Cash awards for Indian team

I am appalled to hear about the cash awards announced by politicians of
various states to our cricketers. Cricket is a self sustaining sport
with large amount of sponsorship. The players have contracts that
guarantee them big bucks. Where is the need to spend public money on
them?

If the politicians wanted to get their name in the papers and go one-up
on each other, couldn't they just restrict it to a felicitation
ceremony? With people like this ruling, we are condemned to forever be a
second rate nation.

A moment of madness

Misbah-ul-Haq lost the Twenty20 world cup for Pakistan in a single moment of thoughtlessness.

Today, on my way to work, I saw a ghastly accident just outside my office gate. A motorcyclist was lying on the road, dead, his skull smashed. He had skidded and lost control. Unfortunately for him, a truck was coming at that very moment and it ran over him. If only, he reached that place a few seconds later.

Almost everyone in my office saw this on the way to work. The euphoria of the World Cup victory was gone.

All that work...

...and still no real results to show for it. I started keeping tab of my exercise details since Feb 18, 2007 through the website Traineo. Since, then, I've exercised 153 days out of 217 burning a total of 71814 calories!!! Sadly, my weight which was 78-79 kg at the start of the year is still at the same level. I think its time for me to seriously start looking at my diet:-)

An inspiring story

Sometimes, you come across an inspiring story just when you least expect it. I had gone to an engineering college for campus interviews. Given that we are late going to campuses this year and the colleges that we are going are not in the top echelon, I wasn't expecting too much.

Then, I came across a candidate who simply blew me away. It was not because he was brilliant. It was because of his background and what he had achieved. His father was a daily wage worker, who delivers bricks on a bullock cart. He has realized that education is the only way out and borrowed through his nose to get his son through college. We found that this guy was easily the best of the lot and offered him a job.

This reinforced to me the point that India has so much of talent, which goes unnoticed due to a lack of opportunity. Instead of opening up and providing everyone equal access to opportunities to improve the life, our politicians seem intent on shutting them out further.

An Indian win

It did not happen in the Twenty 20 world cup, our overhyped bunch yet again proved unequal to the task. But an Indian won yesterday in the GP2 championship. I was lucky to catch the last part of the race while channel surfing and it felt amazing to hear the Indian national anthem at a major motorsports event. I'm hoping this happens a few more times, with Narain Karthikeyan taking a full place in the A1GP championship.

Apple's new ipod range

Apple has formally launched its ipod range in India. The prices and the corresponding prices in the US

Model	Price in INR	Price in USD	Converted Price in INR	Premium
ipod Nano 4GB	8800	149	6000	2800 (45%)
Nano 8GB	11400	199	800	3400 (42%)
Classic 80GB	14500	249	10000	4500 (45%)
Classic 160GB	20400	349	14000	6400 (45%)
ipod Touch 8GB	17700	299	12000	5700 (47%)
ipod Touch 16GB	23600	399	16000	7600 (47%)

I wonder what the justification is for such a premium on what is already a premium line of products. Where is the incentive for anyone to buy it in India, they will just pick it up on their next trip to the US or Singapore.

T20 world cup

Watching the Twenty-twenty world cup, I can't help but feel that the days of one day cricket are numbered. The same excitement and thrills but in half the time, how can it fail? I'm surprised that it has not taken off in India yet, maybe we have a lot of people without much work to do and need sometime to keep us occupied the entire day:-)

Bangalore drowning

It's been raining heavily for the past two days and Bangalore has descended into chaos. Flooding, traffic jams, the same story repeats itself. There was a silver lining for me this morning. The traffic situation at Jakkasandra and Silk Board was so bad that most of the vehicles coming on to the Ring Road got stuck there. I left for work expecting an hour long commute, but reached office in 12 minutes flat!!!

Here are some shots of the storm water drain at the intersection of HSR 14th main and ring road.

 

 

 

Only wish there was a way to get all that water into Agara kere and fill it up