Rise of the Phoenix

F1 season has begun! 

If at all you are a follower of F1, you might be aware that Honda has opted out of F1 because of slowdown. The axe was hanging on the necks of almost all its employees specially the two drivers of Honda F1 20

08 season - Rubens Barrichello and Jenson Button. Ever since this news was officially out way back in Nov 08 it was a huge suspense whether someone is going to buy this team. There were few rumors of takeover by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim and the Virgin head Richard Branson. Finally late february or so it was announced that Ross Brawn (former Ferrari principal also Ho

nda F1's 2008) has 

bought it and the team will be renamed Brawn GP ! Finally a sigh of relief for Button and Barri

chello. A new team was formed overnight with the old management..... remember there are hardly any changes in the team except its name. Ross Brawn is an innate talent in F1 history. Having worked with teams like Benneton, Ferrari he has a huge experience 

in racing. He is also considered to be the brain behind the 7 time world champion Schummi ! 

Till y'day morning the fate of Brawn GP was still unclear. No one even knew whether they are participating in this season. Brawn has made an official statement y'day before Friday' practise that 

they WILL race this season ! But they dont have an

y sponsors yet :-( They had real tough times and even tough times ahead.... hey wait .... here comes the flamboyant Richard Branson. Virgin became the major sponsor for Brawn and even the label of Virgin was imprinte

d on the car y'day night !! and today morning it was the Aus GP qualifying session ! 

Guess what made me write all this stuff ? Today's qualifying was dominated by BRAWN drivers - Button and Rubens ! In what was amazing qualifying BRAWN made it up 1, 2 wh

ich means they are going to race tomorrow from the start of the grid. Button took the pole. Seldom you get to see this kind of stuff. It was aweful ! Whr are these giant teams? the so called front runners for constructors ? Ferrari, Mclaren, BMW, Renault etc.. ? these 4 teams were reigning the world of F1 for the past few decades. Looks like change has come to F1 too... small teams making it count. But F1 by itself is highly unpredicable... things change overnight ! Nevertheless ....this was an amazing start by Brawn and I hope(Massa hopes !) that they continue doing so to kick the a***s of Ferrari and Mclaren. 

Brawn has already set the pace in qualifying. It would be interesting to watch if they can continue the same in tomorrow's race! Looks like they are the strongest contenders this season unless the Ferraris and Mclarens work seriously on their engines and the car aerodynamics for the forthcoming races. Cheers Ross Brawn..... 

FZ Vs A Star

A couple of days back, in Times of India there was a small snippet about the newly launched Maruti Suzuki A-Star. There were few rallies held in cities like Chennai and Bangalore. According to TOI, A Star gave a record mileage of 37+ Kmpl !!!!!!!! can u believe it ? when Ford Fiesta gave an average of 31Kmpl .... my jaws have dropped! and this news has certainly made me think of my decision of buying an FZ 16. My bike is literally drinking feul .... at times it gives just around 30Kmpl :-( Common its just a 153 CC bike with just around 14 BHP... it should give not less than 45 no matter how u ride. Then I keep saying to myself... time and again... this is one heck of a Yamaha product ! & I am one heck of a crazy creature who respects this brand name from the core of my heart.

Now imagine feeding two(dont get me wrong... i am talking about me and my bike) with my miniscule salary !

But the fun of riding a bike is amazing and it will be even more when keep ride at 107Kmph on a national speedway. Yesss.... yesterday i was testing my machine on NH9 Medchal highway and it hit 107 with ease ... for a moment I felt someone was pulling me from behind ... then i slowed down a lil bit as there were heavy vehicles ahead of me. It was fun... my heart was beating at double the normal speed... adrenaline kept pumping ! :-) Next time i will make sure that my tacho shows at least 111 kmph !

Anyone can cook !

Did this title remind u of something? In case you are still struggling to recollect where u have come aross 'Anyone can cook', it is the jist of the Oscar winning movie 'RATATOUILLE'. I can never forget the characters in this movie. Rats look cute after watching this masterpiece from PIXAR !! Such is the brilliance of this flick. One movie which has truly inspired and motivated me to get my hands on cooking.

Anyways... coming back... this weekend my cousin Harish was at my home and we both thought of cooking Veg Munchurian! We got some Carrots, a Cabbage, a Capsicum(many Cs ... lol), few Onions etc... and of course the ready made Knorr's veg manchurain pack. Then trimmed these veggie stuff and mixed it with maida and made into Veg balls....fried them in oil and then mixed these fried balls with the remains of vegtables and Knorr's pack and boiled it for another 5mins and here we goooooooooooo! our yummy veg manchurian was ready...! never felt so happy about cooking !!! :P

oh yeah... we also tried our hands on Palak Paneer which was also quite tasty. But Veg Manchurian was so aweful that it truly deserves the dish of the weekend award ! Hey... just got another !DEA :-) 'Satyam' is already in troubled waters... how about getting ready for next job? a chef in a fast food centre or something like that? food is one of those sectors which will be last to be hit by recession .... so no slowdown worries... no pink slips... my job will be safe as long as I cook well !! lol

Next week I will try some new stuff... got to explore Reliance Fresh(the one beside my office) tomorrow for more ready made recipes! else I need to take some timeout for Googling with key word 'recipes' :P

Freedom,Independence,Republic & Democracy ....where are these ??

I have learnt ages ago that India is a truly Republic & Democratic nation & India is a developing country. India being the 2nd fastest growing economy in the world, we are talking about becoming one of the super powers in the world ! Future definitely looks promising.

But there are few gray areas which are definitely pulling us back. Forget major things like corruption & Terrorism. In the era of globalization few senseless acts by brainless creatures are making me think if we have really achieved freedom. I don't know how many of you have given a thought on this earlier. Things like attacking women in Pubs and Discs, Anti V-Day protests, Attacks on Churches are few classic examples from the recent past.

Men going to Pubs in ok with them... then why not women? after all its their life. Many people have already debated on this. But in my opinion any such taboo is a pure senseless act. According to a research report apparently V-Day has created a Rs.600crores market in India alone ! courtesy... Archies & Hallmark ! Even in these recessionary times, this V-Day Archies sales has grown by 4%. You know what it means ? It has indirectly contributed to lot of employment & to the growth of Indian economy. I agree that celebrating these kind of days is purely an individuals choice but it is pure non sense and stupidity if someone else has the trigger. Look at this.... "Couples seen on the streets on Feb 14th will be forcefully made to marry !" what the f***. May be terrorists have a better reason for their senseless acts ! This is heights of making a mockery of LOVE.

What bothers me even more is that the fact all of the above mentioned things have occurred in major Metros ! cosmopolitan cities like Bangalore and a city like Mumbai which never sleeps ! Solution for rediculous acts like these is not so tough to find if you are willing to look for. But who cares these things make headlines only once in an year. India would have already become a much better place to live for if we our acts made some sense... but unfortunately the most uncommon thing in humans is commonsense !

No offenses please... this disgust and hatred is only on the protests which cause huge traffic jams and interrupt the dialy courses of many of our lives.

Luck By Chance

With Farhan in the lead I couldn't miss this movie ! As Ajay was in India on a vacation, I took him along. He knows I am a crazy fan of FA :-)

The other day I saw an old episode of 'Oye, its Friday' on Youtube of course hosted by Farhan. Guest in that show was his childhood friend Duggu(Hrithik). Hrithik played a small cameo in this movie. He said Luck by Chance will easily be one of the biggest bollywood hits of 2009! amazing... I am a crazy Hrithik fan too. Hence I had huge expectations on this movie but I must say at the end of the day I am a lil disappointed. Luck by chance is yet another average movie. Very much similar to Fashion which also projects the real life scenario. Even in terms of story line this movie is quite predictable and there is no real juice in it. Prior to Rock On release I thought its going to be a trendsetter... even Rock On turned to be yet another average bollywood movie. But Rock On scores high(5/5) for its music. Same is not the case with Luck By Chance.

Every scene is quite predicable but I must appreciate those bits and pieces in the movie which are hilarious. There are few scenes which will have a rib tickling impact on you. The great thing about these scenes is that there are very few dialogues... mostly done with expressions and acts. I thoroughly enjoyed this dialogueless humor. Zafar Khan's(Hrithik) role was even more amazing. You need to watch this to appreciate the humor in it. & of course Rishi Kapoor's role is no less. I must say his role has life in it ! Delete Rishi Kapoor & his role from this movie... and you wont have anything much to watchout for!! apart from the sexy, curvy & drop dead gorgeous Isha Sherwani who also delivered her part quite successfully. Note: She has become my desktop wallpaper :P lol

Its worth giving a watch for those bits and pieces.