"నా దాన్లో పుల్లగా ఉన్నవి ఏమి వెయ్యొద్దు"

(don't put anything sour in food that i ordered)

Among the many fine things of Jaggu,  i was particularly

impressed by one that i wanted to blog about.  When we

go to a restaurant or international fast-food joints, before 

anything, Jaggu asks the person who takes the order 

whether he is fluent in Telugu. Most of them give a faint

smile and say they are.  We then start giving our order 

in Telugu and the bearer also interacts extremely 

comfortably.

Most of the waiters in these restaurants (in the metros) try 

to speak English with great difficulty while taking orders, 

and speak out only the phrases that they are probably 

trained on. This makes the experience somewhat unreal. 

In such circumstances, Jaggu's gesture encourages them (or 

anyone else) to speak  in the language they are comfortable 

in (telugu/hindi) while making sure the opposite person is 

comfortable in that too.

How much Dumber can you get, Palin ?

I was just reading an interview of Sarah Palin on CBS, with Katie Couric.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/09/30/eveningnews/main4490618.shtml

This inteview perfectly revealed how dumb, artificial and spoon-fed Sarah Palin was. I could not stop laughing as I read the above interview. She was asked a question about which newspaper she read, and for this she replied 'I read most of the newspapers'. And to this, she added that she reads the news articles with special appreciation for the press and the media :). LOL. Then, she was asked to name a specific newspaper among all. She says

"Um, all of them, any of them that have been in front of me all these years."

Then, she was asked to name a few of the newspapers that she read.  For this, she replied how people of Alaska were aware of things that happened in the rest of Washington, D.C. How dumb !! Did she not know the name of any single newspaper ?? :). Or was she trying to prevent any particular newspaper to get  highlighted ? Don't think so .

She was asked specific questions on abortion and she seemed to give such vague and unrelated answers.  And, she replied to things saying things like "my positions that I am pro-life .....". Felt like she had a bunch of advisors who gave her hints like "these are your views on these topics".

It looks as if she is an average american mom. In politics, she hasn't dealt with anything much beyond Wasila and Alaska.  And, she is running to be the vice-president of the most powerful nation.

It reminds me of an interview that George Bush had given before the presidential election in 2000. At that time, he didn't know where India was !

A Historic Day

Today was a historic day, indeed ! Most of the LTRC men got together at 6'0 clock in the morning to start playing cricket . The desire that was dormant within everyone came true today . 

We played one 12 over match and it was great fun . On one side were Prashanth, Samar, Karthik, Suman, Prashanth Mathur, Siva Reddy, Sambhav ... and on the opposite side were Avinesh, Me, Jagadeesh, GowriDev, Arafat, Abhilash, Manish ... Was it  MT vs Parsing ? Hmm, not really :). We have the great parsing guy, Jagadeesh, on our side while Karthik and Prashanth Mathur were on the opposite team. Semantics guys contributed to both the teams :D

Amazingly, everyone displayed great cricketing skills and made their contributions to their team in their own way. 

Some of the highlights of the match were,

1. Jagadeesh bowled 3 overs on record, but in reality bowled around 6 overs. You know what I mean ! His delieveries had the pace to scare any batsman, but they never really got that close . Hmm, one delievery did get very close :).

2. Prashanth's sixes !! Yeah, he hit quite a few of them. And, his bowling pace and Abhilash's swings also ensured that the ball flew past the boundary line. He also bowled out some of the dangerous batsman in our team, Jaggu and Gowri .

 3. I was definately the fielder of the day. Despite my valient efforts, the ball never stuck in my hands. A couple of missed catches and a couple of boundaries are enough to explain my record !

4.  Suman bowled amazing well, and was definately bowler of the day in the right sense. His ultra-accurate delieveries caused quite a few  problems to the batsmen.

5. Samar's stylish display of batting got runs pretty quickly for the opposite team. 

6.  GowriDev showed nice all-round skills, hitting useful runs with the bat and some accurate bowling with the ball.

7.  Avinesh only seemed to speak the language of sixes. Batting in the slog overs, every ball bowled to him resulted in the maximum  amounts of runs. 

8.  Prashanth Mathur, Sambhav, Me, Karthik and Siva did useful bits with the bowl for our respective teams, while Arfy and Manish did well with the bat.

Here were the final scores,

Our  Team (MT?)                :  97 all out in 11.4 overs

Opposite Team (Parsing?)  :  98 in 10.3 overs

Well, the results did not really reflect the on-ground performances of the teams ;) !!! The next match is tomorrow. Hope that this fun keeps going !

Kudos, Abhinav !!!

An really inspiring interview with Abhinav Bindra, the gold medalist at the Olympics this year. I was amazed with the poise which which he answered the interviewers questions. I now see him not only as a great sportsman but a great human being too, who can indeed be an excellent role-model . One of the things that he mentions when asked about why he didn't express his happiness overtly when he won the medal. This is what he said

Like I said, I went to the Olympics this time with no expectations and I went for my job. All my focus for the last four years was on performance. I didn't care that I have to win or lose. I had no fear and fortunately for me, it was my day.

And I won and I was happy. But I'm not a drama person. I'm not a Bollywood actor or something. I'm not the type to jump up and down. I was calm and composed because I realise that there is very little difference between winning and losing and I appreciate the fact that others also work hard and I respect that.

Also, he opined that there is not as much thrill in achieving a goal as much as the bliss in the process. He loved the journey more than the destination, is the point that he drove home. Here are some of it in his words (http://www.rediff.com/sports/2008/aug/30inter.htm).

Now you win the gold medal. It's like climbing a mountain. You struggle so much and you reach there but what is there?

There's really nothing there. Next is that you climb the mountain down again and try and climb the next mountain. So it's hard. It's a fact-- you climb a mountain and then there's nothing there .