Sify Cricket

After a long break.. almost a month I am back to put up my latest blog. The same is the case with my cricket. Last Saturday, after a break of about 3 months, I played a cricket match for Sify. The match was at a ground in Vepery. The ground was odd shaped with the pitch being on the diagonal of a rectangular ground. As a result field placing was difficult as some of the boundaries especially on the legside were ridiculously close.

Sify won the toss and I opened for Sify with Karthik, my colleague. Now Karthik is a six footer who gives the ball a real thump when he gets going. He was in fine form that day and I had the best seat in the house. He dominated the bowling while I was content rotating the strike by picking the singles. Our partnership went well over a hundred in the first 13 overs.

We were going on at a brisk pace when the weather took its toll. It was on an average close to 88 Fahrenheit and I got dehydrated as a result. I had to retire to the pavilion (A few trees on the edge of the ground) but Karthik kept on going. In trying to up the ante we lost a few wickets and my captain asked me to pad up. I ended the innings at 45 n.o and we made 210 from 27 overs.

The opposition captain opened the innings and got off to a flying start. His name is Munuswamy and he was the captain of SPIC-TSC, a third division team in the TNCA league when I used to play there. He played a chanceless innings and literally took the game away from us single-handedly. I, for my part, picked up two wickets with my left arm orthodox spin but they got home with some 7 balls to spare.

Overall it was a good day for me and I had great fun. Arun Gopal my classmate from TAPMI had come from Hyderabad. Arun Panicker also came home that night and we had a whale of a time, talking about our memories of TAPMI and catching up on the latest gossip.

Overall it was a good weekend and the final touch was added by dinner at the Kebab Factory @ Radisson Hotel on Sunday night. Apart from Arun Gopal and me, Anand, Ronnie, Ashu, Prakash and Navin were also there. It was Navin's idea and the food was Awesome. We ate and ate and ate and also had a lot of fun. Navin and Prakash pulled out some old PJs from their repository and we were holding our sides laughing.

But physical exertion without proper training comes at a price. For the last three days every muscle,bone and sinew of mine has been making its presence felt. I am unable to walk properly cos my legs were hit by the cherry. I slept about 10 hours last night and I'm still feeling tired. All this reminds me of the importance of keeping fit physically. Unfortunately my fitness regime is like my blogging. It happens once in a while.

Night Fall

Night Fall by Nelson DeMille is based on the crash of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of New York in 1996. A couple, who are on a Long Island beach that night capture the explosion behind them while they are in the process of videotaping their sexual frolicking. Five years later, after the investigating agencies have attributed the cause of the crash to mechanical failure, retired NYPD Detective John Corey and his wife, FBI agent Kate Mayfield try and uncover evidence for what they and 200 eyewitnesses believe to be the actual reason for the crash: a missile attack.

Even before they think of looking into the case, John Corey is given a subtle hint to stay off the case. This intrigues him further and makes him more determined to know what exactly happened that night.

The book has attempted to bring out the conflict in the working styles of the NYPD, The FBI and the CIA although i'm not sure how accurate it is.
Nelson DeMille's writing style is not too great but his attempt to bring out the various conspiracy theories and alternate explanations has helped. It is obvious that a lot of research has gone into putting this book together.


The ending is totally unexpected and the author admits that the idea for the ending was given by his son.

Its not a great book but if you have nothing else to do, then its a good way to kill time.

Sify's Stock Prices

I just had one of my friends buzzing me on Yahoo and asking me about the price of Sify stock on the Nasdaq. Ever since the announcement that Satyam's stake in Sify was being sold to Infinity Capital Venture on November 11 2005, the stock prices have been rising steadily. Prior to the announcement Sify's stock used to trade in a range between $ 4 to $6.

Ever since the announcement, the stock price has been heading northbound and the markets closed yesterday with Sify at $12.15, close to 2.5 times the price of the stock at the time of the announcement. Some analysts feel that the stock can be expected to reach $ 25

Still the current stock prices are nothing compared to what it was at the heyday of the dotcom boom, when Sify's stock was trading at $424 (23/02/2000).
All this leads us to wonder how perfect the capital markets are..

My First Blog

Today has been a very slow day. Though today is Eid, it is a working day for me and I am in office now. That is not the case with most of my clients. The people I need to interact with for my work are not available today and hence I am totally jobless. I did try to work on some paperwork and other internal work but that too has been completed.

Being in Sales my job is not to sit in office in front of my PC .. but due to the vagaries of discretionary holidays, that is exactly what I'm doing. I look out through the window and find a cloudless sky and I expect the mercury to be around 32-33 Celsius. Not a good day to venture out if I don't have to.

To make things worse, I have a few client meetings scheduled on Friday, which happens to be a holiday for my company. As a result I'm not doing anything on a working day while I have to work on a holiday. This also put a spanner in the works as far as my weekend plans are concerned. I thought that I'll go to Bangalore on Thursday night and will get three days there. Anyway I am going to Bangalore for the weekend , provided Rex has been able to get my return tickets. Am looking forward to a fun filled weekend with my classmates from TAPMI.

I spoke with Arun yesterday and we are planning to catch some Malayalam movie this week.Arif also may come along. We usually have a set routine which goes something like this. Meet up at Kumarakom in Nungambakkam, have dinner Malayali style and then catch the second show at Anand.
Insha Allah things will go as planned.