Cricket, Kabaddi & Technathon!

To start with cricket, India tour to West Indies is going on. The ODIs and T20s are over and its now time for the test series. Test series is said to be the toughest form of cricket, I have heard cricket commentators and experts say the same since childhood. Only recently when I was paying 'World Cricket Championship 2' game on my mobile, I realized why it is called the toughest form of cricket. It takes lot of patience while batting, and you really need to work hard and play with batmen psyche to get their price wicket!

 Coming back to India - West-indies Test series. India won the first test comprehensively. It was definitely a pleasure to watch too on my big screen TV in HD. India won by an innings and 92 runs, Virat Kohli the skipper continuing his wonderful form to lead with the bat with a double century! All the Indian bowlers did a good job in dismissing the host 2 times with a consistent disciplined performance. The second test match started today, West-indies are batting first after winning toss, 3 wickets out pretty soon!

  Moving on to Kabaddi, the 2 semi-finals were played yesterday in Hyderabad. This is the 4th season of the Pro Kabaddi league.The first semifinal match was between Pune and Patna.  Patna are the defending champions from last season, Pune had never reached the PKL finals. It was a very tight match, Pune were giving Patna a tough fight, especially their skipper Manjit Chiller was in great form tackling Patna raiders. Patna team won 4 super tackles, which eventually made the difference in their 37 - 33 win.

 The second semifinal was between Hyderabad and Jaipur, it was north vs south.Being in their own den, I thought Telugu titans would have the advantage. However, Jaipur team showed their class, dismantling the titans to storm into the finals, 34 -24 the eventually score in favor of Jaipur. The final should be a cracker between 2 champion teams. Jaipur had won the first edition of PKL, Patna are the defending champions winning the 3rd edition which happened last year.

 Finally lets talk Technathon. I took part in this Hackathon at my office. We had to select next gen technologies, We had taken up IoT. This was my second IoT hackathon and fourth hackathon overall. We also attended prep training on IBM Bluemix, there was also Microsoft Cognitive services training.We decided to use Bluemix, we also used a raspberry pi 3, a light detector. Team worked really hard, we were able to install raspberry OS, and connect light sensor and test it. However we faced problem registering the device on ibm internet of cloud things website. There was not much technical support and it was an unknown area for us.

 On the second day we got an ibm contact to help out, but it was too late by then. We were already tired and sleepy. We decided to go ahead with the demo with whatever was done. Not many teams had taken IoT theme, and none we know of were able to complete the solution.The demo went alright, not great nor as bad as we were fearing. There was not much weight to completion anyways in the score-sheet. Lets hope for best, we will get results next week. Like any hackathon, me and team got to learn a lot. It was a fun filled experience and we did enjoyed a lot.

A Murder, an Exit, Monsoon and Kabbadi!

  This has been kinda drought year for me with regards to posts count in this blog, I have been really busy with work and home. This is just the second post this year, and hopefully I will get back in the tune to write more.

 My last post was about cricket, the government and my work. With regards to the World T20, West Indies won it, and they were playing some really good fearless cricket, a team filled with hitters and all rounders, an ideal combination for T20 cricket, every player played their part, and despite their differences with their board, they managed to shine at the apex level.

 Back to my subject of the post, there is a lot to write today, and I am sure this is going to be one hell of a long post. To start with, this week an Infosys female employee was murdered in broad daylight at a Chennai railway station. Being from same profession, it is really saddening to see such a news, and even sad is, it happened in broad day light, at a public place, and no one did anything. There would have been some shares in social network after, but if someone or a bunch of people would have saved her, it would have been a much happier social network share. In general, there is fear among people not to get involved in such things, because of the bad image the police and the judiciary system has set, people avoid helping others with fear of getting strangled in police and court cases, even though their intentions are good. I believe in one thing, if you have not done anything wrong, then you should have nothing to fear, and you should be able to be a responsible citizen. Hopefully things will change with time.

Another reason why the people don't involve in such issues is because of corruption. Like the police and the judiciary, even the politicians are supposed to be public servants and should be obliged to help people. Many politicians are corrupt and greedy, uneducated and irresponsible, this leads to similar police and judiciary system. To correct this, I think education is important, and any politician in order to get a political ticket should have a graduate degree, by law.

Second thing which hogged a lot of social media lime-light was Britain exit from EU. Indians have very less impact of this at individual level currently, still every one is riding this bus on social media. Well not that I ignored it, I did enjoy some of the creative tweets which people wrote. I do not want to comment much on this except, I hope they stabilize and prosper, I wish the same for everyone in this world. A world filled with happiness, health and devoid of corruption, poverty and crime, would be hard to realize but a wonderful thing to wish and pray for!

Thirdly monsoon, I am living in Pune since past 4 years now, and this year there has been a lot of problem with regards to water, not only in Pune, but in Maharashtra. People dying due to heat and everyone relying on water tankers is a very sad state to witness. After long and anxious wait, monsoon is here, and experts have predicted a normal monsoon, which is a respite indeed. Hope is that the water would be used effectively. If not now, hopefully in less then a decade Maharashtra and whole of India would be drought free!!

Finally Kabaddi, today the fourth season of Pro Kabaddi league has started, something I enjoy watching. it is a very fast game which involves physical fitness and mental alertness. Thanks to this league, it has gained a lot of popularity now. It is a sport invented by us, and although it is not our national game, even as a nation we are very good at it.

Finally here's wishing everyone good health, happiness and success! 

Cricket, Tennis and Kabaddi!

To start with cricket, major news is India Supreme court banning owners of IPL franchises RR and CSK. A major setback for the BCCI, it’s high time it cleans up all the politics. In other proceedings, Bangladesh beat India to win in an ODI series first time. They already white washed Pakistan before us. Surprisingly, they even beat South Africa after India. This team is on a roll now!!

After Bangladesh, India toured Zimbabwe. All senior players like Dhoni, Kohli, Rohit Sharma rested. Rahane lead the side with new faces. Thankfully team did well; white washing opponents 3-0 in ODIs and also leveling T20 series 1-1. Losing to Zimbabwe would have been a big debacle!! The Ashes are going on in England. Australia trying to win there after 14 years. They lost the first test, but won the second one comprehensively!

Kabaddi season 2 is going on now. I remember season one was a big hit; I watched quite a lot of matches whenever I went to Mumbai. I didn’t have TV in Pune then, now I would be able to watch whenever I can! Wonderful sport with lot of speed and presence of mind, am sure this season would be a hit too!!

Wimbeldon 2015 got over this month. Djoker won it, and it was his 4^thWimbeldon title if I recollect right. Beat FedEx in finals. Federer was in wonderful form, and favorite, I couldn’t watch the match, but was hoping for a Federer win. Djoker won in 4 sets, and is just getting stronger and stronger. It seems Federer may retire in a couple of years now, he had a great career. He took over from Sampras, remember beating him in Wimbeldon long time ago, and there was literally an era of Federer, before Nadal and Djokovic appeared!!