From the Padang area: Singapore

As seen by my iPhone during my morning walk along the Singapore River.

War for Peace

Off MG Road, Bangalore

Hmmm…

Costa Coffee

…at the crowded Sigma Mall on congested Cunningham Road, it was quiet only here. The coffee was good.

Sadar Patrappa Road, Bangalore

Still the hub of commerce of a type.

Low Cost Logistics: Bangalore

The lake at Nandi Thota

The Departed

You like Costello though he is a killer, though you see he is depraved, remorseless, and, in the end, falling off his rocker. You like Costello because you see Jack Nicholson inhabiting him. Matt Damon is not so fortunate in his role, though. You give him all the hate you feel for his character, though you know it's Damon and he's merely playing the part. Why the difference? I must think. But you love Leonard di Caprio, he is vulnerable like Vera Farmiga says to him when he comes visiting her in her home, and you feel for him all the sorrow you're capable of, for almost all of two hours and thirty-one minutes.

Has anyone ever screwed up his face like a rat's so perfectly, and as endearingly, as Nicholson? Have you seen the movie? How did you feel seeing how the naughty look never left his face, even as blood welled in his mouth? For me, watching him in this movie was like attending a masterclass.

The movie has so much music in it, music I like, from start to end, beginning with the Stones! The music had to be there, to balance the relentless, rapid-fire profanity. Do the police really speak so foul like that to each other in the United States? Do they punch each other's face at work in the office and go around calling each other a prick? And use the f-word so freely?: Man to man, man to lady, lady to man, again and again in every conversation!

I've seen the film twice now, and I will surely see this masterly Scorcese a third time—this bloody and cruel tale of two rats, one ratting on the police, the other ratting on the thugs, and the police and the thugs each trying to achieve their ends through pinning everything entirely on their respective rat. Playing rat versus rat.