Same old title, I'm back

It's been more than a month since I dropped by. Main reason - blogging's blocked in office. Other Reasons - Been busy, Watching World Cup cricket, blah blah.

Just popped in yesterday to see what other Blogger pals are doing and found that most of the places are same like mine - seldom updated. Felt bad and thought of coming back with full fledged blog posts(as usual).

Anyways, since my last post, a lot of things happened. Let us give a small look at a few of them.

1. India won the cricket world cup! Was shouting with joy when Dhoni hit the winning sixer. That day was my first wedding anniversary too. It would have been more good if Sachin too made a few runs.
2. Anna Hazaare went on fasting for the approval of Jan Lokpal bill and he succeeded in it(almost, as of now). What was more joyful was the way how the common people of India showed their support for this cause. Long live, democracy.
3. Sachin Tendulkar scored a century in the 20-20 format! That too with the agility of a person half his age. Till date, in this season of IPL, he was not out on all the occasions that he played.
4. Bahrain was declared to be under military rule for an indefinite period as of now. Felt bad to see the peaceful little island engulfed in riots. Let's hope that everything will be back to normal soon. I know many expats who sent their families back and who are planning to shift somewhere else soon.
5. Wifey saw an English movie for the first time in a theater. She was excited and I'm happy.
6. At last the big thing(at least for me). My bestest friend, who was struggling to get his parents' approval for his love affair for quite a few years, decided to call it a day and married his sweetheart in a filmi fashion. Didn't meet the couple yet, but looking forward to it.

Well, will b back very very soon. Till then, adeos n take care.

A thriller

Well well well, if you are a cricket buff and if you missed last night's World Cup match between India and England, you missed something really spectacular. So far, most of the matches in the tourney are one-sided (almost every match was predictable) and people were losing interest in the complete event itself. Even I was satisfied with seeing the live scores on the Internet rather than watching the match on TV. I read somewhere that ICC gave a press release saying something like "this tourney is an acid test for the One Day International (ODI) cricket". And then, yesterday happened. This match provided the necessary kick to the tournament and to ODI format.

For those of you who missed the match, let me tell you what exactly happened. India scored a mammoth total of 338 thanks to the masterful century by the Little Master, Sachin Tendulkar, himself. The innings of the master was masterful because of the way he paced his innings. When Sehwag was around, he just played on without much authority. Once Sehwag was out and Gambhir was settled, the master unleashed a fierce attack on the English bowlers. Greame Swann, considered as the best among the current spinners on the world, was hit for two successive sixers.

Indians would've scored more if it was not for the mad tumble of 5 wickets in the last couple of overs. However, 338 on Indian tracks is considered to be a tough score to chase and thanks to the recent form of English batsmen in ODI, everyone thought that this will be a cakewalk for the Indian bowlers. But the English captain had some other thoughts.

Strauss and Pietersen started things off very well in a classy way, fetching easy runs off the harmless Indian bowling. It needed a special bit of fielding from Munaf Patel to break this partnership. Then one more wicket fell and things looked OK for a few minutes. Then the pair of Strauss and Bell played calmly and the tide shifted slowly but gradually towards the English side. Strauss deserved an huge applause for his first century in World Cup and his career best score of 158.

With just a few runs to score that too with 8 wickets in hand, the English win seemed inevitable. Then Zaheer struck with two wickets in two balls to change the course of events and now the scales pointed towards India. Even though few more wickets fell and the bowling and fielding departments of India increased their momentum, the lower-order batsmen of England held their nerve and hit a few lusty blows in the end. After two sixes in the penultimate over and one more in the last over, the English team were left to score with 5 runs in 3 balls. A bye came in the first ball and couple in the second.

The match got tied after the batsmen had to settle for a single off the final ball.

After all, it was ODI cricket which won the last night's encounter. An epic match to bring the focus back on ODIs. I hope we get to see many more thrillers like this in the tourney.

Nirvana

Another set of wonderful moments passed by, as I finished my short trip to India last month and returned to Bahrain. As this was my first trip after marriage, most of my time was spent by visiting the relatives with my wifey. Counted the number of times I boarded a train, and the result came as 6 times in 20 days. Interesting. But hey, please don't ask about the number of buses I've boarded!!!

Coming back to reality, this vacation was sort of an eye-opener for me. Let's say I attained NIRVANA during this trip. Felt like I was missing out something in life by staying in Bahrain. I desperately felt the need for a change of a job, or even career. I just looked at the past few years of my career and found that I seem a bit back dated in this competent world. Even though I've enough workload to keep myself busy and the pay packet is OK, I feel that I'm doing the same routine work and there's nothing new to learn and develop myself. Seems like I've to clean the dust off my MBA dreams and seriously consider this option.

Taking such a decision might be a gamble now, as I am married recently and have to look after someone who looks after me. But I am sure that this gamble might be worth it.

Well, other than this, life is all OK. During my 3 week trip to India, I had the privilege of spending max time with my new-born niece who's now almost 2 months old. She's such a darling that I couldn't give her to anyone else from my arms.

As promised earlier, I look forward for posting lots and lots of quality posts this year and revive my blog. Last month, I couldn't do much as I was too busy in India. With the Cricket World Cup just a couple of weeks ahead, expect some decent cricketing posts too.

Et cetera

The year is coming to an end and it has been a very busy year indeed. First of all, I got married and started experiencing new roles and responsibilities.

Also, my sister gave birth to a cute little girl very recently and made me an uncle, officially. Earlier, I used to bribe a few kids to stop them from calling me "uncle". But now, I can't do that anymore. So one more new role. I'm desperately longing to see my niece ASAP.

Office has been more n more tiring with a lot of stress these days. People are squeezing me like a lemon there. But no matter whatever they do, they surely can't get more juice out of me than what I've in me.

One big surprise for most of my oldest friends out here is that I stopped drinking(not permanently, at least). After WD came to live with me, I never even thought of having that glass of nectar... ;)

Life has been going smooth as of now. WD is visiting India this week and this will be the first time in six months that I'll stay without her.

I'll be back to my usual posting about politics, sports and movies from my next post. BTW, talking about sports, GOD has just scored a 50th century in Test Cricket. And soon after that the other GODS cried with joy and it rained. What a coincidence!!!!

A disaster filled week

Hi friends, I am back here after a real loooonggg time and everytime I'm here I promise to come back soon, which rarely happens. But this time, I'm here to stay.

Life took a lot of turns and twists these days, but all for good. But this week has been disaster till now. To summarize, these are the so called disasters.

1. My Internet connection has been disconnected due to non-payment of the dues... :( But got it back after a day.
2. My mobile connection validity has expired and I didn't realize it for one whole day as the incoming calls kept on coming(grace period). I realized this when I tried to call a friend to accompany to the Internet office.
3. I went to the Traffic directorate to pick up a test date and the lady there, saw my driving details book and asked me about an application which I forgot at office. She said that it's not possible to give a test date "without looking at it".
4. Again, I went to the same office in the evening and this time, a dude was sitting there. He checked my Learner's License(LL) and informed that it expires in 3 and a half months and they have no test dates for 4 months.
5. So, I rushed to another office and got my LL renewed for an year. This time, I got the test date but its after 4 months and 4 days.

Waiting for driving test for more than 4 months is a stupid thing to do even for a stupid person like me, but this should happen for somebody who was lazy enough to ignore this for the past 4 years. But imagine failing in the test(which is quite common here) and waiting for another 4 months to get the next test. May GOD help me.

Well, this is how my week is passing. But there's some sunshine as the weekend is approaching fast and I don't have much committments. I hope to spend some quality time with WD. See you all next week.

PS: As the Internet policy in my office allows me to access blogs only for 10 minutes at a time, all that I've typed from the point 3 above got lost and I had to retype the entire post. Well, can't really blame anybody for this, except my stars.

Is the END near?

Well, don't back-off thinking that I'm late in seeing the catastrophic disaster movie "2012". This post is just about the recent climatic disasters and some stupid ramblings.

First in line is the cloudburst and its subsequent landslides and flash floods in Leh, India. In August 2010, a little less than 200 persons were killed in Leh because of the aforesaid climatic conditions. You might ask "What's so special about this?". Well, according to Wikipedia, The average annual rainfall in Leh is only 90 mm (three and a half inches). So, obviously, the cloudburst is quite surprising. And to add to my confusion, there's this article on the internet.

Second is what happened in Guatemala in June. There were volcanic eruptions, a powerful tropical storm, floods and landslides, and a frightening sinkhole. I think it's better if you watch it than me describing about what hell the people went through there. This is the link


The rest of the disasters are as below:

Floods in Pakistan

Russian Wildfires

Floods in Europe

Landslide in Pakistan earlier this year

Most of the above events are of surprising occurrence. Well, looking at all these, I can say one thing. We, humans, have messed with the environment in a big way. Looks like the end is pretty near. All we can do is to try to prolong it by contributing towards the greenery.

A historic decision

Today, I was happy. Not for any personal reason but for the announcement of Mr President, Barack Obama of the United States of America. The announcement deals with the decommissioning of the combat troops of US of A in Iraq.

In Mr President's words, "Tonight, I'd like to talk to you about the end of our combat mission in Iraq, the ongoing security challenges we face, and the need to rebuild our nation here at home.". This is exactly what I was thinking for the past few years. For a country plagued by recession and unemployment and a huge social uproar against the war, is it really necessary to wage a war against someone?

After watching a huge list of movies that deal with the war and its aftermath like the critically acclaimed "Hurt Locker", "Home of the Brave", "Dear John" etc, I felt bad for the soldiers of USA than the people of Iraq. How long can one wage a battle for something which they are not sure of? To add to that, I saw these images in one of my favorite website which deals with current world issues.

I read somewhere that some 50,000 American troops will stay in Iraq for support and counter-terrorism training, and the last forces are not due to leave until the end of 2011 at the latest. But still, it's a huge sigh of relief for the families of all those brave soldiers.

Long live humanity. And for those of you, who want to read the complete transcript of the speech of the POTUS, the link is here.