THE PITCH BATTLE

The world cup of football has many facets to it. One of them is football! Another latent but major battle is between the where multinational companies trying to gain the most out of this sporting extravaganza. Consider the ADIDAS and NIKE fight. Nike, who until a decade back was an unknown quantity in the European stage, is now claiming to be a world leader. On the other hand you have the German giant, Adidas which after its acquisition of Reebok has become the largest sports apparel company in the world.

The world cup is a stage where the world will be watching, and neither of the two major players wants to miss out on the action of the pitch.

As per FIFA regulations, Adidas is one of the official sponsors of the tournament. This in theory, should give Adidas a tactical edge over Nike. But does it actually?? The answer lies in the extent of ambush marketing that takes place during the period of the world cup.

Ambush marketing – a term often hissed in industry circles – occurs when one brand(Adidas) pays to become an official sponsor of an event and another competing brand attempts(Nike in this case) to cleverly connect itself with the event, without paying the sponsorship fee and, more frustratingly, without breaking any laws. Ambush, or guerilla, marketing is as undeniably effective as it is damaging, attracting consumers at the expense of competitors, all the while undermining an event’s integrity and, most importantly, its ability to attract future sponsors.

We saw ambush marketing at its most effective during the 1996 WILLS cricket world cup , when Pepsi, which had lost out to Coca Cola for the official sponsorship, came with a “there is nothing official about it “ Ad line starring Sachin Tendulkar which literally left Coke lost for words.

Even this year, the message from the American brand is front and center, and the sunshine bright: "Joga Bonito." The phrase is Portuguese for "play beautiful," and it's a double-edged dig at Adidas. It reminds us 1) that the world champion Brazilians are a Nike squad, and 2) that Brazil plays a creative, dazzling style of soccer that makes the more conservative, bruising teams (ahem, Germany) seem passionless by comparison.

But Adidas, has been equally aggressive in its “impossible is nothing “campaign, showcasing stars as ordinary mortals who have achieved “the impossible”.

The official ball of the tournament, made by Adidas, is where it hopes to make most of its gains from. The predicted sales figures of the ball are estimated to be around 15 million, for which Nike has no answer.

Another major setback for Nike has been the bad publicity it has received ever since the metatarsal injury to Wayne Rooney, causing him to be doubtful for the world cup. Stories having been doing the rounds, claiming that the Nike boots which Rooney was wearing at the time of the injury were partly responsible.

If you thought the pitch was the only battlefield this summer in Germany, then think again, because the showdown between these two brands is guaranteed to generate a lot of heat, and as a consumer, we have the best seats in town to witness this battle!

A uneventful afternoon
picture this : you go to a movie hall to watcha flick and to your dismay ,there no tickets available. dejected, you would go back home or land up and at some eating joint and curse all those people who are in the comfort of theatre , staring into the screen. well , a similar thing happened to us(Me and vendy) today. but then we decided why not try our hands at bowling for a change....
So we went to this bowling joint and started playing...
first rolls :: both of us fail to hit a pin!!! nice start.. guess things can only improve..
Then Vendy the man who claims to have played this game many a time before, comes up with his first points .
At this point i am thinking of just getting the ball to drop atleast one pin...so i take short run leave the ball and let it glide..and whoa!! i drop all the ten !! not bad for my second ever roll!
and then the rest as they say his history.....
i somehow manage to come up with two more complete strikes (dont know what the exact term is for that..)and our dear vendy also manages to to completely miss all the pins on two more instances!
ah! i was congratulating myself at an extremely well deserved victory,when vendy suggested that we try out the real life version bumper ball called ..hmm.. i dont know..some hockey!
you ae given to knobs with flat bases to slide a puck around a board .

GAME 1
i make a liverpool style comeback from 2-6 down to win the game 7-6 in the dying moments of normal time!
GAME 2
Vendy at his clinical best 6-2 victory, courtsey 4 own goals from yours truly..
GAME 3: the decider
the game is very fast paced, vendy scores early , but i reply back instantly and then disaster strikes as i score 4 back to back own goals to seal my fate!
buoy! that was a lot of fun....

BARCA Vs ARSENAL : the preview
I can’t help but write this blog out of pure excitement and anticipation of the events which are going to unfold tonight.Well the time is ticking and soon the action is going to erupt at Paris. It is going to be the Catalan giants versus the gunners of north London! A few months ago, if one were to predict the finalists then Arsenal definitely would not have even been in the picture. After all, they had to contend with some of the biggest names in Europe like Juve and Madrid. However they have made it and they owe it all to the brilliance of one man, Thiery Henry. Every time when a challenge was standing in Arsenal s face, he stood up and delivered the goods. But the important thing to note is football is a team sport and the remaining 10 do have significant impact on the game. HENRY playing at home might be a threat but if the remaining 10 of Arsenal players are unable to perform , it might be a wash out( which as die hard football fan is not what I want to see, especially after the magic of last years final!) , because the team that they are facing has players who gel well with how the team plays as a whole. Arsenal would look for Frebegas and company to support henry in the midfield.
Barca plays its game in a such way that every move finally ends up with Ronaldinho!
But apart from him, there is a lot of quality in the midfield and in the forwards area, in the form of Lionel Messi, Deco, Etoo etc. the argentine prodigy is tipped to be the next maradona and with the kind of form he has displayed this season, he could be a handful for even the Arsenal defence which has not conceded in a long time. Also , the speed and agility that guily provides to the Barca attack , as found out by Milan, should test Sol Campbell and Co..
Everything is set up so beautifully, let the game begin!!

Our beloved hostel's not so distant past!

I was browsing on the comp when i accidentally fell upon the Nov 2002 edition of our beloved fourth estate( which for some reason or the other like most other things in the campus has vanished all of sudden--read green areas and trees!)
well, when you think of GANGA , the first which does not come to your mind is ACADS! well as per this piece by a certain Vipulv aga( @#!@$!#!#!) the situation was quite the opposite a few years back.... Read on...


Ganga
Ganga will think up a proactive policy to make its residents study harder and RG their classmates. Ganga will lose the drive to participate in all non-essential activities and shall collectively set up mechanisms so that every resident concentrates on his acads(sic!).'Mug Until God' shall be the motto of the Gangaite, (Muggum tathaha Ishwarah) emblazoned in Sanskrit on his T-Shirt too. The security will have the power to whip any student trying to play in the field or be found outside his room during study hours at night. Lights shall not be switched off before 3 am, any offenders' rooms will be broken into and cold water poured on his face. The LitSec shall block most of the books from the Central Library at the starting of the Sem and put them in the Hostel Lib so that only Gangaites may have access to them. Consequently, the average CGPA will still be around what it was because half the denizens will pass away or go into a coma during end sems and get U grades in every course. The other half which get 10 pointers shall return to IIT Madras as Professors.

WOW~!!! can you believe it? guess people would be happy to note that things have changed (for better or worse, I dont know! )

i recommend a reading of this edition..pretty good stuff... hilarious and full of optimism , unlike the present day IITian' s write up's which are full of cynical comments on the system and how they are better off without it!

When I got high….

Life has been too fast off late. Since the beginning of the month there has been so much activity that I haven’t actually been able to take a back seat and introspect. Well, finally I got the time, and the space which I was looking. I went up to the terrace of my hostel and there it was! What I had been yearning for …..SPACE and plenty of it! Amidst the empty bottles of boose and packets of cigarettes and the monkey shit here and there, was where I found the perfect setting where life almost seems to stop. The evening sky was filled the different shades of red blended with blue. The birds were cruising above my head and every now and then one could spot a plane in the air heading towards its destination, the jet of its exhaust clearly visible to the naked eye. The site was perfect. The weather could not have been better with light breezing blowing to prevent me from sweating. I had reached a high (and not by consuming anything!) and a vague sense of elation filled me from inside. Alas! As they say all good things must come to an end and so did this…but it had recharged my mind and me regain my lost enthu! Life is great…….

Looking ahead......

I just finished writing my manifesto for the post of sports secretary. oh no, dont say that i am unanimous (which i am by the way),because there is a contest and that is between me and ........ME! this might sound very wierd but it is true. i realized this today evening while having a conversation with my wingmates that , because i got this on a platter, without me making a ounce of effort to get it, i might just let myself get drifted with the wind.

This has not been a very pleasant year as far as my sports is concerned. whether it be losses or injuries, i seemed to be doing the wrong things at precisley the wrong times! anyways no point looking back now and brooding over the spilt LASSI(ya i hate milk!), so lets move ahead and take a sneak peek at what lies in the future of dhanian and ganga...
hmmm....I see..... very vaguely though.....

• Ganga celebrating a comprehensive schroeter victory!( that would be very nice!)
  

• a gold at inter IIT in the far east(please god please!!)

and the rest of the picture seems distorted.....cant read anymore.....

sport rarely teaches you nothing and all through the losses and broken bones(exaggerating ...I know!) i have realized that you are always a winner ,irrespective of which side you are on!

ahem! just to let y0u all know that I also, through my XTRA sensitive, high end futuroscope see the letters "L I T S O C" being associated with GANGA.....wonder what that could mean.......... anybody???

(DISCLAIMER: this is very emotionally charged piece, so pregnant women and young children are adivsed not to read it!!! )
"Pain excites me."."
these are the words a man who has stared death in the face and come back to conquer the world. Yupp , the texas born Lance armstrong is the guy i am referring to. last semseter , when i had to make a presentation on a personality, i chose armstrong and since then he has been my role model in my life. a week ago , a friend of mine gave me his autobiography to read ,knowing very well that i would instantly love the book! the book captured my imagination, and gripped me completely. At certain stages in the book when Lance describes the his fight to survive, i actually had goosebumps! the sheer nakedness with which he describes the pain and the suffering and also the ecstasy he experiences with every single victory, both, in life and on the cycling track. Many people think that Lance never gave up through the course of his tussle with cancer, but this not true. He was so distraught with life that he was satisfied with becoming a burger eating house husband who would play golf on weekends. This was natural, and expected of anybody who has just miraculously survived death( he was given a less than 50% chance of survival , but in reality the situation was much worse and Lance was informed later about it.)
But, Lance was no ordinary guy. Ya he felt lost, but when he was made to realise that he survived and he had life to live, he came back much stronger and became more mature. From being at the bottom of the cycling world , it took him less than 2 years to regain the number one spot in cycling. But that was not enough for him, because , he yet could not convince himself and the world that he had recovered completely. the Tour de France, became his ultimate goal in life. the race is one of the most gruelling sporting events in the world,and it tests you both mentally and physically.
Well the rest is history and so i shall say no more.
on sunday night when mark boucher hit brett lee to the fence and South Africa had achieved the unthinkable, it just made me a stronger believer in Lance 's motto in life:NEVER QUIT!

VETTY WED

Written below is a concised report of a certain evening in the life of DH(ya thats my new nick....courtsey strong tam boy!)there is purpose behind my posting this on the blog, which i have mentioned at the end of the report. So here goes...(pardon me for typos)
well , sometime in life a kind a vacuum sets in , which leaves you lost for thoughts to ponder over , actions to do and in such cases , nothing makes sense !!! last night was one such night...It began with me coming back from a marathon playing session that included one of the best goals which i have scored in my life(goal no.3673..ya i have maintained a record of every time the ball hits the back of the net!!!) .Fast forward and i found myself at dhaba,along with a bunch of my hostelmates, waiting for food to arrive and staring at my phone, as if expecting a call or something!
Scene shifted to hostel an hour later, and to 255 where we got into one our usual election related conversations, and the whole talk drfited from there to other very mundane issues(like the "false " claim of bale in a paper..for details refer to his blog!) By this stage i was extremely aware of what i was doing....I was filling the VACUUM!
Thanks to the comp troubleshooter aka anush maadher, i was able to successfully upload my picture onto my blog...which prompted me to motivate him to stand for the post of technical affairs secretary.
Soon, i had a visitor to my room, the one and only Jha. This guy always seems to have noble intentions and desires, but somehow fails to live up to them.(No offence meant to Jha, after all how many of us actually have desireS???)He was here for "business" reasons.Suddenly something within me wanted to laugh all the way through the night .... so in comes duck into the picture. He had just lost one of his "limbs"; Yes, duck, like most IITians has six limbs: 4 natural ones and a mobile phone and GOOGLE talk! Our man had for some reason lost the G limb, so he was all paranoid, and was in one of his cranky states. He comes to my room, and when i offer the choice of which movie to watch , he comes up with K3G!!!
So we watched K3G, ( bale entered the party soon enough and suprisingly was game for K3G!!) the stereotypical SRK blockbuster, which takes you supposedly, through a range of emotions; anger, betrayal, happiness, and yes! celebration.The three of us having watched it decided to look at it from a different perspective : a critic s opinion of the whole drama. Well, half an hour into the movie, the three of us could bear no more and decided to call it quits.... in hindsight, a very wise decision. The only thing which kept me watching it for half an hour was the absolutely astounding performance of Kajol as the country dilliwali.
It was 12:30 then....It is 01:30 now.
CONCLUSION:
buoy! does it take time to write a blog or what!

thats me!

hey thats me me and more of me!

Huff...puff...huff...
(P.S: The opinions reflected in the post might be seen as offensive to some, so reader discretion is advised!!!)
The smell of fags heavy in the air.... open skies .... five people( extremely hungry!!!) wait with baited breath for the guy from the kitchen to get their burgers!!!!
Yes, this was the scene at the burger joint where we had dinner today. We were surrounded by "Tam brams" who were smoking their lives away, reflecting on the day that had gone by,and probably looking ahead to their day ahead. While i waited for my Italian burger( pretty cheeesy stuff, i must say!!), one amongst us raised the question : why do people fag? there was a moment of silence, and then..... the burgers arrived!!!! The next twenty odd minutes saw noone speak. Everyone was busy filling their tummies, and so the question was never answered. So , when i ask myself now , i still dont have a definitive answer. What is it that makes a person a light a cylinder of 120 mm length and 10 mm diameter and breathe the smoke that emanates from it?

They say its an addiction, but the addiction is only once you start it. everyone knows its sideeffects. When one smokes, one is not only eating away at one's lives , but is also reducing the lifespan of the bystander. The industry might be a very profitable one both in terms of size and revenue, but sometimes you got to think away from the economics and think of welfare of society while making decisions(YES....economics quiz was today...). The Suprising part is that majority of the people who smoke are educated and are well aware of the consequences of their actions. Yet , they seem to behave apathetic to the situation. Its as if they are at the mercy of the fag . In the remaining world smoking is getting branded a taboo, while in India quite the reverse seems to be happening. The young , with a sudden influx of wealth (thanks primarily to the outsourcing bubble!!), have their pockets full , and are looking for avenues to spend. Smoking to them seems to be the right way to go, beacause:
- its a long term investment..... meaning you will have a monthly amount for it, which keeps increasing.... as you get addicted....the only difference being that the premium is taken at the end - with your life!!!!
- smoking makes you thin and slim....now you can eat more junk food,if and when you get time from your beloved partner--the sutta!!!
- Your friends suddenly seem to take notice of your actions...what you do and how you do them....(although there might be some who would stay away from you....then the next point is for you)
- You need no company of anyone else, You and your sutta are enough.... everything becomes secondary in life !!!!!!!

Its a pitiful situation, that the youth(15-40;forming two thirds of our population;) is being drawn by the bud. The fire is burning, and if it is not put out soon , there might be only ash left to collect!!!!!


"A cigarette is a pipe with a fire at one end and a fool at the other"

A collection of my thoughts

Last Saturday i saw the hindi version of the movie " Paint it Yellow". A light hearted ,yet with deeper message, the movie was a completely miscible mixture( ...just back from a quiz..so pardon me for your using phase equilibria jargon..)of all the various sterotypical themes one notices in cinema nowadays. A overall well compiled product, which leaves you humming its music for a long time to come.The songs of the movie was well slotted and the music was upto what we have come to expect of A.R Rehman-- stupendous!!

There was plenty of cricket action to take note of this week. Well it all began with the pounding that Sri Lanka got at the hands of "Punter" and a certain bloke named Andrew Symonds!!!
It was a show of strength from the world s best cricket team on why exactly they are number one.
Having lost the first final, the pressure was on the men from down under, and to say that they beat Sri Lanka would be an understatement! After all, its not often that you see Muralitharan going for a 100 runs in 10 overs!
While this was going on down south, up north, Team India clawed its way back to beat the Pakis and regain some pride after humiliation in the test matches. As usual , the bombay bomber was among the runs, although Mohammad Asif had him dancing in his crease on more than one instance!!
And I almost forgot , we had our quizzes this week, so that kept me occupied the most of the time!! They will go on till the coming tuesday, so i am wondering what to do after that....
any ideas?

like they say...
"An idea can change your life"

"People are talking too much"

These are the exact words which a friend o f mine mentioned to me last night, which got me into writing this blog. All of a sudden the world seems to have become a smaller place, and information arbitrage is to "blame" for it. Yes, agreed that it is good that people can access information from anywhere and at anytime of the day, but there is also negative repurcussion to this phenomena.
This sudden surge in information accessibility has led to people to think that they can beat the experts in different fields at their game. What people dont realize is that whatever they know is only the superficial aspects, and at the end of the day it is best to take the word of the expert in that field before jumping to any conclusions.After all, A engineer can't claim to be a doctor just by reading all the medical pages that Wikipedia has to offer!!!
There is also another dimension to this information super highway that we find ourselves travelling on. Most of us have this urge to be always stay connected to the world, whether it be through Google talk, Yahoo messenger, or through mobile phones. People behave as though they are handicapped when they are not "logged on". Also , since all these means of communications are well within the reach of the common man, its become an integral part of our daily routines to spend certain amount of time in using these softwares. After all, it is cheap and in some cases free !!!
Free SMS; one of the biggest and most popular market strategies of the mobile revolution, it has become second nature to most of us. The idea of SMS is a very appealing; You are able to share informtion without having to getting a instant reaction from the other side, and when it is free, the urge to sms is irresistable!!! It has sort of become a timepass for most of us to message when we get bored or are lost for ideas. Its as though, we are using the service because it is available and more importantly it is free!!
Ya its true, the world is shrinking by the minute...... but lets just hope that there is still some space left for each one of us to live and breathe fresh air!!


"The next best thing to knowing something is to know where to find it."

"lets have chocolate crunch da"


one most difficult things to decide when goes to a place like Planet Yum is......
"what do i eat today?"
A couple of my friends are in a similar situation here!!!
seeing the picture a question comes to mind .....
who is going to make the decision?
i guess everyone who was there then knows who actually made the decision...
think think....

annoying thing --- crazy frog ---- captured!!!

finally we have succeeded!!! the most funfilled and exciting frog has been captured on camera.
well i was reading this book by tom friedman and in it he mentions a very important fact....
"printing made us all readers. xerox made us all publishers.television made us all viewers. digitisation makes us all broadcasters."
what i am doing now is evidence to the above statement.

LAUGHTER, THE BEST MEDICINE....

ahhh!!! i see its been a long time since i blogged... so here goes. Well, today is yet another one of those days where i have no idea of what i want to do. at my head is absolutley blank!!
my "ornament" on my left thumb is still on. Tomorrow is when i might find out when it can come off. i have learnt a lot of things during these past few weeks about my right handed abilities, and i am happy to say that i am not as bad as thought i was with it.
Our semester is not particularly interesting as i was hoping it would be. I have made a few "discoveries" duirng the course of the evenings when under normal circumstances i would have been on the field sweating it out.
yesterday night was a lot of fun!! okay we( we referring to naresh, ducky and self) didnt booze... nor did we go places..
so what did we do?
Well, it all started when i buzzed ducky to ask him if he was interested to make the coffee trip to gurunath... and the rest as they say is history!!! naresh joined us and so did one other friend of mine( you know who!!!). the four of us camped at gurunath for the next two hours or so discussing anything and everything under the sun!! it was clearly evident to all witness at gurunath at that time that the four of us were totally jobless. Soon the scene shifted to 263 ganga where the fun and frolic continued,with spanky and wiper making guest appearances duirng the course of the next hour or so. by the end of it all, my jaw was so tired of laughing that it actually started hurting!!!
it might not seem a whole lot of fun to those who are reading this, but trust me when i say it was!!
suprisingly enough, i was paying attention in every single class today. now , is that just coincindence or what?
5 days to go to SAARANG.... and god knows how many days before i can get back on the field again....

The hidden side of everything...
okay.. This is the last blog from the chill and cold of northIndia...(thank god for that!!) Soon i will be back in chennai , the sweat, the humidity the huzzle buzzle of college life...ahh aahh what a pleasant thought...
i had a great december , despite the fact that i broke my thumb, and we lost at Roorkee(refer to my previous blogs for details..).I travelled a lot during the last month, met a lot of old friends and cousins during the course of my travels.
My brother gave me a book called "freakonomics". It is not that typical economist book, which will explain to you why america is the biggest superepower in the world and how India and China are catching up fast. It tells you how abortions in the 70's and 80's were responsible for drop in crime rates in america during the 90's.Sounds interesting ? you bet it is...
Dont worry, it tells you much more than than that. For instance, you are informed about what crack is, how it is prepared, and why it is more popular, both amongst customers and suppliers.
Stephen levitt(the author for all you who didnt know), gives us an insight into how a drug gang organises itself,and amazingly enough, you will find that it is quite similar to how McDonald's is structured!!
a must read for all!!
"Incentives are the cornerstone of modern life"

The great Indian wedding...
I am typing this blog out of pure enthusiasm of puting a night out!!! yes!! and this was for a wedding..(a not for an exam strangely ..).I just returned home, after a funfilled and exciting night!! i had no idea of the rituals that were involved in a wedding ceremony. Everthing starting from the mandal design o the crucial mangal sutra has pre and post ritual accompanying it.No wonder that the wedding took all night and went uptill 8 in the morning.i lost all my sleep during the course of last night, so when i returned, unlike the rest who decided to catch up on their lost hours of sleep , i decided to check my mail. "You've got mail" .Yes! thats exactly what gave me the energy and enthusiasm to write this blog. Anyways coming back to the wedding, this, my first experience, was quite an eye opening one!! ya sure it was a lot of fun, especially because i got to meet all my relatives after a long time, but i realised how taxing this whole concept was on every single person who was involved in it, including me. Does it need to be so? Cant we simplifly things a wee bit so as to ease the pressures leading up to such events? Maybe not as simple as in a christian wedding where "I DO" in essence captures the entirerity of the ceremony!!
Overall, an enjoyable experience as long as you are not the guy/girl in the line of fire!!

"Marriages are made in heaven but they got to lived on the earth"

Life : A marathon?

Every morning in Africa, a gazelle wakes up.
It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed.
Every morning a lion wakes up.
It knows it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death.
It doesn't matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle.
when the sun comes up, you better start running.


I completely agree!!!

disaster at roorkee!!!!!

what a disastrous inter IIT... knocked out in the league phases and as if that was not enough , a fractured thumb to take with me as a parting gift!!!!(yes...i am typing this with my right hand only!!!left thumb is the one which is fractured!!)) kharagpur humiliated us on day one and kanpur repeated that a day later. 4 days into tourney and we are part of the ever increasing IITM cheering squad, who have all been knocked out in the various sports and are jobless for the remaining days. tomorrow is our last league match against delhi , (a dead rubber!!!) me not playing obly!!! this our first practice match for next years inter IIT in guwahati ...this place is really cold 3.5 degrees right now... one of the many resons why IITM struggling here...okies got to go ... coffee waiting in canteen... by the way this place sucks !!!!

The sun is out and Chennai seems a much better place. For one, we are able to practice for the upcoming inter IIT sports tourney in Roorkee. This time last year i was a first year student,shy and quiet ,drained of all my energy and enthusiasm, longing to go home after the completion of the first semester, but cricket forced me to stay put for 20 days more. Amazing how time changes a lot of things!! Last year all I cared about was when this whole ordeal would get over and when i would be in the cozy enivronment of home. I felt nothing despite the loss we suffered at the hands of Roorkee in the finals. but this year the mood is totally different . I have this burning desire within me to go and win. okay agreed, there is a substantial part of me which tells me to go home and relax forget about al this.But i can't do that and I don't want to do that. Revenge is on my mind. The odds are pitted against us. The weather which is going to be a critical factor , is definitely against us. The last one year has been a learning experience for me, in terms of the various pressures i have faced, both on and off the field. Despite the odds being against us, I am confident of pulling it off this time,mainly due to the fact that i look at ourselves , i see team IITM and not 11 talented guys. Like they say, "there is no I in a team".
Roorkee here i come!!!