Shame In Australia!!

No Conscience...Ponting telling umpire that Ganguly was caught.
image courtesy:cricinfo

Much will be talked about the current India-Australia test series for long. Mainly, the Sydney test will be remembered by the Cricket lovers as a proof against no-ethics Australian team and the poor umpiring by Buckner and Bensen. In this test, almost 7 umpiring decisions went against India and it can be easily proved by looking at the TV footage that all were wrong. Firstly, there was the decision about Andrew Symonds. When Australians were at a poor score, Symonds was caught behind wickets but not given out by Buckner. Symonds went on to hit a century. Even Symonds later accepted the fact that he was indeed out when he was on 30. If this century were not happened, imagine the results of the test where Indians reached to a 500+ score. But this was not all. Worse was yet to come. In all of the glaring mistakes, 2 were really worst of all - when Dravid and Ganguly were given out. In Dravid's case, he was given out by caught behind the wickets. But in TV footage, it could be clearly seen that the ball did not even touch David's bat or gloves. But the immoral Aussies started a jubilant celebration without even waiting for Umpire's decision. Umpire also succumbed (?) to this and gave Dravid out. This was not enough. Ganguly's catch was not a catch in first place. Secondly, the catch was not even completed securely. The ball touched the ground before celebrations again started. Here, Bensen, the umpire, did the thing which was utterly outrageous. He asked Ponting about whether it was a catch or not. Ponting, the man who is the least trustworthy immediately indicated out ans umpire followed. C'mmon Mr. Bensen! Are you there to please Poting and cronies, or what? Bensen should have consulted the leg umpire in first place and then the third umpire who is paid to do this job. But this was not done. Umpire asked a fielding captain about decision!
Ponting, who is known to Indians for his sucking behaviour with Mr. Sharad Pawar. In India, we respect elder people. This was not a tradition of Australian Ponting, whose misbehaviour angered the nation. He was not a trustworthy guy. This point can be proved from the fact that, before Ganguly's catch, Ponting appealed on a catch he never completed. And he appealed with all his cells in body, inspite of knowing that the catch was not completed.
If Steve Buckner and Bensen had clear conscience and good physical abilities like good sight and good hearing ability, the results of the second test could have been certainly different.
Google News Stream

Look how infuriating is the behaviour of Aussie team -



And read about it here in Sydney Morning Herald.

Wow!!!!!!!! 'Taare Zamin Par' is The Top Rated 2007 Movie on IMDB!

Consider this - IMDB has 170,000,000 registered users as on 10 Oct. 2007.
Bollywood is really learning to rock!!
One interesting thing which I noticed is that the phenomenon of meaningful mainstream cinema caught up steam only after invasion of multiplexes...This tells something.
Click on the images to go to the list and official movie website respectively.
(By the way, VG is Video Game.)

Benazir!

Top 2007 Movies I Have Not Watched Yet

(Image credit - Collider.com)

Gone are the days when I could watch a movie on just a flicker of thought. Prior to and post - office hours, I am mainly engaged in the sweet little devil that my daughter is. This adds up to an increased backlog of movies on my wishlist. Here are the movies of 2007 which I wish I could have watched but could not find the time to watch them. Some of these, I already have in my collection and still have not watched.
1. Ratatouille - This is for sure tops my wishlist. The trailers of this movie have nothing but added to my desperation.
2. Spiderman III - I have heard that it is not that powerful a movie. But still want to watch it because you get habituated to sequels.
3. No Country For Old Men - I have fallen in love with movies of Coen Brothers when I watched 'Fargo'. They are really one of the best film-makers of all time. No wonder, on IMDB charts, 'No Country...' tops the list of top rated movies after 2000. Sure I will watch this movie before 31st December (alongwith Ratatouille).
4. Superbad & Knocked Up - Heard that these are one of the best comedy movies in recent times. Sure gonna watch, especially Knocked Up.
5. Harry Potter & Order of Phoenix - I am not an avid Harry Potter follower. But heard that Harry has grown up in the movie and so has the movie. (I actually have this movie in my collection because of my wife who breathes Harry Potter books).
6. Ocean's Thirteen - It is still not clear to me how I could have missed coming of this film. Somehow its release escaped my consciousness. I am still not sure whether I have seen this or not. All of them seem so similar from posters.
7. I Am a Legend - This is currently running here for 3rd week. It's my hunch that I will like this movie (my hunch about movies is legendary! I believe it.)
8. Eastern Promises - I like this genre of movies. Also, the movie has got good ratings on IMDB.
9. Michael Clayton - Again my hunch from synopsis of the movie.
10. Hitman - Have you played the game? Hope this movie fulfills my expectations. Let me cross my fingers.

Return to Blogging & Social Media Predictions for 2008

Huh! It has been almost 4 months now that I had stopped blogging. The reasons were many and excuses were easy to find. I have a tighter schedule now than earlier; I am finding micro-formats more and more appealing - my Twitter updates in last 2 months rival my blog posts in my whole life! But apart from this, also there is the blogger's gene, which I think has been weaker in me always. I have found that whenever I have tried (I have created and deleted 10's of blogs) to stick to a particular theme, the blogger in me takes a leave. So this time onwards, I will be free-wheeling mainly.
For this time, let me tell you what to look out for in 2008 (the predictions!) - Tumblr and Twitter will surely be acquired; There will be scope for integration of third-party mash-ups in both of them & more importantly, real growth of these services will start once monetization of the micro-content becomes possible. Facebook, on the other hand will either reach plateau or decline. Main drawback of Facebook is the lack of better and easy communication with fellow Facebookians. Facebook walls are burried deep down the heap of applications. For an average user like me, only utility Facebook is providing me with, is Movie Quizes! I don't know what else to do there (apart from watching Movie quiz updates from my friends). Orkut seems so much livelier than Facebook, though the later has a professional crowd there. One question that will be prominent on my mind will be about the fate of LinkedIn. Which way it will go is yet to be clear to me. As for as social bookmarking is considered, Del.icio.us will remain worthwhile alongwith Stumbleupon in the next year. In Social Media sites, Youtube and Flickr will rule the roost with the backing of giants Google and Yahoo respectively.
So these are the predictions - a try to guess the shape of future...nothing much revolutionary.

I hope that the postings will be more regular in the new year!