US Open Tennis 2007

I had been to the US Open tennis once before in 2005 and I liked the experience. I was not interested too much in 2006 and it was a good choice since a lot of the games got rained out. This year I wanted to go and I thought the weather will not be so bad this time around.

The US open has both day and night games (probably the Australian open has as well). The day games are disadvantageous for one you have to take a day off or you have to go on the weekend, also since you sit in the seats that are quite high up the visibility is not so good and also the warm weather is not so enjoyable for me. Then the other tricky part is to get tickets for the night in which there are good games. That is purely left to chance and it all depends on the scheduling and you will come to know only the night before about the schedule.

This time around i decided to go for the second week where you might get to see more closely fought matches. I got lucky here. The first match was Venus Williams against Jankovic. Although it was a straight sets victory for Venus, the match had a different story, it was closely fought and could have gone either way. The second match was the highlight of the evening, Roger Federer going against Roddick. The game started off according to script, where both the men held their serves and then in the tie break, Roddick made a couple of errors and it was over. Federer was not at his best, but he used to come back to his best when he was down. It was a real treat to watch some of his shots and whatever Roddick did he had an answer. In fact, between the service breaks, he used to go back out early as if to affect Federer mentally, but nothing worked. In the end it was a usual story of Roddick losing (13 of the last 14 times) the match.

The atmosphere was good but it is the most noisiest grand slam. There is no etiquette and people walk around between points and there are cell phones ringing and so on. New Yorkers feel they can do anything and that is the attitude i guess if you have money.

Federer has won 12 grand slams already and that is quite amazing to see one person dominate a game so much. The other person who comes to mind is Tiger Woods who is along the same path in golf.

Overall, it was a fun evening and to watch a man who might one day will be considered as the greatest of all time.

Welcome back to myself

It has been a long time away from the blog and I had to get back to penning whatever thoughts I have in my mind. I have been too busy at work to think about anything else and things seem to have settled down a bit now.

It has been a busy week with sports here in NY. Red Sox visited the Yankees and got swept. It was a very convincing victory for the Yankees and they are playing with a lot of team spirit this year which i did not see in the last 3 years. They are playing for their pride this year and it shows in their game. It is still a question mark whether they will make the playoffs or not though.

The tour de france finished in end of july and it is one of my favourite sports events. Although, as like last year it was filled with high profile doping cases, it was still a fantastic race. It was a treat to watch the mountain stages and the tour was won by a young spaniard Alberto Contador and the saying mountain stages wins the race came true again.

The formula one has seen one of the most competitive years in a long time. Hamilton, the rookie has taken the sport by storm and surprised everyone including himself by leading the championship this year. It is quite a surprise that in this niche sport a guy in his first season has made such a mark. Mclaren have two amazing drivers with Alonso and Hamilton and they are having some ego clashes. My team, the Ferrari is not bad either and it has been a four horse race to the finish. Each race is very open and is quite difficult to predict a winner. I think the points system is not so fair and it should give more points to the winner or less points to the loser. 10-8-6-4-3-2-1 is not fair. I am looking forward to next year when Singapore is supposed to have a night street circuit and the number of races will be increased as well.

At this point, I think all the sports is filled with doping in varying degrees. Baseball, athletics, weightlifting, cycling and the list goes on. But, the joy a sport provides overcomes these drawbacks for me. The sight of A Rod hitting a home run or Contador climbing the mountains or Hamilton winning a grand prix or Tyson Gay winning the 100m or Tendulkar hitting a straight drive or Ronaldinho scoring a goal or Federer hitting a cross court single handed backhand or Tiger Woods dominating his opponents and many more is worth it.

I guess i have talked only about sports and I will end this with saying that I will be at the US open tennis next week and I am looking forward to the quarter final matches here in NY.

Indian Express and CEC

Nowadays I have started reading the Indian Express news website for India related current affairs news and I am delighted with the improvements they have made. Improvements are in terms of the content and the presentation. Going a long way back, it was my dad's favourite newspaper and he used to be really on top of it. It was the main newspaper which was against the ruling Congress and had the guns to put them on the spot repeatedly. It was highlighted during Ram Jethmalani's Bofors tirade against the then PM Rajiv Gandhi. After those highs, the newspaper lost its way and the quality came down. Also, the Times Of India marketed so well that IE lost a lot of ground, especially in Bangalore. It is very heartening to see the progress they have made now and the quality of writing of the various columnists is excellent. IE is now striking a balance between good quality grounded journalism and sensationalism.

Going thro' the website a couple of days back, I was reading the interview of Shekar Gupta with the Chief Election Comissioner (CEC) N Gopalaswami in the walk-the-talk and I came across a couple of landmark initiatives that the CEC is proposing. The CEC has become one of the most efficient and disciplined organisations in India and the way they are conducting free and fair elections all across the country is a tribute to them. T.N. Seshan started it all and they have not looked back since. This interview was in the background of the UP elections which was conducted over 7 stages.

One of the suggestions of the CEC was to eliminate any candidates having any kind of criminal record from contesting the election. Currently, about 15% of the candidates contesting have a criminal record which is quite sad. The second suggestion that he gave was very interesting in that instead of having just one round and the guy with the most votes win, there should be a second round between the top two candidates in the first round (similar to elections in France that happened recently). The reason for that is multifold.

1. Less than 50% of the eligible voters are casting their vote and the winner gets even less than 30% votes of the total electorate and he is representing all those people. This totally does not make sense.

2. This will change the fabric of the election where two candidates have to appeal to a wider range of people in order to get votes. Caste and religious politics will automatically reduce. For example, currently the scenario is that in a constituency if people from a particular community are about 40% strength, then a candidate from that community will more or less win most of the times.

Indian politics is slowly changing for the good and hope it picks up momentum and most importantly the people should rise to the ocassion and demand changes.

The wisdom of ancient Greeks

I picked up a book last week on some great quotes by the Greek philosophers and thinkers. It is a very small book with around 300 quotes on different subjects like virtue, humanity, god and religion, education, arts and so on. It is a light and fun read.

I love quotes and it always sends out strong and deep messages in a sentence. I get a thrill after reading the quotes and commenting how true it is. In this case, it also gave me an insight into Greek culture and how good they were at that time. I also read about these Greek thinkers briefly and I want to go a little deeper into those guys. It was well worth a read.

Some of the ones that I liked,

Don't appear just, be just [Aeschylus]
Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom [ Aristotle ]
The truth is always the strongest argument [ Sopochles ]
Death is a debt which all of us must pay [ Sopochles ]
Friendship is equality [ Artistotle ]
The fool learns by suffering [Hesiod]
Man's best possession is a sympathetic wife [Euripedes]
He is no lover who does not love always [ Aristotle ]
The measure of a speech is not the orator but the listener [ Plato]

Most watched movies

People always talk about their favourite movies of all times. There are very few movies that are excellent and affect you in some way deeply. There are some movies that you like it when you watch it and forget about it the next day. Obviously, there are a few that you want to forget as soon as you finish watching them. But, there are some movies that due to some reason you dont mind watching it over and over again. There are some movies that I could watch say once every month and enjoy it thoroughly.

The following movies have the most repeat value for me and I have watched these movies multiple number of times. The list is in no particular order. I just came up with this list instantly, but some things are missing still.

1. Godfather I
2. A Few Good Men
3. Jurassic Park I
4. Die Hard I
5. Ronin
6. Clear and Present Danger
7. A Beautiful Mind
8. When Harry Met Sally
9. My Cousin Vinny
10. Saamy
11. Arunachalam
12. Oru CBI Diary Kurippu
13. Ocean's Eleven
14. Speed
15. Kannathil Muthamittal
16. The American President
17. --
18. --
19. --
20. --

Television Series

1. The Cosby Show
2. Everybody Loves Raymond
3. Law and Order (All the 3 types).

The week that was!!

This has been quite an eventful week. The week started off with my first visit to Madison Square Garden (MSG) [ the world's most famous arena] for a NBA game between the home team Knicks and the Detroit Pistons. The game was exciting in the first and third quarters when the knicks made a fight of it, but ultimately the Pistons had too much class. Pistons is leading the Eastern conference overall, but they are nowhere near the Western teams like the Suns, Mavericks or the Spurs. I think the Western conference is an overwhelming favorite to win the title this time around.

I was quite excited for the game, but ultimately it turned out to be less exciting. First of all, the arena looks quite old and it badly needs a facelift. The lights were not so good, it was quite hot inside and the big display screens were so dull that nobody could see them. The Knicks were not upto the mark and a lot of their players were injured as well. The players were tired towards the end of the season and Knicks had the play off hopes dashed as well.

I went out with my cousins to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner. The ethiopian cuisine is so similar to south indian food, with their staple food being injira (pulicha dosai) and the different vegetables resembling keera mashial, beans, chutney, cabbage curry and so on. It is very surprising that they have so much of vegetarian options. A nice dinner overall.

Today is Visu, Tamil New Year's day. I miss the celebrations back home, where you go to your relatives houses and get the Visu Kani. It was quite fun and I used to get quite a collection by the end of the day. I wanted to go to the Flushing temple today, but due to heavy rains I am under house arrest.

Overall, not a bad week!!!!!!

Raju Shrivastav - finally an Indian standup comedian

Cable TV in my place has stopped working for a couple of weeks and I have intentionally not taken any interest to fix it. I am living in a world without TV for the last two weeks and it has been quite an experience. Suddenly, I find a lot of time in my hands especially during the weekends. So, what do I do, i have started reading and using my computer more.

Stand up comedy is big in the United States and I love standup comedy. It is a mirror of your life and captures the events that happen soaked in humour. I love observing these small things that always seem to happen all around you and laughing about it. I was always thinking that why is standup comedy not popular in India. With the variety of people who are living in India and the kind of naatak that they make, standup comedy has the potential to be a big industry and the art needs to be marketed more. The main problem in India is that comedy is always a side dish and never the main course. Also, there are very few comedians and they were always doing mimicry rather than standup. In this regard, the name of Johny Lever or Dayanand in Kannada come to mind. If you watch their shows, the main theme was mimicry and they had these short jokes (questions and answers kind of style) floating around. It was never that they engrossed an audience with things that go on in day to day life.

With all this history behind me, I got a google video that said Raju Shrivastav, best standup comedian in India participating in the Indian Laughter challenge. I watched that 10 minute clip and atlast I knew that i found a true Indian standup comedian. He just described the things that go on during a marriage celebration and how all the people react and it was just too good. Then, i started searching for his different videos and I found a bunch of them and saw that he had such a great variety, he was daring to be different from others, and how he went in depth into a situation, his facial expressions, his own delivery style and his novelty. He is the king of comedy i should say at the moment in India and hope he popularizes it and a lot of comedians make it big. I found later on that he has been a television actor for a long time and he has acted in movies as well. The Indian laughter challenge tv show has given him a big break and his talents have come to the fore.

On the same note, i came across a couple of interesting standups. One is on cricket and the other is by a kannada standup. Hope there are more Raju Shrivastav's coming up and making people laugh.

NY Auto Show

I think the NY auto show happens once a year, although it is not as big as the Detroit show, it is quite significant. As for myself, I am not such a big fan of cars and I am not too much into its technical aspects as well. I wanted to go for it though just to see the progress in cars (the last show i went to was in Delhi 3 yrs back).

The show was in Javits center in Manhattan and it was pretty crowded as expected. My friend with whom I went is quite interested in cars and was all excited. All the big guys whom you would except in the world of cars were there with the exhibits. Ford, Chevrolet, Mazda, Ferrari, Mercedez, BMW, Honda and the list goes on. Each company had their latest models on display and also some concept cars which are not ready for production. I believe most of those concept cars will never hit the market. Ford Airstream was the concept car that i liked the most and it seemed very much practical that it might come on the mainstream market. I got a fair idea in terms of the types of cars that are in the market and their price ranges. There were lot of value for money cars, cars with a lot of style, some useless cars, cars with a ton of features that nobody can remember, big cars, small cars, 10 seater minivans, a few bikes, rally cars and the list goes on.

My main grouse with cars is that there is no revolution in car technology for the last 30-40 years. The technology is more or less the same, there is no big change in terms of alternative fuel or improving the fuel efficiency by a big margin or coming up with something new and exciting. The improvements that i could see were the safety standards and ease of use for the driver of the car. There were features in some cars like revving up your engine 200m away, keyless start and lock opening, refrigerator within the car, place to heat up your coffee (only starbucks of course) , on the road entertainment system, parking a car by itself and others.

The car companies have to keep coming up with new models, good marketing and competitive pricing to compete and grow. From the looks of it, it is a grind with so many competitors involved. There was a separate accessories exhibition where there were no auto accessories and they were signing up for credit cards and had some games. Another interesting aspect was the marker on the hand when you entered the exhibition was invisible, but was flourescent when put under a scanner.

Overall, it was a US car market 101 session and it might prove useful to me in the future.

Abysmal India in the world cup

I did not want to write about this topic but I cannot resist it anymore. India is out of the world cup and what a sad sight it was. I thought this team would definitely go to the next round by beating Bangladesh and Bermuda. That was a given, but subsequently you know they were not consistent enough to move to the semis or further.

Removing the emotions aside, this Indian team promised a lot, but did not deliver. They had all the support systems in place, the expertise required, the skills, treated like kings and enough time to plan for the world cup, but they did not perform. This team did not have the stomach for a fight. In any team, you need everyone to come together to become a winning unit and i think we were always hovering around the 50-50 winning percentage.

Serious questions need to be asked by the administration and we should get back to the spirit of winning rather than the commerical aspects. I think there is so much money floating around that players and administators are not held accountable for poor performance. There should be an attitude change to try new players, start winning abroad and keeping the effect of politics on the game to a minimum. Allow players to play cricket rather than do all other stuff. People should start treating them as normal people and dont care too much about them (remove them from their demi God status).

Cricket is a common thread that unites the country and has so much emotions associated with it. It is in the DNA of Indians and to get it out of the system is like breaking up from your love. I think this is the opportunity for all people to give other sports some credit and start encouraging people in other sports. People should start going to some athletics events, football matches, golf tournaments, tennis and so on and encourage people from other sports as well. I think every Indian is so much attached to cricket at this point and it really hurts when the team plays so badly. If this is not working out, try other sports should be the mantra.

Finally, the death of Bob Woolmer has cast a shroud around the Pakistan team and the latest is that two Pakistan players have been asked to stay back in Jamaica. It is a very sad thing that a person can be killed for losing a game and in fact, the players lost it. As they say, you can only take the horse to the water, but not make it drink. There is a much deeper plot to the murder of Woolmer which hopefully will be revealed soon and not swept under the carpet.

Junoon

I went to a concert of Salman Ahmad (of Junoon fame) organised by Asia Society, NY. One of my friends asked me about whether i was interested and I jumped at the offer. I did not know the kind of music it was going to be, but i knew it would be different.

Reaching the venue was a task in itself because of the snow storm and one had to walk in puddles of snow and it gives you an uncomfortable feel when the feet gets wet. The concert started 15 min late and it suited us quite well.

Salman Ahmad is a doctor by training and quit for his first love music. He was accompanied by Samir Chatterjee on the tabla (my friend was learning tabla from him). Salman is a rock artist with a sufi soul. He has a pony tail and his attire resembled of a rock artist. He started with a couple of numbers which i felt were quite boring and then he hit on his most famous number "Sayyoni" of Junoon fame. That lit the place up and i got more interested at this point. His mastery over the guitar is a sight to see and he could play soft tunes and also really step it up and go over the top. The normal routine used to be he would string a soft tune, start singing and then show his full reportoire of guitar skills and them come back singing at the end and wrap up the song. I was not too impressed by his singing mainly because it was more at a high pitch. He was ably supported by Samir who was alert and upto the mark. He did not do anything extraordinary, but at the same time he held his own. I thought he should have been given a solo stint for say 10 min instead of Salman hogging the limelight. Salman showed his skills with the guitar during the middle of the concert and then tapered towards the end.

Salman's USP is his rock sufi type of music and i would put him as a better rock artist than a sufi artist. It seems like his DNA is rock injected with Sufi influences. He makes best use of his limited skills with his surprise element. I am saying limited skills when I compare him to lets say Mandolin Srinivas. Srinivas has grounded out in Carnatic music and then he moved on to fusion and his music shows the richness.

I was satisfied with the performance, but at the same time I felt something missing (having a nice masala dosai and not having a coffee to wash it down kind of feeling).