30 days to 30...

Yes...you read it right...in 30 days time, I'll no longer be in the 20s. I'll "graduate" into the 30s. Oh My God!!!!! 30 YEARS. Nearly 40% of my life over and done with. I will no longer be known as a young man. I will be now known as middle-aged man. WOW!!!! Its scary. Really very scary.

A look back at my 20s and its been a wonderful joy-ride. Passed out of college after a great struggle, taking a 3-4 month break to study for the CDAC (Centre for Development of Advanced Computing) entrance exam, staying up at night to complete assignments at Yashwantrao Chavan Pratishtan - the C-DAC centre. And then came a string of my-firsts.

My first job offer,
my first job,
my first pay cheque,
my first resignation letter,
my first lay-off,
my first foreign language course,
my first domestic flight,
my first international flight experience,
my first overseas trip,
my first tryst staying away from home in Vienna,
my first cooking lesson,
my first trip to Rome and Pisa,
my first drive on the German Autobahn,
my first trip to Munich,
my first SLR camera,
my first important work project,
my first long term overseas assignment,
my first trip to a Formula 1 grand prix,
my first trip to London,
my first drunk makeout,
my first "fling" with a german woman,
my first trip to Amsterdam,
my first visit to a strip club,
my first Lap-Dance,
my first trip to Salzburg with my dearest engineering friend,
my first date with a CDAC friend for new year
my first love....my dear lovely car....my Indica,
my first project in Bangalore,
my first night out in a Bangalore pub,
my first trip to wonderful Paris, the visit to the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre,
my first "ditch" of a friend whom I promised to meet in Paris,
my first Oktoberfest,
my first sleep-over at my German friend's place,
my first official trip to Alsace on behalf of my client,
my first "bold" decision to return home instead of opting for a Japanese assignment,
my first start-to-end project commitment,
my first car break-down at the end of the Mumbai-Pune expressway whilst on my way to celebrate New Year with very close engineering friends,
my first official trip to Manchester,
my first crush on an office colleague,
my first upgrade to Business Class with Air France,
my first exposure to product management,
my first motivation to do MBA and get into a B-school,
my first negotiation about my salary,
my first trip to USA,
my first gajar halwa,
my first discussion with my bosses about moving into business development,
my first GMAT score,
my first BLOG post,
my first paper presentation on messaging technologies,
my first paper presentation award,
my first long term US assignment,
my first B-school interview call which I did not attend,
my first house in Mumbai (which was always my dream to own one),
my first trip to New York,
my first New Year Celebration outside India,
my first car rental in the US,
my first car driving on a US freeway,
my first solo client-presentation,
my first Starbucks cappuccino (it was to become an addiction later - the triple venti wet cappuccino)
my first DP in the US with all my dearest engineering friends,
my first visit to Disneyland,
my first visit to Las Vegas,
my first 7 hour overnight drive from Fort Lauderdale to Tampa and back,
my first visit to San Diego,
my first lay and that too in a car parking lot,
my first trip to Miami to watch a basketball game between Miami Heat and Cleaveland Cavaliers,
my first visit to watch a tennis match - SonyEricsson open in Miami,
my first drive to Key West,
my first manager promotion,
my first date with an american woman,
my first Linkin park concert,
my first 10 hour solo-drive from Kansas City to Milwaukee covering 10 states,
my first hindi movie in an american movie hall,
my first visit to Universal Studios,
my first visit to Grand Canyon,
my first manual transmision (stick-shift) car drive experience in the US,
my first trip to Gatlynberg, Tennessee,
my first 2-day stay in an old 19th century log-cabin which seemed nearly like a ghost house,
my first visit to Singapore to spend some time with my dear engineering college friend,
and finally.....
my first ever "ice-breaking" conversation and meeting with someone whom my parents had chosen as my "the-one" but me being myself...getting cold feet and not wanting to go ahead with the "alliance".

The whole of my 20s has been very exciting, wonderful, amazing. I couldn't have asked for anything better than what I got. I will always fondly look back on these firsts and cherish them forever.

Blame it ALL on the IPL...

Here I am....Back again....after a longish hiatus. Why the break? Blame it on The Indian Premier League - IPL. Its become a regular feature of my evenings and weekends. So much so that I make it a point to leave from office bang at 05:30 PM(occasionally as early as 05:00) to rush home before 07:00 so that I can catch the evening IPL extravaganza. The are a number of posts I want to write about, but this IPL just takes so much of my time.

The other day, I was just discussing with my brother about how the TRP ratings of other shows on TV have gone down because of this IPL. At that time, I started to wonder, how will I kill time in the evenings when the whole IPL thingy gets over. I'll definitely get a lot of time for myself and maybe I'll utilize it to update my blog. That would be a good way to kill excess time. :-))

Coming back to the IPL, its such a fantastic idea. Great concept. It has the makings of becoming a-la English Premier League. It brings together talents from all the cricket playing nations of the world. It provides a great opportunity to budding young Indian cricketers to showcase their talent in front of the world. Before this tournament began, who knew of Siddharth Trivedi, Shaun Marsh, Swapnil Asnodkar, Shikar Dhawan and lots of more young talent. If I mention all of them here, I'll run out of blogging space. HEHEHE. :-)

Until now, 40 matches have been played and except for a couple of matches during the early part of the tournament and some matches during my friend's wedding, I've watched almost all the other matches. My loyalties rest solely with Mumbai Indians. It is owned by Mukesh Ambani, the richest (or the second richest - depending on whether his stock does well or not) Indian. He has shelled out a WHOPPING 111.9 million USD. They started off very badly when the tournament began but are now starting to make ground with last 5 consecutive wins. They're playing the Deccan Chargers today but they're up against the Law of Averages since they've won the last 5 of their matches.

The other team that I like after of course the Mumbai Indians is the Rajasthan Royals. They were unfancied underdogs at the start of the tournament with only the great Ozzie Leggie Shane Warne as their star player. They're also the cheapest team in the IPL with only 67 million USD. I guess not having big stars helped the team because, Shane Warne as captain and coach has brought about great camaraderie in the team. He has given each player well defined roles and an execution plan which the players do with great elan. Afterall, cricket is a team game.

The teams languishing at the bottom of the table right now are the Bangalore-Royal Challengers owned by liquor baron Vijay Mallya and the Deccan-Chargers owned by the print media Deccan Chronicle. The Royal Challengers have a few "big" players but most of the players are dare-I-say inexperienced in the shortest version (Twenty20) of the game. Rahul Dravid, Jaques Kallis are great players in their own right, but are not suited best for Twenty20. The other team, Deccan-Chargers, have BIG HITTERS (Adam Gilchrist, Shahid Afridi, Herschelle Gibbs, etc) but they don't fire well as a team.

Another new aspect in the IPL is the teams having cheer-leaders. I think its fantastic. The evening is given the dimension of wholesome entertainment rather than just come-watch-the-game-and-go-home kind of a feeling. Afterall the spectators have to get their money's worth. One thing that I don't like about the cheerleader concept is to call girls from western countries. Yes, Indians have always lusted for white skinned, big boobed, skimpily clothed girls gyrating lasciviously to groovy music, but I do feel that the organizers would be better suited to use Indian girls.

Why do I feel so? Because, off-late there have been lots of reports of foreign tourists being molested. The possibility of molestation will decrease when Indian girls are used, because I feel that as yet, we as a society have not become mature enough to handle exposed skin. Indians have always been sex-starved people. Actually, its a hypocritical statement - country with the largest population growth being called sex-starved. Nonetheless, its true. Anyways, I guess I'll leave that thought there, maybe I'll post about it later.

Today's a big game for two teams vying for a semi-final spot - firstly The Kolkata-Knight Riders (currently in 6th place), (owned by Shah Rukh Khan) who are playing The Chennai - Super Kings (currently in 3rd place) and secondly of course the Mumbai Indians. Given the current standngs it looks like its going to be a three-way battle between Mumbai, Kolkata and Delhi-Daredevils.

Lets hope for Shahrukh's sake and for Sachin's sake both Kolkata and Mumbai win their respective matches.

On that note, I'll sign off from here. Mom's been pestering me for the last half-an-hour to come and have lunch, but I wanted to finish off this post before I indulge myself in some sumptuous lunch and some great T20 cricket.