January 2004 Archives

The Bannerghata Road stretch till IIM is getting worse day by day. Thanks to the flyover being built at the BTM junction, half the road has disappeared due to the heavy traffic. The other half is full of potholes and driving has become a duanting task. During the day, its heavy traffic that takes almost fifteen minutes to cover a distance of less than one KM. In the night its the speeding Quallis and Sumo (from Accenture / HSBC ?) which sends a chill down your spine. Add to that, the road is being dug on one side.

There was a film shoot last week in one of the local Manhattan's. There was a huge crowd to watch the shoot and make-shift candy / ice-cream parlours popped up creating utter confusion. Yesterday there was a marriage at the Kalyani Kalyana Mandapa and the entire road was jammed.

Somebody told, "This road is being converted into a four lane highway". Prompty my friend responded "By that time, your son will be working here, then!". God only knows when will this mess come to an end. *Sigh*

Want to find the birthday of your friends on Livejournal. Here is a script which fetches and displays the info from LJ. It uses the HTTP::Lite perl module.

Its self explanatory.

Comments welcome.
http://balajin.net/download/getbday.pl

What a match? An absolute cracker. Unfortunately couldnt watch the match. Thanks to cricinfo, got to know the scores atleast.

I was telling everyone that it was Bret Lee who helped us win the last month. But he is today's hero enacting the Javed Miandad story. Hmm... Could n't help laughing when I read this.

"Australia have Lee, Gilchrist and Patel to thank for their victory. Ganguly will be a dejected man; no one likes to lose after coming so close."

Its high time that Parthiv learns wicket keeping.

The forthcoming India - Pakistan series will create records for ad revenue, it seems. According to Economic times, the going rate is $30,000 for a slot of 30 secs. Samsung and Bajaj are the lead sponsors for the five one day and three test series.

Some time back , an article on The Hindu Business Line quoted, the media sponsors Bajaj and Samsung, and associates Hutch, GlaxoSmithKline, Maruti, LG, Pepsi and Hero Cycles have lapped up their entire quota of airtime for an amount estimated at Rs 80 crore. And that time the expected rate was $7,000 per 30 second slot.

Just for the records, the rate for a 30 second slot during the world cup was around $10,000.

Its all about money, Honey!

Sometime, I wonder how indifferent I become on weekends. I have spent more than 20 hours of the past two days sleeping. I know weekends are for unwinding, but I guess this is too much. How much do you normally sleep on weekends?

Only good thing I did was to do some cleanup and in the process found my video library membership. Promptly went to the video shop and got Mr. and Mrs. Iyer. (that was the CD lying prominently in the front). Nice movie and well enacted by Rahul Bose and Konkona Sen. Though initial the Tamil accent of Meenakshi sounds a bit odd, she has done a nice job. Shot in nice location with some captivating music by Zakir Hussain, its a nice watch. And blame me for missing this movie so long.

Have been facing funny issues with Yahoo! Messenger since evening. When i try to login, it says "You have been disconnected as you have logged in from another machine". I see that Y! has not connected and i am offline. But i am able to receive messages from my friends.

Weird! But sometimes software are :-)

A great cricketing career comes to an end. I remember Steve Waugh as a part of the team which had the likes of David Boon, my favourite cricketer during school, Geoff Marsh, Dean Jones, Allan Border, et al. I was in school then. From then to now, he has transformed to captain of the number one cricket team with a lot of records.

What a day it was for him. Standing ovation when he came in to bat, Every run being cheered, the fifty and then when he got out! The whole stadium gave him another standing ovation and cheered him up. Tendulkar after taking the catch came running to congratulate Steve.

Sachin said "I looked up to Steve Waugh and as a young man learnt a lot from him". Dravid said "I am delighted to play my part in the memorable test". Earlier Laxman dedicated his century to Steve. Ganguly congratulating Steve Waugh after accepting the trophy. Then came the moment. Steve Waugh's speech after accepting the token gift. I was thinking if he was allowed to speak a few more works, he would have cried. He finished saying "I want to get back to the dressing room and drink a few beers". The Australians then carried Waugh through a lap of honour.

We will miss you Waugh!

Australia thrashes India 2-0.

How many of us were expecting a similar result when India went to Australia last month. I was thinking that Australia will beat India 2-0 (may be an innings defeat as well). Indians have played remarkable cricket in this series and have given Australia enough nightmares with the 1-1 result and retaining the Border-Gavaskar trophy.

It was a bit weird that Rahul Dravid was awarded of the Man of the Series instead of Ricky Ponting. Ricky Ponting had scored above 700 runs with back to back double centuries and I though he deserved the Man of the Series. Kumble was forgotten and Sachin Tendulkar was awarded the Man of the Match.

Every batsmen contributed though bowling was average. The bowling department needs a lot of improvement and consistency. Also, Parthiv Patel needs to learn a lot. Instead of over-appealing, he might well concentrate on his wicket keeping. He missed a few crucial chances which could have turned the match.

We have also moved up to the fifth place in the test rankings. Now let us hope Indians do well in the VB Series as well.

Sitting in office alone and spent some time thinking. Have seven resolutions for this new year. I am going to monitor the progress on a monthly basis and see where it goes.

Hoping 2004 brings lots of fun and joy and makes this world an even better place to live.

Welcome 2004.