ICL Matches: Fun to watch

ICL matches have begun and have begun with a bang. Packed houses in stadiums and full toosh entertainment. Watch them in all Zee channels . For now I can show you one of the advertisements for my favourite team. Watch it for yourself and have fun.

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The Negotiator: Book Review

This is first of a book review which I am writing. And the book is "The Negotiator" by "Frederick Forsyth". The book begins off rather slowly giving us a backdrop of the cold war and how the two superpowers US and Russian Govt. are trying to patch up and sign a treaty of disarmament. Meanwhile it introduces us to a set of people spread across continents who will be destroyed by this treaty. The kidnapping of a young oxford student happens next which catches you unaware. The real drama begins when the master novelist discloses the identity of the kidnapped boy. And it is from here that the novel picks up amazing pace and generates immense interest. The character sketch of the negotiator is truly awe-inspiring. And he lives up to all the characterization till the very end proving that he is one of the smartest. The novel again reaches its peaks in its penultimate pages and a thrilling climax gives a fitting end to a masterpiece.

I won't call this the best book I have ever read , but it is definitely one of the best. This is the first book by Frederick Forsyth I have read, and am planning to read many of his books now. I am hoping all of his works are equally appealing. People with a taste for thrillers and politics and with considerable amount of patience, recommended for you!

Can't help it

I can't help it. I deliberately do not want to write on cricket as my blog will look full of cricket posts. But Indian cricket board and its management committee think otherwise. And hence, here I am ranting about our cricket board. And as for the title, I did not want the reader to know that it is a post on cricket from the title. Thats' it.
Indian team for the tests came as a big shocker to me. How could they leave out a player like Yuvraj Singh who is in the form of his life. After a series winning performances in the T20 world cup and the Pakistan series where he dominated in all games, how could one leave him out of the test side ? Some argue that he is not a "Test Player". My question to them is why do you brand players? Everyone is playing cricket and it is just about adapting to the situation whether it be tests, one days or T20s. There are moments in test cricket where you need to go out and attack the opponent and there are times when you play literally on back foot in a one day game. Then why this branding like Test player and one day player. The next argument I want to put is we all admire Aussies as champions ( leaving out the sledging and stuff) . If you want to be champions we should start thinking like one first. They don't brand their players like one day players and test players and as a result they have got a match winning batsman in Adam Gilchrist who is equally good in all the forms of game. According to me Yuvraj is better than Gilchrist as a " test batsman" . Then why not give him a chance.
One side they showed signs of "moving ahead" by dropping Dravid ( Though I was not in favor of that as well) and the other side they are taking a step back by choosing a so called typical test team. Hope they show some consistency in their errors at least.

muziboo.com: Music everywhere

Have you ever felt like making people listen to your composition? But could not find people who give honest feedback on it. Here is a site muziboo.com where you can share your music, rather upload it for users to listen to it and comment on it. There are groups,bands of common interests . To upload music all you need is a login account which takes 15 to 30 seconds depending on your name length and your typing speed to create. Once you are done with this, you are all set to harass people with your compositions. The look vise, a rather plain and sober pretext for such a musical site, but you won't complain as it is really fast to load. Song quality also is good. I listened to couple of songs and to tell you what, they were not at all bad. Good going guys!!

So next time you have to show up your music talent you know where to hit.

My experiements with BCB5

BCB5 didn't come to me as a surprise as did BCB4. I knew its date and venue details much ahead in time and I did register also well in advance. Saturday, the way it began I thought we would have a blast. Me(without my camera),Vijesh,Raghu,Prem,Ambuj all met up at Sony world signal and set off to be joined by Suresh in IIM-B. With audi not booked no formal announcements. It was nice innovation to have mattresses and bedsheets for "discussion" based collectives. As volunteers we helped them finish some of the chores. No card hanging around your neck this time. It were stickers. " Cheaper doesn't necessarily mean worse, Natraj". The collective which attracted me from the very time I registered, XP collective, thats where we spent our first half of Saturday. Interesting session on Agile methodology with healthy arguments from all skeptics of the model. Post lunch spent some time (though did not understand) on Ruby collective and then went on to attend the quiz screening teaming up with Raghu. Then there was an interesting arguement going on " Myths and facts about generic girls and boys". After participating in it passively we headed home. Hey! I forgot to mention, we got the T-shirts on Saturday itself. And this proved out to be a mistake on the part of organizers. Sunday morning wore a deserted look. Prem, Ambuj and Raghu from our group did not turn up. First half went for a session on Indic languages and how to use them for various purposes on computer. Though I don't or plan to use it in near future, it was a good session. And hey, were wait listed for quiz finals.Afternoon attended a session on a news site taazza.com, a nice news site which localizes your news contents . After that we did participate in quiz finals.(Raghu came all the way for this). Lets not discuss the results of it here. Then headed back home.
If compared with BCB4, personally i learnt more or rather it evoked the thirst for knowing a lot of things in me, but overall I think the absence of audi and the absence of crowd on Sunday proved out to be spoilsports.