Cricket with the colleagues

In two weeks our office is playing a cricket match with the Mumbai Offshore office. So this weekend we decided to see if any of us still remembered how to play. The plan was to meet up at the office building at 7:30am and then travel to the grounds from there.

Now keep in mind that I love my weekend sleep-ins and that we're smack in the middle of winter, when I tell you that I hated waking up on Saturday morning. And then you add my preference for punctuality to the fact that I didn't see another colleague till 8am and you can imagine how pissed off I was. Turns out, it's assumed that no one will show up at 7:30am, and people started waking up at their leisure. And I had to end up driving from one point to another before I finally saw some people. The first ground we tried was occupied, so we bounced to another ground and we finally started playing at 9am.

Other than one player, no one had really played in a long time. So we all had trouble doing basic things like throwing and catching! We ended up playing two games and the second was much better. The ground was next to a slum. Some of the fielders were refusing to field in a certain part of the ground and when I asked why, their response was simply, "Landmines". And when i saw what they were referring to, I was disgusted. When I was sent to field in that area, I had to be very careful where I stepped, and soon I told them I wasn't going to go there anymore :)

Of course now I'm sore as hell with a sprained ankle but it feels good.

The hooker?

After the cricket match today, on the post-game show, one of the commentators said, "If Dhoni wants to continue to be a hooker, then he should do it." I laughed so hard I had milk coming out of my nose (in a manner of speaking)! And then I see this headline for an article on Cricinfo.com

http://content-ind.cricinfo.com/indvaus2008/content/current/story/374506.html

Oh well. Dhoni is considered to be one of the most eligible bachelors in India. Add to that being a hooker and it's probably not a bad career move.

Subway in India: Main sauce

The original plan was to eat with my dad at Subway. Except, the last two times I was in Hyderabad, something or the other kept coming up and I kept missing it. So it was going to do this in Pune.

I had to pay Rs. 10 to park my scooter in the first place to get into this place! What struck me as I looked at the menu was the all the sandwiches were 6" ones. They do have footlongs but they're hidden somewhere in the menu, I had to search for them.

I ordered a Panner Tikka sandwich. It's made similar to the chicken sandwich, where they have seasoned pieces of Panner in small cups and they microwave them and put them in the sandwich. Another thing I learned is that most people just add all the fixins on their sandwiches. Makes sense, Indian being cheap would ask, "What can I get for no extra charge?" and go ahead and add everything they can.

After added the veggies, the guy asked me, "What sauce sir?" So I asked him if he had any Chipotle sauce. He said he didn't. So I was looking at the sauces and he says, "Would you like to have some main sauce sir?" I looked at him, "Main sauce, what's in the main sauce?"
"It's main sauce sir. It comes with the sandwich."
"Yeah I know, but what's in the main sauce."
Now it was his turn to stare at me.
"Sir, with the Paneer sandwich the regular sauce is the main sauce."

This was rapidly turning into an Abbot and Costello routine. Finally I looked at the sauce and it was green in color. "Do you mean MINT sauce?" I asked him.
"Yes sir."
"OK! I'll have some of that."

"OK sir, any more sauces?"
"What do you have?"
"We have Southwest sauce."
"What?? I just asked you if you had Chipotle sauce."
"Yes sir, this is like Chipotle sauce."
I didn't want to argue anymore about how the name of the sauce is "Southwest Chipotle". So I just asked him to pack it up. Interestingly he packed the two halves of the footlong in seperate packages. Like it was inconceivable to him that any one person would eat the whole footlong.

Hmm, maybe that's a sign.

The Super Bowl of Cricket

If you go by hype and expectations, the India-Australia series is clearly the Super Bowl of Cricket. The two teams bring out the best in each other and there is a lot of bad blood to go with it. The best comparison is the Red River Rivalry. Texas and A&M is passe, just like India-Pak. Texas-OU is the new big thing, just like India-Aus.

Unless I screwed up really bad in setting up my satellite dish selections, I should be able to watch the two full days of the match on Saturday and Sunday. And if I get really lucky, get a viewing of Texas beating up OU Sat night.

I've found it really ironic that when in 2007 I was finally in India during the World Cup, the World Cup itself was being held in West Indies - so we had to stay up late to watch the matches anyway. Similarly, now that the Ind-Aus matches are happening in my time zone, I will be at work and not able to watch as much action as I'd like. But I do suppose I'll atleast get to watch the score live. My prediction, India wins the series 4-1.