Hear the PIN drop!

Folks.. here is an interesting compilation of repartee which literally made the Pin drop! Have fun:

Field Marshal Sam Maneckshaw once started addressing a public meeting in English at Ahmedabad.

The crowd started chanting, "Speak in Gujarati. We will hear you only if you speak in Gujarati."

Sam stopped. Swept the audience with a hard stare and replied, "Friends, I have fought many a battle in my long career. I have learned Punjabi from officers of the Sikh Regiment; Marathi from the officers of the Maratha Regiment; Tamil from the officers of the Madras Sappers; Bengali from the officers of the Bengal Sappers , Hindi from the officers of the Bihar Regiment; and even Nepali from the officers of the Gurkha Regiment.

Unfortunately there was no Army officer from Gujrat from whom I could have learned Gujarati."

You could have heard a pin drop.

 

The Pin Drops a Second time

At a time when the US President and other US politicians tend to apologize for their country's prior actions, here's a refresher on how some former US personnel handled negative comments about the United States.

JFK'S Secretary of State, Dean Rusk, was in France in the early 60's when Charles DeGaulle, the French President, decided to pull out of NATO. DeGaulle said he wanted all US military personnel out of France as soon as possible. Rusk responded "Does that include the 180,000 US soldiers who were buried here to liberate your country from the Nazis in the Second World  war?"

You could have heard a pin drop.

The Third Pin.

 

When in England , at a fairly large conference, Colin Powell was asked by the Archbishop of Canterbury if US plans for Iraq were just an example of empire building by George Bush.

He answered by saying,

'Over the years, the United States has sent many of its fine young men and women into great peril to fight for freedom beyond our borders. The only amount of land we have ever asked for in return is enough to bury those that did not return.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

 

And the Fourth Pin?

 

There was a conference in France where a number of international engineers were taking part, including French and American. During a break, one of the French engineers came back into the room saying 'Have you heard the latest dumb stunt Bush has done? He has sent an aircraft

carrier to Indonesia to help the tsunami victims.!What does he intended to do, bomb them?'

An american engineer stood up and replied calmly: 'Our carriers have three hospitals on board that can treat several hundred people; they are nuclear powered and can supply emergency electrical power to shore facilities; they have three cafeterias with the capacity to feed 3,000 people three meals a day, they can produce several thousand gallons of fresh water from sea water each day, and they carry half a dozen helicopters for use in transporting victims and injured to and from their flight deck. We have eleven such ships; how many does France have?'

You could have heard a pin drop.

Did I hear the Fifth Pin?

 

A U.S. Navy Admiral was attending a naval conference that included Admirals from the U.S. , English, Canadian, Australian and French Navies. At a cocktail reception, he found himself standing with a large group of officers that included personnel from most of those countries. Everyone was chatting away in English as they sipped their drinks when a French admiral suddenly complained that, whereas Europeans learn many languages, Americans learn only English.

He then asked, 'Why is it that we always have to speak English in these conferences rather than speaking French?'

Without hesitating, the American Admiral replied, 'Maybe it's because many years ago, the Brits, Canadians, Aussies and Americans arranged it so you wouldn't have to speak German.'

You could have heard a pin drop.

The Final Pin drops.

Robert Whiting, an elderly US gentleman of 83, arrived in Paris by plane. At French Customs, he took a few minutes to locate his passport in his briefcase. "You have been to France before, monsieur?" the customs officer asked sarcastically.

Mr. Whiting admitted that he had been to France previously. "Then you should know enough to have your passport ready." The American said, 'The last time I was here, I didn't have to show it."  "Impossible. Americans always have to show their passports on arrival in France !

The American senior gave the Frenchman a long, hard look. Then he quietly explained, ''Well, when I came ashore at Omaha Beach , at 4:40am , on D-Day in 1944, to help liberate this country, I couldn't find a single Frenchman to show my passport to."

You could have heard a pin drop!

Ubuntu Natty is here

The latest release of the FREE Operating system Ubuntu Linux version 11.04 aka Natty Narwhal Narwhal is out in the world today. A few of the features of the updated operating system are as follows:

If you want a CD of the same, you can get one from HERE

Public Murder

I won't even dare call this a Review. More of an Unview.

Myself, biwi and saali decided to head for some lunch and a movie this sunday afternoon. And the choices we had for the movies were pretty limited. After reading Nikhat Kazmi's and Taran Adarsh's 3 star reviews on some websites, decided to take on 7 Khoon Maaf, even though Rajeev Masanad seemed to advise against the move. The entire January and February months were spent going to umpteen weddings and we had no inclination to be present at Tanu & Manu's do. 

Tickets were freely available online (I hoped that the India Vs England match had to be responsible for that!), and so after a slightly mundane buffet lunch at Yakshaa (Above Brand Factory, Banjara Hills) we set out to Cinemax for the 4PM encounter.

Priyanka Chopra acted well. So did Naseeruddin, his son Vivaan, Annu Kapoor, Usha Uthup and people like Joh Abraham, Irrfan Khan and Neil Nitin Mukesh were just livestock in the screenplay.

The one who disappointed was Vishal Bhardwaj. Not only was the direction sloppy, the music too was unbearable. I liked the movie Kites. Found this one more boring. The stories were at best half baked. Priyanka remarries half a dozen times. When one's marriage culminates in a sad ending, one gets weary of venturing into something again. Not jump in half a dozen times. There should be more compelling reasons to do so. Unfortunately for the viewers, Vishalji did not show us any. No one murders in such cold blood as Priyanka did. There was an ocean of insensitivity about her character which the director attempted to mask as a soft corner in the woman's heart. Bad move. She appeared more a psychopath rather than a person wronged.

From someone who had kept the viewers at the edges of their seats in epics like Omkara and Kaminey which really had much less meat in the storyline, it was extremely disappointing.

And yeah, I don't know if I had slept off in the interim, but I counted only 6 murders. Maybe, the audience were the seventh!  ;)

Train Numbering brainwave!

Brainwaves strike the most when one is on the pot! This one was probably a little late unfortunately.

Members might be aware that I had proposed a method of train numbering which could solve the problem of the superfast series for the next few years. And it was based on the 4-digit format.

However, my proposal remained just that and IR went ahead with a 5-digit scheme. I was not really impressed by the current scheme especially with regards to the Mail/Express trains. I contacted the CPRO - SCR's office and one generous soul told me that there might be further rationalisation of the numbers during the next time-tabling! Having resigned to fate, I accepted the current numbering scheme.

This morning, the tube lit! Here's how:

For SF/M/E trains, just add '0' in between! 

2728 Godavari Express becomes 27028.

7018 SC-RJT becomes 70018.

In the 4 digit scheme, 27xx series could handle only 49 pairs of trains. In my 5-digit scheme, it went upto 499. Ditto for 7xyy, and so on for others, retaining the original Zone-Div-Number or SF-Zone-Number system.

It would have also added 450 extra pairs of trains each to extremely overfilled 26xx, 28xx and 25xx series.

I'm not aware if this had already been proposed by anyone. 

Let the War begin

December 16 until recently was famous as a date when the Bangladesh War of Independence ended with the surrender of Pakistan and also a pretty chic but failure-at-the-box-office movie featuring Danny Denzongpa, Milind Soman and Dipanita Sharma. Its also a day when the nine-day celebrations culminating in Christmas begin. The day is also celebrated as the Sports day in Thailand.

But the sexy beaches of Phuket, Phang-Nga, Pattaya or Hat-Yai or the sports played therein would be the last thing on the minds of 44 white-flanneled gentlemen as they walk out to face the ultimate test of their lives; half of them at the WACA, Perth and the other half at the Supersport Park, Centurion.

Its the biggest day for Test Cricket in a long long time, a time that has been gobbled up by the street masala that was dished out in the form of short-cut T20 cricket or the IPL. The real spice now releases its aroma as the top four cricket teams lock horns. No 1 takes on No 2 at the latter's home while Number-3-on-an-upswing takes on a recently numbed No 4.

Graeme Smith and MS Dhoni will not be the best of friends as they walk out for the toss at Centurion, a stadium that gave the town its name! A confident Indian team takes on a strong home side South Africa. And the teams match up one-on-one against each other as well as the Indian proverb nehle-pe-dehla can describe.

While Smith and Peterson are not a patch on Sehwag and Gambhir, the middle order is where the muddle can happen. Amla, Kallis, de Villiers and Prince would like to see themselves supercede the experience and stardom that emanates from the names of Dravid, Tendulkar and Laxman and soon from Raina too!

While Mark Boucher can fight it out along with Paul Harris while batting, Dhoni and Harbhajan can put it past or over the fielders rather interestingly. And Bhajji can tweak it better than Harris is a decided fact.

While the consistent Morkel, Steyn and Tsotsobe on home turf appear better than a niggling Zaheer, a temperamental Sreesanth and a on-off Ishant, those moments of madness from any of the latter three could be enough to do permanent damage. 

A 60-40 upper hand to the hosts is what I predict but if those 40 are with perfect timing, then the hosts can forget getting back the top spot.

And while the first ball is bowled at the Centurion, it would past tea-time at the WACA, till recently regarded as the fastest pitch in the world. Whether Messers Anderson, Finn and Tremlett get to use the cherry first will be decided by the toss of an Australian Dollar, but even if Ryan Harris et al do get the kokkaburra in their hands first, its gonna be one-helluva-start, as Ian Chappel would proclaim, sniggerings from Sir Botham not withstanding. The Barmy Army needs their men to pick one win atleast from the three tests to extend the Urn's residence tenure.

Underneath those covers lies the key to the question whether the current England team would be the first ever to claim the Ashes even before the Boxing day test begins at Melbourne. While England field a rather settled outfit, barring just once change to bring in either Tremlett or Bresnan to replace an injured Broad; the Australian tabloids have been having a field day creating rumours and securing donations and raining voices to get Shane Blondie Warne out of retirement and reverse the fortunes of the Team Down Under before it sinks deep down under beyond recognition. Unfortunately, Blondie has been turning around Miss Hurley rather than practicing hurling down turners at the nets. So the Great Aussie Dream can remain just that, a dream, a wish, unfulfilled!

Ryan Harris must be familiar with the situation. At his IPL team Deccan Chargers, he was unsure which paceman would partner him. Vaas or Harmeet or whoever. He would never have imagined that donning the Baggy green, he would have been under a similar dilemma. Hilditch seems to be ditching Bollinger and Siddle and calling back Hilfenhaus and Johnson. And yeah, VB is not the only beer to be part of the Aussie line up for a change! Wildcard entrant Michael Beer must be hoping he does not get a debut so that he escapes the criticism! There is a possibility that considering Steve Smith is already in the side as a result of North's form which went southwards, Ponting might want to take in Siddle or Dougie to complete the line up. Remember, we are at the WACA. Under those covers, is all that matters. If there is juice in there, you get no Beer!

For those few Indians who appreciate real spice and not street masala, the show starts at 8AM IST at the WACA and goes on until 9PM IST at the Centurion. If its not being seen on TV, its being followed on Cricinfo!

The advertisers can show their Colgate smiles as they walk away to Axis Bank to deposit more money than you could have won at KBC. For those masala freaks, Feb-May 2011 is when the action is. For some crazy connoisseurs like me, the War begins in a few hours! 

The Mystery

This post has been published by me as a part of the Blog-a-Ton 17; the seventeenth edition of the online marathon of Bloggers; where we decide and we write. To be part of the next edition, visit and start following Blog-a-Ton.

Circa 2007. At 9.30PM, I get a call from from one railfan informing me that a white loco was spotted travelling towards HYB. We were at a cousin's place near NLRD. It took me precisely 5 minutes to get two of my cousins into my car and off we drove off towards HYB. Instead of wasting time on the platforms, we headed towards the Electric Loco Trip Shed.

Parked the car outside and trudged in. No sight of any white monster prowling. However, at a distance we did find some loco with shades of white. From afar it looked like a white loco, however the light was insufficient and the loco was far. So, we took a decision of trying to head to LKPL to see if it takes out 2721 or a special to Jodhpur scheduled for later. Or would it be a trial special?

Back to the car and off to LKPL a little more than two kilometres away. It was 2215hrs and there was a motley crowd of college students seemingly back from a movie. Seeing three grown up people getting worked  up about an impending train was making them curious. "Was it some really different train? Was some VIP travelling? If yes, what or who? If no, why were these three idiots getting so worked up?"

Ultimately at around 2235hrs, we heard the melodious tones in the distance. Eyes peering out into the distance. Ears intently listening. Ultimately, it was a bit of a disappointment to see the red WAP4 of Lallaguda scream away with the 2721. Even the amazing accelaration by the top notch LP could not console us! We were disappointed that the identity of the white monster remained unknown.

We had a last hope on the Jodhpur Special. However, as with all specials, it was unknown whether the IST would be followed. Anyways we decided to hang on. The departure from HYB was at 2300hrs. At around 2315hrs, we heard a distinctly different long tone. It was surely not the WAP4. Bated breath. Palpitating hearts. Peering eyes.

As the twin beam headlights neared, it became rather apparent that it was a roof mounted headlamp cluster and not a waist mounted. The loco did have white on it. But it was only a band. Sandwiched between red and blue.

The mysterious White Monster that should have been turned out to be a New Katni Jn 'Tigerface' WAG-7 # 27119 !! Disappointed at the outcome, but satisfied at the fun we had, we trudged back from LKPL!

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