H/T : Bits and Pieces
July 2009
Monthly Archive
July 26, 2009
July 22, 2009
The Boat Club Quiz Club will be conducting two Open quizzes on the 9th of August .
Venue: Dewang Mehta Auditorium, Persistent Systems Ltd., Senapati Bapat Road, Pune
(The nearest landmarks: The location is behind Domino’s Pizza, near the new ICC Towers complex in which are situated shops such as Mainland China. The place is about 2 km from Pune University. This is a wikimapia map to the location.)
Contact: Phone: Ramanand (97642 58560), Salil (98231 12258), Email: contact(at)bcqc(dot)org
‘How to’s: Up to two members per team; no prior registration needed; no entry fees
Prizes
(the same for each quiz)
Prizes for each finalist, for the Best College Team, the Best School Team, and the Best Newbie Team.
Lots of audience prizes.
Prizes are co-sponsored by Landmark (Pune) and the BCQC.
Morning: ‘On the Same Page’ (a Literature Quiz)
Quizmaster: Anand Sivashankar
Timings: 10:00 am to 12:30 pm (report by 9:45 am)
Flavour: Literature
Finals: Eight teams in the final
Afternoon: ‘Questionable Intelligence’
Quizmaster: J. Ramanand
Timings: 2:30 pm to 5:30 pm (report by 2:15 pm)
Flavour: General
Finals: Six teams in the final
July 22, 2009
Check out this awesome video which uses Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant song with shady Indian serial graphics. Vinayak , the dude who made the video also writes a very entertaining blog.
Hat Tip: Boing Boing
July 13, 2009
My current college and my old college are world apart. There is almost nothing that is common between them. HOwever there is one very irritating similarity . The fact that both the colleges like to call ‘tests’ [as in the kind where you study and write and get marks for which go on your academic record] as ‘quizzes’ .
I would really like to give a piece of my mind to the person who cameup with the idiotic terminology. Quiz is a hobby. Its timepass . Its FUN. Tests are NOT!!
Call a test a test. Why do you need to screw up the reputation of quizzing by associating it with academics ?
July 13, 2009
Sometimes I wish I wasn’t as wacked out as I am. Sometimes I wish I could just let my beliefs go and enjoy myself. Sadly that never seems to happen. I have to say I tried though. Last night there was a party in college as part of one of the committe interactions. I really really tried to forget all my views and beliefs about music and have a good time . I just couldn’t . The noise that was blasting at top volume was sheer torture . I just had to leave . I guess I’m really gonna have to learn to go temporarily deaf.
Shya!
July 11, 2009
Hat tip: Bits and Pieces
July 2, 2009
Every era is known by it’s stars . For example , the 50’s are known as the decade of Matthews , Fontaine , Greaves , Finney , Seeler , Ghiggia , Rahn , Kopa , Hidekguti , Pushkas , Kocsis , Grosics ….what the hell …all the Mighty Magyars . No one remembers the fifties for Derek Temple or Ronnie Allen . Its not that they were bad players . They were in fact considered to be some of the better players of the world at the time. Why is it then that no one associates the 50s with them. Simple . They were good , they weren’t Great. When I look at the current football scenario and think how many of these players will be remembered 50 years from now , I get barely any names . The thing is there are a lot of good players today. There are no stars . Even someone like Ronaldo . He is among the top 2-3 best players in the world today. But how many people would put him in a list of all-time greats ? Not too many. Same with Kaka. Eto’o is probably the best striker in the world. He would not be in my list of 100 greatest players of all time. It’s sad that this generation will be remembered for its lack of great players and not by the stars it produced. It’s not like this is a very bad thing of course and I can’t really blame anyone for this situation. All I can do is observe (and complain . And Crib. A lot. ).
So going deeper into the situation. How many players would make the cut ? In my opinion , as of now , only Zidane and Figo. I am of the opinion that Messi will be one of the all time greats but he isn’t quite there yet. The only solace our unfortunate generation of football fans has is that this has happened before. The 80’s were equally bad. They had Maradona , but then I rate Maradona as the most over-rated player ever. Even for the sake of argument if we consider that Maradona was the best player ever , who else was there from the 80’s? We could go upto Baresi , maybe Rummenigge but that’s it. Some of the best strikers of the generation were Lineker and Rossi , which really says a lot . I seriously would say that even the 2000’s are better.
Now that I’ve taken up the topic I might as well clarify that this is why I think Maradona was overrated . sure , he won the World Cup single handedly but then what competition did he have. How many great players did he have to match up against him? No-one. Compare this to Pele . He had Eusebio , Charlton, Di Stefano, Garrincha , Beckenbauer , Cruijff to contend with and he came out on top. Note however that Maradona was an amazing player. He just isn’t worthy of the hype he gets. Top 10 of all time . Nothing more.
Cribbing about the ack of greats in my generation is depressing . I would just like to point out that I’ve been very lucky to have watched sports in the 90’s. Tendulkar , Schumacher , Sampras , Zidane , Maldini , Baggio , Woods , Graf . Can’t really ask for more. The 2000’s and more importantly the coming few years will be boring in comparison. But then the transfers make up for the lack of entertainment.
PS: Don’t try to look for a point in this post. I just felt like writing.
This one as well the previous post Cross posted on the football blog.
July 2, 2009
It’s a mad mad summer so far. And no, I am not referring to the ridiculous heat in Jamshedpur. Compared to last years insipid transfer scene somewhat salvaged by the dramatic Robinho to City move , this year has been crazy. Not the transfer market in general of course , but the actions of Real Madrid. I heard about Kaka’s transfer and i thought WTF . I heard about Ronaldo’s transfer and thought “WTF ! WTF! WTF! ” initially but then calmed down and thought ” Okay , this was always going to happen . It was only a matter of time” . Then I heard about Karim Benzema’s transfer and that’s when I had to blog about it. Karim Benzema is a good player no doubt. But he isn’t worth 30 million. 30 frickin Million!! Are you kidding me? With that Madrid have spent 148 million this summer. Lets put things into perspective here. Newcastle United , one of the biggest clubs in England , fifth on the revenue standings is probably going to bought for a 100 million. Real Madrid have spent more on three players than someone would on an entire club. To add to this , Frack Ribery has also said he wants to join Madrid. I’m pretty sure Bayern woudn’t let him go for anything less than 50 million (they would be extremely stupid if they did). But spending money alone is not the madness I am referring to .(In fact an article that spoke about how the Ronaldo transfer proves that he wasn’t bigger than the club which is a good thing, and I quite agree with this.) What really pisses me off is that the decision to buy these players has been made by Fiorentino Perez and not Pellegrini and has been made for purely financial reasons. Seriously , how the hell are they going to play Kaka and Ronaldo in the same team? They already have a good midfield . What about those players. When is Benzema going to play? They will not only self destruct but also kill a generation of great footballers (Which are anyway sparse in this time. More on that in a separate blog post) . Ribery said he want to join ‘ the new generation of galacticos’ . The belief that stars win matches is a fallacy. The only reason the Galacticos of Madrid won all the stuff they did in the late 90’s and early 2000’s is that while they had the brilliance of Figo , Zidane et al they also had extremely hard working players like Cambiaso , Conceiciao and Makelele . Notice that Madrid’s downfall came after these three left the club. The fact is simply ball skills or great vision is not enough to win matches . You need hard workers to run around , do the donkey work , close down opposition , hinder their game . Without this all the skill in the world would be useless. What Madrid are doing now is living in the delusion that simply buying extremely skilled players will get them results. And sadly the great players are also in the same delusion. I may come off as a pissed out United fan , but seriously think about the impact on football as a whole. Great players go to Madrid for god knows what reason . They all obviously cannot play. Some have to sit on the bench , Even one season on the bench will kill a player (Shevchenko , Tevez) . So we stand the risk of loosing some of the greatest footballing talent in the world. The bigger worry is about the other players. Robben . Sneijder , Gutti , Nistelrooy , Higuan , Gago , Marcelo are all good players. With the three big signings , someone is going to miss out and is going to put his career back a couple of steps. Madrid have the money and have the right to buy anyone they want , but they really should think of their own good and the good of the players in general. As a huge football club , as an icon of the game , Madrid have a responsibility to the game of football. And ruining careers just for the tag of Galacticos or Shirt sales is really not done. Madness I tell you , Madness.
