FIFA Fever !

Was BLOWN AWAY by the soccer mania, completely !! Had a gala time for a month... never thought Football is such a beautiful game. Have to confess... I was never a huge fan of football... I used to occasionally watch it earlier. But as they say 'you are known by the company you keep' , 'being with a winner makes u a winner' ... being with my football crazy colleagues made me thoroughly enjoy the sport. Watching football (any sport for that matter) with a bunch of crazy friends is one of the best times u can ever dream off.

We all follow club football keenly. But the world cup has taken the interest in this sport to the next level. There are hardly any moments/matches that went unnoticed (caught the highlights if I had missed the action LIVE). My Football knowledge would have easily got 5x in the past one month. Add to that my company's name on the ad hoardings. 9mins of advertising in every world cup match !! whoahoooooooooooooo.... best feeling I ever had about my company.... believe me ... I wasn't this happy ever so far in my career so far !!

Last one week of world cup has been even more amazing ! Reason - Prateek was in town !! yes... just to watch the last 4 matches with us. Been to sports bar, had a wild party at Vibhor's pent house, Watched few sick movies, got drenched in rain almost every night, had to go to the office without taking bath !! :P etc.. etc.. etc.. All this has come to an end last night. There will be a brief pause now. EPL kick off in about a month from now... :) I just hope, professionally, things will settle by then. Fingers crossed /\ More updates to follow in my upcoming posts... ciao

Bring it ONNNNNNNNNNNNN !!

Quite excited about this weekend... IPL begins, Formula 1 season kickstarts, Hockey world cup final and EPL matches!! It's gonna be a very hectic 2days. Invitation has already come from Durga Elite - Pent house for what is going to be a rollicking weekend!! To add to these, Ashok & Yadi are coming from B'lore & Bombay respectively as well... Probably this is the first time I am sad to meet my friends :-( I have already rejected Ash's proposal of watching 'AVATAR' in IMAX - not bcoz of time, coz it is f***ing boring to watch it third time !! To be simple & straight, I did not find anything spectacular about this movie... except graphics - which are appreciable. It is all hype, no substance at all. Sorry ASH.

Anyway... this week i am gonna race against time !! its going to be a litmus test for my time managing skills :P I shouldn't say NO anymore to anyone and still manage to watch everything LIVE !!

Just get a feel that CHARGERS are going to lift the championship trophy this year as well.... here is a logical reason - we are not playing in RAJIV GANDHI INTERNATIONAL CRICKET STADIUM/UPPAL STADIUM. Thanks to T-campaigners !! This stadium has jinx. DC has lost all their 9 home matches so far !! add 3 more to that list (Indian team too has lost all the matches they played in this ground so far !!) that makes it a full DOZEN !!!!!! unbelievable ....... home ground is expected to bring luck, but... it is the other way around here. Anyway... I'm happy that this season, no matches are being held in this stadium and at the same time sad as I cannot cheer for my fav team LIVE.

Wishlist for this weekend: DC must win both the matches, Vettel should win the Bahrain GP, Force India/Schumi should finish on podium, Karun Chandok should finish in points table, Germany should win the hockey world cup, Fulham & Hull city should beat the shit out of ManU & Arsenal respectively, Chelsea should win the game against West Ham reach the TOP of the table !!!! &&& I should also attend the 5hrs extended saturday's Informatica class + Hair cut + Sunday's gully cricket match + meet friends !!!!

I think I should skip silly things like taking bath, eating food, talking to parents, browsing, afternoon nap, etc..,

I know the list is huge... but so is the weekend !!!!!!

4 Adieus & 1 welcome !

This FEB by far is the most action packed month I remember. I have bid farewell to 3 of my friends, my brother and received 1 friend!! Viru, Prateek & Sai have left Hyd chasing their their dreams and Vinay has come to visit Hyd for 3weeks after a long gap of 1.5yrs. Vinay went to US in Aug 08 for higher studies. He got placed in Cisco and have to report in San Jose next month. I know him for over a decade now. Almost everyone I know who flew abroad for studies have changed, & that is quite natural. But this guy is still the same - way he talks, walks, food habits, genre of movies etc., nothing has changed about him. I don't know how he managed but trust me, he is still the same.

Viru flew to South Africa for the FIFA project, Prateek left to Delhi - his hometown & Sai flew to UK to pursue masters.

Viru had 2 dreams (related to sports) - 1. to watch soccer world cup & 2. to watch cricket world cup!! He will live his first dream when the world cup begins this June in SA. Durga Elite is the apartments name where our gang hangs out every week. Durga Elite becomes a mini sports bar on weekends!! All 7 of us are sport maniacs. To make things even more interesting we play fantasy premier league !! The discussions usually happen on 4 important topics - 1. Sports(ranging for Cricket to Tennis, F1 & Soccer included !!) 2. CoRCC/Satyam 3. Movies & 4. Chicks !! ( 50 - 25 - 15 -10 respectively). Everyone except Nikhil is/was a part of CoRCC at some point of their career in Satyam. But, But, Nikhil knows equally well about ppl in CoRCC (no wonder how).

From this week, we are only 5 :( In the course of next few weeks/months this number might go down further as everyone is in queue to move out of CoRCC. Guess that's how life is ... addition & subtraction of friends on a regular basis.

Will for sure miss them :-( All the best guys...

Super Sunday !

Last night we've been to Sports Bar in Banjara hills. I was the only teetotaler in the group of 7 !! One of the prime reasons of not being to any bars/pubs till now is that always used to think all bars will be smoking zones where the cigar smoke is more dense than the fog at Delhi airport !! Specially after Bar One nightmare, I thought I would never step into the bar ever. Contrary to my belief, Sports Bar was quite decent. In fact it is rocking !! Then I've learnt that all bars are not smoking zones. Good for me !

The occasion was ManU Vs Arsenal match. 4 for Aresenal & 2 for ManU & me as Chelsea supporter took a neutral stand initially, but tilted towards ManU when the match actually begun:P Idea was to get a balance (4-3). Anyway, it turned out to be a very boring match as ManU crushed Arsenal by a 3-1 & got close to Chelsea. Half of the Arsenal battalion left by half time as the scorecard read 2-0 in favor of ManU.

But the real fun began after the match ended... in fact an hour after the match has ended. We all were just done having food & saw a bunch of fanboys coming in to the bar at 12.30 or so... they too were a mix of Arsenal & ManU fans and most importantly they all were in a single group ! The losers (Arsenal fans) started yelling Arsenal, as a true fan stands by to his/her team. It caught the attention of rivals and IT all began !! IT refers to the verbal fight... the fight raged on, situation heated up when all fanboys gathered and arguing where everyone kept shouting and no one can hear what the opposite person is saying. I was a lone spectator watching it from a distance, sitting in a corner of the couch!! It was all chaos for a while... but everything seemed to be in control !! Arsenal fans started yelling the slogan 'ManU, FUCK U' & 'ARESNAL, HUMARE DIL MEIN HAR PAL' !! After an intense 20 - 30 mins argument defending their teams & portraying the so called 'cheap' tactics of the opposite teams, our group moved on. The good part of this fight is that no one took it too seriously despite consuming barons of alcohol in the past 3 hrs. Everyone was in good spirits !

In all it was a good outing... & I am not scared of going to BAR again :-)

Mission Accomplished !

MUSTANGS Vs BENCH DEVILS

Yuppieeeeeeeeeee! We got through the first round quite easily. 2-1 was the final scorecard :-) But the sad part is that I didnot play the match! We were practicing 30mins before the match begun & I had few minor cramps which aggravated as I continued to play :-( So I was forced to wait outside and cheer for Mustangs.

To summarize, a goal in the first half by Kishore & a goal in the second half by Kiran. There were many attacks on the goal post of the opposition but managed to kick in only 2 in the end as the goal post is just about a hockey goal post(Nothing to the 'Bench Devils' credit). WE (Mustangs) felt a lil nervous in the final 5 mins as the bench devils managed one past our Sleeping goalie(who is more interested in his GF standing outside the line than the football which is just around the corner!). But our strong defender Prashant was good enough to kick the ball into the Devils' zone. Ahh... a funny thing which happened in the match - our goalie grabbed the football with both hands & just crossed the goal post line(luckily no one noticed it except Mustangs) & was thinking about the next move as if he is playing chess......... guess what.... after holding the ball in his hand for about 10 secs(which is against the rules) he kicked it outside!! A real buffoon :P

Now we are through to the 'Group Stage', where each group contain 4 teams and each team needs to play 3 matches. The top 2 will qualify for the next round. We need to wait at least till Feb for our next match as the matches are scheduled only 2 days in a week :-(

Movies & Soccer

Wassupppppppppppppppppp? this is the common phrase I keep hearing at least a dozen times each day. Alright, this is what I am up to these days.

I have got my hard drive full of movies from Trishul. 60+ flicks, mostly Hollywood - includes almost every genre.... Action, Animation, Horror, Romance, Comedy, Drama, Thriller ......

I already have many addictions and to add to those this is a new one. Not that earlier I never used to watch movies. But earlier there was a limit..... at most 2 on a holiday and I used to get exhausted. Now I have breached all the benchmarks of watching movies & there is absolutely no resistance or saturation points visible. Believe me I have watched 9 movies on last weekend ! In the past ten days I have covered not less than 20 movies. Which includes few fabulous flicks like 'Back to the future' series too, Animated stuff 'Cars', Action flick 'Death Race', Horror movie 'The Grudge', Thriller 'Before the devil knows u r dead' to name a few. This has become a daily routine.... morning one movie before going to office and evening one movie after coming from office, as if my physician has advised for a dose of medicine before Breakfast & before Dinner! Out of all animation stuff stands apart.... 'Cars','Ratatouille','Bee Movie' are simply awesome. I heard a lot about Pixar and I must say these guys are superb. I was taken aback with these concepts... Rat becoming a chef, Robots falling in Love, A world of cars & only racing cars, Elephant hearing the microscopic community! I think I have gone crazy for animation stuff. Now I cant think of missing anything... gonna tune in to Cartoon Network from tomorrow ! Any crazy freaks out there like me?? If yes, U can share few more movies with me.

One good thing my company is doing currently apart from CSR activities is promoting football across the nation! YES... after bagging the FIFA deal for the next 2 soccer world cups, they have created a sports vertical and betting big on it. As the first step, they began the promotion activities in the company it self. We have a soccer match this friday evening and we are all gearing up for this. We thought of stretching our muscles a lil bit to avoid disappointment and surprises on the match day. So we had a practice session on last saturday for which only 5 guys have turned up out of 8 !! Never mind... we played for 15mins hardly and realized that is the high point of our stamina and we were down & out in the next minute. Our match will be for 40 mins split into two 20min halves with a 10mins break between both. Now with this kind of fitness I guess the only way of winning the match is, if the opposition team can stay on field for not more than 15 mins :-(

I am planning to watch 'Goal' to get some motivation before the match begins(lol)..... watching EPL or Champion's League is not a bad idea to know how to sledge if not tips & tricks! How about Zizu's head butt :P