Yu(vi) little Beauty!

Its a good feeling to watch India making sure that the Aussies will not win the World cup for the fourth time running. Its an even better feeling to stand in office with a couple of other guys and watch the match on a laptop. The excitement needs to be controlled since we do not have the freedom to scream out our feelings, and this adds to the nervousness of the moments. With no nails to bite, I was ready to bite off the skin on my fingers as Yuvi and Raina started to rebuild the chase. Every ball, we cheered, every run we celebrated and with the target getting closer, we drifted closer to the edge of our seats. We were not going to fall off, but rather were gearing up to jump off the seats and rejoice in the victory that was soon to follow.

The era of Aussie domination in cricket had officially come to an end. Ironically, when Steve Waugh had the record for maximum number of consecutive test match victories, India ended it with the help of Very Very Special performances by Laxman, Dravid and Bhajji. Its good to see that on this occasion, the youngsters took the mantle upon themselves and clinically sent the champions packing. The match started at an odd time for me- 2am PST. Being the lazy fellow that I am, I woke up to see Ashwin bowling the carrom ball to Shane Watson and figured that sleep was more important than watching the men in yellow scoring some runs.

I cannot explain how glad I was after finding out that I had slept through a Ponting century. Frankly, I hate the guy for his attitude and gamesmanship, so I wouldn't have enjoyed even a single moment of it. So I got up to a sensational pull shot from Sachin off the bowling of Mitchell Johnson and thought that Sachin would end up scoring a revenge-century against the Aussies. I thought I'd be able to watch God score his century by the time I got to office, but I was disappointed to find out that he had nicked one to the wicket keeper soon after his 94th half century.

When I heard that Yuvi was playing well and stabilizing the innings, I was driving at an insane speed of 35mph on highway 101, thanks to a few thousand cars with brightly glowing brake lights feebly visible through the heavily drenched windshield of my car. The wipers were in full swing and were frankly going faster than the speed of moving traffic on the freeway. I was thankful to any cars heading off towards the exits, freeing up traffic for me. I was not disappointed after all the delay as I still got to watch Ponting get taken down by Yuvi. As I can see it, Yuvraj now has the right temperament and is in the right phase of his career, having tasted the good, the bad and the ugly aspects of being a star.

With Sachin slowly but surely heading towards the end of his career, I think its about time the Yuvi era took shape for Indian cricket. The lucky charm called Yuvraj Singh keeps rolling- When Yuvi scores, India wins. Hoping for two more MoM performances from him in this World cup. Anyone in the US planning to sleep on the night the match between Ind and Pak takes place next week? I shall plan not to.

Its good to know some things

Walked into work today only to find out that we'd been kicked out of the conference room that had been my project team's den for the past month. Apparently they did not need to explain to us why we were temporarily shifted to a room thats only thats just about bigger than the size of my kitchen back home. But I should say the only thing I am complaining about is the fact that now my supervisor can lean back and get a full view of all the non-value added (for the lack of a better term) activities I perform, like killing time on Facebook, Gmail, Google News and the sports websites. The key words to note here are "killing time". Yes! I have a lot of time that I can kill and I'm putting it to good use by basically thinking about Nothing. Mark Gungor explains in his talk "Tale of two brains" about how men are completely capable of having nothing on their mind from time to time.

Being fond of psychology, I've always been fascinated by how people think, even though I don't understand it a lot of times. It just does not make sense to me how people make some decisions in life, particularly women! You can safely term them as the unexplainable species and get away with just a stare from them, because frankly, they know it themselves that they cannot predict their own moves in different scenarios. Although I do know they are unpredictable, I still take up the challenge of trying to figure out how they think, knowing very well that its a losing cause. The main reason why I do this is because there is no fun in doing something if you know you are going to win. On the other hand, there is a lot of excitement in playing a game when you know you'll keep getting better each time, even though you're going to eventually lose it.

So I begun this dangerous game somewhere halfway through my undergrad studies. At first, I was able to predict the moves of some of the girls I knew. I could even guess what they were thinking about the people around them. But soon I started second-guessing myself and realized that my initial success was predominantly due to beginners luck. But I would not deter from my motivation to pursue the ever-elusive female thought process and I should say I have learnt a lot of things over the past few years. The learning has included lessons on how men react when it comes to women and how they perceive relationships that women have with the people around them.

A few things that could help men when they're handling some situations with women include the following:

1) If you feel a girl and a guy are so close that something could be going on in between them (clarification for all dirty minds: i mean feelings for each other), then be rest assured that something surely is going on! Do not try to assume anything else, because you're probably wrong.

2) If you think you can give advise to a girl who has feelings for someone, please back off and live your life. Do not try to provide any advise, since all you would be doing is stepping into a Tsunami like the one that hit Japan- you'll end up feeling like a house or truck hit you from behind!

3) If you think you can give advise to girls who are just out of relationships/break-ups, be sure to tread a careful path, because you never know when your advise hits the Recycle bin and when her feelings for the guy are Restored back to the Desktop.

4) If you are not a ladies man, please do not try to pick out a gift for the girls without the advise of one, or you'd probably end up disappointed.

Just realized that writing a blog makes me look like I am doing work. So, I shall stop my list of advises for today so that I can write more in the coming days at work. Feels good to have a blog entry after more than 6 months.

PS: I am ready for your smiles (men) and stares (women) now.