Benfica once again!!

Well once again Manutd's entry into CL k.o stage is all based on the result of MU vs Benfica..Hope this time MUtd rips apart those portugese eagles!!

Red Devils - revenge - Portugese Eagles !!

Well dont ya knw wat am talkin abt!! yes Manu vs Benfica Match, CL 2006 group Stage game in Lisbon!!

Red devils took their revenge on last years early group stage exit!! The tactics of the team were just too good!! Without giggs, winning 1-0 in lisbon is not an easy task..But then SAF proved wat he is!! Nd Saha is growing as a very matured striker..nd Rooney..def. not a leftback :p

In Lisbon, before start of any game, an eagle is allowed to fly from one side of the stadium to the podium on the other side.. Its a tradition.. nd Ben fi ca 's emblem happens to have eagle..quite obvious...But then Red devils were just too good nd the eagles cud do nothing but boo at the charisma of manu players.. So top of the group with max. points!! nd am happy :)

Trip to chennai :-)

Well I went to chennai last weekend and had a very good time :) Well I always had nostalgic feelings of this place where I spent my crucial 4 years of life!! Some of the things I thoroughly enjoyed during my stay are:

1. The chocolate ice cream that I had near the beach :)
2. The ride on ECR road
3. Beasant nagar beach
4. The kind of reception that I got from most of my juniors
5. The heat in chennai
6. The monkeys in our campus
7. The insti lan
8. The calmness of insti
9. The farewell that I got

The first of the many surprises is out!!

Well this year IIMB has taken the baton to conduct CAT'06 on Nov 19th 2006. The first of the few surprises is already out!!

Its a 150 minute exam unlike normal 120 minute exam as it was until last year. Hmm now thats a big jolt to most of the aspirants.

But then it would not bother me much, as I have decided to start my preparation only today! ;) What is more interesting now is the way in which various institutes go about speculating the pattern of questions, marking, sections etc.. Wish me luck again pls! :-)

Technology in Sports

I was reading ET today and found one article about technology in sports. It was a good article but then I thought the following few lines might be of some interest to some of us...

"In the QF game of Arg vs Ger, Lehman(German GK) was handed a chit by a team official just before the shootout started. The chit contained the names of the five Argentinian players, who will take the kicks and also in which direction they are expected to shoot. "

I somehow remember... Lehman was diving in the right direction for all the 5 kicks in tht shootout.. Now hows that possible?? Its upto you and me to think and ponder over it..

The ponytail miracle :-)

I always have this extra affinity to people who have a cute ponytail ;)... I cant actually describe whats the difference between a cute ponytail and a normal one :P

I have noticed that the success of following football players' is mostly because of their ponytails :)

1. Ronaldinho Gaucho- World Footballer of the Year. He is so good when it comes to a dead ball situation because of his ponytail. Basically, the aerodynamic force that the sway of his ponytail during a dead ball situation creates is just more than the threshold required to make the defender tumble or lose his balance.

Point to be noted here : When he was not having a ponytail, he was never that good at dead ball situations.

The failure of this guy in WC 2006 can be explained as follows: His ponytail's effect was being nullified by the head band he used for some of the initial matches. Even though, he played the entire QF match against France without the headband, the forces were still active and Carlos must have needed that very badly to keep his head in tact.

Finally, Barcelona have threatened Gaucho by saying that, no more head bands can be used by him or he will be sent on a free transfer to a rock band named 'HEAD BANG with HEAD BAND'.

2. Camoranesi : The Italian right winger. This guy from Juventus doesnt really look like a guy to me atelast. If there were a 'Golden ponytail' award in WC, it would have been awarded to this guy right in the opening cermony itself. This guy is intelligent enough to understand the funda of head band and thereby never used it during any of the WC matches. He instead wore one during the victory ceremony on an open top bus in Italian streets as the tall Italian defender, Matterazzi thought he(Camoranesi) was indeed Zizu's sister ;)

3. David Beckham : Bend-it-like-Him baby ;)! Well England's sad performance in this WC could be attributed to him not having enough hair so that he could have the miracle ponytail on this back! Some of the sources in Spain have revealed that, he has given away some of his hair to Zizu and other Real Madrid players so that the team can win some of the trophies. Real always believes in having equally miraculous players.

If Maniche, Crespo, Drogba and others who had enough hair to tie the hair into a ponytail, had indeed played the matches with theit ponys on, we could have easily seen a Arg vs Por/Civ finals on July 9th. Hope their coaches can notice this before the start of Euro 2008.

I am off now... Hope the miracle continues and we can see whole of the 32 countries that take part in SA 2010 WC with enough ponytails around at the back of their players' heads :)

Nostradamus vs Indian Nostradamus

Well being a major football fan, follwoing were some of my favourite teams at diff. stages of the WC 2006. Firstly, I never thought Italy and France would get through to k.o stage itself.

I thought I could be Indian Nostradamus...hehe..

My favourites before the group stage started was Team in Oranje ;)... Holland....Out in K.O stages
Fine what about Czechs?? Haha...Not even through the groupstage :(
My next favourites were Argentina....Out in QFs
I though Spain would do it finally........Out in QFs again
For someone reason I thought..Ghana might make it to Finals.. :( Brazil is lucky enough..
So 5 predictions and curtains down before QFs itself..

So do I qualify to be called as the Indian Nostradamus?? Hehe...

Would you like to Bell the CAT?

Who doesn't want to Bell the CAT ??!!

As the CAT notification is going to be out this by this weekend, I thought I would motivate myself through posting my journey out here.

This year around 2 lac people are estimated to give the Common Admission Test. Out of this one can say, most of the junta give it just for the sake of spending their weekends in a TIME/CL/IMS classroom or proving a point to his(or her) GF(or BF) or family. I have heard from lot of previous CAT toppers that, CAT is one entrance exam which can't be cracked just because of the above said reasons. One needs to have a true dream for which one needs to put in enough hardwork for a good period of time continuously. Infact, I have some of my friends who say that they are giving CAT because his/her parents or loved one wants him/her to get into IIMs or one of the top-10 b-schools.. What the ????

I somehow feel, the previous post of mine and this one has a very good logical connection. The connection being, the role(no role basically) that parents play when it comes to chosing a b-school. The point to be noted here is that one automatically becomes qualified enough to chose what he wants when it comes to MBA. This makes it much more interesting and demanding to crack CAT and enter one of the top b-schools.

Ok! Why do I want to crack CAT and enter one of the IIMs??

1. The first sentence of the previous post is one very good reason.
2. It gives you more options. As in, you can chose what you want than wanting what you do.
3. It makes you a complete person.

I am sure any preson with an average IQ level will get motivated to crack CAT. If not, he falls into that below average group of persons. Its all about chosing what you want again. I have a bunch of my friends who graduated from iit, who are into IT. I see most of them feeling frustrated about the work do. Is life all about the IF..THEN..Else and DO..WHile loops?? , that too after spending 4 quality years in one of the top institues in India. Having a management degree gives you that extra option as to what you are perfectly tailor made for. Let me end it with this gyaan here.

So I had this desire to crack CAT way back in 2004, the final year of my BTech life. But then, I was not AT or someone else who can put 100%ile without enough preparation. So my desire still allures me as of now. I have taken a year off in the middle from CAT, thinking I might start liking my work. But then it dint happen so far. So here I am, aiming to crack CAT'06!

So how is my preparation so far? Am I really going to crack it or start posting the same things again next year? So far, my preparations have been moderately good. Looking at some of the toppers perform, I can now say they are bad. Toppers here point to the AIMCAT toppers. People are attempting 110+ questions in 120 minutes. And ther I am attempting a maximum of 65-70 questions in 120 minutes with a so-so decent accuracy! So far 4 AIMCATs are over and my performance can be best described by a function which plots the coordinates of a kite after it reaches half its maximum height! So things are quite unsure at this stage. With 4 more months, which is both a good as well as not-so-good time to improve, my dream is testing my patience and the amount of hardowrk I can put in to achieve it. One more reason of me blogging nowadays is a part of my verbal preparation . I have enough people luckily to encourage me throughout these 4months. Hope all goes well on D-day Nov 19th 2006. Wish me good luck! More coming soon....

Is this The Beginning or The End?

Being a B.Tech graduate from iit madras hasn't really given me what I wanted. To start with, I wanted to become a cricketer and as usual, never got the nod from my father (Mother was most of the times worried about my health and not about my acads or other professional things). I would not want to write much about my 11th and 12th life or my JEE preparation here, as it would take away much of the space. Then came my JEE counselling. I had a decent rank, with which I could have got into a decent branch from any of the iits. But then there comes the parental love or what you would want to call it as. My mom never wanted me to go to any other iit other than iit madras, just because it is the closest iit to my place. Not even iit kgp was ok for my mom, which is equally distant from my home place as iit madras. The reason this time being the food that one gets in bong land. And then what is my father's reasoning to make sure I write down iit m as the first option in y counselling. Well he was like, iit b or iit d would not really make life easier for me as the life-style there is quite different. Finally I ended up with elec. bracnh in iitm, which is supposed to b a night-mare for many ex-iitians.

I had a good 4 years stay at iitm, barring few of the academic shocks that gave me the taste of real tough life. I ended up as a seven point someone finally at the end of my four years BTech, majority of which came from Math courses. I think I will write a separate post on Math and my experience with it throughout my life. I still could not resist my liking towards cricket, as I had cricket contributing to most the downfall of my cgpa.

To add to all of this, I wanted to go for Applied Mathematics course at iitm. But then I did not have enough courage to go for it, as I was one among the other people who tend to go with the trend and not according to his/her likings.

So, at the end of four years, I am a BTech grad from iitm with an elec degree. But then what is the use? I dont have most of the elec fundaes with me now, as it is seriously not what I wanted or what I should have gone for! So who should be blamed? Me or my parents or is this something that happens with every iitian or nitian or any other engg. grad?? Answer to me seems to be all of the above!

Inswing vs Outswing vs Spin

Guys, I dont know if anyone of you knew the scores of Under - 19 World Cup Cricket final match scores. Neways a part of the score sheet looks like this :

Pakistan U-19 battin first scored : 109 allout in 41.1 overs

Indian Bowling :

Bowling                      O      M      R      W
Jadeja                8     1   16     3 
Piyush Chawla         8.1   3    8     4 

Indian Batting: 71 all out in 18.5 overs

Paki Bowling :

Bowling                      O      M      R      W
Jamshed Ahmed         7     2    24    2 
Anwar Ali             9     0    35    5 
Akhtar Ayub           2.5   0     9    3 

So India U-19 lost so cheaply after bowling out Paki s for a mere 109. So whats the difference?

I donno if you ppl noticed the bowling cards of the teams above:

Under India, there is Jadeja (U-19 team..so not obly Ajay Jadeja) and Piyush Chawla (the one who got the nod for first test against England) sharing 7 wickets in 16.1 overs for a mere 24 runs.

When you see the Paki bowling card, there are the three opening bowlers sharing all ten wickets between them.

The main point here is that the Indian star bowlers were both Spinners...leggies to b frank..(one rightie nd other leftie though) and Paki top bowlers were all fast bowlers and importantly all three of them being very good swing bowlers.

So in India, we have these spinners coming up every year. Good to have so many Bhajjis and Chawlas coming up. But are they really good enough when it comes to the International Senior level where you have monsters like Kevin, Freddie, Hayden and other such gaints ?

The recent Pak vs Ind series is a very good example where one can see spinners doing no good in the fast paced ODI games and good fast-bowlers like Mohammad Asif getting the Indians into lot of trouble even in tests. And it had alomst been a full fast-bowling attack for all the five ODIs in the series.

All we need is the quickies who can swing the ball a good deal. Remember how effective were Nehra nd Pathan in their initial stages when they got the ball to swing really well? Even the Indian best all-rounder Kapil has got the charm to swing the ball a good deal.

So the idea should be to produce more and more good fast/swing bowlers in India. We do need bowlers who can bowl fast and not just swing, as swing primarily comes out from the speed at which you bowl. Whats the reason for India not being able to produce good fast bowlers?

1. Lack of green tops on Indian pitches.
2. Lack of fitness among fast bowlers.

The second point is something that the players themselves need to work upon. There has been noone in present Indian attack who can bowl at an average speed of high 80mph. When you bowl at speeds less than 130kmph, you expect to get hit all around the park in the present ODI cricket, that too with the new power play being introduced.

As of now how many of us feel we have got a decent fast bowling attack?? I dont think half of us would think so. Leave out Shane Warne nd Murali and you dont see any good spinner in present day cricket(ofcourse Kumble is a medium pacer in my opinion). Nd recently even Murali was hit for almost 100 runs in his overs in an ODI.

I feel it would be good if we can prepare fast pitches in India not only at ranji level but also at international level. And give more importance to even fitness of a player etc. We dont want any Nehra or Balaji if they can't withstand the International pressure nd get injured quite often.


Finally lets hope India to win its home series vs England and hope Piyush Chawla isn't another victim of hard hitting talents of Kevin, Freddie and other such English players. More on this soon...till thn have fun..

Never Ending start

Hmm..so this is my first post eh! How do I make it interesting??

Do I write about my childhood? or do I write about how I wasted my 21 years nd 151 days ? or do I write about the future ? Hey, what future am I talking about? Mine or the future in genreal?

Hmm how about my college life?

Its May 1999, few days after our 10th results were out. I was one among those thousands of students, who dreamed of getting into one of the top institutes for engg. in India. Am I talking about Eye-Eye-Tee s by any chance?? May be..
With enough support from parents, managed to join 11th in one of those corporate colleges, names of which can be seen in newspapers daily, giving the exact count of ranks that each college has got in various entrance exams. Is it the students who got the ranks or the college?? I have no idea about that. I did manag to get some reasonable % discount on those heavy fee that I had to pay. The main reason why my parents( rather any parent who expects a good rate of return from his child's education) put me in a corporate college is quite obvious. Even if I dont read well to get thro any of the top engg. colleges, the college people will make sure that I somehow will end up getting high percentage in 11th and 12th, which will fetch me a seat in ...hmm I donno the name of the insti that well guys..BYTES or BITES . Forget it..I know you got it. hehe.

So first few days in college were quite normal, with classrooms fully packed and not even two classes per day being completed as scheduled. But who said I did not have fun. Hmm ours was a only guys college..then how did I have fun? hehe..there was one hostel just beside our coll building, where lot of lady-birds(hmm bi-cycles or wat???hehe) can be found. Duration of our lunch break was more than the combined duration of two classes. We used to get lunch boxes from home with nothing otherthan curdrice and pickle(seriously only thatmuch everyday) inside. What else do you expect to be inside, when the college actually begins as early as 7a.m in the morning? Lunch break is one time when you can actually go around all the city and come back. Even after that you get good time to sleep. None of my friends, including me had the nod from parents to take two-wheelers to college. I had one cycle though, BSA SLR, for which I was the sole owner and had every right on it. So all of us used to take bus daily to commute to college. The five to ten minutes journey in bus is one more wonderful thing which comes back into our minds every night. There is this billiards club, which is just a few minutes walk away from our college. So, every lunch break - go in there and have some fun, be there till its time we get to see all the lady-birds together. And after lunch break, we never used to have any classes happening, so just sleep for sometime and spend rest of the time worrying about whats happening? Is this all I needed to enter Eye-Eye-Tee s?? Am I in the right place?? What do I do?? How do things get better??

Let me stop with this, as this is my first post. More to be continued...(Am I using the tele-serials funda or wat??)