The Worst cup

Is this the Cricket World Cup or is this a competition to showcase incompetence ?

I thought India and England put in strong claims for the most incompetent performance of the tournament during their match-up. India for miserably failing for most parts to contain England in-spite of scoring 330 odd runs, and England for their classic muck up in going from needing to score just about a run a ball with a ton of wickets in hand, to somehow scrambling to a last ball tie ! Now that would a tough one to better, wouldn't it ?

Hah !! Said Graeme Smith and South Africa . The dreaded "C" word applied yet again. How they managed to lose after destroying England for 170 odd runs, only God knows.

They say that South African team does not like solid food. Why ? Because they are scared of choking on it :-)

England entered again with quite a creditable claim to the King of Incompetent Teams (KIT, I like that !!) with a stunning display of standing-with-your-thumbs-up-the-backside approach when the unknown Kevin Obrien carted them all parts of Bengaluru.

India staked their strong claim for the KIT trophy by thoroughly un-inspiring performances against Ireland and Holland. But the performance that might have sealed the trophy for Dhoni and his team was when they lost close to 9 wickets for 30 odd runs while batting. South Africa did make a valiant effort to snatch the coveted KIT title by tying themselves up in knots during the chase and somehow ending up requiring 14 runs of the last over. But India was too strong, there was just no match for Ashish Nehra that day

Just when Dhoni must have putting his feet up thinking that the KIT is in safe hands, on comes Darren Sammy and the West Indian team. To go from 222/6, needing just 22 runs to win in 7+ overs, they Calypso Kings collapsed to 225 all out. That is right, 4 wickets for 3 runs. Now that is really tough to beat

So the competition is really between West Indies and India now. And they play each other next. Brace yourselves folks, this is the real one. The KIT final !!

Whose name will be plastered on the ICC Wall of Shame ? Let us wait and find out

Umbrella : The poem

I came home from work yesterday, pretty exhausted. My little one ran up to me with her rough note. In that was scribbled a small poem, on an Umbrella, for which her teacher has given her a very very good rating. Apparently her teacher told her that it should be published in a news-paper. Well, I don't own a newspaper, but I certainly own this blog. So here it goes, reproduced in full :-)

It is cold, It is cold

I want your umbrella to hold

To hold and sing and laugh

To play and Jump.

BTW those exactly define her activities at home too. Sing, Laugh, Play, Jump. Maybe I should add dance too . Life is great when you are six !!

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 !!

Bring on IPL, forget the world cup

Let us just forget about the world cup and cut directly to IPL, shall we ? I mean, I no longer have the patience to watch one full day of cricket.

IPL is a different matter altogether. See the brainless auction / salary system that has been devised. A high quality player like Manish Pandey who has not played for India can only earn a max of Rs.30 lakh , where as someone like Saurabh Tiwary , who has played for India for just 3 ODIs suddenly gets Rs.7.2crores ( USD $1.6 million). I cannot understand why everyone was not put under the auction.

Having said this, the auction was perhaps one of the most entertaining ones that I have witnessed, I hope the IPL itself can surpass that.

Well, at least I hope I can see more innovative ads like this one by Virgin Mobile from last year. Sad that this was never telecast. What has happened to our sense of humor ?

Back …..

Well, it has been a while. Just noting here that I should be back soon with more regular updates.

Teaching and parenting

What would I be doing 10 years from now ? Tough to say, but I think I would like to do some element of teaching. Could be to my daughter, for all you know :-)

Trying to teach or explain something to a 6 year old can be a lot tougher than you think. Often I find myself losing patience with my little one. I hope I can remember these wonderful lines by Yeats, immortalized by Sir Ken Robinson’s closing comments in his second lecture on TED.com ( see the video below)

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

I hope I can remember this every time, I should do alright then ….

The festival of lights

Diwali, Deepavali, Devali .. whatever you want to call it. Festival of lights, that is what I am talking about.

The whole country is taken over by decorative lights, crackers, fireworks, festivities, sweets ……….. Except the state of Kerala, that is. Well, there is a token celebration, but none of the color or excitement that you would see anywhere else.

I wonder why is that ??

I saw some theories floating around on the net. One of them being that Onam and Deepavali are celebrated almost along similar lines and since Onam has more regional roots, it has prevailed. Maybe that is true. Onam does have its own charm, but ever since I have been in Bangalore, I have begun to love the colors and life of Diwali.

It just seems to be a happy and bright festival, nothing much can be wrong with that !!

The Confession

The latest in the series of books from John Grisham, one in which he goes back to what he does best : Create scenarios based on the US justice system that gets you wondering “Just hold on a sec, is that really possible ? What if it really happens like this ? “

The theme of the book is around an innocent man who is executed by the state of Texas, and the mayhem that breaks loose once the real killer admits his crime. It triggered a lot of thoughts about the death penalty, which sadly is also a practice allowed by the Indian judicial system and laws.

I thought a bit about the rights and wrongs of the death penalty, here are some of my thoughts

I do not believe we can pass a judgement on whether a fellow human being should live or die. Nor do I believe that any civilized form of governments should have the blood of its own citizens on its hands.

I am aware that once a person breaks the laws established by society, he has to pay the price for that. The price however cannot be his life. Keep him in prison for his entire life if you want, but let us not pass a judgement to kill.

And surely the issue of sustaining the cost of the prisoner for his life should not be too much. After all, at least in India, the death penalty is supposedly reserved for the rarest of the rare cases. I saw that currently we have around 300 prisoners on death row. We are a country of over a billion, we should be able to take care of 300 more without breaking our budgets too much.

Nursery Rhymes

Lot of miles , they say , has flown past by my car’s wheels. What used to be an immensely enjoyable drive to Calicut has been reduced to a slightly bitter experience due to the condition of roads in Kerala.

But that is not the point I am trying to make. I was listening to my wife sing some nursery rhymes with my daughter and I am startled how violent some of these are !!

Take Goosey Goosey Gander

Goosey goosey gander,
Whither shall I wander?
Upstairs and downstairs
And in my lady's chamber.
There I met an old man
Who wouldn't say his prayers,
So I took him by his left leg
And threw him down the stairs

And of course there is poor old Humpty Dumpty who seems to have met a rather violent end

Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king's horses and all the king's men
Couldn't put Humpty together again

Now there can’t be a problem with Jack and Jill, can there ? Multiple fractures at the bare minimum, the following lines would suggest ..

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To fetch a pail of water.
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.

What about the three little blind mice ? Listen to this ghastly tail chopping tale ….

Three blind mice. Three blind mice.
See how they run. See how they run.
They all ran after the farmer's wife,
Who cut off their tails with a carving knife,
Did you ever see such a sight in your life,
As three blind mice

Hmmmmm, looks like we should be more worried about the nursery rhymes than about violence on TV :-)) Now I know why I always had a soft spot for Twinkle Twinkle little star :-)

The robot

Finally watched my first ever Rajni movie, Endhiran . I sort of liked it !! :-) The first half is very watchable, the second half becomes a bit too much of special effects and action.

What else , apart from that ?

Well, we recently celebrated our little one’s 6th birthday back home in Calicut. Her school has closed for Puja holidays here , so she is back home with my parents now. She was overjoyed to be back in the surroundings in which she grew up for the past 4 years.

I guess one of the good things about the 4 years I spent separated from my family is that my daughter has formed very close bonds with both sets of grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles. That can only be good.

6 years, time does fly !!

It simply does not add up

Incident-1: One of the all under one roof home furnishing stores.

The conversation goes something like this

I like this chair, I will take it , how much is it ?
940 sir
Here you are, I have a Rs.1000 note
Sir can you pay me 60 more ? I can then return 100 to you 
Errr …. Why do you say you want 60 ? Are you planning to pay me back 120 ?
No, sir I will give you back 100. See the chair is 940, you paid me 1000, so if you give me 60 more, i can give you 100
If I give you 40, you need to pay me back 100. If I give you 60, you need to give me back 120 !!

Total confusion, 2-3 minutes of patient explaining on how addition works, finally she gets my point. Well it is late in the evening and she must be getting tired, I think

Incident-2: A famous retail store

How much is the total bill ?
309 Sir
Here is 1000
Do you have 9 Rs change ?
Nope, but here is a 10
Here is your balance, 601
601 ??? Haven’t you missed a hundred ????
No sir it is correct. The bill is for 309, I gave you 601
And if you add the two what will you get ?

System crash. Cashier just froze. She calls her manager to figure out this tough math problem. Manager thankfully is an older guy who can still add 2 numbers in his head, so I get my 100 without too much hassle.
Surely this must be a coincidence, I think. Our math skills have not gone so bad, have they ?

 Incident-3: Yet another famous retail store

Your bill is 240 sir
Ok cool, take this 500 note
Your change sir, 160
What the …., aren’t you making a mistake, I should get back 260 !!

Again 2 minutes of confusion, but finally I get my additional 100. Man , surely something is stinking, and this time it has got nothing to do with the food in my refrigerator !!
------------------------------------------------------------------Common trend between all three stores
(a) The cashiers did not enter the amount I paid to their billing machine and did the math on their own.
(b) All cashiers are kids in the 18-21 age group

Question I have is this. Has the proliferation of Cell-phone calculators and computers affected our basic math skills so much ??? 

One thing is for sure, gone are days when I used to take my change and blindly shove into the purse without counting !! I am counting every note from now on !!