Life Etc Etc

It's hard to be a casual cricket fan, there are so many things you don't know when you don't watch cricket regularly. I watched a grand total of half a cricket match in the last one year ( the Indian Chase in the ICC Cricket World Cup for Women ) before watching the last three overs of today's final . The last ball six revived my interest in the game and here are some of the most important things I've learnt about today's cricket in the last few hours since the final: Washington and Sundar are one and the same person . Suresh Raina has not retired and still plays occasionally for India.  ' DK ' is the superhuman alter ego of mild mannered Indian wicket-keeper batsman Dinesh Karthik and when he's in full flow he can hit sixes about as easily as Vijay Shankar can miss them. Vijay Shankar is not a relative of Indian sitar stalwart Ravi Shankar even though I almost felt he was using a sitar to bat after missing the number of balls he d...

On a bright May afternoon I found myself on the Stanley Park Seawall in Vancouver facing the Pacific Ocean . This was the ocean hike that I was most looking forward to. Now before I go any further you might ask me. What is the Seawall? There you go, the picture below should answer your question very well 👇 Stanley Park Seawall (Courtesy: Tourism Vancouver) How did I get there?  Simple via public transport ( TransLink ). In front of me was a 10 KM hike right next to the Pacific Ocean and I was grossly unprepared (didn't even have a bottle of water with me). But water or no water I wasn't about to back out from exploring this beautiful waterfront trail . My first pit stop allowed me to take in the sights of Vancouver downtown along with the  docks . Vancouver Downtown Vancouver docks and the Pan Pacific Hotel Pan Pacific Hotel from the top (Courtesy: BC Ferries Vacations) The next sight to behold my attention was the 100 year old Brockton P...

It's international speech contest time in Toastmasters and yours truly who once talked about what not to do as part of a speech is now back to discuss how to put a ' good speech ' together (although my examples would be geared more towards Toastmaster speeches, almost anyone can use the points below to formulate a good speech). Before I proceed any further let me clarify what I mean by a 'good speech'. A good speech in my opinion has five vital characteristics: Interesting Premise Logical Flow Accurate facts, believable examples, credible anecdotes Rational arguments Clear conclusion Now how do you go about constructing such a good speech. Here's a five step plan:  Pick an idea, a story or a thought which inspired you or affected you or has been bothering you. It doesn't matter if you pick a single line of thought or a story as the basis for your speech. The extent you are convinced about your pick is all that which matters. Now analyz...

My 60th post had to bring me back to Hyderabad, the place where it all began. There are books which allow you to pass time and there are books which transport you into another time. ' Hyderabad a Biography ' by Mr. Narendra Luther belongs to the second category. I picked up this book a few years ago amidst intense work schedules and instantly fell in love with it for it's wit and charm. I've read books which either narrated history with gravity or recollected facts with solemnity but Mr. Luther's book was the first I read where history was recounted with generous sprinklings of humor. Plus how can I not love a book about Hyderabad, my hometown and one of the most vibrant cities on the face of earth. A city with a rich history of more than 1000 years and for centuries a melting point of cultures from all over the world . Here was a region which remained a country within a country long after India gained independence, braved it's period of turmoil and instabil...

Background:  The Second World War and my family go a long way back, members of my family took part in the war on behalf of the British. My grandfather himself had a fortuitous escape when the Japanese bombed  Vizag harbour  and Vizag thermal power plant on April 6th, 1942 . The war and its stories have ever since then, been a source of discussion in my family. Being inquisitive about history, I spent a lot of time trying to know about various facets of the war including watching whatever movies or documentaries I could lay my hands on. However, I have never read or watched anything about Dunkirk until I saw the movie. This was fresh territory for me and I wanted to approach the movie with a clean slate to know more about history ( which I confess wasn't a very bright idea considering how well history is manipulated in movies ). Plot Setting:  It's May 1940,  Netherlands , Belgium and Luxembourg have all fallen to the German Offensive. France is on its wa...

How good is the latest Jumanji movie which comes more than two decades after the initial installment with a brand new star cast headed by a very much in-form Dwayne Johnson? Is this is a true-blue Jumanji sequel or is this an official reboot? Is this movie anywhere close to the first one in terms of thrills and chills? I guess we have enough questions to answer now so let's not wait any further and get started off with our movie review for Jumanji 2 (Welcome to the Jungle). Plot: It's 1996 and Jumanji (the evil board game which siphons people in) finds itself buried in the sands of a beach having been thrown into a river at end of the first movie . The strange drum beats emanating from the game attract a passer-by and as luck would have it, he takes the game to his home and his teenage son. A board game doesn't mean much to a kid of the 90's who swiftly casts it aside. Jumanji then transforms itself into a video game. The transformation catches the eye of the teenage...

Picture This!  It's a lazy day and you have plenty of time to kill (if you don't have too many or any of those ' free time'  days you gotta make some serious changes to your life). You are fed up of the TV and the updates on the social media don't excite you. You want to do something different but don't feel like going out. You are looking for something interesting to read or hold your attention. That's precisely the time for a book like ' A beam of light '. It has a plot which moves at a steady pace and holds your attention through all the twists and turns.     Plot: Inspector Salvo Montalbano wakes up from a nightmare with a start. The nightmare has him visit a vacant plot to investigate a coffin containing the body of someone very familiar. As Montalbano struggles to make sense of the dream he's beckoned to a vacant plot to investigate a cabin which turns to be a hideout out for anti-nationalist forces. The vacant plot has an eerie semb...