Storming Thomas Cup #IndiaStyle

 

When I was completing my secondary education in that great school - N KrishnaswamyMudaliar Higher Secondary School, Vellore, Tamil Nadu, India, 'PE periods' as the 'physical education' sessions used to be called, were both a terror (we were made to run and do stuff in the hottest of days!) as well as a relief (how else can you live down a dreary geography lesson?).

The PE teachers (a wiry Loganathan Sir & a bulky Dakshinamoorthy Sir), used to make us do some mandatory stretches and then ask us to choose our games. Cricket was a strict ‘no, no’! So, it used to be Volleyball, Basketball, Football, even Softball and if we are lucky, Ball Badminton!

While all the other games had just one or two implements, Ball-Badminton required a few racquets (almost always the strings were gone!) and a sorry-looking spongy ball.

Yet, for the remaining 30-odd minutes, we will play BB: smashes will end up in the ball smashing the smasher’s face (we miss the aim, you see!), drops will invariably be dropping in our own side of the court, points scored were celebrated more vociferously than the EPL goals…

And then the annual Teachers' Day used to happen with some of the teachers showing off their hidden talents in a fantastic manner – high serves, spinning serves, deft drops, exploding smashes... Oh! that was the first time I saw girls squeal with glee on some young able-bodied men smashing an yellow ball around. #ToSirWithLove

In those days, shuttlecock (usually pronounced as ‘sattil cork’) used to be a really rich man’s game. Well, I had seen the shuttle then; but never seen it being played. Reason? No indoor courts! In the outdoors, the damn thing would fly away! All of that was due to the impact that Prakash Padukone had (90’s and 2K-Kids: that is Deepika Padukone’s dad!) – newspapers and radio made us to memorize his exploits against Liem Swie King, Morten Frost etc., and that All England victory!!

Only after coming to Chennai did I get to see the game being played live; naturally, the game was still too expensive and anyway in Santhome Higher Secondary, Cricket took a more centre-stage due to some stalwarts including the great singer P Unnikrishnan. Cricket’s Loss. Music’s Gain!

Fast Forward to Singapore. Singapore has numerous fantastic indoor badminton courts that have kept most of the pot-bellied and sometimes fit young/old people honest in their attempt to keep it going. However, until LKY took the shuttle world by storm recently, no noteworthy player surfaced.

As for India, after Prakash Padukone, there was a long gap. Academies came up. Bureaucratic lethargy crept in. Then P Gopichand happened early this century. Yes, it takes that long for organic growth 😐 

And then slowly the stream started getting bigger and bigger. 🌊

Sanias happened; Sindhus leapt up; slowly but surely the rabbits multiplied. 🐰🐰🐰🐰

And after 73 years of hegemony by Indonesia, China, Malaysia, Denmark, and Japan, today, India has made that Elite-5 into #Elite6. Well, did a wag say that it is like entering the Badminton Security Council? Perhaps true! 😊

A fantastic shot-in-the-arm for the Badminton fraternity in India –  en route the title win, they had to beat Malaysia (5-time winner), Denmark (1) and Indonesia (14) to achieve Thomas Cup,  the ‘Unofficial World Cup’ in Badminton - in style!

Great work by Prannoy, Lakshya, Reddy&Shetty and Kidambi to have managed this. Plus the entire team. Of course the coach is Gopichand!

Indian sports is reflecting the new India – confident, bold and never-say-die. Be it the over-powering IPL in Cricket, the gungho way that Neeraj Chopra won the unlikeliest javelin Gold in Tokyo Olympics last year and now this set of ‘saattil corkers’!

In a world that is polarising by the minute, this is a uniting silver-lining that we all deserve to have.

 

GBUF - 16Jan22

 

Happy New Year! Happy Pongal/Sankranti!

Here is our latest edition of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened over the last week around us.

CYA: Views are mine 😊

#sriGINthoughts #GBUF

 

#Good 💚

·       Next time you take a bus at the bus stop near Fu Lu Shou complex in Bencoolen Street, look carefully at the green advertisement box there. And don’t be surprised to see some kalian or cabbage or lettuce growing there. #GIC has embarked on this initiative to raise the profile of urban farming in Singapore by having these boxes in seven bus stops across the island. Well, the wife has a mini farm in our block from which we get a frequent supply of bananas, curry leaves, flowers etc. Where is that next piece of land? #SuperbanFarming

·       Next time when people buy coffee from one of the ~37000 Café Coffee Day vending machines in India, spare a thought to an entrepreneur VG Siddhartha, who took away his life unable to take the burden of mounting debts. 18 months later, his wife Malavika Hegde helming the affairs at the beleaguered company has managed to reduce the debts by over 75% (from about USD 1Bn). Granted she has sold most of the non-core businesses; maybe she had help from her politically-connected family. But got to say, she ensured the coffee #SmellsGood

#Bad 💔

·       King Kohli, the fire behind India’s many wins over the last seven years has stepped down from captaincy. His aggression, energy and in-your-face attitude burnt down many an opponent; at the same time, they affected people who weren’t seeing eye-to-eye in his own dressing room, as Ashwin-supporters will vouch for. But do not take away the fact that Kohli was the main man behind building an India team which these days enters most of the contests as favourites, domestic or overseas. There in lies his legacy. #LongLiveKing

·       We spoke about their predicament a few weeks back. Now Sri Lanka’s problems seem to have been exacerbated more. If debt obligations of USD 29 Bn are not met, the country of 22 million will go bankrupt this year. That is less than 10% of Elon Musk’s net worth, to put things in perspective. A country caught in between the machinations of an indifferent northern neighbour and an ambitious far-off economic giant. Hope they survive this and comeback good. #TroubledEmerald

 

 #Ugly 😡

·       Kollywood and Tollywood have taken a few extra(!) regressive steps recently. First it was actor Siddharth (who?) baiting India’s ace badminton champion Saina Nehwal with a sexist, innuendo-filled tweet, just because she supported Modi. Then the latest Telugu hit Pushpa has gone onto ensure that the female characters (including a O-Oo so ‘philosophical’ Samantha) do stuff for money, all the while spouting mother sentiments. #ThaggedeLe 

·       World is suffocating under the stress of omicron. Governments world over, are struggling hard to ensure normalcy returns based on vaccination of its populace. Then you have someone like Novak Djokovic upping the ante in the reverse direction. He tries to enter Australia with NoVac, claims his agent made a mistake, says he got Covid in December, probably broke his own country’s isolation rules. All for what? To risk hundreds, perhaps thousands? #ChampionJoker

#Fun 😆

·       World has so far revelled in spewing four-letter words right, left and centre. Enter Joseph Wardle, a software engineer (who else?). He created a simple, addictive game called #Wordle where you are expected to know ‘good’ five-letter words. Like I said, the game is quite simple. You can play it only once a day. You get six tries to guess the word with some clues. It probably takes about five minutes to indulge in some mental calisthenics. Play it. #PowerWordle

·       While Darwinism proposed that humans evolved from monkeys, science has found that the pig organs are remarkably less likely to be attacked by human immune systems. It took a significant forward step when a team lead by Dr Muhammad Mohiuddin from University of Maryland transplanted a genetically modified pig’s heart to a terminally ill David Bennett, (who is well), the health frontiers have opened up. Imagine David being ribbed for being pig-hearted instead of being pig-headed! #HeartFullOfVaraha

 

Sources: The Straits Times, Lowy Institute – The Interpreter, The Nature, ESPN Cricinfo, Amazon Prime, powerlanguage.co.uk, Tamil Murasu

Three Patient Tries!

 

Patience is key to success in life.

Even the most impatient over-achievers were patient at some stage.

In Tamil, you have the saying: பொறுத்தார் பூமி ஆள்வார். (The patient ones shall rule the world).

Hindi also has it: सब्र का फल मीठा होता हैं (Fruit of patience is sweeter).

By a quirk of end-of-year fate, we watched three movies over the last few days - all of them extolling the virtues of patience. The choice was random. The coincidence uncanny.

Jai Bhim [Victory to Bhim]

[Tamil; Prime]

Loosely based on a real incident about the trials (literally) and tribulations (too literally) of a tribal woman belonging to Irular community (who live/d a life of catching snakes and doing other menial jobs). It is about one intrepid lawyer’s (Justice Chandru) struggle to find her husband and his friends after they disappear from police custody. Police brutality is common across the world. Degrees vary. But the depiction of the same in this movie has notched it up a few levels. Not for the faint-hearted. 

The court scenes are like Sehwag’s batting – playing to the gallery. Messages are hard-hitting. But what was really heartening was to see how patiently the case is unraveled – step by step, knot by knot. If it were a Vijay/Ajith movie, there would have been a few action sequences introduced to settle the matters then and there 😊 All the brouhaha about caste misrepresentation/change etc., simply misses the point in my opinion. The first five minutes of the movie simply hits the nail on the head and that is that. Jai Bhim is the rallying slogan by Dalits in India to remember Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar. Apt.

#StrongBhim 🌞🌞🌞⛅

Yara [Butterfly]

[Italian; Netflix]

Another movie based on a real-life incident that rocked Italy from 2010. It is the story of an investigator who goes to great lengths to find the culprit responsible for the disappearance of a teenage girl. How she goes about it methodically, amidst mounting political and departmental pressure, self-doubts, insecurities, mistakes et al., forms the crux of the movie. The scientific details are unobtrusive, and the super-methodical nature of the investigations hook you to the proceedings. 

What could have turned into an emotional mush has been handled deftly. The cinematization of events in certain portions – politician’s Sehwag-like (that man again!) proclamations, Bhagavad Gita moment for the heroine – they were probably added to make us feel for the story; but superficial since the premise was strong enough. Of course, the very patient sifting for the proverbial needle in the DNA stack was what ‘wow’ed us. Just went on to prove that real-life is often in a sllllloooow motion when compared to the reel life.

#FlutteringButterfly 🌞🌞🌞

Sardar Udham [Leader Udham]

[Hindi; Prime]

Indian Independence struggle is truly historic. In a protracted fight spanning more than a century, the largely non-violent approach was interspersed with some violent mutinies of various sizes. People still refer to the 1857 Sepoy Mutiny as the first struggle; but there have been several even before that.

Fast forward to 1919. The British government ruling India passes Rowlatt Act empowering the gahmen to try certain political cases without juries and permitted internment of suspects without trial. Tough. Protests sprang up all over the country and more so in Punjab. On 13^th April 1919, a large, peaceful crowd of men, women and children gathered in Jallianwala Bagh, Amritsar. Rest, as the cliché goes, is bloody history.

This movie is about Udham ‘Ude’ Singh, one of the affected people from Jallianwala Bagh/Amritsar massacre in 1919. He becomes a revolutionary (a lovely definition by Bhagat Singh on what differentiates a revolutionary from a terrorist 💓); gets caught; escapes from the prison; travels through Afghanistan, Russia and reaches London; waits patiently like a vulture and assassinates Michael O’Dwyer, the Governor of Punjab who gave a carte blanche to General Dyer to ‘instill fear’ on that fateful day. Well, his wait was for almost 21 years to seek revenge! That is some patience, one might say!

Movie worked largely due to wonderful casting & excellent period setting. Vicky Kaushal as Sardar Udham, the investigating officer Stephen Hogan, Shaun Scott as the remorseless Dwyer – all of them carried the movie exemplarily.

The massacre scene was quite gory. Again, not for the faint-hearted. But that was nothing when compared to the next 20-odd minutes which were excruciating to say the least. Probably that was needed. In fact, in a tribute to Attenborough’s Gandhi, the first few shots of the massacre resembled the ones from Gandhi; but then it veered full left, right after that – after all, this is a movie about violence, right?

Thankfully, the movie was not jingoistic (unlike Uri – Vicky got a India National Award for acting in that!) to the large part and stuck to the known facts and figures.

#OdeToUde 🌞🌞🌞⛅

#sriGINthoughts #reviews #movies

 

GBUF - 19 Dec 2021

 

Hello all, good day!

Here is the weekly roundup of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened.

#GBUF #sriGINthoughts

CYA: Views are mine.

 

#Good 💚

• Connectivity and communication are key to modern day life. Bharatiyar, a great visionary Tamil poet whose 139^th birthday was celebrated last week dreamt of such things in his poems (joining rivers, telecoms, global trade and knowledge transfer – India PM Modi referred to his lines last week, again!) Along that line, we have the new Portugal-Singapore longest train journey – 21 days it shall take to cover the 18750 km route changing trains in Paris, Moscow, Beijing, Bangkok and a few others. Well, if only omicron isn’t there… #TrainToOrient

• There is something about those initials, I think. Maybe he was named after the great man. Singapore’s Loh Kean Yew has booked his place in the BWF World Championships final, where he will meet India’s Kidambi Srikanth later today. In the form of his life, Loh has beaten higher seeded players consistently and is on the threshold of creating history, again. Good luck, young man! #LKYftw

#Bad 💔

• KL is flooded. Philippines is typhooned. Kentucky is tornadoed. Australia is being LaNinoed. Yet, Indonesia’s coal lobby is up against the government’s COP26 green commitment. It keeps happening. Are we listening at all? #BurnAndDrown

• In the recent British movie, Boiling Point, Stephen Graham, a chef at a popular restaurant will be beleaguered by a host of problems. Well, his PM Boris Johnson is also in a similar situation. Breaking his own tough covid rules through parties at 10 Downing, having a close ally resign a sure-Tory seat after being disgraced etc., are causing more bad-hair days for Mr Johnson than England’s poor Ashes showing so far! #GritItOutBoris

 

 #Ugly 😡

• 30 years ago, logging what happens when the computer program executes was limited to a few messages on the screen. Now, logging – just like living your life on social media - is a separate industry in itself. Last week’s boiling over of #log4j security problem seems to be deadlier than the latest Greek alphabet variant of Covid. While a ‘security patch’ is available from Apache, vaccinating all the systems is not so easy and will take time. Just be careful with where you go on web. #logjam4j

• Putin has a pet project: Annex Ukraine. Crimea was done so in 2014. Now, he has gotten his troops near the Ukraine border. Experts say that there is a high chance of a war in Europe before Sankaranti. West is wringing its hands; pulling its hair; making threatening noises. Putin continues to call their bluff. Problem for west is that they are caught in a conundrum: Is Ukraine worth a fight when China is looming large in foreground? Is antgonising Russia good for their energy imports? #ZapadOffensive

#Fun 😆

• Two lions who were in transit at Changi airport decided to check on the duty-free shopping goodies. They seem to have gotten out of the container and one of them even was found atop the container. While NY Post sensationally called them to be ‘roaming around freely in the airport’, SIA managed to tranquilize them and even had the cheek to say that the lions’ ‘safety is key’. A worthy tagline for the Singapore Tourism Board to consider: Singapore – Where Lions Roam Without A Fine! #LionSinghs

• In what was a super-fun Sunday last week at the Yas Marina circuit in Abu Dhabi, the Dutchman Max Verstappen managed to pip Lewis Hamilton to claim F1 crown for the year. The race was full of drama and in a straight slap to those who crib about F1 races being driven just by machines, this year’s championship was dictated/decided by a human decision by the race director to make it a 1-1 race after the safety car was deployed. #MaxVroom

 

Sources: The Straits Times, Tamil Murasu, CNA, The Guardian, The Hindustan Times, NZ Herald, NY Post, Bloomberg, Top Gear

 

 

GBUF - 12 Dec 2021

Hello all, good day!

Here is the weekly roundup of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened.

#GBUF #sriGINthoughts

CYA: Views are mine.

         #Fun 😆

• They were lauded as the cutest by everyone. Social media was flooded with the smooth mammals jumping in and out of water; crossing roads; Otter Watching Groups were created; Singapore is called the #OtterCity. Life is good. Until a rowdy group attacked a man and caused 20 wounds, butt-bites included. Now, tables have turned. People want the population to be curbed. Soon we may call them as OT – #OtterTrash 😊

• For all those who swear by technology, the first Ashes test served up what it was like in the not-too-distant past. No snickometers, no automatic no-ball detection, no power in the stadium – so no DRS, no spider cameras tracking everything from captain’s nose-digging to early-balding batsmen to teaching kids the latest cuss words. It was the good old game where only the 15 pax on the field were involved. Lack of tech surely affected the umpires – 14 on-field no-ball calls were missed in a span of few overs. #TechAshes

        #Ugly 😡

• China’s Evergrande has defaulted. We knew that it would happen eventually. Apart from almost half-a-trillion debt mountain that is out there, the bigger issue is the contagion of bankruptcies that this will cause in small and medium enterprises who are still hoping that these failed/failing conglomerates would pay the bills for anything from supplying tiles, plumbing, electrical works, cleaning services… #WorseThanCovid

• India is doing great on several fronts – Covid management, better infrastructure etc. But the indoctrination also seems to be getting ‘better’. Ahmedabad court censured its municipal corporation for targeting non-vegetarian food carts only against encroachment (‘Don’t dictate what I can or cannot eat!’) & worse still, the CBSE 10th Standard English Reading passage attempted by 2+ million students yesterday seems to have set an appalling standard on gender stereotyping (‘emancipation of the wife destroyed parent’s authority over the children’/’male chauvinist pig’) #SlowGoebbels

#Bad 💔

• I thought that it is a season of giving. What is given is the giver’s prerogative. Well, you could give pink slips, for all you care. BCCI gave it to India’s most successful ODI captain (%), Virat Kohli who by switching off the phone expected that he would not hear it! 😉 And then Vishal Garg of Better.com did it for 15% of his employees over… a Zoom call – ‘If you are on this call, you belong to that unlucky group!’ #SameShitNewZoom

• Losing the head honcho of any organization is bad enough. Losing the Chief of Defence Staff in an accident is definitely worse. India lost her premier soldier and a host of others in a helicopter crash a few days back. What was galling was the way the media handled it – it was actually business-as-usual – in your face, laden with innuendos of conspiracies, sensationalizing every morsel of info. Where has the nuance vanished? #OneMinuteSilencePlease

#Good 💚

• Omicron seems to be a mild variant. Governments are opening up the vaccine regime to kids now. More VTLs happening now. Cheaper Antigen Rapid Test kits ($4.90 vs $10+ per kit) made available. Antibodies from Ostriches used to coat masks to detect Covid under UV light. One step at a time. One jab at a time. One test at a time. Slowly, but surely. #ConstantHope

• Watched Bunty Aur Bubli for the first time yesterday. Survived. No, that isn’t the good news. There is a dialogue which Bunty spouts: ‘What is the use of sending two reformed souls to prison?’ The Dutch seem to have taken it to heart. They have reduced their prison population to such a degree that they are now turning the prisons into other useful structures. Prison chapel becomes the school theatre. Cells turned to Hammam. #KajraRe

Sources: The Straits Times, Tamil Murasu, The Guardian, New Indian Express, Positive.News, TikTok

 

Maanadu - Delightful Loop

#Maanadu #sriGINthoughts #tamilmovies #reviews

Mild spoilers ahead. If you don’t want them to be revealed, just ‘Like/Love/Wow/Sad/Angry’ and move on 😊

8 reasons why I did not ‘like’ Maanadu… 💓

1. Probably for the first time ever in all these years of movie-watching, a villain does not want the hero to die. That was as tough to digest as an undercooked biriyani #BeAliveLoop

2. One finds the hero flying from Delhi to Coimbatore in ShivAir and GoAir alternately. The day might get repeated. But the flights don’t. I have heard of codeshare flights; but this one is…? Unless I missed a subtle message there... 😉 #AirlineLoop

3. STR has a grand total of four outfits – okay, five including the patient gown. And that is the highest among all actors. Advantages of a timeloop movie? No costume expenses. #SartorialLoop

4. Dhanushkodi meets KhaliQ for the first time, he asks for his name. When he gives his name albeit diffidently, Dhanushkodi lets out a judgmental, ‘Oh!’. The next shot is on Khaliq’s face, which depicts a tremendous mixture of resignation, insult, how-long-will-my-community-be-judged feelings. #ReligiousLoop

5. Just like people wondered about how old Kattappa in Baahubali was, people will be counting the number of times Simbu dies in this movie. #NumberLoop

6. Blood is thicker than water, they say. Yeah, right! Don’t let them mix. Else it will be a #BloodyLoop all over again!

7. There is more to SJ Suryah than that meets the eye. He probably exhorts YG Mahendra as ‘Thalaivarey!’ in more ways than the number of punishments described in Garuda Purana #LeaderLoop

8. Heard that they have stopped teaching the students Caesar’s veni, vidi, vici in schools. Instead it is, வந்தான்; சுட்டான்; செத்தான்; ரிபீட்டு! (He came. He shot. He died. Repeat!) #InfiniteLoop (yes, that pendant!) 💓

######

In software development lifecycle, we keep harping that the clearest of requirements gets the best software out – I mean there will be less bugs; a bug-free software is a myth anyway! Similarly, a good movie must have spent a lot of time on writing. Readers might remember my lament about Tamil movies’ writing or lack of and how Mollywood movies rock in that aspect. Venkat Prabhu has worked really hard to make a cogent movie with intelligent writing, that Ujjain BS notwithstanding. Creditable, indeed.

######

Maanadu – a successful conference of minds!

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐

PS: I unlocked my phone only once during the movie; just to snap a picture of friend Baala (Great start, man!! Congrats & best wishes!) That, my friends, is an achievement in itself!

GBUF - 05 Dec 2021

         Hello all, good day!

After a month-long break, here is the weekly roundup of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened.

#GBUF #sriGINthoughts

CYA: Views are mine.

         #Fun 😆

• Two sports. Two records. On Friday night, it was the Memphis Grizzlies who won by the highest margin in NBA history – 73 points! Then the other teddy bear, Ajaz Patel picked all the ten wickets in one innings following Laker (1956) and Kumble (1999). We are in a #BearMarket alright!
• Xmas Spruces are everywhere. Norway even gifts one to Britain every year for her help to the Scandinavian nation during WWII. The gifted tree finds its way to Trafalgar Square and stands tall there through the festive season. Only problem this year is that the 24-metre tree seems to be lambasted for being ‘sparse’, ‘threadbare’, ‘ill’, ‘half dead’. All due to a few broken branches! Talk about the ‘thought that counts!’ & ‘look a gift horse in the mouth’! #GiftBranch

        #Ugly 😡

• Politicians prevaricate. Politicians mislead. Politicians lie. When they do all these one after another, the lose credibility. And when they do it in the Parliament, then it gets ugly. Raeesah Khan of Workers’ Party, Singapore did all this and her leaders – yeah, Pritam! - kinda threw her under the bus. In turn, she threw them under the MRT when she said that it was them who asked her to ‘take the lie to the grave’. #LiesDontWork

• He was the poster boy of Singapore’s opposition when he was jailed six years ago for wounding religious feelings. He sought asylum in the US citing persecution at home. Today Amos Yee is jailed in the US for 6 years for grooming and possessing child porn. We lost a young man somewhere. Parents? Teachers? Society? #AmosInfamous

#Bad 💔

• South Africa did a favour by identifying handful of variants. The whole world did the apartheid on them; named the variant as #omicron (can’t name it as the next Greek alphabet Xi, for obvious reasons); closed borders – pretty much played the COVID playbook perfectly. Typical situation everywhere. Experts say something and the talking heads take over. #ShootMessenger

• World #1 and #2 are still fighting. US says China’s Taiwan moves will have ‘terrible consequences’. China warns China-linked US businesses that they can’t make a fortune silently. Didi delists from NYSE. US-EU is looking to start Global Gateway as against China’s Belt Road Initiative. Competition is good – only if it is healthy! With COVID-induced imbalances, this is not looking healthy at all. #FightLikeKids

#Good 💚

• China (them again!) funded (almost 20% of Laos’ GDP) and built a 400+ km high-speed rail from Vientiane to the border town Boten and eventually to Kunming within China. There is of course a grander scheme to snake through Thailand, Malaysia and reach Singapore. How this will work with the HSR between Malaysia and Singapore – noises of revival can be heard now – is a moot point. But overall a good thing for the region’s connectivity! #LaneXang

• When #AdiPenne created by Singapore’s Suria Velan/Stephen Zechariah, made it to some of my Indian contacts’ Insta reels, I was feeling good. We do need some good news in these gloomy times, don’t we? Enter ‘Tank’s Good News’! Founder George Resch’s motto: “Making people think a little bit more positively, and making them laugh,” is something that we all can use, right? #GoodNewsSellsToo
  
  
  
  
  

Sources: The Straits Times, Tamil Murasu, Bloomberg, Forbes, Nikkei Review, The Guardian

 

 

GBUF - 31 Oct 2021

Hello all, good day!

Here is the weekly roundup of Good/Bad/Ugly/Fun of what happened.

#GBUF #sriGINthoughts

CYA: Views are mine. 

#Fun

• Cristiano Ronaldo is going to become a father of twins. Now #GGMU fans are already worried and wringing their hands: “We spent so much money on this man to produce magic on the pitch. Not only has the magic not happened but also, now he will go on paternity leave! #CR7x2

• Singapore’s Health Promotion Board (HPB) seems to have taken the unwanted sobriquet of Singapore being the ‘World’s most fatigued country’ to its heart. It is giving away $30 vouchers for those who register for a Sleep Challenge. Minimum 7 hours of sleep required. Along with that you must have move the butt to add steps to the count. Who says sleep doesn’t pay? Take those #40Winks!

#Ugly

• This year, at least one cyclist per day has been arrested by the police in Singapore for riding on the expressways!! With speeding vehicles at 90 kmph, these lightweight velocipedes will just fly off in the draught! I think in their eagerness to enhance their fitness, the cyclists seem to have left their brains at home! #MenacingPedals

• Covid has seen 5m deaths across the world. To put it in context, that is 90% of Singapore’s population. So much of waste – economic, opportunities, growth and above all human! The way we humans handled the pandemic was simply not good enough. We yoyoed from one end to the other; blamed and continue to blame; stumbled and continue to stumble. What is the use of all the education and growth? #BackToSquare1

#Bad

• You worked hard to become famous. Millions follow you. Then an anonymous post flames you. Fans leave in flocks. You become an outcast overnight. Then it is found that the post was false. Welcome to ‘Cancel Culture’, a herd mentality facilitated by that omnipresent phone you are holding now! South Korea leads the pack on this; but it is as much a pandemic as Covid! #ShootFirstAskLater

• Sometime back Sellur Raju, a minister in Tamil Nadu was ridiculed for trying to cover Vaigai river with Styrofoam sheets to prevent evaporation. Well, they are trying that in Switzerland to stop glaciers from melting. The world is definitely becoming hotter by the day. Carbon emissions will double in less than two decades & most of us will live to feel it then! So, take that small step. Switch that aircon off. Follow #ReduceReuseRecycle

#Good

• Some good things are happening in Rome G-20. They are shaking hands on Climate, Covid and Economy – notwithstanding the usual saber-rattling by the usual suspects. They also endorsed the common tax regimes to prevent rich getting richer – hopefully it does that! There is #COP26 in Glasgow which wants to get some agreement solidified among all the parties. Tough. But must proceed boldly. #HotHotterHottest

• As the delta variant rages through Singapore (number of cases are as consistent as Pakistan is in #T20WorldCup), what is heartening is to note the planning and the coping up of the health infra in Singapore. ICU facilities we/are beefed up, more nurses trained and deployed and private hospitals roped in. It is a positive spin alright; but it is needed for us to know and recognise the great work that frontliners are doing! #SaluteFront

Sources: The Straits Times, Tamil Murasu, Bloomberg, CR’s Instapage, SG HPB

PS: If you are interested in taking part in #GQ2021 related to #T20WorldCup, please let me know.

No. 2: How to be one?

This article was written for Volume 6 e-journal of www.arbharconsulting.com

3 Chicken-Soup-For-The-Soul Movies

Three life-is-crap-but-there-is-always-a-good-bidet-around movies on #Netflix…

1. 42

Those who have read Douglas Adams’ Hitchhiker trilogy (with 4 books!) would remember that the answer to ‘What is Life?’ Is 42. Perhaps Mr Adams got it after the shirt No. 42 'owned' by Jackie Roosevelt Robinson, the first African-American to play Major League Baseball for Brooklyn Dodgers. Harrison Ford is delightful as the cigar-smoking version of Krishna Paramatma. Key message: A hero doesn’t fight to burn down but to fight and keep the fire on. One hit at a time. One run at a time. #PitchPerfect (4/5)

2. Green Book

What if a black pianist, Dr Dominic Shirley sophisticated to the core, wants to travel Deep South in the US during early ‘60s on a concert tour? Mad, you would say. What if the same pianist (Mahershala Ali in an Oscar-winning performance) employs a white, racist Italian (Viggo Mortensen) to be his driver-cum-valet for the trip? Possible and the inevitable happens. Both grow up during the long drives experiencing, by now familiar, situations of how segregation was so deep-rooted. There was this poignant scene where the negro farmers look at their ‘brother’ pianist with awe, respect, disbelief and a bit of pride when they see him being served by a white man. Key message: The best way to fight bigotry is through dignity. #TunedPerfect (3.5/5)

3. Yesterday

It’s a hard day’s life. Jack can’t Let It Be. His manager who yearns to be his lover, Wants to Hold his Hand. But Jack is still stuck in Yesterday In His Life. Then miracle happens. Whole world forgets that Beatles ever existed except Jack. Promptly whips out the songs and becomes an overnight star. Did the star become a black hole or a true polar one? Danny Boyle casts yet another Brit-Indian to play the struggling musician. Oh, Ed Sheeran is in it too! Key Message: Character is doing the right thing even when no one knows that your are cheating. #JudePerfect (3/5)

#sriGINthoughts #reviews #fortytwo #greenbook #yesterday