Arbit Time Pass

Not Guilty!!!!

2009-06-10T09:55:00.000-07:00

"Mr Qasab has pleaded not guilty to waging war against India, murder and possessing explosives"

[Source:BBC]

1. Never seen a terrorist being named with so much respect: Mr Qasab!!!
Do they call him Mr. Osama Bin Laden?? Never heard that.

2. And how can is that he plead NOT GUILTY. Oh. May be the tapes and the photos of him spraying bullets on CST Station were all fake and doctored.

Even after this, if they don't go for judicial reforms then God help us!!!

Rags to Riches...

2009-06-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

Now even a 9 year old can publish her Autobiography. Rubina Ali, the star of Slumdog Millionare will write her Autobiography according to BBC.And I thought the 50+ age group had the monopoly over this genre of books.

My heart doubts if anyone would be seriously interested in reading such a book but my mind knows that it would become a run away hit and Danny Boyle will buy the rights of this book too and make a movie out of it which would again show the beautiful slums - the true India and go on to win a Oscar.
The title of the book and the movie would be in English - Jai Ho.

P.S: Seriously, do 9 year olds write their Auto Biographies?????

Women Power!!

2009-06-04T01:11:00.000-07:00

What is common between President of India, Chairperson of Ruling Party(/Coalition) and the Speaker of the Lok Sabha. The woman power in India is on the rise. Throw in some influential names like Mamata Banerjee and Mayawati and we have a considerable power in the hands of the so-called weaker sex in India.

It was interesting to see an interview of Meira Kumar on NDTV last night. Pranoy Roy had a tough time extracting words out of her and a few minutes seemed like an eternity when the history-maker spoke. Like Pranoy, I was wondering how would she, with such gentle manners will handle the rowdy Lok Sabha. The microphones would have to be turned on to their full volume for her.

But may be a lady at the helm of things will bring better discipline in the house. The gender may eventually turn out in favor as the MP’s may listen to her out of the respect simply for her being a lady. After all in most of the schools the rowdy classes are handled by lady teachers.
Will we see someone being thrown out of the class or made stand on their seats with their hands up or may be get a ruler hit on the palms?

Twitter + Policing = Twilocing...

2009-05-31T11:12:00.000-07:00

This piece of news can give Bollywood writers some innovative ideas. Brothers and Sons lost in the infamous Kumbh Ka Mela no longer need to see their duplicates or similar lockets or some birth marks to recognize their loved one which leads to the emotional reunion.
Guess with the advent of applications like twitter, it is quite impossible for a child to get lost. If your son or daughter is missing, just twitpic his/her photograph with an appeal for everyone to ReTweet it.
Technology can definitely help take a huge burden off the Police department.

Also on Twitter:
'Twi'lywood

Hindi Commentary ke Jalwe

2009-05-24T11:04:00.000-07:00

It frustrates you. It makes you cringe. It spoils a perfect match. It is the Hindi commentary.
And when you hear some of the comments like the ones below, the remote suffers, the bedsheet on which you are sitting suffers and sometimes your hairstyle suffers.
I finally got the name of the commentator who had made the life hell for the past few days. His name is Hrishikesh Kannan. Apparently he is a RJ and apparently is appropriate for giving only the score updates.

Cameo
Generally speaking, Cameo is something like a quick fire 30 – 40 runs. But our Mr. Kanan describes Suman’s 10 runs (which he hit in 11 balls) as Cameo…Oh, going by the same logic can we define your commentary stint as cameo too. Because the standard like that Suman Innings was pathetic.

Chakma
Chakma dena is beating the batsmen. That is generally a very good delivery where a batsman tries to hit it and fails to do connect. But the great commentator of our times defined a leg side wide ball as “oh!! Khoobsorat gend.. Chakma diya batsman ko.. Par umpire ka wide ka ishara” (Oh! Lovely Ball. He beat the batsman.. but the umpire signals a wide)..
“Man, it was down the leg side”, I cried as I pulled my hair.

Century
Poor Manish Pandey. He must have been a proud boy being the first (and only) Indian centurion of IPL 2. But our RJ turned commentator just killed his effort with the comment.
“Deccan ke sath pichle match mein Inhone slog maar ke century banayi… par semi finals mein kaafi ache stroke maar ke 50 poori ki…”
(He slogged his way to hundred in the match but followed it with a fifty which had nice looking strokes)

Middle Overs
Now this was truly a masterpiece. Just an over after the strategy break, the commentator says that they need to push on as the middle overs viz overs 7, 8, 9, 10 are gone by and they are nearing 15 over mark (After 11 overs). Arun Lal should have done a Bhajji with a tight slap to his face and told him that there is a difference of 4 overs between 11 over and 15 overs. And those 4 overs form a considerable 20% of the innings.

Who was the idiot at Set Max who decided to have Hindi commentary put on for these last few matches or was it our cable walah who changed some language setting…just spoiled the whole fun of watching cricket.

Breaking News!!!!

2009-05-23T04:59:00.000-07:00

“Times Now was news TV’s third front on Decision Day”

".....NDTV anchors appeared not so much sober as flagging. Languorous is the adjective that came to mind"

"CNN-IBN’s advantage was that its anchors communicated more energy."

Since Election Day, many channels are in the self congratulatory mode. Times Now has advertisement each day in the newspapers claiming it to be the most watched channel. Citing other surveys, other channels claim the same. But I tend to agree completely with what Mr. Chakrabarti wrote in the Express.
Some thoughts:
Times Now: They had so many people on the panel, it was worse than a MBA GD. Nothing was clear what the discussion was going on. Mr. Arnab Goswami is so self obsessed, he doesn’t let anyone speak. His poor companion tried so hard to intervene with some thoughts but was mauled over, mostly by her boss.

NDTV: The calmest discussion. But maybe it was too calm that you went to sleep if you keep on watching for some time. There were more anchors than guests. But Barkha Dutt in between was trying to be someone like Mandira Bedi of Cricket.

CNN-IBN: Rajdeep Sardesai also Lilke Arnab Goswami, seldom gives others to complete their points but it was much better than Times Now. Plus he made every guest remark about how their exit poll result was accurate. No doubt they formed the marketing bites later on. The best part of CNN IBN was the panel specially Yogendra Yadav. He is the real star of every election.

IPL: Brands and Performances

2009-05-21T23:27:00.001-07:00

Financial Express brought out the Brand Value of IPL Teams. Ironically, it seems the brand value is inversely proportional to the performances.
The top 3 in the brand value are the bottom 3 in IPL rankings.
1. KKR ($42.1 mn) - Ranked 8th
2. Mumbai Indians($41.6 mn)- Ranked 7th
3. Rajasthan royals ($39.5 mn) - Ranked 6th

Also, the most visible Team Owner faces during the IPL have to head home with their teams in the wrong half of the points table.

Shahrukh Khan - He was visible for the initial part at the grounds and then in the TV Ads

Neeta Ambani - I thought she would be more articulate but she was a interviewer's nightmare in the only interview I saw of her.

Shilpa Shetty - The new boss. She was on the favored side of the luck for quite some time now. Seems it did not work here.

Preity Zinta - I don't think they need to invest in Cheer leaders. Every time there is a boundary or a wicket in favor of KXIP, the camera pans on her (with all her artificial emotions) rather than the cheerleaders.

Youth and Impatience

2009-05-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

"The youth of India have voted in large numbers for our party. But it is in the nature of youth to be impatient. They will not tolerate 'business as usual' (attitude)." - Dr. Manmohan Singh

Seems like the new Airtel Broadband ad has quite an impression on the new prime minister.

Strange! Self help books, elders, teachers everybody says that you should be patient. Remember the famous, "Sabr ka fall meetha hota hai".
Now this 'impatient' thing is becoming a fad now...I am confused!!!!

'Twi'lywood

2009-05-17T19:52:00.000-07:00

Well, I mentioned some of the benefits that can be derived out of twitter here.
But learnt about a new dimension that can be added. Twitter can be romantic too. First it was Mails, then sms’es and now people are tweeting to propose their love.

Mails and Smses were far too personal, too westernized a concept of proposing. Twitter Proposals will be more bollywoodish where many times the hero shouts (and then sings) in front of the whole world confessing his love. In case of twitter too, a person proposes khule aam in front of the Twitter World or Twitter-verse (replacement for universe) as they call it.
May be we will have a sequel of sholay in which Veeru Jr. will not have to climb the water tank and shout for Basanti. He will just tweet. Meanwhile Jai Jr. can have a one to one exchange of sms’s with Mausiji explaining why Veeru is such a nice guy.

Going Umpireless

2009-05-13T00:25:00.000-07:00

After Anil Kumble forced wicket keepers to use helmets, it is now the turn of Umpires to don base ball style helmets, especially in T20 where there are more frequent ferocious shots many times aimed at the umpires.
Lalit Modi would love the idea. He would now have more space to put some more advertisements.
In fact, IPL, which keeps on innovating, should come up with a concept of umpire-less matches. Technology is already so advanced that all types of decision can be taken sitting in the “safe” and air conditioned cabins. It would also lead to cost cutting. Cut out on the 3rd umpire. We can only have 2 umpires with all those screens in front of them giving them the ball trajectories, Snickometer graphs, stump views (no running on the pitch dude !!) etc etc.
Already run outs and stumping decisions are taken ‘upstairs’. Players (and may be umpires too) look up the screen after a LBW decision just to check, No balls, wides can be easily checked using technology. The only important “on field” thing that remains is anger management and sledging management.
I am sure Lalit Modi can find a solution to that!!!

Sourav in his Zone!!

2009-05-11T00:53:00.000-07:00

Sourav Ganguly has a history of getting people run out. And whenever he is around playing for a long time, there are bound to be confusions on the pitch, a few run out chances and of course the run-outs themselves.

After yet another such close run out opportunity in yesterdays KKR vs Delhi match, Rameez Raja sugar coated this fact in a statement which roughly went like: Sourav Ganguly while batting is in very focused in his zone. He only wants to deal in boundaries rather than singles and hence it becomes difficult for other players to communicate for taking singles.

Well….I am not a very big fan of Rameez Raja, the commentator but he sure has his way with words!!

Appam - The Mentally Retarded

2009-05-08T00:44:00.000-07:00

Sreesanth, the great Indian team Joker never gives up any opportunity to make fun of himself and doing acts which showcase his degraded mental abilities.
A certain ‘fake’ soul led us to believe that after being the second Indian cricketer to be seen crying on a cricket field (for entirely different reasons than the first person, Vinod Kambli), now famous as Appam C**** had improved, his mental abilities grown far more in the last one year than the progress seen in rest of his life.

But No!!! That doesn’t seem to be the case. First he says something that now no amount of Brylcream After-shower and advice from Yuvraj Singh is going to help him get close to a girl (leave aside wooing her father).

And then he does so something so idiotic, that throws all sensibilities down the drain. I mean, the opposite team is 176 for 2 in 17 overs. The batsman has hit you for 3 sixes in a row and then you get him out – not clean bowled or LBW but caught in the deep where had the ball connected better, it would again have crossed the boundary. And by taking such a wicket you are so thrilled, excited and you are lashing out at the batsman – who is none other than Hayden!!

This dude is in a serious need of a psychiatrist.

Noisy Hybrid Cars..

2009-05-06T03:52:00.000-07:00

...would require that the government "conduct a study on how to protect the blind and others from being injured or killed by vehicles using hybrid, electric, and other silent engine technologies."
Link..

The policy makers are quite Door-Darshi in their thinking...
Forget Blind people and Hybrid Vehicles. Many times a normal person fail to notice the Volvo buses which have engines in the rear..

Basically, the external ESS is a system that produces artificial vehicle noise. This is supposed to help pedestrians recognize the sound of an oncoming vehicle, even if it's not making any noise. For drivers that just can't do without the sound of internal combustion, a separate system inside the car can pipe in a new soundtrack that's meant to mimic the rising and falling sounds of an engine
Link...

In that case, a hybrid Tata Nano (if there is one in future) can be quite a head turner if fitted with a Engine Sound of a Ferrari...

Duplicate!!!!

2009-05-05T10:43:00.000-07:00

Observed on a trip to North-East..

The manufacturer was from Delhi....May be he named the product after his 2 daughters - Neha and Lovely....

That is quite a "Fine" Duplication... Ain't it??