Thursday, July 20, 2006

Too much of a good thing!

All year long, the Brits long for the freakin' Sun, struggling to keep the cold out and struggling with the miserable rain. And now they can't stand it when the heat is on. These Brits, I tell you! 36 degs and they want out. Please come to Delhi in the summer, dearies - 47 and counting will make you all yearn for peak January winter.

As Obelix says, these Britons are crazy!

Monday, July 17, 2006

Thank God for British humour

In a bloody mad world, where cannot-be-rationalized shit happens (Zidane's head butt, The Mumbai serial bomb blasts and the Israel-Lebanon-Hezbollah conflict), I sincerely recommend a strong dose of good old Brit humour to make sense of it all. Call me escapist, but if the damn terrorists (and the apparently accused - like Zidane was) could read up such stuff, they would have far less time to create damage.

Thank you, Martin Johnson, for livening up cricket, and life, for me!

Thursday, July 06, 2006

The hell hole called Koramangala

Koramangala used to be a very beautiful, very posh and very nice extension of Bangalore 10 years back. I remember my first job in Bangalore, with the office on the main Koramangala road just 200 meters from Raheja Arcade. The road was spacious, not too much traffic, the restaurants were great and it was a place one aspired to come to/live in/hang out etc. The travel time from my home to Koramangala (distance ~ 12 km) was not more than 30 mins.

Come 2006, and one visit to Koramangala is enough to convince any die hard city slicker to dump it all and move to the Amazon with a fishing rod in hand and Odomus in the pocket. Getting into Koramangala from any side is pretty much impossible. Try the Dairy Circle route - the flyover (which took 100 years to build) has cleared up that junction, but has pushed the traffic jam to just after the flyover ends (opposite Christ College). 30 mins is on par to cross Christ College and the Forum at peak hours. Try the Indiranagar side, from the Inner Ring Road. Just after the Sony Showroom, be prepared for undefined traffic logjams (could vary from 30 mins - 1 1/2 hrs) between Canara Bank and BDA Complex and beyond. Try Silk Board and Madivala - same bloody story, and the oneways don't help either.

Net net, the only option is perhaps a drop from the sky via helicopter.

What's happening (according to me anyway) is that flyovers are being done on all sides - Dairy Circle, Silk Board and Indiranagar Inner Ring Road - but the heart of the matter is left undisturbed. Traffic has grown exponentially, and the roads within the locality have remained the same. This has led to a logjam that logically cannot be cleared unless traffic reduces, because there is no place to expand roads!

Why, oh why did this come to such a pass?
The supreme irony, however, is that 2400 sq feet sites go for anything between 1 crore - 1.5 crore now. Surreal, crazy, simply unexplainable!

Monday, July 03, 2006

Yay a significant series win overseas

- At last - something to savour. A serious Test series win overseas against meaningful opposition.
- History will probably forget that this Windies team was one of the weakest ever.
- History will forget that we could have won this 3-0 atleast.
- Dravid was an absolute colossus - really!
- Kumble was terrific throughout - amazing how he can keep churning out performances like this when it matters, and increasingly overseas as well.
- Poor Sachin - missed out this series, and may actually end his career without ever being part of a team that won overseas.
- Ganguly who?

No, this is big. This is real big, for a starved nation. Why does it not feel so? Is it me? Is it the football? Is it the awkward timings of the matches? This must be BIG. I guess it will be, soon enough!

What do I know about football?

Nothing at all, absolute zilch!
After all, I predicted foolishly that Riquelme and Messi and Crespo would be the attacking force that would put German aspirations to rest. How was I to know Argentina would prefer the defensive tactics usually used by Germany and Italy? What do I know?
Was I crazy to assume Rooney, Gerrard and Lampard - absolute stars for their respective English clubs where they scored goals at will - would be able to even half-replicate that form in an England shirt? Of course I was - and I was plain stupid to ignore England's terrible penalty kicking!
However, my biggest blunder has to be the absolutely naive assumption that a bunch of 11 brilliant footballers should make a hald decent team with attacking intentions. Wrong, plain wrong! Ronaldinho/Ronaldo/Adriano/Kaka/Robinho simply cannot score when they play with each other against a half decent organized team, evidently!

So there you have it - 3 of my 4 predictions went totally awry, and my grandmom predicted Italy would win, so that is no consolation.

What do I know about football? Or was the penalty shootouts football at all?