ORKUT !!! So what's the fascination

My daily ritual ,waking up at 7 in the morning with my blurry eyes ,double clicking on my mozilla ,entering the words "ORKUT" and then pressing control+enter .
(sorry i would not reveal my username and passwrord),and then i seem to get stuck to this site for at least an hour doing nothing but wasting my time ,but i still love to do it,and the question that i ask my self again again is why i do it ???
well simply speaking i have no answer to it ,in short i am ADDICTED to it and this is quite contrary to the days when i did not even bothered to open my orkut account for one and a half years after my friend sent me an invitation ,after i inquired what's this ORKUT all about in my undergraduate college.

I never even bothered to accept any friend request that people sent me seriously speaking i thought it to be a "piece of crap",bt thinks changed in April last year when i logged into my orkut account ,and saw there's a world out there to be explored,literally speaking i did not even have a single scrap during these 18 months ,though had at least 10 friend requests,people in my college were always fighting on the no of scraps they had ,and i thought what's this fuss all about ,they talked as if the scraps pointed to the cash balance in your account ,well i have realized today that unless one uses ORKUT he would not be able to understand the importance of the no of scraps(they tell something about ur popularity) or for that matter the no of fans that u have made ,and the best way to increase them is to be fan of others.

Now ORKUT is not total time pass as i used to think earlier it has helped me trace my friends ,who had no contact with me for the past ten years or so ,and my school friends whom i did not contact after leaving school for many years ,but the best thing is that u make friends from all around the world on orkut ,i made a dear one from Brazil and i think though i don't know this guy but there is a bonding with me as our interests are almost the same coding assembly language and having endless discussion on football.

For total time pass the best thing is to go to any Brazilian communities and send friend request to all the girls there ,and if u don't know Portuguese it does not matter Google translator is out there to help me ,trust me it works quite good i have been chatting and scrapping using it for so many months and the girl's think i am good at Portuguese.

The best thing about orkut is this policy of open scrap book which makes it easy to know what's happening in everyones life ,without the others coming to know that You have been spying on them ,one more feature which adds to the fascination is the "recent profile visitors" one becomes quite excited to know who all have visited your profile ,though this feature can be turned off but the this adds to the fun ,i know that people would come to know that i am visiting their profile and spying on them but does it matter i don't think so.it adds to the legend of the ORKUT.one more use that i forgot is that it acts as a good birthday reminder (in case u forget them ,as i do).

and how could i forget the testimonials on orkut ,they have helped me a lot, i have received some strange emails (from girls) after reading the testimonials on my page that my friends have written for me ,i have also been on a testimonial writing marathon for months now ,problem being that i don't have enough good words which make people happy, i have begged so many time to people to write a testimonial for me but only a few have responded till now.

Whatever ,the name ORKUT has become a part of my life ,and i am sure i would not be able to leave it for sure so in short HAPPY ORKUTTING!!!!

ps:you can check my orkut profile here daman

MARAT "mystery" SAFIN

DATE:10 September 2000
VENUE:Arthur ashe stadium ,Flushing Meadows New York
EVENT :US OPEN FINAL
PLAY MAKERS:Pete Sampras and Marat Safin
SPECTATORS:23,000 plus the American President Bill Clinton
EXPECTED OUTCOME:Pete sampras to win his 14th grand slam in singles

But every one discounted the fact that the 20 year old something Russian was also playing the match ,and contrary to everyone's belief that sampras would have a stroll in the park ,the Russian completely annihilated the the great American in the presence of the home crowd 6-4 ,6-3 ,6-2 in 1 hour and 40 mins ,and a star was born .

After the match the great sampras had praise for his opponent as quoted by him "He passed and returned my serve better than anyone I've ever played" and "He reminded me of when I was 19 and came here and won it for the first time" .Safin had played a spectacular match with the best ever tennis that any one could have imagined his ground strokes had the raw power of Agassi and the finesse of Sampras,Marat reminded of the the player Pete was in 1989 when at the age of 19 years he became the youngest to player to win the men's singles by defeating his great adversary for many years to come Andre Agassi.

Everyone saw a great tennis star in the making who would dominate it after the sampras era had ended ,but it was not to be so ,so what went wrong for the Russian??

Though everyone saw the talent of the man in the game of tennis but no one saw the mercurial nature of the man that was to follow ,he became well known for his emotional outburst during matches where he would smash his rackets every time a call went against him ,this roller coaster ride of emotions did not let him focus on his game and as a result of which he slided down the tennis rankings in the subsequent years,subsequent series of injuries in 2003 also did not help his cause or one could say he himself pressed the SELF DESTRUCT BUTTON .

This story highlights the fact that though one may be talented a lot but if he is not able to channelize his efforts it ultimately results in mediocre performance from the individual ,and this fact is more emphasized in the filed of sports ,as the great SUNIL GAVASAKAR had said "Cricket is played between the two ears more than on the field" All the great champions that we have witnessed so far are more mentally stronger than their peers though they may not be as talented as other.For instance Steven Waugh was so strong temperamentally it overshadowed his natural talent ,who can ever forget the hundred he made against england in 2001 Ashes on one leg and the words he said to gibbs when he dropped his catch in 199 world cup "You just dropped the World Cup " .as opposed to players like named Vinod Kambli who were talented but could not live upto it because he wasn't mentally strong.

Coming back to tennis from where i had started ,there have been instances where players have achieved less because they lost their focus ,for example the great JOHN MCENROE could have won more titals but he did not because he always spent his time arguing more than playing as opposed to the cool BJORN BORG who won 11 grand slam titles as he was mentally more tougher than him.

In The present Era to the great champion ROGER FEDERER is becoming is because of his temperament which supports his abundance talent. when asked about how he always won and the hunger that kept him going his reply was "As a child i used to cry a lot when i lost a match ,so the best way was to win every match that i played so that i would not cry again" It is this attitude that separates him from the rest of the field,though safin may match him for talent as he did in 2005 Australian open by defeating him but he does not have the temperament and focus to be consistent as him.


The willingness to succeed at every occasion can be best summed by SHANE WARNE who despite his off field controversies always wanted to win and give his best as he said to IAN HEALY in an interview "It's all about winning mate" and it truly is.

VIVE LE LANCE

Lance Armstrong was one of the reasons for my sudden interest in TOUR DE FRANCE ,i still remember the the days of July 1999 ,when the whole world was fascinated by the victory of a man was who had only 40% chance of surviving cancer three years ago in 1996.i was also fascinated by his story and followed the so called "boring" sport of cycling that only europeans followed.

Though his seven tour victories from 1999 to 2005 has been a record in the tour history but he isn't the only one who has achieved great feats in the world of cycling ,he may have broken the record of five consecutive tour victories of MIGUEL INDURAIN and five non consecutive victories of legends like Bernard Hinault, Eddy Merckx and Jacques Anquetil but it can always be argued was he the greatest cyclist ever??

The accomplishments of Eddy merckx far outweigh anyone's achievements in the sport of cycling ,legendary for his domination of one day classics like milan sen -remo which he won seven times .He is the only one who won the yellow jersey(over all leader),polka doted jersey(king of mountains),and green jersey(best sprinter) in the same edition of tour the feat which has not been matched by anyone else till date and probably will never be done ,he was like a beast on the bike and never relied much on support of his team mates as lance did over the years in tours ,he took TOUR DE FRANCE as just one of the races in the year but lance took it as the only race of the year ,clearly he was the best bike rider till today.

My admiration of lance goes much beyond cycling ,the way he fought through his cancer diagnoses and emerged as a stronger person both mentally and physically has always made me believe that one can come out and deal with any adversity in life and come out stronger and more focussed than he has been ,though his accomplishments in cycling can never be forgotten but his deeds off the pedals are more inspiring than on the bike,one can learn a lot from him about the preparation for a long and important task ahead ,he prepared for the tour nearly 300 days a year for that 21 days on the legendary roads of France in the month of July ,so that he can prove to people that he can do it again.The time he spent at the labs of MIT so that he could get the perfect bike for the tour is truly one of a kind in sports which had been never practiced till lance did it,beyond cycling his work in the field of cancer giving hope to millions of people around the world that they can fight this disease through the LANCE ARMSTRONG FOUNDATION is one of a kind.

As Armstrong quoted after winning the tour de france in 2005 ,his last triumph on the Champs-Élysées

"Finally the last thing I’ll say to the people who don’t believe in cycling, the cynics and the sceptics. I'm sorry for you. I’m sorry that you can’t dream big. I'm sorry you don't believe in miracles. But this is one hell of a race. This is a great sporting event and you should stand around and believe it. You should believe in these athletes, and you should believe in these people. I'll be a fan of the Tour de France for as long as I live. And there are no secrets - this is a hard sporting event and hard work wins it. So Vive le Tour. Forever."

This sums up the true Armstrong we all know ,we all have admired over the past years ,as he said that people who don't believe in cycling cannot dream big ,but apart from them if u don't dream big you cannot achieve much in life , if Kekule had not dreamt we would never have seen the aromatic ring in benzene ,miracles do happen and will happen we just have to believe we can do it,as lance showed us the way.He brought cycling to the stage where people followed it all around the world ,not just in europe but in america and other parts .The true side of lance can be depicted by his autobiography "It's not about the bike,my journey back to life" ,which highlights the fact that fighting cancer is of more importance than winning races .

In the end i would like to sum up lance's story as the greatest come back in the history of sports ,he has shown us nothing is impossible if we believe in ourselves then we can accomplish any feat in this world ,so in the end i would only day vive le lance.LONG LIVE lance.

BRAVO BARCA!!!

Figure this..................

1.Manchester united - £14 million(AIG)
2.Chelsea-£10 million(Samsung)
3.Juventus-£15 million(Tamoil)

so when ................................................
FC Barcelona decided to end it's 107 year old tradition of not sporting any logo on their shirt's many big companies lined up to secure the deal as this would catapult them to the south american market where barcelona are followed passionately ,apart from europe and asia ,for instance internet gambling giant betandwin.com agreed on a £12 million deal with the club.so with which organisation did BARCA decide to enter into an agreement???

well it was no corporate giant ,but an international organisation we all know which was set up in 1953 ,to help in welfare of children known as UNICEF ,and how much did unicef decide to pay barcelona ,actually nothing to the contrary barcelona decided to pay 1.5 million euros per year for the next five years to unicef,and this year the money will be used to help children in swaziland suffering from HIV.it may suprise many people that barca decided to go with this deal ,but once we understand the club and their history it will not be a suprise to us.

Setup in 1899 by a group of english ,dutch and catalan supporters with the moto Més que un club (More than a club) ,it truly is more than a club for it's million of supporters worldwide ,it has become sort of a catalan institution where people of catalan region associate themselves with ,after their rights and freedom was reduced under the rule of FRANCO during the spanish civil war ,and this is one of the reasons of their great rivalry between REAL MADRID ,known as the EL CLASSICO de grande ,as it was supported by FRANCO under his rule .BARCA were not allowed to sport the catalan flag in their logo during the time of FRANCO.He tried to embodied real madrid as the spain he wanted to create and as a result it was known as the REGIME CLUB with barca being called as the opposition,another factor which lead to their rivalry was the dispute over argentine ALFREDO DI STEFANO who became one of the greatest footballers while playing for real madrid leading them to five straight european club triumphs in the mid 50's.

This brings us to a question whether "sports clubs are only there for money?",althought the monetary aspect of clubs cannot be put on the backburner as they need money to survive ,for eg.LEEDS UNITED were relegated from ENGLISH PREMIER LEAGUE because of bad debts which resulted in their players moving out of it ,but money should not be the only criteria as people associate their passion,joy and sadness with their clubs after all how would one account for these rivalries all over the world??

• boca juniors vs river plate(argentina)
• vasco vs flamengo(brazil)
• liverpool vs everton(england)

all these rivalries are a result of the passion of supporters who were instrumental in founding of these clubs in their early years.

Clubs bring happiness to the faces of people in adversities ,like a small town in belarus known as GOMEL ,which was devastated by the chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986 are avid supporters of their club FC GOMEL and they prove it by attending their matches in a huge no they are no 1 when it comes to fans attending matches in belarus league as it allows them to forget their sufferings for a few hours.

To conclude i would only say that although money is important but one should never hesitate to help people who are in more need than us,and if we have the means to do it.Well our cricket board BCCI can take a cue from barcelona as it boasts of the richest shirt deal for indian cricket team with sahara and nike by helping people who really need money and not just putting money in their lockers and not using them or being used by people who alreasy have it.