Technically, i should not call it joy. It is a shame that we create such glorious facilities, and even before they get completed, or their purpose gets solved, we start talking about finding alternate uses for them. Most stadiums in India, such as the Andheri sports complex, are ripe venues for holding functions, concerts, marriages, and other sundry functions which can get good rentals. I can never trust our government to think of focusing on letting the stadiums act as practice grounds for budding sportspersons, as that will not get them additional revenue. Each such structure is an investment, and hence it needs to start making money. It can never be taken as an investment in channelizing the efforts of a sportsperson in the right direction. A world-class facility should just be opened to be enjoyed during a world-class competition. It need not have any role to play to encourage more people to use those facilities to train, and hope to become world-class sportspeople.

With such rotten and callous attitude, i do not see any future for sports in India. We will, forever, continue to be a cricket playing nation. A sports played by about a dozen countries. And even in those dozen countries, it is rarely seen as the most important sports that a child starts playing. Australia, England, New Zealand, for example, are all fairly good at soccer, rugby, tennis, swimming, golf, basketball, volleyball etc. There must be a reason, right? A child sees excellent training facilities in his/her neighbourhood, which makes them try out different sports. And hence decide what’s best for them. If all they see is a neighbourhood, non-maintained park, in the name of a training facility, they are bound to setup a wicket, get a bat, and a ball, and start playing. Its the cheapest option for them, and for their parents. They are “Coming out to play”, which also makes their parents happy. And if they’re good at it, then they start dreaming of the rich and famous lifestyles of our spoilt cricketers.

In India, how does a person who is not rich enough to afford training facilities in their schools or their parents’ clubs, take up sports?

If the authorities in charge of creating stadiums start thinking of milking them for rentals form weddings, concerts and offices, then who really is thinking of sports here??

I rest my case.

Related posts:

1. I want to save my ass. F@#$ everything else. Including sports.. An article in the TOI today highlights, through an example,...
2. Google shud be banned from India? What is this crap? Why are most international sites,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

S-9/4, 1st floor, dlf phase 3. behind neelkanth hospital

- builder floor
- owners stay on ground floor. good people.
- clean environment. lots of greenery and good homes all around
- security is good. not a single incident in last 18 months
- owners looking in the range of 15-16k + 500 maintenance (which includes security and water). only electricity is extra
- enough parking space. you can park 10 cars next to the house if you want.
- no brokerage, as owner has asked me to try finding a tenant. i have been staying there since oct 08.
- 3 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, 2 big balconies, cupboards in bedrooms, all electrical fittings in place
- peacocks, deers, kingfisher and hummingbirds have often been seen!

option 2

C-1086, ground floor, sushant lok 1

- 2 minutes walking from ansal vyapar kendra
- courtyard marriott, park plaza, city centre metro station, galleria market are all within 1 KM / 5 minutes in a rickshaw, 2 minutes in a car
- park facing, clean and open environment.
- security of sushant lok 1 is generally better than any dlf locality. water and electricity problems are also lesser. gated locality.
- currently, sushant lok 1 is the most central location in gurgaon
- i have bought the 1st floor and the basement in this house. hence am shifting here. the ground floor owner wants to put it on rent.
- this will involve brokerage, but i can get that reduced to a bare minimum
- 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, 3 balconies, woodwork like cupboards in all rooms. modular type kitchen. all fittings like geyser, lights etc in place
- rent in the region of 15-16k

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

India-Born Scientist Launches Sand-Based Electricity Maker
Chidanand Rajghatta | TNN

Washington: Some beach sand minted into floppy-sized ceramic tiles, a coating of secret ink, and just about any fuel — enough to crank out electricity in your home or business without the old-fashioned transmission grid. Bloom Energy’s CEO K R Sridhar calls it “powder-to-power”, a new form of clean, reliable electricity made locally rather than at distant power plants, thus reducing the need for new transmission lines and relieving pressure on the existing grid.
Presenting a technology that he claims will revolutionize energy industry in much the same way cellphones changed communications, the India-born scientist-entrepreneur on Wednesday formally launched the “Bloom Box”, at a Bay Area event attended by Silicon Valley digerati and California governor Arnold Schwartnegger among others.
“What people need to understand is we are not building a company, we are building an industry,” Sridhar told the elite gathering, after whipping the covering off a glass case filled with beach sand with the floppy disk sized ceramic tile buried in it. The tile, coated with different coloured secret inks that act as an anode and cathode, forms a basic unit of a fuel cell. They are stacked together to scale into a power box that can range from a bread-loaf sized unit to a much larger arrangements the size of a refrigerator or a truck.
Power is generated through an electrochemical process when natural gas or other fuel is injected into the unit. Several US companies already using Bloom Boxes, including Coca-Cola, FedEx, and Google, endorsed the technology at the event hosted by eBay, but questions centered on costs.
Sridhar said the Bloom servers can provide electricity at 9 to 10 cents (about Rs 4; which is about the same as in India currently) per kilowatt hour, compared with 14 cents for power from the grid. But that includes subsidies from the state, which Sridhar maintained is necessary for any new industry till costs come down.
That could take up to a decade. Bloom boxes currently being used by companies such as eBay which produce 100 kilowatts of power enough for 100 homes cost $700,000 to $800,000 (about Rs 4 crores) per unit.
The kind of bread-loaf sized individual unit a home energy server — that Sridhar waved around which can power an individual home will take five to ten years to materialize and may cost around $3000 (about Rs 1.25 lakhs). “Dont go running to place your order just yet,’’ Sridhar joked.
However, what has electrified green buffs and renewable energy mavens is that the Bloom Box can generate electricity from multiple fuels while producing relatively few greenhouse gas emissions.
And unlike solar panels and wind turbines, each server can produce the same amount of energy day and night for years on end, according to the company, which also claims the process is twice as efficient as burning natural gas.

Article source: http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=CAP/2010/02/26&PageLabel=17&EntityId=Ar01700&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

What is this crap? Why are most international sites, including bbc, cnn, google etc. hell bent on confirming to PoK as part of Pakistan?

Should google not apologize to India and do away with this PoK-in-Pakistan theory??

Related posts:

1. Google and MS in final race to acquire Facebook for around USD 10 bn! After time having elapsed, we can see that the deal...
2. google translate is actually fairly accurate! While browing on the net, came across my blog in...
3. Cute/Random India images clicked on my vacation! Just got back from a mini vacation to dalhousie and...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

New Delhi: The strange ways of the stakeholders have ensured that the original objective behind holding the hockey World Cup in India — to revive the game in the country which taught the world how to play it — has been lost even before the event has begun.
With just four days to go for the event, there’s hardly any buzz around what is hockey’s showpiece event. There have been almost no attempt to involve the fans and give the event a broadbase; the media has been kept out of bounds even though the tournament is on our heads, thus not allowing it to let the public come face-to-face with the event. All one has been hearing in the run-up to the Cup are jarring voices over never-ending controversies.
An inexplicable blanket ban on the media in the name of security cover, as well at the puzzling approach of the organisers, have meant that no one is talking hockey. The organisers are simply hiding behind one word: security.
Almost all the foreign teams are here in the city and the scribes have still not got access to either the squads or the competition venue, the Major Dhyanchand National stadium, as they have not been given accreditation cards. They have even been barred from interacting with the Indian players despite the fact that they have been training here for almost a fortnight now. As things stand now, providing security has become more important than hosting the World Cup itself.
There’s no doubt that security is of paramount importance, but it should not be as oppressive as it is right now. It should not create a wall between the players and the media, for the very purpose of playing sport gets defeated here.
At the team hotel, if you are lucky, you can reach the players by identifying yourself as an ‘acquaintance’ and can talk about everything under the sun except the game! The moment the monitoring security personnel, hovering all around the place, hear the word ‘hockey’, they promptly intervene. Surely, someone has goofed-up big time here.
With no interaction with players and no means to enter the venue, the expected hype is missing, something which has even disappointed the players. “It’s really bad. We are disappointed that there’s hardly any build-up. They should allow media to cover our practice sessions,” said an Indian player.
Hockey India and the International Hockey Federation (FIH) have done little to improve the situation. Rather, they have added to the confusion.
Sample this. On Tuesday noon, FIH tournament director Ken Read issued a statement saying that media access to training won’t be possible until “accreditations are active, which is expected to be on February 27th”.
Six hours later, the World Cup Co-ordination Commission announced after a meeting that the accreditations would be completed by Wednesday, “so that the accredited media could attend an interaction with the teams during practice at the National Stadium on February 25.”
The TOI has been highlighting the shabby manner in which the Commonwealth Shooting Championships, going on in the Capital, have been organised. Add to that the World cup mess and you can’t help but feel uneasy about the prospects of the Commonwealth Games in October.
”

What do you make of it?

The Commonwealth shooting championship came and went. Almost zero competition for Indians, whole lot of problems for citizens staying nearby, and coverage of all that went wrong. All in the name of security. We are incapable, even after all the technical development and advances, to provide for a good transportation and security systems. Our planning is almost perfect in most cases. And its not that we do not plan in advance, but as a golden thumb rule, we delay the tender process, the implementation etc, till it almost reaches a point of no return. Enough money gets spent in the middle, filling enough pockets, and the work still does not get done. Hence, the police resort to cordoning off the entire area, so that their backside gets saved. The traffic police reserves the road only for the chosen few. So that traffic snarls do not happen on their stretch. And their backside too gets saved. The organizers will finally pay the media, or use their muscle to say that the games were great. And the international federations too will go back happy, that another event gets completed, and their favored consultants and vendors got to be a part of the whole tamasha. So everyone wins, right?

Who doesn’t?

Whom were the games meant for?

With the Hockey world cup, India had a fabulous opportunity to revive our national sport, and ensure we reclaim our place in the sun. But with all the HI, AK, SK controversies, we have relegated the game to even greater depths of ignominy and shame. The media is not allowed inside, for security reasons. The new stadium is not given access to, for security reasons. With 4 days to go, there is hardly any excitement in the city, with only sehwag and priyanka crying their hearts out that they have given their hearts to the game. And that too, only because hero honda happens to be the lead sponsor. It could have been ranbir and imran khan doing the same, if it had been pepsi. thank god the lead sponsor was not a CBI or a jaago grahak jaago. imagine if they were.

As a common citizen who is no longer part of the commonwealth games system, i can say, at this moment, i do not care about the hockey world cup. you have failed to sell it to me. You have failed to create an excitement and a national fervor in me that would have made me want to go out and play.

And to me, at this point of time, with 7 months left to THE games, i can quite safely assume the story will be the same, as you are doing with your test events. Here’s what will happen during the games:

- Reserved sections on key roads, only for the privileged few. No thought will be given to the common man and his traffic woes
- Unattractive ticket packages and lackluster marketing will ensure that most tickets remain unsold, and the stadiums will get filled by students and whoever can be arranged at the last minute, willing to sit and fill the stadiums
- The telecast will be on doordarshan, and most people will not want to watch most of the telecast
- security will be the prime worry, and in that fort environment, most people will take hours to even get into the stadium, resulting in terrible experiences
- With stadiums not yet complete and the test events not really testing actual games time pressures, the risk of failure will be very high. i am not talking of major risks like the games not happening, but minor risks like the transport congestion not getting tested, the catering stalls not knowing how many to cater to, the accreditation systems taking much longer, resulting in chaos for the spectators etc.

The hockey world cup could have been one of the most important test events for us. Alas, the only thing they are keen to test is the security, and that is not through hitec gadgetry, but through restrictions, blockades, and people on the ground.

The sole objective: I want to save my backside. Fuck everything else. Including sports.

the TOI article has been sourced from:

http://epaper.timesofindia.com/Default/Scripting/ArticleWin.asp?From=Archive&Source=Page&Skin=TOINEW&BaseHref=CAP/2010/02/24&PageLabel=29&EntityId=Ar02900&ViewMode=HTML&GZ=T

No related posts.

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.