As for the weird title of the post- Triskaidekaphobia means
A morbid fear of the number 13 or the date Friday the 13th.
I dont suffer from it though, just there is a damn word for this kind of shit is
fascinating.
Monday, May 16, 2005
Triskaidekaphobia
So Friday the 13th passed away without incident and I mean any good incident. I gambled bigger than planned and lost even bigger i.e $2.00. I have now concluded that my bad luck always over rides my good luck. Lady Luck is yet to read my blog.
As for the weird title of the post- Triskaidekaphobia means
As for the weird title of the post- Triskaidekaphobia means
Wednesday, May 11, 2005
Whats wrong with Sports in India
Imagine a bunch of guys watching a sports broadcast on a sunday with beer and chips and cheering and jeering. Every passing minute there is an "expert" comment from someone 'cos all guys think they are the expert in sports. They will shout, scream,jeer and when the beer gets to the head even get into a fight. Why? 'cos they are passionate about the game. They have their reasons, like they may have played in a under 14 team as a 16 year old and whopped everyones ass or they read the damn sports page every morning even before their eyes have opened up completely.
I fit that latter description. Nope I never played in any team as a teenager 'cos I was no good at any sport. That fact makes me even more passionate about any game that I have watched/played except golf. Now golf has weird jargons "Birdie, eagle... parrots, Tiger etc etc"ok not the last one, but sounds like a game out of seasme street. I know my animals so I dont folllow golf.
Coming back to the topic of sports in India. Does anyone know what is our national game? Hockey. Now, how many of us can sound off more than one hockey players name? I know Dhanraj Pillay, a Puneite from Khadaki(Pune has funny names for areas, I will write about that sometime later) but what about the rest? Gagan ajit singh? Ashish balal. How about Pargat Singh? Does Dhyan chand ring any bells? The G.K geeks are probably smirking and the female readers(if any) have already gone back to checking their email for the 14th time in the last two hours and forwarding the nth "Love is ......" email to everyone on their list.
If you do know who I am talking about thats great, but let me assure you my friend we are a minority. This is the damn national game of India and most of India probably doesnt even know the past/present stars of the game. Why? whats missing? Some may say, popularity, awareness etc. etc. So lets talk about the other game with the willow- cricket which has an abundance of these.
Well cricket is a slow game compare to hockey, the faster version lasts one whole day but still Indians like it. Infact we love it so much that Indian-Pak matches are un official holidays in govt. departments. Great... so cricket should be named our national game, although it can probably do with less popularity and such a status will not do much for it. All the cricket buffs say " Cricket is our religion and Sachin is our God" right back at them man. Although most of my demi gods in cricket are foreign. There is a hell lot of cricket played in India. But how good are we at cricket when compared to the world. Which is the best cricket team in the world? Is it "Team India" as the press calls it now or is it that team from down under. We can draw a lot of parallels between cricket in India and football in Brazil. There is one huge idfference which is Brazilians are world champs. They kick ass when it comes to football and it really is a pleasure watching their team play the game. Can the term world champions be used for Team India. Sure they win big sometimes but that can be explained using the law of averages. Now this is a sport that we are passionate about, is played by millions, loved by millions,has a lot of heroes for the kids to emulate, is backed by the corporate sector like no other sport in India and it also regularly pumps millions of (INR) in the secret caymen island bank account of a certain individual called Jagmohan Dalmiya. Just guessing!(this is for any legal repurcussions if Jaggu's son/daughter reads my blog ever and tells daddy about the guy talking bad things about Daddy"ji")
So whats wrong with cricket? My dad remembers the 83 world cup win, I dont 'cos I was still riding my tri cycle. Will I get to see one in my lifetime? It took us 20 years to get to the finals of the same tournament when the game is just played by 8 countires. So when am I going to see a world beating cricket team.Dont know yet. Although we have improved a lot in the past few years but big whoop man. So has the damn world. Even the Bangladeshi team has improved,they beat us.
This post is not about just what is wrong with cricket but sports in general in India. So I spoke about hockey and cricket. Now lets move on to the other sports
Tennis-Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi did great things and made us proud before they fought over who will go out with Mahima chaudhary and get naughty with her. Just should have played doubles with her man.
Sania Mirza- Well she is good, has potential and should make India proud but is young right now as she is just 18. This is what people say. Sure she is all that, but have those people heard about Maria Sherapova? You know how old she is ? 10+8.. do the math.
Football- Bhaichungs da man and there is nobody else besides him on the scene now. Although this is a team sport which is riding on the shoulder of one man.
Badminton- Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand and ?
Table Tennis- I dont know this one. Did know some players a while ago.
Volleyball- The team travels to UAE once a year and gets beat in the semis by Iranis, Uzbeks or some taller,faster, eatern european team.
What else do we play man?
Chess- Sure.. Vishwanathan Anand and who else has emerged in the last 10 years to challenge him? Surely there is some bench strength in this game and we keep hearing about some 14 year old kid defeating some grandmaster here and there but not many have gone on to challenge the elites. Vishy(I am on first name basis with him) is surely a great player but I like Kasprov(undisputed world champ). I would like to add here that being taller,faster,more athletic gives you no advantage in this game so that is why we have a bunch of good chess players
Swimming- Swimming across the damn channels is just a way to get in the record books but how about swimming in the pool and that too fast.
Track and Field- P.T Usha(80's), Milkha Singh(in the 60's) and now Anju bobby George. What about the 90's?
Snooker- There was Geet sethi and now Pankaj Advani, but again in between nobody.
Statistics show that 80% people stop reading a post as long as this one 90% of the time before they have read 76% of the post. This is true for 54% of the world population barring bollywood/hollywood actors who cant read. Quoting an unknown dead man " Lies, damn lies and statistics".well that was one.
For the rest of the interested readers, I will talk more about what is wrong with the sports culture in a follow up post.
I fit that latter description. Nope I never played in any team as a teenager 'cos I was no good at any sport. That fact makes me even more passionate about any game that I have watched/played except golf. Now golf has weird jargons "Birdie, eagle... parrots, Tiger etc etc"ok not the last one, but sounds like a game out of seasme street. I know my animals so I dont folllow golf.
Coming back to the topic of sports in India. Does anyone know what is our national game? Hockey. Now, how many of us can sound off more than one hockey players name? I know Dhanraj Pillay, a Puneite from Khadaki(Pune has funny names for areas, I will write about that sometime later) but what about the rest? Gagan ajit singh? Ashish balal. How about Pargat Singh? Does Dhyan chand ring any bells? The G.K geeks are probably smirking and the female readers(if any) have already gone back to checking their email for the 14th time in the last two hours and forwarding the nth "Love is ......" email to everyone on their list.
If you do know who I am talking about thats great, but let me assure you my friend we are a minority. This is the damn national game of India and most of India probably doesnt even know the past/present stars of the game. Why? whats missing? Some may say, popularity, awareness etc. etc. So lets talk about the other game with the willow- cricket which has an abundance of these.
Well cricket is a slow game compare to hockey, the faster version lasts one whole day but still Indians like it. Infact we love it so much that Indian-Pak matches are un official holidays in govt. departments. Great... so cricket should be named our national game, although it can probably do with less popularity and such a status will not do much for it. All the cricket buffs say " Cricket is our religion and Sachin is our God" right back at them man. Although most of my demi gods in cricket are foreign. There is a hell lot of cricket played in India. But how good are we at cricket when compared to the world. Which is the best cricket team in the world? Is it "Team India" as the press calls it now or is it that team from down under. We can draw a lot of parallels between cricket in India and football in Brazil. There is one huge idfference which is Brazilians are world champs. They kick ass when it comes to football and it really is a pleasure watching their team play the game. Can the term world champions be used for Team India. Sure they win big sometimes but that can be explained using the law of averages. Now this is a sport that we are passionate about, is played by millions, loved by millions,has a lot of heroes for the kids to emulate, is backed by the corporate sector like no other sport in India and it also regularly pumps millions of (INR) in the secret caymen island bank account of a certain individual called Jagmohan Dalmiya. Just guessing!(this is for any legal repurcussions if Jaggu's son/daughter reads my blog ever and tells daddy about the guy talking bad things about Daddy"ji")
So whats wrong with cricket? My dad remembers the 83 world cup win, I dont 'cos I was still riding my tri cycle. Will I get to see one in my lifetime? It took us 20 years to get to the finals of the same tournament when the game is just played by 8 countires. So when am I going to see a world beating cricket team.Dont know yet. Although we have improved a lot in the past few years but big whoop man. So has the damn world. Even the Bangladeshi team has improved,they beat us.
This post is not about just what is wrong with cricket but sports in general in India. So I spoke about hockey and cricket. Now lets move on to the other sports
Tennis-Leander Paes and Mahesh Bhupathi did great things and made us proud before they fought over who will go out with Mahima chaudhary and get naughty with her. Just should have played doubles with her man.
Sania Mirza- Well she is good, has potential and should make India proud but is young right now as she is just 18. This is what people say. Sure she is all that, but have those people heard about Maria Sherapova? You know how old she is ? 10+8.. do the math.
Football- Bhaichungs da man and there is nobody else besides him on the scene now. Although this is a team sport which is riding on the shoulder of one man.
Badminton- Prakash Padukone, Pullela Gopichand and ?
Table Tennis- I dont know this one. Did know some players a while ago.
Volleyball- The team travels to UAE once a year and gets beat in the semis by Iranis, Uzbeks or some taller,faster, eatern european team.
What else do we play man?
Chess- Sure.. Vishwanathan Anand and who else has emerged in the last 10 years to challenge him? Surely there is some bench strength in this game and we keep hearing about some 14 year old kid defeating some grandmaster here and there but not many have gone on to challenge the elites. Vishy(I am on first name basis with him) is surely a great player but I like Kasprov(undisputed world champ). I would like to add here that being taller,faster,more athletic gives you no advantage in this game so that is why we have a bunch of good chess players
Swimming- Swimming across the damn channels is just a way to get in the record books but how about swimming in the pool and that too fast.
Track and Field- P.T Usha(80's), Milkha Singh(in the 60's) and now Anju bobby George. What about the 90's?
Snooker- There was Geet sethi and now Pankaj Advani, but again in between nobody.
Statistics show that 80% people stop reading a post as long as this one 90% of the time before they have read 76% of the post. This is true for 54% of the world population barring bollywood/hollywood actors who cant read. Quoting an unknown dead man " Lies, damn lies and statistics".well that was one.
For the rest of the interested readers, I will talk more about what is wrong with the sports culture in a follow up post.
Thursday, May 05, 2005
Mera Bharat Mahan
Acutally it goes some thing like
"100 mein se 90 baiman.. lekin phir bhi mera bharat Mahan". For the non Hindi speaking audience, it is roughly translated as "Out of every 100 people 90 are dishonest but still my India is great". Ok that was my pathetic translation but you get the idea right?
This is my rant about India.. my country.
1. Why cant we Drive in Lanes?
2. Why cant we stand in a line anywhere by ourself? Why does it take a man with a stick to police us to actually stand in a line?
3. Why do we have to spit where it is written "Do not spit here" or the Hindi version "Kripya Idhar Thooken Nahin", same for Trash.
4. If we see a sign like "Do not touch" on an exhibhit.. then why do we have to go and touch it?
5. Out on the streets they way people drive, it seems everybody seems in a hurry, so things should move fast in the country but amazingly they dont.
6. Another one related to traffic, why does it take a traffic policemen along with a traffic light for people to actually follow traffic lights?
7. This one is related to cricket, the national past time. Why are we just mediocre even with the best team that we have had in decades?
8. Despite being hailed as an IT super power, why do the internet connections suck for an average home user? ( I am talking about dial-up 'cos thats what i have used there )
9. If you can speak english, you are considered more educated than a person who can only speak hindi, or any other regional language even if he/she may have a damn Phd.
10. Why dont we vote? Now "we" here implies to the massive middle class of India who are educated enough to make informed choices. And our inaction should automatically disqualify us from blaming everything on corrupt politicians.
11. 800+ movies a year, but only a few(the number never reaches double digits) worth watching.. I am not even going to say why?.. just wtf?
12. Why is everything so damn expensive at the airports? especially food.
13. Why do the roads break after every monsoon?
14. Why do we profess our love/date of visit by writing on monuments?
15. Finally, what the hell is "Chalta hai!"
Politics, politicians Corruption, cleanliness - Now thats another blog and I am not even going to start in this post.
If you feel there is something else that irks you.. feel free to comment. I would like to see what other people think are oddities of India.
"100 mein se 90 baiman.. lekin phir bhi mera bharat Mahan". For the non Hindi speaking audience, it is roughly translated as "Out of every 100 people 90 are dishonest but still my India is great". Ok that was my pathetic translation but you get the idea right?
This is my rant about India.. my country.
1. Why cant we Drive in Lanes?
2. Why cant we stand in a line anywhere by ourself? Why does it take a man with a stick to police us to actually stand in a line?
3. Why do we have to spit where it is written "Do not spit here" or the Hindi version "Kripya Idhar Thooken Nahin", same for Trash.
4. If we see a sign like "Do not touch" on an exhibhit.. then why do we have to go and touch it?
5. Out on the streets they way people drive, it seems everybody seems in a hurry, so things should move fast in the country but amazingly they dont.
6. Another one related to traffic, why does it take a traffic policemen along with a traffic light for people to actually follow traffic lights?
7. This one is related to cricket, the national past time. Why are we just mediocre even with the best team that we have had in decades?
8. Despite being hailed as an IT super power, why do the internet connections suck for an average home user? ( I am talking about dial-up 'cos thats what i have used there )
9. If you can speak english, you are considered more educated than a person who can only speak hindi, or any other regional language even if he/she may have a damn Phd.
10. Why dont we vote? Now "we" here implies to the massive middle class of India who are educated enough to make informed choices. And our inaction should automatically disqualify us from blaming everything on corrupt politicians.
11. 800+ movies a year, but only a few(the number never reaches double digits) worth watching.. I am not even going to say why?.. just wtf?
12. Why is everything so damn expensive at the airports? especially food.
13. Why do the roads break after every monsoon?
14. Why do we profess our love/date of visit by writing on monuments?
15. Finally, what the hell is "Chalta hai!"
Politics, politicians Corruption, cleanliness - Now thats another blog and I am not even going to start in this post.
If you feel there is something else that irks you.. feel free to comment. I would like to see what other people think are oddities of India.
Monday, May 02, 2005
Philosophy of Life
I had been procastinating for a while now so didnt post anything for a while plus everytime I thought about writing some shit, I realized, I had nothing to write about. Now that I have got off my butt for this week, here is something interesting that a friend sent me. Just sums up the philosophy of life in one line no matter what your religious belief. I am sure some of you have read it before as it is an old email fwd.
Religions of the World
Warning! This is offensive, but take it with a light heart.
Taoism: Shit happens
Hare Krishna: Shit happens rama rama ding ding
Hinduism: This shit happened before
Islam: If shit happens, take a hostage
Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?
Bhuddism: When shit happens, is it really shit?
Confucianism: Confucius says, "Shit happens."
7th Day Adventist: Shit happens on Saturdays
Jehovah's Witness: Knock knock, "Shit happens."
Unitarian: What is this shit?
Mormon: Shit happens again & again & again
Televangelism: Send money or shit will happen to you
Protestantism: Shit won't happen if I work harder
Catholicism: If shit happens I deserve it
Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to me?
Atheism: There is no such thing as shit
Agnosticism: Maybe shit happens and maybe it doesn't
Rastafarianism: Smoke that shit
If I ever decide to pursue a different religious belief for whatever asnine reason, it will definately be "Rastafarianism"
Religions of the World
Warning! This is offensive, but take it with a light heart.
Taoism: Shit happens
Hinduism: This shit happened before
Islam: If shit happens, take a hostage
Zen: What is the sound of shit happening?
Bhuddism: When shit happens, is it really shit?
Confucianism: Confucius says, "Shit happens."
7th Day Adventist: Shit happens on Saturdays
Jehovah's Witness: Knock knock, "Shit happens."
Unitarian: What is this shit?
Mormon: Shit happens again & again & again
Televangelism: Send money or shit will happen to you
Protestantism: Shit won't happen if I work harder
Catholicism: If shit happens I deserve it
Judaism: Why does this shit always happen to me?
Atheism: There is no such thing as shit
Agnosticism: Maybe shit happens and maybe it doesn't
Rastafarianism: Smoke that shit
If I ever decide to pursue a different religious belief for whatever asnine reason, it will definately be "Rastafarianism"
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