bhavane

Should the ticker change from JAVA to MYSQL?

I went to the local SuperCuts yesterday to get a haircut. I settle into the chair, give my instructions to the hair stylist (fancy name for barber), remove my glasses and immerse myself into some thoughts.

If your eyeglass prescription reads -9.75 and -8.5, you will know that there is no use looking into the mirror to see what is going on with the hair. You can’t see anything. So I usually drift into some random thought process until the hair stylist says something.

I did notice before I sat down that there was a lady giving a haircut to a gent in the next chair. After about 3-4 minutes into the ordeal, the hair stylist suddenly asked “Were you talking Russian?”.

I woke up from my thought process and “Huh?”.

“Sorry, I was asking her”, glancing towards the lady near the next chair. I had not noticed that she was finished with the gent and was cleaning the surroundings.

And the two went on.

“Yeah”

“Was he from Russia as well?”

“No, he is from Estonia. Estonia was part of Russia, but decided to be an Independent country”

“How come?”

“Russia was actually a collection of republics and at around 1990….91 some of them decided to separate from Russia”

“So the Republicans and Democrats decided to be separate countries?”

“No. No. These republics are like states. Like Texas and California. There were a lot of them in Russia, like Latvia, Estonia, Ukraine”

“Oh”

“They did not like communism and when communism died in Russia, they wanted to have a government that is democratically elected”

“How awful!”

“Yeah” with a sigh and moved on with her chores.

A few results from google image search for monkeys. Note some of them are monkey dolls. [Mouse over the images to see the URLs it points to].

This is just a sampling of the photos that I selectively chose from the results. As you can see, there is a strong relationship between a monkey and a diameter of different colour around the lips.

I just wanted Andrew Symonds to take note of that fact when he presents himself on the cricket field. Race is not the issue. Cream is. Pay some jack and get a skin coloured cream.

… since I looked at the blog. Was busy with many other things. But didn’t think its been 15 months. Hopefully back again for regular posts.

Agassi Farewell and US Open

By far the best story of the week. I am a huge fan of Agassi. I can’t think of any other sportsperson who has done such a 180 degrees transformation in his life. The flamboyant and image-is-everything Agassi of 15 years back to the current level headed and composed one. Its incredible. I have not met one single sports aficionado who is actually not a fan of his.

So I was glued to TV as he played Becker on Sunday. One could sense from the get go that the problems with his back was getting the better of him. He was not stretching as he usually does and when did you could almost feel the pain. But I kept hoping that he will pull off another one of his comebacks, especially after he won the second set, but obviously it never happened. Anyway, I just loved the drama of his last tournament. It would have been nicer if he progressed through a little bit more, but he was not going to win the tournament anyway, so it does not matter. I also thought Benjamin Beker showed tremendous class in leaving the stage to Agassi even though he was the winner of the match. He joined in the several minutes of standing ovation that was poured onto Agassi.

In other US open news, Roger Federer’s path to another title just got a bit easier with Nadal’s defeat. At least Roddick seems to be playing better. Not quite ready to challenge Federer yet though. James Blake before he lost to Federer in the QF said the pressure was on Federer! (Rolling eyes) Yeah, right. Apart from flashes of brilliance here and there, Federer took him out methodically in 4 sets. Federer did look tight a little bit, but it was very evident from Blake’s body language who was under pressure there. BTW, Federer with his new hair cut kinda looks like Saif Ali Khan.

Also, my favourite player on the women’s tour, Lindsay Davenport lost to Henin-Hardenne 6-4, 6-4. It is likely that she might have played her last grand slam. And in that case, it is a pity that the fans could not give a fitting farewell to her too. But on the other hand it is only fitting that the player who was always low-key (in spite of being a great player) and would have liked a low-key exit got exactly that.

World Cup - Hockey

India lost its first match to Germany 3-2. I like this bit from the report:

Then I have no doubt that they played well. But when will India’s newspapers stop such nonsense about sports that we are not good at? The only sport we are decent at is Cricket and that is the only sport for which the newspapers rubbish the team if they don’t play well. For every other sports you can find headlines like “goes down fighting”, “valiant effort in vain” etc. Why don’t they just say, “yeah, we suck”.

And today they lost to England again by the same margin. Not much info via match reports on that match yet. But glad to see that so far there is no “goes down fighting”.

Trescothick’s no to India

When England toured India a few months back, England’s opening bat Trescothick disappeared from Bombay one fine morning and when he appeared again in England, cited personal problems for his disappearance act. Now the latest news is that Trescothick does not want to go to India to participate in the ICC Champion’s trophy going to be held next month. How about that? Pure coincidence, I guess. I should think those personal reasons have resurfaced?

At this point since Trescothick is not providing any more explanations for his personal problems, I am beginning to form some personal opinions of my own about him as well, which of course I will not reveal.

Other sports news bits

• Yay, NFL season is underway and fantasy football rules!
• Should have known better about their penchant for finishing 3rd in international championships, before tagging this USA basketball team as having the potential to be a dream team. Losing to Greece? Can’t imagine what went on out there.
• Racing takes the air. After bike and car racing, now rocket racing.
• Schumi retiring? (Seems like legit news, but I have seen such rumours before)
• Pakistan is spanking England in the one day series
• You would think Sania Mirza and her multi crore endorsements can do something better than Taco Bell, right? Or is the spate of 1st and 2nd round losses taking its toll already?
• Dravid is finalist for 4 categories in the annual ICC awards.
• Tiger Woods. One more tournament. One more win. Now 5 in a row, including two majors. This guy is beyond human.

No, its not a name of any 13th century King or minister. It is a name of the latest virus that causes viral fever in India. First there was Dengue and now Chikungunya.

ToI from today has added a new feature that should help their users a lot. You go to any page (including their homepage), the “Print” menu pops up by default. Wonderful. I wonder why no one thought of this nifty little feature before.

Steve Irwin the hyperactive naturalist, zookeeper and highly successful TV show host died yesterday by one of the ocean’s deadliest animal, while shooting for a documentary called “Ocean’s Deadliest”.

Irwin was at Batt Reef, off the remote coast of northeastern Queensland state, shooting a segment for a series called “Ocean’s Deadliest” when he swam too close to one of the animals, which have a poisonous barb on their tails, his friend and colleague John Stainton said.

“He came on top of the stingray and the stingray’s barb went up and into his chest and put a hole into his heart,” said Stainton, who was on board Irwin’s boat at the time.

Man, if you are like me and if your knowledge of stingrays is limited to Mr. Ray in Finding Nemo, you would never believe that they are so dangerous.

The “Croc Hunder” - RIP.

Hair Updates

When Darrell Hair said that “people will pay” for his vilification during the controversy, I did not think he meant this .
Now this is interesting. Barry Jarman, who match refreed, India-South Africa matches in 1997 said that a couple of SA players were caught tampering with the ball. Bob Woolmer, who was the coach of SA at the time, rubbished that claim . Not so coincidentally, he happens to be the coach of the Pak now, who, even without his assistance, have been masters at the art of tampering. But in the end, I think what Holding says is what is right (from Cricinfo - Quote…unquote ):

Every fast bowler does it. Its like performance enhancing drugs. If you are smart, you don’t get caught. That’s all.
All in all this controversy has been a lot of fun. Get this: there is even a blog that has popped up: supportdarrellhair.blogspot.com.

Pak-Eng 20/20 and One-dayers

I think the Hair controversy was really the shot in the arm that Pak needed. After being totally outplayed in the test series (well, in the 3rd test they had a chance to win; but now that does not count) they are back with a bang in the one-dayers. They just outclassed England in the 20/20. Only rain prevented a drubbing by Pakistan in the first one-dayer. It has so far been a no-contest. England watch out.

US Open

I really really hate it when I miss matches like the one where Agassi just now beat Baghdatis in 5 sets. Been busy with work and so just saw the score on the internet. Anyway, YAY! for Agassi’s win. Baghdatis is a tough player and like Agassi, a crowd favourite. Agassi must’ve played quite well.

As I wrote here, it was a great first round match between Agassi and Pavel, which Agassi prevailed. But when he was coming back from 0-4 down (and when Pavel was not at his best health, I might add), at 3-4 I think, there was a shot from Pavel, that to me looked on the line, but called out, as the play was being played out. Pavel challenged and the ruling stood. There was not a single replay of the actual point shown. Only computer simulated arcs. The very next service game with Agassi serving, there was a serve that looked out to the naked eye, but Agassi challenged and the ruling was in Agassi’s favour. Again only computer simulated arcs. I think that sucks.

Anyway, I am a huge fan of Agassi and no matter what, I am glad he won.

In the men’s side, unless his name is Nadal, he must be playing for the second prize. I have no idea whether anybody even dreams that he can beat Federer. If Federer plays well, on this court only Nadal will be able to sustain a little bit of fight (mind you, not beat him, but just play a little longer). But I also hope Roddick someday will be mentally strong enough to challenge Federer and Nadal. On the women’s side quite a few names that can win it all. Henin-Herdenne, Mauresmo, Sharapova and S. Williams should all contend. My favourite for years has been Davenport, but she is been hobbling recently and seems like she might do her usual Q.F or S.F round and exit. Sania Mirza should count herself lucky that she got to the second round.

And BTW, in other useless tennis news: Roddick and Sharapova reportedly dating. They were also seen together at the ESPYs and the previous day at Hefner’s house.

Steroid News of the Week

Seems like there is a steroid news every week (btw, this is my favourite of all sports subjects ). A report finds that the players of Caronila Panthers (NFL) uses steroid extensively during the 2003 season when they went to the Super Bowl. Here’s what I would like to know. Is there even any investigation required to find this out? Can just looking at them be termed “investigation”? And only some players from only the 2003 season of one franchise took steroids? Got to be kiddin’, right? How about someone investigating whether there is any player in the NFL that does not use some kind of performance enhancing drugs?

But I love NFL. Everybody dopes and so one team can not really get an unfair advantage over the other. Everybody is on a level playing field. So it is more fun to watch.

Other Sports News

• India are the champions of the South Asia Games . Zzzzz..
• USA is one step closer to winning the FIBA basketball world championship.
• Something that will really help our (India’s) national game get some prominence.
• Ravi Shastri says, Dravid - Waugh Waugh.
• Harbhajan starts day dreaming. Bhajji, can you please start setting small goals first. Say, beating West Indies, or something?

“So what?”. Thats probably what you are thinking.

But I was like, “who better?” because there was a controversy sometimes back on whether Clorox contained pesticides.

[IIRC, actually the controversy was about its claim that its bleach contained pesticidal properties. The news was spun by public into “Clorox is a pesticide”]

PS: The heading: here’s the news link, which I forgot to add y’day.

It was a great 1st round match. One set all. Down 0-4 in the third set. He won the third and then just romped home in the 4th.

I think this is the first open where the players are allowed to challenge line calls. I am not yet sure about how many challenges each player gets etc. But one odd thing about the telecast is that replayes for all close line calls including challenges are shown only using the hawk-eye like computer simulation (whatever it is called.. still catching up on things!!). No real replay. That actually sucks.

What some states have to do to stay in the news..

I love sports. All kinds. I have been thinking of writing more regularly on sports, but it takes time. And that’s the one thing that I manage really badly. So it never materializes. And I am attempting to change it with this post. In general, I follow most of the sports from India and US. In fact, I should say I follow US sports more because I get to watch them.

Awesome Tiger

First up, Tiger Woods. Last Sunday he won his 12th major tournament. He now stands second only to Jack Nicklaus, who had 18. This guy is already the best golfer in history. I know, I know, we do have a tendency to label extraordinary efforts with “the best ever” tag. But Tiger is different. Look at the stats and where he stands in golf history.

• 12 professional majors - 2nd all time. And in almost all of them just destroyed the field.
• 51 PGA tour wins - 6th (tied) all time
• Never lost a lead in majors after 54 holds. He won all 12 of them
• Holds (or tied with) the record for lowest score under par in history of all 4 majors
• Check his website for all the records he holds

And Tier is only 30. If he stays injury free, within about 5-6 years, he will not have any records to play for. They say a golfer primes in his 30s. And if he is only beginning to prime, the rest of the field as well start playing, I don’t know, Poker or something.

Controversial Hair Day

Anyone who follows cricket knows that Darrel Hair holds a maters in umpiring controversies . Last Sunday he obtained a Ph.D. I wouldn’t necessarily say that he was biased in any of the decisions, as many folks have done. But he surely seems like someone prone to snobbishness. I think the umpires should strive to facilitate the progress of the game and not take over the game themselves. In this particular situation, the seam of the ball had come out. In this ultra-electronic age, not a single TV camera caught any Pakistani player scrubbing the ball. In addition, the ball was being sent to the concretes repeatedly by Kevin Pietersen. So, whatever it was, it would have made sense for Hair to consult the Fourth Umpire, Match Refree and anyone of power before taking the decision. Steve Waugh said Hair can be stubborn and hard-nosed at times, but he later put a positive spin to it. I think this is the very facet of Hair that is negative about him.

It has to be said, however, that Hair’s controversial decisions do have some merit. Hence I don’t agree that they have been biased. In fact, among all the controversies, the most famous are the Murali no-balling incident and the one that happened last Sunday. If you look closely at Murali bowling, unless you are a die hard SL fan, it is impossible not to get the feeling that his elbow is bent as well as that he is chucking. I have a difficult time digesting the argument that the action is what it is because of the some physical disability.

And in the middle of this controversy, the PCB chairman Shahrayar Khan, in addition to being very critical of Hair, had this to say:

What has cricket to do with muslim people and christian people?

Catching up to lost Dream.

The most prestigious basketball league in the world is the NBA. The majority of the best ballers are from the US. So, why have US failed to be successful at the international arena, of late? Two reasons. (1) The overwhelming over-confidence that they are superior to every other team and hence sending their second or third string players. (2) The team owners (and the players) concerned more about their NBA team than their country. Understandable because the players are being paid in millions by their NBA team. The team owner’s revenue depends on his/her star player being healthy.

But this seems to be changing a bit. A few embarrassing failures, most notably in the Olympics, made them and the players realize that other nations are catching up and if we are to play for the pride of being the best, we have to field close to the best team possible. With D-Wade, L-James and C-Anthony and others, the team is starting to beat up counties like they are supposed to in the ongoing World Basketball Championship , although they did get a bit of a scare from Italy. I do feel from watching the games that the over-confidence factor is still there with the players.

It is very difficult to match the Dream Team. How can a team with these players ever be matched: Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Karl Malone, John Stockton, Patrick Ewing, Clyde Drexler, Scottie Pippen, David Robinson and Chris Mullin. Quite difficult. But if Wade, James, Anthony and company can keep it up (and also play for US in the coming years), they won’t be very far being. Unlikely to match the Dream Team. But close.

Other Stories of Interest

• South Aftrica after pulling out of the tri-series is getting in line to play England if Pakistan pulls out of the one day series.
• India’s push towards becoming a football super power took a beating when they were beaten by Sri Lanka in the South Asian Games. India, by the way, is beating up on other SAF countries in the games.
• Vishy Anand won the World Rapid Championship in the Mainz Chess Classic for the sixth straight year. After he lost the second round, I thought may be this is not his year. But he comes back to win it. And in the u-20 section in Mainz, Harikrishna became the world rapid chess champion.
• And finally, my favourite subject. Recently sprinters Gatlin and Marion Jones were caught cheating (with drugs, I mean). Marion Jones said she was “shocked” that the results were positive. Sigh! I will just point you to my other posts on this subject.

A couple of recent news items suggests that India is starting to move in US’s steps (I compare it to US because I have stayed only in India and US!). One of them good, the other bad.

1. First the good one. “One India, One Rate” . On the even of the Independence day, we started a flat rate scheme for Speed Posts in India. The rates will just be based on weight and not the destination and its distance.. High time, I think. The faster it is extended to all types of postal services, the better.
2. And then this. Not surprising. It had to eventually happen. But sad nonetheless.

Someone sent a link to a google video of a Malayali mimicry group. I clicked on it. Link not found. Not to be fooled, I went on my own web surfing to find it. Within a few minutes I had gone in a totally different direction.

First, I searched for mimicry in YouTube. There I saw this. I did not know Sonu Nigam could do voices so well. Amazingly gifted. (Although, I would have enjoyed it better if the the video and audio were actually in sync).

After that, I started searching for Sonu Nigam. I saw a few links to clips of TVS SaReGaMa, the singing compition on Zee which started way back in days I was in college. What caught my eye was a series of clips of Shreya Ghoshal. I wondered what is up with Shreya Ghoshal. And started listening to each clips. Amazing. For a teenager she sang songs as close to Lata/Asha as I have ever heard. Really really gifted. Listen to them for yourselves. For example, in the “Golden Moments - 2″, we can hear a tiny bit of “Ajee Rooth Kar Ab” and then a good bit of “Paan Khaye Saiya”. Two great and difficult songs. She sang them effortlessly. Other clips, “Saari Saari Raat” and “Jhoomka Gira Re” were great too. While I was hearing some of the songs, I just googled for her name and there you go, at 18, she has already signed mega films and sang in Devdas, Krrish to name a few.

Unlike other times when I just go into this meaningless websurfing trip, this one was really a worthwhile trip.

PS: Happy Independence Day!

Its been a crazy week and only today I got time to actually go through the scorecards of the recently concluded SL v SA and Eng v Pak test matches. As I was looking at the Eng b Pak scorecard, I saw that Sajid Mahmood and Monty Panesar played prominent role in England’s victory. So I was trying to think where those of Indians origin represented other countries.

There are many in the West Indies cricket team. Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan to name the prominent among them. England was captained by a half Indian Nasser Hussain. It now has Monty Panesar. There are/were a few wannabes in OA Shah and Mark Ramprakash. There are many playing in the English county circuit. England also has a future captain material captaining the U-19 side in Varun Chopra. New Zealand has Jeetan Patel (and had Deepak Patel). Kenyan Cricket team is full of them. Hashim Amla became the first cricketer of Indian origin to play for South Africa (whom Dean Jones referred to as a terrorist).

Outside of Cricket, Vikash Dhorasoo played for the French soccer team in the recently concluded world cup. Mohini Bharadwaj represented US Gymnastics team in Olympics. Vijay Singh is from Fiji and plays pretty good Golf.

More than anything else, it tells where all people from India have gone (or been forcefully taken) and settled down. Quite amazing.

But as you can see its been mostly cricket and only very little of other sports. Is it because that is the only sport that we are good at? Or is it the only one the parents allow their kids to be good at? I don’t see a single player of Indian origin in any of the college sports that are shown in TV in the US. Not in baseball, football, basketball, tennis or track and field.

PS:

1. ESPN obvisouly considers Spelling Bee a sport, since it telecasts them live. So there are many more sportspersons of Indian origin that I have not named.
2. There was one Indian looking guy in the Bob Knight’s reality show on ESPN.

Even though he never quite complained about India taking away the US jobs, his constant harping about US losing jobs to India and China and the US lawmakers doing nothing about it, made for really painful viewing couple of years back. After that they changed his programme to much earlier time and the repeat also gets over by 6pm PST and so I never watched it for a long time and never missed it.
For quite some time now, he also writes a column on CNN every Wednesday. I started reading those columns with a negative bias because of the opinion I formed after watching his TV programme. But I must say that I have changed those views. He is very vocal on unemployment, porous borders, failing schools and incompetent politicians (Dem and Rep). After a few columns I now get that he is just very concerned about the US and its security and economy, like every US citizen should be. And now I feel that it would be nice if they had “Lou Dobbs Tonight” in primetime for us to watch.

Here is more silly timepass by British researchers.

A couple of previously noted British research here.

Update: And would you believe it. Another British study is out today. The study concluded that it will take 150 years for women to have equal pay. And how did they come to conclusion? In the past 30 years the wage gap shrinked by 20%. And so they did some research and studies and found out that it will take 150 years to shrink it by 100%.

… As the gender pay gap at the age of 30 is about 20 per cent, this suggests it will take 150 years for this gap to disappear.

Floyd Landis beat me to it. When he won the Tour de France last Sunday, the first thing that came to my mind is: ok, here’s is the latest one on drugs. Especially because he is, just like Lance, one of those who has “overcome great obstacles”. He is battling through such a scary hip injury that the only way out is to have a hip replacement surgery. Not as bad as the cancer that Lance had, but bad enough. What this means to them are (1) You can have as much drugs as possible and if something happens, it can be easily attributed to the medications that he is taking, entailing him to reject any allegations of drug use. (2) More fans. I mean, who is not thrilled by a feel good story of overcoming the odds. In fact, it is extremely praiseworthy and amazing to do the “overcoming the odds” thingy, but for (1).

I wanted to write about it as soon as Landis wond the Tour, but forgot. Today he tested positive for high levels of testosterone, a performance enhancing steroid. I say he is stupid. US is the R&D centre of the performance enhancing drug world, with drugs that can go undetected in tests. And he tested for testosterone? What is the world was he smoking thinking?

US is a country where drug use is so prevalent in sports (is there any doubt if you look at the football/baseball/basketball players?) that the only way to fix it is to legalize it. No one is much concerned about it anyway (In fact, USOC encourages drug use). It is only when athletes from other countries use them, we have a problem. Our athletes never get caught because of two reasons: First, International testers do not have the balls to tell the truth on favoured and famous athletes from the US. Second, we are so much ahead of the technology that international testing programs do not even have tests to detect the latest designer steroids.

To have a level playing field, the only way is to legalize it. Allow every athlete to juice their body with whatever they can put their hands on. Doesn’t matter whether these drugs are going to start debilitating their body and life the next day. Make these drugs accessible in every country. Have a branch of BALCO in every country. In the end, athletes have access to these killer drugs but it is their choice whether to put them in their system or not. Then let them compete. (And the survivours can easily make a transition to WWF).

PS: Actually I would not be surpised, if enough pressure is exerted and Landis’ second test comes back negative and everyone lives happily ever after

I am hearing Sports Radio, Baseball commentary etc on radio. Everything is “brought to you by” some company. If you hear baseball games on radio, the manager’s “trip to the pitching mound” is usually “brought to you by” someone, say, hypothetically, Coors Light. And many times the “trip to the pitching mound” itself will be called “Coors Light trip to the pitching mound”. And hence this will be announced as: “This Coors Light trip to the pitching mound is brought to you by..(surprise, surprise) Coors Light”. I am wondering why Miller Light does not sponsor the “Coors Light trip to the pitching mound”.

Although, this is not limited to sports, it is more common during sports breaks. “Budweiser Hot Seat presented by Budweiser”. “Cingular At the Half, presented by Cingular”. “Toyota half time report brought to you by Toyota”. Why don’t they do this more often in other news or programs? For example, in Los Angeles, the local news could be the “Taser Local news brougt to you by Taser”. “This Hummer Gas Price Update brought to you by Hummer”. Or may be they could even name the commercial breaks. “IBM Commercial Break presented by IBM”.