The EX-Files

People remember November 16 for various reasons, be it the forming of UNESCO or the birth of Tiberius or about Rakesh Roshan making a Krrish 4 announcement but one nation with its people by birth or origin and fans of a game played by 54% of the inhabitable world, will remember this day as the day when a great man hung his boots after 24 years of excitement, emotion, expectation, excellence, eminence, erudition, exemplification, eellogofusciouhipoppokunurious….ok, I’m beginning to sound like V and you get the point.

By now, most of us would’ve finished shedding tears, flooded social media with forwards, videos, texts proclaiming that Sachin was one of your horcrux and gotten about our lives but every time we talk about or watch or play (in that order for me at least) cricket, the memories about Sachin bubbles up, at least for another few days, months, years based on how much each of us are rooted in the game. But the fact remains that he was the most prolific cricketer the world has seen so far.

Cricket historians, journalists, legends, literates and astrologers have already flooded media with opinions, facts, records, memories, personal life, food and future about the master blaster, so there’s really nothing more to say about him except for the reason why I adore this little great man. It can be said in 2 words – Humility & Respect.

It’s great to watch him play those drives down the ground or the wristy flicks from outside off but those are not what separate him from the others. His respect for the game and everything that is involved with it, living or non-living…is one factor which distinguishes him from the rest. And then his humbleness after achieving so much at a young age is truly inspiring and is what has made him so prolific.

The cricketing world and the fans will surely miss him. But the game will go on and along with it, the fans, discussions, media, controversies etc. There has been a radical change in the way the game is played today with the advent of the new formats and socio-economic factors, so it remains to be seen if the records and milestones Sachin has set, will be broken or not. Whatever be it, the truth remains that Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar is one of the greatest cricketers the world has had the pleasure of experiencing.

So, let’s thank Sachin for 24 years of splendor, supremacy, satisfaction, sentiment, serenity, sebastomania….ok, I’m beginning to sound like V and you get the point. Time to go find yourself another horcrux.

iPL 7 - A whole new perspective

After 6 years of IPL, the bread and butter for millions of Indians, the way cricket is played has been changed, not only in India but around the world. True? Indeed, it has brought a new meaning to “towel in pants”, bred sports enthusiasts, made millionaires and gave twitterati plethora of topics to critic on. But most importantly, it has made Indians out of international cricketers, be it Bravo donning the lungi, Bhajji and Perera dancing, Gayle’s production language in Hindi, and so on.

The next season of IPL will see allegiance of players shifting between franchises but for CSK who tend to hold on to their near and dear, son-in-laws are an exception though. So, with this paradigm shift, there would be some rule changes as well.

• All players should possess a twitter account to be considered for the auction.
• CSK to replace all their cheer leader girls with Whistle blowers, the team lead being Mr. Cricket.
• To fill the SRT void, which is like trying to seal a black hole, how many players would MI need to buy? They’d have eyed some of the CLT20 non-IPL teams, were there any?

And so on…but the most important and brain shattering change would be the inclusion of a completely international team. Interesting? But it’s the Indian PL, we just can’t have a whole bunch of non-BCCI controlled folks playing in a team, so what does BCCI do, they go ahead and name them the International Indians. Now, what does it take to play in this team, you basically need to adopt an Indian name and pray Lord Srinivasa.

So, this year IPL will feature the 8^th team, the International Indians featuring

Position	Name	Specialty
1	Aaryan Finch	Bat
2	Chrisnamachari Gayle	Bat
3	Shanetanu Watson	All
4	Rosshan Taylor	Bat
5	PandIan Bell	Bat
6	Kaneakaraj Richardson	All
7	Bradeep Haddin	WK
8	Markendeya Gillespie	Bowl
9	SivakUmar Gul	Bowl
10	IShaun Tait	Bowl
11	Jamieni Anderson	Bowl
12	Kiran Pollard	All
13	GoPaul Collingwoord	Coach

And guess what, they already have a team song Love Money Party by Mileyini Cyrus.  

*In Bane's voice* Let the games begin!

Cricket Screwboards

Some say cricket is a funny game, others say it’s a boring game…well I wouldn't exactly call it boring excluding the IPL, Champions league, movie stars, media, cheer leaders, ghosts, occasional test series in SriLanka and West Indies and few others things which I wouldn't disclose on the basis of section 66(A) of the IT Act.

The last one week I've been at home, I've witnessed a wonderful display of cricketing skills at the WACA test, but for that, it’s been pretty boring. So I started looking up list of cricketers from each country WIKI is Awesome…and so is Sachin…getting back to reality, I started looking up a list of cricketers from each country and found some really funny last names.

Below are some hypothetical scoreboards, domestic and time insensitive, meaning a player from 1897 could be featured with a player from 1997, that’s who you call a centurion…have fun!

England

Bird                c Gunn b Hunter                  

Carr               runout (Ford/MacLaren)

Read               b Wright

Lamb              c Cook b Butcher

West Indies

Small            c Best b Butts

Butler           b Shepherd

South Africa

Hand               c&b Palm

Crisp              b Pringle

Bland             b Burger

Australia

Darling         c Love b Ring

Hole               runout (Slight/Burn)

Moses            c&b Pope

Hawke            c Hunt b Archer

Moody            c Beer b Sleep

ODI No.2 World No.1...SA-CESS!

“Eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot, world no.1 for world no.1” … the inherent happiness at the loss of enemies is imbibed in human culture. Until a point of time it was Pakistan’s loss against Bangladesh or Ireland but new found happiness in England’s defeat against South Africa while India conquering Kiwis and Kangaroos, is ecstatic…Emus are totally different story.

England’s loss to SA in the 2nd ODI by 80 runs is a classic example of contest between a confident side and a confused side. England started well in the first 5 overs when they gave away only 11 runs and just when Cricinfo said “The two new balls in ODIs have certainly brought the bowlers back into the game, especially in England”, Smith crashed a wide delivery outside off straight down the ground… a little more straight and it would’ve seen midwicket…what transpired after that was a convincing total by South Africa led by England’s worst nightmare, Phyllanthus emblica or commonly known as Amla.

The chase started brilliantly for South Africa when so-so-be bowled a not so so-so ball to remove cook and drive him back to the kitchens. Bell and trott put up a decent partnership when trott holed one Elgar and trot back to the pavilion. Soon, Peterson struck timber when he rang the Bell…by the way it’s South Africa’s Peterson and not the pie eater’s son, oh well… all of them anyway are. Morgan departed in haste to join trott in paddle-broading…oh sorry, paddle-boarding, broad should be busy tweeting about team mates.

England’s best performer of the day was Kieswetter, more of a bedwetter really having dropped 3 catches and bamboozled by a slow left arm part time debutant. Few more of these, the prior-ity would shift to much better batsman and keeper who led Sussex to victory in a 150 run partnership just a day prior J to the 2^nd ODI. The rest are really not note worthy for their performances and the innings ended with an inspiring partnership from the last wicket pair, a foot apart…in height that is.

South Africa move to No.1 in all three formats of the game, not considering hong kong sixes, bush cricket, field cricket and other 25 forms. Can they last? Everyone knows what happens to SA under pressure, just need to wait and watch till they get into a KP situation, I meant Key Pressure situations!

And just before I post…for the first time that I’ve seen on Cricinfo – “BREAKING NEWS Andrew Strauss announces retirement from professional cricket“ http://www.espncricinfo.com/

Daddy’s day out!

Dads are known for their humorous witty one liner’s… this is just another incident which got us going for the evening.

We recently bought a new car and were showing off to relatives about the good and not so good of the vehicle. One major problem was the car getting dirty because of the dust, the dried leaves and the most important, the crows!

Crows have this amazing ability to dirty the newest of things… from bike seat covers to shirts. Every morning the car was covered in sloshes of crow excreta.  There were no trees where the car was parked, so the only possibility was when crows are flying.

As we were discussing this possibility, dad remarked with a grin, “That’s motion in motion!” … the rest was a classic Kodak moment!

The Yagi lives on...

It's yagi... a slight modification of which makes me think it's been long since I watched the yogi bear series on Cartoon network or even heard the ramta jogi song from taal and... guess am 'wave'ring from what i actually wanted to say about the one-quarter wavelength spaced elements of the veteran Yagi-Uda beam antenna.

Ah yeah...coming back to the antenna, it's rare to spot this 83 year old war horse in the common houses of the metros... wait it's not completed... in Chennai. It's been quite a while since I amply remember seeing a functional yagi-uda antenna. The attack of the cable operators & the dish antennas have long displaced the yagi and all that can be seen today is a part of the beams (yes common place term, any EC engineer reading this & still remembering the parts of the yagi - Gomen nasai) at places where people have not even bothered to remember they had the yagi.

Interestingly, last few days that I've been going around the residential colonies of Arlington Heights, I was able to spot...well.. let me count...26 in-shape Yagi-uda antennas (operational I guess) in 39 houses making it an average 66.67% chance of spotting an Yagi in the neighbor. My survey might be insufficient to state that the US neighborhood uses yagi-uda more than the Indian neighborhood but then it's enough say that you can visually spot more yagis here.

Those were good days when we had to run to the terrace to adjust the yagi and shout downstairs to check if the transmission was good. Mom anxiously waiting for Surabhi, dad for the DD news, bro for the sunday morning cartoons, granny for rangoli & the entire family for a nice cricket match... will we ever see those days? Now that we can record live television, pause & see various angles... we would never have to run upstairs to adjust the set of cross beams - 'Uda' diya humne 'Yagi' ko!

729

What's 27 X 27 i.e. 3 raised to the power of 6 or the cube of 9 - we'll it's the duration between my last post & this one. Just wanted to start again...

Die't' Hard 7.0

Maybe it was a bolt of lightning or maybe someone broke a flower vase on my head or maybe it was one of those days when I was thinking weird…well I decided to go on a diet! I came across GM diet few months back and found it very interesting, now I decided to give it a shot.

On one hand, I decided to bring down my weight and on the other wanted to test my self control. I went a got a whole lot of snacks for my bro to eat and wanted to see if I can abstain myself from eating any of those. For a guy who fantasizes about food, it was a difficult task but then wanted to test myself!

DAY 1
It was all fruits day. All I could eat was fruits. The best part of this diet is that it doesn’t restrict you on quantity. I had a full water melon, mangoes, apple, chiku and pear all day and it wasn’t very difficult. My will was strong and even though my bro was enticing me with chocolates and all sorts of snacks, I was happy to eat fruits.

DAY 2
It was all vegetables day. No fruits at all. I didn’t have a problem with breakfast. Potatoes are my favorite and the diet prescribed 2 boiled potatoes for breakfast. The mashed potatoes, cauliflower, beans, corn and peas for lunch were kinda tasty.

DAY 3
It was all fruits and vegetables. If I could pass the first 2 days, I thought this was a cake walk… the challenging part, it was Monday and work day. Well my friends did raise their eyebrows seeing my finger-licking and lip-smacking emotions, especially for the vegetable paste I was eating and were trying to allure me to their chappatis and sambar saadam, but the headstrong boy didn’t budge. The evening snack consisting of apples, guava and pear was received with a greeting and was cheerfully consumed by all. A wonderful night’s sleep followed the vegetable slush with mango dinner.

DAY 4
I knew this was the best day of the diet. All I had to take was 8 bananas and 3 glasses of milk. Enthusiastically, I bought a dozen huge bananas the previous day and filled my lunch case with 5 of them. 2 bananas and a large glass of milk was breakfast. People did freak out a bit when I opened my lunch case to see 5 big bananas instead of my Tiffin box. I ate the bananas to my hearts content… I should say the onlookers should have had a hilarious time watching me slurping and eating. We did have a great time after that, with all kind of weird pictures of ‘man from mars’ made of banana peels and ‘mars’ chocolate… a personification of the phrase ‘going bananas’.

DAY 5
The best day was followed by the worst day. It was time for beef and tomatoes. Being vegetarian, I could substitute beef with a cup of rice. But tomatoes … poor me, I had to go through it. Every hero has to face the dragon and only if he kills it, will he reach the princess… I had no choice but to fight the dragon. I tried everything possible to negate my taste buds, but the tomatoes were too strong, they too were fighting me. Thanks to my ‘Water’ shield, which was used in large portions after every swallow of boiled tomato, victory was mine. I successfully won the battle against the evil tyrannical tomatoes.

DAY6
The battle though won, made me weak. The temptation to eat sweet, spice and everything nice crept in. I could eat rice and boiled vegetables but my craving for other food was budding, nevertheless I held on. To worsen the situation, my neighbor brought in a bowl full of ‘Tirupati Prasadam’ or simply ladoo. I considered this as a literal ‘blessing in disguise’ and with auspicious emotion, savored a petite piece of the Tirupati ladoo. That was it for the day.

DAY 7
Now the temptation took a different turn, I spent the day thinking about the last 6 days and what all I could eat the next day. And yeah it was Feast day. One spoon of oil was allowed, I could have fruit juices, rice and vegetables. And even before I could realize, the day was over and so was the ‘diet’.

I was proud of myself, being strong and willful to avoid all the goodies and stick to the plan. What did I gain – self confidence. What did I lose – 3 kgs, lots of toxins, money (buying fruits and vegetables), chocolates (somehow I felt everyone were eating more than ever!) and a good chunk of flesh from my cheeks. You know sometimes it’s better to lose more than you gain.

Next day, I started by biting myself into a big chunk of chocolate and that’s exactly what I am doing right now… so diet hard … eat harder!

The wait … is over!

It didn’t work... it didn’t … how could have my noble mobile betrayed me or did it not? Was it my sheer tired fingers after 13 hours of work at office which silenced the alarm at 4:30 in the morning? Either way, I woke up late, it was already 5:05 AM and I panicked as I saw every minute ticking. I brushed quickly, picked up my wallet and the most important receipt of the pre-ordered copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, rushed out of the house wondering how long the queue would have already become, if they had already started giving out the book!

Thanks to the stark empty roads, I made my way to City Center in about 20 min and stumbled my way to the already long queue of people eagerly waiting the launch of the book. The ambiance was filled with Potter talks as two guys in robes handed out Potter trivia, scrambled words and spell quizzes to all. Few screams now and then excited everyone that Landmark had started giving out the books but in vain. It was almost an hour’s wait before the escalator started ascending to the Landmark Book Store. Reporters from news channels captured the exciting moments and interviewed the fervent fans on the stereotype stuff.

Groups of ten were allowed inside to pick up their copies when a guy screamed on top of his voice, ‘I have got the first copy!’ … unfortunately to his astonishment nobody bothered to respond as everyone were eagerly waiting for their turn. Soon it was my time, it was like picking up treasure, a priced possession, there was this tingling feeling to open the book and start reading but my serenity overcame the rage and I made my quickly back home.

Well… so now for the book. I am not gonna give comments on what’s nice and what’s not... it’s exciting; it’s clinching, very emotional … and yes the last of the series. It does pain to think that there is no new part coming up… but this this little boy wonder is always etched in the hearts as …. The Boy who lived!

Grand ol' man of the terrace

It was one of those usual 16:30 tea breaks at office. We had made our way to the terrace, the open world, free from the clutches of the so-called ‘Ergonomic computer chair’. It was pleasant as it has been for a quite a while during evenings, which of course has been very contrary to the mornings. That was when we noticed an old man on the opposite building, in shorts, white shirt and stick in hand walking on the terrace. He should have been about 75 to 80 years old.

The house was amusing, to notice. It had a small terrace and beside it was a series of inclined tiles reaching to the overhead tank which was about 10 feet from the terrace. To our surprise the old man stepped over the small parapet and started ascending the tiles. Very nonchalantly he walked up the tiles to a small ledge at the top. He removed his slippers there and climbed on top of the tank, with ease. He opened the 3 lids covering the tank and started measuring the water levels with the stick he was carrying. Once done, he closed them and got down to the ledge where he put on his slippers back. It was amusing to watch him do it with an aplomb of his own and were wondering how he would come down the tiles as it was fairly steep. We knew he wouldn’t walk down, probably he would sit and slowly make his way down but again to our astonishment, he picked up a rope which was tied at one end to the tank and merrily made his way down, over the parapet and back to the terrace. Mission Accomplished…He had measured the water levels in the tank!

It was truly amusing to watch the old man do it so casually and began to wonder if we could even do something like that at this present age… too preoccupied with electronic gadgets that we would just switch on the motor and wait for the tank to overflow. Well… it was time to go or else people would act as if the world had come to an end… and we carry on, inspired from such charming people!