Pick your choice

Horses, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

India had already won the series and this last match was only of statistical importance. But, if its a match between India and Pakistan, the spirits are never less than a war cry. India rested Sachin for this match to give its other young players a chance. Except Dravid, and the comparatively more experienced Yuvraj and Zaheer, the Indian team was a full blown team of youngsters, given a chance to prove their mettle on Pakistani soil, at Karachi.

Pakistan's opening pair Akmal and Imran Farhat gave them a very good start. But Sreesanth was on song this day, and he took 4 wickets to rock the Pakistani top order. A late surge from Mohammed Yousuf, helped Pakistan pile up a score of 287 runs.

Chasing a score close to 300 is always not easy. But, India had successfully chased in the past 12 matches already, and had won all of the matches in this series while chasing. Dravid opened with Gambhir, and gave India a very good start. Pakistani fielders were all over the place, squandering the ball. Dravid was playing very cautiously, and after the dismissal of a rather reclusive Gambhir, arrived the in-form Yuvraj. Watching Yuvraj was a treat. He made batting look so easy !!! He was top notch form, and was in great nick with the kind of timing and placement he had in his strokes. The match was getting interesting and Indians were in complete command.

Just then, while surfing the channels, I came across another live match happening in Sri Lanka. It was the Under 19 World Cup Finals match between India and Pakistan again !!! Indian bowlers, especially the spinners, bowled extremely well to bowl out Pakistan for 107 runs. It was indeed a very lackluster batting from Pakistan, and the result of the match was a given, until ....

I couldnt believe what i was seeing on TV. Jamshaid Ahmed, the Wasim Akram look alike, left arm bowler, bowled a beauty and knocked off the bails off the very first ball !!! The over was full of great swing owling. Huffs and puffs all over the place with the ball miraculously missing the bat, the batsman and the stumps. In the next over, Anwar Ali, started off with a no ball. The next ball swung in deep and the batsman was caught plumb LBW. India were 2 down for 5 runs. Next 2 balls were again noballs. And then came a ball, which was like a fast bowler bowling offspin !!! The ball pitches some 3 feet outside the off stump and crashes into the stumps !!! With such great in-swinging, that too in the second innings of the match, it was not at all surprising that India were 4 wickets down for the score of 8 runs after 2 overs !!! This match was getting over really fast. The next over by Jamshed was just like watching Wasim Akram bowl. All beautiful late out swingers, just beating the bat. And the last ball, was a decieving inswinger, knocking off the bail on the off stump. The batsman was caught unaware, and was trapped well. The next over saw another Indian wicket falling in 3 balls [ one ball was another Anwar Ali no ball, but i am sure the pakistanis wont mind those no balls ]. India were 6 down with just 9 runs on board !!! It was a disaster, you could hardly have expected in any match.

Luckily for India, the umpires called in for lunch !!! Otherwise, the match would have ended in another 10 minutes. After this disastrous start, which usually happens in low scoring matches, it was no suprise that India lost the final :( I definately wanted India to get over with this low scoring match and win the finals, but the superb bowling, especially from Jamshed, really made it a treat to watch. Even, Dhoni and Yuvraj's great shots, didnt generate that much sizzle as this great bowling did. Sometimes, its just not the hard hitting batsmen, but also some really good inspiring swinging bowling, that make cricket such a wonderful sport to watch.

It really was tough choosing which of these 2 simulataneously running matches to watch.

Uneventful

Nothing eventful happened this week, when i was down with fever and cold. But yeah, one definatly noteworthy thing was that my Flickr Photostream got viewed 1000 times :)

Also, India bounced back quite convincingly in the second match of the 5 match series to level the series at 1-1. It was a treat to the eyes to watch Sehwag bat effortlessly. Poor fellow, he had a real horribly unlucky dismissal with the ball coming straight down on the stumps when it was thrown from the thirdman boundary, and that too after the wicket keeper missed to hold the ball in his hands !!! Now, thats called "destined to be out" :)

Apart from watching DDLJ [ yeah again !!! ... not sure if this was the 43rd or the 44th time i watched :p .. come on .. i dont even count it now :) ], and "Two Week's Notice", I also watched the great Muralidharan [ i hope he spelt it numerologically right here :p ] innings :) in the second of the best fo three finals between Sri Lanka and Australia. Sri Lanka undoubtedly had no answer to Australia's 368. Sadly, i didnt watch the Aussie innings when Symonds and Ponting butchered their attack. But watching Murali bat was some fun. He hit 2 huge sixes of Brad Hogg. Then i heard the commentators say that Murali had created a new world record of conceeding the highest number of runs in a limited over match. 99 - 0 for the record. He did salvage some pride by scoring 22 later on, with 2 sixes and a boundary. Mind you, all these were good cricketing shots, not just the swing of the bat, in Srinath style :)

Changing colors

Google has come up with the most elegant and the most obvious solutions to combine Google Mail with Google Chat. Read more about it here. After read about this feature, it looked so simple and so obvious !!! as if it was always there staring right in your face and somebody just had to do it. Great innovations are usually simple :)

Yahoo did have this, but wasnt very user friendly, with their Java based client. What I liked even more in Google, was that they provided a backup of the chats to store straight away into your mailbox. Thats something really cool, since we anyway use the same login creds for both mail and chats. I even tried it out today, and the format in which the chats are stored is really sleek and very good.

Gnome, with Nat's dashboard idea, had all the ingredients for this feature, but i guess the Gnome platform was in itself a limitation for the usefulness of this idea. Gnome and other desktops now a days have the presence notification of your contacts in built with various applications combining to give you a very knowledgable use of them. Something like, your mail app, integrates with the presence notification app, and your chat app, and when you find your buddy online, you could directly ping him on chat, or going a step forward you can as well, have a video conference with him !! By providing the "presence" notification of your chat buddies in your browser [ mail ], Google makes it very convenient and user friendly, and obviously crossplatform. You are sending a mail to a person, and you find him online, then better chat, rather than mail him :).

Recently, I joined my PU college mailing list on yahoo, and was reading the old mails there. These guys were all in different geographical locations, and were sending mails to the mailing list. Just by seeing their mails being replied while they were still logged on to the net, they started sending one liner mails asking ... "hey, you seem to be online, login to messenger, lets chat". I guess, we will no longer see such mails anymore with this new feature from Google :)

Another story coming up from Google, is that, they are planning to have people chat with eachother, irrespective of the service provider they are logged in to. Something like, while i am on Google Chat, i could talk to another of my friend who is logged into Yahoo chat. This would definately take a lot of time to happen i guess, but the idea is very good. This they say is the same way how the telephone industry has evolved. No matter, which telephone service provider gives you the phone, you can always call up your friend.

Rang De Basanti

Violet, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

Watched Rang De Basanti this weekend with Anu, Sai and Srikanth [ the Bajaj guy ]. Was nice to go out with friends for a movie after such a long time. The movie was good. The concept and the blending of the scenes from the past to the present is done very well. The best part about this is that Aamir doesnt quite take all the limelight , though he does add a lot of fun and holds the friends together. The first half is very hilarious and reminds one of his college days. The only thing that lacks in this movie is a strong story. I felt that the main story, or the main point that the director wants to convey is delayed very long. I didnt get hold of what the movie was all about even at the interval. Only after the interval there is something like a story, towards which all the characters move along. The acting, the dialogues, the sound track, all these keep you occupied in the seat. It is definately worth a watch. The females sitting next to us were huge Aamir Khan fans, with all clapping going on when his name was shown and even when for his introductory scene.

This Sunday, I had to stay at home alone, [ parents were out of town and sis was working !!! ]. I was happy that i could watch the final test between India and Pakistan at leisure, but thanks to KPTCL, there was no power the whole day :(. I had to go back to cleaning my room, and do some reading and listen to some radio to keep myself occupied. But then, in the evening once the power came back, I was surprised to hear that Irfan Pathan had taken a hat trick in his very first over, and that India were batting at 50/4 !!! And this was just the first day !!! ... After having 2 lame draws in the series, I could hardly believe that 14 wickets had already fallen on day one of this match !!! On seeing the highlights, things became clear. The fast bowlers were swinging the ball more than Shane Warne to spin !!!. The pitch was deadly. [ So much for saying that the previous matches were played on "dead" pitched :p ]

In the night, watched 36 Chambers of Shaolin. A very classic movie. I still remember watching this when i was about 3 years old i guess :) [ may be i watched again later, but i dont remember so ... ] The scenes were so funny. Well, the main idea of this film was that with patience and perseverance and determination, man can achieve anything. The tasks that the Shaolins call as the basic things to become a Kung Fu wrestler look so simple and yet so difficult to perform. Thats where the humour is shown. The crux of the movie in in how Sontag [ the hero ] overcomes all these difficulties and after reaching all the 35 chambers of the Shaolin, decides to create the 36th Chamber, so that he can teach the common man, about Kung Fu.

2005 Journal of Catchy Colors: Sarfraaz

2005 Journal of Catchy Colors: Sarfraaz

I was so happy to see that this pic of mine was selected for this beautiful journal :) I thought that i should definately be blogging about this :) Feel like patting myself for making into this journal :)

Retrospection

Lake view, originally uploaded by Sarfraaz.

This was sometime in the mid of December last year. Was a very very frustrating time for me. That particular weekend, i just didnt find any peace. Was getting so agitated with each and everything and everyone. It was tough. I guess everyone goes through such phases in life a few times. Earlier, while staying alone, it was very easy for me to seclude myself from all and just retrospect. But now, things were a bit different. I drove away and sat beside a lake, just thinking about all the things in my mind. I have this habit of noting down the things on a piece of paper so that i dont loose the threads running in mu mind. That day, i was surprised to find that I had close to 20 items running in my head !!! Well, definately not all of them going no simulataneously in my mind, but those were the things that i had to get done. A hell lot of backlog of things to say the least :(

Discipline in life, they say, helps to focus your thoughts and channel your energies well. It isnt that tough to learn about discipline. Whats tough is to be disciplined. The main reason for not doing most of the things was may be I had plenty of things on my plate at once. I had to prioritise them and start finishing up one after the other. It was good that i wrote down those things, as it helped me remember things that i lost track of.

While thinking about all these things, a few more general thoughts came to my mind. Its said that work grows to occupy the time alloted to it. This is a very well known fact in all the industries where estimations are done, and finally at the end of the day, people realise that the alloted time was never sufficient to complete that task. Its just the result of work growing to cover up the time you had. I guess, the reason is just not that. The reason, most of the time is complacency, which leads to procrastination. I also believe that one tends to comlpete more work, when his hands are full with a lot of tasks. This in a way complements the earlier thought about work expanding itself in the allotted time. If you have enough tasks on hand, which put you in a crunch situation, you are bound to complete most of the tasks. Ofcourse, the drawback of this could be that the work might not always be effecient, depending on the skill of the person. I guess, thats why they say that its only a busy person who enjoy's his leisure :)

Movies

A List of movies that i have watched in the past couple of months after Ramzan

• The Legend of Zorro

This should rather have been called as "Family of Zorro" :) ... Watching Antonio Bendares and Catherine Zeta Jones with Zorro Junior playing tricks and fights was more fun than entertaining. Bendares was looking older, as if he had lost the touch for the fight scenes. Catherine was at her best in her role, and protrayed it really well. You can watch this movie for her :), or well, for the Zorro Junior. This kid has a few nice scenes maintaining the tradition of the Zorro family fo saving the less fortunate people. Its fun watching this kid, but he unfortunately doesnt have a lot of scenes. It definately was not as good as the Mask of Zorro. Sequeals always seem to be failing badly in Hollywood.

• Dus

Thats exactly how much time you would want to sit watching this movie. Pathetic movie to say the least. The only good part was the "Dus bahane" song in the starting when they show the titles. And probably "deedar de" later on in the movie, for its good music, though the song picturisation is nothing less than some really bad remix songs you get these days. The story line is so easily predictable, and ... oh well .. forget it .. i dont wanna write anything more about this movie.

• Aashiq Banaya Aapne

This movie has some really good songs. But alas, only songs dont make a movie. Tanushree Dutta was good in this movie. The funny part about her was that, whenever she smiles in the movie, it looks like she is holding one roshogulla in each of her cheeks :)

• Main Meri Patni aur Woh

This is by far the best movie in this lot, and definately a good movie that i have watched after a long time, may be the only good movie I watched after Page 3. Rajpal Yadav is just awesome in his role in this movie. He has portrayed his role of a simple living bachelor, earning enough for himself, who is the best at his job [ librarian ] , and then, the role of a prospective bride groom, trying to break the ice with his prospective bride, and then the suspicious husband to perfection. The setting in city of Lucknow, with some very nice Hindi dialogues, and a simple story line, make this film very much watchable, though it kinda looses its hold somewhere in the middle in the second half, and then the much expected climax is made very sentimental, and kinda gels in with the mood of the movie. The gazal in the movie "Guncha" is very good, and ofcourse so is the sound track. The first part of the movie is very nice and funny, with all the marriage proposal fun, and then the added irregularity where the bride is actually taller than her bride groom. Some very well executed scenes to watch here.