But it was fun all the same, with the Jones Beach Air Show and the Brooklyn Bridge featuring predominantly in the adventures from the weekend.

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And today, after finding both videos on Youtube, I am more or less sure.

Presenting Rajiv Menon and Prabhu Deva paying homage (with a National Award winning performance) to Gene Kelly…

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… and we will use it like the biggest stage in the world and shout our hearts out.

Without any further ado, presenting…. Ashok!

This post is not about callipygian features. It’s about allegiances and disappointment, specifically my allegiance to the the Old Lady of Mount Road and the disappointment resulting from reading her newest stable-mate.

There was a point, even after I came to the US that The Hindu was the place I’d go first for my news, soon after I walked into the lab in Ohio. And you could argue that I lost my fan-boy like blind following when I found a report in The Hindu about a “100 days” celebratory event for Saamy.

Then, sometime last year I found out that The Hindu had a new stable-mate. This paper, Ergo, is circulated apparently in an “all-color format” and has been described (on its website) as a free sheet targeted at young, salaried professionals of Chennai initially “targeting the IT corridor”. I found that the web edition had a proper RSS feed and almost immediately I added it to my Google Reader feeds.

Then suddenly, the feeds stopped and started again after a gap of a couple of months.But from the feeds, I think that the content leaves much to be desired. With headlines such as “Nicole Kidman poses nude for magazine“, “Jordan set for fifth boob job“, “Christina Aguilera back in shape” and “Gemma Molloy off to party with Hefner“, it looks like Ergo is positioning itself as a supermarket tabloid or what could pass off as one in Namma Chennai.

First thing, who is Gemma Molloy? Apparently she is an Australian model. And Michael Jordan has man boobs? And Cuba, did you get an eyeful of his Airness’s man boobs when you did all those commercials for Hanes? Oh, they are talking about Katie Price? Whew!

Jokes apart, it looks like most of the entertainment news is recycled trash from TMZ or Perez Hilton. Not that there is anything wrong with it, but what’s the point of doing it in Chennai? What’s the core value that this “tabloid” is shooting for? Dumbed down news to the email forward creating, fast food chomping BPO types? Now that would sound like a sound business plan to my father. To me, going by what I see online, it seems like the editorial team’s priorities are muddled.

I am not sure if Page 3 Australian celebrities are worth newsprint acreage in India. I am not sure even Hollywood page 3 celebs are worth it. Wait, am I wrong? Do people in India really care if Kim Kardashian took a public shower in a bikini top and a sarong, which the people from thesuperficial.com very kindly brought to my attention last week (I have thesuperficial in my feed reader, solely for the illuminating commentary about Amy Winehouse’s skin ailments, honest!).

If recycled trash was the first thing that strikes me, the last straw is this gallery that showed up on the Ergo feed today. It made me do a double take and wonder if this was a feed from Ergo or one of those Kollywood type websites that post publicity photos from movies that never get made publicity photos that almost always show skin. You know, the one’s that make you think later that the pictures were probably from one of those movies that ended up as soft porn?

I went back and looked at the About page and found this line -

The team was handed total editorial freedom, with just two riders: to follow the “rule of the land”; and keep a check on issues pertaining to taste.

Well, there is no law that prevents “galleries” such as the one that I linked above, but I thought it was in poor taste for a publication that is a stable-mate of The Hindu.

The website itself looks like it is still in beta, though a footnote in the About page indicates to the contrary. For quite sometime (when the feeds weren’t being updated), on the main page, the link to their feeds took me to The Hindu’s main page. The section naming doesn’t make sense (Featured story 1 and Featured story 2?). This Podcast link leads to nowhere, though there are podcasts available (there is an error in the Wordpress category id used in that link). Frankly looking at all of this, I think the beta testing was a sham and the design looks amateurish.

I would be willing to look past the website because I am willing to make the assumption that this was intended to be an offline till someone decided that they should have a web presence. It is stupid to give the online edition step-motherly treatment, but India being India, I guess that happens.

However considering that the website design is credited to a company owned by someone who is considered by many as a doyen among Chennai bloggers and that the “Editor, Publisher and Printer” for Ergo used to be a notable Chennai blogger at one point (if it’s the same person!), I am appalled.

Even then, if someone tells me that the offline version is better, I’d be inclined to believe. The restaurant reviews in the Saapad subsection are pretty informative, considering that I haven’t lived in Chennai for sometime. The Lifestyle section has had some interesting articles that make for nice light reading. And the Entrepreneurs sub section that aims to bring new business models into the open is a brilliant idea.

So if all of those articles (that I read and appreciated in the online version) found a place in the offline paper, then it is all good. However my visibility is limited to the online format alone and frankly if I were to go solely on the basis of this underwhelming online evidence, Ergo is doomed. While I want to root AGAINST that, I don’t think I will win that bet.

This brilliant picture was shot yesterday somewhere in London. Apparently the photographer used a big flash and rendered useless the Stig’s trademark black visor on this crash helmet. Sadly though, speculation still abounds.

The original black jumpsuit clad Stig was once revealed to be Penny McCarthy, a former F1 driver and tester for a number of teams like Arrows, Benneton and Williams. But after he was killed off in a Top Gun-esque stunt on the HMS Invincible, the white Stig was introduced and his identity has been a closely guarded secret.

Interestingly, British bookie William Hill has offered odds on the identity of The Stig. Former F1 drivers, Damon Hill, Martin Brundell and Julian Bailey have all been mentioned on Stig rumors and have received odds of 4/1, 6/1 and 3/1 respectively. Even current McLaren Mercedes driver, Lewis Hamilton faces 16/1 odds. Oddly even celebrities such as Simon Cowell (yes THAT Simon Cowell) has been mentioned as a possible Stig.

While excitement has spread in the Top Gear forums in the intertubes, BBC has refused to comment on the new pictures. Interesting!

I realized that I was closing in upon a milestone. By the time this post is online, it will be 5 years since I started blabbering. My first post was posted on Blogger on the 10th of February, 2003. And barring a few months early on and around 100 days in late ‘04 and early ‘05, I have been posting rather regularly.

Looking at Lekhni’s tag, I realized that she had given me a good chance to take a retrospective look and to reminisce upon these five years gone by. But the problem with my blog is that, as my erstwhile tagline goes, it is the record of an egoist’s road trip through life with cricket, music, books, cars and movies for company.

Which means that this blog is about me and me alone. So, as the days go by, it becomes increasingly difficult to remember the odd posts that one has “written” relating to some of the keywords of this tag. Also, the difficulty is compounded by the fact that I took an oath, with myself as witness, that I wouldn’t post anything personal here. So the odd heartbreak has almost never found an outlet here, even if some friends (both online and IRL) have heard me obsess over it.

I have come to a conclusion that wherever I think I won’t be able to fit within the confines of the tag, I will bend the boundaries to my whims and fancies. Hey, this is MY blog and I do what I think is right. Also, my ego prevents me from sticking to the “1 post per keyword” rule of this tag. I will hence go ahead and regurgitate multiple links wherever possible. But let me just make the basic rules clearer to everyone.

The rules of the tag are: Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like). Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better.

Family: As far as family is concerned, my mom offers the single largest (potential) inspiration for posts on this blog, but I haven’t posted much in this regard. Anyways, as much as I denied it then, this post had its genesis in a phone conversation with my mom.

Friends: I think I will use this keyword as a chance to link to a couple of 55 word shorts. This short is about a short lived friendship. Here is another I wrote about what will intrigue some of my vetti friends.

Yourself: The majority of this blog is about me and my overblown ego. I am tempted to link to some of my “infamous” posts here (tulips/volcano, anyone? Or the silly photo meme?). But I have other plans.

Two years ago, I put up an “accomodation wanted post” that the aforementioned vetti friends hijacked and converted into a post that screamed “Looking for a Significant Other” post. Occupied as I was in my worries about finding an apartment and settling into a new job, I edited that post to make it sound less frivolous. But later, seeing where they were coming from and the fact that it did sound like a matrimonial ad, I recovered the post and put it into a private vault, not wanting to lose anything I wrote.

Until today, that is. So here it is - in an unedited, “directors cut” format, my appeal for shared accommodation in the Parsippany / Rockaway area.

Your Love: I don’t know if people realized this. But I started blogging because of cricket and the fact that Rediff and Cricinfo stopped accepting pieces from guest authors. My posts as a guest author/columnist in these portals were perhaps my earliest attempts at putting my thoughts into paper, barring a few emails that I sent to friends from time to time.

So without my ado, here are my earliest Cricinfo contributions to the Writer in You section -

1. About the continued exclusion of Sadagopan Ramesh in March ‘02

2. About the test match at Lords in August ‘02

3. Thoughts about the first day of India West Indies test match at Bourda in April ‘02.

And my contribution to Rediff as a guest author -

1. Musings about the win at Port of Spain in April ‘02.

Apart from these, I’m going to link to a pair of long posts about my favorite cricketing pet peeve - The BCCI. These posts (part 1 and part 2), though a couple of years old ring true even now. I also believe that India needs to look at a core competency model for its selection policies, though positive changes seem to have come through in these past couple of years. And lastly this post about playing cricket with a scientific calculator.

Anything I like: I am romantically challenged, but even then I have a soft corner for this post of mine, a what-if tale of romance, from the perspective of a member of the vehiculum futbolus genetrix family. As I do for this one - about PTC/MTC buses in Chennai.

Another interest of mine is movies, so here are a couple - this post about one of my favorite movies, and this one about the general state of Bollywood. I have also pontificated in the past about dancing my heart out - Here and here. Lastly, I dont think this tag will not be complete without this cooking type post.

But before I leave, I have to apparently tag 5 bloggers whose blogs I love to read. Seems like two of them have to be new acquaintaces. Hmmm, let’s see.

In keeping with the trend on this post, I will cheat and tag 7 bloggers instead. I will tag - Smugbug, Arun, Pri, Megha, DoZ, Missus Em and Max Da Vinci.

A couple of these people haven’t posted recently and that’s never good. So I believe this retrospective look will spur them on. Particularly, Megha, whose latest anniversary post was such a cop out! Yo, Can we get a real post now? And DoZ, if you want, I will look away if you include your posts from Stochastica as well.

There, DONE!

Whew, five years is such a long time. But I am not done yet. Keep coming back and please do leave a comment or two everytime. Thanks to Lekhni for this opportunity. Came at the right time and I can’t think of a better way to usher in a new blogging year.A new template would have perhaps been perfect icing to this cake.But thanks to a brain freeze by yours truly, it was not to be. Ah well. Life’s not perfect, either.

And in other news, I seem to have been tagged again. Guruprasad’s tagged me to write about “non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself”. Now that is quite an impossible task because the blog does not have anything else apart from non-important things/habits/quirks about me and 480 odd posts is a large number to wade through.

In fact I think that this blog’s the single biggest reason that I am still single, because so much dirt on me can be got with a simple google search. So I have decided that I won’t muddy the waters any more. Can you excuse me, Sir?

1. Some people collect stamps and some collect footwear. I collect headgear. Or at least I think so, if possessing 12 hats is any indication. My oldest is a (West) McLaren Mercedes team hat that I picked up at a store off Elliots Beach in Chennai before I moved to Ohio in ‘01. My latest acquisition is an official (Vodafone) McLaren Mercedes hat (with Lewis Hamilton’s signature sewn on to it) , this time procured from the Team McLaren store (thanks Yakkow, for making the calls!). Another prized possession is a Nike Team India hat (to go with my Team India practice jersey) that some friend picked up at Macy’s a few months ago.

2. MTR makes this rocking idly mix. Thanks to MTR, I have had idlies for dinner like 3 days in a row now. Every day I find that I have some batter left over (enough for a couple of idlies) and so I add some more the next day thinking that it will be enough for the half a dozen small idlies I eat. And every day I end up with left over batter. I think this is going to continue till I run out of the idly mix. But I am not complaining at all. Mom makes the perfect molaga podi and she has surpassed herself with the batch I have now. She might live in Chennai while I am here, but like I mentioned to someone the other day, “mere paas maa hai, by proxy”!

3. I don’t listen to Tamil soundtracks anymore. Sad, but true. For some reason, Tamil soundtracks seem to be failing to excite me anymore, barring one or two albums here and there from Rahman and sometimes from Yuvan Shankar Raja. I yearn for the Ilayaraja of yore and Yuvan Shankar Raja is at best bearable, unless he is crowing in his off key voice. The beauty of Ilayaraja and his voice was that he knew when to sing and when to stay away from the mic. With Yuvan, either people around him are feeding his ego or he is deaf.

4. I have no such complaints when it comes to Hindi soundtracks. In spite of my less than perfect Hindi, I seem to be listening to more and more Hindi soundtracks and if you were to ask me about my 10 ten songs from ‘07, Hindi tracks would dominate. And based on the number times these songs went on continuous loop on my mp3 player last year, In Dino (Life in a Metro), Aakhri Alvida (Shootout at Lokhandwala) and Dhundla jo sama bandha (Manorama Six Feet Under) will be in the top three definitely.

5. Speaking of Hindi soundtracks, am currently listening to Rahman’s latest - Jodha Akbar. And hearing Sonu Nigam sing In lamhon ke daaman mein, I wonder how history would remember him. Well, personally speaking, I think after his time is done, he would rank up there among the greats. But then, I’m no expert. When I was in high school, for a time I believed that PB Srinivas sang Gunguna Rahe Hain Bhawre. Don’t ask! But in any case, considering the number of Sony Nigam numbers that rank among my personal favorites, he ranks up there in my personal list. And that is enough. Life goes on.

6. A couple of months ago, I got promoted at work. Well, not really. It’s a promotion by name and I still do what I used to do, which is not much. I did get a decent raise and I guess that makes it worth it. But this also means that I will be travelling more often than i did during the first two years that I spent in this job.

7. And the travel started even before I got promoted. In November and December, I spent close to 4 weeks in total out of Jersey in Portland (OR) and in Cleveland (OH) on some difficult client installs. Twelve hour workdays and infrequent meals were the norm so much that after returning back to Jersey, I have totally lost interest in cooking these past two three weeks. I should get back into the same groove back again.

8. Saturday before last, DoZ and I did a movie marathon. Both of our hectic work schedules in the past couple of months had meant that we had missed quite a few serious movies and we decided to catch up. Starting with a show at 10:30 am, we watched 4 movies one after the other. Three of the four movies will definitely get Oscar nods. Johnny Depp’s Sweeny Todd surprised us by being a slasher musical, a new genre maybe. The Diablo Cody screenplay Juno is genuinely funny. And even though Kite Runner was melodramatic, it was not the slowest of the lot. That honor goes to There will be blood. But three out of four movies is a good hit rate anyways and one has only DoZ to thank, for choosing the movies.

9. I have spent the last two years in New Jersey. When I first moved to Jersey, for the first couple of weeks, I stayed with S and his roomies, till I moved into my own apartment (with a roomie). And these are the only new friends I have made here in Jersey in the real world. There have been a few friends I have made via this blog and while I did meet some of these people in real life too, I miss university life and the security blanket of desis that it provided.

10. This is also the first year since ‘01 (when I moved to the US) that I have continued on and stayed in the same apartment at the end of the year. At Athens, the roommates and I had to move for different reasons every year. The first year, the tiring walk up a hill made us move once the lease was up. End of second year, the university decided to the raze the old apartment complex. And I moved at the end of the third. I spent a few months in Illinois and Delware and moved to Jersey in ‘05. I moved into this apartment in November ‘06. This second floor apartment is huge, has a nice balcony facing the road and is generally accessible. The rent’s about the cheapest in the area.

(Amma, this is about the time you stop reading this post. I am going to talk about my neighbors and you better close this browser window. Don’t worry, my neighbors are really nice people.)

12. Speaking of neighbors, a lesbian couple lie below me every night. I mean, my bedroom is right above theirs. And in case you are wondering how I know - when they do it, they are LOUD, both of them. Like they were last night. And to think that soon after I first moved in, I was asked by one of them to turn down the volume on my TV after 10pm since she was a high school teacher. May be they wanted to be heard and my TV was drowning their soundtrack. Amma, in case you are still reading, don’t worry. I don’t speak to them. I don’t even speak to any women. Podhuma?

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