Biked around Manhattan today - checkout the route.. took 2 hours flat.

New York has a good share of people from cricket playing nations: UK, Australia, India, Pakistan & The West Indies. With this in mind and the T20 Cricket World cup around the corner, I set out to watch some live cricket, but was disappointed to find that there were not a lot of options for this.

As a result, I started a cricket Meetup group to watch cricket. I thought it might be a challenge to get a place to host it. But The Blue Donkey on the upper west side jumped at the opportunity, and offered their backroom with a large flatscreen TV.

This resulted in several fun nights and weekends watching some awesome games, including India vs. Pakistan as well as the T20 World Cup final. I made some great friends, and the group is now upto 85 members and growing!

Here's the Meetup Link. Join the fun!!
http://www.meetup.com/Live-Cricket-New-York/

In my final year of engineering in India, I worked on a project with BARC (India's atomic research center) called BLISS (Balloon Imaging and Surveillance System). The idea was to mount a camera on a balloon, let it float above sensitive areas and search the video for known images (tanks, trucks etc) using neural networks.

Jump cut to a decade later, to a different life in a different place. We were in central park, and I'd just got a brand new iPhone 3GS with video for my birthday. I've always wanted to rerun some of my experiments with more advanced equipment, and it felt like the day had arrived! I biked to a toy shop on 72nd street and figured 10 helium balloons would be enough for the experiment. I ended up needing 24!

We fastened the phone to the balloons, and let it go! And here are the results:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RiEu6IEq-7c

I was recently at Times Square, enjoying a slice of Pizza on the new lawn chairs on the now traffic-free Broadway. I saw a man dressed in a superman costume talking to a couple of policemen. They had asked him for ID after he put on a fake fight with another young man dressed as Batman.

It looked like they were waiting for a senior officer to decide what to do about it. While they were waiting, Superman decided to give the cops a slip - and made a run for it. I suppose he hoped he could fly away as he ran, but the cops were close on his tail. As he turned to free himself, he hit a cop, and three cops jumped him. He swung, and hit a policewoman, who went flying and rolled into a chair.

Soon there were seven policemen on him, and he put up a good fight. It took a good 5 minutes to tie him down and handcuff him. This would all have been more fitting for spidey or batman who all had their scuffles with the law. Not supe, they were on his side.

Anyways, it was covered by NY Post and NY Times:
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/even-superman-needs-his-mom-and-dad

http://www.nypost.com/seven/07152009/news/regionalnews/manhattan/supeman_arrested_again_following_dust_up_179409.htm

He was arrested a second time a week or so later.

Here's the video I took, but my phone camera lens has oil from my pizza slice, so the picture is not so clear. Got over a thousand youtube views though:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VyNrxRWsBc

On the day Michael Jackson died, I put up a Michael Jackson RIP group on Facebook. As soon as I created the group, and as the news of his death was being confirmed, I noticed that in 10 minutes 500 people had joined the group.

About a month later, there are 420,000 members in the group. It's the largest group on Facebook related to Michael Jackson. Take a look:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=100704011805

Facebook also has a concept of Pages, which are newer than groups, but can only be set up by people or representatives from the brand of the Page. This seems to be a good way to balance the fallouts of Facebook's excessive democracy, if that's even a thing. Pages evolved to solve this, because there were probably hundreds of 'Groups' related to famous brands and people.

Pages lend themselves to more customization and are of course tend to be more authentic than groups, for the reasons mentioned above. You can only create a Facebook Page related to a person or brand if you are that person or an official representative of that person or brand. When I tried creating an MJ Page, I was asked to for my digital signature confirming that I was an official representative. Of course I wasn't, so I didn't create the page.

Because pages are more dynamic, more lightweight, and something that people are more familiar with now than groups, those that created MJ pages now have millions of fans. I chose not to challenge the legal eagles at Facebook, and went with a group. 420,000 and growing is not bad for a group I would say.

The most spectacular outcome of all this has been the pictures on the group - this has got to be the most comprehensive photo album of photos of MJ, capturing every period of his music career and life: http://bit.ly/MZTpl

Anyways, RIP MJ, and thanks for all the music.

My Foray into Fiction

Thought I'd write some fiction for the fun of it. A story about a boy, related to the migrant Sikh workers to Africa in the late 1800's. Here goes...

Gokul skipped a stone over the salt pan, trying to beat his own record of eight skips. He collected flat stones suitable for this feat in the pocket of his kurta (shirt). It was what kept him busy in the lazy afternoons of late nineteenth century Bhuj (Gujarat, India). The heat lulled the townspeople into a dreary hebetude, but drove Gokul to an animated bout of stone skipping.

At fifteen years old, he was strong enough to help collect dried salt in gunny (jute) sacks and stack them for collection every week. Gokul looked forward to these collections, when he would often be allowed to ride the camel pulling the loaded wagon.

Of the two camels, Gokul preferred Luv, the gentler one that would eat hay and jaggery from his hand. Kush, the other camel, would ignore Gokul's offerings and instead express discomfiture over his harness, the heat or the weight of his load.

You like? Continued at:

http://www.scribd.com/doc/15600079/Skipping-Stones-A-young-mans-adventure-in-India-and-Africa

I sold my Ducati last week - a sad day indeed. It was quite a bike but I guess it was time to move on.

I bought it 4 years ago, partly inspired by the Indian movie Dhoom, partly by Chips from the 70s and partly by the bromance and bonhomie of my biker buddy Vineet who also bought a bike.

It was a half fairing yellow 750 CC sports bike. Not a lot of Ducatis are made a year, and certainly not a lot of half fairing (the shield around the sides), so it was definitely a unique bike. Italian made, it could do 0-60 in 4 seconds - faster than a Porsche and most Ferarris. Some can even do it in less than 3 seconds.

The longest ride ever was from Boston to New York, which I don't recommend. I underestimated the exposure to exhaust fumes and dealt with the consequences for a couple of weeks.

It was most fun to ride it to work down the west side highway. I once made it to dinner from 18th St to 79th St up the West Side Highway in 5 minutes - started at 7:55 PM and made it at the planed time of 8:00 PM.

Oh well, time to move on, but it was good eDUCATIon.

The Indventure is over......

I'm back from India - what a trip - so much happened at work and outside!

My trip back was interesting. I'd bought some eucalyptus oil (used to fight colds and has a strong menthol smell) at Kodai and I had it in my carry-on baggage. Of course it leaked which is why I'm writing this. So when I was going through the baggage check at CDG the security guard asked "Que-est-ce que c'est".With my smattering of French I sputtered that it was an oil and "C'est bien pour votre sante" ie "It's good for your health". As my person was being checked, a lady officer in the booth ahead was sniffing the air. To make light of it, I said "C'est bien pour votre sante!". They didnt seem to appreciate my raising a stink. I asked them where my gate was. They replied "C'est la. Allez, c'est bien pour votre sante" read "It's over there.. now get going, it'll be good for your health".

Thanks to everyone in India for making my stay there as wonderful as it was. Have to say, So Far, So Good!!!! :)

1) Parliament house Vidhan Sabha - Bangalore
2) When I met Aishwarya Rai and a few other stars on Marina Beach, Chennai
3) My prize winning picture "Too Hot for the Ice Cream Man" - Marina Beach, Chennai