World Cup Fever - 3

Nostradamus was wrong!!!

"In the sixth month of 2006 the King of Spain will cross the Pyreness with his troops. The legions of Beelzebub will battle him in central Europe but the evil ones will suffer doom and destruction. The Holy Grail will then come, like the King, to Spain."
This is what Nostradamus say in one of his prophecies which was referred in all of the major Spanish newspapers with respect to the chances of the Spanish team.

Obviously that hasn't been fulfilled and Spain lost to France in the 2nd round continuing their legacy of under-achievement. France did very well and with no pressure on them to win they pulled out a rabbit from the hat and beat Spain with their experience.
Brazil and England did enough to win without playing to the level that can win a world cup.
Argentina left it pretty late relying on an extra-time wonder-goal from Maxi Rodriguez to win it against Mexico.
Germany did it in the first 12 minutes and Sweden were left picking up the pieces for the rest of the game.
Switzerland and Ukraine played out one of the worst games of the world cup with neither of the team wanting to take any chances and Ukraine winning in a scrappy penalty-shootout.

Portugal and Holland played out one of the most amazing games I have ever seen and it's not the quality of the game that I am talking about but rather the lack of it. There was no sportsmanship from any of the players and the referee just made it worse by flashing cards like crazy. No wonder it equalled the record for the highest number of yellow cards in a match (16) and broke the record for the most number of red cards (4).

This is the line-up for the quarter-finals:

Germany V/s Argentina
Italy V/s Ukraine
England V/s Portugal
Brazil V/s France

I personally would like to see a Argentina v/s Brazil final with Argentina winning.
But with Germany playing at home and peaking at the right time, they will be tough to beat.
Italy should have it relatively easy against Ukraine.
England have been outsmarted by Scolari, the Portugal coach, twice before and are my favourites to do it again.
Brazil v/s France should be an interesting match and will come down to whoever controls the midfield well. The world's best midfielders would be in that match with Ronaldinho, Kaka, Zidane and Viera playing for their respective teams.

Best of :

Goals : Maxi Rodriguez (Argentina)
Match : France V/s Spain
Team : France
Player : Lukas Podolski (Germany)
Coach : Luiz Felipe Scolari (Portugal)

I am off to San Francisco this weekend and am not sure if I will be able to watch the games, but I am sure gonna try.

Enjoy!!!

-Muthu...

World Cup Fever - 2

All the teams in the world cup have finished playing their first group games. So which team is hot and which is not?
Spain seems to be the hottest team not only because of the number of goals they scored again Ukraine but in the way they scored it. They looked really impressive, their touches on the ball, passing and finishing. Brilliant. And which team totally sucked. Surprise it was not one of the African nations who made their debuts but France, the winner of the 1998 World Cup. It wasn't hard to believe by the way they played that they hadn't scored a goal since the 1998 Final when Emmanuel Petit scored a goal in the final minutes. Zidane, Barthez, Makelele all came out of retirements to help France qualify for the World Cup and I think that's the best they can do. They are going to struggle to reach the second-round and it will take a minor miracle for them
to go any further than that. They had class players like Henry, Viera, Zizou etc but they couldn't string together a single pass.
And Franc Ribery, boy o boy, is he really overrated, i think so, he was being talked about being the next Zidane and of possibly replacing Zidane in some of the games and bring Zidane as a sub. His skills seemed to be OK but his vision and finishing was pedestrian to say the least.

Brazil won their game against Croatia. It wasn't a great effort but they got it done. They will have to improve a lot though against Australia who are on a high after scoring 3 goals(their first ever in the WC) in the dying minutes of that thrilling game against Japan.

The second set of group games have started and I just watched England labouring to a hard fought win against Trinidad & Tobago(2-0). And they did only because the Trinidadians were tired. If things happen as they are happening now and Ecuador(who incidentally qualified to the second round for the first time) manage to get a draw against Germany, England will face Germany in the second round. What a match that's going to be?

My "Best Of" series continues :

Goal: Kaka (Brazil)
Team: Spain
Player: David Villa(Spain)
Coach: Luis Aragones(Spain)
Match: Australia V/S Japan

One of my colleague send me this interesting article about the difference between the soccer balls used in this tournament and why goalkeepers don't like it.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20060612/sc_space/
whygoalieshatethenewworldcupsoccerball
;_ylt=AgMpqheV1LTB5oh6_NhptH
EiANEA;_ylu=X3oDMTA4NmhocGZ1BHNlYwMxNzAw

So don't blame the goalie.

Enjoy!!

--Muthu...

World Cup Fever -1

Finally, I get a chance to post about something which really excites me. Before you start getting any ideas, let me say it's regarding the World Cup Soccer going on in Germany. It has taken me some time to say "Soccer" since people have a funny look on their face when I talk about the "football" game in Germany.
So who seems to be the favourite this time around.
Looking at some of the group games as of Sunday June,11, Netherlands seemed to be the most impressive team with Argentina a close behind. Although I really like England and would like them to do well, they have a real problem with the strikers that they have now. They have 4 strikers now but in reality its about one and a half, with Wayne Rooney injured and Theo Walcott with his inexperience. That leaves Peter Crouch as the only fully fit striker and a half-fit Michael Owen(who was substituted at the 55th min). An interesting statistic about Wayne Rooney is that he didn't score a single goal in any of the qualifying matches.
And about Argentina, my favourite team to win the World Cup, they have a couple of missing players Javier Zanetti and Walter Samuels who did really well in the last world cup and are really impressive in their respective leagues. Argentina didn't have any offense on the right flank, all the attack seemed to be coming from the middle and the left with Riquelme doing a really impressive job. But my main worry is what if Riquelme gets injured, booked or has a rough day who is going to command the midfield. Lionel Messi seems to be the answer but he is coming off a bad injury and would be a shadow of himself before he was injured.
This is my observation from the last few games about what was the most impressive in the following categories:
Best Team : Netherlands
Best Player: Arjen Robben
Best Match: Sweden V/S Trinidad
Best Coach: Leo Beenhakker(Trinidad & Tobago) For the offensive substitutions that he made when they were playing with 10 men.
I am going to post my thoughts and update the list very often till the world cup is over.
Till then, enjoy.

--Muthu...

Indian Olympic Lethargy.

In the Winter Olympics that is being held in Turin, Italy, I was watching the Luge event which is a small one- or two - person sled on which one sleighs supine(upward facing position) and feet-first. Steering is done by flexing the sled's runners or pulling straps attached to the sled's runners. Luge is also the name of the sport which involves racing with such sleds. And there is an Indian sportperson called Shiva Keshavan who finished 25th in the competition. Looking at his story it really made me wonder how the Indian sports official can make life really hard for a guy instead of encouraging him. He boycotted the opening ceremony where he was supposed to be the flag-bearer and which is a really big honour for somebody representing the country as he was being given a hard-time by the officials who were accompanying him. With the discrimination that the government and the corporate industry makes towards other sports compared to cricket, I wasn't really surprised that they do the same with the Winter Olympics team considering the fact that most of the population in India have never seen snow in their entire life. It's a shame that India with a population of more than a billion can never win anything big in any of the major competitions.
Is it government lethargy, lack of sponsorship from the corporate world or just the indifference of the general population to any sport other than cricket?
In a related story, when Jennifer Heil of Canada won a gold medal in the Women's Mogul event(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mogul_%28skiing%29) she thanked J.D. Miller, a Montreal hedge fund manager who pooled a team of two ski coaches, four trainers and a sports psychologist to work with Heil so that she can reach the ultimate pinnacle in the sport and she did it. How many people like this would we find in India who would do the same thing.
Your guess is as good as mine. If things continue like this, I won't be surprised if India doesn't win a gold medal in the Winter Olympics in a million years unless they introduce "Ice Kabaddi" in the winter olympics any time sooner.

--Muthu...

Videos on Google.

I was surfing the web and found a real cool video on a guy's blog. It surprisingly looked very similar to the videos posted on google and wait a minute, it was. Google now allows you to have links of video on your site and they give you the code that you need to embed on your site for it.
Although I liked the quantity of videos that I could find on it, it seemed strange that when you say download the video, it just downloads a 1 kb file containing the information and which can be played only on the special Google Video Player. This forces you to be connected to the net whenever you want to watch the videos. I am not sure how the "paid" video service work, if they allow you to download the entire videos or if it's the same thing. I guess if it's not then it's not worth buying those videos which don't come cheap ranging in costs from $ 1.99 to 5.95 and maybe more. I hope someday Google finds another way to recoup the money that the market expects them to make and puts it under so much pressure so that they reduce the money they charge for these videos and also make available some of the videos free.

This is the test for my first link to a Google video link.
A clip about Funniest Goals...

Cool Anagram Site.

I have always been interested in word puzzles and anagrams. Just found out this really cool site which takes a word and gives you all the anagrams of that particular word.

Internet Anagram Server 

What is an Anagram?

anagram (an-a-gram)

noun

A word or phrase formed by rearranging the letters of another word or phrase. For example, Elvis to Lives.

verb tr., intr.

To rearrange letters in such a way. To anagrammatize.

Check it out.

-Muthu...

Finally...another post and a License to Drive.

I am a real lazy person. I keep reminding myself to update my blog everyday warning that nobody will ever visit it again unless I keep on updating it.
Lot of things have happended since i did my last posting. I finally got my Driver's License on my first attempt(I am really proud to say that) which i thought i never would. I did that although it was not without some drama. This might make sense to somebody who has actually driven on the snow and how it feels. Sometimes it literally feels if your car is on skates. Anyway I had it planned on Nov.15 which turned out be a really bad day with snow showers and all and postponed it to the 30th of November. I don't know what i was thinking when i did that. Was i expecting the weather to all clear up and the sun to come up considering it is my third consecutive winter in Minnesota and what happens during that particular period. I have no idea why i did that. To say the least it did snow during that period and the whole ground was covered with snow. Thanks to my good friend Vinu Antony who was kind enough to tutor me and who drove me to the driving exam station. As soon as i was in there, i knew i was going to get it done no matter what. People had warned me that the driving examiners usually fail drivers in their first attempt. But i was determined not to allow that to undermine my confidence. The driving test was a breeze where i finished all my driving manoevures under the watchfull eye of the examiner. Nothing felt as sweet as when he asked me to do a lane parking and said "You have passed". That was the highest point in my brief driving experience.
Also congratulations to my friend Vinu and his wife Mini who were blessed with a beautiful baby boy Prince Vinu on Nov. 18.

--Muthu...

Day of Moving.

Today has been a long hard day of moving and unmoving stuff.
If its the end of the month and you see lot of furniture around, you know people are moving.
A couple of my friends were moving out and asked for my help in moving and cleaning in their apartment. I have gained a reputation for being the guy who can tell you how to get rid of stains from the carpets/walls or what to use to clean, etc. I think if you have to move in and out of 6 apartments in 18 months you kind of learn all this stuff(But I have settled down now). And to get your security deposit for the apartments after you vacate is no mean feat. Once you have cleaned up, the landlady/caretaker will have an inspection and inform you if you are going to get your money back or not. These inspections were more nerve wracking than the Viva's I have given in my college days(And Believe me those used to be really bad). But nothing is more satisfying than getting your whole deposit back. The thing that i have learned is if you are going to clean up you either clean up the whole thing 100% or don't clean up at all. Once the caretaker gets a small stain on the carpet or an unclean closet you can be pretty sure that they are going to charge you through the roof for it.
That's the advice that i give to all my friends when they move out.
And finally not to mention all the things that are moved out mainly the furniture and the mad rush to claim it.
I think I will wait for another day to write about the relationship between moving out and furniture in the garbage cans.
One of my good friend is going to India tomorrow and so i had planned to send a video recording of me driving a car. I am sure it doesn't sound like a big deal but I think it will be for my parents and my sister when they see me driving my Honda Accord 1998.
I have promised one of my neighbour that I will help him move.
Oh my back hurts!!!!

My first Attempt at Blogging.

This is my first attempt at blogging. I have been surfing and reading blogs in what seems like an eternity to me and wanted some place to add my views and thoughts about stuff.
So here is my first crude attempt at blogging.
The first thing that striked me when I started creating my blog was while selecting a title.
All the better names have been taken, so it kind of made me feel that I have joined this community later than i should have. So after going through all the permutations and combinations of the names that I had in my head( It wasn't a lot, I must confess), I settled on the name "Valkai" a Tamil word which means life. Must have given you a hint as to which part of India I am originally from(If you hadn't already judged by my name), although i consider myself a Mumbaiite having been born and brought up in Mumbai.
So here I am with my first blog and making a point to myself to update it with my thoughts as and when i can.