Marat Safin

I don't consider myself a tennis fan. I know most of the rules, know the current world #1s. But that's about it. On a fine January morning in 2005, I happened to read an article celebrating the twenty-fifth birthday of (to me) little known Russian tennis player. That player was of course, Marat Safin (And if you didn't see that coming after the post title, YOU'RE A DOLT). I remember being extremely fascinated by this man. I loved the fact that he wore his heart on his sleeve, wasn't afraid to say what he thought. His temper amused me too - he'd break racquets and berate himself in multiple languages... His only stumbling block was his form, which varied as erratically as weather forecasts vary from reality. I decided that I had to see this man play. It was convenient that his birthday, and consequently the article, were around the time of the 2005 Australian open. I saw all of his matches during that Australian open, and was immediately a fan. He defeated Roger Federer in an epic semi-final and the went on to beat the fan favourite Australian Lleyton Hewitt in another fabulous match. I'd finally found a tennis player to support.

It all went downhill from there. Plagued by injury and a lack of self belief, Safin hardly ever made it past the initial rounds of most tournaments after that. I gave up watching tennis too. Roger Federer was too boring and I didn't really like Nadal. Fast forward to a couple of days back, and I see a news article that said that Safin was through to the third round of Wimbledon having beaten Novak Djokovic. That got me excited, I made every attempt to get the time for his third round match. A prolonged search got me a time of 6:30 PM IST, yesterday. But then, one must not forget that Wimbledon is in Great Britain. Thanks to the weather, the match only started around 11 PM IST. To cut a long story short, he won. What excites me is that last night (I stayed up to 2 AM, watching him win) he was the vintage Safin. There was a little bit of everything that makes Marat Safin what he is. There was a racquet thrown, frequent yelling, multiple expressions of disbelief at how he'd been cheated by providence over one shot or the other. Coming up to the what had to be the last game (he only had to hold serve), him leading 7-6, 3-6, 7-6, 5-4, the crowd was going crazy. There was a spectacular Mexican wave that went around Court 1 thrice before he could even start his serve. And then, just to prove that this was of course, the ever erratic Marat Safin, he went on to trail 15-40. Everybody (me included) must have groaned inwardly at this juncture. Could he blow it all? Having done all the hard work, would he stumble now? And he didn't. The crowd went beserk as he took victory from an increasingly panic stricken Andreas Seppi.

Safin is quite the fan favourite. The spectators gathered at court 1 braved chilling weather, seated till after 9 PM local time, to see another Safin epic, and they were rewarded. Safin was gracious enough to sign a multitude of autographs after the gruelling three hour match, and left the court to loud cheers from the spectators. What is it about this Russian that makes him such a favourite with the fans? To be really honest, I think Safin's rollercoaster career appeals to this feeling we all have inside us. The tragedy of unfulfilled genius. Safin embodies that unfulfilled genius. That's why, his win is our win, his loss is our loss, his heartbreak is ours and his jubilation is ours too.

One of the commentators said something about destiny. If ever Safin was supposed to win Wimbledon, it had to be now. Can he win? Of course, when he's mentally fit, it doesn't matter who the opponent is. It just doesn't. He can steamroll the best into submission. Will he? That's another matter altogether, for Marat Safin always plays with a handicap. Only one man is trying to defeat his opponent. Safin. However, two men are trying to defeat Safin. His opponent and - Safin himself. I'm sure there are millions of fans worldwide who'd like to see him overcome himself in the coming days. If he can do that, I truly, from the bottom of my heart feel sorry for his opponents.

Like another commentator said, "It's ridiculous really, that a man of such prodigious talent last won a grand slam at the Australian open three years ago."

The Chronicles of Abba: The Cult of Baba

The way Abba's going, he'll soon be the most famous person on the planet (for *ahem* the wrong reasons!). The third chronicle of Abba takes us to a pre-Seamen (* cough cough*) Abba. There we all were - just having returned from the star party. Abba had been awake the whole night, clicking away to glory... Understandably, the lack of sleep did not agree with his constitution. The responses from his began to get more and more vague, until this happened:

Enthu: (Mocking query) Can we expect any good photographs from you at all?
Abba: Arre just go to Katraj.
Enthu: What?
Decibel: Hahaha... What's wrong Abba? Horrid pics?
Abba: Why don't you too go to Katraj and have milk?
Enthu: Look now... he's lost it so bad he's going to send you to Katraj no matter what you say...
Me: Hey Abba - You suck!
Abba: Just go to Katraj, dude.
Enthu: This is going to become a legend in our college... Part of college lore... Telling someone to go to Katraj will be like the biggest threat you could give someone... Imagine-
Senior: Junior1, you're going to go to Katraj today...
Junior1: NOOOOO!!!
Junior2: (to Junior3) My God Junior1 has had it today...
Junior3: Agreed... He's in for a drubbing today... Hope we see him tomorrow...
Me: Hahaha!
Abba: Arre shut up dude! Don't you want to drink milk in Katraj?
Enthu: I've understood I think... I think Abba is the Doodh Baba. He's a baba who's sole devotion is to milk... So it follows that 'Go to Katraj' is his way of saying 'Go to Hell'.
Me: Hahahaha what the random!
Enthu: Please forgive me Baba, I have grievously wronged you by making fun of you... Just don't send me to Katraj!
Abba: What? Uhh?
Enthu: No baba, forgive me, I have made a mistake...
Abba (transformation to Baba now complete) : Hmm... I shall consider...

More followed, until the Doodh Baba became a part of Astronomy Club lore...

Next post: Hymns to Baba; Facts about Baba that you did not know.

It pays to do the right thing

Long time, no see eh? What? You were happy I wasn't blogging much? No I didn't quite hear that. Stop mumbling and go on to read the next post.

This happened a few days back...
My cousin and I were returning home one night. It wasn't what you'd call a long ride... about 10km or so. I hadn't been sure of the amount of fuel in my bike, so while I was checking that, he left. He had a headstart of 5 minutes or so. Once I was convinced that there was sufficient fuel, I was off. I'm the younger one here, and the one with the smaller (engine displacement) bike. Thought it would be fun to catch up with him, and ten km would be a long enough distance to make up the lost five minutes...

Six odd kilometres of fast riding (not rash, mind you, fast and rash are different), and I'd finally caught up with him at a traffic signal. A bus separated him from me... As the signal went green, he got off to a nice headstart again, and I got bottled up behind the bus. By the time I'd overtaken the bus, I'd lost sight of him again. Now, this is the part where you need to refer to the map. I caught up with him again, at another traffic light (The orange dot on the map). Now, to get home (blue dot), I could either take a right turn, and ride up a one way, or I could follow traffic rules and go straight. The straight was obviously longer. I hoped against hope that he would pick the straight road, giving me a crucial kilometre or so to overtake him. But he didn't. He decided that it was late enough for him to take the right and go against the one way. So he ended up taking the red path, the shortest way home. I thought about following him. Then I didn't do it. A younger cousin was sitting pillion, didn't want to be setting bad examples... Took the straight road.

Now, the straight road leads to a junction at which some construction work is in progress (It's been on for a while, no one has any idea what they're up to) . Due to this, the way home is the yellow path. Very long as you can see, not a chance in hell of making it home first. Resigned to my fate, I proceeded. And then, the gift of the gods! That very day, a straighter road had been opened up for traffic (the brown part). Suddenly, I had another path, the green one. It wasn't as short as the red, but it would defintely cut a couple of hundred metres and eliminate the time consuming U-turn. Yelling and whooping (I'm afraid I must've made quite a scene of myself that night), I made my way home. My heart was pounding in my chest, adrenaline pumping through my system... would he have made it home? Would the ride up the one way have delayed him long enough? Nervously took to the right turn, and then the left... to see...

No bikes parked in front of my house! I'd beaten him! In spite of the five minute handicap, in spite of the fact that I took the longer way home, I'd beaten him home! It was a good two minutes before he arrived.

It's a valuable lesson... Don't break traffic rules. It's dangerous, not only to you, but to countless others on the roads around you. There is no time limit for traffic rules. They're always in effect. I'm happy that nothing went wrong that day, but how easy would it have been for a car to be speeding down the one way, and to have hit my cousin?

(At this point, I'd like to make it clear that my cousin is no slowpoke on the roads, and that the displacement difference was a good 40cc (or 25% more) , which is large enough on Indian roads)

Remember, it's good to follow the rules. The gods will bless you!

Flickering thoughts

I use a gmail account. I blog on a google owned site. I regularly use google docs. Google search is of course a given. But enough is enough now. At this rate, google is going to take over the world. In my scathing (not really, but cool word, so there!) counter attack to google, I've signed up to Flickr.

You've probably guessed by now that the first part of most of my posts is generally meaningless. So yes, the real reason why I chose flickr over picasa. Simple. Flickr is intuitive, better managed and has a superior layout. And the most important thing. I can middle click images on flickr. I hate picasa more than anything else because it won't let me middle click and open many images in different tabs. I mean, WHATS YOUR PROBLEM, GOOGLE? IS IT WRONG TO OPEN A COUPLE OF IMAGES SIMULTANEOUSLY FROM THE SAME ALBUM IN DIFFERENT TABS? And those of you who tell me to open two instances of picasa and do what I like, zur Hölle gehen.

So yes, I like flickr because I can middle click. Go figure.

Oh yes, the link. Here it is.

Foot in Mouth Disease

Foot in mouth disease is a dreadful thing. Symptoms include talking before you think, blabbering nonsense, unintentionally revealing things that must not be revealed, etc. Now take the example of Abba (yes, of KrackJack fame). On the way back from GMRT, we were having lunch at a highway dhaba. The whole bunch of us had been divided across two tables. Abba and a couple of other guys sat at one table with a bunch of girls, while our table had mostly guys, with a sssssolitary girl. Abba's table was finished with lunch much earlier than ours, but the guys at that table were still hungry. So they hopped over to our table.

Now Abba is a jolly nice chap, who like most ten year olds, imagines himself to be a noble king one day, a resolute knight the other, a brave pirate hunter the next and so on (there is the small problem - the fact that Abba is all of nineteen, not ten, but since he's a nice chap we'll overlook that). On that day, (probably influenced by the number of girls surrounding him) he decided that he would be the Pirate Hunter. Like I said, Abba hopped over to our table halfway through lunch. He must've thought that a proclamation of the state of affairs would go rather nicely with the whole Pirate Hunter thing. But a simple 'I'm coming over there to join you guys' just would not do, would it? Of course not! So he said:
Abba : My seamen have deserted me!
Enthu (eating, bursts out laughing) : WHAT? HAHAHHAHAHAHA
Me (eating) : What? What seamen are you talking about? (to enthu) What on earth is he talking about?
Enthu : HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Me : * Puzzled *
Abba : * Puzzled *
Enthu : HAHAHAHAHAHAHA... Pune Mirror Page twenty-five... HAHAHA
Me : What in the blue hel... HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Abba : * Still puzzled *
Me : Pune mirror page twenty-five HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Abba : Arre what's going on here?
Enthu : We are verry sorry, but we cannot help yo...HAHAHAHA
VRD (Realisation dawns upon him) : Arre sheesh... hahahaha
Me : hahahahahaha
Abba : * Still extremely puzzled *
VRD : Arre its just a difference in the stress on pronunciation... like say - please and plizz.
Abba (Now, finally out of the storm) : Oh god! NO!

We continued laughing for a while after that, all of which cannot be captured on this blog.

Will Durant once said, 'One of the lessons of history is that nothing is often a good thing to do and always a clever thing to say.' To put it in simpler words (for the benefit of Abba), 'A closed mouth gathers no foot.' Pay attention Abba, pay attention!

Credits
I cannot leave the credits out. This post here ONLY by public demand. The public in question is anu, from here (Yes, only her (and her only, even though that's wrong english)). Form your own opinions. The greySith has said (and laughed) enough.

Salt In My Wounds

You've probably heard the old proverb about how 'rubbing salt into one's (no offence to enthu) wounds' is a bad idea. Well. My doctor did just this. He rubbed Copper Sulphate into an open wound in my thumb. He's not a maniac or anything (despite the fact that he rides a red bike with the registration number painted in a manner akin to dripping blood ). I've had this weird muscle growth around my thumb, and he used the blue vitriol to kill the growth. Now, having rubbed CuSO4 rubbed into my wounds, I am officially the coolest person on the planet. MUHAHA!

Off to GMRT

GMRT. That's Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope for those of you who don't know. It's the world's largest metrewave radio telescope. We went there last friday to have a look. I'd initially thought that the radio dishes were fairly small. I was horribly mistaken of course, and the realisation dawned upon me when I saw this.



'What it do?', you might ask, if you actually like the song by Li'l Flip and Mannie Fresh. The sane ones, though, tend to wonder what it does, and how. So I'll tell you. There are thirty dish antennae like the one you've just seen, set up in a Y shaped array. This behaves like a very large receptor for radio waves. These radio waves are broken down and processed. What you get is a picture of the universe (or you, if you somehow manage to hang in front of the array for long enough), in the radio band. Radio waves travel through dust clouds, so you can actually see behind stellar obstructions. Additionally, radio telescopes are active twenty-four hours a day, as compared to the total darkness required by optical telescopes. Fascinating stuff, such as pulsars, has been discovered by use of radio astronomy.

We visited the control room, from which the entire array is, err, controlled. There was this massive server there, that we have grand plans for. We plan to use it as a large bandwidth gaming server. No really. Why do you laugh?

As usual, there was also the major distraction. Photography. Very conveniently, the site
had approximately infinite scenes that make for brilliant photography, but time only allowed for a few snaps. Here are a couple.