Men in our neighborhood can be seen with nothing on but their underwear. Women turn up with short tops and shorter skirts, though not short enough.

At work, queues at coffee machines have migrated to water coolers, and people who normally yearn for sunlight are seen lowering the blinds each morning.

Fields of corn, once green, are now burnt yellow.

The shelves displaying table fans in departmental stores stand empty.

Ice candy vans have sprung up in places occupied earlier by meat vendors or flower vendors.

Minor traffic jams can be seen near schwimbad, the local swimming club.

A colleague asks my wife “Why are you wearing so many clothes ?!” It takes a while for her to understand that there are no indecent intentions behind the question, only an incredulous mind wondering how we survive with so many clothes on at such times.

At the chess club, I see all my opponents sweating; my game has nothing to do with it.

But the prize goes to the owner of our local South Asian grocery store, who has his own elegant theory explaining the situation when we return a packet of rice infested with worms. “It is the heat.” he says, looking at the little white worms so much like rice grains crawling inside the packet. “It is the heat which is turning the rice grains into these worms. The heat, and nothing else.”

Until that moment, I had thought the heat had affected only the Germans.

An interest rekindled

There was a time during school days when chess was a pastime I frequently indulged in. A rivalry that instantly comes to mind is the one I had with Sai, a friend who beat me convincingly most times and yet left me each time with the feeling that the result could have been otherwise; it made me go back and try again and again. After school we went our ways and my active interest in the game dwindled, surfacing now and then during sporadic encounters with classmates or colleagues.

These days it has come into favor again.

It all began a few weeks back when I took part in a fascinating simultaneous event organized by a local club. After that, I joined the local chess club. The club meets on Friday evenings, when most people informally play against each other and some – who have a tournament match on that day – play official games. The five weeks so far have been full of fun and learning. Some of the members have an ELO rating of around 2100, and playing against players of such strength is a humbling experience for hobbyists like me who think of themselves as ‘above-average’ in their own category.

I also recently bought Fritz 8. One way to describe this piece of chess software would be to mention that it has an ELO rating of over 2600 and that it can beat 99.9 % of chess players on this planet. But that would miss the point. Fritz contains an array of features to help players at different levels improve their game, and it is this feature-set – and not the Herculean strength it boasts of – that would prove most useful to players like me intending to improve their skills. I hope to discuss some of these features in this space sometime in the near future.

On the recommendation of a player in the chess club I bought the book ‘Chess Master Vs Chess Amateur‘ by Max Euwe. I’ve read a few chess books in the past, but none of those went to the depth this book delves into while explaining the basics for amateurs. The approach is novel and effective : by highlighting the contrast between the thinking of the Master and Amateur, Euwe presents a path an amateur could take to bridge that gap. There are twenty five games discussed in the book; I’m currently into the fifth game, and I find that the games are presented in increasing order of complexity and amateur skill, so each new games takes longer to complete ( and the variations discussed also increase ).

I intend to start – as soon as I can make time for it – a chess journal : a section where I could discuss happenings in the club, talk a bit about Fritz and also log some of the games I play ( in the club and with Fritz ). Adding some algebraic notation might bring some variety into these pages.

A Package eagerly awaited

Yesterday morning, I was on my way out when I saw a DHL van, yellow in color like the Deutsche Post ones, come up to our house. The driver of the van jumped down with a small package in his hands, and my eyes lit up in expectation. He walked up to me and read out the name on the package : “Frau S, bitte.”

“Ja.” I nodded, “Ich nehme das”.

The package was from Amazon.com, and the date was the 21st of June. I ran inside, tore open the package and lifted out the hard bound copy of book 5 : The Order of the Phoenix. In size, it was comparable to the previous one, probably larger. The print appeared to be smaller, but I wasn’t too sure.

My wife took up the book almost immediately, sat on a single chair for the next 13 hours ( getting up only to prepare and eat lunch in between ) and completed the book before midnight. No, she wouldn’t tell me anything about it – I had forbidden her to do so.

I cannot read a book like that, non stop. I am a slow reader and I like to take it in parts, like small helpings of a tasty halwa I’d want never to finish. So now I can take my own sweet time and read it at my own pace. Since Rowling has taken around 3 years to complete this book, I should be taking at least 3 months to read it, shouldn’t I ?

A festival par excellence

We were in a queue for a while, after which we were let in. We walked through a passage to reach the center of tower No.41, where, through the enveloping darkness, we heard the mellifluous strains of saxophones in the air. A little further, around a pillar that divided the area into two sections at right angles, we saw the source of the enchanting music : four Mexican saxophone players were playing in a corner, watched by people sitting in perpendicular directions. As we took our seats, the piece being played came to an end and the players stood up, bowed. Applause followed, and we joined in.

They sat down immediately, and began their next piece. The ambience, dimly lit, brick walled, and narrow-spaced, seemed perfect for the instruments being played, and we were drawn into a trance by the magic of the pipers. Sitting there, feeling the music seep in, one felt this was how life ought to be – a dreamlike existence filled with music. It was a moment in a million, a moment one would cherish for eternity, a moment, the mere thought of which would be enough to relive its ecstasy.

The saxophone quartet programme was the perfect ending to an amazing Saturday at FIMU, Belfort. This music festival, spanning over three days of a long weekend, is held each year in this quaint little fortress town in France, with groups from all over the world coming to play music of different varieties and styles.

None of the concerts had any entrance fees, and the venue for each concert was either an open stage erected for this festival, or indoors, inside regular or makeshift concert halls, and all of these venues were located within a radius of around 2 to 3 kilometers. Where ever one went, there was music in the air, and with so much choice available there were times when one couldn’t make up one’s mind about which concert to attend. For a lover of music, there was only one word for this setting : paradise.

We were introduced to this festival by Stefan & Uta, who have been participating in this event since the last six years, and this time they suggested that we come along. It turned out to be an unforgettable weekend; we’re already looking forward to FIMU 2004.

Some pictures of our trip have been collected in the photo album FIMU 2003.

Pneumonia or … ?

Since the last couple of days I’ve been down with a throat infection and a mild fever. When my sister-in-law heard this from my wife, she asked if there was a chance that it could be SARS. We laughed out loud.

Then today, when I went to the local doctor for a brief consultation, he asked me if I’d visited Hong Kong or China in the recent past. He was doing his job, of course, but I couldn’t help thinking that what we were witnessing was not a rapid spread of pneumonia, but paranoia.

On a more serious note, when I read in the WHO press briefing that the medical facilities in Hong Kong were being pushed to a limit, I couldn’t help wondering what would happen if there was such an outbreak in India. Given its high population densities and not so high medical infrastructure base ( the latter in comparison to Hong Kong ), controlling the spread of SARS in India would prove to be much more challenging, and the fatalities could turn out to be much higher than what we are seeing at the present. Efforts in the direction of preventing the virus from entering the country seems to be of paramount importance, but we are seeing very little of that at the moment.

Since the news about SARS is currently being eclipsed by war related broadcasts, public awareness about the seriousness of the disease seems to be lower than what it would have been under normal circumstances. This is probably a blessing for the airline industry, which did not need this outbreak at a time when the war itself is taking a big toll on its revenues.