Archives for August 2023

Happy birthday Christina

25 August 2023 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

We celebrated Christina’s birthday, without any of our two kids for the first time, by having a nice paella with Christina’s brothers and sisters and my mum. Here are some photos we took.

During the dinner, we called Anya and Kyan to share the nice atmosphere with them. They would have liked to be present but Christina and I are delighted that they are in France studying and, probably more importantly, discovering their true selves…

I have to say that Christina has not changed a bit. She is still as beautiful and intelligent as ever.

While both of us are becoming older (that’s a fact!), we still love spending time together and have fun.

Life is really cool.

“Keep calm and eat Paella” :-)

Club de Cuervos is one of my favourite TV shows ever

18 August 2023 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

Kyan, Anya, Christina and I started watching Club de Cuervos a few years ago.

Over the four seasons, Club de Cuervos, which is a Mexican TV show in Spanish, has become one of my favourite shows ever. Unfortunately, Anya stopped watching the show when she left Mauritius for university. And, for some reason, Kyan also stopped watching the show with us after some time.

Last night, Christina and I watched the final episode of the series.

The premises are simple: “When the patriarch of a prominent family dies, his heirs battle to determine who will gain control of his beloved soccer team: The Cuervos of Nuevo Toledo.”

The first heir is the formidable Isabel Iglesias, played by Mariana Treviño. She is atypical. She does not have many social skills but knows everything about being the president of a football club except that she isn’t because, well, she is a woman (as explained during a flashback in one of the last episodes).

Instead, the board appoints the little brother, Chava Iglesias, played by Luis Gerardo Méndez, who does not know anything about football and who loves partying, taking drugs and womanising. And mayhem ensues.

Fortunately, Chava has a formidable assistant (the best in Mexico!), Hugo Sánchez, played by Jesús Zavala, and a bunch of great football players (who also happen to be comically moronic): examples include Potro (Joaquín Ferreira), Cuau (Said Sandoval) and Rafa (Antonio de la Vega).

Another formidable football player is Aitor Cardoné (Alosian Vivancos) who is simply out of this world. I’ve never seen someone as, ahem, controversial as Aitor. In fact, controversial is not the right word. He is basically the one who is always the worst… except that, in reality, he is not.

Mary Luz, played by Stephanie Cayo, is the “outsider”. She does not know football, is not an Iglesias (despite being one) but, little by little, becomes a key component in the intrigue. She is the one who provides the glue… Without her, the mayhem would be without limit. (PS: She is definitely one of the most beautiful actresses I’ve seen and is from Peru.)

Will the Club de Cuervos of Nuevo Toledo win the final at the end? You will know by watching the TV show from beginning to end. The show is on Netflix.

You will not regret it. You’ll most probably love it too!

Disclaimer: it’s not for kids.

Should I purchase a 4K Blu-Ray player?

7 August 2023 By Avinash Meetoo Leave a Comment

I am seriously considering purchasing the Panasonic DP-UB820 4K Blu-Ray player. It is a five years old device and is one of the last 4K Blu-Ray players still being sold.

It supports Ultra UD 4K Blu-Ray, normal Full HD Blu-Ray, DVD and CD media. It also supports all modern immersive audio formats (such as Dolby Atmos) and high dynamic range video formats (HDR, HDR10, HDR10+ and Dolby Vision).

It’s not easily available in Mauritius and, maybe, I’ll have to ask someone from abroad to get one for me but I am keen because I do have a few Blu-Rays, loads of DVDs and many CDs (dating from my university days) and, currently, I do not have any device with a HDMI output to play them.

People have moved to streaming on platforms such as Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+ or Showmax and Blu-Ray players will soon stop being made.

My previous DVD players

I didn’t have a DVD player initially. When my parents left Mauritius, they gave me theirs: a cheap device from China, a Dual DVD-118. Everything about it was bad but it worked and I used it for a few years. This was around year 2000.

In 2004, we purchased a Philips DVD-727K DVD player. By that time, I had started creating my own CDs and DVDs (with videos of Anya and Kyan) and I needed a device which could read different types of media (CD, CD-R, CD-RW, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R and DVD+RW). Interestingly, I would give the player to my sister-in-law a few years later but would get it back when I needed a CD transport for my bedroom…

Around 2006, I purchased the LG RH7823W DVD and HDD player and writer. It was an interesting device as it could be used to record live TV programmes on its 80Gb hard disk and, later, burn the (edited) programmes to a DVD. From that time, I have many DVD-R of programmes and movies I got from MBC, Canal Satellite and Parabole Maurice. I don’t really care about the movies anymore as I can easily get them online now but I do care about some of the programmes I have recorded. Some of them feature the four of us or are of historical importance. I still have the LG at home and it still works. I don’t use it anymore as it lacks a HDMI out and it has a very noisy fan.

In 2009, we purchased a Sony Playstation 3 and our first LCD TV, a Sony KLV-40S550A. We wanted to play games, we wanted to discover the joys of Full HD Blu-Ray and I personally wanted to run Linux on it. We really loved the PS3 as it was way better than anything else we had had before.

The PS3 broke down in 2017 and we immediately replaced it with a second-hand super slim PS3. I didn’t want to purchase a PS4 (and, later, a PS5) because we are far from being power gamers and the investment (especially when purchasing games) was too high.

Recently, this PS3 has just stopped working. I suspect a power supply issue. Writing this blog post has made me realise that it might still be possible to repair it and solve my Blu-Ray, DVD and CD issues without having to buy anything new.

We’ll see.