What a thriller!!!!

I am yet to recover from the nervy thriller that just ended in a deserved victory for the home side. For all you people who still do not know what I am referring to, I am sorry to say this but you guys have missed some of the finest test match cricket this generation has ever seen. Not yet got the funda??? Its the ashes test series that is presently on between England and Australia with England being the home side!!!

For those who don't follow too much cricket (and I doubt if anyone like that exists), the ashes is a legendary test series that is played between england and australia for the ashes urn!! I am not going into the funda of the legend and how it was named the ashes etc.. Maybe I shall leave that for another day.

This current edition of the ashes is a 5 match series being played at various venues across England. The first match was at the "mecca" of Cricket, ie, Lords. This test match was won in a rather convinving fashion letting us all believe that it was going to be another one sided serious with the Aussie juggernaut rolling ahead and crushing England and regaining the ashes. But, the rest of the series, so far atleast had something else in store for us. The next three test matches at Edgbaston, Manchester and Trent Bridge were real thrillers. They had everything in it, brave batting, superb bowling, bad umpiring decisions, good fielding, some excellent catching, match winning or match saving knocks, you name it!!!! The one at Edgbaston was won by England, the victory margin being two runs.

The next one at Manchester was even better!!!!! It was heartbreaking to see England not being able to clinch this one as a defiant Ricky Ponting played one of his best innings scoring 156 and then Brett Lee defending for all he was worth to keep England from winning the test. All England needed here was 1 more wicket and they would have been home!!!

The fourth test which is the most recent one and just finished an hour back had Australia with their backs to the wall again and this time, the English made sure that it remained that way by winning this one. This time, the margin was three wickets!!!!

Am really looking forward to the finale!!!

Cheers

Goooooooogle Talk

Google has come out with their own messenger software and have appropriately named it Google talk . Check it out Here. Apart from its simple and sleek looking interface, it has a free calling facility. Its still in Beta though and emoctions are not yet available. Give it a try and drop me a line at abhi.gopal@gmail.com
Cheers,

The Bangalore Trip - Day 1

This is going to be a multi part post and I am posting the first part here.

Its been ages since I have blogged. Its been ten days since I have returned from my short trip and I guess I should have blogged earlier. Its just that life has been moving at an extremely fast pace these last few days that I haven't really had the time to really sit down and organise my thoughts (yes, i can see you people grinning and wondering, "What thoughts???").

Well, coming back to where I started from, the Bangalore trip was awesome fun!!! Three other friends made the trip with me and this included RK, NR and Mrigank Sharma. We left on wednesday night and reached Bangalore Cantt Station in the early hours of Thurs Morning at about 5.10. Its been ages since I have been to Bangalore and the first thing that I noticed about Bangalore was the weather. At that time, it was pretty chilly weather. RK and me were wearing shorts and were having a tough time holding bags and also putting our hands in our pockets. We took an auto to CMH road where RK's friends lived. We woke those poor fellows up at an unearthly hour and stacked our bags there and grabbed some shuteye. This keeping in mind that we had to report at WIPRO's HQ located at Electronics City which was about 25Km from where we lived and an hour's commute considering Bangalore's worst traffic situation. (More on the traffic situation later). All of us woke up in an hour and grabbed some breakfast and boarded an auto to Wipro. At first we thought that this auto driver was following a roundabout route considering the time it took. But later we found out that it was the shortest possible route.

We reached the conference venue at about 9 and completed the necessary formalities relating to registration and obtaining food tokens for all the three days ( very very important). I won't get into describing the mundane details of the conference itself but it would suffice to say that we had an enjoyable time and spoke to a few people from our field itself and gained very useful experience which I am sure will help us in the future.

Day 1 was came to a close at around 5.30 in the evening and we left for MG road (For dummies and first timers, there are only three roads in Bangalore that are worth visiting and these are MG road, Brigade road and Commercial street, the first two being perpendicular to each other). I had to meet a couple of friends there and RK had to meet his old classmates. Once we reached MG, RK left to join his friends while the three of us went to meet my friends. We chose Barista as our meeting point because it was the first thing that we set our eyes upon. One of my friends was from the Indian Institute of Science (IISC) and he gladly offered to show us round campus and hence we boarded an auto to IISC. We saw the hostels, ate dinner at the mess ( which I must say was very very good again) and ended up walking a good 8 kms around the campus and managed to see about 30% of it at best. Our day done, the three of us boarded an auto back to CMH and spent about a couple of hours chatting and getting to know the other guys who gladly offered us their apartment for the weekend.

This was Day 1
Will post about the remaining days a.s.a.p
Cheers

This is on request

This post is put up on behalf of Sylvester who is in the EEE dept at SVCE.

Will come up with a post myself soon..
Cheers..

Disclaimer:-
[The following piece of text has been pasted directly from Sylvester's blog].

Re-Invigorating SVCE
If it is not asking for too much kindly pass this along to fellow SVCEians. If not SVCEians for SVCE...who else? I will forward further details as and when something concrete is done.

If possible could you put up a link to these URLs on your sites, blogs, groups, sms...everywhere!. Thanks!

www.greymind.com/gather ( name it SVCE RESEARCH HUB)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/roboticsclub/ ( name it SVCE Robotics Club)

please note: the first site will shortly be housed in the SVCE server( where it rightly belongs!!!!)...we would then of couse provide a redirect from the current url but if you could later correct the URL nothing like it! But for now kindly let the rest know of these two sites and please put the links up if possible. Thanks once again!


I will be delighted to hear from you! Please do let me know...suggestions, ideas, constructive criticism....together we can perform miracles.

Counting on your support!

A short break

Am off to bangalore for a few days. Back on monday morning. So won't be able to reply to all your emails etc..Have a great weekend and a great Independence day as well!!!
Cheers,

There is somethin about this man!!!!

Amitabh Bachchan is back!!! And so is KBC!!! Normally, I am not the kind of person who watches a lot of TV but I watch KBC solely for Amitabh. The man has one hell of a screen presence and if not for him, I don't think KBC would have had even half the success that it has managed to achieve.

On Friday, KBC 2 which is a new series with higher stakes and a slightly modified set of rules started airing. The first participant was an IITM Engg student from Bihar. He won 6.4 Lacs.. But, thats not the main reason why this show has such a huge following. Its becuase of the man who sits opposite to the contestants, and guides them thro' the entire show.

Amitabh calls the show Kaun Banega Crorepati Dwithiya. At 9 pm, the lights dimmed and the familiar KBC tune went on air. The Big B was dressed in a smart leather jacket and a floral shirt underneath. A very casual look and a refreshing change from the formal clothes he used to wear earlier. The usual Fastest Finger First round followed and the IIT guy made it through. Another change that I noticed is that Amitabh casts doubts into the mind of the participants causing them to be slightly more circumspect with their answering.

Bottomline is that even though its a new series and some things have changed, for instance, participants get a fourth lifeline after answering 5 questions and that the stakes have doubled and is now 2 crores, its like KBC had never taken a break and the good old show is back!!!!!