telecommunication...

Its the end of another week...Have not been keeping well but I think I should be alright in a day or two. I have overcome the guilt of losing my mobile over the last weekend. I own a nokia 6610 now:-)

Meanwhile in the last 10-12 days I have been amused by a few phone calls that I have got from my friends. Reni from the US, Vinay from the SCG on the eve of the India - Aus match and just yesterday Randeep from Stuttgart! More amusing since they were surprises...Imagine Vinay calling me up in the morning to let me know that he was at the SCG...so that I could watch him on TV! And Randeep called me as a reaction to a mail I had written on the NOBLES! In any case it is always nice to get a call from your friends in these days of "emails".

Tomorrow is another big match day...We are playing Wockhardt.

Various...

Last weekend was at Hyderabad. As the city, where I started my corporate life, it is special. Naina & the Chandy family seem to be doing great. The very best to them. I went to two restaurants which could mean the same if one were to look up the Thesaurus - Utsav and Mela. The former, courtesy my former DRL mates and the latter courtesy the CET group. It was good to see Rajmohan and his wife too. I think Manoj would have liked my coming to Hyd, since he got an opportunity to see a little bit more of the city:-)

There were two hoardings which caught my eye. The first one was a seductive Katrina Kaif hoarding with the punch line, "Dare to be alive". As if KK herself was not disturbing!The second hoarding was of a mineral water promotion with the punch line "DRINK and DRIVE". Although there were a few more sentences, it was not visible! I feel that there needs to be a certain amount of discipline for hoardings too. Though I do accept that a majority of the people would not have looked at these hoardings if not for the shock value, it is certainly a disturbing trend. However I give a lot of credit to the creative guys for such creations!

Ajay Kuduva seems to be still around. He scored a 34 in the Deodhar trophy yesterday. Though not in touch with him, it will be nice to bump into him sometime. The tri-series in Australia is shaping up pretty well.

The Republic day is around the corner...

A Big Victory

In the first game of the E-Merck cup we romped home to an easy victory over the hosts. In fact the batsmen literally batted them out of the game. Chasing 305 in 45 overs, E-Merck collapsed to 206 all out. Yours truly scored a patient 34 in around 27 overs, opening the batting. One can imagine the fireworks on display at the other end, with me having a test match kind of day in there. I think there were some close calls on the lbw front, which I need to work on if I need to survive the 20s and 30s the next time around. The target will be of course a 60 plus!

In an interview sometime back Justin Langer had this to say on what he thinks about Steve Waugh's leadership..."I would run into a wall, if he were to command me so" So much was the respect that Steve commanded within his team and country. In a sense my generation literally grew up with him. Not many know the fact that he was one of the pioneers of the "slow ball" which he used to great effect in the Reliance World Cup of 1987.Fortunately for me, I got a chance to see him live at the MCG last year when he was batting for NSW against Victoria. Memories of a life time...

I met up with Ashwein from IIFT on Friday at the Irish Cafe.

Meanwhile Sankar Raman, my engineering mate stayed for a day at our home.With Nitin Jain putting in an appearance some days back, it has been some good CET bonding in the first month of 2004.

India Shining...is the latest phrase to catch on, in most of the articles found these days...Btw this ad is made by Grey. And a Loyolite happens to be the creative director there, Prathap Sudan of the 1977 batch.

New Year's Eve

I finally managed to spend my new year's eve out of home. A significant feature considering my track record in the previous years. Myself and Anish hit off on a pub at around 7.30 pm. The basic assumption was that it will be next to impossible to gain a place on such an occasion as it nears 12 and also the necessity of the fairer sex to act as a passport for entry. (my apologies to the women folk for any feeling of hurt whatsover)We felt very good to see that we were the first people in. The pride of having planned out things well was evident. At 10, it was still us with a few others. Both our assumptions were turning out to be false. The idea of disappointment may have had more to do with the second assumption turning false and this leading to the fact that the crowd would be less interesting than usual:-)

Anyway by around 10.30 we were out of Eighties and into Club 9 which was where we saw the year pass into 2004.

Another learning a few days back was that it is essential to get an yellow fever certificate to apply for an African Visa. And one of the two places, the vaccination is done is at Seaman's medical organisation at Ballard Estate. The fee is Rs 150. The surroundings are nowhere near to being called a clinic, but I suppose that is the way the programs of the WHO are run! So dont take much notice, since this is the way , millions of people have got it done and you are no exception. The reward is that of getting a certificate duly stamped and signed...You are ready for getting the visa!

I think I will devote my next blog to Steve da who retired today.