Penseive

Too many random thoughts in the head. Need to pour them out!

Everyone is calling it the greatest match in history! What is the fun in watching 2 baseliners smash the ball around waiting for the other to make the mistake! Agreed it was a superb see-saw of a match with 2 brilliant players. But give me a Becker-Edberg or Rafter-Ivanisavic anyday!

If they sell motivation anywhere please let me know! My to-do list looks too familiar now!

Been listening to a little Dhrupad. I feel a little ignoramus about not knowing about it. I always thought it was a style of Hindustani!

Is it good to be image/appearance conscious? Where is the line between wanting to be fit and being self obsessed? If I choose to be plump and happy am I being lazy?

I think I can live in Chennai with a lifestyle that I am used to with Rs. 28,000 per month. Am I being grossly stupid/naive/impractical???

I don’t work well under pressure…I work only under pressure! Again please ..any heads up on the motivation front??

If I  say only nice things (most often when I mean them) to everyone and treat them well but keep secret, spiteful and not so complimentary thoughts, am I still a decent person? People might think I am…but am I really! This thing bothers me a lot!

When you are waaaaaaaaaay past the deadline that you set yourself on something why do you only feel like procrastinating more!

Why am I writing this post instead of working on that wretched paper???

Nazi gate and pricking pens!!!

The media has been facing constant onslaught for sometime now and rightly so; for their over-hype and slipshod research! Often sensationalism wins over telling the real story. Undisclosed sources are made up and often the news is too! Read on at http://www.penpricks.blogspot.com/ about one of the best planned spoofs to reveal the real face of news reporting in India today!

Blog Abuse

Unless you were buried under a rock I’m sure you all know about the Big B’s blog. And Ram Gopal Varma has one too! Put the two together and they’re making sure there isn’t a single criticism against Sarkar Raj! The concept of “my blog-my opinion” serves as a very thin line between the permitted and the unethical! Earlier AB Sr. had trashed a number of newspaper columnists for their comments about his blog. Khalid Mohammad was at the receiving end of some really below the waist comments because he had dismissed Bachan’s performance in Bhoothnath! What exactly do they think a movie critic’s job is?? I find it extremely amusing that AB and RGV are naive enough to make film reviews so personal by attacking the reviewer! You make a movie, and express and exploit your creative license. The reviewer similarly has the license to bring to print exactly what he feels about the movie! How difficult is it to understand that? And when your blog is read by thousands of fans and others, you automatically shoulder a huge social responsibility of not abusing your widespread readership and the adoration of your fans! AB writes brilliantly and has a wonderful knack of telling a tale, making his blog interesting to read. But when he decides to wash his dirty laundry on his blog things get a little out of hand and leave a very bad taste!

In another episode, a saga of email exchanges between a blogger and a portal called keral.com brings in disgust of really scary proportions!!! Cyber stalking, hacking,threats and abuse…really what is this world coming to??? The poor blogger has been undergoing tremendous trauma.There have been several cases of plagiarism, with even popular newspapers stealing content from peoples’ blogs. All this exposes the dire need for serious regulation of copyright protection to blogs in India.

Where do we draw the line? Can celebrity bloggers use their blogs for their personal vendetta? Does a blogger have any moral/social responsibilities toward his/her audience? When does it change from being a medium of personal expression to a bitter abuse of freedom of speech??

p.s : On a totally unrelated note, check out J.K Rowling’s brilliant speech at the Harvard Commencement.

Foot-in-mouth!

I take back my words about JTYJN I love that album too! Just didn’t give the songs a chance.. The Jaane tu mera kya hai by Sukhwinder Singh is such a gut wrenching piece! And Pappu has ishtyle!

Moral of the story : Don’t jump the gun with an ARR album!

SupernovaK!

Finally! It’s about 12 hours since I saw Novak “Nole” Djokovic fall down on his knees in ecstasy after destroying the swiss robot - a feat which was formerly touted impossible in a slam outside France.And the euphoria is still there! For the record, I do hate the “Fedexpress!”. Ever since he beat Sampras in Wimbledon in 2001..ending a an era in The Wimbledon championships! I still remember watching that match at home and the heart ache felt at the end. I remember going downstairs to find R perippa equally emotional and shattered. Granted Federer is a phenomenal player with unquestionable genius. He is also reasonably level headed and free of any airs! Yet however hard I try; despite the gloominess slam after slam seeing him run away with the trophy, despite the unequivocal praise and declarations of genius, I couldn’t get myself to root for him! I would have been a much happier tennis fan if I had joined the Federer bandwagon. Seriously.

I flitted between several other possible replacements for the Sampras shaped hole in my heart - but not with too much success; for me or them! Safin was the first. I did watch him beat Sampras in a fantastic display of tennis in the 2000 US Open and also watched him on Zee English after that on the David Letterman show (I was supposed to be studying late in the night!). Somehow the fact that it was only Flushing Meadows and that Safin was a hunk helped. However he is probably the biggest waste of space on the Tennis Draw! Such talent wasted due to no motivation and a complete lack of sporting temperament. Slam after slam he remains an also ran crashing out in unnecessary 5 setters. He did come close to redemption once - 2005 Aussie but that was a flash in the pan!

I really like Andy Roddick. Great court presence, a fantastic serve, superb attitude on and off the court, a great sense of humour and great looks too! However hard he tries though, he is always found lacking playing against Roger. His performance in the 2007 US open semis was mind blowing and playing anybody else, he would have trampled them on course to the final. But even that wasn’t enough to beat Federer. In any other era, in the absence of a phenomenon like the Swiss, he would have been a multi grand slam champion. Yet he remains among the runner -ups!

The search for the 21st century tennis hero continued.Somehow Nadal doesnt appeal to me. The grunts and the sliding and all that top-spin puts me off. The 2007 Montreal masters came as a brilliant ray of hope to me. I had seen Djokovic in the French. However I don’t enjoy the play at Roland Garros enough for him to leave an impression. But it was a completely different story in Canada. The scrawny Serb impressed me with his wonderful playing. The glint in his eye and the confidence gave me more hope. By the time I watched him do his famous impersonations I was a complete convert! Inexperience and nerves were his undoing in last year’s US open. But in Melbourne this year, he has played like a champ! When he hopefully beats Tsonga tomorrow to lift the championship trophy, he will have a die-hard fan cheering for him! Thanks to him, today I was the one with the smug look, watching a Federer match with S. I say, Let’s go Novak, let’s go!