Tendulkar: Letting the bat do the talking!

I had planned to complete my work-in-progress post on time management this morning, but 2 amazing knocks from Tendulkar resulted in this post featuring on this blog first.

Many congrats to Sachin on reaching 15,000 ODI runs - what a player! Mind-boggling statistics spread over 18 years of high-consistent performance explained by one magic number - a career average of 44.24 after yesterday's knock of 93.

The 2 knocks of 99 and 93 this week against South Africa in some ways summed up Tendulkar's career over the years.

His 99 on Wednesday was all pure grit - prior to the match, he was not in best of forms, knew he had got out to playing a rather loose shot against Ireland. So, he came out to bat against South Africa with a very determined look, playing very straight with no flamboyance, stuck to his task with all the patience on earth and produced a gritty innings of 99. This is what differentiates Tendulkar from other great players say Lara - he changes his gears and plays well within himself when things are not going all great for him, managing to make runs and fight his way back.

Friday's 93 was a high class innings - knew he had got his bearings right, now was the time to dominate and prove a few things. Many aggressive shots on a pitch with a fair degree of bounce and movement - a few punching square cuts, powerful pull shots and then later danced down the wicket to the spinner to play a few lofted shots over the ropes - an exhibition of why he is still the best and the most dangerous batsman around. A glorious innings under rather tough circumstances!

I have been a Tendulkar fan for most of what I term as "my in-senses life". 18 years back, when Tendulkar first walked in, I knew very little about cricket (I was 7 then!). Being Tendulkar's fan then meant nothing more than appreciating those 4s and 6s and 50s and 100s - a boundary was "hurraay", a rare dot dot-ball was "come on, whack them out of stadium" and his dismissal meant "numb silence". Since then, I have followed almost every cricketing and non-cricketing move of Tendulkar. Over the years, as a Tendulkar fan, I have been through many different stages, with every stage providing an additional reason to admire Tendulkar:

For cricketing reasons (stages from 1989 till date):
hurray >> entertainer >> great shot maker >> early achievements >> aggressive batsman >> high degree of focus >> compact batsman with a great technique >> very stable head >> highly ambitious >> great batsman >> high commitment to the game >> mentally the toughest around >> high cricketing ethics >> team man >> best batsman with all possible world records >> high passion for the game >> closest to being a perfect batsman

For non-cricketing reasons (stages from 1989 till date):
cool head >> positive thinker >> aggressive thinker >> extremely modest >> very ethical in all spheres of life >> high commitment to family >> high emotional intelligence >> assumes social responsibility >> a very balanced thinker >> closest to being a perfect human being

... I can go on and on and on about Tendulkar. But let me stop here and congratulate Tendulkar once again for getting to 15,000 ODI runs. As a fan, I would want Tendulkar to go on for ever, but we all do realise that Sachin is now probably nearing the end of his career. Let's hope that he finishes on a high, dominating all attacks over the next couple of years.

Repercussions of a desperate hunt for blogging topics!

I have said it before and I say it again - the biggest roadblock to my otherwise promising blogging career is my complete lack of ability to think of nice blogging topics. Once a topic is 'assigned' to me, I can sorta find my way through the post.

If I had a database with minute-by-minute data of how I have spent my free-time in the recent past, blogging would appear right up there on top. That however does not mean that I spend a lot of time next to my laptop typing out posts. Let's look at this rather interesting phenomenon in greater detail which has left me perplexed! Some estimated data to help us understand this strange situation (all figures estimated as a percentage of total blogging time)

Reading other blogs : 5%
Typing out posts : 15%
Reading my own blog : 5%
Thinking of blogging topics : 75%!!

Further breakdown of 'thinking of blogging topics' (total 75%) reveals:

Staring at the wall : 25%
Over lunch/ dinner : 20%
During office meetings :15%
While waiting at traffic signal : 5%
Commercial break between overs of a cricket match : 5%
Looking for topics on orkut : 5%

The above data gives some indication to the gravity of the current problem. To sum it all up, this never-ending search for good blogging topics has taken a high share of my precious free time away! There has to be a solution to this... in my quest to answer the biggest puzzle of my life, I thought "what are friends for?", let me ask for some help. So, I pinged Ninja on gtalk and asked her for "good blogging topics, please" - little did I know that I this was a sure shot formula leading to nothing but disaster. After much pleading, got a response "go blog on fashion!"... my immediate reaction was "waaaaat, no way"... so I stopped chatting and got back to my staring-at-the-wall-for-topics state. Spent hours thinking, didn't get another topic of interest. So, thought - "lemme write something on fashion offline and if it shapes up well, will post it on the blog"

So, I started typing... "ehh...fashion... is amazing... is good... defines attitude"

... didn't sound that good, realized I knew very little about fashion to blog. The only way out now was to act brave and write a post with a few strong statements!

"...to me, fashion means absolutely nothing... while television channels would hate this blog from now on, I think fashion has exploited viewers of their time and money... I was shocked to see fashion tv on the list of pay-for-view channels... it can at best be termed as a complete waste of time and money... we as individuals should have our own identity... following a fashion, is much like being lost in image of a brand... that's not inspiring enough, the world needs a change. Dear readers, please go and define your own fashion! For instance, fashion to me is a pair of jeans with a-crushed-and-washed-but-not-ironed shirt... da da da"

... not heading anywhere, I decided to end the post there... still in search of a topics...juntaaa, please help!

Launching 800rpm!

This post is to announce the launch of a very special blog - 800 rpm (http://www.800rpm.blogspot.com/) focusing entirely on the auto world.

This blog will continue to be my primary blog - with a mix of funny, 'bloggy' and serious posts (to inject some element of sanity!)

However, over the next few days, I will be devoting a lot of my free time to the new blog to get it up to speed. The interesting part is that Maharaj (Arun) would be my co-blogger for 800rpm.

We will be focusing entirely on the auto world. Though we haven't structured every detail of the content to be posted, very broadly we will be covering the following:

• Car reviews and test-drives
• Auto fundaes
• Driving fundaes
• Auto industry developments
• Others/ Misc

Much of it is going to be dynamic and I am sure with time, the broad categories would evolve as well. Anyways, for more details, please visit http://www.800rpm.blogspot.com/

A journey of 1000 kms begins with a single spin!

Life is a journey, travel it!... it’s the path that matters, not the eventual destination… focus on the efforts, not on the results... da da da

Sounds like a perfect beginning to one of those long boring philosophical posts on life and goals, etc, etc… however, dear readers, don’t be so disappointed, this post is the exact opposite!

I was initially thinking of posting a very objective matter-of-fact review of different cars that I have test driven in the recent past, but decided to instead post about a day that was from my point of view exciting, ambitious, thrilling and entertaining and for someone distant from the driving world, it would have been at best boring and tiring!

The story till Friday, May 4th 2007:

Singapore, a near diamond shaped island, 40kms wide and 30 kms in length when extruded out of complex trigonometry and geometry formulae would probably stretch to 100kms in perimeter. I had driven nearly 1300 kms in Singapore in 2 weeks, essentially implying that there was no major road left untouched. I started off with “lets try this expressway”, two days later I was like “lets try the 2nd lane of the same expressway”, a couple of days more I was like “practice makes a man perfect, so keep driving and repeating the same roads again and again!”…

It was during one of these drives, the music deviated away from “high-bass, side rear view mirror vibrating and floating rock music” to “…I want to break free…I wanna break free…” and I thought, well, I have had enough of driving in Singapore - I actually need to break free as well – probably a drive to Malaysia and experience highway driving. Next step was rather simple – visa application to embassy of Malaysia and I got my multiple entry visa in a week’s time!

Then I started calling up my friends to join me for the trip - while some were direct in their feedback “dude, crazy idea… I am not joining”, other psued specimens like Candy were a bit more refined “would have loved to join you on the trip, but have got work over the weekend and a couple of meetings in the office”… finally after much persuasion, Abhishek and Aparna (K&M from now on, dorm names not used in public interest :P) agreed to be part of my crazy idea – a trip to Mount Frazer and back (~1000 kms) in a day!

Saturday, May 5th 2007…

With no real preparation required for the trip, we decided to start at 5:45 am after a negotiation process that lasted for 30 mins debating the pros and cons of a 5:45am start vs. a 5:50am one! As usual, I had to goof up with the alarm and by some strange configuration of phone settings, the alarm just didn’t ring. I got a call at 5:45 from K&M and I woke up in a state of shock – “What! I am late to get up for a drive?… no way, this is not me…!” However, made some quick recovery and we finally managed to start off at about 6:15am. A quick trip to money exchanger and stocking up a couple of cold drink cans, we were all geared up for a trip to Malaysia.

We crossed the border after immigration formalities by 7:30am and hit the expressway by 8am. The road was excellent with speed limits not as strict as in Singapore. So, I decided to throttle a bit more and see how the car behaved at higher speeds. At 150 kmph, Avante was sailing – well balanced and sturdy, felt in complete control. I will go into technical and driving details in the next post, but to sum it all up, the drive was quite cool and the engine behaved in the exact fashion that fits my exact definition of an ideal engine/ car – packed with power when required, otherwise serene, refined and calm with low decibel levels!

While M free-rode and peacefully slept, K was busy with navigating out goof ups. We had one map to help us – on most occasions we got the highway right, however a couple of times we found ourselves driving down the wrong direction though! :-)

We reached KL is quick time, had a quick brunch – so did the car (petrol refill)! The next stage was a bit more challenging as we found our way to the other end of KL bye-passing the city. We soon reached the smaller highway leading to our final destination. With significant decrease in road quality and width, it took us much longer to get to Mount Fraser than we had initially imagined. We got lost a couple of times, till we found a desi to help us with directions. In typical desi style, the route from his point of view was simple – “keep going straight, no turns”… we were like, “thanks, you are the man!”. However, 200m further down, the road split to two tangentially opposite directions! With not much left to trust the directions we were provided with, we decided to trust our instincts instead - right turn was the verdict!

The uphill drive was a challenge as well, at times the road was a bit too narrow to be classified as 2-way – meant that much more of focus on the road and control at the bends. But Avante behaved very well at turnings and steering through the challenging climb was a pleasure – more on this in the next post.

Finally, we made it to Mount Fraser at 2:30pm and then began the search for a restaurant for lunch. We had to now define the “next steps” – any places to see around? K managed to catch some sort of cold on the way and that was reason enough for him to free-ride. I was the designated driver and therefore I tried to act as if I was too tired. That left M to do all the googling for places to see. Next 5 minutes were completely hilarious – M tried to communicate with a mixture of sign language, actions and Singlish, but that did didn’t help much. We were trying to get the directions to a lake: “ehh… lake, where?”… no reply… “water…?” again no feedback from the other side to confirm if our attempt to communicate had been received and understood… next, we tried showing mineral water, but that did no good too… finally M got the idea of asking for “..boating?” aahaa, our receptionist understood and gave us rough directions to the lake.

We were in more ways that one excited about the lake and boating… our conversation went like:

“… wow, lake would be fun here” … “lets get the camera out” … “we don’t have tons of time, so lets keep the lake visit short, mebbe just cover one part of the lake boating” … “a speed motor boat would be fun here, lets try for that”… and there was a gradual build-up in excitement leading to the lake.

The lake was not too far, we got there with 5-10 minutes of drive. However, we were greeted with a shocking sight: 1) The lake was a bit brown in colour, as opposed to blue that we had envisaged 2) There was exactly one pedal boat in the lake and the other 3 were stacked one over the other at the corner of the lake 3) … and finally it hit us… nooooo… the lake was only a fraction bigger than a bath tub… just a hint bigger! Ofcourse, as M was the navigator at Mount Fraser, K and I peacefully blamed her and added the lake to her list of exponentially increasing list of recent goof-ups!

It was time to lower our expectations – to understand and accept that Mount Fraser is not a tourist spot by any stretch of imagination. We spent half an hour doing time pass at a view-point – it was good, just that there was no view. To limit any further damage to our self-esteem and trip-planning confidence, we decided to erase out from our memories that we ever visited this place! It was unanimously decided that all pictures taken at Mount Faber would be donated to the recycle bin of our laptops, once we get home!

With K down with tons of cold and a bit of fever, M decided to be the navigator on the way back. We started from Mount Faber at around 4pm, stopped at another lake in between in an attempt to search for that one good scenery to make this trip good, but didn’t find any. With not much left to see, we started the return journey back to Singapore.

Next 6 hours was all driving – we stopped once in between for tea and once for petrol, but otherwise I did what I enjoy the most – night driving, a true test of driving technique, stamina and inclination. Avante clocked 500kms in quick time and we were back at the Singapore immigration at about 10:30 at night. There was some visa and passport configuration problem and resulting punga at the Malaysia immigration, but M in her typical style went and gave a big lecture to the immigration officer and sorted it out!!

As we entered Singapore, the odometer read 970 kms for the day. With Newton/Novena being only 15-20 kms from the border, I knew that the decimal system of mathematical numbers wouldn’t let me reach 1000 kms in a day. So, took a slightly longer route, via Tuas to inch closer to the 4 figure mark. Next when I saw the reading, it was 994 for the day – and I knew we were ~5-7 kms from home… was not sure if we would get to 1000, but decided to go ahead with the straight route back home. One traffic signal from home, the odometer read 999… it was close, very close and the meter turned to 1000 exactly when we were at the security gate of the building!

We were all tired after doing 1000kms – but M still had the energy to make some quick dinner and we called it a day soon after that!

This was my second time to 1000 kms in a day, the first being in October last year in South Africa. I wouldn’t want to compare, but this trip was probably a bit more challenging with 3-4 hours of hill drive included. But statistics apart, it was a great trip with K&M. More trips in the pipeline over the next few weekends, any takers? :-)

Capturing a very special moment - the state of Nirvana

This is a very special post, to capture a very special moment that has eclipsed everything else over the last 3 days. I will struggle with words for most part of this post, ‘coz I am currently in a state of Nirvana, a high resulting not from 5 bottoms-up of neat Scotch Whiskey on the rocks, but a high resulting from realization of a long cherished dream come true. It might sound like I am going a bit overboard with this, but it wouldn’t have been a special post otherwise, right?
This Thursday, I got my car! … lemme give a short preview to the events and emotions starting from just before Thursday evening to the time when I started typing this post.

Jan 2007, first serious thought about car ---> Applied for Basic Theory Test to convert my India license to a valid Singapore one ---> Started with understanding various different cars, a trip to showroom almost every weekend to understand the specifications, price, design, etc ---> booked 17th March as test date for driving test ---> 16th evening, got a Singapore traffic book to ghot ---> went for a movie on 16th evening, came back at ~2am and then realized “ohh. crap, haven’t ghoted for the test” ---> ghoted the driving rule book from 2am to 5am on 17th early morning ---> went and gave the test, lady luck helped me pass the test and after ~2 hours of patience in the queue, got my license to drive!

Without even thinking of breakfast or lunch, I directly went to the car dealer, told them, “look, I am legally permitted drive now, so better let me take a test drive”! ---> went to different showrooms – Chevrolet, Subaru, Hyundai, Honda, Nissan, Toyota to check out all possible cars that could fit my extended-extended budget! ---> gave a very deep thought to what I really wanted vs. the risk of taking a huge loan ---> developed an excel model to see if there were any remote cost savings that I could do to fit the monthly installment of car in ---> alas, it made no financial sense to buy a car here in Singapore à so, Mr. Logic said, “don’t be stupid, there is no real need to buy a car, it makes zuk financial sense” ---> then Mr. Unknown told “stop living life so defensively, stop being calculative with things that matter to you most, try being fearless for once, stop relying on logic for every damn decision!” ---> and so… decision was made, Mr. Logic was asked to take a chill pill!

So, after one final round of test drives on 1st April, made up my mind to go for Hyundai Avante ---> surprisingly, it was not even in my initial short-list, ‘coz I wanted a manual transmission only, while Avante came with automatic version only ---> deep thought again, decided to let-go the stigma attached with manual transmission to appreciate the other good things with Avante à booked the car over lunch on Monday, 2nd April

I was reasonably happy with the decision, though felt nothing special as such à work kept me busy for the next one week ---> on 11th April, got a message from the dealer – “your car has been registered and will be delivered this week” ---> I called back immediately, said “please please, asap!” ---> the plead was responded to and I was informed that I could collect it on Thursday evening (12th April) ---> Since then, I have been in a different world! ---> Mr. Logic probably gave up and disappeared and Mr. Unknown has been governing all my actions since then ---> didn’t sleep much on Wednesday night, out of sheer excitement and expectation of a special day ahead ---> next morning, went to work à everyone was like “can you please stop smiling for no reason?” ---> did a bit of work, with half my mind in the fast approaching dream world ---> finished the work and left office early at 7pm ---> rushed to the showroom ---> signed the documents, saw if the relevant papers were intact, and this was it ---> was handed over the key and …

Wasn’t entirely sure of the way back home from the showroom ---> a very tentative drive back home ---> takes a bit of time to adjust to a different car, so patiently drove back home ---> a quick couple of calls back home, started off within 10 minutes to see my cousin ---> lost my way, took the wrong route, but “so wat, I was enjoying it”! ---> drove and drove from 8pm to about 2:30 am, ofcourse with stops in between for a Birthday party and some late night Mc Donald’s visit ---> special thanks to special friends (Candy, Bharti, Bulco, Abhishek) for making the evening special ---> back home at 3am, had clocked ~150 kms by then!

Since then, a few more drives all across Singapore ---> have done 400 kms already! ---> many of these drives were purely “aimless” ---> take any damn expressway, keep driving, will reach somewhere at some stage, take a U-turn back and drive and drive ---> get lost somewhere in between à but I have enjoyed it all ---> I delayed the decision to purchase a road map and since then haven’t looked at the map, ‘coz I am enjoying these “aimless drives with no real motive or destination” ---> Maslow would have seen me drive before he came up with the term “self-actualization”!

Today, Sunday morning, got up à went for breakfast, something that I haven’t done in years, just to drive! ---> came back, did the first car wash here, spent a bit of time near the engine, but frankly, with all technology coming in, I couldn’t understand much

So, this is how it has been ---> frankly, I am in a totally different world at the moment ---> have dreamt of having a car for way too long (~2 decades now probably!) ---> and it is slowly sinking in ---> not sure, if any one else can appreciate it, probably Maharaj who is himself a bit crazy about driving would get somewhere close to appreciating my state of mind at the moment! ---> for others, I continue to a topic of intense research over the last 3 days “… he was okay till sometime back, currently looks like a case of acute mental instability, lets pray he recovers and stops smiling… ” and from my point of view, this is Nirvana!

PS: This post was purely to capture this moment. I will get back to my logical ways soon, hopefully before tomorrow morning; otherwise my boss will give me a tough time!! My next post will be a driving review on Avante. In short, I currently term Avante as “Raw power fused with dazzling curves and calm refinement”

A bit of rubbish...

This is going to be a slightly different post - I am a bit annoyed with the way we all have reacted to World Cup debacle...

I am just as much disappointed with India's early exit from World Cup... to the extent that I haven't seen a match since India lost to Sri Lanka. But nothing on earth, warrants this sort of reaction from the media, public, etc

Anyways, that is history now - the events that have since then transpired have showed one simple thing - as a nation, we are highly emotional - we tend to live on extremes - worship Tendulkar one day and then show utter disregard the very next, now that we are out of the cup.

Probably, we all need to put things in perspective. Are we over-reacting? More importantly, is over-reacting to the situation and dumping the entire team likely to improve the performance of the team? My answer is a crystal clear no to the above. Yes, there is need for young blood in our team, but not at the cost of Tendulkar and co.

That is anyways a lesser point - I seriously don't mind that much when critics take a dig at Tendulkar's recent performance - it has been ordinary by his standards. But, to go one step deeper and question Tendulkar's attitude, motivation and commitment to the game is something unacceptable. We all have observed Tendulkar for 17 years to know what the truth is. Our ex-coach got this part totally wrong. I am still giving Mr Chappell some sorta benefit of doubt, terming his out-burst against Tendulkar as an 'error in judgment' as opposed to something 'intentional'.

May be, just may be, the onus is on us, to support the team and ask ourselves "What can be our role here?" Can we look beyond criticizing players and being a threat to the safety of their families?

My experiments with stress management

This is going to be a bit of a heavy post, I will get back to my ‘chill blogging resolution’ soon. A post on stress management has been in the pipeline for long – has been a topic of interest and research since school days and more so in the last couple of years.

However, over the years, there have been a few changes to my attitude, understanding and approach to stress management. Often as it turns out to be, going through a rough phase can help us discover new things and this is what exactly happened with me. It is so much like Test match cricket, you go through a rough phase, you then improve your technique, temperament and attitude to the game. For me, in some ways, it has been a journey of extremes – from a point when I thought, stress meant nothing, driven by some sorta arrogant belief that one can take tons of stress (I can handle it all!) if one has the ability to chill out – to the other extreme when I finally understood that stress needs to be managed on a regular basis and there is more to it than just trying to be chill.

Since then, it has been a process of gradual reconstruction, driven by the intent to discover what I termed as AM_v2 (much like how Indica transformed as a car after initial quality issues!) – there is always that scope for improvement, but I have learnt a bit about stress management and this post is an attempt to put it all together.

Rest of this post is going to be more in graphical format to communicate the complex message better:

We all deal with stress differently. Please do get back to me with your comments if you think differently about stress management.