Sachin Mania …

All I get to hear now is how everyone wants to win the ICC Cricket World Cup for Sachin. Guys, just win it first, ok ? Then dedicate it to your grand-mom, cat, couch , neighbour ……… I don’t care. Just bring the cup home.

My reading is chugging along rather nicely, momentum is everything in reading. So let me keep it going. I decided to get online and check out some new books. Flipkart is a neat little site with a fairly well organized book collection and free shipping.

Now let me see what I want to buy. History , Non fiction, Mystery and thrillers, Sachin Tendulkar, Travel ….

What was that again, Sachin Tendulkar as a book category ????

Surely not !!! He he he , the turbulent week at work is catching up with me. Let me check once more …

No , I was not mistaken. Sachin apparently is a stand alone category of books

Nothing personal against Sachin, top class professional and an absolute legend. But this is taking it a bit too far, don’t you think ?

“Inspirations”

Was randomly browsing through YouTube when I came across this lovely song from Cliff Richard named Theme for a Dream. Now surely I have heard this recently …... Not Pal Pal Har Pal from Lage Raho Munnabhai, is it ??

The original - Theme for a dream

The copy - Pal Pal Har Pal

Sadly so, and it was one of my favourite songs too :-(( You can’t even call it an inspiration, it is a straight lift , with very few changes !!

Here is yet another one of my favs Pehli Nazar Mein from the movie Race, this time hit by a Korean inspiration

The original : Korean song

The copy - Pehli Nazar mein

I also found this website with a large list of songs that were inspired or blatantly copied. Pretty big list, I must say. Conveniently organized under the composer name so that you can find out the more ‘inspired’ ones.

One thing can be said about internet, it certainly does break international barriers , even if it is for copying music !!

SMS flood

Generally I am all for technology, but in some cases people misuse to the point of absurdity. Take SMS for example. I get all sorts of nonsense wishes on my cell phone, here are various samples that I have got over the past few months

1. Happy New Year ( Well this is not too bad, apart form the awful text art some folks seem hell bent on making)
2. Happy Republic day !!? ( really ??? when was the last time you wished somebody in person for this ?)
3. Happy Men’s day ( Please, never ever wish a man on “Men’s” day, if at all there is such a day. I beg of you, please don’t)
4. Happy Bandh !!! ( this was when there was a call for a one day Bandh in Karnataka following the fights between CM and the Governor)
5. Best wishes for “XYZ”-festival ( Might be useful to check at least if this is a festival that I am even aware of, let alone celebrate !!)
6. Motivational messages – (I do read a considerable amount of books, so chances that you will tell me something original is slim. Why not avoid it altogether ? )

I really need to update my phone to something that can bulk-delete. My old-fashioned phone is killing me :-(

Life would be fair if ….

1. Life would have been fair if eating and sleeping made you leaner and exercise made you fat.

I would have been sporting rippling six packs if this were true. But alas, no such luck.

2. Life also would be fair if Engineers made all the money and Managers did all the work !!!!

hmmmm, now that I mentioned it, #1 seems to have a higher likelihood of success than #2 :-((

Omen

Ever woke up one day with an unwavering feeling that something bad was going to happen that day ? Well, I did, happened to me last Thursday. From the moment I got up , I had this extremely tight feeling around my chest. Wifey tried to assure me that ‘All is well’ but the feeling would not go away.

Later in the day, it turned out that the feeling was not entirely misplaced.

I was crossing the outer ring road in my car, cutting perpendicularly across two lanes of traffic at a junction to move to the other side of the divider. I saw a Chevrolet Travera stopped just before the intersection, the driver was asking directions to someone standing by the divider. I took my car forward and just when I was about to pass in front of the Travera, the driver decided that he knew enough about the directions and accelerated forward. And of course he was not looking at the road, he was still making some parting comments to the guy on the divider.

All I could do was brake hard and honk at full blast, almost willing the guy to turn and look at the road. He turned almost in slow motion and thankfully jumped on the brake immediately. His front bumper missed my driver side door by no more than 5 cms. Half a second more, he would have ploughed right into me. Saved by God’s grace, no less !!!

Slept like a baby that night, woke up around 3 a.m to the sound of a female voice calling out my name and knocking on the door. Woke up with a start and listened more carefully. Nothing at all. Maybe it was just a dream, or is it a bad omen again ??

I think I have been reading too many thrillers of late, time to get back into non-fiction !!