iBlog: Nishit Shah

• Indian Premier League is super hit. I enjoy watching every bit of it. My favorites are Mumbai Indians and Kings XI Punjab.
• Just watched Notting Hill for the second time. I still fancy Julia Roberts.
• Angelina Jolie still has best lips in the world.
• Def Leppard’s India tour has been postponed from May to October.
• Kenny G will be playing in Bombay on 11th May @ Taj Lands End.
• Still can’t make up my mind between Fusion and Cosmic at Firefox Super Bikes.
• Completed reading I bought The Monk’s Ferrari in one sitting. Among the best books I have read by an Indian author.
• Cannibal Holocaust is one of the most controversial movies I have ever seen. Worth a watch !
• Have been humming Oxygen from Bryan Adam’s new album 11 whole week.
• The new news channel News X from INX Network is pretty good.
• IdeaCampPune has been postponed and it will now be held on 17th May instead of 10th May. I’ll be attending this.
• Proto.in Online meet was super successful. Was logged in for a while.. then got disconnected. But couldn’t login back. Now after reading Vijay’s post at Proto’s Blog, I came to know that the chat application had limit of 60 users. BTW I am definitely going to Delhi for Proto 2008 July Edition.
• According to Mr. Bush the food shortage in US is because Indian middle class is growing. Does he mean that there won’t be any shortage if people here are undernourished ?

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Got this from Amit Ranjan’s Blog

Its been more than 2 years since I have been shopping regularly online, it was around 2-4 times a month earlier and now its almost 5-7 times. I do most of my regular transactions online, like paying monthly mobile/ electricity bills at Visa Bill Pay, incase I am going out of station, I buy airline tickets at IXIGO,  or train tickets at IRCTC, concert tickets for Iron Maiden show at TicketPro, Tata Sky recharge vouchers, etc and recently purchased Indian Premier League tickets for the match between Mumbai Indians and Deccan Chargers at Kyazoonga using the credit card. I don’t mind spending the extra 25-40 bucks they charge for courier. It is more convenient and saves a lot of time. And when it comes to paying credit card bills, its simple to transfer money through netbanking. Damn, I relay too much on the net and feel really handicapped in case its not accessible even for a couple of days.

I read a lot of books and boast of decent enough collection that can be called as a small library. At the last count I have around 187 odd books including the technical reference material. For the past year and half or so, I have bought almost all of my books at Indiaplaza. If I come across any good book I just add it to my wish list at Indiaplaza and once the wish list is big enough or if I have finished reading all the books from my library, I add them to my cart and order them. Not only there is 22% off on most of the books, the books get delivered in just a couple of days at my place. Also, the collection of books that they have is much better than the one at my neighborhood book store. I am very much impressed with their customer service though there have been only a couple of instances where I need to bother them, else, everything has been smooth so far. I bet its one of the best shopping portals in India.

I am a big fan of animated movies and usually don’t miss out on any of them and the ones from the Pixar stable are given special treatment by watching them first day first show. Watching Horton was on top of my list because this was the first time that my friends had watched an animated movie before me and telling me good reviews about it, usually its the other way round. Though watching this movie was on top of my list, I was a bit tied up to actually make time for it. Somehow managed to get hold of tickets for the afternoon show and there I was surrounded by kids everywhere in the theatre !

One day, Horton the elephant hears a cry from help coming from a speck of dust. Even though he can’t see anyone on the speck, he decides to help it. As it turns out, the speck of dust is home to the Whos ( the tiny ppl living on the spec), who live in their city of Whoville. Horton agrees to help protect the Whos and their home, but this gives him nothing but torment from his neighbors, who refuse to believe that anything could survive on the speck. Still, Horton stands by the motto that, “After all, a person is a person, no matter how small.”

The movie was too good and enjoyed watching every bit of it. Hats off to the guys at Blue sky studios which infact is a subsidiary 20th Century Fox and had come up with other animated movies like Ice Age, Robots, Ice Age 2 for coming up with such a brilliant movie. One thing what I like about animated movies and which always draws me towards it is that while making a movie one can just make our imaginations run wild and think of something absolutely absurd and make a movie around it which can be cherished by everyone of us. And at the end of the movie there is always a lesson to learn from it, as mentioned earlier in case of Horton it was a person is a person no matter how small. BTW I am desperately looking forward for Pixar’s Wall-E which is gonna be released on 27th June this year. Watch its trailer here. Damn, the Pixar guys make only one movie a year !

Electric. This is one word I would use to describe the atmosphere at the DY Patil Stadium for the match between Mumbai Indians (MI) and Deccan Chargers (DC). Though I had been to a couple of one day Intl and a Test match earlier this was my first time for a T20 Match. My li’l sis had never been to a cricket stadium earlier so she accompanied me. I had bought a couple of thousand bucks tickets for the South stand online. I was of course cheering for the home team and had got the MI tatoo on my cheeks and pasted the MI stickers all over my navy blue tee. My sis thought that I had gone crazy, but that’s the ways I am The stadium was absolutely superb. It was jam packed and the crowd was absolutely amazing. I was not expecting it to be so packed since the stadium is way out of the city. The arrangements made for food / water were too good. I was never hungry or thirsty at all like my previous encounters while watching the matches at Wankhede. Thought I was a bit disappointed with the stale samosas sold at the venue by CCD. I didn’t expect this from them. I had to literally throw away the 2 packets after eating just one bite and had to relay on McVeggie burger to survive.  The MI cheerleaders were right in front of us and I must say that I was absolutely spell bound by their performance. Watching them dance, I came to the conclusion that the amount of energy and enthusiasm that had was infinite. Kudos to the guys n gals from Shiamak for putting up a great show. Unfortunately the MI played so badly that they never got a chance to cheer in the second half of the game…

Disappointed. This is one word that I would use to describe the outcome of the match. The MI didn’t really play well. At one point of time I was wondering if they would even cross 120 runs. But thanks to some impressive stroke play by Bravo and Nayar, they managed to score beyond 150 runs. Adam Gilchrist slaughtered the MI with no mercy. In the beginning the crowd was a silent spectator to his massacre as they seemed to be somewhat loyal to the home team but it seems Adam the lion tamed the crowd and everyone started cheering for every stroke that went out of the boundary. The Deccan Cheerleaders were always on the platform and had to dance on every other delivery. They were a bit far from where I was sitting but somehow managed to get a glimpse of those tall firangs cheering. I had planned to watch all the matches to be played in Mumbai but now will only go for both the semis and the finals if I manage to get hold of tickets. If they will be available online like b4..nuthing like it.

Had some issues with my wordpress …I had screwed it up royally while playing with it hence no posts all these days.. Finally I was able to upgrade to the latest version and publish a post. The latest version is supercool ! Will publish all my pending posts at one go with back dates ..of course

  Brand Equity Quiz is one event that I look forward to attend every year. Sadly is always as a member of the audience but would love to be a part of the participating teams. This year’s finals was held at MMRDA grounds. I liked the last year’s venue (Turf Club) better than this one. The semis and the grand finale were held back to back and quizmaster Derek O’Brien had promised to pop the champagne for the winner exactly at 9:43pm. He was absolutely precise in his calculation. The event was supposed to start at 6:30pm and I barely managed to reach the venue on time as I had gone for the first Directiplex outing. First the semis took place and then the grand finale started at 9pm after a short break. I really wanna know how to get VIP invites to this event because every year I fill up the online form or get in touch with the Economic Times guys and get the pass for the audience section which is quiet far from the stage. I need to start networking more with influential people

I managed to write down few of the questions from the semis. But, as the game progressed my pace wasn’t good enough to jot down everything. On second thoughts I should have learnt how to write in shorthand. Coming to the quiz, the theme for this year’s event was history of quizzing in India. How the first quiz took place in 1960’s to the present day. For every round there was some quizzing trivia for that decade and the best part was that the winners of those rounds got the prizes that were given way back then. The first round winners were given a couple of beer bottles and a live duck in a cage as these were the prizes given way back in 1967 by Derek’s dad Neil O’Brien who conducted the quiz back then. Even the quiz was carried out exactly the way it was back then. The questions were written on stripes of paper which were kept in an old biscuit box and Derek took them out randomly. The scores were written on blackboards with chalks back then, and also at Brand Equity Quiz finals for the first round. As the technology progressed in the 70’s and the 80’s the quizzes were carried out in the exact same manner and the prizes given to the winners were same too including a gift hamper which contained many things like shampoo bottle and shoe polish ! lol…that was innovative thinking ! But the best prizes went to the winners of the Brand Equity Quiz, TCS, who walked away with prizes worth 13 lakhs including 2 Mahindra Scorpios.

The audience were not spared either, Nokia E series fones, two Kingfisher Airlines tickets to any destination in India; three Pierre Cardin watches and one Sykz Gym voucher worth Rs 15,000, one Star Cruise package for a couple for five nights, etc were given away. And the best part was if anyone answered the question, the whole row would get prizes, which was pretty cool. I have uploaded few of the pics of the event here.