T20

Lets for a moment this that I am Sachin Tendulkar. :)). I have enough money. Why will I sign up for a T20 IPL series. Where the likes of ShahRukhs and karanjohars (unintentional non-capitalization) are jumping around.
In fact if karanjohar is in a place, any form of serious sport should not be played in a 1km radius. Its totally inappropriate.
Football also have leagues. And they conduct it very soberly. The spirit of the game is maintained. The camera remains on the field and not where the stars and cheerleaders are dancing. Players dont have to wait for the dance numbers to be paused so that they can continue playing.
All thats happening here is being overdone. My hope is that all this random stuff will die out in some time and cricket will survive. Coz right now its not cricket thats happening. Its good for the players also. As Bhajji said, its gonna be fun coz I know how Dravid and Kumble bat. And they know exactly how I bowl. Plus I think its a great opportunity for younger players to try their hand at before going into international. I would have appreciated more one-dayers in the series. And I guess its lot less pressure also. They can experiment here a lot.

This link here in Washington post that talks about IPL. Its an english newspaper in the country of America, a country where the average intelligence is not much higher than this
Some excerpts:
tens of thousands of male cricket fans finding it hard to keep their eyes on the game.
Go ahead .. make your assumptions.
"It's a new era for cricket -- hooray for American cheerleaders!"
Loll around in your assumptions.
It condenses nearly a week of match play into three hours, with shorter "overs," which are similar to innings in baseball.
Get your facts right. Theres no shame in asking someone if you dont know them. And no, nothing in cricket is *like* Baseball. Its the other way round, you morons.
I wish I could wear a bikini, but that's not allowed for Indian women.
This was a statement from Rakhi Sawant. But let me correct it a bit. Its allowed. And ppl will wear it where it is required. On the beach. NOT on a field. You are a bunch of hippies who have no idea whats going on in this world.
Across South Asia, modesty is still an essential part of everyday life.
Thanks. I know you didnt think it to be one. But never mind.

Orkut

Whats happening is beyond comprehension. People are telling me that Google is copying every feature ever made by facebook. That in itself is quite sad.
Then I saw a new thing today. Status messages in orkut!! First they allowed names to be changed in orkut. Which allowed people to compe up with a new name every day. Well they were not names but anything they wanted to write often spanning 10-20 words. Then I think they integrated gtalk status messages into orkut. Then changing display name in gtalk. All of this ended up showing all sorts of names in my messenger list and orkut friends list. Names like "Lakshadweep to Goa" and "Teetotaler" appeared in my gtalk, which were perhaps their names on orkut, and google decicded that names on orkut are names on gtalk. And to top this there was a bug somewhere. This name stuck in my gtalk liks pertmanently. Even after the experimenting guys changed their names back.
Now to top it all they have another independent status field in Orkut. Now come on!! How many thing u want ppl to write abt themselves. Name (it has become a creative field in itself), About me, Headline (the one under personal tab), status, gtalk status, gtalk name. Surviving is becoming harder and harder.
There was another cool feature added. Ask friends. I just saw thatsince its launch six months ago, only 2 people in my firnd list of 250 have asked questions. Both of those were "hello world, mike test 123 questions"
This just makes me sad.
I want to delete my account. The only thing that I will miss now is not my friend list but the entertainment being provided by orkut!! :)

NGV

Started living in NGV now. It's a huge resdential area with around 10 blocks. Each block having 5 buildings. Each building having 25-30 apartments over 7 floors. That gives us close to 1-1.5K homes. We are in bangalore so needless to say all occupied. That gives us close to 5K people.
Now this place has 2 gates. One of which being the front gate and the other (surprise!!) back. The distance between these gates is approx 1km. I will try to replace these values with actual values shortly.
Now the issue is that someone (lets call him Mr X) has decided to close the back gate during the night. from 11 pm to sometime in the morning (will never be able to find that out :D). That is probably understandable to most people. Though I can argue about that too. Lest call this issue 1.

Besides issue 1, they also close the back gate at 11 am. Yes, in the morning. And open it in the evening around 5. So for these six hours the doors remain closed. I have no experimental data but lets approximate the number of people travelling in and out of NGV during these hours.
Out of 5K people lets say 1.5K are at home during those hours lets say 300 move in/out (school kids etc). Out of the 3.5K people going for work 500 or so would also go late etc. 200 would probably come early. Another 500 for visitors, delivery people, etc. 1.5K? Lets approximate num of vehicles differently. Lets stand at the gate for 15 mins. What frequency do we expect. 5 per min sounds ok? 6hrs * 60 * 5 = 1800. Lets downsize a bit and assume 1000 people. Now lets say 50% of these wanted to go from the back gate but were forced to go from the front one. That gives us 1000 wasted kms. by an average of 25 kmpl that gives us 40L of petrol. .Take all that fuel for a month you get 1200L petrol. Put it in a big tanker. And put fire to it. Why because Mr X did not feel like opening the back gate.
I was trying to guess what were his "reasons" for this decision.
Not being a very smart guy, I couldnt think of many. Here are my modest attempts:
a. Avoid an extra guard required at the back gate during these hours.
b. It would provide more security during the day to people living inside.

Nothing else I can think of. Now reason "a" doesnt suit a country which thinks that a person should sit in a lift to press the button of the floor which u desire to go to.
Reason b, I do not understand. Suppose I am coming to do something bad in NGV. I find that the back gate is closed. What do I do? I dont feel like travelling another km to reach the front gate. So lets drop the plan.

Now the issue 1. The only reasons for dong 1 are the same as for the day. No they dont ask for identification. And its impossible to recognize 5K people.
Wait it gets even more interesting. There are seperate lanes for each way of traffic in the area and a wide divider in between. There are two seperate gates for each of these lanes. They close one of these gates during the night. The one going out of NGV. So half the traffic moves on the wrong side at night. Given the accident count and drunken driving cases, drunk people driving wrong way doesnt sound like safety to me.

Now Mr X. Hello. You sound like a hell of a guy to me. You just took it upon yourself to decide the wellbeing and safety of not just all of us but also of the planet.

I try to remain aloof of all administration. (I know, thats not something to be proud of :( ). And I try to encounter as few administrators in Bangalore as I can for the sake of remaining iota of sanity in me. But I will try to get some answers about these.