Sydney Morning Herald - Unethical Journalism

While watching the live telecast of the CWG closing ceremony, I was idly browsing the site of the Sydney Morning Herald, a leading Australian English daily. The site was already uploaded with the pics of some of the events of the closing ceremony. Pretty cool, I thought. I clicked on the associated story. I was in for a shock.

It contained a detailed description of some of the events even as they were unfolding live in front of my eyes and of some events which were yet to start ! I rubbed my eyes in disbelief. How's this possible, I asked myself. It was only after a couple of minutes of double checking and cross verifying I realised what was actually happening.

SMH in its infinite wisdom chose to go by the closing ceremony itinerary it had in its possession and cook up a report with descriptions of individual events and run it on its site - no matter whether the events had actually happened or not !
Owing to the time difference, (Sydney is 5 hours plus ahead of India.) most Australians would have been sleeping when the report went online and hence wouldn't notice. I guess SMH reasoned that non-Australians wouldn't probably notice either.
Well, all I can say is they were wrong.

Unethical journalism, to say the least.

My name is Antony Gonsalves !

Ever spent sleepless nights wondering what Amitabh Bachan says in English in the 'My name is Anthony Gonsalves' number in the movie 'Amar Akbar Anthony' ? Well, here you go - this is what he says :-)
"You see, the whole country of the system
Is justaposition by the haemoglobin in the atmosphere
Because you are a sophisticated rhetorician
Intoxicated by the exuberance of your own verbosity"

VVS strikes again !

VVS weaves his magic again ! There's no other word to describe the way he constructed his innings, marshalled the strike and generally held the lower order together.
I've never seen him so animated at the middle - yelling at Pragyan Ojha for not taking a single that was there for the taking, gesturing towards his runner to convert ones into twos and twos into threes etc. To me, it showed how much he valued an Indian win, coming as it would against the Aussies. That he reserves his best against the Australians is part of folklore now. But even by his high standards, this innings stood out. He was on painkillers and using a runner. The fifth day Mohali pitch was crumbling and the Aussie quicks were breathing fire. Save for Ishant Sharma, wickets were falling all around him but VVS stood firm. The silken drives, the wristy flicks were all on display. My admiration for the man just went up a few notches.

Sure, Tendulkar's 98 in the first innings, Zaheer's 8 for and Ishant Sharma's 30 odd runs were very important contributions. But in my book, VVS took India home, which is what matters

05/oct/2010. Mohali.
Aus 428/10 | Ind 405/10 | Aus 192/10 | Ind 216/9
Ind won by 1 wkt. Man of the match: Zaheer Khan
India leads 1-0

Daily wage Vs Monthly wage

I've often wondered whether companies are justified in paying their employees their salaries towards the end of the month and not on a daily basis. In other words why should employees give their employers a month's credit ? The corpus that companies like Infosys, IBM etc payout towards salaries amounts to a few hundred crores every month. For example, taking an average salary of Rs 50000, IBM India spends an approximate amount of Rs 500 crores monthly. Invested at even 5% interest, just imagine the amount IBM must be making month on month, year on year !

What happens to all this money ? How is it shown in the Books ? Should not these benefits be passed on to the employees ?

Companies in the US make salary payments fortnightly. I guess that's somewhat better but the argument remains the same.

Of course, since I'm not an economist, I'm not sure if there is something fundamentally flawed with this thinking. Also, I'm not sure how clients make payments for projects executed - before, after or during.

But I keep wondering. Am I onto something ?

Commonwealth Games - Delhi 2010

It is several years since it was officially known that Delhi will be hosting the Games. And yet there is a mad scramble to finish the arrangements in time - and that too after a major stink was raised in the world media about the pathetic conditions of the infrastructure. The living quarters of the athletes was reportedly a mess - to say nothing about the actual venues.

They'll fix it. That, I'm pretty sure about. There's too much at stake for them not to. But it is sad that measures are being taken to fix things only after things came to such a pass. It only means that supervision and monitoring of the contractors was poor which can only mean that the bureaucrats were in cahoots with the organizers and the contractors. Millions, probably billions of rupees must have been siphoned off. Middlemen must have laughed all the way to the bank. Politicians and bureaucrats must have become crorepatis overnight at the expense of the nation.

I happened to go through some websites of some prominent world newspapers (Sydney Morning Herald, BBC, The Dawn etc). The way scorn was heaped on India and the Indian way of cobbling together an event of this magnitude was shameful. No matter what is done to salvage the Games from here on in, the damage is done. Here was a good opportunity for us to demonstrate to the world that we stand second to none in hosting mega events. Of late, India has captured the imagination of the First World like never before. The Games could have driven home the point that India has truly arrived. But that is not to be. We have actually gone back a few years. The costliest Games ever may well turn out to be the shabbiest.

But the incorrigible optimist that I am, I can only hope that this country is one step closer now to realizing that corruption is eating away at the vitals of the nation. Maybe we have learnt our lesson.

Randiv's no-ball controversy

Okay, so Sangakkara asked Randiv to bowl a noball to prevent Sehwag getting a century. What's the fuss all about ? I really don't get it. It's not as if he asked Randiv to punch Sehwag in the face ! Just get on with it, I say !

No doubt it was not in the spirit of the game. But the Indian media is over-reacting. A mountain is being made of a molehill. And all this because Sehwag couldn't get to a personal milestone. It brings to the fore the fact that we attach more importance to individuals in the team doing well than the team winning.

Personally, I couldn't care less.

Endhiran - the robot

Endhiran
The internet is ablaze with news of the music launch of Endhiran which happened in Malaysia at a glittering function last Saturday. This means we are a step closer to the actual movie release itself !

Any Rajanikanth movie by default generates interest. But there are unprecedented expectations on this one because of multiple reasons
It is a Shankar movie
The makers have achieved a casting coup of sorts by roping in Aishwarya Rai as Rajani's lady interest.
It is said to be a sci-fi kind of a story.

I'm personally very excited.