The number one

After the farcical F1 race last weekend at Hockenheimring and a brutal press conference later ( see especially the section saying Questions from floor in this link), Felipe Massa has now come out and said he is not the number two driver in Ferrari.

Barring Massa, I am not sure how many other people in the world would share that belief. But I agree completely with the temperamental Brazilian. Sure he is not number two, Fernando Alonso is number 1 and 2 in Ferrari !!

Hope someone gives poor old Felipe a hard slap so that he wakes from his state of denial :-(

Tour de France

What better to fill the void left behind by the World cup football, Paul the Octopus , Jabulani et.al than Tour de France ??

Surely one of the purest forms of human suffering that you can witness in sports. 3 weeks of sprints, crashes, lung bursting mountain stages and exhilarating descents. I have been a follower ever since I read Lance Armstrong’s books.

Armstrong, sadly had a disastrous tour this year. But the battle between Andy Shleck and Alberto Contador has been enthralling  so far. I just witnessed a brutal attack by Shleck up the Col du Troumalet that tore up every other cyclist except Contador. After nearly 3 weeks just 8 seconds seperate them. The time trial on Saturday will be interesting. Contador is the favorite on the time trial, but this has been a tour full of surprises.

One of the things that I find very different about cycling is this concept of fairness. If the leader of a race crashes, the rest of the pack would wait for him to catch up. The concept being that Le Tour should be won by the strongest rider, not the luckiest.

The other is the total commitment of the team towards their leader. I saw Shleck’s team mates sacrificing themselves one after the other to set up a brutal pace to propel their man to the front

Both these are quite unlike any other sport that I have known.

Makes for fascinating viewing all the same ….

Life is like that

Flashback to some Friday around 6 months back. I am tossing an turning in my bed, it is 11.30 in the night. Sleep is distant. I feel restless and tense. I try to read but I cannot focus. What is happening , I wonder ?

Now back to the present. Friday evening around 9.30 pm. I am settling down in by bed. My daughter is snuggling close to me, her head on my shoulder, arm clasped across me. I look down at her and see two expectant eyes staring back at me.

“Story”, she demands.

I start off with some impromptu story, my daughter keeps giggling. I keep asking her questions during the story and she keeps responding. Suddenly there is no response to a question, I look down and see that she has fallen asleep.

I have probably mentioned this before, but the feeling of having a little one snuggle up and go to sleep in your arms is the most relaxing feeling ever !!

My bed-time story time is over, the story of my life continues. Only things seems suddenly so different from 6 months back. I cannot find a single word to describe the difference. It’s as if everything that I wished for came true … Complete, maybe that is the word, I feel complete again.

World Cup

World cup football and my daughter – 2 strong reasons that have kept me off the blogosphere.

World cup has been a pleasant surprise, I was not too sad to see Brazil and Argentina go early. I don’t like their attitude, always whining to the referee, overacting when fouled, they act more like a bunch of kindergarten students than professional football players.

So finally it is Oranje vs La Furia Roja. My prediction is for Netherlands to nick it. I like watching Spain play, but they are one dimensional. They could be choked by the Netherlands midfield. van Bommel and de Jong have been the best defensive midfielders on display this world cup.

Just a couple more hours and we will know the winner !!

Also busy with my little one. I am in charge of sending her off to school and receiving her once she comes back. A few minutes with her is the best stress reliever  ever !!

Wonderful Wuhan

June 22nd, 2010 : Wuhan, China
If Beijing revived my deeply hidden fear of skyscrapers, Wuhan bumped it up a couple of notches. The city looked every bit as big as Beijing, with insanely tall skyscrapers everywhere.

Courtesy of the late flight from Beijing, we reached there pretty late. Checked into Ramada , they upgraded me to a suite room. Very luxurious. But alas, they had to do this when my time spent in the  hotel was going to < 10 hours :-((

In the morning we ran into couple of Delhi-ites in the hotel lobby. They were from an Indian firm supplying plastic fuel tanks to variety of car manufacturers. They do manufacturing in China. Indian company, manufacturing in China, supplying parts to German and US companies. World is so small …….

The place was called optics valley, I am told that there are like zillions for optics and laser manufacturers in that area.  The “optics valley” comes from Wuhan National Lab for optoelectronics, one of the five national laboratories in China. The Laboratory is managed by Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), which has about 50,000 students !! A more comprehensive look at this impressive university is found on the following Wikipedia article. Among others, it also house the National Center for High Magnetic fields, another impressive feat of planning and Engineering. When fully commissioned, it can do pulsed fields of up to 80 Tesla, possibly the largest capability in the world

This is another thing that I notice about China, there is no chest thumping or boasting. People are quietly building up world class research, science and engineering facilities. Very focused vision, with loads of government support. There are surely lessons to be learnt from them.

To crisply summarize Wuhan – World class !!

The only downside being the Smog that hangs over the city at all times. You get an acidic sort of smell in your nose all the time too :( Massive urbanization does have its de-merits in terms of air quality.

Left in the evening from Wuhan to Nanjing, my mental image of China as a low cost manufacturing hub has rapidly altered in the past couple of days.

Let us see what Nanjing has in store