Ox,Bull,Buffalo,Cow

ok, we spent 3 hrs on Saturday in office trying to argue about the "distinguishable features" of all the above named animals

True Spirit of Christmas

Since, I was a kid, Christmas has always been special for me.It was always an occasion to look forward to, not only for gifts, but also because it gave a change for us kids to feel good, meet other cousins and have a good time.

And so when I decided to do my MBA away from Mumbai, one thing on my mind was, how will Christmas be away from home? I want to be at home, i must.But that wasn't something I had control over.

Christmas eve came.Although my parents were not with me, mom tried to make up by sending some foodstuff for me from home.Although it wasn't enough, at least something is better than nothing.I decided to go along for mass with my friends.I have always had a lot of non catholic friends all my life, and MBA was no different.My friends had never been for a mid night mass before, and I asked them asking them to come with me.We had a nice time at the mass, in the open grounds, listening to the Christmas story and singing carols, and I almost forgot that I was away from home.Being with my new family, my college mates, made me more than happy.Before we knew, mass ended, we greeted each other, came back to the hostel and went to our respective rooms.

I felt something missing, there was a family here, but where is the spirit of Christmas? It is then that I saw the bag of cookies sent by mom, and it hit me.I sat on my laptop and typed a message on the instant messenger calling one and all in the hostel to share the cookies.Moments later, my room was full of people, all sharing the stuff I had got.Another Catholic friend barged in, apparently he had just received some stuff from his folks sometime ago.And there we were, now celebrating the true spirit of Christmas.Yes the true spirit of Christmas is in sharing.

It was indeed a Merry Christmas now!

Trip to Bangalore

there are cleints..and then there are clients

our clients want us to see fieldwork ourselves, to verify if its taking place correctly...sothey manage to sendus to bangalore fr a day

24 hrs in total...work of about 8 hrs, hunting housesand locations fr 4 hrs...sleep for 8 hrs and tp for 4 hrs

Cricket Unites

 

Cricket is a religion in India, no doubt.and hence it is one of the greatest binding factors I know of. I mean 2-3 people, who have never met each other, can suddenly start chatting/discussing/arguing or quarreling, when it comes to the mention of this game. It doesn’t matter if the place of disscussion is a local train, or a office cubicle.Talking to that tough looking VP the way you chat with friends doesn’t look possible, but then start talking cricket and he will talk as if he knows you from years!

 

I can recall this incident about 4 years back, when I was still doing graduation. I and a friend were traveling in the Mumbai local train, back from college. The second class compartment was crowded as usual but we managed to grab a place. As soon as the discussion veered away from studies and towards cricket, 2 gentlemen who were sitting besides us got involved in the discussion. One of them gave his expert analysis on why John Wright was not the right coach for India, while another was lamenting the fact that the BCCI does not keep enough day-night matches, which means the common man doesn’t get to see matches. (Day matches get over by the time the guy comes back home)

 

By the time we reached our station, we got enriched on a lot of aspects of Indian Cricket.

Diwali / Eid Holidays

man, Diwali n Eid are gr8...since i joined IMRB, ihave never got 5 days off on a trot..and now that i have, i didnt know how to spend them!

but i guess everythin has its way, andi found it out too

Saturday: went to awedding...manglorean one, so lots of hoggin of food....Something i noticed and wanna share with u guys, i the way music has changed in these weddings...from western classic and rock to Indipop...heard more of himesh than anyone else!

Sunday :made chilli shots at home ...Ya i made my own variations..but then its cool...Later in the day had some great non veg food at Bhendi bazar ((iftar hosted by my frends)...and then watched Schumi in his final race

Monday: Packed off my bike...my bros gettin it on friday

Tuesday: Enjoyed at my 8 year old cousin's place!Its really fun playin with kids!

Wednesday: well my weekly Mahim novena...and maybe wld meet sum friends!


Happy Diwali and Eid Mubarak

An hour at SBI

Today I happened to go to SBI at Shivaji Park, to get an MBA entrance
test form for my bro. Reached a bit early so I tried looking around
and amusing myself. Since it was early morning, I saw all those ppl
hurriedly walking towards the rail station, the BMC dumpers trying to
pack the garbage from the dumps, the shopkeepers just opening their
shutters...and before I knew it, it was time for the bank to open.

Typical babudom rules the roost.

Here is a time trail

Trying to find someone in the bank who knew abt the form I wanted- 5 mins
Waiting fr theperson (as the person hadn't come)- 10mins
Finding out that I need to fill a slip first- 2 mins
...and finding the counter to deposit it-5 mins
realising that the line I am standing is not moving - 5 mins
making the decison to jump to the other line-2 min
The list goes on

and SBI is the leading bank in India...Amen

Aksar

Somehow I like movies where the bad guy gets away with doing the wrong things. And Aksar is one of the rarities in Bollywood in this regard. Most of the villains have to pay for what they do in these Bollywood masala movies.



In this regard, Hollywood is much better. Remember Primal Fear (Edward Norton, Richard Gere ) ?I loved that movie and its Climax. Only to find that some years later Bollywood made a mess of it with Deewanagee (Ajay Devgan, Akshaye Khanna, Urmila Matondkar) where the bad guy is humbled in the end.

Schumi retires

Ever since i started watching formula 1 sometime in 97...I cheered for only one driver and only one team ...they are Micheal schumacher and the Ferrari. I can't imagine watching formula1 w/o schumi on track ..i kno life will go on..
But won't it be strange to cheer for kimi or massa..i dun kno ...

Herez hoping schumi end with a bang..winning the Driver's championship for 06'

Lage Raho Munnabhai

Hi guys,
I saw Lage Raho Munnabhai today. I never thought someone would put the Mahatma's message across in a flim so nicely....Richard Attenberg...u gotta take notes dude.

However watching the movie did incite something else in me...That feeling that the Mahatma erred somewhere..but where???

He followed the path of Non-voilence and speaking the truth, but somewhere he was not as aggressive as he should have been.You have the Raj almost on its knees during the peak of the Non Co-operation movement, but one stray incident at Chawrichawra was a detterent enough for the great man to withdraw it.I can never get a rationale behind this .A few more months and Non co-operation would have got us freedom in 1927..not 1947!!!!!

Also...during the mid-1910's when Britan was in the middle of WW1. Mr. MK Gandhi did not negotiate with the british the way Lokmanya wanted ..i.e complete freedom in return of Indian soldiers fighting for her majesty...andinstead waited for after the warto negotiate..and as expected all Britan offered was some cheap reforms!

Can Aggasi do it?

Thats the question thats been haunting quite a few tennis fans.Andreis on his swansong and all his matches at theUS Open could potentially be his last.On saturday, he came up against Bagdattis, who battled against all odds.In the end ,he broke down physically to hand over andre the win.Andreis gonna comeup against roddik in the 4th round if he gets past teh rookie becker...and then therez Nadal further on. Still early days in teh tournament, but i still feel it will be a nadal federer final

Hi

Just wanted to know whether bloggers is still working or not..looks like its banned by most ISP's but notby mine!

Water water everywhere

Rains have lashed mumbai for the past 5 days ..and it looks like they will continue doing so for some more days...Life is affected badly specially of people like me ...For whom local trains are a lifeline and BEST buses a close friend .

My Colony is flooded..Yesterday I managed To go to office thru knee deep water, but today I resigned to fate and didn't attempt to go.Good for me because later in the day my colony got flooded

.Too much of anything ain't good..and certainly not rain.

ZEE Germans!!

Germany showed on Friday night what Home -Advantage was.In the penalty shoot-out the crowd gave them the momentum that they needed to sail past the fancied Argentine team.Talent was overshadowed by Crowd support.Its a natural phenomenon.
Office is full of Argentine fans and I am more or less the lone German supporter...Hope the frustrated fans keep their emotions in check!!!

The shockof the turnament came when the favourites for the title- Brazil were eliminated by their old nemisis -France!Portugal was one up over England in the lottery

all eyes to thesemi finals on tuesday and wednesday...maythe best teams win!!!!

What a Day !

The match between Fed-Ex and Nadal went to the wire ...Nadal won the 4th set in a tie break...had he lost in the tie break..he would have certainly won the 5th and the match...Alas..he can;t conquer clay and Nadal..Cheers to Nadal

In F1 Alonso won in Britan and Shumi was 2nd..Shumi is still in the hunt 23 points behind ...can he catch up?

India are pounding on the Agony...God knows when Dravid will declare..


And the dutch prevailed over serbia 1-0

Super Sport Sunday

Today is June 11...what a day for sport buffs...

Lets start with Tennis.Not since the days of Agassi and Sampras in the mid 90's has such a famed rivalry taken on the awe of the tennis world.Fed-Ex and Nadal.The 2 best players of the world are gonna lock horns once again , this time in Paris.While Fed is the reigning No 1, Nadal (World No 2) is the master of clay, the surface on which the French open is played. Nadal enjoys a 5-1 win/loss recordover Fed...something none of his other compatriots can boast of...

Moving to formula 1, the British Gp is here.Alonso has taken the pole followed by Kimi and Micheal in that order.Alonso looks unstoppable so far this season, theonly semblence of a fight has been from Ferrari's Micheal Schumacher.Questions about Micheal's future are the major gossiping point all over the Racing world with tranfers being discussed..and no one sure where they will go.Kimi has been a distant 3rd so far, with Mclaren having major reliability problems.Wait for the drama to unfold at Silverstone.

The world cup group stage matches go on ....and it becomes more interesting as the days go by

And finallywe have the rejuvinated Indian Cricket team playing in the 2nd test at St Lucia.Sehvag has set the pace with a almost Run-a-ball 180 and the visitors finished at 361/4 yesterday...lets see whats in store for Dravid and his Men today.

Back in Mumbai

Convo is over and so are the best 2 years in my life so far....GIM goodbye..i will miss u.

What lies ahead is MUMBAI.Yes I am back in the city of dreams ... joining my new job ..lemme wish all my batchmates the very best in life

Kamat's Party

Last saturday , Vikram Kamat a batchmate from Goa had invited me over to his house fora party.Lemme give you some background into this

Vikram's parties are very famous at GIM. The Whos who of the batch gets invited to his parties. I can sa that he is the "Vijay Mallya" of GIM.

I had a lot of fun at his arty.In this party I was the Bartender ..Well I broke the Golden Rule of bartending at his party...Bartenders are supposed to be Sober !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats a Picture of me with the great socialite

Kamat's Party

Last saturday , Vikram Kamat a batchmate from Goa had invited me over to his house fora party.Lemme give you some background into this

Vikram's parties are very famous at GIM. The Whos who of the batch gets invited to his parties. I can sa that he is the "Vijay Mallya" of GIM.

I had a lot of fun at his arty.In this party I was the Bartender ..Well I broke the Golden Rule of bartending at his party...Bartenders are supposed to be Sober !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Thats a Picture of me with the great socialite

Basant cup semi final 1

Something very strange happened at Basanti Cup last week.. The clear favorites (Bhau's team) was made to bite the dust by Sid and his boys.It was a brilliantr turnaround after Sid's team could muster only 60 odd runs in their innings .But batting against Sajjad and Co turned out to be a nightmare for Bhau's team.With ghiyaz out due to a sore back,they didn't have a great batting lineup and everyone looked rusty. Dany Matthew was a lone warrior and battled till the end.In the end the task got a bit big on him and he crumbled under pressure. PGP2 teams take a lesson from Sid and boys...

Happy New Year

This New Year has been one of the best I have had for years.I mean the New Year celebrations . Except the fact that I was not with my family, everything else was so great.

It all started with an evening at Onkar’s house .Onkar is a batch mate of mine who stays in Panjim .He was kind enough to invite some of us to his house for tea. We all ate dholkas and jalebis here (Yummy!!!).

After this I was back on campus at around 7.had to go for a party so got all ready. I was wearing proper formals complete with blazer and formal suit for the party, because that was the dress code!

After we friends were ready we decided to dine out , so went to our favorite restaurant in Goa. Don Pedro’s. Amazing dishes, but mostly non – vegetarian, so veggies stay away.
After food we went to a friends house to pick her. She also bought her cousin along, my date for the evening. A very pleasant personality and I did enjoy her company.

Now to the party. The place is Rendezvous, same club where we had this year’s GIM fresher party. I didn’t actually want to go there but then democracy rules and my group wanted to go here. I had no problems, it’s important to be with our friends for New Year, place isn’t so important.
The dance was more formal, so I didn’t actually like it.The count down to the New Year was great and so were the hugs and kisses after the New Year started. We danced to some foot tapping music before it was time for the Miss teen contest there. The contestants were good looking but somehow their answers to questions by the judges were not that good

Anyway we got out of that place at 3:30.went to Miramar CCD but found it crowded so went to the Panjim CCD.sat there doing gupshup for an hour and then went back to campus.

Once back on campus, we thought about going on a road trip and seeing the sunrise somewhere at a vantage point. So we reached the 17th century built Aguada fort and from there we viewed the rising sun. After that me and a friend, Nandan went down the western cliff before the fort till we reached the ocean. After taking some snaps we came back .It was 8:30 by this time.

I remembered that my mom had told me to attend mass and reaching Panjim for 9 am mass didn’t look possible .So I decided to go to my friend Sharon’s house for mass. She has a chapel just outside her house, in her yard. After attending mass there we came back on campus.

I had a late breakfast and slept. It was around 11:30 AM by the time I slept. It was a long and eventful night

Happy New Year everyone