Chak De India

I had almost forgotten I have my blog until one of my friends reminded me of my erratic posts(glad that people keep a tab) ... Last couple of month have been too hectic, loads of new things to learn and work on simultaneously...( who would have dreamed that oracle and UNIX have more compatibility issues than an average married couple :) )

Weekends just seem to fly past and before I know.. Lo and behold it’s Monday again... as the famous lines of the poem Leisure,
“What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare" :)

While on the topic of social networking, good o'le Orkut seems to be in news all the time and for all the wrong reasons too. People need to learn that it isn’t possible to monitor what every individual does, if not Orkut (which they threaten to ban daily) , the country's tech wizards will come with something else. What all will they ban??

There is one thing though that brings a real wide smile on my face these days, the sports scene in the country these days. Sania is in the form of her life. The hockey scene is picking up with India reaching the semi-finals of Asia cup. the cherry on the cake is the Nehru Cup win. For all the football fans, finally we could scream for our Indian team. The self belief shown by the footballers was heartening... hope this is a beginning of a new era (already dreaming of India making it to next Football World cup :) )

Hockey, the name itself floods me with a sense of deja vu. The school days hockey practices, playing in the slush on the school grounds, exemptions from exams .. the list is endless. Chak De India just took me back to the best days i spent in my alma mater. Its so wonderful to see people take hockey seriously now. Hope this is just the silver lining needed to improve the players' conditions and the playing conditions ( trust me the training camps are actually like refugee camps :) ). I am sure Dhyanchand must be smiling proudly in his grave too.
So here's to Indian hockey ... Chak De India...make us proud always :)

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Walking sticks and Indian Presidents....

After the fantastic weekend ... with the amazing race at Indi and Real winning La liga .. the week started on a bouyant note. Hamilton is actually improving with each race.. the way he matched up to Alonso's pressure was amazing ... for a change Kimi's engines lived till the end of the race and did not succumb to heart failures as it always does. The competition between Kimi and Massa was superb to say the least. As i write this , I am already dreaming about Silverstone.
Since i have a soft corner for Hamilton .. just hoping he triumphs on home turf.
The whole of this week has been so hectic that I dunno how the 5 days flew. More so because I was almost buried in work.
With the presidential polls looming over India.. I am dreaming of a day when Indian presidents wouldn't need someone to hold their hand in order to even walk ... ( remember Shankardayal Sharma ) .. our present nominee also isnt far behind .

The Sivaji fever has caught up to me tooo .. hope to watch the movie this weekend ...
Singning off the week that was :)

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Somber Saturday

Saturday started out as all normal weekends do .. on a lazy note ..
As my bro had his paper in the afternoon, the first half of the day till 11 had to be spent in forced silence ( he doesnt like any noise in the house when he is studying & for me its kinda difficult).
My cousins came in the evening and Deepak got me the amazing iriver X20 MP4 player from Dubai ... its actually my gift to my bro as he goes off to join his job in August at Schneider Electric.

The latter half of the day was just normal as i caught up on my reading ( reading Fontainhead again... cant seem to get enough of Howard Roark ... I hope God still makes guys with the same mould :D.. but even if he does, where are they? ). Missed the F1 qualifiers coz i read the schedule wrong :(
Saturday however ended on a somber note, there was a phone call at 1:30 on our landline. I dread late night calls, always get bad news. This call was no different, one of our family friends expired suddenly. Just got me thinking on how life changes in matter few minutes. So many times , we take people especially our loved ones for granted. We forget to tell them we care and when we want to.. its too late anyways ..

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Return of the prodigy

Being a huge Ferrari fan, the racing season has been quite a disappointment, but for the rise of Lewis Hamilton. I vouch for the fact that there is no harm in acknowledging genius even if it happens to be your competitor. His colleague, a certain Mr. Alonso though has some difficulty in accepting this fact. His insecurity shows in the form of his silly gaffes ( which I dont mind anyways :) ) . Kimi Riakonnen is blessed with good luck which seems to just increase each season ..and he does make it a point to share with his team too :) .

I miss Schumi but the competition just got tougher for Alonso from the least expected quarters ... just in his backyard.
Guess there is something between me and Spain... Nadal, Alonso and Barcelona to just name a few. Like the popular ad punchline says aptly "And the battle continues....."

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2 Minutes of Fame

At a recent celebrity wedding (read big fat), there was a media circus about a starlet claiming to be the groom's ex-wife. The media went into an overdrive about her suicide attempt and alleged drug addiction and the in-house doctors diagnosing a case of hallucinations.
However the alleged "Victim" got what she was seeking, her 2 minutes of fame (even if it was defaming) and glory. Who else would have given a second glance to Janhavi (see it wasn’t just 2 minutes of fame .. we still remember her name).

The numerous PILs filed these days have made a mockery of the judicial system. In a country where court cases stretch beyond the lives of victims , where a bomb blast trial takes so many years that the country has already witnessed a couple of bomb blasts at the same places , its a surprise our courts have time to even consider PILs on trivial issues.
All the litigants of the PILs are looking for are their 2 minutes of fame. Do they really care what Richard Gere actually does for AIDS patients. In case of the PILs against ART, it is a fact that what I perceive as beauty would be an eye sore for my neighbour, does that mean we file PILs and counter PILs against each other. India was a land which thrived on its differences. However it’s really scary to see the levels of intolerance these days.


Like the spoof on PILs on radio rightly says, does anybody ever think of filing a PIL against the government or politician who fall back on their promises or for people who starve.
I guess then, nobody would hound them for their sound bytes because they aren't filing PILs against someone famous, who would in turn guarantee them their "2 Minutes of Fame".

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Metro... a way of life

Due to my extraordinary( pun intended) past experiences with movies which are a collection of short stories which have some common thread, I had to be dragged to watch the movie, Metro.
However I am glad i was .There are very few movies which actually set you thinking about the rat race called life. Each day begins and ends almost like a reflection of a previous day without much thought given to anything.
In property ads we hear descriptions of the amenities and more amenities.We run to buy a flat with maximum amenities but without giving a thought about the little almost non existent time we have to enjoy them. The little time we have is spent mulling over the EMI rates which seem to be smiling back at us wickedly.
Its a trend to talk about spending "quality" time rather than "quantity" time with our loved ones. If only if it were that easy to define "quality".
We keep running the race and climbing the ladder and when we have decide we have reached the winning post or the top most rung of the ladder, the path which we traversed would have a trail of many things which we would we had waited and enjoyed.
However the pace of life has reached such a frenzy , that despite the thought of slowing down ... the EMIS and all the jazz jsut keep smiling and we just cant stop running.

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