Aakash Chopra

I like Aakash Chopra, as much for his temperament and technique as for his writing. I find his writing frank and honest. I wish he had a bigger role to play in this India tour than writing columns.

In 'Imagination, patience, luck' he talks about opening in tests and the challenges involved. And here he reminds the Indians to mind the famous Lord’s slope. After the first test he talks about the two lbws and analyzes them.

Learn from the best..

...is Ian Bell's mantra I would think. Read How I learned the craft.

The Warwickshire age-group coaches used to show us videos of great innings, and a fair number of them contained one Sachin masterclass after another. It was Steve Waugh for the mental stuff, Sachin for the technique. I especially remember an innings he played against Allan Donald, and we would be encouraged to do our best to absorb his genius and then go into the nets against the bowling machines and see what happened.

We love Wii

Read: Wii could top record-holding PS2

The Wii has outsold Microsoft Corp.'s Xbox 360 and Sony's PlayStation 3 monthly since its November launch, helped by its relatively affordable $250 price tag and a motion-sensing controller that can be swung like a bat, for instance. Instead of offering lifelike graphics to appeal to hard-core gamers, who are mostly men, Nintendo has appealed to an audience including women and the elderly with innovative but easy-to-play games.

I hope Sony hits back with better games and cheaper consoles. We love Wii, but we love the PS2 too.

No coffee for you!

After years of controversy and a protest mounted by one of China's most popular TV personalities Starbucks has finally closed its doors in Beijing's imperial palace. Read: Starbucks out of China's Forbidden City.

Quid Pro Quo

According to this story, Chinese food inspectors banned meat products from seven U.S. companies. The ban comes weeks after U.S. FDA bans Chinese seafood imports.

The suspension of meat imports from the American companies -- including Tyson Foods -- comes just weeks after the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it would hold all farm-raised catfish, basa, shrimp, dace and eel shipments arriving from China until they are tested for residues from drugs not approved by the U.S. for use in farm-raised fish. Xinhua quoted the head of China's General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine calling the FDA action "unacceptable," and warning that "China, too, detects many substandard food products from the U.S."

In that case, I wonder why the China never detected any substandard food products from the US before the ban. All I can say is this is good for the average consumer. The stricter the inspection, the less chances we have of wolfing mercury for dinner. On a separate note read: Chinese tonight?

Spare me the Junk

Save upto 15% - Act now! (LCDs to coffee makers)
Rapid weightloss without a prescription (variations: your pharmacy order, order # etc)
Refinance your house at a low rate! (Need cash?, 0% APR through 2050, earn $10K per month working from home etc)
Supersize it! (variations: add 4 inches, Viagra, be better in bed, satisfy your partner etc.)
Pictures of hot singles (find a “partner”, horny singles etc)

Looks familiar? My “bulk” folder in Yahoo is driving me nuts. Hotmail aptly calls it the “Junk” folder. Apart from the annoyance of seeing hundreds of spam emails in my “bulk” folder, I have the added inconvenience of losing some personal email which ends up in that folder. I have wondered long and hard about who sends these spam emails! I am supposed to believe that the only heir to the king of Nigeria has emailed me and asked me for my bank account number so he could transfer $5 million immediately? Seriously, I have yet to meet a person who has refinanced his mortgage or added 4 inches by clicking on a spam email. Apparently there are thousands of scammers and phishers, hoping you click on their spam emails and links and do to you what you were hoping to do to those hot singles.

According to a survey, here are the different types of spam categories (in terms of % of total spam)
Products 25%
Financial 20%
Adult 19%
Scams 9%
Health 7%
Internet 7%
Leisure 6%
Spiritual 4%
Other 3%

Some more interesting statistics: there are 2.5 billion porn emails sent daily. 28% of people reply to spam email and 8% users purchase from spam email.

Finally, some action for the virgins.

Here is an incentive to embrace abstinence and preserve your virginity. You could get free theater tickets in NYC -- if you're a virgin. Running out of tickets shouldn’t be a problem for the producer of the show.

"There are a limited number of 'virgin tickets' available," he said. "However, there are not that many virgins in New York City."

No kidding.

Timing is everything

Miss NJ Revealed Alleged Blackmail Photos showing her “not in a ladylike manner.” Poor girl was probably being haunted by her conscience. Or Donald Trump. In any case, the pictures were hardly obscene. Not that it matters, because you see, timing is everything. You get famous and then leak a sex tape.

Chinese tonight?

According to this story on CNN, chopped cardboard, softened with an industrial chemical and flavored with fatty pork and powdered seasoning, is a main ingredient in batches of steamed buns sold in one Beijing neighborhood.

The next time you say “this food tastes like cardboard” you might just be right. Which reminds me, you also have to stop saying “this coffee tastes like piss.” Careful what you wish for. And on a separate note – no green tea for me, thank you.

Rafael Nadal

Read Nadal’s Blog. Interesting to say the least. One thing is for sure – like McEnroe said, Nadal definitely earned a lot of respect and fans for his performance.

I am not going to go into details, into what I felt, into my thoughts, into the whole thing. I am just going to say I have great memories of these 2 weeks. I think I improved, I learned things, I played good matches, difficult ones, and I got to the final again. What happened in the final has been already written a lot, analyzed and said. The only thing I am going to say is that I was sad, very sad to lose the final since I thought I could have won it. Roger is the best, we know that, but I had my chances yesterday. It's over now and it's better for me not to think about it anymore (but it is difficult!).