Can't Walk, Can Dance

The 20-20 cricket world cup has reached its final stages and India surprisingly finds itself still in the reckoning. Even the Pakistan team should be feeling the same, considering the dismal performance of the two teams in the 50 over ODI world cup.

While I await the India vs Australia match, the other semi-final between Pakistan and New Zealand is currently on. The Pakistan opener Imran Nazir complained of a thigh strain within the first 2-3 overs of their innings. He claimed that the injury happened during the course of this match and nothing to do with the previous match. Remember he got a knock on the family jewels in the last match and had to hobble out retired hurt. The NZ captain, Daniel Vettori allowed him to get a runner and no less than the team captain Shoaib Malik walked in. This of course helped the Pakis tactically, but I wondered how restricted Imran Nazir movement at the crease would be, considering his injury.

I first tried to spot some discomfort when he played the back foot cut. He had no problems and was getting on top of the ball easily. I then tried to see if he can play the front foot cover or straight drives. Though he didn't play any of these shots, he did play the sweep, which needed him to stretch his front foot, which was done quite effortlessly. Next came the towering sixes of Vettori, for which Imran danced down the track should to get to the pitch of the ball and then whack it, again all this done with no discomfort. Before Imran got out, he went on to score a crucial 50 and take Pakis very close to victory. And once Shoaib hit the winning sixer, there was Imran Nazir, running full hilt to congratulate him on the victory! Vettori must be thinking that he shouldn't have been the good guy and should have in fact disallowed a runner, as everyone could see that he sure didn't need one!

Go on Pakis, do what you have to do to get into the finals... we will meet you there. ;-)

Niyatthu!

The title of this entry is a kannada word which means something close to mix of "decency" and "honesty" but maybe a more stronger version of the same. Read the rest of the post and you will know the reason for the title.

Some 18 months back an almost unexpected turn of events happened in the political scene in Karnataka. A young aspirant politician, HD Kumaraswamy, pulled off a true political coup. He took a bunch of JD(S) MLAs and went to some resort in the outskirts of the city as JD(S) pulled the carpet from under the feet of the then Congress government. HD Deve Gowda, then, couldn't believe what was happening. Kumaraswamy's elder brother, and a more seasoned politician, HD Revanna stood at the sidelines with wide eyed and open mouthed. BJP was becoming a force to reckon with in the state over the last 2-3 elections and they wanted a stint at governance to prove their mettle. They were more than happy to side with JD(S) to form the government. To add, their leader Yediyurappa was aging and wanted to be a CM before his time is over. All these put together, Karnataka saw a successful political coup.

What followed was political drama at its best. Deve gowda was distraught. There were talks of him taking political sanyas. Every interview of his in the days that followed showed a dejected and teary eyed former PM, totally at loss of words. Senior JD(S) leaders wanted the "rebel" MLA's expelled. This would of course mean the end of JD(S) as everyone knew since the majority of the MLAs were with Kumaraswamy. As days went by, a deal was made for splitting the governance in 2 stages. First 20 months to Kumaraswamy and next 20 months to Yediyurappa. Somehow, Deve Gowda slowly warmed up to the whole thing and all was well then. This brought an end to the political careers of many senior JD(S) CM aspirants like MP Prakash. Deve Gowda gets back to his good old irritating ways and look like things are actually gonna work out.

18 months go by, we come to the present day and close to the day when JD(S) needs to transfer power to BJP. But now, we suddenly have all kinda problems to get this done. Kumaraswamy who brazenly went against his dad when he had to form the government, now swears totally by his father and says he would do whatever his dad says. Deve gowda says he will talk to Vajpayee and they will decide the future. Yediyurappa is already seeing his dreams of his tush on the CM gaddi fading. BJP feels betrayed, JD(S) does what they do best... hold on to power or pain the people in power(Dharam Singh can vouch for this). Where is the niyatthu?!?

When I first heard of the Kumaraswamy move a year and a half back, I felt sorry (very very little) for gowda, but when I saw them patch up in a week or so, I figured this was a well planned show for the people. And now, the real face of the drama comes back. We bring these jokers to power and these guys play their games while the people who voted them in.. well, they wait for these guys to finish making their crores and then do something to make the common mans lives better!

Love-Hate!

It has rained real crazy in Bangalore for most of last week. Its good to see Bangalore at its gloomy best, reminding us Bangaloreans of the good old days. I see many complain off this gloomy weather, but this is exactly the weather that sets Bangalore apart from the rest of the big cities of India.

This being said, I share a strange love-hate relationship with all this rain.
1. I love it being gloomy, but I hate it when it rains so much that the football ground gets all slushy.
2. I love it when I can sit for hours at home without having to bother about turning on the fan, but I hate it when I have to use the water heater to have some hot water since the solar heater didn't get enough sunlight to do its job.
3. I love it when the roads are empty during peak hours when there is heavy rain, but I hate it when the period after a heavy rain results in huge traffic jams even during non-peak hours.
4. The lazy me loves it when the rain gives my car a free wash, but I hate it when my car gets a free mud coat the day after the rains.


Rain in Bangalore... You can love it, You can hate it.... you can also ignore it, :-) which is exactly what I am gonna do.

Desperation

Watching the India vs Pakistan match which has just ended in a tie. A really good match.... had lotsa fun for a change! Would take a match like this anyday than a run blast of 200+ runs! But this could be just me. :-)

But the rule says, when there is a tie, 5 bowlers will trying to hit the wicket and get a point each time they hit the stumps. A very desperate attempt to match the soccer penalty shootout. It is funny, but nonetheless, still desperate. Its almost like, we will do anything for more acceptance of the game in the world!

... and India beats Pakistan again at the World Cup!! :-D

The impossible!

Having watched the Aussies play cricket over the last 10+ years, I would not mind any team playing any kind of cricket just beating them black and blue. This is why the Aussie tour of India in 2001 when Bhajji routed them or the Ashes in 2005 become so important.

I was critical of 20-20 cricket a couple of posts back and I more of less stand by it. But having said that, a Zimbabwe victory over the famed Aussies is something else! Kudos to a team which was helped in no small part by the weather, the state of the pitch and most importantly the over confident approach of the Aussies. The last shock defeat in ODI's for the Aussies came on the very same day two years ago when the Bangaldeshis got the better of them.

I have to agree with a friend of mine who said, "For all the negatives of this new format, it does give minnows a chance to compete". He couldn't have been more right! This being said, what are India's chances against Scotland?? :-)

Simple?

We are moving offices soon and have been interfacing with an interior design company. In the last 2 months we have seen 2 people quit the team that used to interface with us. This would be no surprise if we were talking of an IT company and looks like there are other industries following suit. Why do people quit their job? What are they looking for? What should they be looking for?

These are very subjective questions, but if you have time, this could help you answer some questions. Though these are observations of one individual, see if you can empathize with his dilemmas, wishes, complains and learnings. :-)

What is the hurry?

I am currently watching the final ODI between India and England, and the match seems to be heading towards one with low scores. And after the questionable Dravid dismissal and the abysmal Tendulkar decision, things looks a little less interesting.

Nonetheless, coming to the reason for this post, I saw an Ad come up for the 20-20 world cup and also another trivia that came up which said England has played the most number of 20-20 internationals, 6! I can remember India having played only one, in SA. And the total number of international 20-20 matches is just 19! The format is at such a nascent stage and we already having a world cup for it??

Its quite understandable that if cricket has to grow, the 5 day version will definitely not appeal to other countries and the 50 over ODI format also takes a little too much time. There was an attempt at playing the "6's tournament" where each team has six players. For whatever reason it wasn't successful and we now have this variant. All this being done to cut down the time taken to finish a match, and that is needed to make it more TV friendly and compete with games like Basketball, Baseball etc.

That being said, what is going to be fed via the tube to the potential followers of the game is far from the real soul of the game. There are probably many good things about 20-20 games, I say so because I have seen very few these matches. But from a relative stranger to the game, it does present a lot of imbalances. The finer points of the game will take a bigger beating with this format of the game. Its too batsman friendly and even among batsmen, its more pinch-hitter friendly. We all love watching Afridi thrash the ball and sometimes make a fool of himself, but the fun in watching a laxman leg-flick, a ponting hook or a tendulkar drive and totally different. The McGrath line, the Murali tweak or Warne's leggie is again as engrossing as any piece of batting. These things will be missing in the 20-20 games, even if the same players play in the new format. This is simply because the new format of the game doesn't allow for much time to set oneself in as a batsman or a bowler to fashion a dismissal.

Will I be watching the world cup? Most definitely... its after all cricket. But, I am not convinced that this is the best way to present the game to the rest of the world.

Blue Friday

This is how I was greeted today morning....




Before we go windoze blasting, I saw this after the lappy rebooted from its first blue screen of death in nearly 2 years! Going by typical M$ standards, I think they have done a decent job with XP. Not so sure about Vista though....

Creativity!

The topic of creativity can be fodder for a light hearted post and also for a serious discussion. Lemme try to walk the line in the middle.

I started off thinking in this direction after listening to the Mahiya song from Awarapan. The song is quite catchy and the singer Suzanne really caught my attention. I start thinking... man, the music director has got some creativity! I find that Pritam is the music director. Now, I like his songs, but I also know for a fact that his plagiarisms are also the most difficult to catch. I think "what creativity, the guy must have whacked this tune from somewhere". One of my cousins informs me that she has seen a version of this song on the net which is even better than the original. I hunt around and find the singer to be an UK based Pakistani, Annie. Her song is the original Mahiya and she in fact lends her vocals for the remix version of the song in Awarapan. Now I think, man this girl is creative. I listen to the rest of her album and no song in it comes close to this. I think, "what creative, she looks like a one song wonder".

Contrary to what many people think, talent and creativity are very luck driven. If you can maximize the slice of luck that gave you an opportunity to display your talent and creativity and get maximum mileage from it, you can then expect this mileage to take you much much further for far less real creativity in the future. Just get into the big league, keep your eyes and ears open and play the right cards. The rest of the story just falls in place. Clubbed with this is the obnoxious self belief in many that they are creative. What they really are is quite different. They have just fooled themselves into believing every inspired or adopted idea to be self contrived.

Really creative people are creative all the time and most probably are not blessed with the luck needed to cash in on this creativity. Most of the so called creative people are just ordinary people with one inspired, borrowed or luck induced idea which happens to strike them just in time to reconstruct their creativity halo as it started disintegrating. For e.g., I have just displayed how one such idea can present itself in the form of a blog post to leave streaks of creativity as it whizzes past your fleeting eyes, as they wander from one boredom induced blog to another. ;-))

Indirect Answering Techniques

Though its rude to be generic, I think there is some truth in the whole "Blondes are dumb" saying...

Here is a rather simple question posed to a Contestant in Miss Teen USA 2007. As can be seen, she completely goofed up the answer, but in a strange way, did answer it too. ;-)




:-)))))

Nothing lasts forever...

... and in the case of the iPhone, their profit sharing deal with AT&T could be coming to an abrupt end much faster than they would have anticipated. A 17 year old hacker has managed to get his iPhone to work with T Mobile and these guys also claim the same.

Now for "the" bleeding edge enthusiast in my office to go get his iPhone and try unlocking it to work with Airtel. ;-)

Blame it on M$

As a follow up to the skype outage, here is the reason why skype went offline? As always you can blame almost everything on the big-bad Micro$oft and its primary weapon, Windoze. :-)

Brilliant!

I among many had written off Ronaldinho after his abysmal performance in the World Cup. But I came across this video of a game in late 2006, which just proves that the guy has still got it!



This is the first time I have someone using this trick to break the wall!

Mission Critical Mission

One of the revolutions in the area of communication in last 2-3 years, in my opinion, has been Skype. An absolutely unique mode of communication, using the grossly slandered peer-to-peer method of connectivity in a legal mode, skype revolutionized use of voice data over the internet. They got bought for $2.6 billion by ebay, quite a steep amount. Skype continued to do well and slowly became a mission critical application, whose breakdown would result in productivity and money loss.

On 16th Aug 2007, Skype suffered its first major outage. Skype acknowledged it too and promised to get the service back online within 24 hours. The promised time went by and the service was not back. I use skype regularly and definitely felt the productivity loss because of this outage. Now, when you have set such a great precedent and when people have started trusting your service implicitly, such an outage sure puts you in trouble. And as a direct consequence, the parent company, Ebay lost $1 billion in market share!

So many years of trouble free service and a couple of days of trouble, and what a huge price the trouble came with! Live on, in the world of the demanding!

Movie Review: Life In A Metro

Another multiplex movie and another hit. I have heard only good reviews of Life In .... and I had to check it out to find out if it was worth all the noise. I wasn't disappointed, but no too impressed either, as many things in the movie were plain obvious.

The film is a dig at the fast paced life in any busy city and how desperate people are to find the very essence for ones existence. The whole story revolves around a series of extra marital affairs, some seem to make sense and some are just nonsense. I honestly didn't see anything else in this film, but still it was worth a view and ended before one got bored. Performances were overall ok. I felt Irfan Khan was under utilized and Konkana Sen was just superb! The end scenes were extra filmy, but then, you couldn't have any other end to make it a hit.

I remember the movie Hyderabad Blues which was among the first multiplex movies to become a big hit. The reason I liked the movie was, I could relate to many things shown in the movie. I just hope, Life In a Metro being a hit has very little to do with people relating to it....

Rich get richer...

... and its cliche to say the poor get poorer. In a fast growing economy like India, the economic disparity is evidently visible. Every big-building dotted skyline is greeted with a slum next to it. This being said, the current economic drive does touch the lower strata of the working class, even if its only the tip of the iceberg.

There is this barber who set shop some three years ago close to where I stay. He had four chairs in his shop, but he was the only one working. He kept the place clean and would wait for customers to come in from 7AM to 9PM everyday. He would have been happy if one person had walked in once an hour, and even that was too big an ask. I have seen him actually give free haircuts to people on "credit". He was sure he would never get paid, and was never happy giving the credit. But none the less, growing the business was important and he did what he had to do. I talked to him in detail every time I went over for a haircut and he would say about how difficult life was and continues to be. He talks about the money he has taken from a money lender and the interest he has to pay. But no matter what, he always kept the place very clean and kept biding time, and waiting...

Now, three years later, his business is well set. He has people who work for him doing duty at all the four chairs. All the chairs for waiting customers are occupied and he stands outside (no place inside the shop) greeting customers and overseeing the work being done. He has increased the amount he charges by 20% and has added some value adds to his business proposition now. He has bought new equipment (trimmers and electric shavers), has a person dedicated to do massages and almost no sharing of gear among his workers, which is rare in this business. His patience and his hard work are finally paying, and he sure deserves it.

Though there is a possibility that this is an isolated case, I would like to believe that the effect of the growing economy has reached the people whose economic development will push India into the developed countries list. Three cheers to our protagonist and lots of wishes to every other hardworking dreamer waiting for his crack at this economy.

Insurance vs Investment

I am gonna delve into a topic I know very little about(not that I only write about what I know. :-)), money. I have been a speculator during my last few years of investment in the equity or secondary markets and only recently have started paying a little more attention towards valid reasoning before investing. So, with this as a backdrop, please take everything I write on this topic with a pinch of salt. :-)

I have been wanting to take a good life insurance cover for a couple of years now. In the process of deciding which one to go with, I was talking to friends and family and I was in for some informative surprises. ULIPs (Unit Linked Insurance Plan) have been very popular off late because they provide you with insurance cover and also invest in the hot Indian equity market. Seems like the best of both worlds? Not quite! A couple of friends at office, nsd and patel, gave me some gyan on this and after some reading of my own am convinced that ULIPs are the worst of both worlds. They don't give you inadequate life cover and they also perform worse than many mutual funds in terms of returns.

Follow this link (thanks to patel) for those interested in understanding this better.

Movie Review: Mungaru Male

Mungaru Male is considered by many as a landmark film in Kannada film history. I haven't watched a full length Kannada film in a long time, but couldn't resist the temptation to watch this one. I just had to know what was so good about this film starring newcomers Ganesh and Pooja. The film has a very small caste other than them. Ganesh's mother, Pooja parents, notably the father being played by Anant Nag and a necessary bad guy. The star of the movie of course was its music. I suggest folks who listen to a lot of Hindi music to give this one a shot. It will beat most if not all of the regular fair on offer these days in Bollywood.

One thing I was certain about was the ending of the movie. Most hit films in India, irrespective of the language its shot in, will have a happy ending. So, since this was such a big hit, it had to of course have a happy ending! The story was very simple. Ganesh and mom get to Coorg to attend the wedding of Pooja, Ganeshs moms friends daughter. Ganesh though is oblivious of this and is coming along just to enjoy the monsoon. He inadvertently falls in love with Pooja, not knowing that she is getting married. In the one week that is left before the marriage, he becomes an integral part of the family and he slowly but surely makes his way into Pooja heart. Pooja finally agrees to Ganeshs relentless pursuit and all looks well at this point. Now, I get thinking. If it ends this way, then it just cannot be a hit! There has got to be a twist here. And surely, the story doesn't disappoint. All the parents in the movie tell Ganesh how they want the marriage to go on well and how they expect him to ensure it happens so. Now, with all the expectations laden on him, he has to give up his girl. In typical movie fashion, he says harsh words and obviously becomes the bad guy. The heroine starts thinking, maybe it was all an infatuation and gets set for her impending marriage. Our hero on the other hand is devastated. To make us really feel for the guy, he is seen saving the bridge groom from the bad guy and in fact has a heart to heart with bad guy, who is also in love with the heroine but just can't get her. Again, I get thinking. Now, that the twist has happened, lets now wait for the obvious happy ending. And this is exactly where the director took it away. Quiet uncharacteristically, the hero loses out and the marriage goes on as planned.

The ending was most unexpected and done quite nicely. The performances especially from Ganesh was really very good. I must say, I just loved the movie and now vouch with the rest of the folks who watched the movie. This really is a damn good movie! I give it a 7.5 on 10, some points taken away for the rabbit scenes. ;-)

numlanes=numlanes+1

One of the better roads in Bangalore is the outer ring road. There are lot of new projects like the peripheral ring road being planned. But I suggest one thing to all the planners. Please increase the number of planned lanes by one coz you need to plan for this!

Problem suggestion

Some brilliant bowling by Zaheer Khan ensured India a victory over England in the 2nd test at Nottingham. As Zaheer said in the post match interview, all the niggling and sledging by the England close in fielders actually pissed him off enough to bowl his best ever test performance. The England players not only lost the match but also got a wrap on their knuckles by the media and cricket thinkers alike for the jelly bean incident. It was also quite clear from the stump mic that sledging was going on all along.

In the midst of all this disgrace, the English coach, Peters Moores, suggests that we get rid of the stump mic. Is that the solution to the problem or is it to tell his players to keep it quite! He is also more than welcome to give an earful to over very own bowler in the Andre Nel mould, Sreesanth. Instead, he wants to promote this kind of gamesmanship! If his players don't have the gumption to face the music for all their "gamesmanship", they should keep their lips sealed and just play the game! Mr Moore, what you have suggested as the solution to the problem is a bigger problem!

'Mis' things

How often do you see a misprint or wrong data or spelling mistake in the newspaper? Not so long ago, these kind of mistakes used to be rare, but Times Of India sets new lows every other day in this aspect. Thought I will start off a new section focussing on this.



The print below the headline in todays Sports section of TOI reads that Tendulkar crossed 11,000 runs enroute to an unbeaten knock of 53. But Tendulkar was overnight unbeaten on 57!

And why do I still stick with TOI, you ask? Its the known devil, unknown angel thing. :-)

A 50% Day...

Its old news that Times Of India has more Ads than news, atleast in Bangalore. But amidst all the Ads was this strange coincidence in just 6-8 pages of yesterdays supplement paper.

... and I still didn't get off the couch. ;-)

Made my evening!

Had a good day with cartoons yesterday! I saw this yesteday evening in TOI and couldn't stop laughing. Its slightly "out there" humour, but with Calvin, what else can you expect! :-)

Made my day!

:-)))

Miracle

As a quick follow up, India did not lose the match! Call it Dhoni's most useful test knock or the rain gods punishing England, what happened yesterday was no short of a miracle. And the experts.... well, they can wait for another day. The Indian team sure believes in giving and taking second chances. :-)

Doomsday sayers!

I remember the 2002 Natwest Series finals between India and England very vividly. Kaif and Yuvraj playing and I was reading a magazine with the TV on and waiting for it to all end. Then I was witness to some magnificent (almost dream) batting and India chased an unlikely 326 to win the match. That day for the first time, the words "Anything can happen in cricket" actually made sense. Since then there were many days when India was reduced to smithereens, but I would hope for the Natwest kinda miracle. The miracles did come few and far between, just frequently enough for me to keep hoping. But at the same time, thanks to all the non miracle performances, I have become more immune to bad performances from India.

Today, India had to chase 380 at Lords. I followed the match a bit on the net, came back home and followed it a bit on television. India are right now 282/9 and seem like losing the test. The rain and Dhoni have come to the rescue, with the latter playing on 76, but the tail didn't wag much. I switch across some news channels and I see doomsday predictions in every channel. Every "expert" in town has a comment to make. Some are talking of how India has had a pathetic start to the tour, while others talk of how India is an aging side, or on how India can't play swing bowling, or on how India is unprepared for these of pitches. But one important thing they all seem to forget... WE HAVE NOT LOST THE MATCH YET! I am sure most of these experts would have a different opinion if Gilchrist and McGrath were on crease. I can see Dhoni doing quite as bit as Gilchrist could ever do while Sreesanth can match McGrath for batting grit and determination any day!

C'mon experts, please wait for us to lose the match while in the process probably making the highest score of the match in the 4th innings before you start heaping the pearls of wisdom at the team!

Profit Booking

Another expectedly bad batting performance overseas by the Indian cricket team against England. The three stalwarts of our batting lineup didn't live up to the hype. Dravid seems to have got into some kinda bad patch, Tendulkar flattered to deceive and Saurav played one of his usual innings these days of making a score, but one that doesn't accomplish anything.

This performance not being indicative, I think it makes a lot of sense for these cricketers to retire and make good of their career. Lemme explain my logic... There are BCCI limitations on the number of endorsements allowed to cricketers in a year. The career of these three are in their twilight anyway and we all know there is not enough talent out there to replace these guys. So, they could retire now and see the Indian middle order going to absolute doldrums. Within 6 months, we will all start making statements like "What a pathetic batting display. If Sachin or Rahul or even Saurav was around, they would have help the innings together". And this kinda talk will ensure that these three maintain their star status and since they are no longer in the national team, they can do all kinds of Ads, like Big B does (Binani Cement to Navratan Oil!!).

This would be profit booking at its best.... makes economic sense, don't you agree? ;-)

So far from Reality

As the Indian TV audience awaken to the genre of Reality TV, we are flooded with contests across cable channels. They range from Singing contests, acting contents and even off beat shows like MTV Roadies and Bakra. While these shows are preferable to saas-bahu serials, they are tweaked to a huge extent for TRP ratings.

Going after TRP ratings is definitely not wrong, but reducing these shows to a farce is kinda lame. For example, I was watching India Idol - 3 today. Since sms is THE way the contest is decided, the ladies apparently never win because most of the sms voters are ladies and they prefer voting for guys. While there could be a lot of truth in this, it also shows the biggest flaw in the system. How did Sunidhi chauhan come through? How did Shreya Ghoshal come through? Some very knowledgeable music pundits made the decision and time has proven them very right. But in this day and age of sms voting, its the slightly cuter one, slightly handsome one, the hindi belt one, the south indian one, the north east one etc etc which is as big a criteria that decides the winner as is their singing. If this ain't lame, I don't know what is! This is a competition for gods sake, shouldn't all the participants get a fighting chance?

Oh well....

Flatter to deceive

The first test against England is underway and India's bowling is not doing too well. The England weather is so finicky that its a surprise the game got underway on time. Vaughn won the toss and chose to bat and England made most of the lackluster Indian bowling attack. But as usual, its our fielding which is to blame just as much. Since our cable service provider does not give the new channel "Star Cricket", I am confined to seeing the highlights in news channels.

One of the highlights I saw of the match was Sreesanth bowling to Strauss and Dinesh Karthik dropping a dolly. This is not the first time I have seen this. Dinesh is a very athletic fielder. He jumps around, he is chirpy and is almost like the energizer bunny. All this is very good for a wicket keeper, but as a fielder, he has to understand that he has no gloves and there are said techniques to hold catches. Even in the last couple of series, I have seen him drop so many catches, that it is surprising that there is not more noise made about his pathetic catching. In fact, he is being considered a permanent in the test team, while a consistent player like Dhoni is on the fringes and as per news reports so was Laxman! No matter how spunky a bat Dinesh is, he has to understand that he is always an all rounder. Either he is a wicket keeping allrounder or he is a fielding allrounder. He has not done enough yet in International cricket to get leeway in the fielding department like Kumble or Laxman or for that matter Ganguly!

C'mon young man... catch that ball, will you!

Strange Video

Have seen buildings becoming demolished or brought down by force. But a building collapsing on its own accord... is a first for me.




p.s: Pardon the sub-titles. :-)

More or Less

While watching CNBC today, I noticed a news ticker which read, Indian economy growth rate expected to be 9% while the inflation is going to be pegged at 4%. How do I interpret this ? Good or bad? Does this mean, if we don't invest in the market/economy, are we losing out on 5%? Does this mean, employers should give an extra 5% hike to folks to maintain parity? :-) or should folks be encouraged by the company to use online trading floors during office hours to make this extra money?

Damn... need to go sleep. :-)

Bleed with 2.0

For all those who have embraced the web2.0 wave, this post will be of utmost interest. 95% of the web2.0 sites out on the net are run by startups. These companies are too small to be able to handle the kind of traffic that sites like google, yahoo or myspace can take. Hence, even if the idea they have is great, they tend to open private betas via invites as they can control the volume of traffic to their site. This definitely helps the business as they have probably created a lot of hype with people trying head over heels to get hold of invites, like what happened with GMail. But at the same time, it kills the spirit of the voluntary beta testers who would like to be the early adopters of any technology.

Here is a site that helps these bleeding edge geeks. InviteShare is a website that keeps track of invites and helps give it out to the needy. I have gotten myself enrolled and hope to get my hands on invites to a couple of sites that have left me waiting for over 2 months! Happy getting invited and inviting!

Two of a kind

This years Wimbledon has been a damp squib. But a revelation of sorts this year has been Martina Navratilova as a commentator. She had won the 2006 US open mixed doubles crown to be her 10th mixed doubles Grand Slam and has probably decided to give Grand Slam winning a rest (till she does another comeback). :-). But as a commentator, she was doing a good job and was humorous too, thanks to all her foot-in-the-mouth comments.

Listening to her commentate reminded me a lot of Wasim Akram when he had just retired and within a few months had started off as a commentator. Wasim Akram would explain the the most smallest of details that the ball or bowler could do. Things that he must have been thinking before delivering each ball. It was funny of sorts, because, he would go into the different ball grips and effects of shining the ball one way over another etc etc. I am sure these are the details that made him the great bowler he was, but this level of "heavy" commentary will polarize the listeners into the "absolutely captivated" or "he is boring" groups.

Martina's commentary is also along similar lines. Usually commentators talk of swirling winds and stop at saying "Its very difficult to play in these conditions". At the same time, Martina would talk about how the racket head should be to counter the wind. And how an almost ordinary looking shot is brilliant because the player used his/her topspin along with the wind direction to effect a winner. The good part of course is you can take her word for it, hell she has won at Wimbledon no less than 9 times!! But again, I think she too must have polarized viewers with this level of detail, but as far as I can tell, it was refreshingly different from the usually mundane commentary in most tennis matches.

And as is obvious, I belong to the "absolutely captivated" group in both cases. :-)

Mystery revealed...

... for the uber geeks among you. Any mobile aficionado worth his/her salt must have kept track of the iPhone release on June 29th. Here are the gory details of the iPhone. Remember, some company sponsored away 50K Rupees($1200 for two 8GB iPhones) to bring you this one pager. :-) On the other hand the share prices of companies whose components have been used to make the iPhone have started sky-rocketing. If the sponsor was one of them, this was a very wise move.

Loving it!

I have always been a huge iriver fan and each year their products just keep getting better and better. As the brain washed ipod lovers start wondering, 'what the hell is an iriver', they make music players. :-) I can see only one reason why anyone would buy an ipod over an iriver and that would be storage. iriver stopped their hideous looking hard drive players (H series) a while back and are only flash based now. This means, almost all their offerings come with a maximum of 4GB which is good for daily use, but not good enough as a music collection storage device. But these players are way way better in terms of music quality and now looks (may be subjective :-) ) over the ipod nano (compare to clix) or shuffle (compare to s10). Even though the famous 'click wheel interface' of ipod is truly innovative, anyone who uses the 'D Click interface' of iriver will feel no different.

Before I have all the ipod loyalists blast me, let me give them a taste of this korean manufacturer's innovativeness. Here are pics of the next slew of products lined up by iriver.

From weird(proposed T70 on left ) to funny("twist" on right),





to cute(disneys mouse), these guys are truly innovative.



Now all I need from them is a flash based or hard drive based big storage audio player and I am set!

Movie Review: Oceans 13

Finally, Oceans 13 happened!. All the traffic at Silk Board ensured that we reached some 10 minutes late. Anyway, don't think we missed much and caught the story strain (to my surprise).

Oceans 11 was a really superb script interspersed with some wonderful acting and drop dead superb screenplay. Oceans 12 was another decent attempt, the plot was too convoluted for me to be part of it. It was more of a mystery of "how they did it" and that is fun only when you have been given chances to figure it out during the course of the movie, which was not the case. I didn't like it as much, but the franchise still had enough in it to bring out a third and maintain interest.

Oceans 13, though seems like the name for the logical next part, doesn't actually have 13 people doing the job, they added Terry Benedict played by Andy Garcia to the crew, but there was no sign of No:12 of the previous part, Julia Roberts. Maybe the role played by Matt Damons dad is the No:13. The plot revolves around the new casino tycoon, Willy Bank played by Al Pacino throwing out Rueben (the casino owner part of Oceans team) from having anything to do with a new casino to which he apparently had a stake (This is the part I missed). Ocean gives Bank a chance to redeem himself which is curtly turned down. Bank then on gets busy setting his new Casinos opening day in place and Ocean sets his sight on destroying this special day for Bank and also denting him financially in the process. Toulour (Oceans adversary in Oceans 12) has a highly insignificant role to play and would have been better off not diluting the presence he had created in Oceans 12. Like any Oceans movie, the complete plot is next to impossible to pen in a review and also would kill the fun for those intending to watch the movie. What I can say though is that the plot is pretty straightforward and is executed in typical Oceans style with some unbelievable pieces (from acquiring a massive driller to being able to tweak with the dice used in the casino).

Of the many things that I didn't fancy in the movie, one definitely was the apparent disregard for millions of dollars by Oceans team. They haven't made that much money from the plots in the previous Oceans movies :-). Another thing which doesn't gel well is how Ocean pisses off somebody of Bank's stature and still is confident of getting away with it.

None the less, the movie was a decent watch for Oceans series fans and would be a definite recommend over Oceans 12 and not quite as riveting as Oceans 11. I give it a 7 on 10.

When you gotta go..

.. you gotta go. And technology helps you in this very urgent cause even. :-) Here is a new startup web2.0 company which is trying to help you find a place to "pee", when you need to go soooo bad! Mizpee is pee location finder which is designed to be browsed via a mobile device. You need to just enter in your location and viola, you have info on the best loo at your possible disposal. :-))

How much more can one use technology?

Pressure gets to all...

There was a time when I used to watch a lot of WWF now WWE. Once I got to the age when I figured that the whole thing was staged, I got so dejected that I almost stopped watching it. These days I spend a 5-10 minute period every now and then between channel browsing watching WWE. And anyone who is a partial or regular viewer of WWE would know Chris Benoit.

On June 24, he murdered his wife and 7 year old kid and later hanged himself. He had in previous interviews attributed a lot of him maverick behavior to the pressures and rigors of life of a professional athlete. A sad end to a good entertainer and even worse that he took his family down(up) with him. All the money, all the pressure, all the fame... wonder if its ever worth it.

How long before...

Wimbledon is on and like the French open is happening during back-from-office-in-India friendly times and hence am able to see a lot of it on television. And everyday, along with all the tennis I also get to see the wonderful ground covers that Wimbledon have. They bring it on and off so fast and are so effective in preventing the grass from getting any greener. In case my sarcasm is lost on anyone, all this rain at Wimbledon really sucks!

We have 4 Grand Slams in a year. Ideally speaking, we should be having one per quarter. But nope, we gotta have it as haphazard as possible. We start in Jan with Australian, wait till May/June for the French and withing 2-3 weeks have Wimbledon and wait for the end of the year for the US Open. Now, the obvious culprits are French and Wimbledon. Since Wimbledon is blessed with such lousy weather at this time for the year, what why can't they move the tourney to be a couple of months delayed or early? Cmon organizers, you see this happen every year, when are you gonna learn that tennis cannot be played in the rain and we hence needs a reschedule!!

Happy printing!

Digital cameras are very pervasive these days and you can find many a person clicking away merrily during functions and get-togethers. One major flip side to digital camera usage is the abundant amount of photos that get clicked and the massive organizing that is needed after any clicking spree. With regular cameras, once the reel is finished, we get it developed and the story of that reel ends there. But with digital cameras, we tend to trust our hard-disks to store everything and when the space crunch hits we then need to
organize(delete) in a hurry.

If you belong to category of people who face the above problem, here is a solution that could help. Picsquare is an Indian startup which does online printing jobs. It can help you print on T-shirts, cups, calendars or take regular digital photo prints. All from the cozy confines of your computer and at 'cheaper than street' prices. Get your photos ass off your hard-disk and onto the photo paper. :-) Give it a shot!

How times change...

India has followed the caste system since ages and probably was started with some noble intent. This has unfortunately been construed into a license for discrimination by many so called upper castes on the lower castes. Who or when this was conceived is always open to argument, but one thing that was consistent in my memory is the dual face of politicians when it comes to treating the so called lower castes. I am going to drop the "so called" from now on, for the record, I don't consider anybody to be upper or lower caste. Now to continue... most of the politicians have one and only agenda, get to power. To achieve this, they need every vote they can conjure up and hence keep the lower castes in this constant state of misery. This ensures that every election these folks suffer from memory loss of the previous time the same politician was in power and always vote on sentiments.



Nonetheless, the general talk in the "middle class" used to deem being of a lower caste to be demeaning or somehow less becoming. When I was trying to get admission after my 10 or 12th, the SC/ST quota was in play and most of the SC/STs I knew were not proud of it. They were well to do and yet were using the quota system. They would tell me that they know what is happening is not right, but then, it probably helps the needy somewhere. From the state of affairs that existed then, today we have the Gujjars fighting to be called tribals! They are a pretty big community and media reports suggest that they are relatively well to do. Why would they want to be called a tribal or crassly put "a dalit"? Doesn't this indicate something wrong with the Government policies? Doesn't this indicate that the quota system is being so badly misused that folks don't care a damn of what the society would look upon them as (which is usually a big deal in India), all just to get reservation in education or government offices?



Whether the Gujjars have the right reasons or not to place this demand, with respect to SC/ST status, the times sure have changed....

Mr ya Mrs

A "well contested" presidential elections in India, hasn't it been a while since we have seen one? The office of the President has become a test lab for the political parties of India. The main reason that K.R. Narayanan was the President was to gather the SC/ST vote bank. Next came Mr. Abdul Kalam, through whom the BJP tried to reduce the animosity that the Muslim community in India felt towards them. Now its the turn of Mrs. Pratibha Patil. Here the emphasis is on trying to woo the female vote bank. C'mon UPA, she was in political oblivion from 1996-2004, you pulled her out of nowhere and made her the Governor of Rajasthan and since she listened to your every move, she gets the next big promotion to Presidency? Any chance of thinking of the country's good before your own?

Since the ruling party usually proposes the winning candidate, there is a high probability that Mrs. Pratibha Patil would be the next President of India. If she wouldn't be the perfect rubber stamp President, then I don't know who would be! If looks could tell all the story, she would be succeeding the most popular President India has had, to become the most meekest President India has had. She is being so well protected by the Congress party that anybody but her would do the talking for her. The biggest question the educated people of India would be asking is, "What is wrong with Mr. Kalam?, why can't he continue as the President?". An answer to which, I am sure, the politicians of UPA or NDA would not have. The left over parties, aptly called UNPA i.e. !(UPA+NDA) :-), tried to woo Kalam into the race. Kalam said the most politically naive thing and the people opposing him had a field day. He said he would contest if he is sure of winning. Duh! This is politics, you are not supported by the 2 biggest party coalitions, you stand next to no chance of winning. You had a good run and unfortunately the political masters of India care more for their next elections, than continuing with the best President India has had. Now, the UPA leaders say that this is proof that Kalam is not really apolitical and he has shown his love for the chair. I ask, what is wrong with having the love of the chair? especially when he has done such a commendable job? Does that one statement make him a political guy? By accusing him of showing his political side, are you agreeing that being political obviously means being bad? I anything, I would say the statement shows his patriotism, as he wants the office of the President to not be corrupted by politics and in that regard his credentials beat the other competitors by a long margin. BJP on the other hand seizes this obvious admiration that people have for Kalam and ask the Congress as to why they oppose Kalam so much. Hey BJP, if you love Kalam so much, why field your own candidate? Why not support Kalam? And Mr. Shekhawat, poor guy must have been waiting for this day so bad. The only rubber stamp post more perfect than that of the President is that of the Vice-President! He must have been dreaming of getting the promotion to being "THE" rubber stamp instead of the Assistant rubber stamp.

All in all, another political drama unfolding to culminate in another political fiasco. It would not be too bad to see a lady take up the post though, giving the women of India a boost. But, in Indian politics, there is no other post that is as hypocritically admired and yet disregarded like the Presidential post. If anything, this win by Mrs. Pratibha Patil would put the women trying to earn a break in the male dominated work-socio setup into reverse gear, as this is exactly the attitude that they are trying to fight in their everyday life!

Let the games continue....

KMPL getting redefined?

While talks of the 1L car catches more attention, the big sedan segment seems to be getting a drift of India mindset. We are a tough market to succeed in, because value for money is more important than sheer quality or looks or efficiency alone. Here is an Ad I saw in the paper yesterday and it really took me by surprise. It surprised me so much that I chose to exercise my already challenged paintshop pro skills. :-)




Is this number for real or a misprint? Does the Hyundai Verna actually give 31kms to a litre of petrol? I have also heard such lofty numbers about Ford Fiesta. Can someone who owns either of these cars confirm this info?

Enough already!

So Atlantis has not got back from space. We are worried, as worried as we need to be. Sunita Williams along with some more folks are in trouble and considering the recent US space history, everybody has reason to worry. There are all these articles of second Indian lady in space walking the same path as the first(Kalpana Chawla). But lets make one thing very clear... Sunita Williams is NOT an Indian. She can be called as of being of Indian origin, but I am sure there are more foreigners doing more good for India than Sunita Williams ever has or will. I have nothing against Sunita Williams, but she is far less important to India than what she is made out to be. I mean, Times Of India actually have this on the very first page followed by a lengthy article later on.



Does the average Indian really have to know that she is craving for pista ice cream and chocolate! Like everything these days, news is also bubblegum-style, masticate the same news over and over, blow it up as hard as possible and then out it goes to stick on someone's memory sole!

For the bookies..

... not the betting but reading kinds i.e.

Indiranagar becomes an even better place to stay with Sapna book house planning to set shop very soon.




I prefer to work in and around Indiranagar rather than live there though. Get all the perks the place has to offer but avoid all the traffic this "once cute" place is engulfed with. Its a different topic I won't come close to affording a place there. :-)

Its never enough

... and it never will be. Wait wait wait... before your fertile minds start reading between lines in the very first line, I am talking about the shopping experience in Bengaluru over a weekend. :-). It just keeps getting crowded and crowded and more crowded. The spending middle class in Bengaluru is so strong that any semblance of a mall anywhere will be attacked on like hungry piranhas. There was a time when I would hear of a new mall coming up here or there and think, "Man, are these guys gonna go out of business, or what!". Precisely the "or what" is happening in busy Bengaluru where anyone can sell, anything will sell and all will buy!

Heres calling all the already rich mall builders, please build some more... Bengaluru needs them and god knows you need the money. ;-)

p.s: To all builders, As you take my cry call seriously, please don't forget that most of us reach malls on vehicles and they need parking. So, please plan a LOT of parking space too. :-)

Movie Review: Cheeni Kum

Another multiplex film, Cheeni Kum hit screens a couple of weeks back. It has Amitabh and Tabu in lead with smallish roles for Paresh Rawal and Zohra Sehgal. The story is exactly what the promos show, of a 64 year old man swooning a 34 year old woman. To Amitabhs credit, he carries off the typical boyfriend role to the 'T'. The chemistry that the lead pair shares is amazing, and that is total credit to the two actors who have understood their characters so well, that they were able to pull off the chemistry that the writer/director may have wished for. Zohra Sehgal is ok in her role while there is this child actress who  has also done a nice job. She is supposed to be suffering from Blood Cancer and hence is given the leeway of expressing on  issues more mature than what is appropriate for her age. Can't give her too much credit though as she is expected to only have one expression, that of being stoic, and she does that well. Wonder if she has got more than that one expression though. Paresh enters in the movie quite late and does an ok job too. The one-twos that he and Amitabh share are quite funny and gives the idea of a typical "retired man". Of course, it is important that Paresh is typical, else the atypicalness of Amitabh wouldn't have been as contrasting. All in all, a decent fair.



One thing that did irk me was Amitabhs character's 30 year old guy kinda portrayal. I am not referring to him trying to woo Tabu. This is the crux of the movie and and hence is expected. But his apparent immature response to the sickness and eventual death of "Sexy", the little girl was overdone. The role of "Sexy" was just to give some respite from the otherwise monotonous storyline. But in a couple of instances, he overreacts and overacts. But again, this is more than something that is obvious, and most cinegoers could care less. For keeping things fun, to the point and in fact quite simple, I rate it at 6.5 on 10.





Couldn't see Oceans 13 this week either, hopefully next week...

Movie Review: Shootout At Lokhandwala

Had been a while since I watched a Bollywood movie in a theater. This weekend I decided to break the spell with Shootout At Lokhandwala. There were other options like Oceans 13 or Cheeni Kum, but decided to see this as I wanted to know how the director managed to handle the casting coup of sorts with so many big names in a single movie.

The movie on the whole was a disappointment! There are very few things that one can appreciate in the movie and I will make an honest effort to remember as many of them. Sanjay and Vivek looked good doing macho roles. Sanjay has matured so much as an actor, that I would now not mind going to see a movie just based on him being in it. Ok.. I went a bit far there. He was good in the movie, and that is enough. :-) Vivek doing a Company like role and giving a Company like performance, he has been applauded so much for his performance that he has lost all the extra '"i's" and "e's" in his name is back to Vivek Oberoi. Good for him. There were a few scenes that were intense and well shot. Thats it, I am done with the good stuff, now to the bad. Abhishek bachchan is totally wasted in the movie, in fact he has absolutely nothing to do with the plot or the storyline and is done with role in a 5 minute burst. The director/producer just doing an item number equivalent with respect to a role. Amitabh's is another totally wasted character. He is seen ridiculing the police force all along but when it matters, like any other slimy lawyer, lets his own views take a backseat. Quite irritatingly and pompously portrayed. The songs are absolute damp squibs! No relation to the story and always in the same dance bar. Diya mirza has a role which didn't need a star, she just hangs around for no reason. Aarti Chaabria is just for bosom show and since no one expects her to act, she doesn't disappoint anyone. Neha Dhupia.... ok, she got a mention in this review, more than good enough for her. Last but not the least, Tushar Kapoor! His was the worst performance in the movie. Since Balaji Telefims (owned by father/sister) is producing the movie, Tushar seems to have got into the cast. He has absolutely no dialogue delivery power. In the middle of gangsters and encounter cops, he seems like this "I want milk" character. Unfortunately there are far too many scenes of his peppered throughout the movie to kill any excitement or continuity that did conjour. I think I can go on and on...

All in all, a very big disappointment, since I did go in with a lot of hopes. But for people who like to see the usual gangster-encounter kinda movies, there is enough in the movie to keep you from yawning. I give it a merciful 5.5 on 10!

True Successor!

Lionel Messi is a phenom in his own right. He is young, talented and extremely quick! On top of all this , he has the added burden of being called the next maradona by maradona himself. We know what a statement similar to this by Don Bradman did to Sachin Tendulkar. ;-) Anywayz, Lionel has been doing pretty well for himself at Barcelona and with Ronaldinho sharing midfield with him, this was a dream combo for many a football fan.



Last weekend saw Barca take on Espanyol in a must win situation, to enable them to get to the top of La Liga. Apart from just football skills, Messi decided to call upon *all* the skills that Maradona possessed during this very important match! It was blatant, it was cheating and luckily justice was served as Barca didn't win the match!



Truly disappointing from such a talented player... Football is all about winning, but no sport should be void of sportsmanship. Defenders tugging at shirts or hand holding strikers back, strikers falling like nine pins at the very sight of a defender, these are regulars in football these days. And the more such leniency is allowed, the more degraded the most popular sport in the world would become. In my opinion, you can play the game right and still come on top. Maradona the great is unfortunately remembered just as much for his "hand of god" as he is for his dribbling skills. Now, Lionel Messi will also be remembered (at least by me) for his rendition of "hand of god" instead of his stupendous football talent.

IE acting up!

Off late, readers who access this blog using IE would notice that there are sometimes some funny characters or extra paragraphing in blog entries. Firefox users would not see this. I was initially unsure of the source of the problem, but now know that its because of ScribeFire.



I use ScribeFire (formerly called performancing) to post blog entries. It comes as a convenient firefox extension and is hence very handy for online and offline post creation and updates. But looks like IE has an issue with ScribeFire. :-( Anyway, I am looking at alternative blogging tools, until then, IE users, please bear with the mis-formatting. Else, even better option, switch to firefox. :-)

Congrats - We have finally made it...

Ever wondered why no UFO sightings happen in India? Its always got to be the US or maybe Russia. Who am I kidding, its always the US. ;-). In my opinion, this is because the aliens always want to meet the leaders of the world and US is today the undisputed leader of the world and has been so for a couple of decades.



But our time in the alien limelight has finally arrived. If this is not the strongest ever indication of India hitting the economic and political big leagues, then I don't know what is! :-). Can someone please tell Condoleezza Rice to reconsider. :-))

Hot Air?

The 5th of June was World Environment Day. I could see the appreciable difference in awareness among people and also more focus on the issue at hand by the media. The media of course is just following the world scene, where there is a general urgency and seriousness to tackle the problem of global warming. The term "global warming" actually encompasses many different parts for the general public(me). It means you keeping your vehicle well serviced so that it spews less smoke, it also means using less electricity, it also means using paper instead of plastic etc etc. Now I know not many of this makes sense in the true meaning of global warming, but this what I understand it to be and probably what most people would think of it too. In effect I have just been doing enough to be a good citizen in the global resource pool called Earth. But apparently global warming is all about CO2 (Carbon dioxide).

I saw the documentary "An Inconvenient truth" a couple of months ago. It was a very passionate, dramatic and a bit of self propaganda presentation by Al Gore. It was quite a scary eye opener for me to see how our modernization was killing earth. On the back of this documentary and the constant media attention meant that I, who anyway was a good global citizen became more conscious and more vocal about the destruction of earth(people near and dear to me can vouch for that). I then happened to read a blog which gave a different spin to the whole problem of global warming. I of course was a skeptic to this new spin, in fact I responded to it massive intolerance at the possibility of there being another explanation to global warming. Global warming seems to be the first issue in a looong time that has global acceptance and affirmative actions being discussed. How can all the world leaders be wrong? How can all the media that I am exposed to be wrong? Then I read a bit on the net and then some more and finally saw this. Those who want this documentary and have net access to me, I can send it across, else you can watch it online. Just as much an eye opener as the Al Gore one, this gives more credible data (at least looks credible) on why humans are too small a player in the universal or earthly scheme of things. It tells:

1. Sun makes earth a lot hotter than CO2 can ever do.
2. The clouds help the Sun in this process
3. The amount of CO2 humans generate is less than 1% of the total CO2 emissions in the world.
4. The temperatures on earth have been going hot and cold for lot longer than humans and their industrialization.

It then goes a step further are disproves many of the claims made in "An Inconvenient Truth". The number of scientists who have come forth in this documentary when compared to "0" (if I remember right) in the Al Gore one gives more credence to this one. Am I converted, hmm... not quite. But I can see a lot of sense in what is being told here and I am now more open minded to consider the alternatives.

1. The climatologists will get a lot more grant money if the fear of global warming keeps lurking.
2. The developing or under developed economies will in all probability stop their economic growth if they were to follow the strict guidelines laid down by the developed countries to prevent global warming. For e.g. India has all the coal it needs to keep burning, but his constant CO2 threat is going to make these reserves next to useless.
3. Gives one more topic to the developed countries to align itself with the developing economies so that the developing economies ensure the already globalized companies in the west keep the margins high enough to ensure the quality of life in these developed countries.

If this sounds like a fresh convert speaking, let me assure you, the last two points above have been in my mind a long time, and this new explanation on global warming gives me a reasonable connection to the reasons. I completely agree with green peace activists and the environmentalists telling us to treat the planet better and be more environment friendly. But I now question the politically and economically backed motive in driving reforms down the throat of the "finally catching up" developing economies of the world!

Business End of things...

This years French open is coming to a close and the mens semi final line up is:

Federer vs Davydenko
Nadal vs Djokovic

The dream final is of course Federer vs Nadal, but if not for this outcome, I would think there would be more interest in a Nadal vs Davydenko match than a Federer vs Djokovic match. This is because, Nadal gives every player a fighting chance to beat him, even though he wins at the end of it. But Federer just demolishes the opponent. That is why its important that Federer loses more often, makes viewing the game more interesting. :-)

If Nadal and Federer play the final the way they played their semis, Federer is in for another drubbing. he he he...

Timely Dilbert

Ironically, we are having the appraisal process kicking off at our office. :-)

On Target!

The hutch ads have always been catchy and cute. But not so long ago, they came up with an Ad which showed that they knew their target market very well. No wonder they got bought for billions of dollars! :-)





In case the subtlety is lost on anyone, the ladies always run up the "Large" bill. :-))

For want of airtime...

How good is our National Badminton team? The last match I saw was Chetan Anand, India's No:1 being beaten in the quarter final stage of a tourney by Peter Gade (then World No:3). I was happy then to see the pluck in Chetan and wished for him to do very good for himself and India. Almost a year has passed by and I don't remember seeing many news let alone good news about Indian Badminton.



Then about a month or so back, I happen to hear about the tiff between some of the top Indian shuttlers and BAI (Badminton Association of India). The BAI wanted all players to attend a "elite" training camp for 6 months and attend only those tourneys that are decided by it. This kind of camp would definitely help the younger crop of players and players on the fringe of national team selection. But the folks who are already on the team and doing ok for themselves surely didn't want to miss out on the pay packages of playing in tourneys abroad by attending this camp (which will probably not do them much good). The BAI in turn stopped these players from being considered for selection for these tourneys. Definitely can't blame the players for throwing the towel in and the dictatorial behavior of BAI had to be opposed. The opposition was spearheaded by none other than Chetan Anand and his wife Jwala Gutta along with her doubles partner, Shruthi Kurien. This has been going on for a while with each party taking a media salvo at each other every now and then.



This being said, today I hear the news that BAI has finally loosened its stance and is now going to given permission to the top players to not attend the camp and go ahead for tourneys. This sure is a sweet victory and instead of getting back to their cause (i.e. badminton) ASAP, our rebelling shuttlers had to have the last word. While talking to the media, Chetan claims that BAI must compensate them for the tourneys they missed. While Jwala goes total filmy and says their careers have been "irreparably damaged". You don't play for 6 months in big money tourneys and your career has been damaged? In the same vein, a capable software professional working in a company with pittance salary has also damaged his career! Shuttle Rebels, get back on court and prove your point! "Resurrect" your careers...



Sports professional minus cricketers in India and media starved and nobody wants to lose any airtime....

 

Its finally happened...

The sport of tennis had been longing for two things to happen. Federer to beat Nadal on clay and Nadal to beat Federer on grass. Both are geniuses in their own ranks with Federer being the more accomplished one. In fact, I think Federer plays so good, that he was/is doing more harm to the game of tennis than good. Its almost like in cricket, nobody can beat Australia and hence no finals is fun as the result is a foregone conclusion. The world has been longing for some sort of competition to brew that they decided to make a surface where both of these players will have an equal shot at winning. Nadal won this strange match and possibility of some interesting results was now a reality.



Nadal had since continued his winning streak on clay and last counted at 81 continuous victories on clay, till the Hamburg Open final where he met Federer. The stage was set and Federer finally did it! What makes this victory special for Federer is that he was in some sort of a slump losing to some lesser known players and here too lost the first set. But to be fair to Nadal, he had been playing far more tennis that Federer, 81 is a good number. :-) Now that French open is definitely going to be a lot more interesting, one can only wish for an equally interesting Wimbledon. With Federer on a 41 match unbeaten streak on grass, the tables turn and Nadal, the underdog, should pull off an upset. If this year, French Open goes to Federer and Wimbledon goes to Nadal, we could possibly be privy to a very legendary duel brewing for many years to come.



Boo to domination, hail the underdog! :-)

Being Nasty!

Dayanidhi Maran is out! I am sure a less competent person will now control the ministry, which is a not so good. He was a young politician and I generally feel the younger crop of politicians are less corrupt. But there was one thing about Maran that irked me to no end and that was his oh-so-obvious Tamilnadu centric IT policies. I agree that more cities in India must get their IT industry going. But I just as strongly believe that we should not lose the edge that Bengaluru gives India in world IT scene. How many IT CEOs did Maran get to Bengaluru versus Chennai? Why this disparity? Bengaluru has been grappling with infrastructure issues for some time now and why is this? The only industry that Bengaluru can boast about is IT and not all of the IT engineers are Bangaloreans. They come from all parts of the country, and hence giving Bengaluru priority is not a crime, but is in national interest. As a cabinet minister in charge of this ministry, he should have been the forerunner in getting attention to this issue. But you heard Kalam and Manmohan Singh talk about it before the IT minister uttered a word even!

I am happy that a less efficient minister at the helm would mean more good to IT on the whole and Bengaluru in specific than Maran. Just calling a spade a spade, even if its nasty!

The new radio city

We have a new FM radio station in Bangalore, Fever 104. These guys are not exactly new and have been around for 2-3 months now, but they have been pretty low key when compared to their competitors. This is strange considering the niche market that every station is trying to acquire. Also, the big name behind this station is Virgin who are a old name in the music game and should know that they need to woo the market, at least initially, even if they do present good music.



They have a very consistent format unlike other radio stations and this is probably what makes them unique. They play 40 minutes of non-stop, ad-free music every hour and then pepper in a few ads in the next 20 minutes. The Bangalore arm of the station is headed by erstwhile radio city RJ Darius and has some other ex-radio city RJs like Fiona and Rohit Jayakaran pitching in. Their song selection though is very much like radio city, trying to play the most "popular" songs in Bollywood and International tracks, though the ratio is almost 1:1. I have not heard a single Kannada song being played, which I think is bold. I did hear an RJ late in the night speak a few Kannada words though. :-)



As of now, I prefer Fever 104 to radio city simply because they play better music with lesser Ads. Sunaina Lal not being around didn't help radio city's cause either. But an annoying thing about Fever is their non-conformance to standard(if there is one). There is some funda of radio station frequencies ending with an odd number, at least in the US there is. In Bangalore too, we have:

1. Radio Mirchi - 98.3

2. Radio One - 94.3

3. Surya FM - 93.5

4. Big FM - 92.7

5. Radio Indigo - 91.9



Radio city started of as 91.0 and changed not so long ago to 91.1. This being said, why did Fever start off with 104.0 ?? I just bought a Car CD/FM player from the US and I know that will not support even ending frequencies. :-( Now, do I upgrade or wait for Fever to upgrade?

Movie Review: Bheja Fry

My first hindi movie in a looong time, and boy was it worth it! Multiplex cinema is here to stay and this movie is the best proof of this. Bheja Fry, a 55-60 Lakhs budget movie, a 1.5 hrs movie, a non bollywood-like star cast movie and yet more fun to watch that the most Yashraj films!

Bheja Fry is the story of a rich, pompous, selfish and arrogant music industry businessman Ranjit Thadani(Rajat Kapoor), who at the end of the movie learns a thing or two about how to be a nice guy. Rajat Kapoor unwinds every Friday night with a bunch of friends. Their activity being, getting some person who believes he has talent to their dinner/get-together and make fun of them, of course without the person knowing that he is being made fun off. Sounds rude ? it of course is, and that is exactly what his wife (Sarika) feels. The "idiot" called in for one such fun Friday night is Bharat Bhushan(Vinay Pathak), a wannabe singer working in the tax department.

The story gets interesting when Ranjit sprains his back on this particular friday and to boot loses his mobile. The significance of losing the mobile is absolutely essential for the movie's intense storyline. :-). Adamant to continue with his weekend party, he calls Bharat Bhushan to come and disregards his wife's suggestions to cancel the friday get-together and care for his back. Miffed by this his wife leaves the house in anger. The rest of the movie is to do with Ranjits efforts to trace his wife and in the process the very unique antics of Bharat Bhushan. All in all a real fun movie and will definitely be worth your time.

Was the movie technically brilliant? Of course not, it is riddled with minor mistakes that are needed to keep the story going. This being said, no one can complain about the performances, most notably that of Vinay Pathak. Absolutely brilliant comic timing and dialogue delivery. Ranvir Shourie could have been used better and Milind Soman was possibly the worst performer in the movie.

On a purely entertainment scale, I would give this movie a 8.0 on 10. :-)

StumbleUpon Money

Imagine a product that takes you to a random site on a click. The random site of course is not so random, since it is based on some logic of likeness shared by people with similar interests as you. Seems far fetched and would probably not work. And even if it did do something close to whatever it claims, who would spend money on/for it.



Truth is stranger than fiction and reality definitely likes far fetched ideas. Apparently, the startup Stumbleupon  has 4 million sites being stumbled upon by people and their 2 million user base is good enough to have ebay interested in them. Imagine, with a seed funding of just $1.5 million dollars, they are now rumored to go for $40-$45 million dollars! Now, this is called stumbling upon some money! I really wonder, how would a company like ebay benefit from stumbleupon? Can then make people stumbleupon products that they are likely to buy? Along similar lines, how would ebay benefit from spending $2.6 billion to buy skype? Can they make sellers and buyers talk over skype and finish deals?



I guess ebay just has money to burn or a real whacky M&A strategy. :-)

Bad Timing Lady Luck!

I am in transit at Singapore and have 20 hrs to kill here. I was sorta happy to know that a big chunk of this time will be spent watching the cricket world cup match of the day as Changi airport has live screening of the same.

... And as luck would have it, Ireland play Sri Lanka today. Urrrghhhhh!

Interestingly, I was watching a news programme on BBC where they were citing the low crowd turnout this world cup. If anyone doubted the future of cricket, doubt further. This has arguably been one of the least entertaining world cups I can remember. First off, two strong teams (ok, we can debate this ;-)) get knocked off before the super eights. To add, a coach is killed in mysterious circumstances. Another team, England, had a very mediocre world cup after igniting hopes with their last minute performances in the Benson and Hedges against Australia. Now come the high ticket prices because of which not enough locals are turning up for the matches.

All in all a bad world cup and personally more than happy to have missed it. :-)

American Idol - Indian Origin

The monotonous reality talent hunt show "American Idol" is going strong in its sixth season! This season has been ruled by an American of semi-Indian parental origin, Sanjaya. I have never seen him performing on the show, but a colleague of mine showed me his pictures on the net and must say, this guy has some whacky hair and dress styles! Its probably because of this whackiness that he has a huge fan following, some of whom are crazy enough to do this! :-)

Gadget Burn

There are ideas and there are IDEAS



There are gadgets and there are GADGETS



There is weird and then there is NABAZTAG!!!!



Its interesting, its kinda useful, its as geeky as it gets and it helps you burn more gadget money. Go through the site and be amazed or laugh or be puzzled. :-)

Music Review: Ta Ra Rum Pum

Home sickness kicking in and nothing like some Bollywood music to pep you back to work. I had a slew of new films to choose from, but wanted to play safe and went with Ta Ra Rum Pum. As far as I remember, this film was supposed to have Shekhar Kapur directing and A R Rahman scoring the music. Apparently plans changed and both these guys have nothing to do with the movie. Since this is a music review I only care for the music director(s) and Vishal-Shekhar are as good as any out there in Bollywood music these days.



The first impression on hearing these songs were... "wait a sec, haven't I heard these somewhere?". This unfortunately stuck to my head throughout my listening and hasn't gotten any better. But none the less, the songs have merit and they exist with an identity(barely).



Of all the songs in the movie, the one that is the obvious hit and a class apart is O Shona by Shaan and Sunidhi. Shaan somehow manages to nudge ahead of KK even though KK does get some songs in some unexpected films to be hits. You can also sense the extra effort Sunidhi puts in to sound soft and suppress her otherwise more throaty sound. Definite hit (it must already be doing the rounds in channels back home) and a definite out of India picturisation. Its gotta be so, its Yashraj afterall! Haven't they forgotten that there are picturesque places in India too? :-) Another song which caught my fancy was Ab To Forever sung by Kay Kay. This is a real pacey number with an initial cue sorts sung by Vishal (part of the music director duo) which is so so catchy! Definitely ring tone material. ;-). Vishal has also sung a sufi number of sorts which again is pretty impressive. After hearing Shekhar in Aazmalae from Taxi No 9211 and Vishal now, I can quite boldly say that these are the best singing music director duo Bollywood has seen. But I do wonder though, if Kailash Kher had sung the sufi score, it would be so much more apt. These were the interesting parts of the album. We now have the typical Title song, which is ok but not really captivating and a slow version of the same song sung by Shreya Ghoshal. Nachle Ve and Saiyaan were typical and kinda brings the overall rating for the album down.



So, I think this album deserves somewhere between a 6 and a 7 out of 10, how about 6.5 ? :-)