Afghanistan in Sports

I came across this link.

http://ia.rediff.com/cricket/2006/mar/27deep.htm

Afghanistan doing well in sports is an encouraging sign. Given a chance I think they will come good in Cricket/Hockey/Squash due to thier close proximity to Pakistan and many north west frontier pakistani's are in fact of afghan orgin (The Peshawaris). Time has to answer if this will continue.

It happens only in Tamil Nadu

One news in a tamil website says that Rajnikanth fans are forcing him to come to politics, after his announcement that his fans can vote for any party they like and he will not influence them. The reason the fans give,

"Other lesser popular actors are already into politics and the fans of Rajini cant face the fans of other actors already in politics."

This happens only in Tamil nadu. Looks like nobody is interested in getting a better governance. All they want from Rajnikanth is just come to politics so that the fans can answer Rajini's critics. Nobody respects Rajini as an individual and at the end of the day he has the rights to do what he wants. If he is not interested in politics that his decision. Only in Tamilnadu people see stars as GODs and when they do something which the fans dont like they start cribbing that the stars are not interested in people's welfare. They never realise that all these things look idiotic for an outsider.

Technology Startups in India

The last two years lot of software and chip design start-ups have sprung up in Bangalore. Glad to see India slowly moving in the direction of product development from the Services sector. But it would be interesting to see a statistic of how many such start-ups suceeded and compare that with the success rate of Silicon Valley start-ups in the late 90's. Something tells me that India's supply of quality talent in the technology sector is very less. Though we have so many Engineering colleges churning out young graduates every year I doubt if 10% of them are coming out as quality engineers that the industry demands.

For start-ups to be successful, in my opinion, they need to have really good and dedicated people who dont get bogged down by failures and fight till they succeed. The next few years will be interesting to see how the product industry and SMEs develop. If we can fight against the odds and bringout products from our country it will be a major leap in-terms of projecting India as a country capable of producing technology products of international quality rather than just be a services garage.

What is going wrong with Team India?

Just before the Pakistan series I told some of my friends(when we went to Coorg for New year) that Team India will no longer be Team India without Daada. I am not a Bengali and am not a Rahul Dravid hater. In fact am a great fan of Rahul for his batting. The reasons I told were that

1. The youngsters will no longer get the kind of support that Ganguly gave them and hence that will lead to a feeling of insecurity.
2. Dravid is a gentleman cricket. Captaincy requires a different character. You got to be agressive and be a person who stares at the opposition straight at the eye. I love Ganguly for this character itself. The way he tackled Steve Waugh in 2001 series in India by deliberately walking late for the toss showed that he is quite a character.

Now the results are showing up. And I found it interesting when Times of India came out with the same reasons. Read this link.

http://cricket.indiatimes.com/quickiearticleshow/msid-1462632.cms


One thing is sure. Appointing Chappel cost India dear. He is expecting to bring in the Australian work ethics in Indian team. That will work in Australia but not in India for the following reasons.

1. If a player doesnt perform in Australia and he is shown the door there are dozens of quality players waiting in the reserves. But in India we dont have that many quality players. So we got to live with whatever we have and we need to slowly nurture them and build a team which Ganguly did a really great job.

2. Indians are emotional when compared to Aussies. So if a player is dropped he feels emotionally drawn back and he gets a sense of insecurity. This further affects his performance.


All I could say is that Kiran More, Chappel and co did the greatest dis-service to Indian cricket by dropping Ganguly. He should have been persisted with a little longer though his personal batting performance was bad. He would have atleast made sure that he created a core Indian team for the future before he left. With Sachin, Dravid and Laxman already nearing the end of their careers India hasnt identified the core team for the next generation. Hopefully we dont go back to the dark days of the pre-ganguly period.

What makes Inventions happen in the US

Sometimes I wonder how the US manages to have so much information and they pioneer in most of the inventions. One of my colleague told me the other day during a lunch that the US goverment funds to research about every damn thing. You ask them a statistic how many people below the age of 18 have too much of potato chips a day, chances are that they will have the information available in a mouse click.

Its exactly these kind of statistical analysis that points out a pattern and shows certain necessity. When the necessity is identified it leads to an invention - as the saying goes "Necessity is the mother of all inventions". Hope India grows to have such kind of statistics taken in the future.

Interesting Link on Product Beta

As I struggle through my work pressures on getting our beta product out, I came across this interesting article on beta. A nice read.

http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/01/09/dont-blow-your-beta/

Daada Dropped Again

Daada is dropped for the England series saying that youngsters ought to be given chance. I am also one among the umpteen Daada fans got shocked by this exclusion. What is baffling is the reasons given by the bunch of jokers. Kiran More says that the same yardstick cant be applied to Sachin. Guys watch out. Sachin will score one hundred in the series against England and rest all scores will be less than 30. Even that hundred will come in a match that is of least significance. Media will jump up and down saying Sachin is the greatest of all and he is able to comeback in adversities. If Daada does the same thing the statement thats given is scoring one hundred in 10 matches is not enough and he should show consistency. This should be the joke of the millenium. Hope the media stops over rating and over hyping about Sachin. Lets wait and see whats going to be Daada's future.

In my opinion he should consider the so many fans he has won and the so many people who care for him as the greatest things he earned in his life and peacefully retire now. Its no point in fighting against a bunch of jokers.

On Cricket

Missed the whole Indo-Pak series as I was dropped into a country that doesnt know CRICKET. These people play a funny game called NFL. I could only watch some clippings of this series, thanks to CNN IBN and its free video service. One of my friend sent this Wikipedia link about street cricket. Brought back the nostalgic memories of the childhood days and the street crickets. I would say I had used almost 95% of the terms described here. Read this at leisure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_cricket

A Post to Show my Absolute Vetti-ness

I am getting bored to death here in Boston and hence started to scribble something here. Today being a holiday here on account of President's day (BTW who celebrates that here !!!!) I had to sit out whole day vetti infront of my TV and my laptop in my hotel room. What can I pen here? Mmmm. I am not even getting a topic. Watched Idhaya Thirudan over the weekend. The least I talk about it the better. Charan's direction is going deep South I would say. How could he come up with such a crap movie? Well till I get my next topic to blog and show my vettiness here, keep waiting.