Cognition

Turns out the matrix (in one of it's module implementations) needs patronizing for it's existence and therefore mediocrity will thrive!

Rahul Dravid

Manorama

It hurts to see the kind of role Manorama has had to play in the last 20 years. The prompt for this post is a certain Telugu movie where all she had to is hero worship the 'lead sheik' on screen.
Tamizh cinema has also treated one of it's greatest character artiste very shabbily. Since the 90's (with the exception of maybe a couple of movies - maybe), the roles that she has to take up and deliver could well have been copied and pasted from one movie to another.
The last movie where she had some scope was a Vishu movie which I can't, for the life of me recollect the name.
While I understand the entertainment movie segregation and need, it's hard to fathom some one like Manorama reduced to an hero adulating Panderibhai

The only remnant of the prodigiously talented actors of early Tamizh cinema (with Sivaji and Nagesh gone) deserves a lot more.

Sensex

The amazing rally (9000 in March to 17000 in September 2009) we've seen so far is because of the stimulus packages being provided all over the world trigerring easy liquidity making their way into the Indian market.
The domestic stimulus package aslo helped but may cease to exist going into 2010 as both the prime minister and finance minister have made clear.
The US stimulus would continue into 2010 however as would the be the case for most of the west or developed economies which have been hit the hardest.
The idea is to stimulate the economy artifically so as to encourage consumer spending leading it to have a knock on effect on industries thereby improving their balancing sheet. The modus operandi is to continue to stimulate untill a few positive earning seasons are seen across all sectors.
Earning seasons are typically the last month of a quarter when the earnings are declared. The jury is out on how the India earnings season fared this quarter with some believing that we did well while others beleiving that it wasn't great keeping in mind the current position of the market (in other words, these earnings would have been good if the market was at the March low level, but not good enough for a 17000 high). The sectors that have done well are FMCG, IT and Banking.
Having observed the markets closely for the past two weeks, it is clear that the Nifty would struggle to breach 5000 anytime soon, we had a correction as soon as we got above 5000 and got dragged down for 6 days straight close to 4200 before the last 4 days of rally have got us to scale back to 4800
Shankar Sharma of First Global predicts that in the next 6 months, we would possibly go back to Sensex 11500-12000 essentially because Global markets are going to be selling off. He bases this on the premise that Emerging Markets seem to be rallying less than the US which is an indication that the market would fall.
The S&P and Nasdaq have also moved significantly over the past few days, but the emerging markets haven't kept pace (they have rallied but not as much).
If the global markets start selling off, then Shankar's prediction is that India would sell off more leading to a downward movement.

For those of us invested on equity, this may mean that we watch the sensex closely for the next 2 weeks and 'sell' holdings at appropriate points if the above trend turns out to be true.In other words, turn trader if we are just investors.

The other activities that the market would need to align itself around is the soon to be, but perennially delayed 3g auction,the GST (new goods and sales tax) and the result of the Reliance feud. Interesting times ahead!

Inglorious Basterds - Not a movie review

I wrongly presumed Quentin Tarantino was a jew. This meant that I was 'gathering unrealistic wool' just before the release of the Basterds. Hitler, holocaust, the 3rd reich, antisemitism have inspired a number of wonderful movies over the years. But in the hands of Tarantino, the possibilities were endless.
Khalil Sabbagh's book on 'Palestine' triggered an interest on getting the perspective of the 'underdog' and who better than Tarantino to deliver that for the jews..

Expectations enough to cause palpitations...However!

The movie doesn't deliver on any of these , it isn't a take on war although there is that. It definitely doesn't bother to offer any perspectives whatsoever.
It's almost like Tarantino scorning the armchair intellectuals of the world.
Hitler is reduced to a bufoon'ish character who gets 'popped' in the end. The movie appears to be the ultimate jewish fantasy offered visualization and sound.But this is not a movie that needs to be understood. On the contrary one needs to be curb any preconceived notions and shred any thoughts on getting enlightened to savour it. Just turning up should do the trick...

And the movie is fantastic as it is typical Tarantino fare. The subplots gain significance over the main plot, but the main plot isn't lost completely instead it presents itself unobtrusively. The character defining conversations continue to get your undivided attention. There's blood and gore and Tarantino's interactive style (for instance Hitler's key generals are pointed out explicitly to the watcher) on display. The movie is subversive (in the context of it's period) but definitely not genre defying in that Tarantino does not defy his own genre of film making with this one - so on that standard it's a fairly typical movie.
Cleverly Tarantino also manages to keep the movie from falling under the realms of a 'mel brooks' type spoof. It's kinda hard to explain as the movie successfully oscillates itself from being serious to spoof'ish and back, but this oscillation is oblivious to the watcher (and gathered only on retrospection). No surprises here too as Tarantino is a past master at this!
Personally the movie also creates a chequered opinion on Diane Kruger, liked her in Wicker Park, not so in Troy, and she's cool again in the Basterds. The background score is superb! All in All - a collector's item!

Lastly, on where to slot the Basterds on Tarantino's movie array - just don't!

No generalizations work..

I've have this thing against cliche's..., they make me cringe sometime and baffle me with the way they spread (almost by touch, only faster). They are unavoidable and in this day and age, all pervasive.
Cliche's apparently begin as 'cool phrases based on common observations' and inevitably exploit the human urge for getting onto the 'cool' bandwagon.
What results is an abuse of the phrase at every conceivable opportunity thereby rendering it of it's fundamental feature of being a 'cool thing'
Cliche's therefore in my opinion are cool phrases turned irritable owing to their usage crossing a certain threshold.

So when Sachin played that classy innings, it should have ideally been good to see MS Dhoni not resort to any of the standard lines in the post match talk -

"They got off to a good start and we never got into a postion to contain them. It was up to us to chase it. We got a good start and we came in the end due to Tendulkar and Raina. We lost it in our mental calculation, not because of our talent. It was one of the good ODI tracks we have seen in India, you have to be smart. Hopefully we will be up for the next two games."

But it wasn't - I cringed again.., this time for the lack of any standard irritable glorifying phrases. The revelation that there's a time for 'known talk' surprised me when if you think about it, it shouldn't.

Fundamentally the context decides what's right and it's over(ab)use that usually tilts the scales from right to wrong. In other words, there's no right or wrong (or good or bad) but just abuse and the alternate.

All entities seem to follow this unspoken rule of 'It's good if it's not in excess' starting from the amount of sugar your body requires to the constant reinvention of programming language premises. But we seem to generally miss this point when we judge something. When we say something is good, we implicitly imply 'for all contexts' when we do not bother to complete the statement.

The 80's and early 90's summer holiday afternoon's were spent watching movies on hired video cassettes which followed standard entertainment patterns. We watched it to a point where most of us started hating 'run of the mill' entertainers. It's been close to 5 years now wherein I've really broadened the horizon and started watching movies that juxtapose method acting, drama and entertainment while at the same time being natural. I've had an abuse of 'good movies' this week - finishing off my Kuroshowa collection and watching Sideways and Traffic again. The context has switched and I badly need a 'Gilli' or 'Troy' now.

Does this prove the futility of pursuing a clear judgment ? Maybe, but then there are 'pretenders/pretensions' who/that are clearly in the wrong with no context to justify.
The matrix ignores the context and judges the abused while leaking the pretenders.

People

There's
Glib
Glib & Stuff
Stuff & crass
Stuff,Silent & Judgmental
Stuff,Silent & don't give a damn
and then there are
news-anchors..

If there was someway of measuring the intelligence index of every activity that one's involved with every hour of a day.
And if we were to plot the indices of the current generation with any before we would be on the right side of a bell curve.

The 'gift of the gab' and a thick skin is quintessential for success. Yak never sold better than it does today!

MASH 4077 Patrick Swayze

Got the video for the previous post..

Admonition

Patrick Swayze appeared in one episode of MASH in it's 9th season. He plays a marine deeply concerned about his comatose comrade who's been treated at MASH.
A random blood check reveals that Patrick Swayze's character has leukemia, the episode like most others has a moral message to convey. But that's irrelevant to what I'm trying to say..

I couldn't help thinking that this was a strong case for the fate/destiny construct. It's not about spinning a logical yarn around and calling it coincidence (while that may be true!)

The sheer timing of Swayze's death due to cancer and me watching this episode on DVD forces me to observe that this may have been a forewarning of sorts!

Makes me believe that the word 'superstition' is probably covering more aspects than it should

Unnai Pol Oruvan

There's no doubt that "A Wednesday" was a good movie to remake. It offered perspective, a scope for good characterization and more importantly made for a quick slick movie.

Unnai Pol Oruvan was a movie worth watching. Owing to a date bungle, I double paid for it, but no complaints-the last movie I watched was Kandaswamy-so I needed to regain my trust on cinema in general.
I had watched 'A Wedneday' over 11 - 9 min. parts on youtube - a week back and the thing is, it made a bigger impact than UPO.In fact it made me badly want to watch UPO...

The movie hinges around the what I call the 'philosophy interlude' between the 'comman man' and the commissioner. The rest of the movie is just a support structure. It is this conversation that attempts to capture the viewers emotions and judge the movie in general as either of "utopian but correct" or bull...
In Wedneday this conversation lasts 9 odd minutes, in UPO it seems a lot lesser.

Naseruddin Shah underplays the character, he brings forth the helplessness he's feeling inside and the anger very well and he's supported by some well written lines.
Kamal on the other hand imbibes some drama in this conversation, the contrived dialogues, the elaborated story example with a deep baritone voice. You feel his overbearing presence and that spoils the key moment to a small extent.

Some of the dialogues in UPO are lame and seemed to have been knitted together to force slick'ness.

Mohanlal is very good, it's a hard pick between him and Anupam Kher who is also very good. There is no doubt however that Kamal has been pipped 'in the post' by Nasseruddin Shah - this is not to say Kamal is bad, but just that there's a inconvinient mix of Kamal the star with Kamal the actor.

Proceedings...

Quentin Tarantino is now mainstream...tragic :(
Just learnt that Fibonacci series first appeared in the work of sanskrit scholar Pingala named Matrameru - dunno why that piece of information is so appealing..
I still meet types who are theologically challenged and smug about it
My M*A*S*H series collection is now complete..., Simpson's is next in parallel with Entourage..
Conan O Brien is trying way too hard..., from what I've seen
The biggest challenge for action/science fiction types movies seems to be that of a good climax - case in point - Iron Man
Fiscichella!
Saravana stores and Walmart are a lot alike..

Revelation - A.R.Rahman - A musical storm

The book helped me figure why i'm not a committed fan of Rahman but rather an objective admirer.
Apparently for Rahman, lyrics take the proverbial backseat to music (to a worrisome extent). On the surface while the premise can be justified as a composer's prerogative, it appears adverse to me (in the context of film music especially).
Once the lyrics deteriorate, the intelligence quotient around a song proportionally deteriorates.
Think Shakalaka baby...(damn!)
I guess it's not about what should take precedence, that would be downright ridiculous.
It's about contemplating whether good music and gibberish (while successful) are a desirable combination. Whether a 'musical genius' should possess that trait much rather promote it (implicitly and inadvertently) is the question..
Where would that leave Kannadasan's songs, Metallica's black album, Megadeth's Train of Consequences, REM's Man on the Moon, Goo Goo doll's Iris , heck even Weird Al Yankovich's Smells like Nirvana..
.....
.....
The book on the whole is well written, but lacks in content and therefore ends up sounding repetitive. I am not sure who the target audience should be.
A honest review would be extremely controversial..

Cognition

The state of the world can probably be explained by the fact that a virtue, any human virtue is appreciated rather than expected.
The matrix is programmed to have just banners and only rare vestigial attributes for virtues.
Kaliyugam!

Collective Soul - Shine

Why these guys didn't go on to become one of them top 5 bands, I'll never understand....
The matrix operates in mysterious ways ..!

Yelam pugazhum iraivanukke

Irritant..

Effeminate and Boisterous...
The keyword is "and"...

Thou shall remain unrequited

The easiest way to build an image of 'intellectuality' is to go against popular opinion with a vengeance. The 'I hate Spielberg' - (because the whole world likes him - which I won't admit as the reason for my 'hate' BTW) attitude is more hypocritical than the hype that feeds popular opinion.
Challenging/testing stereotypes and making your own inferences is one thing, but forcibly and boorishly adopting a diagonally opposite perception/route is another.
The irony is that in both the cases, the underlying motivation is that of nurturing an image - nothing wrong with that - but then...
The blogosphere unfortunately seems to thrive in this space.
One would think that there needs to be a data set built before analysis and while analysis can be perceptive, the data set is available for interpretations. But instead what one finds is 'the hype" and it's 'equally exaggerated counter'.
Goes to show that stereotypes are neither created nor destroyed, they are just converted from one form to another.

Will The Real Kapil Dev please stand up ?

Kapil pay's the following tribute to Saurav.

"That evening in 2002, standing on the Lord's balcony, when Sourav took off his shirt and waved to start wild celebrations was a remarkable moment. I can never forget it. For the people of older generation like me it was a tremendous occasion. It marked the beginning of a new India. What was really surprising was here was a team's captain, and not just any player, who had decided to bare his emotions in such a public fashion and that, too, at such an historic venue. It was just unbelievable and fantastic."

REWIND......

Cricketing legend Kapil Dev on Wednesday took exception to skipper Sourav Ganguly's act of stripping off his shirt after the incredible victory against England in the NatWest series final, saying captains should learn to keep their emotions under control.

"A captain getting carried away is quite normal, but then he should also know how to show his emotions," Kapil told a press conference in Kolkata. "I was taken aback when he took off his shirt, though I know it was an emotional outburst," he said. Kapil, who led India to the World Cup title at the same venue in 1983, said his reaction had nothing to do with the "sanctity" of Lord's. "Had such an act been done by a youngster, I wouldn't have minded. But Ganguly is after all the skipper."

Kapil, however, hastened to add that cricket had changed a lot since his playing days. "May be, twenty years from now nobody would bother about such things." Ganguly's act of taking off his shirt and waving it to the crowd from the balcony of the dressing room after the two-wicket win last Saturday has come in for criticism from some quarters.

danks bub...

Contrived Virtue..

Should avoiding a diatribe give one a moral high ground ? especially if one has the system in his/her favor ?
Is the accuser's backtracking owing to an afterthought induced pragmatism or the system a vindication for the accused ? Veka kedu....

I am Jack's Horripilations

Metallica - The unforgiven 3

Double Bummer

This is F**kin uncanny....

Someone's figured out the Kiefer Farrell connection too

Didn't realise it was so bloody obvious...

Bummer...

Turns out that I'm not the first person to figure this out...

Seperated At Birth

Federer & Tarantino



Kiefer & Farrell

Some Kind of Monster.

Metallica - why jason newstead left

I haven't heard any of echo-brain's (the band that Newstead formed) numbers.
As far as I am concerned - Jason Newstead's departure has coincided with a decline of Metallica.
Not that Robert Trujillo is bad, on the contrary he's perhaps better than Newstead.
The biggest contributor to the downfall has been the fall in standards of the lyrics. The mighty Hetfield should have known better than to share that aspect with his band mates.
Creativity doesn't necessarily subscribe to 'many heads being better'. The reason being it's stimulant - namely 'experiences' are unique to the individual.

Metallica - One

True Fucking Rock and Truly Fucking Dead

Reading the Fountainhead for the second time seems to trigger a compulsive behavior
One begins to slot everybody as Keatings, Roarks and Tooheys.
Considering that one works for a corporate, Keatings and Toohey's over Roark's form an indeterminate number.
The sure fire inevitability makes this whole thing almost ironical

McLean Stevenson

How does one judge good characterization ?
When one essays the character perceivably better than anyone can?
Or When one slaps a certain personality on the character and enhances it further?

Watching the first two seasons of MASH after having watched the last two continuously for a year helps you notice certain subtle differences pre and post Henry Blake
I've always preferred Henry over Sherman but I've always knocked it down as an impulse preference.
Lately I've been able to spot a lack of genuinity or applied spontaneity in Harry Morgan's performance as the replaced chief of the 4077.
The episode in which Sherman screws up during surgery and vents his frustration on Pierce is an example. But it's entirely possible that I am overanalyzing. Harry Morgan was good in his own right.
But Henry was something else.., surely the "role of a misfit officer yet a good doctor with his heart in the right place" is complicated enough, but to induce implicit comic timing and emotion is something else..Henry Blake supposedly played the 3rd fiddle but I find that to be a funny way to look at things, considering how every piece fitted to make the finest TV Series of all time.

Was therefore surprised to read this on Wikipedia -

"Stevenson would later admit that leaving M*A*S*H was a mistake, and he was also upset by the fact that his character's death prevented him from ever returning to the show. In an interview of Loretta Switt, She poured some light on the subject of why McLean left the series at the hight of its success. She explained that McLean wanted to be on top as number one. He felt pushed down being one of eight of a series. According to Loretta, before Stevenson left the series he said to her " I know I will not be in anything as good as this show but i have to leave and be number one." On the set, Mclean's nickname was "Mac""

This revelation makes his performance even more commendable.

Alan Greenspan : The Age of Turbluence : Chapter 15 - Musings on India

The original intention was to begin with a quick review of Chapters 13 & 14 where Alan Greenspan discusses "The Universals of Economic Growth" and "The Modes of Capitalism", but the allure of beginning with Chapter 15 - "The Tigers and the Elephant" turned out to be overbearing (for obvious reasons).

It's hard to just randomly pick up Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations and do a serious job of comprehension and progress. My experience is that Alan's book is a useful precursor.
The Age of Turbulence is a record, of Alan's legacy developed over 4 decades, 2 of which came from his lofty perch as the Federal reserve's chairman (equivalent of our RBI governor, but only with about a 100 times more influence and reach).
It is a useful combination of a biography, experience report, lessons learnt by influencing and observing Economic proceedings in the 20th century and then using all that to make some predictions on the choices available for the World going forward.Most importantly, it is a relatively easy read.

The first 10 chapters traces the path to Alan becoming the Fed.s chairman under Reagan, discusses his biggest influences to be the heady combination of Ayn Rand and Adam Smith - the former being the biggest exponent of Laissez-faire Capitalism and the latter being it's creator. It also discusses significant events across the globe - most pertinent being the fall of the Berlin wall and the mixed effect of European countries adopting deregulation and opening up their markets. There are a multitude of examples on the alternating inflation and growth cycles in the United States and the Fed's solution to each of them.

For the uninformed reader, it demystifies inflation and growth by clearly driving home the point on the inevitability of their alteration. The key it would appear is to have enough information, make enough observations to try and predict their occurrence and not in the least,record and learn from previous mistakes.
The more accurate the prediction, the more in control the economy is - the distinction point between developed and developing worlds.

As usual - I intended to make notes, but didn't - until Chapter 15.

Alan begins by acknowledging the significance of India and it being the biggest example of the scope and success that can be achieved by the forces unleashed by a free market economy, but spends most of the 3 pages putting forth some unflattering facts - that I have attempted to articulate below


While India's GDP has grown to a health 9%, it is still just 2/5th's that of China's meaning China is growing at a much more faster rate.
Central Regulation on private industries is a huge deterrent to progress in Manufacturing - For eg. (and this startled me) Private manufacturing firms with more than 100 employees cannot fire anyone with government permission.
Our net software exports were up ~4 fold from 2001 to 22.3 billion in 2006, but you already knew that!
However, the combination of jobs created in IT and the cascading fields of telecom, construction and power is a measly 1% of the employed population.
The govt. regulations in manufacturing explains the reason as to why we have excelled in software services but are not a patch on hardware and manufacturing.
40% of manufacturing firms employ 5 to 9 workers.
The poverty line story appeared even more appalling in this context - the fact that there are more than 250 million people earning less than $1 a day - even though this is an oft repeated number.
India lags behind China and it's significant Asian counterparts in the production of rice, cotton and wheat. Tea appears to be the only saving grace.
A 3rd of our crops rot enroute to the market.
Foreign Direct Investment in India (FDI) is relatively paltry owing to Central regulation. ( 7 billion to China's 72 billion )


Alan theorize's that the root cause of India's severely and adversely dichotomized economy owes itself to the adoption of Fabian Socialism from the British post Independence.
In a very small nutshell, this means that the State governs key industries like, Power, Transportation and Agriculture - the premise being the (quoted verbatim)
"Notion that government Individuals driven by the good of society overall can far better determine the appropriate allocation of resources than can erratic free market forces - dies hard in India"

The quote from Martin Feldstein an eminent Harward economist summarizes the situation
"Cell phone service is widely available [in India] at low cost because it was regarded as a luxury and therefore left to the market, while electricity is hard to obtain because it has been regarded as a necessity and therefore managed by the government"

The clear and candid message is that India needs to step up it's measures to address Manufacturing and Infrastucture shortcomings and the best way to do that would be for the government to completely deregulate thereby obliterating the numerous licenses and taxes that currently exist.

Left alone to ponder on the above, you feel that it would be improper to castigate (even verbally) the leaders post Independence for adopting the British system as-is.There were a plethora of other problems around and thinking ahead a 100 years down the line for the economy was not one that was deemed the most pressing - on hindsight maybe it should have been, but then!
Most of our economic graduation (if it can be called that) has been learning on the fly - As the passage mentions - Manmohan Singh under PV Narasimha Rao opened up the markets in 1991 - the results of which are available for us to interpret. We obviously need to deregulate further.
It wouldn't be too hard to fathom (and this is my rationale, not in the book) that the underlying problem for deregulation would be the instability in our current state and government coalitions. Ironically during the initial years post Independence - we had a stable government but neither the know-how or the experience to make the right moves for the economy, but we have the latter and have promptly lost the former.
Our next Finance Minister needs to rest assured when making his next set of policies and they need to be long term perspective driven.At this point, we still seem to be a pseudo progressive economy.

There is an outside chance that the dynamics that exist in India would mean that the answer does not lie in a complete free market environment, but an alternative version of Fabian Socialism. We do not seem to have enough data to make that judgement, in that light it would sound prudent to just open up the markets completely and keep our eyes wide open to preempt serious issues and bug fix them.

More to Follow...

realize I never had a single line - What the fuck ..... ? post, so Ajit Jain, thanks dude..

Boiler room

Things that irk me about Dasavatharam

The George Bush character (if true, the official website does not make any mention).

The 'oolaga nayagan song' and singer.

Jackie Chan at the music launch...Chan rides an 'Invisible/disguised high horse' when in India. Seemingly for Chan, there are just 2 categories of Indians - Malliga & non Malliga's. He gets off the horse for wonly the former.

The parallel launch of Dasavatharam in Hindi (and no, not from a linguistic issue perspective), but just because the Bollywood audience are tuned to different expectations. Shankar's 'Aparichit' should have taught people lessons.

The Home Page!

***********************

Kamal has made it clear that he does not believe in the 'mainstream' and 'offbeat' segregation. When Allavandhan was released, one wished he did.
Maybe the above theory is indeed correct, but Kamal's eccentricity could end up providing an antithesis as much as his loyalty to cinema and experimentation could provide the proof.
The hope is that KS Ravikumar's 'commercial movie making acumen' negates Kamal's 'uncontrolled non-conventionalism' and a product with the effect of a Aboorva Sahodarargal or a Thevar Magan emerges.

In the immortal words of Stanley Kubrick -

"You sit at the board and suddenly your heart leaps. Your hand trembles to pick up the piece and move it. But what chess teaches you is that you must sit there calmly and think about whether it's really a good idea and whether there are other, better ideas."

Hopefully Kamal has sat down calmly for his latest move..

Please don't hurt the legacy

At this very point, the Royal Challengers Bangalore have one more match to go. After all the tripe that's been said and written - RCB are on a mini roll beating Chennai and Deccan - and the hope is that of a positive result in the final match which should see them garner 10 points in 5 wins. If I were to script their stories, they would have had another victory against Chennai and would have ideally ended up with 12 points - not enough for a semifinal berth, but good enough to be seen in a much better light.Hypothetically speaking!

Honestly the only thing that I am concerned with is the cascading effect on Rahul Dravid's legacy. To have scored '360 runs' in 13 matches at an average and a strike rate higher than his two greatest contemporaries and a bunch of others and yet be slotted as T20-unfit suggests a sad 'image trap' effectuate.

It's difficult however, even for an ardent fan to absolve Rahul Dravid off his captaincy mistakes. But it's usually the effect that dictates 'popular opinion' of what makes a good captain. While consistent results are a good enough yardstick, lack of them does not underpin the 'characteristic of a bad leader'. Take for example the match against Deccan and the decision to open with Kumble - the move not only worked, but it worked as expected - so should it turn popular opinion overnight - nope! and with Rahul's luck it's likely to go unnoticed. But one thing's for sure, Rahul doesn't appear to be a good enough motivator (proabably because he never needed to be ...) - a word that is sometimes debatably synonymous with leadership.

On the other hand there's been a bunch of articles on Shane Warne's captaincy abilities, not the least by Ian Chappel. Ian brings forth his non substantiating alter ego to tell us that Shane could have been Oz's greatest captain. He doesn't bother to tell us why (except briefly dwelling on the IPL success and also the fact that Oz won around 10 games out of 10 - something like that - under his brief tryst with skippership). There's no articulation of the specific abilities that Shane Warne posseses, no technical explanation whatsoever.

From my perch, Shane's a wonderful motivator and an equally good gambler and he's bull headed - all of which combine to give him heady successes and suffocating failures, fortunately for Shane, the failures have been more often than not, off the field. Maybe these attributes suffice, but I am yet to see Shane pull a rabbit out of his 'technical' hat at the IPL - something like what Imran did against England in the 1992 world cup final.

The fact also remains that Shane has a wonderful IPL team and while I don't claim to have predicted this level of success for the RR's - I was absolutely sure that a team with Tanvir, Smith, Shane, Mascrenhas and Y Pathan were an ideal combination. For one with the exception of Shane and Smith, they were minus the hype.It would be intresting to see how Shane would lead a team like RCB or Mumbai Indians and the kind of successes he would generate with them.

Getting back to speaking on the Royal Challengers, I'm reminded of a Simpson's episode where Homer predicts that countries would soon be replaced by corporates. My friend had an intresting observation with the names of the different teams - Every other team has it's city name at the beginning and the traditional name at that, with the notable exceptions of the Deccan Chargers, Royal Challengers Bangalore and Kings XI Punjab. Merely listening to Preity would remove any doubts on the identity and affiliation of the Kings XI with Punjab.
In the case of RCB and Deccan Chargers the names of the teams essentially seem to be the owner brand strings -
Could it be a mere coincidence then that the other teams have been more succesful or specifically appeared to be more bonded ? Doesn't identity trigger local passion and consequently a reason for unification, team spirit and the like ?
Why on earth would one from Bangalore want to support Mallya's brand (especially with that stupid song and the dumb catch phrase) when I have Sreesanth and Hussey playing for other teams ? - In my case, the answer lies in the presence of Rahul Dravid, but that need not necessarily hold true for everybody. RCB needs to spare a thought to inculcating a club culture at Bangalore and for that it proabably needs to look at what popular sentiment demands even if it means changing the name 'string'.
More importantly, IMO RCB needs a new captain, Misbah's my pick.The rest of the platitude's of getting the combination and the positions right follow.

Rahul Dravid shouldn't have proabably said that he would have cracked the game if he was '21' - after scoring 360 at a stike rate of 126. Inadvertently he contributed to the further cementing of his image. Tragic, because his success story is important to redefine a few stereotypes.....

Commandur Rangachari

The first iyengar to play International Cricket

Molder

I hate Beck, always have, but other than him and Lucinda Williams, this year's Rock nominations have been a bunch of 60 year old's - John Mellencamp, Paul McCartney & Bruce Springsteen.

I haven't heard any of their nominated numbers yet,but sure am glad that the "Boss" won out of that lot.

2008 Resolution : Get back to the Grammy groove - I really am feeling old.

Why Kattrathu Tamizh (MA) is such a bad movie..

One Simple Reason : Entanglement!
To confuse your frustrations as convictions, to generalize on isolated instances are omnipresent tendencies.
But to be bullish enough to make a movie out of it and worse to throw in a bunch of advice that justifies a plain unlucky 'antagonist' is preposterous.
The problem with the movie is that it does not fulfill the promise of delivering that 'message to society' that it builds upto.
There is reasonable scope for acting - Jeeva's commendable, the songs are OK, Karnas is competent, but the plot is as far away from 'intelligent cinema' as originality is from Bollywood.
To use Ameer Khan's words to describe 'Black' - the movie is 'manipulative'.
Which makes it no different from the run of the mill Kaptain Vijayakanth starrer - except that the manipulation is rather subtle - when in reality, the subtility is typecasted atop of hypocrisy - in a bid to be classified under meaningful cinema!!?!

Mostly Inadvertently, the movie raises a couple of valid points in that :

Capability does not necessarily share a direct proportional relationship with success anymore these days.
The implications owing to the rift between the haves and the have-nots are severe and distraught.

But unfortunately it does not dwell on the above.

It instead chooses to pick apart the call centre culture, women wearing provocative tshirts, pizza hut ,MTV etc. and unjustifiably tries to tie that in with the subject of Tamizh graduates not getting their due.
Which leads you ask : What part of Market Scope and Business fundamentals does the director/script writer not understand ?
How does one expect to get paid 2 lakh a month being a language expert ? For what end deliverable ? Even if there is some end deliverable that pre-requisites a language expert, How many such deliverables can the market vie for to cover the averages ?

Rudimentary questions completely overlooked by a camera-happy crew.

Tamizh MA is another one of those attempts to illogically cash in on the language sentiment and is another stark reminder that slow cinema involving psychopaths are not necessarily purposeful.

The Man Who Knew Infinity - Srinivasa Ramanujan by Richard Kanigel

Kanigel is unfeigned in tone and thorough in research. He also appears 'not to be a mug' with numbers and does a very decent job of articulating what could be described as "the plumbing work" as far as mathematics is concerned.
Ramanujan's life is apparently pretty well known - atleast in South India and Kanigel neatly compartmentalises it into 3 phases that can be very roughly stated as - The Growing up years, Life at Cambridge, The last few months.

The content is interspersed with information on the numerous contextual predicates around the subject. Kanigel aptly describes the Southern India mindset, stops short of being judgemental and on the contrary in fact makes more headway into understanding the reasons for things being the way there are. He aptly describes what would be perceived as brahminical idiosynchrasies, but doesn't say so himself. He also indirectly villifies the attitude of the west and takes a jibe at the blithe Englishman. In short, by trying to understand the system and the context, Kanigel has inadvertently exposed the futility in comparing cross site culture - choosing instead to explain the differences in as much detail as possible.

In general by being judgemental - the author fundamentally assumes the reader to be a dunce and tries to make the decision for - as opposed to just catering for the ignorance of the reader on the subject being addressed - Kanigel doesn't venture to do this and therefore doesn't invite the readers ire and consequently his/her disintrest.

The saleab'ility of the biography is in the dichotomy - Ramanujan's life was a walking contradiction, it appears that Destiny had always willed him to display his 'genius' and then lie down and die, but chose to make the plot more intresting by introducing emotional, social and even political road blocks along the way.
Ramanujan's life unfolds like a movie and just when it appears that he would be doomed to be lost to the outside world, some acquaintance or the 'Goddess of Namagiri' would herself intervene to provide the proverbial 'nudge'.

The role by Harold Hardy the British mathematician in 'exposing' Ramanujan to the world is also dwelt in great detail, Hardy almost takes up 40% of the content and yet is most definitely the 'support cast' - a predicate to the subject of Ramanujan.

Ramanujan died when he was '32', he was 'discovered' a mere 6 years earlier and made the most of his time.
A European mathematician had this to say (not in verbatim) - There are two different kinds of geniuses, the ordinary kind and the magical ones. The ordinary ones are those, whom we admire for what they have achieved, but once we get a hang of their methods, we realize that they are not very far fetched. The magicians are those whose methods are inconceivable even after being described in the most lucid of ways - Ramanujan was of the second kind.

Currently, the adverb/adjective 'genius' has been subject to a combination of abuse and override to an extent of making it synonymous with the 'relatively better' - thereby dragging it to the realms of the comparitive.
In reality 'genius' is way beyond the comparitive and the superlative.
The book is a reminder of the implications of the word and the pre-requisites it demands and that for me is the no. 1 reason on why it is a highly recomended read.

It appears improabable to do an assiduous review with clarity through a single posting, so there should be atleast '2' follow up posts to this prelude.

Mash up

The one thing conspicious by it's absence is "Uroram Puliyamaram"

The Fight Club influences you to get detached.., Reading Tugga's autobiography "Out of my comfort zone" impresses the significance of the "will".
The problem with being involved with media that broadcasts two different almost contrasting philosophies efficiently is that you are liable to get confused, if you have not used your own discretions and made your own conclusions.

It's pretty shallow "in my opinion" that Age ratings for a movie are taken considering short term effects of "just" sex or violence : It is 'relatively' easier to shake off the influence of both on an impressionable mind.
Whats harder to get out of is the ambivalence created by the philosophy endorsed by a well made movie or a well written book.
Movies which set out to convey a deep inner meaning should be rated 25+ in my opinion. If I had a rupee for every person who has liked Fight Club for the wrong reasons, I'd have enough to pay for the next litre of petrol.

I do like Fight Club for the perspective it provides,I find it flawed because it seems to (albeit maybe inadvertently) leverage 'existential angst' to prove it's point.
To pit one philosophy against another is ridiculous (but unavoidable) in an endeavour to convey a message.
What needs to be understood is that philosophy is a mere generalization resulting from a root cause analysis of one's experiences ? which means that the generalization is individualistic. A well disguised oxymoron in implication.

Major League Soccer

Offering

13 teams
4 Competitions
David Beckham

Hope

Even negative sports journalism has been on the slide, as big-name columnists have given up cranking out their annual hate pieces against the game. Perhaps they've realised that football can carve out its own market and will not threaten basketball, gridiron or baseball, or turn the nation into a breeding ground for effeminate communists.

Lost in Translation

Random Eight

Brihadeshwarar Kovil
Srirangam
Kalahasti
Yadagirigutta
Gokarna
Vijayanagar Vitthala
Guruvayur
Vaikom

Entailment

"Man, I see in fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential, and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables; slaves with white collars. Advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of history, man. No purpose or place. We have no Great War. No Great Depression. Our Great War's a spiritual war... our Great Depression is our lives. We've all been raised on television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires, and movie gods, and rock stars. But we won't. And we're slowly learning that fact. And we're very, very pissed off."

"The first rule of Fight Club is - you do not talk about Fight Club. The second rule of Fight Club is - you DO NOT talk about Fight Club. Third rule of Fight Club, someone yells Stop!, goes limp, taps out, the fight is over. Fourth rule, only two guys to a fight. Fifth rule, one fight at a time, fellas. Sixth rule, no shirt, no shoes. Seventh rule, fights will go on as long as they have to. And the eighth and final rule, if this is your first night at Fight Club, you have to fight. "

"A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 mph. The rear differential locks up. The car crashes and burns with everyone trapped inside. Now, should we initiate a recall? Take the number of vehicles in the field, A, multiply by the probable rate of failure, B, multiply by the average out-of-court settlement, C. A times B times C equals X. If X is less than the cost of a recall, we don't do one."

"A guy who came to Fight Club for the first time, his ass was a wad of cookie dough. After a few weeks, he was carved out of wood. "

"Everywhere I travel, tiny life. Single-serving sugar, single-serving cream, single pat of butter. The microwave Cordon Bleu hobby kit. Shampoo-conditioner combos, sample-packaged mouthwash, tiny bars of soap. The people I meet on each flight? They're single-serving friends. "

"Reject the basic assumptions of civilization, especially the importance of materiel possessions. "

"Home was a condo on the fifteenth floor of a filing cabinet for widows and young professionals. The walls were solid concrete. A foot of concrete is important when your next-door neighbor lets their hearing aid go and have to watch game-shows at full volume. Or when a volcanic blast of debris that used to be your furniture and personal effects blows out of your floor-to-ceiling windows and sails flaming into the night. I suppose these things happen. "

Cognition

Contextual perception does not directly equate to "being confused"

Dark Ages..

No Travel Adaptor that fits my laptop 'power plug' pins in the whole of Birmingham..
No internet access in hotel rooms.
No microwave or cooking allowed in rooms.
No place to go as it's been raining all over Blighty.
Only 3 TV channels to flip ...

Did I accidentally step into a time machine ?

This town doesn't even have a theatre that is playing Sivaji :-(

Tour De France 2007 - I

I don't understand the points system for the Tour De France.

Wasn't Gerdenmann 20th after the 6th stage ? How did he get the yellow jersey just after a single win and catapult to the top ?

Are the points awarded based on the stage difficulty ? Is the 7th stage involving the alps considered more difficult than the 6th stage.

This is my first year following the tour and am therefore evidently a naif!
My only claim to understanding the sport to this point is Lance Armstrong's bio and what little I have been watching so far and ofcourse the status updates in the internet.

Welcome any information!

Principle of Freakanomics

"The Conventional wisdom is often wrong. Crime (in the US) didn't keep soaring in the 1990s, money alone doesn't win elections,and-suprise- drinking 8 glasses of water a day has never actually shown to do a thing to your health.

Conventional Wisdom is often shoddily formed and devilishly difficult to see through, but it can be done"

Freakanomics by economist Steven D Levitt and writer Stephen J. Dubner promises to be one of those books with both content and entertainment value.

I have seen multiple instances of the above quote validated, but it's very difficult for people to dissuade themselves from conventional thinking as it seems to give them a false sense of control and organization. But then, I don't endorse the view completely too...

BTW, Picked the book off a street vendor and any of you who intend to buy books from any place other than book stalls, do ensure that you check the quality of print on all pages.

Benoit Tragedy

Having been a wrestling fan for close to 10 years now (although in the past 3 years I haven't been actively watching the weekly shows nor catching up with the pay per views), death of pro wrestlers were far from an unusual phenomenon.

Each premature demise would take me closer to disassociating myself from watching the show...but as time passed by, all would be forgotten and forgiven which was the case with Owen Hart, Davey Boy Smith, Hawk etc.

However, a most ghastly act by perceivably the least likely of wrestlers has drawn the final straw......

If the reason for the murder-suicide is established to be roid rage owing to steroids, then somebody would need to start contemplating the worthiness of this sport that has transcended entertainment and crossed the borders into absurdity...

Fed or Pete. : Why Ask ?

Nirmal Shekar writes a beautiful game but there seems to be a thing about sports journalists and I'm not sure if it's an Indian (journalistic tendencies)thing, in that they do not dwell on too many levels above the obvious.

It's a little irksome, coz' you expect an article such as this to be well substantiated, but on quick second thoughts you realise that it's rather difficult and one would have to choose the path of ignoring "fairplay" or just be plain dumb and go ahead.

Nirmal starts of well with an intresting topic and rightly raking up the Serve And Volley and them promptly digresses into quality of opposition with a rather inappropriate yardstick : No. of Grand Slam titles held by peers.

To take a step back, Coronation across eras in sport and anything else is a rather futile effort. Generalisations and superlatives exist in contexts and to overlook that and say things like "Best Or Greatest ever" means a whole lot of assumption.

For instance calling Don Bradman the 'greatest' ever batsman would come with the assumption that he would have had the same kind of prolific averages in the modern game too : Something which I am absolutely sure could not have been the case. Reverence shouldn't necessarily translate to attribution of the positive "est's" (I know, Don't use this line to get back at me!)

So, What indeed are the factors that we need to take into consideration when we try to crown somebody on Grass ?

Would they be :

• The kind of surface Grass is today rather different from last year and the year before and very different from When Borg and Pete played. Grass is getting slower, players are getting stronger and racquets are getting better. So shouldn't adaptability be an attribute. Can any of us answer with conviction How Pete would have fared on today's grass considering that he played a very ordinary game on slow surfaces. I wouldn't hazard a guess.
• The quality of opposition in terms of ability and not just wins or grand slam wins.
• Quality of Serve and Volleyers considering that it's rather otiose to try and be the best Serve and Volleyer currently.
• Do we compare the fitness levels, improvements in training, heterogeneous set of players etc. to arrive at a decision.
• Or Do we break it down further to specific attributes and say Pete had a better serve, Roger has a better forehand etc.

If I were to answer honestly, I'd say if somebody can do justice to the last point with conviction then we may have a way forward, if not, then comparison of other individual points across eras would give us askewed results. And even a consolidated comparison wouldn't be debate free.

To tear down Nirmal's logic used to crown Pete (Note:Just tearing down the logic used, all you Pete-fanatics back off) :

1. Serve and Volley is a rather unecessary art, so the no. of genuine practioners will only diminish.
2. Grass itself is slower, so the best Serve and Volleyer does not translate to the best grasscourt player. Heck it didn't even in Pete's time else Rafter would have a couple of Wimbledons.
3. Comparing No. of Grand Slam titles won by peers is downright ridiculous, for starters Becker had won most of his grand slams before Pete asserted himself, Goran won one at the twilight of Pete's career, Agassi was the only genuine peer and Rafter appears more like an aberration.By the time, Roger ends his career, I expect to see Nadal and the blogger's delight Gasquet hold onto a few more.
4. There are 4 Grand Slams and winning the other 3 any no. of times does not measure up to being the best on grass.
5. It is incorrect to measure ability by achievement alone, we don't know what could have transpired if Marat Safin had decided to be more dedicated to the game.
   

Being a Fed-fan, can't help saying this though :
If I were to keep things Simple and perspective free, I'd propose the no. of slams/Wimbledons in the kitty and for that, let's atleast wait for Roger to complete playing another 2 years if not his whole career ;-)

Watching Federer play Davydenko yesterday was painful, that he clambered to an eventual victory was digressive.

While it is a well known fact that winners are going to be fewer and far between on clay when compared to other surfaces, the no. of unforced errors were suprising, maybe they shouldn't be, but they were!

Roger played the big points well and Davydenko came across as a person with mental ineptitude.
I still find it hard to believe that he missed the line for the final point. The ball was not served too very close to the edge, it was a "medium fast return" in terms of speed and Davydenko should have angled the ball as he backhanded it and converted it into a winner. If I remember right Federer had his back to the line of the ball and therefore had a high chance of missing it.

To state the obvious, I don't see Federer beating Nadal tomorrow. There was a discussion on another blog on the need to make Nadal come to the net more, but isn't that easier said than done on clay ?

Close to the net shots need more timing and control, but with clay offering higher bounce it's difficult to do both in general. I don't remember any of Pete's matches on clay and therefore can't point out an exact reason as to why he did so miserably (though I can spring out a few theories), however watching Roger these few years, it is evident that he doesn't seem to get into position very well on clay which makes it difficult to control the proceedings and play those immaculate winners. And yes, this is as expected!

Since it is axiomatic that Federer has a better backhand than Nadal and that Nadal's forehand is far more effective, tomorrow's match is just going to increment Nadals head to head against the Worlds Best player (of all time : I dare add). From what I saw in the Davydenko match, the backhand lacked the regular zip.
I've seen the sliced backhand draw players to the net and I've also seen Federer use it well, but it would be arduous against Nadal's forehand compounded by Federer's positioning and timing problem.

There's a Gasquet fan whose comments on another blog I thoroughly enjoy, who (seems to IMO) alludes to the fact that the most naturally gifted Tennis player should proabably be someone with the best backhand. I can't help agreeing!

Of Squash Balls and Fatheads

So the Aussies have been laughing it off.

Ian Healy is as 'obtuse' as they get and brings along a bullheadedness in his comments that makes one wanna smirk at him and wallop him at the same time.

"Let them all put squash balls in their glove and see how they go," Healy said in The Courier Mail. "

Heals, you bungling idiot..

It's not about "How many people can use the technique to their advantage.., it's about Whether the squash ball provided an advantage to Gilly" period. The difference is not even subtle.

The Times of India had a reasonable description of the mechanics involved when using a squash ball, in their sports page.
In simple terms, the squash ball by virtue of being soft provides a spring loaded effect. This is definitely an advantage but pre-requisites control for effective harness.
Gilchrist's fast paced game equips him with the necessary control and we did see the ball travelling long distances (possible as a result of the stored and released kinetic energy in the glove).

Simple put : The squash ball is a performance enhancer as it lends to the "power of a batsman's strokes".
While it may be true that somebody like Sangakarra may not be able to use it to the same effect, it does not set right the fact that Gilchrist was wrong in using it to his illegal advantage.

The funnier thing is that a few of them compare it to having an extra glove. It's like saying bouncing something off a plank and using a spring is the same.

Gilchrist's innings was the difference between the teams. Sangakarra and Jayasuriya played better than most other Aussie batsmen.

My "no need to be politically correct" side wants to scream "That Sri Lanka have been robbed and Australia are not worthy winners of the finals ( only the finals : mind you )", but at the very least this does require more attention and analysis by all those involved.

Happenings

Lasith Malinga bowled the most amazing 4 balls in the history of Cricket.

Kapil Dev takes a dig at Laloo's comment on the ability of our cricketeers. I never knew that Sadness and Mirth could be co-existing emotions until I heard about Laloo's comment and Kapil's retort.

Watching the fabulous life on VH1, Nicolas Cage buys a couple of Islands, P Diddy splurges 1.3 million dollars on a party and Warren Buffet gives away 46 billion dollars to charity : Capitalism doesn't look so evil after all, it's upto the individual to cast it as self-centred or altruistic.

One of the news channel did a retro on DD's earlier Serials and Soaps. Nukkad, Ye Jo he Zindagi, Buniyaad brought back wonderful memories. We seem to have moved ahead in style and stepped back in substance.
Apparently When the least common denominator (only) gets economically progressive but retains it's narrow and skewed scope and perception : mediocrity will thrive.

Morality is the most "scoffed at" concept in the blogosphere.

Had a funny conversation on multi-tasking with a good friend recently, I fail to understand how companies can waste resources on perfectly menial tasks. But If I had been smarter, I wouldn't be judgemental.

Federer lost :(

Paruthiveeran snippets are amazing. Good to see the new standards of method acting in the industry.
But are we moving towards a new stereotype ? Never mind, looking forward to watching the movie.

Who the fook is Lauren Harris ? And What the fook was she doing in an Iron Maiden show ?

While it was great to be a part of an Iron Maiden Show, I have to admit I was dissapointed when I left palace grounds.

Quite a few things didn't go right :

• For starters we overplanned and got there way ahead of time.
• 2 out of the 3 startup bands were downright lousy.
• Lauren Harris was an insult of a precursor to a cult group like Maiden, an assorted collection of "baby goat" noises would have sounded more hard rock than her.I guess if you are Steve Harris daughter, you get a license to cacophony.Now we know why Maiden wrote "Bring your daughter to the slaughter".
• Maiden didn't play :

1. Bring your Daughter..
2. Mother Russia
3. Tail Gunner
4. Clairvoyant

On the positive side :

• The visual effects were great, they did play 6 of their popular numbers from Best of the Beast and Eddy was on the warpath.
• Parikrama were amazing.

Bruce said they would be back again, I'm not sure if I'd be intrested though..

Aerosmith is on next, in Mumbai early June. This must be our purple patch.

Supply Chain genius

By eliminating the need for wholesalers through an effective distribution unit, Walmart deal with manufacturers (around the world) directly. This allows them to negotiate costs more effectively.

By just having to concentrate on

Improving the efficiencies of the distribution system
Negotiating with manufacturers and
Feeding back to manufacturers on the sale/lure of their products.

They have converged their area of thought processing and Innovation. They can now rest assured that with the focus on the above 3 points their business will be in good stead. How many companies can boast of an Operational marvel like that ?

Any savings that are achieved through improvements in the above processes would directly translate to a reduction in cost for the end customer.

The appeal is in the simplicity.

Ref. Source : The World is Flat : Thomas Friedman

Cometh the hour, Cometh the Beast!!!

Iron Maiden
in Bangalore. The first heavy metal band to tour here. This almost makes me beleive the India Poised crap that the Times of India is crowing about.

But if the 6th greatest rock band ever has decided to come down, we must be doing something right..

It's the Nature of the beast baybee and it's the time to get those skull pendants and Maiden T-shirts out!

More happening on the Hutch buy out merry go round

This is a combination that I wouldn't have pitted together in my wildest dreams:

The Tatas along with Richard Branson

are the latest lobbyists...

Reminds me of the 80's multi starrer action flicks, this is going to be fun, sit back and watch, i'm expecting an anti climax of the most obvious kind..

gulp!

And I was thinking of buying a LCD TV for the world cup.., nanri Hawkeye sir..

The Hutch Acquisition battle

The Hindujas are the latest entrants in the lobbying battle for "Hutch Essar". Arun Sarin and Anil Ambani are the desperate ones, with the former seeking a big entry into the fastest growing market and the other looking at maximising presence.
The curious question I had was when I started reading about this was on Why Hutchinson would be stupid enough to sell their leeway in India.

Outlook clarified that in their cover story by confirming that they have been at loggerheads with their Steel making partners 'Essar'.
Speak of weird bedfellows!

In a nutshell, Airtel, Reliance and Hutch are the 3 biggest market grabbers in India for moble telephony. Spice never made it big though they entered the market first.
Reliance is going all out to get to a 41 % market share from their current 30%.

Vodafone needs to make an entry into India and many analysts feel that this may be their only realistic chance.

The Chinese Billionaire (can't remember his name) has just refused 14 billion. So he knows the worth and it's gonna cost big time.

In all likelyhood, this might go nowhere and Hutch may decide to go ahead by itself after some time.

Otherwise :

Vodafone have the money, Reliance have the biggest direct motivation and Outlook mentions Anil working with Private Equities to rake up the bling.

And there are the other players like Max, Essar themselves and the Hindujas...

As an end user, it proabably would be best for the three way market share to remain to ensure no monopoly and diktats by a market leader.

My irrelevant yet significant ;-) backing therefore goes to Vodafone.

The Hutch network reception leaves a lot to be desired for, hopefully Vodafone with it's strong financial backing would be able to set right the flaws and flawed policies.

Which reminds me : for some unfathomable reason, Hutch have decided to send me e-Bills without clarification of any sort : Arun, Anil if you are listening!

Worthy of derision..

I have been wanting to say this for a long time..And, the time has come

The Ashes 2005 victory was as far away from 'convincing' as is Anu Malik's ability to make 'original music'.

To the England Hype-Management team :

If Kasprowicz wasn't adjudged out wrongly in the third test last year, then Oz would have retained the Ashes with the same 2-1 margin.

Also, understand that Andrew Flintoff in your team was in good playing form. So was Steve Harmison. They were backed up by Kevin Pietersen and Michael Vaughan to a good extent.
Let's not forget Simon Jones : What a bowler!!

Australia got an unexpected fight, in other words they were taken offguard, the roll of the "dhalakatai" (a different form of the dice) went the England way.

Please understand that Vaughan's captaincy would not have made a miniscule of a difference in 2006. Reasons being the best English players were not in touch, Harmison hit form only when Australia had to chase 46 in the final innings of the 5th test. Flintoff was in poor batting form and chequered bowling form. There was no Simon Jones nor Tresocthick..

More importantly, the Aussies focussed and when they do, I don't care what team England brings along, they are bound to lose. A fully loaded in-form English team could have at best saved the ignominy of a whitewash! Please do try and 'try to comprehend this' ..

What you are doing now is ridiculous to say the least!

Michael Vaughan was a tad aggressiveas a skip because he had the benefit of experience...and a good winning team to boot : that's ALL, please persist with Flint or try Strauss..Instead focus on setting right the priorities of your existing team, You have some fine players in Ian Bell, Alastair Cook, Simon Jones, Monty Panesar and the usual suspects of Flintoff, Pietersen and Strauss.

Don't bring back Vaughan for the sake of it, unless he's proved worthy at your First Class Level.

And for heaven's sake, pick a proper coach for your national teams, from Erikson to Fletcher, your 'teams' display at the World sporting arenas' remain the only competition to Tamil cinema in the field of comedy! Seriously...

Shane Warne Hat-trick



Boonie got the third wicket, I remember seeing this live..

Warne walked and talked and did much more, if I were his creator, I'd change nothing, not even the off-field controversies....

Thanks for the entertainment mate...

Shane Warne interviewed by Parkinson - Comedy Skit

A spoof, but hilarious...

No. 27

With their triumph at Johannesburg, India have now won matches in all Test-playing nations.

Ganguly concentrated a lot better, so did VVS.

Sreesanth and Zaheer Khan were really cool..

With Kumble pitching in the 2nd innings, the folks who have been lobbying for "experience" in the team appear to have won a small battle.

Not intending to be the cynical snob but I do hope the "new found attitude and solitude" of Saurav is here to stay....

I also hope the selectors do not replace Sehwag and feel that it would help Sachin to bat low down to try and find his form back...

With all my aversion to stereotyping, I can't help but say we did an Australia albeit in our own way and I hope we continue it.

Meanwhile The media continues with it's own agenda of reconverting cricketers to Gods back again...

As an Indian cricket fan, I am genuinely happy, but I'd love to see a series victory followed up by a continued brave run in the World Cup. The results would then take care of themselves! For I now beleive we can! but still not so sure if we will..

Foot in the Mouth Award goes to..

Kevin Pietersen, majestic in the first innings, was humbled today. Rob Smyth, over on the Guardian site, spotted that he had said in his book, “I see no way Shane can bowl me round his legs”.

Well thats exactly what he did.., not quite the Mike Gatting dismissal, but a peach of a delivery nevertheless..

Never have your dog stuffed...: Memoirs of Alan Alda

Ever walked into a bookstore for the first time right into the correct counter, picked up a book and walked out ( after paying for it ofcourse ) like you knew it was there all the time....

Fate has a funny way of making it's presence felt and these subtle instances that it presents itself can be quite enjoyable actually....

At the Raleigh Durham Airport preceding a 3 hour wait for my flight to DC, I walked into the airport bookstore almost by reflex straight into the area where they had stocked Alan Alda's :
"Never have your dog stuffed and other things i've learned.." It's almost as if my subconscious had figured out a way to communicate with the real.., If there ever was a memoir I had wanted to read, this was it...

The book by itself is fantastic and having read half of it, It comes across as a very genuine effort, Alan Alda has had life teach him a lot, but the good thing is unlike most of us he made the most of what it dished out..., there are inferences to draw by the dozen and we don't have to necessarily read between the lines.

The significant instances of one of the best actors America has ever produced who took spontaneity to a whole new level is intresting to say the least.
In his role as Captain Benjamin Franklin Pierce ( Hawkeye ) in M*A*S*H, The juxtaposition of humour and drama was achieved to the fullest extent.., the book tells us why he's that damn good.I admire him now more than ever.

For all those of you who are fans like me, the book is a must-have. For those who like to read, i'd highly recomend it.

BTW : All 11 seasons of M*A*S*h are now available for an excellent price of 199 $ which cuts buying each DVD individually by nearly half.

Kramer Unplugged.....Unfortunately!

First Dean Jones, then Mel Gibson, now Michael Richards..

By the looks of it, looks like the trend of verbally venting pent up frustration is in..

Richards is eccentric.., there's been enough said and done about what he said and how his career may be over.., I don't have any different perspective to offer

But I saw something else on TVwhich got me thinking : Looks like the kids who bore the brunt of Kramer's anger have got themselves a lawyer and are planning to sue Richards if a personal apology is not provided.., this after Richards has apologised in public...

How suing is being perceived as remediation for a racist slur is beyond me...? which makes me question the integrity of some of the people who are throwing the stones.

I quite enjoy Seinfield though it's no-where close in my opinion to be among the best sitcoms. Kramer and Jerry are one-dimensional, the only character I find genuine is that of George Costanza, but that's me...

Mr Median's disgruntlement

This article talks about the average increase in American salaries across the board over the years and yet the discontent owing to comparison.

While this would not apply to everybody in India, a certain cross section of people that I belong to seem to suffer from the same syndrome.

Consider Mr. X making seven lakhs after 4 years of experience. Y makes a couple of lakhs more and Z makes even more on a L1 visa in the US

The money is more than sufficient for X but he dunks a job with reasonable growth potential, goes down to the US picks up a job for a few dollars more.
At this point Z is making even more and so X is still unsettled.

The motivation for greener pastures has shifted from logical triggers like :

Low Remuneration
or Lack of growth oppurtunities to "Earning better than this guy you know"..

And the worse thing is : Owing of the flat world, more and more people are able to use this approach.

So Y working on cutting edge technology or a good business management role makes inferior money to X and Z doing some "high level far away from the technology to even know what it means" stuff or stuff that even doesn't have direct business/management implications.
That being the case, It takes an amazing amount of will to come to terms with the above and the percentage of Y's are steadily on the wane.

Clarification : I have nothing against people with only money as the top priority, in fact I honestly respect them..

My problem is with this dude (generically speaking) who is oblivious to the above and belongs to the 'X' of the 'Z' category struts his newly acquired iPods or electronic gizmo on my face and oozies a certain pretentiousness that could put the Aristrocrats in Medeival Europe to shame : so I ask him to go stuff it.

The Human Hair

Hair breaks his silence in a most unlikely manner IMO.

"How can people judge me to have prejudices when I went to school in Australia alongside Chinese children, Hungarian refugees and all manner of other nationalities?

"I grew up in Orange, in central New South Wales, living next door to a large family of Aborigines. I had some of my happiest times playing rugby and cricket with the children. They were like brothers and sisters to me.

"It's particularly hurtful when I count as some of my closest friends the Pakistan umpires Aleem Dar and Asad Rauf, and the Sri Lankans Asoka de Silva and Peter Manuel. We are men from different cultures drawn together by the game of cricket. We exchange views and I have always found men of that calibre tremendously supportive."

Hard to judge the man now.., he's got that wonderful ability to get under a person's skin and so Inzamam's and Ranatunga's angst are justified. But should this really be attributed to prejudice?

Andre' the Giant : Curtain Call

A helluva lot will be said and has been already

Cliche 1 : The game would miss Andre Agassi!

My reason as to what made Andre special :

• Not just the best return of serve
• Not just having one of the best baseline games
  

But for his ability to do the juggling act of being a glam/style icon and a serious champion.

Iconization takes it's toll and is known to distract sportspersons from their focus area i.e the sport itself.

Only the prodigiously talented survive...: Agassi is of that rare breed.

He would have won a couple more slams had Pete played in a different time. But thats the way the "tennis ball rolls" and this game is not just about winning slams.

However, he's got something for the stats -addicts to savour too :
Winning all the slams & an Olympic gold.

For all of Roger's ability, I would be very suprised if he does scale that peak..

The World Tennis owes a lot to Agassi and personally I hope he has a good life ahead!

Peanutbutter with Chocolate

Inadvertent Rambling

Now here's the deal..

"Accept the existing System, do not question it, especially if your convictions aren't the result of a decent experience research or you do not have the t'ticular fortitude to take things forward"

Comprendo ?

40 licks tour : 2003 Canada

My buddy Atul & wife Ananya have decided to take an unexplained blog-sabbatical which left me with no choice but to go through their archives and stumble onto this

Can't beleive it's 3 years now since I attended the biggest concert of my life!

Aug 1 : 2003

12 hours in the Canadian Sun
More than 20 rock bands topped off by the Stones
Aussie band (sigh!) AC/DC kicked butt






Justin Timberlake gets pelted

Would take a helluva lot to better that!

" "

Without love, what are we worth? Eighty-nine cents! Eighty-nine cents worth of chemicals walking around lonely. ~Hawkeye

Reality Bites

Only 1.3 million out of a working population of 400 million are employed in the information technology and business processing industries that make up the so-called new economy

Hall of Famers

Pat Rafter and Gabriela Sabatini
Also :
Proabably the world of sport's best front ends...

Life worth Living

Thanks to

M*A*S*H & Alan Alda
The Simpsons
Debra Messing
The Swashank Redemption
Seven
Sleepers
A few good men
Nayagan
Michael Madhana Kamarajan
Ayn Rand
Metallica
Guns N' Roses
Linkin Park
Any rock group that made it big in the 90's
Cricket
Wimbledon
Soccer WC
The Aussie cricket team
Roger Federer
Monica Seles
Sly Stallone
Richard Branson
Shivaji Ganeshan
Goundamani, Vivek & Vadivelu
Niagra Falls
Walt Disney
Asterix & Tintin
S.P Balasubrahmanyam
Illayaraja
Google
Blogs

My "personal list of influences"/"admiration club".

MythBuster : Ashes

Awright Peeps,

I guess we've always been lead to beleive that the "Ashes" belongs to a burnt stump or bail or whatever from way back in the days when Australia first beat England - in England, sometime in the 19th century ??

Thats's a joke..

Nope, I'm not saying that!, the tour co-ordinator @ MCG claims that the "Ashes" (I presume she means the myth surrounding it) are a joke.

Here's the inside scoop :

When Australia did beat England for the first time.., many British newspapers declared "The English Cricket was dead", it appears that this became some "sortofa" cricketing catchphrase at that time. There was no urn at this point nor did it contain the ashes of any stump or bail..
When England subsequently visited Australia for a friendly match and won.., "the ladies of the house" presented the then England captain with an urn like thing.."speculated to be a perfume bottle or something..".
Apparently nobody knows what it contained/contains.
The captain took it to Blighty, and returned back this time as the governor of Victoria and even married a Victorian.
After his death, the urn was sent back to Lords and replicas of it are what Oz and England fight for every year.

I wish I had recorded this piece of info., would have better hearing it from the horse's (er, no offence intended :-) mouth..

But there you go : Another piece of trivia busted!

The greatest goal from down under ?

Harry Kewell's 79th minute equaliser takes the socerroos through..

Oz land is up early and celebrating. Gus Hiddink is the greatest coach and Australian soccer looks to have arived. Truly!



Read more

Tanjore Temple : Legacy of Raja Raja Chola

I picked this off Lazygeek's blog.

A Google Video Documentary on the Tanjore temple

wonderful stuff!

Raja Raja Chola who constructed the temple was a visionary par excellence. The temple by itself is an engineering marvel and the documentary details on how "80 tonne" blocks were moved to the site for constructing the gopuram a 1000 years ago.

Kinda Ironic when we look at the Civil Engineering Challenges ahead of us currently. Don't miss the documentary!

Thanks Lazy!

Album Review : How to dismantle an...: By U2

is in my opinion easily the best album of 2005 and one of the best post 2000. Being a die hard rock fan, it saddens to see that the glory years have passed...

But U2/Bono relight the fire..

Mostly filled with soul searching songs, the album starts off with the peppy "Vertigo" and mellows down to slower tracks with beautiful lyrics.

"Crumbs from your table" ought to be the Best Song post 2000 alongside "Numb" by Linkinpark

Here are a few lines :

From the brightest star
Comes the blackest hole
You had so much to offer
Why did you offer your soul ?
I was there for you baby
When you needed my help.
Would you deny for others
What you demand for yourself?

.....
.....

You speak of signs and wonders
I need something other
I would beleive if I was able
But I'm waiting on the crumbs from your table.


.....
.....

Where you live should not decide
Whether you live or whether you die
Three to a bed
Sister Ann, she said
Dignity passes by

.....
.....

An amazing track

Trust on U2 to never die..

For those who love Rock : We salute you..

Sledge fest

I didn't wanna miss having this published..

Read on for "Best of Sledging in the World of Cricket.."

Sledging has always been a part of cricket.Even the great WG Grace did it. Once in an exhitbition match given out leg-before, he refused to walk and told the umpire: " They came to watch me bat, not you bowl". And the innings continued.
Grace's ability to stand his ground would have done Sunil Gavaskar proud. Once, when the ball knocked off a bail, he replaced it and told the umpire: " Twas the wind which took thy bail orf, good sir."
The umpire replied: "Indeed, doctor, and let us hope thy wind helps the good doctor on thy journey back to the pavilion ."
The best WG Grace sledge was on him, though, not from him. Charles Kortright had dismissed him four or five times in a county game - only for the umpires to keep turning down his appeals. Finally, he uprooted two of Grace's three stumps. Grace stalled, as though waiting for a no-ball call or something, before reluctantly walking off with Kortright's words in his ears: " Surely you're not going, doctor? There's still one stump standing."

The Prasad Vs Sohail Incident : Hero to Zero in 3 easy steps
Chasing India's score of 287-8, pakistan got off to a flyer of a start, Amir Sohail and Saeed Anwar went about tearing the Indian bowling attack. Pakistan looked all set to win as they reached 110 odd for the loss of just 1 wicket within the 15 overs.
1. Play a Great Shot: Amir Sohail was completely bent on demolishing the Indian bowling to pieces, charging down the track to the faster bowlers (if u can call Prasad that) in this particular case he came down the ground (a good 4-5 steps, anymore and he would have hit Prasad too) and slashed the bowl over vacant off side area... the ball disappeared into the fence in a flash ... what followed has since been etched in the memories of every cricket fan in the subcontinent.
2. Act Oversmart: Amir Sohail is no Miandad. But he tries to be,and fails miserably. Sohail after hitting the shot pointed his bat the area where the bowl had disappeared and then towards Prasad apparently gesturing where he will send the next one .
Its not everyday that you see a batsman sledging the bowler, and Sohail was about to learn just why.
3. Get what you called for: Sohail attempting to repeat the shot (albeit with his feet stuck to the ground this time) made room and exposed his stumps, and his weakness, and in return lost his wicket and his face.
As the wicket lay uprooted, Prasad returned the favour to Sohail, pointing to the pavilion this time.

The comeback was truly remarkable, almost a miracle .... Prasad has bowled thousands of deliveries and taken hundereds of wickets in his career but, it was this one granted him a place in the History of Indian Cricket .. for ever... the ghost of Miandad's last ball six was exorcised, once and for all.

Steve Waugh Vs Curtly Ambrose Episode.
It really does not get any bigger than this, the two legends of cricket came face to face, literally and engrossed in a verbal duel in a test match in Trinidad. All the juicy details were not to be known until Steve Waugh came out with his autobiography.
Ambrose repeatedly stared Waugh down during a searing spell, and Waugh, who sized up the towering Ambrose, said: " What the f*ck are you looking at? "
Ambrose was stunned because, as Waugh says (in his Autobiography), "no one had ever been stupid enough" to speak to him like that.
Ambrose replied, "Don't cuss me, man", before Waugh's response, which had nothing to do with bowling.
"Unfortunately, nothing inventive or witty came to mind, rather another piece of personal abuse: 'Why don't you go and get f*cked.' "
The Windies skipper Richie Richardson had a hard time keeping Ambrose from hurting the Aussie.

McGrath Vs Brandes(the Best one till now….)
In a showdown of best pacers of two countries, Brandes made up for his complete absence of batting skills by some displaying some great sense of humor and presence of mind.
Aussie paceman Glenn McGrath was bowling to Zimbabwe number 11 Eddo Brandes - who was unable to get his bat anywhere near the ball. McGrath, frustrated that Brandes was still at the crease, wandered up during one particular over and inquired: " Why are you so fat?"
Quick as a flash, Brandes replied: "Because every time I make love to your wife, she gives me a biscuit ."
Even the Aussie slip fielders were in hysterics.

Viv Richards v Greg Thomas
This incident took place during a county championship match between Glamorgan and Somerset.
Glamorgan quickie Greg Thomas had beaten Viv Richards' bat a couple of times and informed the legendary West Indian ace: " It's red, round and weighs about five ounces, in case you were wondering."
The very next ball was given the King Viv treament and smashed out of the ground, into a river - at which point Richards piped up: " Greg, you know what it looks like. Now go and find it."

Merv Hughes and Viv Richards:
Merv Hughes usually never short of a word while on the field, rarely keeps quite. During a test match in the West Indies Hughes didn't say a word to Viv, but continued to stare at him after deliveries. " This is my island, my culture. Don't you be staring at me. In my culture we just bowl." Merv didn't reply, but after he dismissed him he announced to the batsman: " In my culture we just say f*ck off."

Sachin Tendulkar Vs Abdul Qadir
The year was 1989, the little master had recently made his debut in Pakistan. Sachin not even old enough to get a driving licence Sachin Tendulkar was facing the best bowlers in the business. As the Pakistani crows jeered and mocked Sachin holding out the placards saying "" Dudh Pita Bhachcha ..ghar jaake dhoodh pee", (hey kid, go home and drink milk), Sachin sent the then young leg spinner Mustaq Ahmed hiding for cover (he had hit two sixes in one over. The frustaded mentor of Mustaq Ahmed the legendary Abdul Qadir challenges Sachin saying " Bachchon ko kyon mar rahe ho? Hamein bhi maar dikhao` (`Why are you hitting kids? Try and hit me.`).
Sachin was silent, since then we all have come to know that he lets his bat do the talking. Abdul Quadir had made a simple request and Sachin obliged, and how. Sachin hit 4 sixes in the over, making the spinner look the kid in the contest. The over read 6, 0, 4, 6 6 6, David had felled Goliath ... and a legend was born.

Ian Healy Vs RANatunga
Ian Healy's made a legendary comment which was picked up by the Channel 9 microphones when Arjuna Ranatunga called for a runner on a particularly hot night during a one dayer in Sydney... " You don't get a runner for being an overweight, unfit, fat c*nt!"

McGrath to Ramnaresh Sarwan:
Sarwan, the West Indies vice-captain, and McGrath went toe-to-toe in an ugly shouting match in Antigua in May 2003, The incident was sparked after Sarwan, on his way to a match-winning second-innings century, reportedly reacted to lurid taunts from McGrath by telling him he should get the answers from his wife, who was recovering from radiation therapy for secondary cancer. The details :

McGrath: "So what does Brian Lara's d*ck taste like?"
Sarwan: "I don't know. Ask your wife. "
McGrath (losing it): "If you ever F*&king mention my wife again, I'll F*cking rip your F*fing throat out."

Mark Waugh Vs Adam Parore
Mark Waugh was standing at second slip, Adam Parore relatively new to cricket came to the crease played & missed the first ball.
Mark Waugh- "Ohh, I remember you from a couple years ago in Australia. You were sh*t then, you're fu*king useless now".
Parore- (Turning around) "Yeah, that's me & when I was there you were going out with that old, ugly sl*t & now I hear you've married her. You dumb c*nt ".

Ravi shastri v/s Mike Whitney:
Its common knowledge that Indian's usually don't resort to sledging, and the Aussies swear by it. In this rare ocassion the tables had turned and it was the Aussies who were at the receiving end.
Shastri hits the ball towards Mike Whitney (the 12th man in the game) and looks for a single, this guy gets the ball in and says
Whitney: "If you leave the crease i'll break your f***ing head"
Shastri didn't bat an eyelid before replying : " If you could bat as well as you can talk you wouldn't be the f***ing 12th man"

Merv Hughes Vs Cronje
Merv Hughes was one of the greatest exponents of the fine "art" of sledging. Once during a tour game in South Africa Hughes was bowling to Hansie Cronje . It was an especially flat wicket and Cronje was hitting Hughes for fours and sixes all over the place.
After the umpteenth boundary, Hughes headed down the pitch, stood near Cronje, let out a fart and said: "Try hitting that for six." It was five minutes before the guffawing stopped and play could resume.

Robin Smith and Merv Hughes
During 1989 Lords Test, Merv Hughes said to Robin Smith after he played and missed: " You can't f*cking bat".
Simth replied, both with the bat and with words, he smashed Hughes to the boundry and said "Hey Merv, we make a fine pair. I can't f*cking bat and you can't f*cking bowl ."

Team mates Sledging :
England were playing Pakistan and, at what turned out to be a crucial moment later on, Frank Tyson managed to get an outside edge off a Pakistani batsman after the batsman had been frustrating them on a hot sweaty day. The ball went right through the hands of Raman Subba Rao who was standing in first slip and through his legs. After the over Raman heads over to the bowler and says, "Sorry Frank, I should've closed my legs." Frank Tyson, who didn't find any of this amusing, quipped back, " No, you bastard, your mother should have ."

Ian Healy Vs a Short chubby batsman:
In one of the tour matches in South Africa, Australia played Hansie Cronje's province. Cronje was at the non strikers end, there was a short chubby batsman on strike.
Ian Healy yelled to Warne, " Bowl a Mars Bar half way down...We'll get him stumped"
The Aussies and Cronje were all in hysterics, all this was before a classic reply from the batsman.
The exact words: "Nah, Boonie (David Boon) fielding at short leg will be onto it before I can move."

Miandad Vs Lillee: The 'brats' clash:
Miandad played Lillee to s quare leg and completed an easy run, with a collision taking place in the center. According to Miandad, Lillee had tried to block him in the path. After a verbal exchange, Lillee went ahead and kicked Miandad on his pads. Miandad, started charging towards Lillee with his bat lifted high above the head, as if to hit him. The umpire's intervention prevented what could have turned out to be a real assault had Miandad gone head with his plans. However, the picture of Miandad hurling his bat at Lillee made the whole incident look even worse, and was promptly declared as the most indignified incident in the history of Cricket.
Lillee's version, to this day, had Miandad first hitting him with the bat, and then swearing at him. He maintained that there was no contact from his side throughout the incident.
Note: The author is aware if the fact that this incident has nothing to do with sledging, but found the temptation of mentioning the episode was too hard to resist.
The Frog Jumping incident, 1992 India Vs Pakistan: India vs Pakistan matches are always a treat to watch, and if its the World Cup its stakes are even greater. Javed Miandad, the Bad boy of cricket, at the receiving end for once. Miffed by the verbals from Kiran More, he complains " Insaan khel rahe hain janwaar nahin" (Human beings are playing not animals). And after a sharp run out chance, where Miandad closely survives Miandad starts jumping up and down, face distorted imitating Kiran More's appealing. A sight to behold. Pure comedy. Pakistan loses the match but go on to win the cup.
'I did it instinctively', Miandad later told. He added, 'Hey, is this the way you appeal for everything? Don't appeal like that '. You can also watch the video of the incident.

Dropped the Cup?
Perhaps the most famous sledge in a World Cup match took place the epic Super Six clash between Australia and South Africa (in 2003). South Africa looked on course to a routine victory with Australian captain Steve Waugh at the crease and on 56. At that stage, Waugh clipped the ball in the air straight to South African fielder Herschelle Gibbs. In his haste, Gibbs dropped the ball when attempting to throw it in the air in celebration as he had not fully controlled it. As he passed him, Waugh is said to have asked Gibbs: " How does it feel to have dropped the World Cup?". Waugh carried on to make an unbeaten 120 and Australia posted an unlikely win and won the World Cup a few days later.
Waugh has however denied that quote, instead claiming that he said "looks like you've dropped the match".

Hughes Vs Miandad
The inimitable Merv Hughes has forgotten more about sledging than most people will ever know, so he was more than a little miffed to be on the receiving end in the 1991 Adelaide Test against Pakistan. Hughes and Javed Miandad almost came to blows after the Pakistani batsman dared to call big Merv a " fat bus conductor". But revenge was sweet for Hughes. A few balls later he finally got his man and as Miandad walked past, he could not resist shouting " Tickets, please!"

Dennis Lillee Vs Sunil Gavaskar
Dennis Lillee and Sunil Gavaskar, were involved in a war of words in the 3rd Test, MCG, February 1981. A historic win for India in that Test would definitely not have taken place had Sunil Gavaskar not calmed down. He clashed with Australian
fast bowler Dennis Lillee, who Gavaskar claims abused him after claiming his wicket and the Indian captain asked non-striker Chetan Chauhan to walk off the field, forfeiting the match. Gavaskar was batting on 70 when Lillee appealed for a leg before decision. Gavaskar showed his bat to the umpire, indicating he had 'nicked' the ball before it hit his pads. Angry words were exchanged between the batsman and the bowler, and Lillee even went to the extent of pointing to the batsman the spot where the ball had his pads. The decision went in favour of the bowler and as Gavaskar started his long, dejected walk back to the pavilion, Lillee turned around and abused him. That was it. Gavaskar snapped, and decided to forfeit the match.
Later, Gavaskar was to write in his book 'Idols': "That (the walkout) was the most regrettable incidents of my life. Whatever may be the provocation and whatever the reason, there was no justification for my action and I realize now that I did not behave the way a captain and sportsman should ."

Flintoff Vs Tino Best
Best, never short of a word or two when he is bowling, was done up like a kipper by the England all-rounder as West Indies slumped to defeat in the first Test. Flintoff saw his opponent preparing to face Giles' off-spin and shouted: " Watch the windows, Tino!" The wind-up had the desired effect, causing Best to come charging out of his crease like a man possessed. He took a wild swing at the ball, missed and was promptly stumped by Geraint Jones. Not a broken window in sight. Flintoff could not contain himself and spent the next five minutes giggling like a teenager, as Best sat on the balcony rueing his stupidity.

Viv Richards to Gavaskar:
Gavaskar had decided to relinquish his opening position and come in at no 4 for that test. But, Malcolm Marshall fired out Anshuman Gaekwad and Dilip Vengsarkar for ducks, setting the stage for Gavaskar to walk in at 0/2.And he thought there would be less pressure! Viv Richards says " Man, it don't matter where you come in to bat, the score is still zero."

Steve Waugh and Parthiv Patel
Amidst all the hype surrounding his farewell match, Steve Waugh had to contend with an unexpected dose of his own medicine from a player half his age.
As Waugh fought a grim battle to stave off defeat in the series-deciding fourth Test in Sydney, 19 year-old Indian wicket-keeper Parthiv Patel tried to unsettle the veteran batsman through some banter.
The baby-faced Patel egged on the 38 year-old stalwart to play one of his sweep shots one last time.
The India 'keeper was saying, 'Come on, just one more of the famous slog-sweeps before you finish'
Waugh replied: 'Look, show a bit of respect. You were in nappies when I debuted 18 years ago' .

Rod Marsh and Ian Botham:
When Botham took guard in a Ashes match, Marsh welcomed him to the wicket with the immortal words: " So how's your wife and my kids?"

Trueman and Aussie batsman
In an England v Australia Test during early 1960's Trueman was fielding close to the gate from the pavilion. As a new batsman came out he turned to shut the gate, Trueman said " Don't bother son, you won't be out there long enough."
Daryll Cullinan and Shane Warne.
As Cullinan was on his way to the wicket, Warne told him he had been waiting 2 years for another chance to humiliate him. "Looks like you spent it eating ," Cullinan retorted.

Adam Parore and Daryll Cullinan
Because Cullinan is well known for being Warne's bunny, New Zealand keeper Parore greeted the South African, carefully playing the first ball from kiwi Chris Harris, with a cry of: " Bowled Warnie!"

Malcolm Marshall and David Boon
Malcolm Marshall was bowling to David Boon who had played and missed a couple of times. Marshall: " Now David, Are you going to get out now or am I going to have to bowl around the wicket and kill you?"

James Ormond and Mark Waugh
James Ormond had just come out to bat on an ashes tour and was greeted by MarkWaugh……..
Mark : "F*ck me, look who it is. Mate, what are you doing out here, there's no way you're good enough to play for England "
James: "Maybe not, but at least i'm the best player in my family"

Waugh Vs Jamie Siddons
In a Sheffield Shield game between NSW and SA, a Waugh twin (not sure which) was taking an enternity to take guard, asking the umpire for centre, middle and leg, two legs - the whole lot. Then he steps away towards leg side and has another look around the field, before re checking centre.
Jamie Siddons is at slip, and decided enough is enough. He yells out."For christ sake, it's not a 'f*cken test match."
Waugh replies: "Of course it isn't ... You're here."

Mother (in law) of all sledges:
In the 1980's Ian Botham returned early from a tour of Pakistan, and on radio joked " Pakistan is the sort of country to send your mother in-law to ." Needless to say the Pakistanis did not find this amusing, and when Pakistan defeated England in the 1992 World Cup Final, Aamer Sohail told Ian Botham " Why don't you send your mother-in-law out to play, she cannot do much worse."

Barmy Army Vs Shane Warne
England's "Barmy Army" recently decided to sledge leg spinner Shane Warne musically, and it has been described as boorishly personal, but effective.
The sledge was based on Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep - the "Where's your poppa gone?" Song. It has been converted to " Where's your missus gone?" (Warne had recently been divorced ith ife)

Special Mention:
Inzamam-ul-Haq once told Brett Lee to " stop bowling off spinners".
In the recent Karachi Test when Irfan Pathan came to bat in 2nd Innings Afridi shouted two times " O mera Shehzada aaya ! " (Oh! my prince has come)

China & India : Reality beyond the hype..

Do not mean this in a judgemental way, but a fairly accurate analysis by Deloitte

http://www.deloitte.com/dtt/research/0,1015,sid%253D1000%2526cid%253D117305,00.html

Please read and pass on..( we need to get our leaders to read this..;-)

PS : Click and download the link on the page which says :
"Attachments
China and India: The Reality Beyond the Hype (225 KB)
Published May 2006; 16 pages; A Deloitte Research report."
for the complete report.

Thanks Rajni for sharing!

Destiny's Child..: Martina Hingis..

Named after a Tennis Great!

5 grand slams by the age of 22

Premature retirement in 2002.

Back after a "brief sabbatical" of close to 4 years in 2006.

A few semifinal appearances later...

Won the Rome Masters tournament yesterday the 21st May 2006 defeating Venus Williams enroute..

Looks like Tennis loves her like no other...

Inadvertent Ramblings

Practical decisions and Passionate Implementations are key.

The converse and any other permutations are bound to fail or reduce the degree of success.

STROKE: Remember The 1st Three Letters...

Got this through a mail, useful for all of us to know ( funny, I feel like a hypocrite though, i've always said "useful forwards" deserve an entry in the Top 5 Oxymoron charts)

STROKE IDENTIFICATION:
During a BBQ, a friend stumbled and took a little fall - she assured everyone that she was fine (they offered to call paramedics) and just tripped over a brick because of her new shoes. They got her cleaned up and got her a new plate of food - while she appeared a bit shaken up, Ingrid went about enjoying herself the rest of the evening. Ingrid's husband called later telling everyone that his wife had been taken to the hospital - (at 6:00pm, Ingrid passed away.) She had suffered a stroke at the BBQ. Had they known how to identify the signs of a stroke, perhaps Ingrid would be with us today. Some don't die. They end up in a helpless, hopeless condition instead.
It only takes a minute to read this...
A neurologist says that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects of a stroke...totally. He said the trick was getting a stroke recognized, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within 3 hours, which is tough.
RECOGNIZING A STROKE
Thank God for the sense to remember the "3" steps, STR . Read and Learn!
Sometimes symptoms of a stroke are difficult to identify. Unfortunately, the lack of awareness spells disaster. The stroke victim may suffer severe brain damage when people nearby fail to recognize the symptoms of a stroke.
Now doctors say a bystander can recognize a stroke by asking three simple questions:
S *Ask the individual to SMILE.
T *Ask the person to TALK . to SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE
(Coherently) (i.e. . . It is sunny out today)
R *Ask him or her to RAISE BOTH ARMS.
{NOTE: Another 'sign' of a stroke is this: Ask the person to 'stick' out their tongue... if the tongue is 'crooked', if it goes to one side or the other that is also an indication of a stroke}
If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call for assistance immediately and describe the symptoms to the dispatcher.

Keep on Rollin Punter..!

I just couldn't help putting this :

Ricky Ponting's last ten test outings

7 Hundreds ( 149,104,117,120,143,103,116 ), 5 fifties ( 54,56,71,53,74 )

More importantly Victories for Oz :

9 out of 10 including two series whitewashes of the West Indies & South Africa in South Africa.

& 1 draw.

Talk of innings that matter...!

MASH 4077 : Meatball surgery, emotions, frustrations, humour and all..

The fact that M*A*S*H was/is the greatest TV Drama series of all time may be closest to the most "indisputable statement ever!". For those of us who haven't experienced the M*A*S*H euphoria yet, here's what the serial is all about :
(Directly picked from the DVD cover..)
"Korea 1950. They are a MASH ( Mobile Army Surgical Hospital ) unit stationed three miles from the front. Loosely based on real-life MASH unit 8055, life at the 4077 was often a mix of horror and hilarity. So scrub up and journey back to join the doctors and nurses that had us all in stitches: [then it proceeds to introduce the central characters, but i'll stop here]"

You'd think, with a theme like that ( War brings out strong emotions, even to those of us wo haven't directly experienced it: At this point I take a few milli seconds break to touch my wooden TV stand ) a wonderful script and an exceptionally talented and affable cast, the series couldn't miss doin well..! Well, you're darned right!
But what makes M*A*S*H succeed is it's ability to make you think along with it.., you might agree with it's chief protagonist Surgeon Hawkeye Pierce who's actually an antagonist to war and everything it brings along ( read insensitivity, bureaucracy ) or you might disagree but you would never ignore it..

Picture this scene in the third season..

"Hawkeye is nominated Officer of the Day and is asked to carry a gun by the "second in command" of the unit, Major Frank Burns and Hawkeye's retort : Frank, I will not carry a gun.., I will carry a book, carry a torch,carry grant, carry you all the way to Virginia, Cash N' Carry, I will even Harry Carry if you show me how to.., but I will not carry a gun.."

The dialogue pretty much sums up Hawk's attitude towards war which manifests itself in different ways ranging from "shows of disgust" and hilarity.

There is an episode where Hawk suffers a concussion and speaks continously to a Korean family ( who don't know English! ) in order to avoid falling unconscious. He talks about everything from babies looking the way they are ending up looking the way we do and the "rotating thumb" which is proabably one of the greatest wonders of the human body : This episode ranks as my favourite to this day (in a series where it's very very hard to pick a fav., if I may add..)

Before you start thinking it's just about Hawk, please think again and very hard at that, MASH is littered with characters that include Trapper: Hawk's comrade-in-arms for the first 3 seasons, Corporal Henry Blake : Head of the Unit, Major Frank Burns : Second in Command and Chief target of Hawk and Trappers practical jokes, Hot Lips Hoolahan : Major Frank Burns major squeeze and a wonderful nurse, B.J who comes in as a replacement to Trapper, Charles Winchester who comes in as a replacement for Burns, Radar O Reilly : the corporal clerk who is the lifeline of the unit, Corporal Clinger : who wears dresses to get a discharge and so on....

The repeat audience that MASH generates even after 2 decades of it going live is phenomenal, there are re-runs in America and the rush for DVD's continues to be high.

I'd like to write more articles ideally, maybe a blog a month on each of the characters and key episodes and maybe I will :-)

However, just in case I procastinate it to eternity, lemme just get the message across now :

For beginners : Beg, borrow a DVD of season 1 from anbody you know and get hooked..!
For seasoned watchers : Amazon has some cool deals on further seasons and from what I gather from Atul, season 11 is out.

Peace!

Mathew Hayden : Exquisite

I think I've just seen the greatest cricket shot ever :
Mathew Hayden straight driving Jacques Kallis for a HUGE six with a single swing of the hand and an exquisite follow through.

The Match :
Australia v South Africa, 2nd Test, Melbourne, 4th day : Dec. 29th 2005
82.1st over of the Australian second innings!

Eddie Gurrero : RIP

1967 - 2005



Realise I'm a little late with this post, nevertheless : Eddie Gurrero, WWE superstar passed away in a hotel room a couple of weeks ago.

Like a million others around the globe, Have been a big fan of Eddie's In ring exploits over the years.

May his soul Rest in peace!!

One of the speculations for Eddie's untimely death is that of "substance abuse".
Which makes you wonder : If addiction could do something like that to Eddie, no telling what it's effects on lesser mortals would be..

At the risk of sounding like a page out of an Archie comic :

Peeps, Say NO to drugs!

Word - Life!