Quid agis, medice?

This last sunday I went to see the match between the Mumbai Indians and the Deccan Chargers. I figure I should write something about the experience itself since I’ve already written about more important details of the trip .

As some of you might have figured out from one of my recent posts , I worship Sachin Tendulkar. So my basic criterion was to see Sachin. If Sachin had played I would have supported Mumbai unconditionally till the end. But since he didn’t play , I turned to plan B ie ‘Support the Batting Side’ . This was quite a good decision as the match seemed a lot more interesting this way. Mumbai’s innings though quite bad was fun since everyone was cheering on their team.

Deccan’s innings was super fun for me because of the brilliance of Adam Gilchrist. So basically I was cheering for a team for the entire duration of the match and it was awesome fun. Hope to do this again someday.

Man Utd have beaten Barca to reach the final of the Champions League for the 3rd time. They haven’t lost the earlier two times so I’m hoping the trend continues.

We totally deserved to win and Scholesy’s goal was brilliant. The referee was good and actually knew the rules of football unlike the horrendous refereeing last week at Stanford Bridge.

The great one , The Enlightened soul , Head of Department Professor Dr. N. Nagesh has given his views on Mahabharat – the TV series to that rag awesome newspaper , the Pune times.

He says he won’t watch it. I don’t see how a venture can be successful without the great man’s approval. If he won’t watch , neither will I.

PS: You will get this post only if you are from Loyola Junior College.

While it could be argued that the Mumbai Indians lost their match against the Deccan Chargers so badly because of the absence of Sachin Tendulkar , I feel this is just a small part of the real reason for this embarrassing loss.

The real reason was the cheerleaders. They’ve gone in for local ‘talent’ and come up with total idiots who don’t even look good ! There were guys in the cheer-leading squad. I agree that the Mumbai Indians must have a few gay fans but having two guys out of four cheerleaders is the sort of minority appeasement that I really must oppose. Even the girls sucked. Co-ordination was non-existent , and when I say that I don’t even mean with each other. Every individual cheerleader’s two hands were also not co-ordinated.

Their horrible show did nothing but depress the crowd and made all of us cheer for the Chargers whose cheerleaders were actually graceful and better to watch inspite of  being all covered up (Don’t you just love the Shiv Sena?). The mumbai cheerleaders also pissed off the Chargers and made Gilly hit the ball even harder , often aiming for them .( He missed them by just a few inches on one occasion. )

It would do Mr Ambani a world of good by getting some good cheerleaders since he has scrounged so heavily on the player auctions and built such a crap team.

G.O.D.

Though now I am a bigger football fan than a cricket fan , at some time in the past I was a huge cricket freak. And that was entirely because of Sachin. The first time I watched cricket was the 1996 World Cup (yeah ,i know , i started late) where Sachin was phenomenal.

My best memory of Sachin is the first ball of the 21st over at the semi final in Sharjah on this very day 10 years ago. Shane Warne coming around the wicket . Sachin just steps out and Warney’s first ball is into the stands.Straight down the ground for six.  As Tony Grieg once said ” That’s his way of saying Hello Mr .______ , I’m Sachin Tendulkar. Pleased to meet you”

Even now , I watch India matches depending on whether Sachin plays or not. I get depressed by the thought of Sachin retiring. For I’ve always been a Sachin fan , as long as I’ve been watching cricket. I don’t know what sort of depression I’m going to go into when Sachin actually retires. I hate the 24th of April. Every year it comes and makes Sachin a year older , a year closer to retirement.  And today GOD turns 35. How many more years could he have ?  Sheesh , I’m depressed now.

Shatrughan Sinha may have suggested that the Bacchhan’s use their clout to get nominations for certain awards and has also complained about Taare Zameen Par not being nominated for the same. Amitabh Bacchhan has come out with a surprisingly well researched reply in which he effectively says that Sinha ‘gifted’ Raveena Tandon the National Award.

Sinha has come back with revealing that he did have a *very* big hand in giving Raveena Tandon the award but its still way better than Mulayam giving the Bacchhans all those awards.

In an unrelated incident Raveena Tandon just shelved plans for a comeback.

Jessica Alba starer ‘The Eye‘ is copied from a  Chinese film called ‘Gin Gwai‘. While David Moreau and Xavier Palud may feel proud of themselves for choosing such a freaky, interesting story to rip off , they fail to realise that they are taking on the rip-off- meisters of the world of entertainment : Bollywood.

Whatever you can think of ripping we’ve already done it .

Source: ToI

My favourite football site published  this awesome Avram Grant press conference .Here’s a transcript.

Question: Are you back in the hunt?

Answer: Maybe not.

Q: Was it a deserved win?

A: Yes.

Q: What pleased you most?

A: I don’t know.

Q: Is it a relief to win here?

A: Yes.

Q: Were you impressed by the performance or the result?

A: Both.

Q: You seem to have something on your mind, a problem?

A: No, no problem.

Q: An issue?

A: No, I’m okay, sometimes I have nothing to say.

Q: Do you have a message for the Chelsea fans, who think you are back in the title race?

A: No message.

Q: But you are back in it now?

A: I don’t know.

Q: Is it because of Sky TV (who had switched the game to Thursday)

A: Maybe it is because of you, I don’t know.

Q: Would you rather say nothing?

A: It’s a good question, I don’t know what to answer. It’s not Sky, I enjoy watching them.

Q: You are two points behind Man Utd but you don’t know whether you are back in the title race?

A: No, I don’t know

Q: Are you in the title race again?

A: I don’t know. I am sorry, you can write what you want and I will answer how I want.

Napoleon Einstein .

I wasn’t planning on doing this but Avnish has put pressure on me to respond to Abhishek’s attack on our attack on pointless words. Avnish has made some pretty good points . Abhishek  particularly has taken to heart the posts and JR too has expressed his less pissed off  views on the subject.
I couldn’t really make out how I had offended Computational Linguists because I don’t have the slightest idea what they are. The rest of this post is written asuming its some hi-funda tech joke that I, a ‘technophobic mech guy’ , have no hope of getting.

Getting back to words. I do not hate words nor do I feel that new words shouldn’t be made. I hate being made to learn these words , especially those I will probably never use in my life , for I feel that it is a waste of (my very limited) memory. I would much rather know that a dog ran onto the pitch and urinated on Jimmy Greaves’s shirt in the Quarter final of the 1962 World Cup than know what ‘amanuensis’ means.

So maybe its my hatred of mugging or maybe I’m just not that attached to language in general as you are. For me Language is just a mode of communication. As long as the chap I’m talking to gets what I’m saying , I’m happy. It doesn’t hurt me if people don’t compliment my vocab or command over the language.

Sheesh ! Chelsea is playing Everton and here I am talking about words! How lame is that?