Bang Bang Begining

Cricket world cup 2011 has just begun and the men in Blue have started in style. After the 2007 world cup debacle, this was like the 'revenge of the fallen' ! and the revenge indeed is sweet !

Sehwag did exactly what he said before the tournament begun.. he said that he wants to spend all 50 overs at the crease and he almost did so. Good for the team.

Anyway.. the purpose of writing this is to post something very interesting that happened a week back. A day before I returned to Hyderabad (approx 10days back), I was chatting with Nikhil, a good friend of mine, over the office communicator. His predictions are mostly fluke but they sometimes turn out to be bang on ! The topic slowly moved to world cup and I asked him to predict the score in the inaugural match between Ind and Ban ... below are his predictions...

India - 378/4 (50 overs)
Sehwag - 176

and today I wish I had copied that conversation ! damn.. he is again so close ...!! I watched the India innings at his place today afternoon and we both burst into laughter on many occasions thinking of the chat and predictions we made. He is like the Emraan Hashmi in Jannat !

Next match is against Eng and there is more than a week gap. Will ask him to predict that match... u all readers can 'bet' with his help. Good Luck !

FZ Vs A320

The air fare from Bhubaneshwar to Hyderabad on Indigo airlines is close to Rs.2200 and the road distance is just over 1100 Kms, that's Rs. 2/km.

Now, in Hyd, I ride Yamaha FZ. It gives a mileage between 32 & 35. Ever since the petrol prices have been deregulated by the Indian govt., prices have sky-rocketed touching new highs every month. I have learnt that Rs. 11 is the total increase in Hyd in the past 4-5 months. Now, it costs Rs.65 /lt. That's approx. Rs. 2/km !!

This literally means, I am spending equal amounts to ride my bike and travel by air ! Mind boggling !!

Crazy 31st night !

New year is something most of them look forward to. I am a person who believes that we do not need a particular day to celebrate and hence birthday's and anniversaries do not excite me much. I thought Dec 31st will be just another day for me and I was right till 10pm. That's when my room mates told me about the Puri trip ! On any other day I would have written it off calling them weirdos & insane. But, I sensed the thrill the trip has to offer and immediately said YES.

We are 7 now and they have already booked an SUV (Scorpio it is ! Muscular and Powerful and more than anything it is manufactured by our parent company - Mahindra ! so loyal my friends are !!) We started at 11.40pm, that's 20mins away from 2011 ! Bhubaneswar to Puri is close to 70Kms. We had to wish new year at a petrol pump!! stop wherever we see a light to check if coke is available (found one after half a dozen stops!), ate tandoori chicken in the car, made pegs behind the wagon ! & the FOG ... my goodness! it was so sooo dense, we had zero visibility at times even with the fog lights on! There was a moment where the fog reminded me of movies like 'The Mist' & 'Silent Hill', so scary it was at the same time excitement made us scream. The driver brought the car to a standstill !! This was the most intriguing part of the trip.

We finally reached Puri around 1.30 am only to see the barricades and police on the beach road ! THE BEACH is closed tonight ! But there is a twist in the tale here... the driver took us to the beach from another road. When we stepped out and saw huge sand art exhibition on the shore... which was closed as well. But we managed to creep in without waking up the artists. We saw the giant Santa Claus from inches away... in fact touched it!! it was monstrous... after examining it we made our way to the beach.

The beach was completely vacant.. like a private beach, absolutely deserted... and guess what.. first thing we saw over there is a abandoned boat!! may be the one used by fishermen... we jumped in joy and the into the boat. Then the scotch flowed out... we talked, gossiped, sang, discussed movies, people, cities, work and what not.

What if we could not celebrate the new year in GOA, we did the same at the beach but a private one :P Spent a good 3hrs at the beach and between 4.30 - 5am moved ahead to Konark, to watch the sun rise. The sun rise point was totally crowded at 5.30am. We did wait for half an hour to capture the sun rise, but our driver was in a hurry and continuously honking. So we had to leave the place much before sun came out. Again on our way back, the fog haunted us! similar scenes... in fact better since it was the dawn... zero visibility. Never saw such dense fog when I was in Hyderabad.

In all it was a time very well spent. Was the most memorable time in Bhubaneshwar....

Happy New Year !

It has been quite some time since I last penned down my thoughts. Must confess that my interests are slowly changing! But Blogging is one of my favorites and there is no way I

am going to permanently stop writing. Once in a while I go into hibernation mode... but this time it was a lil longer. Anyways.. I am totally awake now and will do my best to provide justice to the writer inside me!! :P

Wishing you all a very happy and prosperous new year 2011. & Yeah ... any new year resolutions ?? mine is to stop procrastination :-)

Will soon post about my wild & crazy Dec 31st 2010 adventure! Signing off for now...

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