Changing face of Indian Cricket.....

I would be honest here - I am not as crazy about cricket as some of my other friends who would give away anything just to watch a match. blame it on the last few years. Once upon a time I used to play this game every single day but during college and beyond it all just became distant....

Off lately we had seen a lot of change in the Indian Cricket team and many of the original stalwarts have gone making room for a new generation of cricketers... nothing wrong with that.. but for people who used to identify Indian cricket with these stars its a shift which would take time to adjust to.

Without writing any further on this, I would direct you to an amazing article on this in CricInfo.... The author writes beautifully and echoes sentiments of a lot of Indian people for whom Cricket is synonymous to nothing short of a religion....
http://content-uk.cricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/376791.html

Love and Hate

While surfing at the local library, I accidentally pounced upon this post Love and Hate on one of the top economic blogs - Marginal Revolution (#2 in fact based on Technorati rankings). Please don't ask me what was it doing in a blog dedicated to economics!!

For lazy bones who don't want to take pains of linking to another site this is what it says -
According to some recent scientific study, there is a thin line between LOVE and HATE. The same brain circuitry is involved in both extreme emotions - but hate retains a semblance of rationality.

Dunno how authentic was the study and the parameters considered but it is an interesting observation. We seldom know/understand why we love someone but generally are sure of what we hate in a particular person/thing!

Just my 2 cents...............

Ooops! I did IT again!

This is Part-2 of my previous post "AND I finally did IT" Not long ago I was narrating the heroic attempts to cross 100mph on US roads...I was pretty proud of the fact that I escaped all those watchful (cops') eyes and drove at such high speeds. I had realised towards the end I was getting more and more arrogant about the same.. had been driving quite fast on all roads...I am not a rash driver and even my worst critics have praised my driving but As they say.. someone up there was watching....

I went on a trip to Washington DC recently... had gone to Connecticut to a friend's house and drove to DC from there... it was a short but nice 3 day long trip where we made halts @ Univ of Maryland and Baltimore. The "IT" above happened while we were driving back from DC to Stamford, CT on the last day of our trip. I had a flight back to Chicago the next day morning.

We rented a mini-SUV Pontiac Vibe.. Initially I was very excited to hear the name SUV (it has been a dream of mine to drive one) but when I sat in it... I felt more like driving a Maruti 800 or a small car in India... Average pickup and below average traction control.. the whole car was shaking at around 85 mph.... Anyways it was during one of this attempt of mine to test the vehicle's performance (read max speed) that the "Oooops" happened!!!!!

For people scratching their heads - I got a speeding ticket of (a freaking) 290 US Dollars (thats around 15000 INR).... in Maryland... The cop who caught me said I was at 87 mph (Speed Limit - 65 mph) and the first question he asked after pulling me over -" Why are you going so faaaast?" I didnt know what to say.. I am definite I was between 75-80 @ the instant he saw me but arguing doesnt help in these cases...

I am yet to pay my fine.. maybe will do so in a day or two.. am so so so inclined to contest this in a court but have to go to Maryland for that...which is impractical... people say that cops esp fine higher amounts to out-of-state people as they know they will not bother travelling to the state just to contest a speeding ticket...

What you see above is the "sadu" car (err.. mini SUV) and next to it is the "famed" Oooops (speeding ticket)... must say I have started driving within limits now... only yesterday I saw a cop (full camouflaged) with his radar gun waiting for few more preys.....

Life's changing colours

I am writing this post with absolutely nothing in mind or should I say nothing "specific". Maybe that is the reason I think I should write about something which had hovered in front of my eyes like the rain clouds. These clouds becomes a part of everything you do (during the rainy season).. you dont really give its existence a seperate thought but every now and then you cant help but acknowledge them...Its been a little more than 9 months that I have been in US on an onsite engagement. I had experienced a variety of things during this time, travelled to umpteen no. of places.. did things which would have seemed impossible a couple of months back but in the midst of all this there had been something which had kept disturbing me...There had been no sign of any relief as far as I could see. All my attempts of bringing it back on track had seemed futile or even counter-productive in some cases. Thinking about it had led to a state of disbelief, surprise, anger, fear, helplessness, misery, injustice, .. ( I am seriously running short of words here....)

Around 7 months back I lost something very important. By now you would have understood that the sense of loss had been unbearable. Its not that I am weak and this had been the first time I had been through a crunch situation but this had been different. It had ached in places which I never knew existed. Long before I had read a book "The Alchemist" which had talked about following the signs, that the whole world conspiring in favor of you when you really want something in life. Well I had never wanted something more........but I always felt that in this particular case the whole world had conspired against it!!

People talk about "Destiny being decided!" I couldnt agree more.. there are certain things in life which are just destined to happen.. no matter how hard you try, how much you cry it is not gonna change. I do believe in 'Karma' in doing what you are supposed to do to the best of your abilities but maybe that too is not enough. So should you stop trying - well absolutely NOT! Never give up on your dreams as nothing is left without them... there is no difference between you and a dead person. But the trick is to stop at some point of time.. to let go of things which you somehow cannot control. That brings about a question - what can you actually control? Frankly I dont know the answer and the one I know is too cliched... but thats what it is.. sometimes I feel the Bhagwad Gita is one of the most practical book of all times.. even if you leave out the mythological part (and the GODly stuff for people who are atheists) there are lessons to learn from it. You are only as good as your actions.. thats the only thing which is in your hand.. which you can "control".. something which we know as "Karma" [A word gaining prominence as I type all over the world] Do your job.. and just leave the rest! More often than not you would see the pieces falling into place... all the fuzzy stuff (the ones which are not "meant to be") fading away.. being replaced by the important ones.. and life moving on.... There will be this occasional pain.. the sense of loss.. the void which might always remain or maybe pave way for something far more meaningful.. but still life would be progressive.. you would move in the right direction - something you should have done long ago but maybe didnt/couldnt or wouldnt!!!! Nothing is more worthless than chasing an irrelevant dream.... but we all do these.. thats what make life's experiences and maybe not everyone is so fortunate to have them. These events add the so-important spice in your life.. make you jump out of the page.......

I guess people who know me well have surely understood what had I been writing about... many of them would have also frowned.. some would have laughed, some sympathized, some would be thinking "I always knew this is gonna happen" and some would have just not cared.... none of which mind you, takes away anything from the situation I am in nor does it reduces the grevity of the matter. The fact remains and so does my resolution to leave back the "fuzzy" stuff and march ahead!!!!

P.S. I am sorry if the tone of my post seems pessimistic and sad.. Despite what someone would feel after reading the above I am at heart a true optimist!!! Hopefully as the topic of the post suggests - the colours would change soon!!!!!!

AND finally I DID it!!!

Well people! before you start imagining the "it" lemme warn you its not something which most of you would have in your mind ;)... well during the Memorial Day weekend I happened to go out on a bigg road trip.. covering around 2400 miles (approx. 4000 kms) in 4 days.. and IT was not like we were driving all the time.. we had enough time to visit places... so it was a trip to NYC, Boston and New Jersey... Awesome trip but will not get into the details of it (as that's not the "it" I am talking about here :)- )

Okay enough of beating around the bush.. While driving back home (to Chicago) from NYC.. we were fighting against time and I had the most crucial strech to drive.. and it was then that while driving in Pennsylvania, I CROSSED 100 mph (I touched around 105 mph (170 kmph)) and cruised at that speed for almost 10 mins.... From the time I have learnt driving, my only dream had to see the speedometer going past 100... A couple of months back I would have been happy if it would have been just 100 kmph but HERE I went way beyond... Speedometers in US are in miles per hour and when the pointer crossed 100 in it, I was at 170 kmph (way beyond my earlier dream of crossing 100 kmph)... and what you see above was the MEAN machine which helped me reach it - A Chevy Impala!!!!

Off to the land of opportunities.....

Around a month back I landed in the so-called 'Land of Opportunities' on December 23rd, '07 at ORD, Chicago. Well in the current scenario India is as good a land of opportunities (maybe better than US in many ways) but thats completely a different debate all-together. Ya so where were we.... actually I guess its a good idea for me to give a brief of events which happened earlier in the day so that you do get to appreciate this post.

This was my first onsite trip... finally after roughly 2 years of working my a** off in the IT industry my superiors decided that the time had come to send yours truly on a 'phoren' trip... maybe partly out of fear that if they dont I would quit and partly bcoz in all companies now-a-days we are part of a pipeline.... the beginning of which starts with some training, then project, then onsite, then project lead, n it goes on and on with a lit' difference here and there... and mind you the story is no diff in the so called "dream" companies.... so there I was all set to fly to US on a long-term assignment. Normally under such circumstances people are overjoyed but I had a mixed reaction...bcoz I had an amazing group of friends back in Blore n the thought of leaving them n the good times we spent behind was kind of overwhelming... but since this was the most logical thing to do I packed up my bags (temporarily) from blore and embarked on a journey to the 'phoren' land.

I have a habit of getting too excited at times and the same was the case with my first intercontinental flight... where regular fliers dont even bother checking the time of the flight more than a day in advance... I had done everything under the sun... be it filling up the information sheet online (this is generally done at the airport).. choosing my seats... checking the menu... and even the movies on the in-flight entertainment for both the routes (not that it helped in any way.. in my BLR- london (LHR) sector there was some problem with the screen and it kept shutting down in between movies much to my annoyance and in the LHR-ORD sector it was a pre-programmed one so I had no control other than just switching channels).. anyways as you would see later that would turn out to be the least of my worries....

Okay back to the day of my departure from Blore... I was flying British Airways via london and the flight was at 7 in the morning (much to my relief I was saved the pain of boarding a flight at 2:30 AM in the night in a semi-conscious state). I had asked my parents to come down to Blore to help me with my packing and man wasnt it the right decision. Thank GOD for them I did manage to clean up all my mess and pack everything within 3 days, a no mean achievement considering the amount of work I had left pending :)- One thing I like about my parents is that they are least nagging... my mom is really strong and she understands how this world works n my dad is ever-supportive (touchwood!).... so no tears were shed at the airport... they were more than happy to see me go out of the country FINALLY!!!! So after clearing the tons of formalities I sat there waiting for my flight to leave... it was delayed by half an hour.... I had a heavy heart (personal reasons) but at the same time was quite excited to leave... eventually the moment came and I entered the flight... well wasnt I shocked.... me being used to seeing Jet Airways n Indian Airlines was quite stunned with the huge aircraft which was waiting at the tarmac... but to be honest the economy class was equally cramped in this case maybe a tad better but nothing extraordinary....

Finally I settled down in my seat...well to tell u frankly it did feel a bit alien... I am used to seeing mostly indian faces on a flight with (more importantly) an indian crew at the helm... but here it was diff, there were more phirangs than indians and the crew had a weird accent. I dunno if you wud aggree with me but I am more comfortable with an American accent than a British one... I am not really going into the debate of british english being superior than american english but blame it on the pseudo-american living in Blore/India, american accent is easier to understand.... so there I was in the middle of an alien population with people speaking a known language in an alien tone and I was already feeling homesick (rather Bloresick).. anyways my flight was pretty ordinary... I had ordered an asian veg meal which was okay.. in-flight entertainment had options but I had an annoying screen n headphones which spoilt it... I slept intermittently in the 11 hour long flight which finally gave me a headache. One thing which I liked was the view below... I could see these amazing snow covered mountains n towards the end I did get a glimpse of the Big Ben and the Giant London Wheel before it went all foggy... I always wanted to see Heathrow from air but sadly the weather was really bad with visibility under 2 mtrs....

Finally I landed at Heathrow and after an irritating round of security checks (where they rip you off everything other than just a top n a bottom) I went into the lounge... I found LHR beautiful to say the least... it was huge and had a grrrrrrreat varietly of shops n lounges... but you do get bored of all that after a while... thanks to the horrible weather my connecting flight to Chicago was around 3 hrs late so my total transit time was close to a horrifying 7-8 hrs... After what seemed to be an eternity I boarded the flight and after another eternity the flight finally left... I was dead tired by then... I was up since 3 AM (IST) on sunday and my flight to chicago left at approximately 1 AM (IST) the next day 22 hrs without sleep.... and more was yet to come.

My second leg of the journey was on a smaller aircraft, with crappier food n in-flight entertainment BUT better seats n to an extent crew n fellow passengers. Anyways I was too glad to leave London that I would not have mind anything at that moment. I slept most of the flight and woke up an hour before we were supposed to land at Chicago. We finally landed around 10 PM CST (9:30 AM IST).... AND just before disembarking my worst fear came true... I was dreading all along the sub-zero absolutely crazy weather of Chicago and to my dismay the weather had been particularly bad that night.. with snowstorms n a severe weather warning doing rounds.... all this sent a chill up my spine... just a day before I was a part of the beautiful maritime weather of Blore and now the Captain's voice announcing "Welcome to Chicago! blah blah blah the weather outside is -15 deg Celsius .......... " was enough to drive me crazy....

I got down from the flight after wearing every piece of warm clothing I had (panicky!!!) I went on to clear the immigration. I was greeted by a huuuuge queue which eventually took me around 2 hrs to reach baggage clearance... this was the best part - after waiting for a freaking 1 hr I got to know that both my luggages have gone missing... these BA dumbo's have left them in London itself... this was it... I had gone nuts first of all nothing was going right that day and on top of that I am in an alien land with no luggage other than a check-in bag. Anyways after a 2.5 hr long wait I finally got my luggage (they had sent a lot in a diff flight)... it was already 1:30 AM CST (1 PM IST) and I could barely stand on my legs... now the part was how to reach my senior's house with whom I had planned to stay the initial few days. No one came to pick me up (cant blame them as the weather outside was scary) and I could not find/book any taxi after repeated tries. There is something funny in the US - all public booths work only with quarters and TRUST ME they are the most difficult to find in US. Obviously I had no quarters with me and to manage one (for calling) I dont remember how many times I had to buy a coffee (to get the change). Eventually I did manage a taxi - a guy of pakistani origin who had been in US for 18 years now. He was nice and sweet and we struck a conversation. It was during the course of discussion that he managed to ask me about my monthly income and guess what was his reply, and I quote " well you see we make something similar driving a taxi" TRUST ME I dont care how truthful his statement was (in all probability it wasnt) but at that point of time after such an ordeal that was the last thing I wanted to hear!!!!!!! Finally I reached home after a 38 hr long ordeal.....

Well to everyone who did read so far :)- let me tell you that I have plans of writing the sequels to this post but they would paint a better picture. Actually nothing can beat my first intercontinental experience.... it was unique in more ways than one!!!!!