IPL 2010 - Trading Begins

The player trading for IPL 2010 season has begun and the franchisees are busy in discussions.
Some franchisees are looking to get rid of their non-performing 'assets', especially Kolkata Knight Riders - who seem to be always in the news - they don't need any invitation to be in the news, just like their owner.
Royals have put Kaif for sale, who seem to have fallen out of favor with every possible organization associated with cricket in the country, will anybody pull him out of his misery?
Manoj Tiwary, another overrated - overpaid good for nothing domestic player is set to, move to a different franchisee. I don't think there would be any high profile transfers, but i think some teams should just get rid of some of their baggage. Some of these players include;
Chennai Superkings - Joginder Sharma, Jacob Oram; Kings XI - VRV Singh, Wilkin Mota; Royals - Kaif, Shane Harwood, Tyron Henderson; Chargers - Azhar Bilakhia, Chaminda Vaas, Ravi Teja; Mumbai Indians - Rohan Raje, Jayasuriya; Knight Riders - Mortaza, Aakash Chopra, Ishanth Sharma; Daredevils - Manoj Tiwari,Mithun Manhas, Challengers - Dale Steyn, Wasim Jaffer, Vinay Kumar.
After the trading ends, the bidding will take place, if the pakistani cricketers are available then they are likely to be a popular choice - along with Keiron Pollard and Eion Morgan. Other players to watch out during bidding will be Ambati Rayudu, JhunJhunwala, Badani. Some of the players from Champions league might also get a chance to play in IPL 2010.
The good thing about IPL 2010 is - it starts a month earlier this season. :-)

Champions League T20

The Champions League T20 2009 kicked off to a great start in front of a packed house in Bangalore's Chinnaswamy Stadium.It was a match full of fireworks and challengers had to bow to brilliance of one mighty cobra – Jean Paul Duminy. The results so far have been disappointing for the IPL franchisees but they still have a chance to turn things around – although they have made their chances of moving into Semifinals, a little bit tougher. The two Australian teams – Bushrangers and NSW blues and the SA team – Cope Cobras look really good. It would be a surprise if they didn't make it to the semifinals, although Bushrangers – a good team – haven't been tested in a tough match, as their match against daredevils – turned out to be a dud.

Daredevils and Deccan Chargers still have a chance to top their groups if the other results in their group go their way – well, at least technically. Royal Challengers will have to settle for second in their group – a big IF here, if they beat Volts. The IPL franchisee captains will have to get their bowling changes right, so far they have been very disappointing.

The good part of the CL T20 so far is impressive show put up by some of these overseas or unknown teams – well, from an Indian perspective. The first hundred of CL was already recorded in the fourth match – although Duminy could have got it in the first – which would have been a nice coincidence to have hundreds in the opening match in IPL and Champions League.

The one thing that was noticeable is the crowd response – the cricket crazy Indian public didn't seem to bother much about the non-IPL team matches – which was noticeable in Delhi and Hyderabad. Hopefully, they will embrace the best teams out there – even if they are not Indian, after all, it's the game and the format – that is the winner. Either way, Lalit Modi might already have plans to throw away a whole bunch of free tickets to the school kids or even people passing by.

Crunch matches to watch out for – Chargers vs T&T, Royal Challengers vs Otago.

Rio - 2016

It's a fair and spirited choice by the members of Olympic committee to chose Rio over the other cities for 2010 Olympics. It justifies the growing importance of emerging economies in other parts of the globe, especially BRIC Countries.
Russia was a superpower once - hosted olympics, China is almost a super power now - hosted olympics recently - probably the best ever, Brazil is going to host them in 2016 and what does India got - to show to the world?
A big nothing - still struggling to get ready for commonwealth games!
Unless, India's infrastructure grows by atleast 5 fold , - it shouldn't even think about hosting any major event - except probably cricket world cup.
Even south africa has got the 2010 FIFA world cup...hmm!

Its NFL Time

Thank God...now, there is something to look forward to, on Sunday evenings starting this weekend.
NFL 2009 season kicks off today when Steelers take on the Titans.
Last year season saw a surprising super bowl finalist in Arizona - instead of them the Eagles should have made last year's final a penn state affair.
Tom Brady is back, so is Brett Farve - this time with the Vikings after messing up Jets playoff chances in the last 4 games - which after almost 8 months now says, he was not fully fit! Huh..give us a break! Vikings - though, should make the playoffs this year, if they can get the ball to Adrian Peterson. TO is now with the Bills.
G-Men have a 100 million$ quarterback - but lot of key people are missing from the ranks this time around. Cowboys are looking to start their new season in a new stadium - but i doubt their luck will change this year. Steve Spaganuolo - is now a head coach with the Rams - hopefully this season will be better for them - last season they suffered pretty badly.
The most interesting plays that i want to see this year are from the Eagles quarterbacks - will Andy Reid - let two of his star quarterbacks be on the field at the same time, that would be a great sight to watch - Good luck, McNabb and Vick.

Teams to watch out for -
AFC - Colts, Patriots, Chargers, Steelers
NFC - Giants, Eagles, Vikings, Bears

Hopefully this season will be close and very interesting. Happy Viewing!

Deception Point - Book Review

I finished this epic 738 page book in less than 2 and half days which is probably the least time i took to complete a book, except one of the Robert Ludlum's books that i read, during my 10+2.
In short, Deception Point - is story about NASA's discovery of a meteorite in the Arctic ice shelf, which has a fossil of ET life and how the incumbent government uses this discovery to boost its image before an impending presidential election and how other secret US agencies have their own ambitions and vested interests.

Even though the pace of the book was very fast like a Hollywood motion picture, there are lots of illogical stuff in the book which is irritating because you can feel that author has researched a lot on the sciences or technology that is involved in the book like - meteors, ice, ocean creatures, special ops forces technology etc. A couple of examples would be - presidential contender debating a president's senior staff on CNN, daughter of presidential contender agreeing to brief the white house staff - the reason why she was brought in to do it and president himself requesting her to do that -is totally crap. Dan Brown could have done a lot better.
Well, it is no wonder all his previous novels were discovered only after he wrote "The Da Vinci Code" , otherwise probably no body would have really cared for his novels.

Dan Brown's next novel, "The Lost Symbol" is being released this September, 2009 - six years after he wrote da vinci code, hopefully he won't disappoint his readers.

Rating 2.5/5.0

A good "Monetize" idea

I was just browsing around reading NYT article on travel to NovaScotia and PEI and tumbled across this very innovative website which contains listings of accomodations in Canadian Universities during offseason which anybody can afford for accomodation or meeting purposes for a small fee.
Here's the website - http://www.connectoncampus.ca/resources.html
That's a very good use of existing infrastructure, which just lies around idle during the summer months when there is little to no activity. These kind of resources would be a boon to budget consious travelers or solo travelers or backpackers, who can take a break in clean place.
It would be really good, if some schools or colleges did the same in India, where in summer months there's absolutely no activity in schools - and backpackers to india would like to stay in a dorm/ room in these places than in a dingy room of a filthy hotel, in some shady neighbourhood.

An even more interesting (but i am pretty sure, not always) way to find cheaper temporary accomodation is this great idea called "crash on my couch" - http://www.couchsurfing.org/
In this website, people who have some spare space - couch or bed offers it to a traveler who needs a place to crash. Check the number of people offering a couch, all over the world! That's some amazing and ingenious idea.

Best place to buy books

This is a really cool website to buy textbooks.
Students save a lot of money either when buying new books or just renting them for a fraction of the original cost. The coolest thing about, is for every book bought on this website they plant a tree - go green.
www.chegg.com

Comic's Time

This blog and its contributor are just amazing!
It reminds me of early school days, when i had a big bounded book, of all these comics and used it to read it over and over again.
They never felt bored, was always eager to read and re-read them for an nth time.
There's probably lot of folks like me who would like to relive those moments, so here you go - check out this link -
http://thecomicproject.blogspot.com/2006/08/links-to-all-comics.html

Tag time

Here's a example of geo-tag using yourgmap, in which i tagged the airports that i have been through in North America -

Airports that i have been through

Its a good way in which you can let your friends know of any trips that you took, restaurants that you tried, cities that you visited etc

Best Deal Time

This website is the best place to grab the best deals out there in cyberspace, especially when it comes to electronics.
I bought my DELL laptop by checking this website and got an awesome deal with incredibly cool features included.
Check this website if you are looking for a bargain.
http://www.deals2buy.com/

Caio!

IPL Super Over Fiasco

It was a terrific match, no doubt about it. What i don't understand is, why do they need to decide a winner in the league stages, since it is a tie - why not award both teams 1 point each. After all, this is not a semi-final or a final where there has to be a "Winner"!
IPL admins will have to figure out some really crazy rules like - strategy breaks even in a rain shortened game, super over at league stage, some matches even though starting late were allowed to play 20 overs while in double headers - they had to declare a winner because they need to start the next match etc
I think the organizers just want to bring in the "masala" entertainment of a super over.
Well if they had to decide a winner in every game - they should have allowed a super over to decide the winner between royals and mumbai in the rained out match.
Some things just defy common sense.

Very funny Blog

This is a link to one of the most popular blogs that recently also became one of the best sellers.
Very funny and very creative.

http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/

Scary Landings Time

Whenever you are in your final minute of your flight, the words that you would like to hear from your captain are - welcome to "destination", local time is so and so and hope you fly with us again sometime in the near future. But, have you ever been in a situation, where you heard your captain say - he is aborting landing because there is another plane on the runway or an announcement saying - huh, hey we landed! Now, that's scary!
My most scariest landing ever, was a southwest flight from Baltimore to Raleigh-Durham, a very bumpy landing by the pilot, almost ended up dragging the plane all the way to the end of the runway and the words - hey, we landed safely, congrats!. Jeez...that would scare the heck, even out of a seasoned road warrior. Even though i was in the middle of the plane, i could feel that runway was about to end!
Another scary landing experience, was in a very turbulent weather at New York's Laguardia airport in a very small 30 seater Embraer jet. Flying in from Toronto into LGA, i have never felt scary or rather never felt happy to be back on ground again after that experience. I was actually holding onto armrests on both the sides, looking outside through the window in a freezing rain, imagining that this is how its gonna end! The plane landed in wind gusts of about 40-50 mph, flying like a drunk bird, swaying right-n-left and the pilot warned that it would be a rough landing. I bet no scary ride at six flags can beat the heck out of that landing. Just close your eyes imaging that, landing on a tarmac in those conditions at 250 mph and breaking into a right turn towards your gate.

Another landing, i donno if i would have ever known how close i was to a very danger zone, but on a Continental flight from Newark to Salt Lake City, the pilot, about to land at salt lake city airport announced that he is aborting the landing because there's another plane on the tarmac, and he lifted the plane upward, took a very wide circle around the salt lake and came back for a safe landing.
These experiences have made me very paranoid about flying or rather landing when flying in a small plane like Embraer or bombardier. I have vowed to avoid them at all, if possible. These days when flying, i also look for what aircraft is being used to fly that route. Have you ever been in such an awkward or tense moment before? Share them, may be we might have something in common - scared of small planes!
Relax - until the next rumble.

Its IPL time

IPL is back. Its ironic that an event with "indian" in its name, isn't happening in india - even though it created a dent in the pride of "new india", most of the cricket loving folks like me are just happy that the event is happening after all the drama and the cat-n-mice game between the indian cricket board and indian government officials. Power hungry people on both sides trying to prove their mettle and look what happened in the end, it benefited a third party (SA).
Even if the event achieves 75% of the success it did last year, then the credit would go to CSA for stepping into big large boots of their indian counterpart and an arrogant-but-smart business minded individual heading the entire show.With the game time, it also bought in some extra glamor and glitz to this event, this year with addition of shilpa shetty, to the already omnipresent preity and shah-ruk-rukhh khan.
IPL-2, with one week to go already had its share of controversy and tabloid news.
Gavaskar ridiculing KKR and ruk-rukhh khan returning the favor in kind, sourav ganguly with his share of insecurities and stubborn attitude etc

When the game starts next weekend in capetown, hopefully it will be a lot of fun for tens of millions of cricket crazy indians (includes me!)
Hopefully this year challenger fans will have something to cheer about, but delhi and chennai look very strong compared to other teams and chargers, like last year look like the favorites to grab the first spot - from the bottom.

Cricinfo fantasy league is here - http://fantasy.cricinfo.com/fantasy/fantasyleague/user/home.html

More rumbles later - chill!