ghatsterspace

...and then I remembered I had a blog!

2007-11-16T02:19:00.000+05:30

Even those select few who'da been visiting my blog in early June or July wuda given up on me by August... life at IIMA got so hectic that blogging became the last of my priorities... there were always so many things to be done and 24 hrs a day seemed too little!

As days passed, I guess even I forgot that I had a blog until today when I got this message on gtalk:

fzaffer: hey i've added your blog spot to my blog so ppl can check u out if they like when they are reading my blogs

is that cool with u?

fzaffer@gmail.com: http://littledimes.blogspot.com/

Sent at 12:55 AM on Friday

I wondered why someone wud want to add a link to a "long dead blog"!! probably it was her way of telling me, "dude I'm gonna start diverting some traffic to your blog so you better get your act together in time and start blogging again"... haha.. thought about it for a while and then I figured it really does make sense for me to start blogging again... not today but yeah sometime soon...

P.S. for the uninitiated, there's definitely a lot more free time in term II at IIMA as compared to the extremely demanding term I.

From 1 Champion to Another - The show goes on...

2007-06-14T23:30:00.000+05:30

It was way back in '94 when I heard about this sport called F1 for the first time. Formula 1 talk barely made sense to me then but from the bits and pieces I could comprehend I got to know that a Brazilian driver by the name Senna had just died in a car crash and capitalising on the unexpected exit of the championship leader, a German youngster by the name Michael Schumacher was fast catching up!

What I got to see in the next few races, got me so involved in the sport that I soon became a hardcore fan of Schumi. If winning 6 of the next 7 races since Senna's death appeared surreal what he went on to achieve in the next decade or so got almost all F1 record books re-written. When Schumi finally announced his retirement at the end of the 2006 season these were some of the records he held:

- Most Drivers' Championships ( '94,'95,'00,'01,'02,'03 &'04)
- Most race victories (91)
- Most number of fastest laps (76)
- Most pole positions (68)
- Most points scored (1369)
- Most races won in a single season (13 in 2004)
and the list goes on....

Unlike most sports lovers who enjoy the game only when the competition is intense, I also enjoy any sport when one player/team dominates his/their era.

I've always enjoyed
- the way the Aussies have cornered the cricket teams of all test playing nations into submission time and again

- King Federer's saga on the lawns of Wimbledon

- Nadal's almost equal dominance on the clay courts

and my list is endless..

Not very suprisingly I was always glued to the TV every Sunday when Schumi would get into his scarlet Ferrari to make a mockery of others racing beside him.

However, as Schumi's time at the top came to an end and younger rivals took over, my interest in the sport did take a hit but the 2007 season has got me interested in the sport yet again and the reason happens to be a 22 year old McLaren rookie, Lewis Carl Hamilton. At his debut race in Australia, earlier this year, Hamilton not only became the first F1 driver of African ancestry but also finished on the podium to earn his first F1 points.

Hamilton's hardly 6 races into his Formula 1 career but has got the record books buzzing and here's a brief account of Hamilton's first season in F1 so far -

Race #1 - Australia(18-Mar-07)
Starts 4th on the grid and finishes the race at 3
- podium finish on debut!

A commendable feat but one accomplished by 12 other drivers before him :-(

Race #2 - Malaysia (08-Apr-07)
Starts 4th on the grid and finishes the race at 2
- 2 podium finishes in 2 races

An indicator of times to come, but written off as beginner's luck :-(

Race #3 - Bahrain (15-Apr-07)
Starts 2nd on the grid and finishes the race at 2
- First driver in F1 history to finish on the podium in the first 3 races of his career (a record which seems to be extending beyond 3 with every successive race. He's finished on the podium in all of his 6 races so far!)

Finally the world makes note of a champion in the making and accolades start pouring in :-)

Race #4 - Spain (13-May-07)
Starts 4th on the grid and finishes the race at 2
- Becomes the youngest driver ever to lead the drivers' championships

In serious contention for the championship now and the intra McLaren rivalry heats up :-)

Race #5 - Monaco (27-May-07)
Starts 2nd on the grid and finishes the race at 2
- Tied on 38 points with team mate Alonso but slips to second position on the championship due to Alonso having more victories in the season.

And the pendulum swings away :-(

Race #6 - Canada (10-Jun-07)
Starts on Pole and leads the race all the way to the chequered flag
- Regains the championship lead from Alonso
- Becomes the fourth youngest driver to win an F1 grand prix
- Becomes the first in the last 5 years to win a race in the debut season

Back on top in 2 weeks :-)

If the recent past is any indicator to what lies ahead, then we have a lad who's gonna take F1 racing to new heights. More than anything it's the Alonso-Hamilton clashes I'm looking forward to, it been quite a while since 2 drivers of the same team raced for the championship and I sense some really exciting races in the offing.

I sometimes wonder whether champions are born or made.. but on hindsight it really doesn't matter - If you are a champion, you stand apart and the world looks up to you!

Ahmedabad (Gujarati: અમદાવાદ Amdāvād, Hindi: अहमदाबाद)

2007-06-12T17:28:00.000+05:30

Alright here I am back to my blog which I'd created a few days back.. was wondering where to start.. spent a few mins thinking and then zeroed down on Ahmedabad - the place where I belong for the next 2 years!

For starters, Ahmedabad is the largest city in the state of Gujarat and situated on the banks of the river Sabarmati.. err.. well did I say river??? Think it'd be more appropriate to say what used to be a river... haha.. well atleast at the moment, all I could see of the "river" was a vast stretch of dry barren land where the localites play cricket in the couple of hours preceding the late Ahmedabad sunset!(it's usually around 8 in the night when it gets dark here.. and that definitely is very late by Indian standards!!)

And the weather here is nuthing like I'm used to - the heat here puts the Chennai summer to shame... the midday temperature's always been in the mid 40's from the day I landed here and it's 43 degrees Centigrade as I type this:-( I'm being told that it's a good 2 more weeks before the monsoon sets in and the temperature moderates a bit.. now I'm really curious to know what 'moderates a bit' is by the Ahmedabad standards.. haha..

Now that I'm done with the 'Bad' part of Ahmedabad, I'd now like to broach the 'worse' part of Ahmedabad - the traffic! It's really quite surprising to see that this place doesnt have as many vehicles on the road as you'd expect in the 7th largest urban agglomeration in India but the traffic sense of the drivers here more than makes up for the low vehicular density! In the 2 weeks I've been here, I've witnessed more than 8 accidents and what's more suprising is the people involved dont bother stopping, unless one of those involved is badly injured.. really bizarre but that's the way it works here. Last week, I'd hired an autorikshaw to drive me down to a nearby mall and to my utter disbelief the rick made contact with atleast 3 other vehicles on the way and once rammed into a car with a loud thud, but it was jus a few stares exchanged while the auto driver shrugged his shoulders and moved on!

And finally before I end, here's the 'Worst' of Ahmedabad - more than 90% of the inhabitants of Gujarat are vegetarian and understandably not many restaurants here serve meat. It took us more than a week to find a place to have our first non-veg dinner!!!

All said and done, it does look like one of those places which you dont like at first sight but eventually fall in love with... I strongly hope I'm proved right.. keep visiting this site again to know when the change takes place :-)

And yeah I finally join the bandwagon...

2007-06-04T23:54:00.000+05:30

Hello people..

Been delaying this for so many months now and now finally get my act together and take my first step into the so called "addictive" world of blogging!

Even as I type this, I really hafta admit I'm very much a novice in this world of blogging and hope to get better and make my blogs interesting in the days/blogs to follow..

And here's to my first blog ever..

Cheers,
:-)