The greatest sportsman ever...

To start the blog, I was looking for a lead and found Big B's blog on bigadda.

The exact sentiment which has been coming to me from the day Sachin scored the double ton is shared by Big B. That same day, Sachin has proved that he has attained a place where no one has ever been and probably will never be. What follows now is just raising his own bar higher and higher. I have read a couple of self-motivation books and found mention of players like Tiger Woods being greatest players and how they manage to be great. They all are great including Sir Bradman, but the greatest is Sachin Ramesh Tendulkar.....the son of the country once ruled by another country which has never won the world cup of the game invented by themselves till now and neither do they have as great players in the history of their game. He has no extra marital affairs nor has he been involved in betting scams or flirted with any woman married or unmarried or such filth. He is the greatest sportsman on earth and an even greater human being.

During the football world cup, I was hearing accolades of how some players were so popular and were highest paid and thought if they had actually achieved anything. Sachin has achieved all these records in such a game which depends mostly on the team performance, generally. Had he been playing in a one person game like tennis, he would have made the world feel that their 10 fingers are less in number to put on their mouths or their two hands are less to bow down to him.

I sincerely feel the time is ripe and has come to award the degree of "Sir" to Sachin. But wait a minute....am I doing exactly what Big B has said we have been doing??? Yes....Sachin doesn't need a "Sir" but rather a "Mahatma" to be added to his name or something of that greater sort. And I have little doubts that if other countries manage to get good batsmen in the future they will be called "Sachin Tendulkar" of their resp. country. And every parent will feel there should be Sachin Tendulkar and in their own home (Marathi people will prolly know what I am talking about) and kids in developed countries will want their parents to call them "Sachin" like we have been calling our Sameers as "Sam". I am proud and obliged to share the same first name as the master and already thank my parents for that.

Salute to you Sachin....asach khelat raha ani jagaala namavat raha....amhi kaayam tujhya paathishi aahot.

Jai Hind....

Finally, an app for Mumbaikars

During my stay in Reading, UK last year, I came across an interesting iphone app. It could tell the user the exact door to get in a particular London Underground tube rail to get out right in-front of the exit, to avoid tourist rush and exit quickly. I am sure lot of research and programming must have gone into it, considering the number of tube lines running in London. But the programmer earned some 3000 bucks on the first day itself, paying a handsome return for the efforts.

And I immediately thought, how useful it would be to have an app which tells about the local train in Mumbai, the time it would leave from a particular station I am at, if it is fast or slow, and if it would stop at a station I wish to go if it is a fast train. Sorry for the confusing lingo, but Mumbaikars will get all of this, am sure. And to be frank, I myself downloaded a coupla ebooks on flash programming to see if I could be the one. Come on, I too have good programming skills.

Anyways, I did manage to get employed with a IT company, but for my structural stuff. But a few days back, my collegue from Mumbai showed me an app called mIndicator which does exactly the same stuff I just talked about. But that's not all, it also has BEST routes and taxi and rick tariff cards. Ya...it is too good to be true. Best part is, you don't need an iphone to use it, because it is a java app, meaning it can be used on any phone with java. And it doesn't need a GPRS connection either, except to check your PNR status or mega-block details. The time table of trains also shows the trains only from the current time onwards and not from the first train in the morning. This is more than a humble little Mumbaikar can ask for. The app is created by Mobond. More details about the app can be found here.

Mobile age is very much here. Looking forward to mobile season tickets and card tickets now....like mobile boarding passes.

The third dimension...

Some days back, I was surfing google maps and found a small window on the right saying "Maps" and I hovered my mouse on it and it slid to expand into "Earth" and "Satellite". To see what the new thing was, I clicked "Earth" and it asked me to download a plugin, which I did. After clicking again, it started loading, but thanks to my home internet, I couldn't achieve the end. So some time I checked back and to my amaze, Google Maps can now be seen in 3D. This is different from the street view feature and I saw Ahmedabad, but was not much excited. So I thot I will see Mumbai (thinking it won't be much different either, knowing the innovations to be implemented in the "major cities of developed countries" first) and I was surprised to see the 3D of the icon of Mumbai's spirit, The Taj Hotel. And then I also checked out my favorite structure of my city, the Bandra Worli Sealink and it was a literal virtual drive.

More easy access to the wrong social elements, I know, but its so amazing to see it. Do check out...