In Gods, I trust

Cricket Gods, that is. There is nothing in life, like sports, where instant justice is handed out. I am speaking from my experiences while playing for the Penn State Cricket Club, the last 3-4 years. Anytime we feel that our opponents are cheating or trying to take wrong advantage of rules, I always console myself and tell my teammates as well that, cheaters don't win. From all the different instances of such happenings, I vividly remember that being played out to be true.

Yesterday, PSCC opened their WMCB league season with a match against Chantilly CC. The team that represented us was not the very best we could send out but nonetheless, were a bunch of dedicated characters. Eventhough Chantilly were finalists from last season and boast of big centurions, we always thought we have a chance because of our team. The weather forecasts were really bad for the day. We won the toss and made 142 all out in the alloted 40 overs with Shiv top scoring (yet again!!) with 48 and some late inning charge from Ramesh, Wagla and Venky. During the innings break, there was a slight bit of rain.

Herman -playing in his first game - gave us a dream start and took 2 wickets off his first two "legal" deliveries. We knew even with our modest score, we are in for a fight. Chantilly scored at a brisk rate but kept losing wickets. There was stoppage of play due to rain in the 4th over and after that, we took 3 more wickets to leave chantilly at 82 for 5 in 18 overs. For a game not to be abandoned, atleast 20 overs have to be bowled. Chantilly CC realized if they play till the bitter end, PSCC had the better chance of winning. So, from 1oth over on, they wanted to maintain a decent runrate and hope the game is called off after 20th over. They were planning on calling "bad light" after 20th over, by which we end up losing. As luck (or cricket Gods) would have it, it started raining after the 18th over, so there was a break. The playing conditions were very bad by now with the outfield pretty wet and slippery and the cricket ball awfully wet. Anyway, after the break, we had to take the field although we knew Chantilly were gonna call off after 20 overs. Lo and Behold, the heavens opened up again after the 2nd ball of 20th over was bowled and no further play was possible. This means both teams get one point each.

There were a lot of interesting conversations and altercations/arguments that went on, which will be published in the pscc cricket blog.

There was this another instance in 2005 season, when we were hosting a team from D.C., Jamaica here at Penn State. We were defending a total of 177. There was a whole lot cheating that went on from their side when they were chasing the target. As always, we overcame that and we won very comfortably.

This also brings up0 the inevitable question: Why is there such prevalent inclination among the players to cheat? Why can't you try to win it fair and square?

caught in between

watching dreams with wide open eyes
caught a glimpse of the very thin ice
arms outstretched at the sky she cries
ma! let me come to you from the lies

lives and trusts, people and trends
all beginnings hurtling to their ends
flags raised and batons exchanged
say your goodbyes to all circles and friends

chasing endless silences deep inside
says the little voice stop your fight
in my head crying tears only dry
nothing to lose, there aint no secret to hide

Wanted: Death of an Illusionist

I never liked Mondays. It seems to be the day right after Sunday. And Sunday is a great day to be spent sleeping, lazing around, play a few games and gaze at TV, all the while throwing down couple of beers. As they say in "office space", I am not a big fan of "case of the Mondays". I like to sleep in whenever I can, go out to the real world as late as I can. I found one more reason to hate this particular Monday, May 8, 2006.

I was happily hanging out with Surdi and Golu at Sportscaf, after an hour at the baseball batting cages, chugging one of my recent favorite beer, when we realized they were not gonna show NBA playoffs on one of their big screen TVs.. WTF mate? So, we made our way to a neighboring bar, cafe 210, to catch the game. Eventhough they do not have big screen TVs, there are many TVs around, and we were hopeful of catching the game on one of the TVs. We ran into my friend and a few of his friends there. We found our momentary happiness as we had set a TV up for the NBA action -- A smoking hot chick walks up to the TV and changes the channel on the the telly to ABC. It seems they were gonna show the biggest farce on the face of the earth - David Blaine - hold his breath under water for 9 minutes.

This has always baffled me. David Blaine and his gimmicks - spending 2 months inside an ice box; standing in a plastic cubicle for days over river thames in London. Its just stupid. People seem to be thoroughly enthralled by this bullshit. As Golu said, Blaine got nothing on P.C. Sarkar. Hey man, I got nothing against your card tricks, 'cause its just math. But all this crap about making miracle happen on streets -- what the hell do you want? Do you want people to think that you are God or something like that? If you wanna perform miracles, go to Africa and make food appear for the starving millions. Cut your crap. Stop with your gimmicks.

Anyway, there were a whole lot of people that were seriously curious to know whether Blaine would be able to spend 9 minutes under water, like it was going to change the way they lead their lives if he were to do it!! (A lot of them did not know why 9 minutes. Apparently, the world record stands at 8 minutes and 58 seconds). Golu and I, and a few sympathetic souls started the "Die, Blaine Die" chant as we thought this was absoulte rubbish. In fact, I told a few of my friends at the table that if he were to die attempting this stunt, I'd start believing in the existence of God - mainly because, God is supposed to be fair and just and what Blaine is juking the people of, is complete anthithesis to that.

ABC Television had a 2-hour special event even though the whole shit is supposed to last a maximum of 9 minutes. They needed the other 111 minutes for their precious commericals, Blaine's attempt at setting the record for standing the longest in water and his training regimen and all the shit that goes along with it. Come on people! Just because ABC and its family of TV stations have been hitting you with a barrage of commercials for this "live" act, and sensationalized this absolutely worthless piece of gimmick, you DON'T have to feel like you have to watch this.

The best part of it all was, the douchebag Blaine did not succeed in it. He could not stay longer than 7 minutes and 8 seconds. That is a total of 110 seconds short. Actually, you know what? That's the worst part. You know he is gonna "try" again to break the record. However, i don't have to start believing in the existence of God. Goddamn it. The funniest sight was one of my friend's buddies missed the exciting conclusion as he was in the loo. He comes rushing back to the table asking, "did he do it?", "did he do it??". Come on dude. Grow a penis. For Christ's sake!

P.S. Golu.. I beat you to it! Nyannanna Nyah Nyah!

Picasso got nothing on Hannah

My buddy Jim Seliga sent me this picture around the time the Steelers won the Super Bowl in January. His niece, Hannah (aged 6?) drew this for her school. I was going through some of my old emails and came across this gem!!!

Truthiness

Those of you that watch on Comedy Central, Stephen Colbert's Colbert Report (Col-bear Re-pore) every night at 11.30 PM, already know the meaning of the word, Truthiness. It was declared the American Dialect Society's Word of the year (2005). Although Stephen wants recognition for coming up with the word, according to Etymology experts (word police - as stephen calls them) the word has been around since the 1800's. Although I must say I was a little disappointed that it wasn't available at dictionary.com, I could find the entry in Oxford English Dictionary online.

I went to a local computer services store to get my laptop fixed yesterday, with my buddy. My laptop has been acting up lately. This is the second time when it has just stopped working and I, even with a lot of help from my buddies, could not figured what the hell was wrong with it. The first time, the trouble was that --- while booting up, the boot up procedure never really identified the hard drive, so it would go to some error screen and continue doing that. This went on for a month or so. And all of a sudden, it just started working fine.

This time around, I could not charge the battery. It looked like there was something wrong with the power cord/adapter cable. So, i tried a few things -- got another power cord from a friend, changed the battery etc. Nothing doing!! So, finally i took it to the computer store yesterday. The owner of the store plugs it in, pushes the button, it starts working fine. Anybody believe in miracles??? I do, Now. Everything about my laptop computer, baffles me. Its more moody than a woman during PMS (what? I am no sexist. I am just stating the facts!).

Anyway, while on our way out, the owner (a korean-american elderly gentleman) wanted to ask us something. "So, if I had told you to leave the laptop and pick it up the next day, and I absolutely did not have to do anything to fix it, and if I charged you a fee (in his store, it was minimum $18), would you have paid it?". I said, "Yes". I told him that I expect him to be truthful with his job and if he charges me any fee, I trust that he has earned it. If the job didn't entail any of his time and expertise (as was the case now), I completely expect him to tell me that. By the same token, if a costumer comes in with a problem, although he spends hours on it but is not able to fix the problem, I expect him to charge the costumer, atleast the minimum charge. He said that he has had costumers who just plain refused to pay any money if he is not able to be fix the problem. That i think is bullshit. If the guy has spent his time and effort, eventhough he might not be able to solve the problem, you have to reward him for the trouble he took. I guess that's where the trustiness and truthiness come in. Costumers need to have confidence in the truthiness of the shopkeep and, the shopkeep needs to know that he will be paid for the efforts he puts in.

The Word of the Day

is Iontophoresis. It is the process by which certain medication is delivered inside the patient's body using electric current. In the continuing story of my fucked up shoulder, this is the new chapter. During my last physiotherapy session, they told me that they are gonna use this method to send in the anti-inflammatory drug (dexamethasone... oooh!! I am getting all technical and shit!) to heal the supraspinatus tendon.

Couple of pairs of electrode pads were attached to my shoulder (the bottom surface of the electrode has the drug, by the way) and it takes about 20 minutes for the whole procedure. Today, I am getting a second dose of the drug. The shoulder felt fine for a while after the procedure, but the pain came back in couple of hours. Anyway, at the end of it, the physiotherapist wanted to know whether I'd like to remove the electrodes myself -- as its like "waxing"... and I was gonna lose some hair from the arm area.... I told her she could go ahead and do it. As she was about to rip them off, I thought it would be a good joke if I shrieked (since i am a jokester), which completely startled her.... I thought she was gonna get a heart attack... Phew!!

P.S. I saw one of the three episodes of South Park that I have never seen before... I had mentioned that in one of the earlier posts. Its called "Jewbilee". This is where all the Jews in South Park get together for a meteor shower and pray to Moses and so on and so forth. And a anti-semitic Jew tries to ruin it all by invoking a "negative" jew supernatural and the story is how the jew scouts (or squirts) and Kenny and a Bear save it for the Jews.

Shoulder(ing) burden

The Penn State Cricket Club (PSCC) is in the 4th year of its current existence. We'd be participating in a summer long tournament in Washington D.C. starting May 14. This would be our third year in the WMCB league. In the last season, I shared the opening bowling duties with Viren Patel (more often than not) and I finished the season as the highest wicket taker for the club (22). Going into this season - especially with Viren switching his loyalties a club in Virginia itself - I was really psyched up to be the "senior" opening bowler and leading the team's bowling options. But alas! As you might know from my previous post, My shoulder is hurt from a freak football accident and I've gone to the doctors to get it fixed in time for the Cricket season.

Today, I had an appointment with a physiotherapist (there is a joke in there, I am not even touching it!!) and once again, I showed up late, thanks to the magnificent public transportation service here in State College, also known as CATA (it should be more like, kata). This felt more like a doctor's appointement. After a few minutes of going through a range of motions and exercises, my physiotherapist figured out what a doctor with a M.D. and a few x-rays could not. I have inflammation of the Supraspinatus tendon. This tendon forms the part of the rotator cuff. A good description of this injury could be found from the Mayo Clinic site.

The supraspinatus tendon muscle runs along the top of the shoulder blade and inserts via the tendon at the top of the arm. This muscle is used to lift the arm up sideways and is also important in throwing sports. One could cause damage (tear) to this tendon by repeated overarm action (such as in sports like tennis, cricket etc). In my case, I caused damage to it by falling on it. So, there is a whole bunch of inflammation to it.

I was told that with a lot of rest and some prescribed exercises, I could get this puppy healed in about 2-3 weeks time. I scheduled for 2 more PT sessions this week, where they are going to do basic exercises and some ultrasonic treatment + ice-pack time, and 3 more next week, where more strenous throwing motions will be undertaken.. I hope to get into some cricketing action in about 20 days time. Till then, no monkey business.

Oh yeah, by the way, about the whole me-nailing-a-nurse-or -someone-in-the-medical-profession-in-a-hospital, it did not happen :-( Damn you PT person.. you and your workplace rules... Piss me off!!