Chose a different hotel this week. The room is not so good, and the room does smell strange. But it does have free high speed internet access. Gives me time to write this stuff at the end of the day.
Oh by the way, the curtains suck. There are two white things, one kinda transparent and the other not-so-transparent. The third layer, the one with the pictures, does not draw at all! Now I am insecure about what people outside can see :-)
But it has internet acccess :-)
Most likely, we’ll change hotels for good from next time onwards.
Took Southwest again this week. But unlike last week, this morning there was absolutely no line. I went there at the same time as last week, but I got group B instead of group C for boarding. Also, there was no line at the ‘B’ entrance. The Starbucks line was 10 times longer than the flight boarding line!
Reached on time, but the damn rental car shuttle waited and waited and waited at the airport. The last time around, they picked us up and took off immediately. Not so today.
It evened out at the end, I guess. I got in early/on time but wasted time in the shuttle to the rental car, but also got reservations in FastBreak so I could pick up the car quickly.
Got in at about 11.30 and wasted (in some ways) most of the day talking to the vendor guys trying to resolve issues with the tool. They are going to be here for 3 days (2 more). Let’s see how it goes.
Was a relatively uneventful weekend. Met with some cousins for dinner at an Ethiopian restaurant. Nice food, as usual. Quite funny how I have started liking Ethiopian. The first time I had it, over 5 years ago, I had decided never to taste it again. Times have obviously changed.
One of my cousins who was visiting from India, is leaving today. We’ll miss her a lot. Hopefully she will find a ‘saras chokro’ and come back here soon :-)
Other than that, saw the USC game and was relieved that we won. Spent Sunday exchanging the phone we got for my wife and going to a nearby furniture store. The store is going out of business, but you know what, the prices don’t reflect the fact at all! It was a quick browse-through. In fact, we did not even like most of the stuff. Worked out well in the end :-)
Now it is Monday morning and time to go back to San Diego. Luckily this week, wife is coming to visit. She’ll be there Wed night and we’ll spend the weekend in LA/SD. Not sure what to do, but at least we’ll be together :-)
Forgot about this, but here are the other fall shows worth watching:
Mon: Still Standing. Very funny, always cracks me up.
Mon: Everybody Loves Raymond. Looks like they are setting up for ending the series. Raymond’s parents are moving to New Jersey. So it seems that will be the theme of this season.
Tues: According to Jim. Starts off as usual - funny and highly entertaining. Cheryl wants to have a baby, so looks like a new baby will be the theme of the series. I can see so many places where it can become hilarious!
Wed: That 70’s Show. So funny. I am amazed how much good writing there is, in this show. Each character is well done and the actors are doing a great job. Though I must say, I see Donna smiling when someone else is delivering a funny line.
Thu: Saw some pre-season OC stuff, but Joey is actually not that bad. Will & Grace is not that funny and The Apprentice sucks.
Fri: 8 Simple Rules. Quite funny, but again, I think it was truly funny with the father, but David Spade’s character is bringing in some funnies.
But one show I want to mention and highlight, is American Dreams. It is in its third season, and it is about life of a family in Philly in the 60’s. It is a very well written show and the topics there are quite similar to what is going on here. Vietnam war and its related support and protests, teenage angst, Catholic school influences, etc. I highly recommend watching it. The season 1 DVD is out and I am seriously considering purchasing it.
Wow. For the first time in the season, Schumacher had a bad race. The only other time he did not get any points was when he crashed out. The only other time he did not finish first was the previous race.
So this race was effectively quite a bad one for him. Shows that he is a human being. But the excitement of course revolved around Rubinho, who secured his second place with a good win.
Vill was not faring too well. The car is awesome, but Vill probably is doing a good job of running these three races now so that he is in the groove with his new team next year. Hopefully it will be good competition for the leaders.
31-28 at the end. What a game. Fortunate to get the ‘W’. Now, hopefully, after more learning, we will be ready for Cal. Luckily it is at home, so a slight edge. But the way USC has played all this season, it seems they wake up late. I hope they continue to learn and improve. Beat Cal!
I did see some improvements in the receivers. They were able to hold on to some tough balls. Especially Steve Smith.
The defense let a few fumbles get away, and that run at the end of the first half was a terrible missed tackle. Also, there were a lot of situations where a sack was coming and it did not materialize, in the first half.
They missed a tackle which allowed a TD with 00:00 remaining in the half! Stanford leads 28/17 at the half. It will need a great effort by USC to win this one.
They won the ICC Champions Trophy and I am really really happy for them. Since their dream team collapsed they’ve never really come back and become a world force, but hopefully this win will give them some confidence. I am also happy because they beat England in England :-)
Wow. Feels good to be back. Meet my wife. Thinking about it, we have spent more time away from each other, but for some reason this seemed longer. Maybe it was because we know that it is going to be for a long time.
Was planning to go to Tahoe for the weekend, but decided against it after realizing that it would be too hectic. Going to relax at home this weekend.
Another college football Saturday. A lot of the top 10 teams are on a bye week, but USC is playing Stanford. They have made a lot of mistakes, but more imporantly, the famed defense is being shredded by Stanford.
It is 14/10 against USC and I am afrid if this continues, it does not look good and it smells of an upset.
It was a nice evening, not too hot, not too cold. We went and saw one of the boats in the Maritime Museum (Star of India). Had dinner at TGI Friday’s.
Came back late, and went to sleep. Realized that we live quite some distance from downtown, like 20-25 minutes. But that’s alright. We don’t need to go there all the time.
Now, it is Thursday afternoon and only one more day left to get back home! :-)
Do you know what A9 is? It is a search engine project funded by Amazon.com. They just released a product which lets users save their searches and refer to them at any time. Basically, you search with you username/password entered in the toolbar or on the site, and then everything you do is recorded.
Privacy issues, anyone?
Remember when google said gmail is going to have text ads in the emails? Pretty much everyone and their families were complaining that it is privacy infringement and all that crap. No one realized that as soon as you sign up for free email, you are submitting yourselves to the email provider. Forget free, even paid email services have to archive all emails, just for backup and regulatory purposes. So there is nothing like truly private email. Yes, you can encrypt it so it may not be readable and all that, but the bottomline is that gmail is no different than yahoo emails, or hotmail and such.
And now that A9 is out and amazon.com has announced a 1.57% discount if someone searches through A9, I am not seeing a single person talking about privacy and all that.
Ponting loves the Indian bowlers and especially the slow bowlers, so it will be good to have him out. Of course, the last time around in India, he was made Bhajji’s puppy, but you know what, things have changed.
It’s been ok. I have been learning a lot. I like it here, in terms of the people and the project. But there is a whole new ‘getting used to’ to do. So it will be interesting.
Spent the evening alone yesterday, because the other person from my company had to go for dinner with a friend. We share a car, so I just stayed in the hotel. Had dinner at the restaurant there, and watched some TV. Slept while watching the TV.
And those who like arguing, please go to this guy’s blog, and make a good case for why we should not be killing chicken. His point is, we are a superior race than them, so we should be able to kill them when we want, how we want. That’s crap, if you ask me.
Got here late morning and checked-in before coming to the office. The hotel seems ok, haven’t checked the room, but I was told they are all nice.
Free breakfast (real one, not just croissants and OJ) is included, and so is one cocktail every evening. Though the latter, I am not going to be able to use. Not for now, at least :-)
We have cubes assigned, but we just hijacked a conference room and made it the project room. Feels good - spacious, and private. Met a few people I am going to be working with. Got some stuff installed that I will be working with. Got some manuals to read through. Exciting! :-P
Not sure what we’ll be doing in the evenings. Most people leave the office by 6pm. We are planning to be here only 4 days a week, so most likely, we will start early everyday. Let’s see how it goes.
After much discussion, we decided to watch the darn game between India and Pakistan. I don’t know what I was thinking. I should have just taken the easy way out and slept through the night.
No. Not that easy. Kept alarm for 1am and went to the house where we planned to see the match, at 1.45am. And the damn rains in England made the start delayed by 15 minutes.
India went in with Rohan Gavaskar as the 7th batsman and Dravid keeping. Pakistan won the toss and fielded.
In no time, because of rank bad shots, India was 28-3! Ganguly was the one to be blamed the most, because of the pathetic shot he played. Crap. Absolutley crap. He should be disciplined, unless he gives an explanation. Sehwag needs to be dropped just because he’s been given too many chances. Laxman would also be dropped, but he was on the only one to middle the ball, but that is the case with him all the time. He never looks shady, but he gets out to a poor shot all the time. And quite early in his innings. That is unacceptable. He needs Sandy the psychologist quickly!
Kaif and Dravid set up a small partnership, but then Kaif left. And in three balls, the woefully out-of-form Yuvi left too. For a duck. Another person to be dropped - never mind the sensational catch he took at point later on.
Then Dravid and Rohan had another decent partnership before Rohan left. Three dismissals fishing outside the off stump (Kaif, Yuvi and Rohan). And Agarkar came to the crease.
And what a revelation! Agarkar smashed the ball around and had a good time and ultimately, made 200 possible. Just.
So Pakistan had a seemimgly easy task of making 201 to win. But nothing is simple in India/Pakistan games and this game was no different. Pathan struck twice in two overs and Pakistan was reeling. At the end of his spell, Pathan had 3 wickets for 11 runs in 7 overs. And India was right back in it.
The problem? The other end. There was just not enough backing up for Pathan and the most experienced pair of Inzamam and Youhana settled down and started collecting the runs in a professional manner. It feels funny to say that for Pakistan, but it was true. No undue risks, and keeping the run rate up with singles and twos.
And then, despite a mini-collapse, Pakistan, with Youhana leading the way, was never in doubt of the victory and got it.
So India is out and will be back home now. Time to start thinking about what went wrong and seriously trying to correct it. Also, we need to quickly get into the test match frame of mind, because Australia is going to give everything they have to win the series coming up.
I am going to go back to the ‘India is not consistent’ mentality that I had a year or so ago. We need Sachin Tendulkar back at 100% and some guys to return to form. Ganguly needs to be a little more scientific and a little less intuition-based. And of course, we need to perform 100% as a team.
Only then we can hope to make it 2-2 vs Australia.
