Last week in the practice session of last race of F1, one of the best drivers in todays F1 fraternity, Felippe Massa met an unfortunate accident reminding everyone how close F1 drivers has been to death. The safety measures for the drivers has been increased in last decade but still they are just one mistake or accident away from seriously injuring themselves.
In Massa’s case he has been fortunate enough to be out of danger but unfortunately even the doctor has been unable to say for sure whether he will be able to make a comeback to the sport. That remains a doubt. For now we can just hope that he makes a successful return to the sport.
But for Schumi fans this has opened a new opportunity to watch their idol race for one last time again as he will be replacing Massa for the rest of the season. It would be interesting to see how Schumi resurrects Ferrari’s dissastrous season. For it won’t be easy for him this time around as even the last team is competing with other teams (until Kimi comes and crash Sutil. lolzz 
) But knowing Schumi he will spring some surprises and hopefully he will lead 1-2 finish for Ferrari (and Force India ends up withsome points in the next race) For Schumi and Kimi fans like me it will be a double treat for both driving for the same team was a dream team for us.
BMW – The next Honda
Well BMW has decided that it won’t race in F1 due to poor results of this seasons as being reported. This is a setback for F1 as I think BMW was a fantastic team and became a top team in just few years. And if top teams like Honda, BMW are going to quit after each and every season the spectacle of the sport will reduce. Just wish that FIA do something to stop this trend.
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Many Mumbaikar and Indians yesterday were a relieved lot as one of the accused of one of the worst terrorist attacks the country suffered after independence confessed about his role in the attacks. Ajmal Amir Kasab, the only terrorist caught alive of the 10 terrorists that were involved in the 26/11 Mumbai terror attacks, had a four and half hour confession that brought back te dreaded memories for many back. Though this confession was unexpected but it was welcome by many mumbaikars like me. Now that he has confessed I feel that he is meted out with the punishment that he deserve and look out for other remaining accused by seeking them through Pakistan.
Meanwhile this article about Kasab on the front page of TOI caught my eye first
There are several theories to why Kasab has chosen to confess now. One of them is that India was keen to have a confession while Hillary’s still here. However the most credible explanation came from Kasab himself.
Judge: Aaj achanak aapne kyun confess kiya? Jab pahile charges frame hue toh tab kyun nahi kiya?
Kasab: Pahile Pakistan ne yeh nahi mana tha ki main unka hoon. Aaj maan liya hai. Isliye main bayaan de raha hoon.
Judge: Aapko kaise pata chala ki Pakistan ne maan liya hai?
Kasab: Bas mujhe pata chala. Maine suna ki Pakistan ne kaha ki Kasab Pakistan ka hai.
Judge: Kya tum kisi tarah ke dabav mein ho bayaan dene ke liye?
Kasab: Nahi
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Yesterday was the first day of my college of the final year of my B.E. degree. Frankly speaking I still doesn’t believe that I had been through 3 years of my graduation and is now in the final year. For I think I had still not enjoyed my student life at graduation level to the fullest.
I always thought that I have got a wonderful set of teachers in my department of my college as it was confirmed yesterday. As it was just the first day they didn’t take any lectures. Just the HOD asked us to give the name of our project group members and asked us to be a little serious as it is the final year one of the most important year of a students life and blah blah blah. There was more he told us but I cannot write it here as I too don’t know when I went asleep in middle of that lecture:) .
So where in other colleges and for that matter even in our college but other than B.E. electrical students were just sitting in their lectures we were given an off day with a note ‘welcome to final year, one of the most important years of your student life. Be ready to just study study study for a whole year’.
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I don’t know what was worse for the Australians; whether the defeat or the way their captain Ponting’s conduct in this match. There had been some controversial and close decisions in this match and Australia was at the receiving end. It had hardly happened in the past against the Aussies. So I think Ponting found it hard to handle and he directly confronted the umpires and the batsman (Peterson) on one occasion. I don’t think it was in the spirit of the game and I think even Ponting would accept that when he sits back and review his own behaviour.
Meanwhile, Andrew Flintoff made it clear that he is very much charged up to make his final test series memorable with a memorable bowling performance. He has been one of the most feared all-rounder who can turn a match with either bat or bowl or even both. And he showed today what he can do. I think he can play like this for another 2-3 years if he remains injury free. England will find it difficult to find a replacement for him.
This is Australia’s first defeat in this series then too I had the post topic as ‘another defeat’. Well, I too am surprised at this title but this was that came to my mind immediately. It may be because I am one of those who has grown up with watching them winning matches after matches, series after series. But in last few years with two of their great bowlers retiring they have been tested everywhere. They lost in India against India and then lost against South Africa on their own turf. Though they defeated South Africa in South Africa later, their bowling attack which seems to be too raw has not been able to come to the fore when it has been tested with pressure. Though I think they will make a strong comeback in the third test with Brett Lee in the attack.
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Two days ago my cousin, a class III student, was studying. He wrote multiplication table of 9 and showed my uncle. My uncle checked it and found it to be correct but when my uncle asked him what is the answer of 9 x 8 he was unable to answer it. He had to remember the whole multiplication table of 9 up to the 8th step and then he answered.
This is not the case of just one kid. Its the case of all the students. Take another case. My father who is a professor at a junior college just asked one simple question to one student during the admission process last year. The fee that was to be submitted was Rs 252. The student had a note of Rs 500. My father asked how much he should return? At first he said Rs. 300. My dad was startled but he just repeated the question. Then the student replied Rs. 150. My dad was like loosing his cool a class XI student, who scored first class in his class X exam, cannot answer such an easy question. My dad asked him how can you not answer correctly such an easy question. The boy just replied, ‘Sir, you give as much money you want to give. I won’t mind if you don’t return my remaining money.’
Such has been the quality of education that is being imparted in last few years that students are unable to calculate some easy calculations. Gone are the days when we use to calculate some of the calculations without the help of the calculator. It was just 5 years ago, that I graduated from class X and we never got the amount of marks that students these days get but we use to do such calculations easily within few seconds (just one or two to calculate that 500-252). So we can see how much the quality of education is degraded. The syllabus of the students is periodically reviewed and I don’t think the syllabus is much different than ours. I feel it is as good as we had. The difference is in the mentality of the students and their parents. The parents just get their students admitted to good schools and also good tuition classes which will get their studies done. But what the parents and teachers fail to do is to expose these students to some exciting techniques like vedic mathematics which helps to calculate some complicated calculations easily without the help of calculator.
Now since the Government of Maharashtra has included the decision of awarding ATKT to class X and class XII students, I wonder where the quality of the education will reach. The students who failed in 2 or less than 2 subjects can take admissions only to class XI. This decision doesn’t go down well with me as this will take the level of education one step backwards.- I agree that this will open a new opportunity to those who have failed in 2 or less subjects but the fact remains that class X and class XII remains the foundation for your education in our education system. If the students are weak in the subjects of these classes then how will they cope with subjects of higher classes that depend on these subjects. For instance a student who has failed in mathematics in class X wants to take admission to commerce stream. How can you expect this student to cope with subjects that are related to mathematics such as Mathematics & Statistics and Book Keeping & Accountancy.
- The case of ATKT rule at graduate level is different as in engineering (as I know little about at other graduation courses) only 20% of students are all clear meaning 80% have ATKT’s. Here in class X 80 % are all clear i.e. passed.
- Moreover, even in engineering, in most of the cases, KT’s get multiplied and the student gets a drop. I don’t think it will be much different here either.
- Where will these students get the admission? They won’t get admission to government aided colleges. They will have to go to unaided colleges and has to shell out a large amount of money, which poor students who had failed due to bad economic condition of their families can’t afford. Hence they won’t be able to avail the benefit for this decision. Only rich students will avail this benefit.
- And those who think that this will help reduce the amount of suicide cases then think again for some students even suicide if they get less mark and lose hope of securing admission in their preferred stream.
So I hope this thing just get scrapped and also hope that parents and teachers expose kids to some impressive and interesting techniques. If this does not happen then think what will your grandchildren learn?
Updated: Yestreday the Bombay High Court stayed the Maharashtra government’s decision of implementing the ATKT system. I am happy that the court stopped the government from implementing such a decision which I think would have pulled the state of education many steps backward.
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P.S.: Just heard about John Buchanan’s book. Another book by an Australian player/coach that has taken a form of a storm in Indian media. So I found a subject where I can add a little bit of humour as I have surfed through some humourous blogs and wanted to write some humourous post. So I intend to air my views with little bit of humour. Not intended o hurt anyone.
There’s another book from another Australian and again many Indian players are again targetted by this book if reports in media are to be believed.
As always the writer has said that he has been misquoted and the comments are taken out of context and people have to read entire book to understand its meaning. Now this whole thing has become a pattern with all the autobiographies/ books written by Australian players and coaches. I think they see India as a big target audience as anything associated with cricket here is always a big thing and a book can always be a blockbuster.And I think they knew about this thing will be happening as the Indians are always very much sentimental about their cricketing heroes.
But the thing that surprised me is that John Buchanan has not written any thing good about any Indian(again it according to the reports i.e. not any good thing written about Indian players is shown in the media) . Like Gilchirist had to say in his book that he realised afterwards that Dravid was not out during the controversial Sydney test as he saw the replays(I haven’t read this book so this too remains based on the facts that came out in media prior to the relaease of the book). The other thing that surprised me that he commented on player who hadn’t had any connection with him. He has written about the princely attitude of Yuvraj Singh that was communicated to him by Kings XI Punjab coach Tom Moody who later said that he doesn’t remember any such conversaion as he is not in the habit of airing team laundry.
P.S.: Since all this has been taken out of context by the Indian media I too thought of taking a little more out of context. I am really sorry if someone gets hurt after reading this. Comments are welcome.
P.S.: I think this thing has not become as humourous as I wanted. So I think I should return to my earlier serious type of posts with a slight add of humour in between. What do you say?
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Well I am into my final year of my graduation and I am sure about the thing that I surely want to study further.
But what to study? Whether I should go for management or masters in my current field i.e. engineering or as my father suggested in public services (i.e. IAS, IPS, IFS etc.). Most probably I will give up the last option as I am not too keen on doing it. Its my father’s desire and I don’t think that is what I want to be. So still I am still spoilt with too (read 2) many choices. Many of my classmates have decided what they want to do. Some are sure they want to stop their studies and start making their life; some are sure they want to go for masters in their respective field of choice while some are sure they will go for management.
So I am in urgent need of help!!! (does this sentence really make sense? I doubt it but I like it) So those who know the advantages and disadvantages of each of these fields then please reply me. Those who can spoil me with more options are also welcome.
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Just 10 months after finishing this years world cup the ICC is gearing up for another T20 world cup just to avoid any clash with the 2011 ODI World Cup. The groups for this world cup has been announced yesterday and now Australia face the destiny of West Indies of being ranked lower than Bangladesh. So the Group goes as follows
Group A: Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia
Group B: Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Zimbabwe
Group C: South Africa, India, Qualifier 1
Group D: West Indies, England, Qualifier 2
Well I’ll miss Ireland, they played pretty well in this years tournament.But I’m sure they’ll qualify as a qualifier.
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Last night, Roger Federer created history by defeating Andy Roddick 5-7, 7-6, 7-6, 3-6, 16-14 to win sixth Wimbledon title and claim a record 15th grand slam. In this epic final, however, you may feel your heart reaching out to Andy Roddick, as he too played some fabulous tennis and the match seemed never-ending in the epic fifth set which was undoubtedly longest ever last set played at a Wimbledon’s final. And had Federer not broken Roddick’s serve the match could have been indeed never ending. I just hope Roddick get to put his name on that winners board and get to hold that trophy next time around.
Well now if you think Fed-Ex will stop anytime soon in the future after having won everything then think again coz this man is not short of motivation, atleast not for now. For he has the motivation of winning grand slams in front of his soon to arrive child. ” I’m not really worried about my motivation because I love this game too much. I’d like to stick around for a long time I don’t know whether you guys have heard tha but Mirka’s dream was always that our child should see me play. So there you go . I have to play some more years because of Mirka.”
For me he is a great champion and moreover a great sportsman. He and Rafael Nadal has been perfect role model for any youngster. They have had a great rivalry which is good for tennis and they had always been the perfect sportspersons taking victory and loses into their stride as we saw how Nadal coped with his French Open loss. True Champions indeed.
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Its been a long while since I posted about cricket. But I can’t keep my thoughts away from this game for too long. So my posts too can’ remain away from this game.
Recently ICC chief David Morgan said about bringing some changes to test cricket in order to bring interest of the followers, to the traditional format of the game, who are at the moment hooked to the T20 cricket. The most talked about change is reducing the test game to a 4 day affair from the current 5 day affair. Well I don’t think that it will help much as most don’t like test cricket for most of the test games are draw and reducing it to a 4 day match will increase the no. of draw games. For this change to work ICC will have to bring in more changes like, as mentioned in todays TOI letting each side bat only for a day and reducing no. of overs in a day to 80 overs. If the side batting first is bowled out inside a day then the other side will bat the remaining day and the next day which is scheduled to be their batting day. And the most important one if the side batting second failed to reach its target and is not bowled out then declare the side batting first as the winner instead of declaring it as a draw.
Well this idea looks exciting for me but it has its disadvantages like we will hardly get to see the kind of innings Gambhir played against New Zealand in the second test earlier this year to chalk out a draw for India and let India be in the lead. After all these types of innings are the real kind of test innings. We also will not get to see a triple century to see unless someone like Sehwag plays a whirlwind innings at the top of the innings and yeah that will mean Lara’s record of 400 will remain unchallenged.
The T20 version will always remain the audience favourite as it gets winded in 3 hours (unless you are like me as I was recently got bored by too much of T20 cricket) while test match lasts for nearly 8 hours * 5 days. There will be more ideas of this kind in many peoples mind and whichever idea ICC adopts I hope it won’t affect the real test values.
Many traditional followers believe that test cricket shouldn’t be tinkered but if we want the interest in test matches to improve we have to change it. Just hoping it doesn’t tinkers the real values of test cricket as I stated earlier.
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