Everything has its ups and downs and the football WC'06 had its major down yesterday.
The much awaited match between Portugal and Netherlands was expected to be a nail biting affair expected to go all the way to the penalties. A matchup of two teams so equal that almost everyone was having trouble picking the winner. Unfortunately the match turned out to be "bruiser" with regular fights breaking out. 16 yellow cards 4 players sent off, Luis Figo the captain and senior player of Portugal head butting a Dutch player. Any time there was a foul there would be a huddle with heated arguments between players and then suddenly players would fly out of the huddle...

Portual won 1-0 but they paid a heavy price and may be without their top 3 playes Figo, Deco and C Ronaldo when they meet England (#$%@#$ England have really gotten lucky) next. At full strength Portugal would have beaten England fairly easily but now England have the upper hand...

I played football :)))
God knows after how long I stepped on to a proper playing field (not court, mind you) and played for nearly 2 hours with a fairly serious set of players :)))

German Engineering...
That's how I would describe Germany's 3-nil victory over Ecuador. Engineered as well as their Mercs or BMWs...
Obviously with this result I take away the "Dark Horse" label from Ecuador...

Couple of funny incidents:
- During the Croatia vs Japan match, Croatia's player Srna who had already missed a penalty and in the 4-5 corner kicks he had taken he had stupidly curled 3-4 of them over the side lines (rendering them "out" from the time he had kicked them), so at the 6th or so corner the commentator goes dryly "Mr Srna, if you want to have a professional career after the world cup, you better not curl this one over side line". :)))

- In the England vs Sweden match, after England had made about 10 or so dry, and harmless passes in the backfield the Swedish crowd started boo'ing them and the commentator goes "The Swedish crowd boo'ing England. England maybe think they are Argentina" obviously referencing to the fabulous 24 pass goal by Argentina. :)))

Here is how I think the teams are stacking up...

The top 4 (in descending order):
- Argentina
- Germany
- Brazil
- Spain

Teams that are waiting at the front gate:
- Netherlands
- Italy

Teams that are knocking on the back door (trying to sneak in when everyone is looking away):
- Portugal

Raauuuuul!!!

Thats the sound of the pressure being released from the pressure cooker situation in the Spain vs Tunisia match when Raul scored a goal to equalize 1-1. Tunisia scored early in the 8th minute and it took until the 71st minute of the match for Spain to strike back. Spain played an amazingly controlled and patient game never deviating from their style and kept bulding the pressure until it all paid off with Raul's goal...

Since then they have scored again and are now winning 2-1...

This is the 32nd match of the 2006 world cup. Half the world cup is over :(((

In vein with the Da Vinci Code here is a riddle...

The orb that can't be handled by anyone except by one in the rear and was used to escape to victory

Got it??

It’s a football!!! Escape to Victory

So after watching endless hours of the 2006 football world cup matches here are some thoughts…

- Argentina is my pick to win the whole thing and it is the only team that can challenge the Brazilian team. Messi is all that he is made out to be and he is still 18 (till 24th June).

- Czech Republic who I thought would make to the last 4 have done themselves in with their performance against Ghana. Kudos to Ghana. Their group "The group of death" (Italy, Ghana, USA and Czech) is down to the wire on 22nd June. Do not miss those matches. Italy vs Czech and Ghana vs USA.

- Asian teams will probably not shine like the last world cup. Rooting for Korea, they will have to play really well to beat France next. Saudi Arabia really lucked out against Tunisia.

Awesome matches
- Australia vs Japan. 3-1. Australia score 3 goals in the last 8 minutes after being down 0-1.

- Argentina vs Serbia & Montenegro. 6-0. School is in session :)

- Czech vs USA. 3-0. Total football by Nedved and Rosicky.

Bad matches
- Anything with England :). Seriously.

- Italy vs USA. The players are not to blame the referee just got it all wrong. The 2 red cards to the USA were totally out of whack.

Dark horses
- Ecuador

More later...

Rwanda Rwanda...

...can anybody hear our cries, can't you hear us calling you...Wyclef Jean sings in "Million Voices" from the movie "Hotel Rwanda".

Over the weekend I got some "education" on the genocide that took place in Rwanda in 1994. A friend gave me the movie "Hotel Rwanda" and a documentary called "Ghosts of Rwanda" with a warning "Hey they are disturbing". I had had some exposure to various civil wars in Africa and the horror of their killing methods. Wilbur Smith in his books describes some of the horrific ways in which people are killed in these African wars. In the mid 90's I also remember the news of the tens of thousands bodies floating over a lake into neighbouring African countries. Anyway, so I watched the movies...

In about hundred days following the assassination of Rawandan President on April 6th 1994 about 800,000 to 1,000,000 Tutsis and Hutus were slaughtered by militant Hutu groups. One of the groups called themselves the Interahamwe ("coming together") and Machetes were used as the main weapon for the ethnic cleansing.

Despite pre warnings sent by both the Red Cross and the UN peacekeepers the world didn't react until it was too late. No one in the world, the UN, the powerful countries, no one reacted. Everyone just sat and watched about a million people being hacked to death.

UN had a decent sized peace keeping force but at the start itself Belgium pulled out most of its troops and the commander of the UN peacekeepers Lieutenant-General Roméo Dallaire was then left with some 450 ill equipped troops to guard the whole country. He had requested for only about 2000 peacekeepers to handle the situation. 80 countries in the UN were approached but none of them agreed to lend any troops. And to think a few thousand troops could have saved maybe half a million human beings. It was a gut wrenching ordeal to see Dallaire as an individual take full responsibility and say:

"I was the commander and my mission failed and hundreds of thousands of people died and that I can't find any solace in statements like "I did my best". A commander can't use that as a reference in any operation. He succedes or he fails and then he stands by...to be accused of and to be held accountable for...and my mission failed".

The UN tied Dallaire's hands by telling him that he should not take any pre-emptive action and "avoid armed conflict". Before the killings started he had requested Kofi Annan, who was the heading the peace keeping department at that time, for a strike at the arms cache of the militia and was told not to do so saying "you do not have enough data".

The Clinton administration still suffering from the setbacks of peacekeeping at Mogadishu, Somalia also did not do anything to prevent or control this tragedy. (On a quick side note "Black Hawk Down" is an awesome movie about the Mogadishu incident, one of my favorites). The Clinton administration made excuses and played with words like "We don't know yet if this is a Genocide. Genocide has a legal meaning to it and we don't know if we can say that". Only later in 2003 Bill Clinton would accept that "...I will always regret about the Rwandan thing...".

Here are some Wikipedia links:
Rwandan Genocide
Genocide
Genocide in history
Rwanda

Youth For Equality

The momentum of this anti-reservation movement needs to increase. There needs to be more co-ordination between the country wide protests. Here are some websites...

YFE - All India
YFE - Bangalore

• Maha Rally in Banglore, Sunday, 28th May
• Manipal Hospital joins anti quota agitation!

YFE - Mumbai
YFE - Corporate Support

The Tipping Point

The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. Recommendation: Must read

This is a really good book, gets you thinking and thinking differently about a lot of things which are taken for granted in our daily life. As one review of the book says "makes you see the world in a different way".

The tagline of the book is “How little things can make a big difference”.

Malcolm Gladwell takes lots of examples where things have spread like “epidemics” due to some small incidents which tipped the balance resulting in avalanches. He takes the examples of how the Hush Puppy shoes once floundering, suddenly in 1995 made a comeback and soared in popularity. All this wihtout the company really doing much. And how crime in the city of New York was so prevalent but due to some small changes the crime rates drastically tipped downwards and the city made a comeback as a safe and very livable place.

The book explains these "epidemics" using 3 rules or laws: the Law of the Few; the Stickiness Factor and the Power of Context.

The Power of Context (Part One) chapter is the one I really liked. The Power of Context and the Broken Windows concept (explained and used in the book to illustrate the drop in the high rate of crime in the city of New York) suggest that behaviour is a function of social context. It is not that behaviour is not governed by genetics, social upbringing etc but it additionally suggests that certain times you can have a very normal person with everything straight but their behaviour can yet be powerfully affected by changing their immediate situation and environment.

The Broken Windows theory suggests that “…crime is the inevitable result of disorder. If a window is broken and left unrepaired, people walking by will conclude that no one cares and no one is in charge. Soon, more windows will be broken, and the sense of anarchy will spread from the building to the street on which it faces, sending a signal that anything goes.”

In the New York subway system every inch of the trains and stations were covered in graffiti and crime was really prevelant even in daylight. Mugging was a common place. The book explains how the graffiti was the Broken Window invitation and some administrators just by ensuring that the trains and stations were cleaned up, inside and out, managed to "tip" the decline of crime on the subway and in general also.

Another concept which really appealed to me is how it is generally believed that emotion is only inside-out. “I feel happy, so I smile. I feel sad, so I frown.” But the Emotional Contagion theory suggests that the opposite is also true. “If I can make you smile, I can make you happy. If I can make you frown, I can make you sad.” “Mimicry” is the way where if you show people smiling faces or better yet you yourself smile at them, they will smile back. Although, as the book says, the response may be so fleeting that you may need electronic sensors to detect micro smile. But the whole point is that you do influence and have the power to pass on your happiness, just by cracking a small smile maybe at someone who you know is feeling down or maybe at a meeting in office or maybe even at someone with whom you share a “cold” relationship. :-)

"Emotion is contagious" :-)

Saw this written on a playcard in a picture in the newspaper today, directed at the people brining in the new reservation and quota system...

"U just 'RESERVED' yourself a place in HELL"!!!

Leap Backward

Saw this in the India Today

Introducing quotas in higher education without adequate and compulsory primary education will only lower the standards of higher education

Simple logic ain't it? This statement aptly captures the reservation related uproar happening in the country these days.

I am here on the IIT Bombay campus and the students here are on a indefinite chain hunger strike. A group fasts for 24 hours and then they are replaced by another group who fasts for another 24 hours and so on. Innovative ;-)

Saw a survey on NDTV which showed that a large majority of the country is pro reservations. No surprise since this survey included the whole of India urban and rural. But does that mean reservation is right? No it isn't. If the current reservation in about 55 years has not managed to uplift the backward people then that doesn't mean you automatically increase the reservation perentages all across the board and then introduce it in higher/professional education. You go back and fix why it is not working in the primary education area first.

We know all these things...
...who are we kidding, this is just a #@$%ing political gimick...

Courage under fire

Over time your faith in them erodes, your dependence on them goes down, you stop bothering to make them understand, thinking so much time has passed why change them now or even expect them to change, you nod along. You don't want their opinions anymore in your life decisions...

You are just wanting and waiting to get away and get out but...

...but there comes a time when you see them gather up their rickety frames and stand up tall in the name of all that is good. They surprise you with something that you thought they would never grasp and come to terms with. It hits you that hey they "Once Were Warriors".

And in the end it makes you want to once again belong to the fold...

That dastardly tesri manzil has struck ;-)

Reaching out...

This picture from the Dubare trip is what everyone is ending up liking.
Let me know what you would caption it as...

Things...

...that I have seen and heard recently and liked...

- The song Love me like you by Magic Numbers
- The remake of the song One (original by U2) by Mary J. Blige and U2 and its black and white video
- Foo Fighters song "Best of You"
- Video of the Foo Fighters song "D.O.A". The whole video goes through a 360 rotation and comes back straight up again at the end. Everything, the band, the various scenes etc all go through this slow 360 degree spin.
- KK's song "Tu hi meri shab hai". Its from the movie Gangster which by the way is bad...
- That song girl friend from the tamil movie Boys. I had heard this a while back but heard it again recently...
- Saw this new medical drama series on the tube, "Grey's Anatomy". A little on the serious side, not as funny as "Scrubs". Comes on Star World on Wednesday's 9pm to 10pm. Loved the one-liners.

- "The Tipping Point" by Malcolm Gladwell. Read the first 50-60 pages of the book and found it really interesting.

- Some "gyan" I saw around:

• Never let someone be your priority while allowing yourself to be his/her option.
• Failure is not a single, cataclysmic event. You don't fail overnight. Instead, failure is a few errors in judgment, repeated every day.

...on and on and on...

Found this really loooong sentence in the book I am reading, Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

Whoever, at that day, had passed through the little city of Vernon, and walked over that beautiful monumental bridge which will be very soon replaced, let us hope, by some horrid wire bridge, would have noticed, as his glance fell from the top of the parapet, a man about fifty, with a leather casque on his head, dressed in pantaloons and waistcoat of coarse gray cloth, to which something yellow was stitched which had been a red ribbon, shod in wooden shoes, browned by the sun, his face almost black and his hair almost white, a large scar upon his forehead extending down his cheek, bent, bowed down, older than his years, walking nearly every day with a spade and a pruning knife in his hand, in one of those walled compartments, in the vicinity of the bridge, which, like a chain of terraces, border the left bank of the Seine.

Now this book is translated by someone but I don't know if the translator will take so much liberty so as to add such a huge sentence without it existing in the original work. In my memory I haven't read a longer sentence than this, if you have seen something longer or even feel that you can write one longer let me know ;-)