Winning...

Winning is wonderful. Winning against all odds is just fantastic! Winning in sports, especially team sports, gives me an unusual high that is very hard to describe. Simply put, nothing replaces the feeling of winning as a team.

Here's the story. During the past weekend (24th March), the Student Council of India conducted their annual Cricket competition for all the university and non-university folk. At the University of Maryland, I'm part of a Cricket club - The Cricket Club at UMD. We had enough members in our club to draft two teams - team 1 and team 2 - for the competition. I was initially in team1 - the "stronger" team. But I overslept (hahaha! come on...it was a Saturday!) and I had to be in team 2 - the "weaker" team - as the Captain. Weaker as it is, only 6 out of the 10 members showed up when the game time came. Our opponents wanted us to forfeit the game - since the rules said you need a full team of 10 members to play. I quickly ran around the ground asking everyone I ran into if they are available. None were! I found a couple of people who never played and I drafted them, assuring they will be OK playing Cricket for the first time. We finally had 10 players and won the match #1- with relative ease. We just had to place the weaker players in strategic spots and my team's smart play saved the day.

As fate would have it, we had to play our own club's team 1 in the next game. We stuck to the basics, played a disciplined game. It worked! We beat the "stronger" team!! Off we went to the semi-final. Same "weaker" team, same simple and straight game plan. We won! The final was a great game - especially for me. I had to contribute quite a bit to salvage our team's pride... and I did! We came up a bit short and lost the final. But it was a spirited competition, and we defended our score very well.

I can not describe how fulfilling captaining a winning team was. We beat the odds! I have heard a lot of people walking up to me and saying "Wow! We never knew you played Cricket!". Yes, I do play Cricket and today's wins were all because of my team. I was very proud of my boys and the lone girl who played in my team. Congratulations, guys! You did a great job. I'm swollen fat in pride!

To Catch a Foul Ball...

It is Spring time and it means one thing for sure in America! Baseball - America's favorite pastime - is back! The spring training games of the Major Leaguers are well underway in Florida and Arizona, and the college baseball teams have already started playing their regular season games.

It is typically American to spend a nice summer day watching baseball, catching foul balls or homers, and enjoying the seventh innings stretch. I have been to a bunch of baseball games - college, minor and major leagues. I had always wanted to catch a foul ball, just for the pure thrill of it. But I never grabbed any! And all that changed a couple of evenings ago!

During the past week, there was a UMD baseball Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) game. I was walking back from the gym with a friend, and we heard loud cheers from the field. We went to check it out and see if we can go see the game for an inning or two, IF we didn't need tickets. It turned out we needed tickets. No big deal, we thought, and were walking back to the car.

Just then, a foul ball came flying in the air. I chased it down and grabbed it! The very next pitch was fouled, and it too came flying outside the field too. I saw a bunch of kids with their gloves coming out to get the ball. I left the second ball for them. [Yes, I know! I'm very kind! : - ) ]

I'm really excited to catch a foul ball FINALLY - even though this is a college game! 'tis thrilling to enjoy yet another "typical American" experience.

A game of Hockey and then some...

OK. This past Friday, a bunch of us guys decided to go to a hockey game and check out the Caps. We were just ready for a pretty ordinary evening - have a couple of beers, grab some dinner, just go watch the game. No high hopes for the game though - the Washington Capitals are not doing any well (they have 9 consecutive loses - the worst in the team's history) and they are nowhere close to making the playoffs.

So, we gathered a couple of hours before the game. One of guys suggested a nice Spanish restaurant (PS: Spanish, NOT Mexican). He frequents the place and loves the appetizers that go along beer. And so we all headed to "La Tasca" in Chinatown - just in front of the Verizon Center, and ordered some appetizers.

Halfway through my beer and munchies, I bit into something that almost crushed my tooth. I pulled the hard thing that I almost chewed and guess what it was...it was a piece of glass! A piece of freaking glass, man! Imagine swallowing it! Or what if there's a whole bunch of these pieces in other people's food? I was outraged! This is serious stuff that people use to sue!

I had two options - (1) be a jerk and start yelling at the waitresses at random, or (2) talk to the manager/waitress and see what can be done. I chose to be polite. I showed the waitress the piece of glass and asked her what's going on. I'm sure a lot of people ordered similar appetizers with the SAME dip - it is, after all, a happy hour. The manager marched right in, and was very, very apologetic. He even assured me that they threw out the ENTIRE dip and are making something fresh. Finally, he said he'll take care of our check and that we do not have to pay anything for our food and drinks. Sweet!

Well, if the eventful evening ended there, I probably would not have written this blog entry. There's even more. I've ordered some stuff, and me being vegetarian, I had a couple of green-stuff ordered. The food arrived and it turned out they messed up my order. My food has crabs in it, and I could smell it. The manager and the waitress were even more apologetic and I was given new food, of course!

When we were just about to leave, a waiter carrying a plate full of glasses with drinks/soda bumped into us and broke all the glasses! More apologies followed, with us almost becoming very popular in the restaurant!! Yikes!

Finally, we went over to the game. Everything was usual there - except that the Caps snapped their 9-game losing streak, and trashed the Maple Leafs 5-1 !


Whoa! what a wacky evening! All that mattered in the end was ... we got free food/drinks, and Caps won!

Change 2.0

Change...like someone said..."is the only constant in life". Change happens everyday, every season, every year. Things, I learned the hard way, do not stay constant. How we cope with change is what matters in life. Much like a lot of people, I hate change initially. When things change, I cringe status quo. That's 'cause I tend to get emotionally attached to places and people, which makes me want things to be the way they were. However, I've really learned to adopt to changing situations and accept change as a part of life!

A recent change that's been happening in my life is related to my current job. I'm being "promoted" to a new, full office from my little cube. This means I have to move from my current office building to another building a couple of blocks away, on the edge of campus. Not a big deal at all - I will have the same computers, I will be working on the same projects, with the same team. The only thing that's different is that I'm gonna sit at a different place.

The good things about the new office? I will now have my own room, two windows with view, my own personal phone, unlimited personal office supplies, my own desk lamp, etc. Oh, I will have an espresso machine (saves at least my $1.58 on my Starbucks every morning), and the usual mini-fridge and microwave. Also included are a special entry key-card and an admin parking permit. Not too bad, eh?! And did I mention, this office is right across the street from my apartment! I know, it is pretty dandy!

Putting things into perspective, this current change does not seem to be sweet for the moment. As the time passes, I am sure I will learn to accept it and appreciate it, and enjoy it. I'm sure about it! I moved my computers today, and I cleaned and Lysol-ed the desk, draws, and shelves in my new office. I'm gonna box up my books, papers, and other unidentified stuffed that got stacked up on my desk in my little cubicle. They'll all go organized in to shelves now.

As one of my colleagues in the new office put it, "the CEO has moved in"! All rise!

For Women...

Ladies...here are my congratulations and best wishes on the

International Women's Day!
(March 8)

Blog-o-rama

Blogger blocked my blog! (hmm, that makes a nice tongue-twister). Blogger blocked my blog before I barely brought this boring blog back! baaaah!

Anyway, this is a strange story of a certain fuzzy algorithm at Blogger/Google. He ran into my blog and found it objectionable. All I did was during my last entry on Eugene Onegin, I linked to the same page on Met Opera's website three times. Since Google works on backlinks, it found it to be confusing, and decided that I might be Google-bombing. Plus, I had some Cyrillic (Russian) characters on the blog, making it that much more suspicious.

[ Click on images below to read the text ]

Here's the story:

I logged on to post a new blog entry. Here's Blogger greeting me with this message
"This blog has been blocked by Blogger's spam-prevention robots ..."

Say WHAT??






I then proceeded to the link Blogger provided to have my blog "unlocked". Here's the next page, greeting me with "Your blog is locked" - in bold!

It went on to read "Since you are an actual person, your blog is not a spam-blog".

Thank you very much for letting me know!

They asked me to wait until "one of their humans" verify my blog and unlock it! Here's the scary part: "If we don't hear from you, though, we will remove your blog from Blog*Spot within a few weeks". Great! that scared the heck out of me! I sent them the form, with their assurance of getting back to me within a business day.


It was late evening, I was growing impatient. I can't afford to losing my 100+ posts, memories from the past two years, photos, etc in one shwoosh! I tried to send another "request" to Google to unblock my blog. Here's the zinger: their website now reads they will get back to me within TWO BUSINESS DAYS. Nice! Make me more impatient!


Hope at last! This afternoon, one of the humans from Google sent me this email, saying my blog has been "unlocked" and I can continue to post stuff on it.

Which brings up an interesting question. If an "inherently fuzzy" algorithm can zap a blog based on just ONE entry that it deems to be spam, how smart is it for us to keep using it? How about flagging a blog to warn a person and warning the person that their blog RESEMBLES blog-spam, instead of warning to rip the blog off of it's existence? What's the deal with deleting the blog within a "few weeks"? How many of us post to our blogs everyday? Most of us update our blogs once every two weeks, or even once a month! Imagine a guy posting stuff that Blogger's algorithm considers "blog spam" and he returns after a month to see nothing on his blog? Guess what happens then!! I mean, I understand the terms of service of these blogging servies, but wouldn't it be much more nicer to the user (who brings revenue to the company through Ads) if they could email him flagging his blog, and requesting to make amends? Makes sense to me! But what do I know? I'm just a human, with non-fuzzy logic!

May be it is time for Google/Blogger to reconsider their spam-blog detecting fuzzy algorithms and re-code them to be a bit more user friendly!