Marriage-Divorce : The Gowda Play

Pardon me if this post actually gets outdated by the tomorrows morning news. Last heard, JD(S) has decided to forget their differences with BJP and have decided to keep the marriage of convenience going. Yediyurappa will be the BJP candidate for CM and the promises that the coalition will stay strong has started.

It looks like the thought of losing more than just power got the JD(S) supremo, Deve Gowda to agree to the alliance. One of the reasons for JD(S) to be so bullish about breaking the alliance instead of handing over power was because of it having comfortably won local body elections. This gave them confidence that even if there were mid term polls, they would come out better in terms of number of seats in the assembly. But after breaking the pact to hand over power to the BJP, the public backlash was so strong that JD(S) realized that things were not going to plan. One of the exit polls showed them winning a paltry 17 to 19 seats. Couple with this was senior JD(S) leader MP Prakash trying to get things going with the Congress again. With Sonia visiting China, there was no swift action on this front, but the fear of a party split was very real. The Gowdas quickly regrouped and got the alliance going with the ever ready BJP for the second time.

Lets just hope that after all this power struggle and spitfire comments we will end up having some decent governance from the next 20 months. (fingers crossed)

Feed the obese!

Harry Potter Series... by far the reading/viewing sensation for kids (and also strangely some adults) of this generation is nearing the end of its money making journey. At the end of this journey, book publications, movie producers, memorabilia makers and above all the author have made millions and billions of dollars. With the final book in the series being released and a movie to follow, JK Rowling doesn't want her current supply of millions to stop. To keep the flame burning, she has some fuel in store...

What fuel you ask? Rowling reveals that Dumbledore is gay! For all non-potter fans, and I hope there are many, he is an old wizard in the harry potter books, alike Gandalf in LOTR. :-). In my opinion, this is nothing more than adding the constant fuel needed to keep the book and characters and whatever else in the minds of the fans till the movie is out. Who would really care if the old wizard is gay?? I haven't seen any of the harry potter movies to completion and neither have I read any of the books and hence don't know if this news could have any significance in the overall context of the movies or books. I would think that this wouldn't have any relevance as the genre that the harry potter series falls into is mainly for the kids and they don't need to know these kinda details. This news was probably planted to enamor the gay brigade onto the harry potter groove and get some gay pride going. Also, this helps to get some more religious controversy going which can only help with the publicity. To be honest though, Rowling wouldn't be the first to use these kinda cheap gimmicks.

At the end of the day, the already over-fed harry potter fans get some more junk food to gorge on! Keep it going Rowling, don't let anything stop you from making your money!

GMail ups the ante!

GMail adds the one feature that was a request from many users for a long time, IMAP support. This is quite unique when it comes to a web based email client and kudos to GMail for getting it in and more importantly keeping it free.

GMail after the initial surprise factor of its unique user interface and 1GB of storage has done precious little to forward its case. The fact that its a Google product is good enough for many (including me), but then, new features are a must! GMail, I feel, suffered from what every Google product seems to suffer from i.e. lack of sustained interest. Google has been getting new products out, but doing very little on the old ones.

Anyway, the IMAP support availability with GMail sure is good news for many!

Closing loopholes

The finance ministry in India has notified the guidelines for ESOPs given by a company and the tax implications of the same. It apparently does not cover the situation regarding a company not listed in India giving stock options to its employees working in India. A friend of mine found this doc which helps understand this more.

Lemme ask for more official help and figure this out...

GDAD!

GDAD - Acronym For "Good Deed A Day". :-)

I aim to do one Good Deed a Day(sentance used only for dramatic effect with no real conviction), and all bloggable good deeds will be, well, blogged!

If any of you guys out there are as lazy as me, this would be a real boon.



2 Second T-Shirt Fold!! - More amazing video clips are a click away

Now, no more excuses for having a messy bedroom. :-)

Secret revealed!

India is on the verge of losing the 6th ODI against Australia. At 189-2, our required run rate was around 7.5 runs an over. With only 17 overs left, India chose to send in Rahul Dravid, who has been in pathetic form. People in the pavilion are Yuvraj, Uthappa and Dhoni himself. Why?

As I write this post, India has just lost the match. We lost the match not because of our bowling, it was again our batting. And the main culprit was our top scorer, Saurav Ganguly. He has opened the innings and scored 85 runs in 110 balls! That is equivalent to scoring at 4.6 runs per over when our required rate is 6.3!! This under normal circumstances would be considered ok, but when you are chasing 318, this is sacrilege. He has successfully managed to figure out the mantra to stay on in the Indian ODI cricket team. Keep scoring runs, no matter what the strike rate or situation. People will remember his 50's and forget how useless and sometimes detrimental the scores actually were. Here are his significant scores after his return to international cricket and the number of balls taken to get these scores.

73 in 99 balls (Strike Rate: 73)
42 in 75 balls (Strike Rate: 56)
39 in 54 balls (Strike Rate: 72)
72 in 104 balls (Strike Rate: 69)
59 in 79 balls (Strike Rate: 74)
53 in 60 balls (Strike Rate: 88) {Sachin in this match was scoring at strike rate of 120}
41 in 59 balls (Strike Rate: 69)
85 in 110 balls (Strike Rate: 77)

He is averaging around 53 in ODIs this year and we have not won a single match because of his performances. In the same time, Sachin and Rahul, the other two oldies have scored match winning innings on multiple occasions, but have a lot lesser average than Saurav. In fact, Rahul and Sachin are the first two in line to get dropped from the team in the "oldies rotation system".

Even in todays match, he played so slow that he left little too much for the rest of the folks towards the end. Today is one of the occasions where his batting has already cost us the match! I don't like Gambhirs technique, but his attitude is spot on. The selectors would be well advised to pack our team with match winners rather than folks whose performances make no or negative impact on the match!

Informed Criminal

I watched the movie My Wifes Murder yesterday. It was touted as one of the better RGV films and something I had missed watching in the cinemas when it released. Since it is not a new release, I won't go into a review per say. Its a decent movie and could have been a lot more better.

One of the things that struck me the most was how I was thinking about what the hero (Anil Kapoor) should be doing after his wife(Suchitra Krishnamurthy) is accidentally killed by him. Before anybody starts fearing the birth of a murderer in me, let me give you the reason for the same. I am an avid fan of CSI, a crime scene investigation serial. Its been on for 7 seasons and I have watched every episode and enjoyed it thoroughly. During the course of all these CSI episodes, I have seen the weirdest of cases being solved and each episode has got to be a different plot than any other that has been aired. Hence you understand the different methods used by criminals in committing the crime and the different methods used by the investigators to catch them.

By CSI standards, this movie has a lot of scope for improvement. Lemme give examples.

1. The hero mops the blood of his wife off the floor. This is absolutely useless as CSI usually have a torch which emits a certain kind of light that has blood glow in the dark, even though the blood cannot be seen by the naked eye. He had to use bleach to make this torch useless, but then, someone using bleach only for a portion of the house will also give rise to suspicion.
2. The hero dumps the body in a water body inside some forest. He places the body inside a cardboard box which he had taken from his house and dumps the body with the cardboard box. To keep CSI off his tail, he should have ideally disposed the body without the cardboard box.
3. If he was trying to make people into thinking that his wife was murdered by someone else and body was dumped, he needed to do something to make the police also think so. For e.g. he should have taken every last valuable off her body or should have cut off some portions of her body to make the police think it was some psycho at work or maybe fake a rape occurrence. None of these were done by our Hero.
4. He uses his colleagues (Nandana Sen) car to transport the body to the jungle. Another big error, as he has to now necessarily make her an accomplice at some stage, else he will not be able to explain why he borrowed her car.
5. He starts off the movement of the body from his house to the car when there were still a lot of people moving around in the apartment. Again, more leads that he has to plug in order to get his story right.

I noticed many such instances which by CSI standards would make this movie a joke. :-)

So, all in all, if someone is gonna make a murder investigation based movie, they have gotta have a plot that will have the CSI scratch their heads. If not, some sleepy couch potato like me will poke holes in the story. :-)

Disclaimer: No one be scared... I have not turned into a murderer or psycho. These are just observations. ;-)

Movie Review: Johnny Gaddar

There have been very few good movies hitting the theaters off late and a good review from a couple of friends and TOI got me off my butt to watch new comer Neil Mukesh (Grandson of singer Mukesh) get his career started.

Johnny Gaddar is directed by Sriram Raghavan, whose first movie Ek Haseena Thi was a decent start. The story of Johnny Gaddar is based on a gang of crooks trying to pull off a drug heist and of course the protagonist is part of this gang. All the money, all the lure and a bombshell as inspiration has our hero becoming the gaddar. Since the advancement of the plot is the only thing that is really interesting in the film, I will leave that to the interested to go watch at the theaters.

Neil has done a decent job with his acting, but nothing great. He does look quite handsome and this combination should keep him around for a while. Rimi Sen is the bombshell, and that is all she is. Thank god there is no expectation of acting from her in the script! Dharmendra is the leader of this gang of crooks and has actually killed a lot of his hamming and done an unexpectedly good job. Vinay Pathak is good as expected and provides the much needed comic relief. Zakir Hussain, who plays the role of Shardul bhai has gotten over the Ram Gopal Verma brand of acting, where he was expected to only look serious as hell, speak nothing and not movie a single muscle on his face. Here he has some good exchanges with Vinay Pathak and overall does a great job. The brief role to Govind Namdeo who is the corrupt cop selling the merchandise is also well scripted and well enacted. As can be figured out by now, all the main actors in this movie have given good performances and this is one of the reasons why the movie seems to somehow get out of rut that the screenplay seems to force it into and get back on tracks.

There was nothing much I could see as special in the music or background score. It is decent, but nothing really great. There is this one score featuring UK desi babe, Hard Kaur (Glassy fame), which is peppy and probably the best song of the movie.

Overall, a watchable movie and worth the 500 rupees you need to pay to get a pair of tickets during a weekend in Bangalore! I would give it a 6.8 on 10.

Too much of anything...

... is never good.

India lost to the Aussies at Kochi in the second ODI. This is not surprising and one could hardly feel bad, as the Aussies clearly were the better team. I didn't see the match live, but was witness to the last minute treatment of Sreesanth by the Aussies and later saw what Sreesanth had handed out to the Aussies.

Sreesanth is aggressive and is willing to lose a portion of his match fee every match! I must say, he is going overboard with it! Beyond a point, its no longer funny and it in fact starts getting embarrassing. I know he must have been advised by many people, but he seems to have next to no self restraint. The only way he will be back to his best senses is if he is dumped from the team for a few matches on clear disciplinary ground and then brought back.

This being said, the Aussies have no right to criticize Sreesanth. He was just giving them a piece of what they dish out to everyone in world cricket. What credentials do they have to say that he is crossing the "line"? What about McGrath going after Sarwan a couple of seasons back? What about Ponting shoving Sharad Pawar off the stage so that he and his team can jump around on the stage after winning the ICC Champions trophy? Or all the close-in chit-chat that Steve Waugh and Co were so famous for?


Those who stay in glass houses....

Once M$ always M$

Micro$oft released the next gen of its Zune media player, Zune 2. Though they have managed only some 3% of the number of Ipods sold, they are not giving up without a fight. They have added wireless sync to PC and also opening an iTunes like store for songs. The best thing about the store is that it sells DRM Free music. This means that you buy a song from the Zune store and transfer it out of your Zune player and still hear the song. You can give it to your friend too, but here is the fun part. Your friend can hear the song, but only 3 times, after which it will be automatically locked! I don't understand how they would do it, but they allegedly do it.

Trust Micro$oft to make DRM-free music DRM!

Avaya gaya...

In what has become the trend of the season, big private equity players are gobbling up some big names in the tech. Not so long ago freescale went to Blackstone group and co. Now its the time for a very accomplished player in the voice and system integration space, Avaya, to get bought over by Silver lake partners. Also, 3Com, perennially part of every networking race, but the winner of none, has also got bought over by Bain Capital and Huawei.

Its so crazy to think that such deals, done in the plush corporate boardrooms, could decide my money investing decisions. But strangely, it does. And paranoid as one has got to be in the high paying tech industry, I think I will wait and watch for a while...

mera number kab aayega?

Smoke?

India has won the T20 world up quite handsomely. There was a lot of vindication of the selection of the team, of the captain, of the playing eleven etc. Very sunny days for Indian cricket these.

While all looks well and wise, there are some administration woes under the carpets. The ICL has got as much sympathy or support because it has pointed to many of the problems that ail BCCI and vouched to fight or get rid of them. One of the biggest of these ailments being zone politics. Look at the selection of Team Managers for the last few tours. Ravi Shastri for Bangladesh tour, Chandu Borde for England tour and Lalchand Rajput for the T20 World cup, all from Maharashtra. Now, the post left vacant after Kapil Devs resignation as NCA chairman goes to Ravi Shastri. Ravi Shastri, after his retirement, has been more of a businessman and at best a commentator than an active coach or mentor. I don't have an alternate candidate, but I do question the merit of this decision. Is this the smoke that indicates fire?

BCCI may have bought some time thanks to the distraction from the World Cup win. But if it doesn't get its act together, the well preparing ICL could take the game away from them, pun intended.

Epitomizing Thick!

We have known George Bush to make some really stupid gaffes and here is the latest. He has pronounced Mandela to be killed by Saddam! :-)) In fact, Saddam has killed all the Mandelas.

Since you can get almost anything on YouTube, here is the video of the famous words being uttered!



If people find public speaking scary or difficult, you cannot find better inspiration than this. Here is the leader of the most powerful nation in the world, making the most ridiculous of blunders one after another and still on song for a encore the next day. :-)

Rail Rescue

A year or so back, I could feel a distinct improvement in the road conditions across Bangalore. A lot of pot holes had gone missing, many roads were widened and many flyovers became operational. The traffic had in no way reduced, but was made more bearable.

This years rains have come and maybe almost gone and they have taken the roads with them. Majority of the roads have now been revisited by the pot holes and flooding due to rain is almost passe. With the "Namma Metro" taking its time in coming and being limited in nature, at least to start with, I think Bangalore should start thinking of solutions for the next wave of traffic troubles. Its unlikely that our metro will have the reach like the famous Paris or London metros, and hence we need more alternate mass transit system.

I have heard Narayana Murthy talk of mono rail and here is an example of it in action in Sydney. Look at the support pillars, they don't seem to occupy much space and the rail seems to fit into the narrowest of roads.





pics courtesy wikipedia

I know there is plan of some kinda mono rail for Bangalore, but I think we will need a lot more like these planned and done so very soon.

I am...

ecstatic!!!

WE HAVE WON!

We have beaten the champions!! And my cocky comment in the previous post of an India vs Pakistan final... well, Nostradamus, thy successor is me! :-)))

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?? :-)