My way of showing my affection every year!

First Movie

Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander

First Channel

YouTube (My preference over here in US)

First Sport

Table Tennis

First meal

Bread-Butter

First Call

Home

First Website

http://www.blog.netgautam.com

First Song

Pehla Nasha

For those who would like to take up this questionnaire, most welcomed. Here is the template for questions -

First Movie

First Channel

First Sport

First meal

First Call

First Website

First Song

I am trying to continue the trend started by me when 2006 was ending. To summarize the things in the way that you can recall them later, more easily than ever.

Here is the first series of that kind (you can also find same list for last year) -

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before?
   1. Continued my job for 2 years (of course that is an achievement when it is for first in 3 years of career)
   2. Completed NetAmp application - an app to play music over network
   3. Found my love
   4. Traveled abroad / US (Writing from there only)
   5. Visited Disneyland and Universal Studios
   6. Watched lot and lot of movies (I still can’t believe that I managed to watch 50 movies in 2 months!)
   7. Visited Historical Monuments in Capital nearby
   8. Met with old time mate (Happy)
2. Did you keep your New Years’ resolutions, and will you make more for next year?

   Oh yes I kept it. I don’t have habit of leaving impossible things like that. If it couldn’t be done in 2006, it was kept in 2007. Hey Krishna, are you listening? Of course, making another one for year 2008 and this time, again it is next to impossible for a person like me!

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?

   Luckily NO.

4. Did anyone close to you die?

   No.

5. What countries did you visit?

   US

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007?

   Remembrance (I think it isn’t about resolution)

7. What date from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory?

   27/07/2007, 04/12/2007 and 13/12/2007 (all sum up to mah lucky number as I have realized just now)

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?

   Discovered Love

9. What was your biggest failure?

   Umm…None.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?

    Yes. Cough and Cold for quite long time during Cricket World Cup

11. What was the best thing you bought?

    I never buy things rather I present them to myself - 2 GFs / Laptops (dv9502 and dv6500t CTO NB) and 2 External HDDs (160 GB LACIE and 1 TB Western Digital)

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
    1. Jo
    2. Ritu
    3. Puneet’s laughs
    4. Pankaj’s company during celebrations
    5. Nitesh Gupta for wonderful rides
    6. My Brother
    7. Archana for wonderful compliment
    8. Happy
13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?

    Three of mah colleagues

14. Where did most of your money go?
    1. Laptops
    2. External HDDs
    3. Clothes
    4. Movies
    5. Coffee
    6. Food
    7. Discotheques
    8. Shelter
15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
    1. Love

India lost second Border / Gavaskar trophy match against Australia after losing its last 3 wickets in 6 remaining balls of match - thanks to one-sided decisions of Umpires Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson during whole match.

When you find that two of the players which were NOT OUT but were declared OUT in first innings and in the same way, during second innings of same team, four key players which were clearly NOT OUT but given OUT by the match umpires Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson, you know that somewhere something is going wrong.

Also, when opposition team is favored by umpires for their batting, you start feeling hatred towards them which is natural.

And in such situation when our poor team loses match, more than being sorry for them, if someone abuses umpires feeling frustrated for them, you feel better to support him.

The second test match was total blunder full of umpiring mistakes. Umpires which are taken with utmost request in a match, the Gods of match, looked too small in this test. Steve Bucknor is well known for his sick behavior towards Indian team and he was atop in this game when India lost a well-expected Draw match. Then a good sport lover of game is supposed to be angry for these two pranksters of match who thought that they can even prove the match cameras wrong.

Throughout the match, Australians were appealing and umpires were raising their fingers for players like Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, Saurav Ganguly etc. Some of batsmen tried to show disapproval to umpires’ decision but of no output. And this all was for making Australia achieve their 16^th consecutive win. Not even single Australian felt sorry for wrong umpiring decisions (I was expecting it from Australian Captain Ricky Ponting at least).

Result…I am no more going to believe that umpires are always right - something my dad taught me during my childhood while making me understand this game!

Here are the videos of umpires clearly favoring Australian team -

IND vs AUS 2nd Test,Sydney-Day1- 4 Poor decisions by Umpires

Nonsense Umpiring Ganguly Out 2nd Test Ind v Aus @ Sydney

Poor Umpiring Day 1 2nd Test Ind v Aus @ Sydney 2008

Lucky Ponting Day 1 2nd Test Ind v Aus @ Sydney 2008

Poor Umpiring - Indian vs Australia 2nd Test 2008

More news results on same topic -

• Australia beat India in Sydney thriller
• BCCI to complain against umpiring
• Umpire gaffes hurt as India tries to push for victory

Update (January 07, 2008): Thwarted BCCI has decided to put forward suggestion for change in ICC rules so that there shouldn’t be any doubt about Umpiring decisions for the teams visiting Australia. Here are the proposed guidelines -

Presently I am residing here in US of A as Hema called it out! I am here for official trip from my firm and had reached here on December 4. Right now staying somewhere in San Jose and working at nearby location in Sunnyvale. Lucky to have company of two mates here - Amit Gupta and Nitesh Gupta (Nits). We all are colleagues. Nits is here since Nov and I have reached here with Amit. We go to office together, almost staying together and cooking together too. I am liking this place because of its beautiful infra and VTS service. Moreover there are lot of people from other races here as they say that more than 40% people are Indians in this city and it is also known as Gandhi Nagar. It feels like mini India. People are quite friendly and one can easily get hooked up with the ones of their interest. I had my tryst with locals and I am feeling good being here after meeting with them.

Whole week I was busy in settling down at office and at the apartments. Things were so messed up at both places. For first time, I realized that even a girl can mess up an apartment too much to clean up properly. Eh.

This was the first weekend and went out to Mccarthy Ranch. There first went to Best Buy and looked at the electronics goods primarily. But I found that all those which I wanted were more cheaper when purchased online than from store provided you know where to look out over Internet. Then it was Wallmart to get other stuff for living. Interestingly I happened to meet and talk with 2 Indian guys (Harsh and Sri) at Best Buy and one at Wallmart (Srinivas) which was surprising for me provided my nature of… At the end of day, we had something going inside our stomachs (I am not able to recall the name of outlet) but I must say, it is very hard for a veggie to survive on fast-food here specially when you get to eat ultra-cold burgers and that too, not much tasty . India is much better in that way. Also, here McDonald’s doesn’t serve any vegetable items…huh. Also bus service is till 0830 only on weekend. So you better get into last bus otherwise you will be left thinking of almost no other alternative.

Weather here is quite cold and you can’t be out from home without any jacket even when it is a sunny day. And purchase of a jacket was the costliest part of my shopping . I chose Raiders to save myself from deadly cold outside. It was quite expensive shopping for me out of we 3 at the end of day but I had something to feel good for sleeping soundly. Nits is still busy with issues …poor guy. I don’t know when will he get to sleep.

I came across this news today morning in newspaper and still found it to be hacked when I tried to open it up. Here is how website of Punjab Cricket Association looks like -

Previously I had also written about miserable website of Board of Control for Cricket in India website (BCCI).

I couldn’t understand why they aren’t serious about their online presence.

Update (25/10/2007): The Punjab Cricket Association website has been updated and now it displays the right content but it looks messed up when opened in Firefox or IE. Here is how it gets displayed in Firefox -