merry time
from the world of sports

first up India has won the asia cup against Pakistan 4-2 making it a strong contender for the coming world cup and proving that the team has talented players and potentials to reach greater heights still.
moving onto the fast paced and exhilerating formula 1,i have more reasons to celeberate with schumi proving he is the best out in the f1 circuit with his win in the us grandprix in Indianapolis. with just 1 more race to go michael schumacher has almost guaranteed himself a sixth driver's championship title.

b' day wishes and this...
when I went swimming on the road
my dad starts off early to his office and so today he went to his workplace and called back home before I left for college to advice me to drive safely because of slippery roads due to overnight rains .with the experience of riding my metallic blue sunny for the past 6yrs I was more than confident of reaching my college safely or so I thought.kicking my sunny hard and dwarfed by the jerkins with a coolers like that of anbu selvan IPS in the film kakha kakha I started my journey in the same old route.just around the corner of the street leading from my house to a place called mettupalaym,something happened and the next thing I knew ,I was lying flat on the road.the place wasn’t muddy nor did I apply sudden brakes nor did I collide with any other vehicle but there I was lying on the road with my hands outstretched and my vehicle spinning on the other side of the road.it must have been a really funny scene because I fell down from my vehicle for no obvious explanation.other commuter and pedestrians helped me gather my bags and keys and sent me back home.both the palms had scratches but the real wound was in my left knee which started bleeding.all these happened because I failed to listen my parent’s advice of taking an auto.i wanted to save the money which I felt was unnecessary for the transport but in the process I had to pay a fee double the money I would have spent for the auto to pay for the wound dressing, x-ray, ATS injection,pain killers and more...learnt a very important lesson in my life.
listen to elder's advice for they have the expeienced yrs behind them and to be extra cautious on rainy days.

’am a year older today
today I am a year older
Growing a lot more dumber
And a trifle more happier.
p.s. had a great day at college and home with loads of goodies and barrels of laughter and fun .

production of a musical programme
to help the students understand the nuances of producing an audio programme we have a subject included in our course called audio lab wherein we have to use creativity and produce programmes once in two weeks under various topics.this week we have to produce a musical programme either as a real competition or as a stage managed one for the emphasis is on the production part of it.we are seven in group and it is always our practice to while away the free hrs in the college the previous week and spend hours together just before the day of recording and so following the tradition we all met today to discuss the format for the musical prog which has to be recorded tommorow.discuss as we did for 4hrs in a continuous stretch and at the end of it all none of us had a clue about the prog.’s Structure. we haven’t decided the sound effects,the songs to be used for the competition and many other factors which goes into recording an audio musical programme. We ran out of innovative ideas and so we are back to square one with the age old format of three teams with two participants.when are we going to learn???

age old common cold
hachooooo…hachoooooo……..
my preparations for the assessment examination and the quest to complete two assignments within the dead line have taken a severe beating because of hachoo… you guessed it right, the cold and cough. when we set afoot on this planet by our birth the divinity up and above the exosphere decides to present us with something which we are bound to carry on for the rest of our lives and so I sneezed when I was born and here I am more than a decade later continuing on what I am destined to do…hachooo…my parents have tried all the Vedas such as Rig Veda,Sama Veda,Yajura Veda and ofcourse Ayurveda but nothing seems to work.then they switched onto the tablets and tonic and they were standing like liliputs in panic, in front of the mammoth cold. By now ,i am so used to having cold that when they don’t pay their weekly visits I am kind of let down.i have learned to live it but this latest attack seems to have weapons of mass destruction and this is when I look up at the lord and shout aloud “ oh lord ,give me a break”.

science city-a dream
just as the plans for the construction of the secretariat behind the main Anna university campus in the area housing madras school of economics ,anna univ data center and part of the college of engineering, guindy is gaining momentum ,slowly but steadly the plan has started facing opposition too though not in a large scale comparable to the opposition to the construction of the secretariat in Queen Mary’s college.from what I heard through sun tv ,earlier there were plans of converting the entire stretch of Sardar Patel road which houses top educational institutions such as Anna University, Indian institute of technology, central leather research institute and Guindy national park as a science city for development of science and research.such a city should have been developed which would aim one and only in education and research and which could enable two of the best colleges in the city to share resources among many other things.the project could have also brought top students,academicians,researchers in the city under a common banner “science city”.now the project of science city is only a dream which can never be realized. Forget about the science city but why should the secretariat which is a high budget project be taken up in the center of the city. environmentalist feel any such massive projects can prove to be a threat to the animals in the guindy national park and also will lead to other chaos such as traffic jam due to CM and other minister's entourage.all that we can do now is, wait and watch till the rest of the plan unfolds.

Schumacher and Ferrari riding high
like a phoenix burning itself and rising again from the ashes to start a new life ,Michael Schumacher and his scarlet Ferrari had a rebirth of sorts in the Italian grandprix.the team Ferrari had more reasons to celebrate in front of the home crowd with the two drivers giving a podium finish and thus narrowing down the gap between them and BMW Williams in the constructor’s points tally.with the win schumi extends his lead over Montoya by three points and kimi raikkonen by 7 points.Ferrari finally seems to have got its strategy going .still the competition is wide open with two races to go.As the season is heading for a grand finale and with schumi vying for a fifth consecutive driver’s championship title, f1 looks better than never before.

THE HINDU-125 yrs and going...
my morning starts with the 'the hindu' newspaper supplemented by a hot cup of filter coffee.this is not just the case in my house but in most of the house-holds in tamil nadu where other dailies stands nowhere in competition with the hindu.being a media student i am not just an ardent reader but an admirer of the journalistic ethics followed by this oldest surviving national daily in the country.today they are celebrating the 125th year with our honourable prime minister shri Atal bihari vajpayee inaugurating the celeberations.the special edition circulated today with the daily to commemorate the 125 yrs carried some of the rare photographs of Indian greats from its archives.it is a 'must read' edition.with the daily changing its style of presentation and bringing in technology on par with the likes of Washington post ,the Hindu sure does have long and successful years ahead .

assignments and me-don’t go well together
the past week was very pressurizing with loads of assignments piled up on my desk and one specific assignment in entertainment audio subject made me go crazy…it was a very simple one or so it appeared until I started working on it.we were supposed to write a script for a 15 minutes long educational programme. sounds simple..??? but I crossed a good many hurdles before I completed it.my first obstacle was choosing a good topic and I could have easily taken a couple of days to narrow down on one topic only to change it the next day.i started writing a script on pre-historic life but even before I could complete writing the first page I ran out of ideas and throwing it out I started from the scratches and hence went hunting for a good topic yet again.that’s when I landed up on the idea of a series of programmes titled ‘man made disasters and the first programme I came up for the series was ‘atmosphere in danger’.here I again I suffered a writer’s block when I was half-way through it.I was struggling to provide a powerful,thought provoking conclusion.i still wonder how I finished it and handed over the script to my prof. Today.whether the final script is satisfactory is another question??? whenver I start writing an assignment the perfectionist in me tells to put in the best I have and to give more than 100 percent and in the process I take so much more time to finish and usually I write the final word of the script on the morning of the d-day ending up late for the collge.on the other hand there are people who don’t attach much importance to it ,that most often they finish it well before the deadline.these deadline sometimes make me to compromise on the quality of the assignment.with all this I would add that the last script on sky watching for which I went through the same set of hurdles was evaluvated and my score isn’t worth mentioning.i felt really sad to come up with such a mark after all the pain and hardwork that I had taken to write it.guess my woes with assignments just continue…

sporting action…
I dearly missed the U.S.Open ,the test match between England and South Africa and other sporting actions from around the world because of CAS.Neverthless the print medium provided a good coverage of most of the sporting events happening across the globe.andy roddick has proved himself to be a great fill-up to the void created by Pete Sampras’s retirement from the game.the ATP ranking shows the Spaniard Juan Carlos Ferrero,the French open champion leading the men’s singles ranking while Kim clijsters who is yet to record a grand slam victory tops the women’s singles ranking.i kind of expected kim to win over her Belgian counterpart Justine henin hardene but as the natural law goes ‘let the best and deserving win’.this leaves henin with two grand slam titles this year.moving over to cricket,it was a wonderful sight to see a rejuvenated England team with a test victory in the final test match to draw the series 2-2.guess vaughan’s captaincy skills is maturing by the minute.meanwhile the test series between Pakistan and Bangladesh concluded with Pak. Taking away the honours.one thing which was common to all the test matches in the series was that Bangladesh always after a commendable performance in the first inning never really put up the same show in the second innings.it’s a young team with lack of experience,guess they need some more time to be real competitors in the international cricketing arena.

good old memories
the innocence, the playfulness, the protective atmosphere, the smell of masal vadai and the good old watchman welcomed me yesterday as I stepped inside the giant gates of my school,my dear school.school days were very special and my college life is nowhere near the fun and enjoyment I got in school days.i along with my friend went to school after a gap of one year to wish the teachers on the occasion of teacher’s day[though a day later!].unlike many students I studied in the same school from my kindergarten to twelfth std and hence what I know,how I behave, how I interact and basically everything about me was shaped by the school named after Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru.As I climbed up the stairs I was reminded of the day, I walked or crawled down the very same stairs with my shoe laces tied together in a game of truth or dare.after handing over a card with emotions poured out to the principal, we took a tour across the school corridor refreshing our memory as we passed our class-room. What I liked about my school is that never did they advocate a bookish knowledge kind of educational system.i learnt to face the world brave and bold and the last two years were a decisive phase when I changed from a little introvert girl to a self-confident young lady.i wanted to stay there forever but I knew I have a whole wide world to explore.with these thoughts I waved good-bye to my mentors and left the school but I know I would visit my school again and again.
p.s. one of the non-teaching staff thought I came to school to invite them for my wedding, since I was holding a greeting card. explaining to her that I was only in the second year of my college was another story.

CAS and its outcome
with most of the pay channels cut out due to the implementation of CAS from September 1st and subscribers left in a quandary whether to go ahead and buy a set top box.,the television scenario looks plain and bleak.no national geographic,no discovery,no STAR network,no Zee and no ESPN.i miss the test action between England and south Africa,the excitement of U.S.Open,Zee English’s sitcom Full House and more…When I was surfing through the channels today ,I stopped by to listen to a song from the latest flick BOYS in one of the free to air channel or that was what I assumed it to be.there was no video and only the audio went on air.thinking it to be some error in transmission I switched over to other channel but in a due course returned to the same channel only to still find the audio but no video signal.it was then something struck my mind hard and fast when I listened to the audio more carefully and my hitch was confirmed when the same song was played on radio.it was a radio channel which was broadcast through television because of the restrictions to air pay channels.so here I was sitting in front of television watching nay listening to radio…convergence of medium ehh..and I would name it teleradio.

all work and no time
the last couple of days have been very hectic without virtually doing nothing.on Monday my younger sister who is a bharathnatyam dancer gave a dance recital in west mamabalam and so Monday turned out to be a memorable yet tiring day.yesterday I was helping my sister in her pursuit to complete her preparations for physics practical examination and just when I found time to enter the world wide web,everything turned dark and black, yup a power cut and so I was left starring at the monitor in the dark but for the small glow from U.P.S which too extinguished very soon. So here I am today trying to make up for the two days absence from blogging.the rain is pouring cats and dogs and I am put off by the smell of wet mud.it’s good to see the onset of monsoon.i am gonna check out the newly built rain water harvesting sytem in my apartment.got to go…

soap operas
the soap operas running from a little after dawn to a lot later after dusk have invariably captured the minds of house makers across the country. starting with hum log and Mahabharatha of the 80’s we have come a long way since then. today Ekta kapoor’s ‘k’ series have come to dominate the predominantly hindi speaking part of the country while radaan production’s chithi followed by the currently running Annamalai have conquered the south Indian households.most of the emerging trends in the media are most often than not being debated upon and soap opera is no exception.