Watch Abhinav Bindra win the gold for India in the 10 meter air rifle event at the Olympics. The video is more than an hour long, fast forward to the 25th minute to see the last round and fast forward to the 47th minute to see the awards ceremony. Towards the end is the playing of the Indian national anthem and I do hope that the anthem is played a few times more during these games.
I am both happy and sad at him winning the gold medal. Happy because a medal is a medal, especially a gold in an individual event and a first for India at the Olympics. Sad because the second most populous country in the world produces just a handful of athletes who can compete at the international level. I was joyous when I came to know about the gold at work, and almost went bouncing to my American co-workers giving them the news but half a second later I realized how odd it would look to them when they have athletes who have won 3 golds in the 3 events they have participated in till now and aim to win 7 more.
In other news my roommate Pratheep says that the Left parties in Kerala and West Bengal have given a call for a bandh tomorrow. They allege that it was a conspiracy by the Congress and BJP against China and that’s the reason the Chinese shooter Zhu Qinan came second in this event behind Abhinav
Net was down at my place for around 25-30 days. And since I cannot check personal email or sites such as Orkut from work my apologies to friends who had sent emails, scraps etc. I am working my way through all the email that has accumulated; should be back to normal in a couple of days.
I just found something philosophical and quite true in a very unexpected place. Read this para from the technical blogpost (rant actually) titled “Rails Is A Ghetto” -
I believe that in order for anyone to create meaningful change in their life they must take personal responsibility for their own actions and start with themselves. This is difficult at times since it’s human nature to not want to look at yourself and say, “Damn I suck”. That’s usually the first step though.
I have lived in 5 cities for more than a month in each city. I have availed mobile services from every single major mobile service provider in India. And I with that kind of experience behind me I can confidently say that the Hutch/Vodafone service in Mumbai is the absolute worst of all of them. Even the second worst is much much much better than Vodafone Mumbai.
I stay in the Borivali area. Voice quality is very poor. Calls get dropped on an average once every call. Often my cell is unreachable. Often due to network congestion I have to try multiple times to dial out to somebody. People call me, they get message X but actual event Y has happened, for e.g. they get a ringing tone and I do not get any call or missed call.
Now I am totally fed up. For me the mobile is very critical in keeping touch with family, friends and for work. I have decided to ditch Vodafone (and my friends say Airtel is equally bad) and go in for a Tata Indicom mobile. My roommate Punit has a Tata Indicom phone and it is very good in terms of reliability and voice quality. Subscription plans (calling tariffs) are identical among ALL service providers so the differentiator has to be the actual mobile service, ease of paying bill, promptness in solving problems etc.
This post is for anybody planning to take a Vodafone connection in Mumbai. My advice - DO NOT.
I really loved the new Idea Ad starring Abhishek Bachchan! Check it out on YouTube below. Simple, memorable, ties in with the central “Idea” theme and you like watching it again and again.
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