The Kid is The Man

After one of the most exhilarating finals in the history of Wimbledon, 5 times straight winner Roger Federer should be more afraid than pleased and happy. Because the inevitable looks to be approaching sooner rather than later.

The amazing show by Spanish "superkid" Rafael Nadal will have left Federer stunned at how good he is becoming on grass. With Federer highly unlikely to ever push Nadal off clay, it seems like the prey is getting the better of the hunter's familiar territory.

Federer did give an amazing tribute to Nadal after the game, which speaks for the Mallorca man's brilliance at just a mere 21 years of age. One of my friends recently told me that he believes the Federer-Nadal era is similar to the Pete Sampras-Andre Agassi one. But the difference then was that Sampras always ended up winning. While now, the equation seems to equal to Federer, but is slowly tilting towards a certain young talent, who can happily say that "the show has just begun".....

Defying Realism

If you can pack truckloads of pure bullcrap into a 180-minute nightmare and still earn a glaring profit out of it, then you must be definitely having more magic in you than David Blaine, huh?

After reading the total gross income of Bollywood movie Jhoom Barabar Jhoom (something I dare not see) and seeing it make a healthy profit, the guys in Mumbai have certainly devised a formula more powerful than Einstein's E=mc2, I guess. The total gross stands at Rs. 12, 57, 64, 120 so far. Amazing. Mind boggling stuff.

And when you consider the fact that the tens of thousands of engineers in the country struggle to make a living, after having stretched their souls out in search for a livinghood, you can feel the imbalance of life.....

Quote Unquote (Original)

- Beauty lies within. But that is something that only doctors and surgeons can see. So I rely on the outside one.

- In actuality, the only purpose of life is to delay death for as long as possible. To speed up this process, indulge into smoking, drinking etc. Or else, just be calm, cautious and healthy.

- I sleep in the night's darkness, looking forward to waking up to a better day's brightness.

- The best part of an experience, whether good or bad, is that you learn something, again whether good or bad, from it.

- In the end, only the truth makes a difference. Lies just fade away.....

Whipping the hockey stick on ourselves.....

I picked up the paper today morning and went through an interesting piece. It was about Bollywood bad shah(sorry, did I leave a space ;-)) Shah Rukh Khan and his soon-to-be-released movie Chak De India. The movie is about him being a coach of the Indian women's hockey team.

It is with despair that we can note the fact that we need a movie to promote a national sport. India must be the only country in the world, which is imbalanced in such a way. We have our own hockey stars but most of the country doesn't even recognise them. Only keen followers and GK enthusiasts know something about the game.

Imagine this situation. You play hockey for your country. Your a star. You just helped the team finish 3rd at an international tournament. And still if you walk down the street, no head is going to turn in appreciation. It hurts, doesn't it?

Well, that's reality for you then. But my ego definitely hurts. To see a fake, hypocrytic and apparently useless industry about to help promote the national game is something that cannot be digested. Even the fact that they are bound to earn crores of rupees from the movie's success. But our hockey stars will still walk in the open at night, with life as normal as can be.....

Learning from China

My father recently shared some interesting titbits from a trip of his to our great "world's fastest growing economies" rival, China. He visited a few cities in the country(which are difficult for me to name completely, you can ask him for the exact names) and a few of their industries and factories.

The points he shared with me left me wondering whether we are even capable of considering rivalling them, despite all the talk of us being head-to-head in the race to be Asia's No. 1. He visited a few factories and admitted that people are so transfixed to their work that they dont even look around to see what's going on. Since he arrived in a delegation, you would normally expect the workers to throw glances. But such is the commitment of the Chinese, that they dont give an absolute damn to what goes on. All that matters to them is their work. And work too in such a professional way.

They have perfect timings for arrivals, their lunch breaks are not peppered with gossipy conversations and their tea breaks are way too short for us Indians to even imagine. Maybe, this is what we lack. A true professional approach, a whole-hearted one too.

Even if most of us spend half the time that we spend on gossiping and fooling around in the way that the Chinese do, then definitely they'll have a strong rival.....