2006: What it taught me

There are tons of things that 2006 taught me. Some are from my perspective and some from the perspective of my daughter.

1. Sweater threads are the most delicious food items ever created.
2. Dad and Mom (me and my wife) are the two best singers in this world.
3. Any nonsense that comes out of dad's mouth (goobly-goobly-gaagaagaa) is extremely funny.
4. Crib-mobile and portable swings are the biggest inventions ever
5. Car seat and seat belts are on the other side of the spectrum.
6. Amazon.com is the best place to buy diapers, exceed the $25 min for free shipping and they are delivered to your doorstep.
7. Electronics is not the section where I spend most my time at while shopping alone anymore.
8. The only time I can watch South Park is if I am alone in the TV room AND using headphones (and I cannot link it from my blog :) )

There are many others and I will write those when I remember them.

Here are some not related to babies but as a result of watching some Indian channels.

1. Zee tv serials give me motion sickness with their zoom-on-face-from-6 angles in 3 second tactics.

2. Whenever Priyanka Chopra dances in a song there are three guys near the camera who are holding powerful portable fans to blow her hair.

3. The gap between nice Indian movies and crap-masala movies is widening every month. Movies like "Dor" prove that Indian cinema has a bright future, some movies like GolMaal (new) neutralize that thought.

4. Do this.
Open Paint. (Start->Run->MSPaint).
Click on that curve button.
Hold Shift and draw a vertical line.
Click on the left side of the line about 1/3 of its height from the top.
Click on the right side of the line about 1/3rd of its height from the bottom.

This is how Aishwarya Rai's dance movements are choreographed, especially the one where she is dancing near a waterfall and is shown on B4UMusic ($2.99/month) after every 12 min.


Enough nonsense for the day. I will be back with more.

Happy New Year 2007

Wish you and family a Very Happy and Prosperous 2007!

(if at all anyone is reading this :) )

GOAL

Watched Goallast night. The movie is not perfect but has its moments and definitely worth watching for any football fan. I did not watch it in the movie hall as I never knew it was released there. It made little more than $4 mil in USA and similar in Europe.

It seems GOAL 2 is in production where Santiago is transferred from NewCastle Utd to Real Madrid.

Considering the last soccer movie that I watched was "Hip Hip Hurray", I would definitely recommend this one on DVD.

YES!!

Finally, I am sitting in front of the TV, with the laptop in my hand and blogging away.

Life has been pretty busy and two weekends were totally consumed by the US open did not help. I can safely say that I have not seen so many tennis matches ever in a 2 month period.

I could almost predict Federer's shots. :)

The DON is back

Nah! I am not talking about myself. But I saw a song from the remake of "Don" for the first time today.

That has to be one of the most unnatural song sequences I have ever seen. I think after watching Shahrukh Khan only in interviews or still pictures, I had stopped thinking of him as an actor. So it looked totally weird watching him dance with Kareena Kapoor. Kareena Kapoor is like the big source of hope for me. If I am not sure about something, I think if Kareena can be a big movie actress and sign movies after movies, I can do anything. She is the sole reason I think Sania Mirza might win multiple slams in one year. Thanks Kareena.

I sincerely believe that Amitabh and Zeenat Aman of today could have done a better job in that Don remake.

Cincy Masters Pictures.

Here is a link to some pictures that I have uploaded.

Cincinnati Mastes 2006

Watch this space for
o A report of the Cincy Masters 2006.
o Pictures of my autograph book.

Back From Cincy

..And back to the blog as well. Here are some pics, there are a lot more and many interesting stories. So watch this space.

Tennis Time

Note: All images uploaded at full resolution. Click to enlarge any image.

Long live Cincinnati's tennis tradition!

This week was the Women's tennis event. This is tier III event so not many big names turn up. On the flip side, good seats are cheap.

This was the first year we bought tickets for women's series. Last year we were all set to buy the semifinals ticket and Sania lost in the quarters. This year since Serena was playing too, we bought tickets well in advance for courtside seats. Sania lost the quarters agains on Friday but she was to play in the doubles semi on Saturday and Serena was playing the singles semi too. So we were excited to be there.

One thing about watching these matches... It is extremely hot out there. They keep announcing the symptoms of heat stroke and advise people to keep drinking water ($3 per bottle). I smuggle 2 small gatorade bottles in my shorts pockets and then buy ice cups for 25 cents each to get me through first two sets without spending much.

Anyway, first match on Saturday was Sania's doubles semi. This was the first time we saw Sania and our first reaction was she seems to have lost a lot of weight. She looks and is very young (will turn 20 sometime this year) and we were sorry to think that such a talented young girl has to face fanatic clerics and just cannot be herself. I hope people do not give her too much trouble else US would be happy to make her play under stars and stripes in 3-4 years.

Highlights:

* Her Polish partner Marta and she were having fun on the court.
* They were smiling after almost every point and both hit some pretty impressive shots, especially forehands.
* Sania's weakness seems to be her serve and her speed but she had her UE under control. I heard that she had many UE the previous night but she does play a high risk game. It looked like since her partner's fate also depended on her, she was restraining herself.
* They won 6-0 6-1






Second match was the first singles semi between last year's champion Patty Schnyder (World # 8, Swiss) and Katarina Srebotnik (World # 24, Slovenian). Katarina is 5'11" and seemed to have a more pleasant personality than grumpy Patty.

* Patty won the first set and Katarina fought to win the second.
* Third set saw lots of action with Patty visually upset with a couple of calls going against her (never mind the fact that a couple of close calls went against Katarina.)
* Then she was audibly upset and also hit a ball away that ended up going out through a gate that people come in from.
* Third set went into Tiebreak and Patty had a match point.
* Katarina saved the match point with a nicely executed serve and volley.
* Patty double faulted to give Katarina game, set and match.
* As is the tradition with US tournaments, winner hits autographed balls in the crowd. I caught one of the balls that Katarina hit. Years of Tennis ball cricket paid off.







During the Patty-Katarina match, they announced that Sania and Marta would be signing autographs in the "air-conditioned retail tent". All desis including us formed a line and got her autograph and photograph.
















Third match of the day was Serena Williams and Vera Zvoraneva (current world # 50). Vera was ranked as high as #8 in the past. This is Serena's first tournament after six months of injury break but she had demolished her opponents with ease to reach the quarters.

* Serena looked all set to waltz to the finals. At least the crowd thought so. Most of them were there only to watch Serena's match.
* Vera had other ideas. Before anyone figured out what was happening, Vera was 5-0 up in the first set.
* Serena made tons of UEs and Vera made very very few. She has a very good balance while hitting shots on the run and some of her shots made me believe that this girl is going be in top 20 very soon.
* The crowd and Serena started getting increasingly frustrated and there were sounds of "Go Baby" "You can do it Baby" all around. One woman was overdoing the "baby" cheer so much that many people must have thought that she was Serena's real biological mother.
* Serena never recovered and Vera kept playing great tennis. Serena lost in straight sets.







Then we spent the night at our friends' place and were ready for the finals next day.
Next day was little relaxed as we had a fair idea what was going to happen in singles finals. Vera won in straight sets. Sania unfortunately lost. My camera battery went dead a few minutes in the singles final so I have very few pictures from Sunday. Luckily I could squeeze little juice to click 2-3 pictures at the end of the match.

Highlights:

* Katarina was very gracious in her speech and made a light remark that she was happy to get the most games from Vera in a set in this tournament.

* After Vera hit four balls in the crowd, they announced that she is
going to hit a couple more bonus balls. Vera autographed a ball, walked
over to a side and handed it to her fan with a big Russian flag.
Appalause all around, a Kodak moment (my Canon was out of juice at that
time).

* Vera played some excellent shots and hardly gave any breathing space to her opponents.

* Katarina played well too but Vera's form was too good for her today.

* Doubles was good but Mirza and Marta lost the plot in the third set.
Maria Camerin (their opponent) was pretty relaxed with mimicing a loud linesman call once in the third set that made everyone laugh and forget about the heat for a few seconds.

Hand-Eye Coordination

So who do you think is the winner?

Piano Guy


DDR guy


PS: Might not be viewable from India unless it works from Inida now or you know how to access Google video from there.