Roller coaster ride...

I am letting out one of my secrets.... I have a fear for roller coaster rides... :).. Whenever my friends call me out to Six Flags, I give one excuse or the other and miss the trip. But last Saturday was the D-day and my first roller coaster ride came not in Six Flags but in 605-S on our trip to Artesia to buy things for our Sunday night party. Bharathi who had got her license (2nd attempt) the last Friday rented out a car along with our second Chauffeur, Pramod (the first being Kalyan) and we all motivated her to drive from our place to Artesia.. The beginning of the trip was fine but once she entered the freeway all HELL BROKE LOOSE....Myself and Vijay were teasing Madhu for being extremely tensed and afraid but as a matter of fact I was terrified. The way she changed the lanes, braked and not to forget when she took an exit @ 65mph and moved from the inner most lane to the outer lane almost made my heart skip a beat... In the end we successfully (safely) reached our destination (Thanks to my daily morning prayers) and found out Bharathi herself was very terrified.... After a couple of hours of groceries shopping and dinner, Pramod dropped a bomb by asking Bharathi to drive back again. We were saved from another eventful drive :) by Bharathi who excused herself. On a lighter note I am looking for a trip to Six Flags now... :)

India's tour of New Zealand

India's much anticipated tour of New Zealand starts today. This is one of the much anticipated tour as India has always under performed in NZ especially the last time when they lost the test series 2-0 and the one-day series 2-5. India is expected to perform much better after their stupendous form over their last 1 year under MSD. India is starting their tour with 2 T20 matches followed by 5 ODIs and 3 Tests.

Fixtures:
T20:
Wed 25 Floodlit Match
19:00 local, 06:00 GMT 1st T20I - New Zealand v India
Fri 27 Floodlit Match
19:00 local, 06:00 GMT 2nd T20I - New Zealand v India

ODIS:
Tue 3 Floodlit Match
14:00 local, 01:00 GMT 1st ODI - New Zealand v India
Fri 6 Floodlit Match
14:00 local, 01:00 GMT 2nd ODI - New Zealand v India
Sun 8 Floodlit Match
14:00 local, 01:00 GMT 3rd ODI - New Zealand v India
Wed 11 Floodlit Match
14:00 local, 01:00 GMT 4th ODI - New Zealand v India
Sat 14 Floodlit Match
14:00 local, 01:00 GMT 5th ODI - New Zealand v India

Tests:
Wed 18 - Sun 22
11:00 local, 22:00 GMT 1st Test - New Zealand v India
Thu 26 - Mon 30
10:30 local, 21:30 GMT 2nd Test - New Zealand v India
Fri 3 - Tue 7
10:30 local, 21:30 GMT 3rd Test - New Zealand v India

The matches can be watched live at the following websites:

www.crictime.com
www.orbit.99k.org
www.cric7.com

SATYAM -- The new word for FRAUD

Today morning when I woke up and switched my laptop for the morning
news (Late night news in India), I was shocked to hear about Ramalinga
Raju's admission of fraud. I have lot of my close friends working in
Satyam including my cousin (Vijay) and I was immediately thinking as
to what is going to happen to them. When I called up Vijay, he was
angry at first as to why everybody from the morning are asking him the
same question as to why Raju did that and later he confessed that lot
of people including him are now worried regarding their future. This
couldn't have come at a wrong time when the economy is doing extremely
bad and people are finding it difficult to stick on to their jobs
least find a new one. I am appalled to find as to how a company with
such a big market share and boasting of PWC as their auditors managed
to do this. Raju's infamous quote. "It was like riding a tiger not
knowing how to get off without being eaten," will now be forever
remembered. My heart goes for all the 53000 employees whose future at
this moment hangs in balance because of the mistake done by a single
guy.

DASVIDANIYA - Might leave you teary eyed...

Many would have seen "ANAND" and the more recent "KAL HO NAA HO" but even though Dasvidaniya is a similar one, it is truly a watchable one. Vinay Pathak has given his best performance till date. I don't want to be a spoiler by telling the story but would like to mention a few things about it. The movie itself is inspired by Hollywood movies like My Life Without Me and The Bucket List but one can definitely see our own picture in Vinay pathak's role. Everybody will always have their TO-DO list, the list about small small things like their puppy love, time when one could have been brave, learn or play something. I read the movie's review that the MA song in this movie is equally moving as that of 'TZP'. Khailash Kher's lyrics and his rendition of the song is beautiful. The song is definite to leave you emotional and teary-eyed. Hope people make more of such movies rather than the usual non-sense over sexed movies.

Vaaranam Aayiram - Not a typical Goutam Menon movie

I went to see Vaaranam Aayiram on Friday night. Being a big fan of Goutam Menon's movie sans Pachaikili Muthucharam, I went with high expectations. I normally avoid going to night shows starting after 10pm because I don't get sleep beyond 9am. But due to my roomie's persuasion we went to the 10.30 show in Artesia (Indian city near LA). After having nice biryani in a Paki restaurant, reached the theatre quite early. I was quite surprised to see the Tamil crowd at the theatre. My friend Ramya and her gang if friends have also arrived and as usual everybody was teasing her. When they finally allowed us inside the theater, I felt like watching a movie back in Chennai. Believe me the theater was so overcrowded that the theater people have to bring in benches and chairs for people to sit. The last time i remember seeing such a scene even in Chennai was when I went to watch Perazhagan in Nanganallur. Over the last few months I was used to watching movies in utter silence, the only noise during the end of movie people commenting about how the movie was. After a long time, I was able to laugh, clap, hear whistles and got the feeling of watching the movie in Satyam or Udhayam in Chennai. The movie started a little bit funny but slowly started to drag. The only saving part of the movie were the songs which were wonderfully picturised by R. Rathnavelu(Never heard about him before). I have been to Goldengate bridge a couple of times but was never able to see the whole of it until I saw it in this movie. Man... Sameera Reddy was so beautiful in this movie. i have seen her in a couple of Hindi movies but she was not as beautiful as she was in this one. Surya was wonderful and the way he has worked and adapted to his character as they show him as both a 16 yr old and to a 60 yr old is quite good. But on the whole the last hour or so, the crowd started to get pretty bored and everyone was waiting for the movie to end. The movie finally ended after a painstaking 3 hrs (2 hrs 55 min to be exact) and by the time I crashed in my bed it was almost 3 am in the morning. Woke up the next day with a terrible headache @ 9.
So my final advise, if you want to take revenge on your friend, then ask him to watch it a theatre, otherwise it is ok to skip this movie....

My first attempt 2 blog

I have always enjoyed reading other people's blogs especially my friend Sriram (Tiku). Every time I read his blog in our CH1blogs, I would always think that i should also start to blog and at last today is THE D-DAY. I was just viewing one of my college mate's profile in orkut and saw the link to her blog and decide ok today I should start. I am now actually watching the 2nd ODI between India and England @ Indore enjoying Yuvi's fantastic century. Today was pretty boring, with the fire in LA the entire sky was full of smoke and dust and being somewhat allergic to smoke I had to stay indoors the whole day. Now it is already the next day and i again have to eagerly wait for the next weekend to watch movies online. India's innings just ended... Yuvi hit a magnificent century and Yusuf pathan finished the last over in style hitting Harmison for 18 runs.... Bye bye its already 11.15 now me got to go to office early tomorrow.......