Days 715 - 718: A Wonderful Long Weekend!!!

4 - 7 November, 2011

I had such a fantastic weekend! Like a really, really awesome one!

It was a long weekend due to Eid and the bulk of it was spent on completing the shoot of my Malayalam short film Inganeyum Oru Katha! But it is probably better to do a list as there is more to it than that... so here we go!

a) On Friday after work, I came back and cooked Baingan Bharta (a Punjabi dish with brinjal) by following an online recipe. Yes, I am indeed getting very seriously domesticated! Who would have thought?!

b) Post the Baingan cooking and dinner, it was time for shooting one of the scenes for IOK. I had a pretty significant role to play in this scene, so I was more of an actor today than a director. The character I play is alway nagging and shouting at her husband, and I had a real fun time doing that!

c) Post the shoot, it was of course, time for general chit chatting in spite of the fact that it was already 1:30 am. Oh well... general chit chatting is always welcome and thoroughly enjoyed, so am not complaining about that!

d) On Saturday, after a dance rehearsal session together with the hubby, I made bread rolls. Yup. And I was very pleased that the hubby wiped off the whole of it within seconds!

e) Interestingly culinary experiments didn't end there for the day. Post the bread rolls, I immediately made some really yummy egg curry for dinner! You see what I mean by serious domestication now?

f) After dinner, it was time for shoot of the next scene in which I again had a significant role to play. Once again, I thoroughly enjoyed acting! After being just a director for so long, I had begun to forget how much fun acting was! So this was really awesome! I must, however, admit that before the shoot this weekend, I was really nervous. I had not done any major acting projects in a long time and I had little confidence on how I will be able to manage this. So it was also good to conquer the fears and go through the experience, in spite of how it would all turn out at the end!

g) Just like the night before, this acting session was also followed by another round of general chit chatting which went well into the night. But just like the night before, nobody was complaining!

h) On Sunday, it was time for an outdoor shoot! This time, I was back to my full fledged director's role. The outdoor location was Labrador Park, which is always really lovely. Today the weather was more beautiful that the usual and we had a great time shooting there. In fact, even the issues such as the noise from the crowd around didn't seem to bother me at all. I felt on top of the world, for no apparent reason really!

i) Post the long shoot, I met up with a bunch of students from my university who are making their first feature film! They wanted to talk on screening options etc. and it was lovely to meet them. I always love to see people getting together and working on a creative project and the passion, dedication and ideas this bunch seemed to have was really inspiring!

j) Post that meeting, the hubby and I met a few friends for dinner at Mozza at Marina Bay Sands. It was our first time at that restaurant and the food turned out to be pretty good even for a non-lover of Italian food like me! And the fun conversation that accompanied the food, made it a really good dinner overall!

k) On Monday, that is today, we had the last and final schedule of the IOK shoot. And most nicely, it had the entire cast and crew involved! So we had a great time shooting and having a last round (for a while at least) of catch up as one big team together!

l) Post the shoot, my brother and sis in law came over to work on the one last dance we had to prepare for the upcoming wedding. So it was choreography and dance time once again, and that was very good fun too!

m) Then it was time to organize all the IOK footage into a hard disk, to be sent to Mumbai, for editing! The editor for IOK is the same as the one for Mausams. He is based out of Mumbai and I had to get all the footage to him through my hubby who is on his way there tonight. Honestly, getting the footage tidied up was quite strenuous but I managed to get most of it done just in time, before the hubby had to rush for his flight! But there was a lot of satisfaction in feeling that I technically have my entire film in that disk and now it is all set for the next round of work!

n) I must also mention that I just got the final version of IOK theme music! We were planning to launch it within a week or two and it is all ready to be shared! So exciting!

o) Last but not the least... the hubby and I booked our tickets to Las Vegas for just a weekend, to pick up the Silver Screen awards for Mausams! It cost us an arm and leg but we didn't feel like letting go of this experience! Super duper excited!!

OK, a really long list, that.

But a truly beautiful one!

282 more to go.