Its funny how you can recognize a place sometimes just by the smell! As soon as I landed in Bombay, I could smell it. It felt good - almost like a ‘welcome home’ smell.

And then at Surat station, the same thing. Funny how that works.

Have been trying to sink in to India. This trip, I have noticed one thing that I did not analyze earlier in my life. I noticed that no one has the patience here. Some examples:

1. Traffic signals - it is a good thing if someone stops at a red light. It is so uncommon to see that! Well, let me take it back. It is uncommon to see that before 9am and after 8pm. And it is no limited to the Bombay. It is also prevalent, and especially more so, in smaller towns where I have been visiting in the past two days.
2. Even if people have stopped at a red light, they start inching out well before the light turns green, and at some point they occupy half the intersection!
3. Ticket counter lines - I was at a railway station, waiting in the enquiry window line. I noticed that when someone’s turn comes up, there are at least 2 other people from behind who are not only watching and listening to what you ask at the window, but they are clinging on to you to see what you remove from your pocket and what you give the person at the counter.
4. And more importantly, as the line progressed, people would not stop moving more than needed. So when I tried to control this, by not moving much when the person ahead of me went to the counter, the lady behind me actually moved ahead of me! Can you imagine that?? She cut ahead of me right in front of my eyes. I stared at her and waited for her to respond to my stare. She said ‘Someone else will move ahead of you’! I argued with her that just because you move ahead does not mean that the line will move faster and she believed that it would! :-)

This impatience is now becoming a problem, I think. There will never be order in society where impatience is a big characteristic.

Bye weeks late in the season are bad. USC found out last week, when they lost some first place votes and even though they maintained #1, they really have to prove it against Notre Dame and I am sure, against ucla the following week.

Meanwhile, what’s with the Cal-beaters? What wrong have they done in taking care of rival Stanford big time? Unreal!

It was awesome. The court was not bad, and the competition was tough. Had a good workout and felt fresh after the game.

Hope to continue with it…

They showed it on the plane. Good movie. Off my list.

Auburn handled Alabama and as expected Oklahoma ran up the score against Baylor. Something tells me that the close win of Auburn is not really going to impact the rankings. It is still going to be a close call for #2 and #3.

Hope USC does not lose out in their bye week. It could happen, though :-(

Wow. After a long couple of flights, I made it. The flights themselves were quite ok. The seats were not bad (window on the right on the first one and aisle on the left on the second one), but not terribly comfortable. But that’s alright.

The layover was short enough and the slowest part was the last 4-hr stretch. Dammit, it seemed like each minute was moving as slowly as an hour. But haven’t we seen that before.

I could not get any cellphone signal at Seoul airport, but at Bombay, it was able to pick up AirTel and I was relieved. It does not update the date and time, but big deal - I already exchanged 10 SMS messages with my brother from the time I landed to the time I came out of the customs area. Good stuff, I like it.

Immigration was surprisingly quick. There were quite a few people, but they had many windows open, so it was quite smooth. The bags took a while, but not too long. Ultimately, I was home only at about 4am! Chatted for a bit with everyone and that made it 5.30am. Of course, as usual, there was food and drink made available at that time too!

Decided that I wanted to get out of jetlag syndrome from day one itself, so did not go to sleep at all, and in fact watched some of the Australia-New Zealand cricket match. It was so hopeless, and so one-sided that I really did not want to watch it. Then it struck me that we could go play squash! So that was decided - to play squash at about 8am.

We did go play from 8 to 10 or so and came home and had the traditional Sunday breakfast of Idlis! Yay! Also had sweet lime juice after a long long time, which was refreshing. I loved it.

I tried to stay awake, but the India-South Africa match was so boring that it made me fall asleep :-)

I slept for a bit, had lunch and then slept till some family came to visit. Two cousins and two aunts came by and then my parents-in-law with my brother-in-law also stopped by. It was good fun to chat with everyone. I felt bad that I did not call anyone and they not only called me, but also came by. Tsk Tsk.

Have to catch up with friends, but first things first. I am here for my visa as well as for weddings. The appointment with the consulate is tomorrow and after that, I have to go shopping for a shirt for my suit, and maybe tie and socks.

The passport situation is weird. They send it by courier in 3-4 days, but typically, apparently, it takes 2 days or so. So we cannot go to the place of the wedding till we receive the passport because unlike the US, the couriers don’t leave a sticky note saying they will re-deliver. There is no re-delivery and even if there was, since we plan to be out for a week, the re-delivery will not work. So we have to wait in Bombay for the passport to come back from the consulate and then only go and start the wedding revelries.

A big and long week ahead. Deep breath!

All this BCS nonsense will take a back seat if Alabama can beat Auburn.

Please, please, please.

And the day has come now. I am flying out today. Will be back sooner than I originally planned, but still it will be a long vacation. Looking forward to seeing everyone after 2.5 years!

I may be offline for a bit.

KMart is merging with Sears. That means one less place to go shopping - bad for some, good for some, excellent for me :-)

A few things that happened in the last week or so have made me re-think this whole ESPN being a sports leader thing.

ESPN is obviously the biggest sports network, and the kind of reach they have, it is just mind-boggling how much impact they can have on ‘normal’ minds. They have ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNNews, ESPN Classic, ESPN The Magazine, ESPN Radio, ESPNZone, and of course ESPN.com.

SportsCenter is an iconic sports news show - players are looking to get into the highlights and Top 10 plays, etc.

Considering how much influence they have, some comments made by some coaches raise a question - should ESPN be scrutinized for what they are doing as almost a monopoly in the Sports News industry?

1. Kansas coach, after the close loss to Texas game referred to a late offensive pass interference as a ploy to get Texas into the BCS running. A loss there would have certainly ended Texas' run for the at-large BCS spot.
2. Ohio State athletic director is saying the ESPN has an agenda which they are trying to pursue with Maurice Clarrett’s allegations about the wrongdoings of the powers-that-be at Ohio State.
3. Bob Stoops, head coach of Oklahoma stopped short of saying that ESPN is trying to pitch Auburn as the #2 because ESPN has a contract with the SEC conference.

All this is kind of unnerving to me. I am not that easily influenced by mass media, but continuous pounding of the same thought across various media outlets can get to anyone. Brainwashing and propaganda is beginning to take the fun out of watching sports today :-(

There are two college football games that I want to be able to see in India. Anyone know of any place that may be showing it there?

USC/Notre Dame on Nov 27

USC/ucla on Dec 4

Leave me a message (email or comment) if you know of any place. I will be in Bombay at the time and wanted to see if I have any hopes of seeing those games.

Actually, on Nov 27, I will be in Surat, which makes it tougher possibility. But at least if I can see the ucla game, it would be great!

I am an avid listener of Yahoo! LaunchCast Radio. I always have it on, and I rate artists and by now, it plays pretty much only the music I like.

And it’s all FREE! Till now.

First they increased the frequency of commercials and more importantly, increased the frequency of LaunchCast PLUS commercials. The PLUS version lets you listen to radio ad-free and also lets you use ‘high quality’ streams.

And now they have locked me out of it. I can only listen to ‘My Station’ if I buy PLUS. Also, if I listen to some of the other free stations, I can only get ‘low quality’ streams in mono mode and no skipping.

I know, I am used to free stuff and all good stuff, but if you force me to buy your stuff, I am not going to. I am currently listening to ‘80’s hits’ on LaunchCast free, Low Quality and am perfectly ok with it.

I am currently working with a client of ours, where we were around for three years or so. We were in ‘support’ mode for a bit after that and we were away for almost a year. The team that inherited the solution was so inept that we were almost certain that the system would be completely replaced in no time.

But guess what, the users use it. The system is up and running, but running with crutches. It is slow, takes a lot of maintenance to keep it alive, but it is a critical reporting system now.

But the point is that the ineptitude of the team here has created all the mess. So many band-aids applied to make the system work, some of them actually incorrectly applied, that it is a nightmare trying to troubleshoot some of the problems that are coming up.

This reporting system is not too important to the Director and he wants to replace it with ‘his’ system. Obviously he has us over just to support the existing thing while his ‘elite’ team (hyuk hyuk) re-designs the new system.

They have not given me access to that environment, nor have they divulged any details on the same. They are afraid, maybe. Politics, politics, politics.

Anyway, it feels good to see that people are still using what we built, and that it is a critical portion of the enterprise reporting system.

http://prilogs.blogspot.com!

A welcome change when most of the people are closing down their blogs - hint hint :-)

Watched the taped American Dreams after coming back from the movie. Pretty good, once again.

I love the writing. And the editing - how they move from one scene/storyline to another. And subtle hair-raising moments with the family interactions, both on the Pryors' side and the Walkers' side.

Fantasia of American Idol fame performed R-E-S-P-E-C-T. She wasn’t featured much though.

I just wish they promoted the show a little more. I am trying my best to do it. I will have another post about some promotion activities that I hope some of the readers of this blog can help me with.

Later.

I think the movie was good. In fact, one of the better ones in general. Not excellent, because the storyline was quite typical, but everyone has done their jobs well.

But my movie-going experience was not that great, because:

1. It was Naz8 - the worst-run movie theater I have seen, with the rudest people on staff.
2. We went at 4.30 for a 5pm show and by the time I went to the ticket window, the show was sold out. The 5pm line was at least 100 people long at 4.30pm! In fact the 6pm was also sold out! We got the 7pm show.
3. Which means, we had to kill 1.5 hours. We went to the nearby Starbucks, and a Barnes and Noble. Killed (yes, killed) the time there and went back in the line at about 6.10.
4. The ticket prices were raised to $10 only for this week! Rip off!
5. The line was irritating because even though when we came we were maybe the 10th in line, by the time they opened up, the twosome at the front called all their family and it was 15 of them by themselves!
6. There were a whole bunch of Nepali/Assamese-looking people who were waiting outside the line. Just before opening up the Veer-Zaara line the security called out for whoever was in line for Aitraaz and 2-3 of those Nepali/Assamese gang went in. The others still hung outside. When we went in, we realize that those 3 women had reserved the whole last row (8 seats) for their buddies! And those guys came in at the end and comfortably sat there. %$#$%#!!!

Too much of trouble around the movie to make it truly fun for me :-(

Suddenly ESPN is questioning USC’s automatic #1 position! Ivan Maisel is saying that they are #1 just because they started at #1. I don’t know - maybe it is true, but the fact is that they have beaten good teams and thrashed the lowly ones. They deserve to be #1 no matter what.

Last year USC took what came to them as bad luck, and this year, if the system is working in their favor, the others will have to suck it up and live with it.

I am scared that the coming week, with it being a bye week for USC, Oklahoma and/or Auburn could jump ahead. Is it even possible?

I hope not.

As expected, USC won by over 35 points (the expected line was 34.5), and in fact, won by 40.

49-9 was the final score and now, after next week’s bye, it will be Notre Dame at home and the final game is at ucla. I will miss both of those :-( Hopefully ESPNStar will have one or both of them, though I highly doubt it.

Against Arizona, the start was only slighlty sluggish, but in general, the game was a blowout. The defense was fired up and the offense has found even more weapons - the Reed pass to Jarrett was ridiculous!

And kudos to LenDale White for 3 rushing TDs on 199 yards rushing off 16 carries.

And Dwayne Jarrett - what to say about this guy. For most of the first half and part of second, it seemed like none of the wide receivers were in action, but at the end of it all, he had a stud game - 6 receptions for 144 yards and 2 TDs.

Nice. No jinxing…shhh.

Watched the latest OC only this morning. Taped it because when I was away on Thursday, I was working at that time.

Good stuff so far, but it looks like masala on the kids' front and good drama on the adults' front. DJ the yard guy may turn out to be the next Oliver whereas the ‘chasing’ Seth will have to continue chasing.

Caleb’s arrest is going to be interesting, because Sandy is his lawyer!

Let’s see what happens.

I am sick of watching the Indian cricket team lose matches that they should have won. Luckily last night I did not spend the whole night up watching the game, but it was enough to frustrate me when I saw the Pakistani innings develop slowly and suddenly change the momentum against the Indians.

Not sure if I want to watch this Indian cricket team play anymore, especially if I have to stay up at night and all that.

With all the flying that I am going to do in Nov and Dec, I think the holiday season is going to come and go away too soon for me. And that is bad and sad, because Jan-May months are so dry.

I wish I could slow-mo Nov and Dec :-)

Happy Hindu New Year to everyone. May the New Year bring all the best to you and your loved ones.

And Cal won. Its almost certain that Cal will jump over Wisconsin in the rankings. I like the way Cal is playing and they deserve a BCS spot.

At least people who care to lecture you and justify some points that they care about. But internally I think everyone is a hypocrite, some less and some more.

Someone can justify their thoughts one way, and the very next day, justify something that completely contradicts their thoughts from the previous day, without realizing that it is so.

Sorry for the rant.