Another Lost Opportunity

One loss, one washout, another lost opportunity for India to make it to the knock out stage in a premier tournament. I think we will hear Indian team captain and management will blame it on luck for their exit, however I see some of things that were fundamentally wrong to start with. Here's a few:

1. What's Ishant Sharma doing in an ODI team. His form has been awful, he is clueless whether he should be a wicket taking bowler or should just focus on maintaining line and length and contain runs and in the process did neither. Tell this guy to take a break and have him play only tests in the next couple of years.

2. Why bring back Rahul Dravid? Two to three years back, BCCI wanted to field young guns and look in to the future. What happened to all the talk on building a team for next World Cup? Dravid had one decent knock in the lost match and his running between the wickets was pathetic and he was instrumental in Gambhir's run out. Is BCCI going to keep him that much longer so he can play next World Cup? Raina should be the one coming in at #3 regardless of the situation of the match.

3. What's the role of Yusuf Pathan? He is not bowling his full quota of 10 overs in most of the matches and his economy rate is over 5.5. When batting he is not used as pinch hitter, he floats around different batting positions and he is averaging 20. He is at best, fit only for T20.

4. Players like Harbhajan and RP Singh have played enough at the international level to be called established cricketers, yet they don't come up with inspiring performances when the team needs. Harbhajan is extremely inconsistent and get defensive the moment opposition attacks.

5. India cannot call themselves and stay as #1 team unless they improve dramatically on their ground fielding. Except for Yuvraj, Raina, Kohli & Karthik (if they play) , fielding has been dismal for the last several years.

Let's see what BCCI does for the next tournament. Hopefully Sehwag, Yuvraj, Zaheer Khan will all be fit by then.

My Music "Autograph"

Apple had a major event today to launch some of it's new line of iPods. There was so much media attention including live blogging of the event and Apple stocks was fluctuating all the time. The range of iPod/Mp3 players that Apple had come up with till date is mind blowing. The revolution that Apple was able to bring in to this market is unimaginable and the sales numbers will be hard to surpass - 220+million units sold till date since it's initial launch and iPod holds the biggest slice of portable media player market share, currently at 73.8%

The new players are loaded with so many features, it's hard for me to imagine going back to one of the players that I owned and lived with not so long time ago. Here's my compilation of devices that I have owned/used and fond memories using those devices.

In the late 70's, when I was a kid, I have seen radios in only a few places and they almost always looked the same - BIG. In the early 80s, my father bought a new black Philips radio which was very nice and sleek. That was also the time FM started broadcasting cine songs for an hour in the night. So the radio became an instant hit at home.

We used to wait for உங்கள் விருப்பம் religiously every morning and evening and for occasional cine songs from சென்னை வானொலி நிலையம். Then in mid-80s came the big leap forward in music listening when my father brought home a National Panasonic 2-in-1 that plays a single cassette and also radio with recording capabilities. Good old Philips was immediately ignored, except when we lose power for 2-3 days due to rain, which is when we buy red colored evereaday batteries to listen to radio.

National Panasonic 2-in-1 also opened avenues for some mini projects with recording. I used to listen to விவித பாரதி in the morning when they will announce the names of the movies from which they play songs during the day. Everyone at home almost developed flash memories to remember the names of the movies and when they will be played during the day. My dad used to get good quality TDK cassettes (both 60min and 90min versions) and we keep them for recording songs from radio. You have to wait for the RJ to announce all the details on the song and press the black and red recording buttons simultaneously at the appropriate time. You also need to record a 3-4 sec blanks/silence at the end of the song so there is a gap between the songs. I still remember the days when we made our own cassette album with neatly organized paper cover sleeve that displayed all the songs in the cassette. National Panasonic remained favorite player till mid-90s.


In the late 90s I got my own cassette walkman. This is when getting music was little easy. You make a list of 18-20 songs in a piece of paper and drop it at the music store along with the blank cassette (Dad's good old TDK) and within a day or two you have your collection, ready to listen. When I moved to U.S. one of the first thing that I bought was a Sony CD/Cassette/Radio boombox. By then, buying cassettes came down tremendously since digital CD was on the up. I also ended up buying a couple of CD-Walkman. In couple of years, I managed to buy/collect around 200 CDs of varying genres.

Then came the biggest revolutionary change in 2004 when I first got my iShuffle which could hold around 300 songs. All of sudden my CD rack looked silly but I still had to keep them since my car only had a CD player. When I got my iPod 30GB in 2005 and transferred all my music content to it, the use for CDs dimished almost fully. Now I have iPod dock at home and iPod connector in car and it has become my only and preferred option for music.

I know there will be something else in the next decade or so, but I think I will keep some version of an iPod for a while.

Pictures Courtesy: Web

Congrats Prakash Raj!!

Congratulations to Prakash Raj on winning national award for his stunning performance in the movie Kanchivaram. I saw this movie recently in Star Vijay and I thought the movie was made brilliantly. Sabu Cyril's artwork and Thiru's camerawork needs a special mention and great job by the entire crew. The film truly deserves the awards and recognition it is getting. IMHO, Prakash Raj is one of the most talented and versatile artist in the last decade or so, yet he is not getting the full recognition and appreciation that he deserves. Anyways, congratulations and good luck to him.

There is also another award for Best Special Effects for the movie Sivaji - The Boss. I wrote about director Shankar and how he is able to bring something special on to his movies couple of weeks back and I had a serious follow up chat with my brother who felt I am too biased towards Shankar. I wanted to point out that Oru Koodai Sunlight probably is one of the main reason for this Best Special Effects national award. In a movie that was made for pure fun, the amount of work that went in to this 41/2 minute song goes on to show the effort and commitment that goes in to each and every frame in his movies. I am in fact planning on writing another post on silly scenes and most obvious logical errors (I know there are plenty and I can only mention a few) in Tamil movies soon and that should hopefully create some new found respect for directors like Shankar.

In a world where we have an award/ceremony for every single satellite channel or cine magazine, national awards still remains the most prestigious and meaningful award, so congratulations to every single artist who is getting this national recognition.

RIP Mr.YSR!

Madhavrao Scindia, Balayogi and now YSR. What a tragic end to one of the popular Indian politician in recent times? Mr.YSR, may your soul rest in peace.

P.S. I was watching NDTV and here's the excerpts from the news anchor person when chopper was found yesterday:

"We are showing you live picture of the crash spot where the chopper crashed and you can see the crashed chopper in the crash spot and all the debris due to the crashed chopper in the crashed spot"

I can understand their need to fill in some news for 24/7 channel, but this is way too much convoluted. Reminds me of my childhood days when somebody asks you மூக்க எப்படி தொடுவ every time you do a simple thing in a complicated way.