Day 3 - Still bleak but there is light at the end of the tunnel

We are under water and without electricity for the fourth day running. The water levels are receding. Local authorities say it'll be just a matter of 8 to 10 hours before we see the road. Which translates into another 12 to 14 hours of electrical isolation. If the authorities, for once, are right with their estimates, we are bang on target for the epic Arsenal vs Chelsea tonight. ;-) Yes, everyone has a private agenda even when they are grounded.

Day 2 and still grounded

The title says it all...

Grounded

First in the line of many pictures I am going to upload showing our area under water.

Michael Crichton R.I.P

It took Michael Crichton to die to make me blog again after a long hiatus. I loved all his books that I read. Am very sad on hearing this news.

Sad state

This lazy conducter was happily sleeping even before I got into the bus. He was in the same state when I got down 30 minutes later. Is this the state of the government employees. I've heard stories about how "well" the government offices function but this was my first live experience. I was very relieved to notice that the driver, at least, was awake.


This image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Where is the fuel

The government says there is absolutely no problem with the diesel stock.But, for most of the days, all I could see is the above placard.


This image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

How to fight laziness???

If you are eager to find the answer to the question above, welcome to the club. I am looking for the same. My not posting here for quite a long time has no other sinister reasons. Just that I was too lazy to open the Windows Live Writer, compose something and publish it. By the way, if you are yet to check out the Live Writer, I recommend you to download and try it out. It is from Microsoft and it is free of cost, the combination you'll rarely see. Talking about trying out new things, I've been using Chrome for a couple of weeks now. Look and feel is as neat and clean as the Google homepage. I have neither used it that much to comment about its security and stability features, which is advertised as the unique feature of Chrome, nor I have the courage in Chrome to use it for my banking and credit card purchases yet; especially, with that scary clause in EULA that was edited later. I'll give it some more time and then try to review(of course, amateurish) it here. Read somewhere that Google captures 2% of all keystrokes in the all-in-one omni bar. That is really scary.

1 Gold, 1 Bronze & counting

India has well and truly arrived at the world sports stage. Today, Sushil won us a bronze in wrestling. In addition to that, Vijender as assured us of a medal in middleweight boxing. Hope he goes on to win the gold. Can't wait for the semifinals bout on Friday. Congrats guys!!

Good Bye Mushi..

Nice to the see the back of Mr.Mush. Hope we never ever see his face again.

Its show time

We are just minutes away from the kick-off of Barclays Premier League 2008-09. Am just as excited as other football fans. And this time, it is my favorite Gunners to start things up. Hoping for a great season for Arsenal.

P.S: Checkout the new cool looking website of the Gunners

Happy Independence Day

Wish all fellow Indians a very happy Independence Day!! Jai Hind!

Cash for Votes

Tuning in to the TV set this Monday after I reached home in the evening, I was not surprised to see Rajdeep Sardesai talking live. What was surprising was, for once, he was making perfect sense. Also, there were stresses, pauses & modulation in his voice which, honestly, I've never seen before. What was the head of the award winning Indian english news channel doing standing alone in front of the camera without any guest or co-presenters? Well, it was time for the sensational cash for votes tapes to be made public.

Initially, Rajdeep was clarifying why they withheld the tapes all these days and, in his own words, why exactly they have decided to air the tapes on August 11. As mentioned before, he made sense to me for the first time. Then, the tapes were aired with subtitles & director's commentary with occasional comments from the man who was actually on the field for this sting operation.

Part I
The tapes showed Samajwadi Party MP Reoti Raman Singh in conversation with 3 Bharathiya Janata Party MPs Ashok Argal, Faggan Singh Kulaste & Mahavir Singh Bhagora in Ashok Argal's residence at the midnight of 21-July. The jist of the matter here is Reoti Raman Singh was saying he has struck some sort of a deal for these 3 MPs with the SP chief Amar Singh over the trust vote and wanted all these 3 people to go with him right away to Amar Singh's residence to decide the terms and finalise the "amount". The BJP MPs displayed their reservations of going to Amar Singh's residence at such a late hour. Soon, we can see Reoti Raman Singh leaving.

Part II
We see CNN-IBN reporters waiting in front of 27 Lodhi Estate, which is Amar Singh's residence, on the morning of the trust vote. It seems the crew were informed by the 3 BJP MPs of their arrival time at Amar Singh's residence and even the make and the color of the car they come in. As informed, a white Maruti Zen arrives at 27 Lodhi Estate hours before the trust vote. After about 30 minutes, the same car was seen leaving the house.

Part III
Back to Ashok Argal's residence where the CNN-IBN crew were informed by the BJP MPs that Amar Singh has promised them of Rs.3 crore each if they vote for the government and someone from Amar Singh's side would soon come and deliver the token amount to them in Ashok Argal's residence. Some time later, a man named Sanjeev Saxena & his associate arrives at Argal's house with a black bag. Sanjeev Saxena places Rs.One crore on the table from his bag. The BJP MPs want him to connect them to Amar Singh which he does after some diffculties in the phone line. Ashok Argal confirms in the phone that he has received the token amount of 1 crore and asks when the token amount for the other 2 MPs will be delivered. Sanjeev Saxena and his associate leave and we can see Ashok Argal laugh in a muffled manner.

On seeing the tapes, I am not sure there is enough in it to implicate Amar Singh or the Samajwadi Party legally. But having said that, there is enough in the tapes to do damage to SP & Amar Singh politically, which I am sure the BJP are very good at. BJP General Secretary Arun Jaitley says they have submitted several phone records supporting to their claim along with the transcripts and the tapes. If these additional evidences hit paydirt, then its show time for the BJP and vice versa for SP. More importantly, it spells devastation for the Congress, who now have lost almost all the major states. Lets see how this transpires and hope the truth comes out to light sooner than later.

You can watch the tapes in the links below,
Video 1
Video 2
Video 3
Video 4

R.I.P Bernie

The world has lost an excellent comedian. Bernie Mac has passed away of pneumonia. Bernie was excellent in the Ocean's trilogy among many other movies. The first movie I saw him was in "The Head of State". The last time I saw him in the silverscreen was in "Transformers". His performances were awesome thoughout. To quote George Clooney, the world has got a little less funny. Bernie, we miss you.

Brad Pitt:

"I lament the loss of a ferociously funny and hardcore family man. My thoughts
are with Bernie's wife Rhonda and their family. Bernie Mac, you are already missed."

Samuel L Jackson:

"It goes without saying that Bernie was one of the pre-eminentcomedians of our generation. He was also an attentive husband, a greatfather and loving grandfather. I feel blessed to have shared years offriendship with Bernie Mac, and I'm honoured to have finally co-starred with him in what I consider to be his finest cinematic acting achievement. My sincere prayer is that his family will be comforted by the warmth of love from all of us who knew and respected this man."

Smiling Assassin

He is the most dangerous fellow in our gang. If in case you get to meet him, be very careful.

This image is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 2.5 India License.

Citius, Altius, Fortius

Yippie. India has won its first gold in Beijing. Hope it is the first of many medals. Congrats Abhinav Bindra and Thanks a lot!

Israeli-Indian Nuke Tests Caused Tsunami???

Well well.. I've heard many conspiracy theories but none of them were as absurd as this. The gist of the matter is the tsunami that killed tens of thousands was possibly caused by joint Israeli-Indian nuke testing in the Indian Ocean.

Read the full article here and laugh out loud.

Even God will not be able to save this country

Another bold(read desperate) act by the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court has had enough, I guess. Even  we, the people, have had enough. I am happy that the bench of Justices BN Aggrawal and GS Singhvi did not say "Only god will be able to save this country". The religious(read political) outfits would start another battle saying only their god can save the people and not the other gods. Well done Justices.

Does this happen elsewhere?

The Supreme Court of a country says it'll issue a bailable arrest warrant against the Chief Minister of a state for not replying to a petition filed against him and five others. The Chief Minister in-turn coolly blames the lawyers representing him for non-compliance. Honestly, the most shameful thing to happen.

SC threatens to issue arrest warrant against Karunanidhi

South Africa thrash England by 10 wickets

I am very happy to see the South Africans decimating the English team for the last four days and winning the 2nd test at Headingley by 10 wickets. I hope England lose the test series 3-0 and Andrew "Freddie" Flintoff, Kevin Peitersen and Michael Vaughan are dropped forever.

Hats-off to SC

Amid all the political backstabbing and betrayal that is currently going on, there is one person who has remained true to his post till date. Yes, I am talking about the speaker of the lower house, Mr. Somnath Chatterjee. He has defied his party's orders to resign from the post and vote against the government in the trust vote that is scheduled for some time tonight. He resigns before the trust vote or not, for what he has done till now, he deserves lot of credits.

Vote of absurdity

What is going to happen tonight is utter non-sense. Although most(read all) of the MPs are corrupted one way or the other, the most disgusting thing happening is with the Left. The Left parties are like an average Indian. Like to take part in all the goody goody things; when the poll time comes, they come out and cry foul taking absolutely no responsibility for anything that happened during when they were supporting the government. These rats are the most irritating thing in our politics right now. I hope these guys are defeated and finished once it for all tonight. But I fear that latter won't happen any time soon. Raja says dealing with US has sovereign issues but dealing with China is totally acceptable. Total bulls**t. Leftist comrades, please run away to China or Russia.

Dream Come True

I have been waiting for 3 weeks for this to happen and finally, I can breathe a sigh of relief. I have successfully got hold of DVD Rips of all the 21 official Bond movies. I have been trying to get hold of the complete Bond collection for the past 5 years without any success. Thanks to a person called "Donatello", I found the first 20 Bond movies, all at one place, as "The Ultimate Bond Collection". In addition to the movies, it had all the DVD extras for each and every movie with an additional extras disc. It totaled to 27.7 GB and took almost 20 days to download. But hey, no complaints at all. All that remains is enjoying the content time and time again now. Thanks Donatello.

Please drive safely

My cousin brother, Arunkumar Narayanan, met with an accident yesterday and lost his life. Condolences to his parents.

Times of India report

Looking for the title of a spy novel

I am looking for the title of a book that I read couple of years ago. My memory about the book is very vague. I’ll list out few things that I remember about the book,

> It’s a spy novel set around 70s & 80s (which was when the book got published)
> Majority(90%) of the story takes place in England
> Its about Communists in Soviet hatching a plan to bring a communist favoring rule in England by creating unrest in England via nuclear blast
> The protagonist is a middle aged - divorced – guy who is a biggie in one of the MIs(Definitely not MI6)
> The Soviet General Secretary will be a very old man nearing his death and he’ll be a paralyzed person who moves around in a wheel chair
> The nuclear bomb will be brought into London by about dozen different people and will be later assembled in London
> The author was definitely a well known one

Update: Found the title, thanks to one of my close friends. "The fourth potocol" by Frederick Forsyth

Rohit Sharma & Pragyan Ojha in the test squad

Wow.. The 16-man squad for the Sri Lankan tour has Rohit Sharma & Pragyan Ojha. Hope it is not too early to draft in Rohit. He seems to be a very good player. Lets not waste him. Btw, yours truly felt even Kaif seemed a good player for the initial two years.

Test squad for Sri Lanka

Virender Sehwag, Gautam Gambhir, Rahul Dravid, Sachin Tendulkar, Sourav Ganguly, VVS Laxman, Rohit Sharma, Dinesh Karthik (wk), Parthiv Patel (wk), Anil Kumble (capt), Harbhajan Singh, Ishant Sharma, Zaheer Khan, RP Singh, Munaf Patel, Pragyan Ojha.

Black Day..

A very sad way to start the day. The first thing I saw in the news this morning is the suicide bombing of the Indian embassy in Afghanistan. Its a shame to the rebuilding process there post-Taliban destruction. If the reports are to be believed, Pakistan's ISI have a major hand behind this. Condolences to all the family members and friends of those who lost their lives.

Super Sunday becomes Super Disappointment

With the Wimbledon Men's Singles finals, British GP & Star Cricket Asia Cup finals, it was all set to be a real Super Sunday. But it ended as a day of disappointment. First, no podium finish for the Ferrari, thanks to some superb driving from Lewis Hamilton and ill-timed British rain. Then, the Asia Cup finals. During the change of innings, I was very confident of an Indian win. Even though Gambhir departed early, Sehwag was showing who was the boss. But it all came crashing down in the 10th over. And by the time the powerplays ended, Sri Lankan win was just a matter of when and not if. Finally, back to England to the centre court of the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club. By the time Ajantha Mendis ran through the top and middle order of the Indian team, Nadal had already taken a 2 set lead over Federer. When all seems lost, the rain came and broke Nadal's momentum. When the match restarted, Sri Lanka had already become the Asian Champions, Federer came back very strongly taking the match to the final set for the second successive year. Just when I thought the master is back in his stride, Nadal broke the FedExpress and went on to claim the prestigious Wimbledon Men's title. All in all, it was a disappointing day considering the results. But results are not all that is important, all the three events were simply awesome to watch. Superb racing followed by a mesmerising spell by a new spinner and finishing off with the best singles tennis match I've seen since Sampras retired. It was a great day for the sport lovers.