Nisha’s Blog - Archived Copy

I don’t know how I managed to tour all the major cities of Holland and not eat one of these - but the most delicious thing in the world is called a siroopwafel. If anyone knows how to get these in the U.S. - please put me out of my misery.

Okay that’s the end of my pathetic appeal.
Thank you

Because of all the emails I’d like to admit:
Yes I was on the Daily Show a few weeks ago. And though it was far more important than the Showdown Iraq coverage… I couldn’t bring myself to publicize it. I am a huge fan of the show… and now an even bigger fan of Rob Cordry and Dan Taberski (the writer producer behing the sketches)

If you saw my three second debut… thanks for noticing.

I have been out of touch with the weblog because I have been wasting far too much time here

Sorry about that. Everything will be back to normal shortly.

I’m back in NY and we are finishing up the edit for Cosmopolitan. The special effects team is hard at work over at SMA/Postworks and we’re hoping to lock by the end of the week.
Then it will be onward to music and sound fx. If I haven’t already said how much I love the new HD 24P format… I do. It’s incredible.

Just because I’m travelling doesn’t mean we shouldn’t keep up on WORLD NEWS!

MONK GLOATS OVER YOGA CHAMPIONSHIP
— ‘I am the serenest!’ he says

> LHASA, TIBET-Employing the brash style that first brought him to
> prominence, SriDhananjai Bikram won the fifth annual International Yogi
> Competition yesterday with a world-record point total of 873.6.
>
> “I am the serenest!” Bikram shouted to the estimated crowd of
> 20,000 yoga fans, vigorously pumping his fists. “No one is serener than Sri
> Dhananjai Bikram-I am the greatest monk of all time!”
>
> Bikram averaged 1.89 breaths a minute during the two-hour
> competition, nearly .3 fewer than his nearest competitor, second-place finisher and two-time champion Sri Salil “The Hammer” Gupta.
>
> The heavily favored Gupta was upset after the loss. “I should be
> able to beat that guy with one lung tied,” Gupta said. “I’m beside myself
> right now, and I don’t mean trans-bodily.”
>
> Bikram got off to a fast start at the Lhasa meet, which like most
> major competitions, is a six-event affair. In the first event, he attained
> total consciousness (TC) in just 2 minutes, 34 seconds, and set the tone for
> the rest of the meet by repeatedly shouting, “I’m blissful! You blissful?!
> I’m blissful!” to the other yogis.
>
> Bikram, 33, burst onto the international yoga scene with a
> gold-mandala performance at the 1998 Bhutan Invitational. At that competition he
> premiered his aggressive style, at one point in the flexibility event
> sticking his middle toes out at the other yogis. While no prohibition
> exists against such behavior, according to Yoga League Commissioner Swami Prabhupada, such behavior is generally considered “unBuddhalike.”
>
> “I don’t care what the critics say,” Bikram said. “Sri Bikram is just gonna go out there and do Sri Bikram’s own yoga thing.”
>
> Before the Bhutan meet, Bikram had never placed better than fourth.
> Many said he had forsaken rigorous training for the celebrity status
> accorded by his Bhutan win, endorsing Nike’s new line of prayer mats
> and supposedly dating the Hindu goddess Shakti. But his performance this
> week will regain for him the number one computer ranking and earn him new
> respect, as well as for his coach Mahananda Vasti, the controversial
> guru some have called Bikram’s “guru.”
>
> “My special training diet for Bikram of one super-charged,
> carbo-loaded grain of rice per day was essential to his win,” Vasti said.
>
> The defeated Gupta denied that Bikram’s taunting was a factor in
> his inability to attain TC. “I just wasn’t myself today,” Gupta
> commented. “I wasn’t any self today. I was an egoless particle of the universal no-soul.”
>
> In the second event, flexibility, Bikram maintained the lead by
> supporting himself on his index fingers for the entire 15 minutes while
> touching the back of his skull to his lower spine. The feat was
> matched by Gupta, who first used the position at the 1994 Tokyo Zen-Off.
>
> “That’s my meditative position of spiritual ecstasy, not his,”
> remarked Gupta. “He stole my thunder.”
>
> Bikram denied the charge, saying, “Gupta’s been talking like that
> ever since he was a 3rd century Egyptian slave-owner.”
>
> Nevertheless, a strong showing by Gupta in the third event, the
> shotput, placed him within a lotus petal of the lead at the competition’s
> halfway point.
>
> But event number four, the contemplation of unanswerable riddles
> known as koans, proved the key to victory for Bikram.
>
> The koan had long been thought the weak point of his spiritual
> arsenal, but his response to today’s riddle-”Show me the face you had before
> you were born”-was reportedly “extremely illuminative,” according to
> Commissioner Prabhupada.
>
> While koan answers are kept secret from the public for fear of
> exposing the uninitiated multitudes to the terror of universal truth, insiders
> claim his answer had Prabhupada and the two other judges “highly
enlightened.”

With the event victory, Bikram built himself a nearly
insurmountable lead, one he sustained through the yak-milk churn and breathing events to come away with the upset victory.

(thanks to Cara)