Pertinent Observations

Yesterday I was supposed to meet an old friend at 7 pm. She works in one of the larger IT firms and from 7 o clock onwards every 10 minutes she calls saying she’s suddenly stuck up with more work and she’ll be there “in another 10 minutes”. finally turned up at 8:30!

have seen my cousin who is with an even huger s/w company struggle the same way. leaves home at 7 am and returns at 11 pm. the hosur road traffic doesn’t help. and i’m not sure if the compensation package can be called a “compensation package”.

no way i’m marrying a software engineer 😀 . add to that my earlier resolution i won’t marry a BPO chick and that rules out probably a really large portion of the “target whatever” when i decide to hit “the market”!

The other day I saw an ad for Air Deccan which claimed 98.7% on time performance *. Shocking. Of course it doesn’t stay as shocking once you see the little star there. and the foot note says “on time performance = flight taking off within one hour of scheduled departure time”!

so one hour late = on time. air deccan rocks!

Two 190s in two days! This is awesome stuff!

But frankly, Pakistan needs to come up with better wickets for test matches. We already had a joke of an India-Pak series early this year (except for the last test of course), and now again you have teams scoring really heavily. Of course except for Taylor, there isn’t much quality in either bowling attack so that also needs to be taken into consideration.

This reminds me of the India-SL series in 97-98 when the Indian board got afraid of Murali and asked all groundstaff to prepare flatbeds. Three long-drawn and boring test matches resulted!

And why the hell isn’t Panesar playing? With Harmison and Anderson and Mahmood and Plunkett all out of form, the least England can offer in support to Hoggard and Freddie is a decent spinner! And Giles is anything but that – he is no more than a bits and pieces guy! And poor freddie is already carrying too much of a burden in terms of batting and bowling – leading to comical captaincy such as asking Bell and Pietersen to bowl. It will make sense for everyone if Strauss is made captain.

Update
With practically all of India cribbing that England has unfairly left out Monty, I’m wondering if the firang media will latch on to this and kinda accuse us of some kind of racism or something… just an arbit thought…

I remember, in the mid-90’s, if India were chasing, the team’s fortunes would depend on one individual – Sachin Tendulkar. Power companies all over the country seemed to heave a sigh of relief whenever he got out – so many people used to switch off their TVs immediately, saving millions of watt hours.

Fortunately for Indian cricket, and unfortunately for the power sector and the environment, that changed in the early 2000s. The indian middle order started showing some kind of steel (the chase at Lord’s on the day of the FIFA 2002 third place playoff stands out). Yuvraj, Kaif, Pathan and Agarkar started showing some kind of promise. Soon Mahendra Singh Dhoni happened. And India had established itself as one of the best chasers in ODIs.

Something must have gone wrong somewhere. Maybe it was that series loss in the West Indies. Maybe it is because of injuries to key players. Maybe it’s because Kiran More’s term as selection chairman ended. But it’s not the same now.

Once again, Tendulkar’s dismissal seems to be a good sign for the power sector. It has been a while since India has done well without either Tendulkar or Dravid scoring. The “promising youngsters” – Kaif, Raina, Mongia – inspire zilch confidence. Injuries to Yuvraj and Sehwag don’t help either. And too much pressure is being put on Dhoni, leading to consistent failures. Too much has been made of Pathan’s batting, which has resulted in him forgetting how to bowl, and consequently losing his place in the side.

We want Dada back. We want Laxman back. So what if they can’t field? They will make up for the runs they concede on the field with runs off their bats. Yes, Dada can’t play the short ball. Still, his very presence in the lineup (maybe at the top of the order) will lend a “better feel” to the side. Same with Laxman. Much better than any of the young blood.

Bring back these two. Please.

There are two kinds of “funda” posts.

1. I want to put my ideas across on a particular topic. So I write this long essay and the comments will mostly be “CP” (class participation). It’s like a lecture.

2. I want to “introduce” an idea/topic and encourage debate/discussion on it. Here, I expect longer and richer comments, many of which add much more value than the original post. Maybe something like a case discusssion!

Of course given that I like to sermonize, I tend to put more type 1 posts than type 2 posts.

Yesterday I found that there exists a firm called “Global Analytics”. Strong name. Wonder what they do though.

* The number of people who say “common” instead of “come on” or “c’mon” is huge! i won’t surprised if soon the OED decides that “common” could also mean “come on”!

* “Frandship seekers” on orkut aren’t trying to hit on the person whose franship they are seeking. They are merely trying to practice their flirting skills! After all, what do they have to lose? They make sure they pick someone who is sufficiently far removed from them, and minimize chances of common friends. Also, a number of these franship seekers don’t have too many friends who have too much of an online presence, so they won’t be “caught out” also!

* A number of people have told me that a lot of people initially started to join orkut in order to improve their group discussion skills! ROTFL! Go to any community that offers a remote chance of a debate (for example, Hindutva) and you’ll see people arguing away without knowing what they are saying. Apparently a number of them are CAT hopefuls. God bless them.

* The “common friends” (yeah that’s common friends, not “come on friends”) thing in orkut is really useful. Especially if the other person hasn’t joined the appropriate affiliation groups in order to spell out his/her resume!

* Baal and I want to conduct some orkut-related experiment for which we’ll need you people’s inputs. I’ll let you know shortly what exactly i want. Just wanted to keep you warned that I’ll be seeking your help soon.

* Yesterday introduced me to Pandora. Strong concept and implementation. Couldn’t believe that such a thing is actually legal. , you were trying something similar for Indian classical music right?

* and I thought about a “wiki version” of Pandora where users “classify” the songs and attach attributes to the songs. However, we think due to the amount of subjectivity involved, it’s better a small group of people does this categorization. Your thoughts on this are welcome.

I’m so glad i wrote CAT when I did. No way in hell I would’ve been able to clear it this year. Too few questions. Too much time. Too much negative for wrong answers 😀

Add two extra spoons of sugar to your cappuccino but don’t stir. Drink the cappuccino – down to the last drop (a stirrer which can double up as a straw helps). The “residual” caffeineated sugar tastes too awesome. And is at times capable of giving you a maajor high (don’t know whether there is actually some chemical reaction which produces some “substance” or if it’s just all in the mind). The stronger the coffee the better.

I woke up this morning humming this arbit song from “A saucerful of secrets”. Really funny, given that I don’t listen to this album too much and the last time i listened to it was about a week ago. And half an hour after I woke up, I was humming “It would be so nice” from “Piper at the gates of dawn” – another Floyd album i seldom listen to.

Among other things, I had a wonderful dream this morning and woke up really happy. However, I’m just not able to recollect what the dream was about. Hellllppppp!!