Here’s wishing a very Happy Birthday to Priyamvad, Ram Shankar, Kiddo, Santosh, Kaushik, Sobha atta, Valli odina, Rakesh Ojha and Pallavi. All of these folks are celebrating their birthdays in the last week of August (and a few in the first Week of Sept.) and itz easier for a collective wish than individual ones 
Phew! I feel drained!!! It’s been a pretty (well, a tad more than normal) hectic day at work for me. I was required to do the co-scripting and co-hosting of an impromptu gathering for our department at the workplace and was busy with it almost the entire day. In fact, the groundwork had to be done yesterday itself and that explains the fact of ‘no-post-for-29th-August’. I co-scripted the entire event and then had to get it edited, paraphrased, arranged and then re-arranged until the final draft was readied by today noon. Once the speech part was done, all remained was to go up and deliver it. And then it started…..a slight jittery feeling that steadily grew as the event neared. I’m normally a very confident person (Well, my school teachers actually were of the opinion that I was over confident but thatz quite a long time ago) who never dithers away from a challenge. And though standing in front of a 300-strong audience and conducting a ceremony while equally holding their rapt attention, seems like an easy enough task, believe me…it isn’t!!!
As the event started, I made quite a mess of a few sentences, mucked up a few names and even fidgeted and scratched a lot!!! But thankfully, as the event progressed, the confidence in me started to flow back and midway through, I was my own-self again – calm, collected and above all…Cool 
The rest of the event passed off relatively hitch-free and I’m sure everyone heard my sigh of relief when it ended! Whilst it was an endearing experience, it taught me one thing – when one has confidence in one-self, obstacles are easily surmounted. I could have easily lost it and blabbered away into buffoonery and timidness but I managed to hold moi nerve and motivate myself to do good, no matter how hard it may be. And while the event wasn’t of a bigger magnanimity – as, say, the CAT exam or a Job Interview – it played a part in making me realize that confidence is the key….and self-confidence is the master key!!!
P.S: I should also thank my co-host. She was slightly more nervous than me and that helped…I dunno how 
Today is Raksha Bandhan or Rakhi as it is fondly called. It is a popular Indian festival wherein women tie a Rakhi (holy thread, decorated or plain) on the wrist of their brothers as a symbol of affection and the brothers, on their part, avow to take care of and protect their sisters. The festival is celebrated not only between siblings related by birth; any two people – be it colleagues, classmates or just friends – can strengthen their brotherly & sisterly love and affection by tying the Rakhi/getting the Rakhi tied. One can read more details about the festivals here and here.
Though I don’t have an own sister, I have cousin sisters (two elder and one younger) who used to tie Rakhi on my wrist every year when I was young. As the years passed on, we migrated to different cities and the festival was relegated to postal rakhis and telephonic conversations. College days again saw a few classmates tie us Rakhis and it was more of a friendship gesture than a sibling love. I have been getting the Rakhi tied from my younger cousin for the past two years, thanks to us being in the same city now. But this year I could not go and had to just stick to a phone call and hoping for a weekend visit (Sorry R) 
. Anyways, enough about myself…let us turn the attention on you, the readers. Being not sentimentalist fellow myself, I am curious to know what does this festival means to you people. Please let me know your feelings in the comments. Happy Raksha Bandhan!!!
Felipe Massa led from pole position to the chequered flag as he led home a a Ferrari 1-2 victory at the Turkish Grand Prix. Teammate Kimi Raikkonen – who had started from third on the grid and managed to jump McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton at the start – was second with a fortunate Fernando Alonso in third. Massa preserved his lead throughout the race and though Kimi challenged him at the end of their middle stints, a belligerent overtaking maneouvre was never on the cards. Fernando Alonso was lucky to finish third since he had dropped behind the two BMW’s at the start and was running 6th for all of the first part of the race. It was only during the pit-stops that he managed to jump the BMW’s and settle into fourth position – though a huge 20+ seconds behind the lead pack. Lewis Hamilton was consistently under 6 seconds behind the lead Ferraris and third place looked in the bag when suddenly his front tire punctured on the 43rd lap and he had to concede not one but two places – to teammate Alonso and BMW’s Nick Heidfeld. Hamilton was lucky to have continued after he managed to limp back into the pits and change his tyre but had to be content with 5th place.
BMW again proved that they are the best of the rest with a strong drive from Nick Heidfeld for 4th place and though his teammate Robert Kubica showed initial promise, he dropped back down the order into 8th place. Renault showed their ascendancy with Heikki Kovalainen grabbing 6th place ahead of the Williams of Nico Rosberg. The other teams had mixed results. All in all it was an uneventful race whose only exciting moment happened to be Hamilton’s tyre puncture! The race did see as many as 20 drivers finishing, with only Mark Webber and Adrian Sutil being the retirees. The Championship leaderboards remain unchanged at the end of the race though the gaps were somewhat reduced. Alonso closed to within 5 points of leader Hamilton in the Drivers’ standings with the two Ferrari drivers lying a further 15 points behind. The Constructors’ standings saw Ferrari close within 11 points of McLaren though an appeal is still pending for McLaren’s points in the Hungarian Grand Prix. The next race is in a fortnight’s time at Monza and Ferrari look good going into the home-stretch…though it remains to be seen as to whether they can overtake McLaren in any of the tables!
Race Reports: Formula1.com | Grandprix.com | BBC Sport
Three months after the dastardly terror attack at Mecca Masjid, Hyderabad was under attack yet again from extremist forces as two bomb blasts ripped through two of the popular weekend hangout joints. The first blast came at Lumbini Park wherein a laser light n’ sound show was in progress and innocent tourists were killed – few of them students from Maharashtra who were in Hyderabad on a study tour. The second blast occurred at the crowded Gokul Chaat outlet in Koti which was full of weekend-shoppers grabbing a bite of the popular chaat.
The perpetrators of this heinous attacks probably were wishing that this would lead to communal disharmony and large-scale unrest in the otherwise peaceful city but nothing untoward has happened till now. Such people have no sense of humanity and have zero respect for the lives of innocent people 
They have this maniacal ideology stuck in their head that blowing up people will cause the destabilization of the society. What good they hope to achieve by that is beyond my understanding!
Though I can’t say that I have been unaffected by previous such incidents (these incidents are an attack against all humanity and not mere individuals) this particular attack brought with it a personal tragedy alongwith it as one of the victims was a close friend’s own brother. I may have met him just a few times but I have immense respect for him and to see his bright future end in such an inhuman way was most distressing. May is soul rest in peace. My heart goes out to my friend and his brother in this trying times and I hope that they gather all the courage and willpower to tide over these emotional moments.
Ferrari’s Felipe Massa grabbed the Pole position for Sunday’s F1 Grand Prix at Turkey immediately after McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton had clocked the fastest time in Q3. Going into the last 3 minutes of Q3, the running order was Kimi Raikkonen>Lewis Hamilton>Felipe Massa>Fernando Alonso and it seemed to me that it would be exciting if that each one would set a fast lap time and the other would topple it! It may have happened that way but for Kimi Raikkonen’s small twitch at the penultimate corner and Alonso’s heavier fuel load. So the order turned out to be Felipe Massa in pole with Lewis Hamilton alongside him and Kimi Raikkonen and Fernando Alonso on the 2nd row. BMW occupied the 3rd row – with Robert Kubica 5th and Nick Heidfeld 6th – proving that thy were indeed the best of the rest.
Though the three-sessioned-qualifying was a novel format and people were liking it, it seemed pretty boring for me! All the action was concentrated in the Q3 – when the fastest 10 drivers would compete for the top 10 positions and it is this session that merits much viewing. In that sense, out of the one hour of qualifying only the last 15 minutes would be watchable! Too little too less IMO
Qualifying Reports: Formula1.com | BBC Sport | Grandprix.com
I dunno what/where I clicked to get to it but somehow I ended up on my iGoogle page and noticed that there was just a mite of a clock on it and nothing much of note! I vaguely remembered that I had put some other stuff therein – about the same time as I filled up my MyYahoo, Live! Spaces and Yahoo 360 pages with all sorts of stuff – but now there was nothing more than a clock and a calendar and some news!
So out came the Genius at Work poster as I set about re-building moi iGoogle page. There were lots of widgets to browse through….lots! Sifting through each and every page was tiresome so I did what google offers best – search! and nearly everything I wanted, had a widget associated with it (I couldn’t find a yawn calculator though). Amongst loads of stuff that I’d added, a few noteworthy items were Chess, Tetris, Hangman, Copter (all games); BBC Sport, Formula 1, EPL (sports); Dilbert, Garfield, Calvin & Hobbes, D.C (comics); Digg, slashdot, Discovery, howstuffworks, JokeADay (syndicated content); Babelfish, Indic, World Clocks, Weather (tools). There were a few nifty themes as well that i tried out but I ultimately applied the beach theme…which actually shows the Sun’s position (rising, high, setting etc) according to the local time. Nice! After it was all done and tidied up, I sat back and marveled at the nifty page (even if I say so myself!). Pity it can’t be shared with others. And Oh, the Sun’s setting on my iGoogle page…time to go
Firstly, thatz a wierd title…but as you go along reading this post, it’ll become self-explanatory
September 8th – that’s the last date for the submission of filled-in application forms for CAT 2007 i.e. the IIM’s Common Admissions Test and I’ve haven’t yet taken the form outta the suitcase that I’d put it in for safekeeping! Saturday’s the only chance of posting it so I’d better get cracking on it tonight itself (Why tonight? Coz I’ve a strong feeling that I’ll put it off for tomorrow!) Not that it’s a tough ask…just a tad strenuous and irritating…all those circle-darkening and limit-signature-to-box et al!
And the Python I’m referring to is the scripting language that I’m learning…or at least am trying to. Its got quite a simple syntax and the fundas too are easy-to-understand…but its the actual scripting that’s getting my goat I end up making hazaar silly mistakes in the script and throw up several exceptions! Luckily for me, today’s sessions covered exception handling *rubs hands in glee* I had learnt Perl sometime ago; hoping that I’ll master it to an extent and then move over to Tcl/Tk and other stuff…but alas! I’ve sorta stood still in that department! Need to brush up those if I’m to face any new challenges 
And now for the last piece of the enigma – the Bastille Stormers! They are a model of shoes from Reebok that I’d bough a fortnight ago. It was a discount sale and a big banner proclaiming “50% OFF” was more than enough to drag me inside. The fact that there was a teeny “UPTO” before it is another matter altogether! Nevertheless, I got the Bastille Stormer runner model at a neat-enough 40% discount and I’m wearing them today. Actually I’ve been hoping to wait till Friday (Coz of all the casual-wear hoopla on that day) but what the heck! Today’s better as any other! They feel quite snug and light and the ahem…runner in me is raring to go and…what else..run! There’re a few pics of the shoes after the jump that you might wanna have a look… Continue reading
