What's in a name?

Well, check this website to find out.

http://www.kabalarians.com/

Here is what it says about my name "Anand", and it is suprisingly pretty accurate...at least the first paragraph.

Your name of Anand creates an idealistic, sensitive nature and a desire for culture and the refinements of life. You would work best in a relaxed environment at tasks involving writing, mathematical, or analytical skills that require concentration. You appear calm to others, but at times you suffer inwardly with nervous tension. You can find it difficult to express your deeper thoughts and feelings verbally. It is much more natural for you to express your deeper thoughts in writing. A lack of positivity and confidence is a source of difficulty in making decisions in business dealings.

Although the name Anand creates the urge to understand others, we emphasize that it limits self-expression and friendly congeniality with a moody disposition. This name, when combined with the last name, can frustrate happiness, contentment, and success, as well as cause health weaknesses in the fluid systems, heart, lungs and bronchial area.

Some random old thoughts

I had written this up quite a few days back, but finally got time to post it only today. Just something to ponder about...

Humility: a lost virtue

Humility is a virtue that is no longer considered important; in fact, a humble person will be considered an oddity in today's world. This might sound harsh: but I believe this is the result of so-called Americanization of the world. In the eastern countries, humility was long considered to be important for great people. In India, there is a story about a great king called Bali, who was a very generous person. He ruled over all the three worlds, and believed that he could satisfy any request made by anybody as he owned the whole universe. How he was humbled is narrated in this story: The Vamana avatar

One of the places where the lack of humility is glaring is sports, and American sports in particular. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one famous US sportsperson who can qualify to being considered as humble: Tim Duncan, and this view is based on the articles about him and his interviews that I have seen. Come to India, and you find more of his breed...though even that is diminishing quickly. The younger cricketers no longer seem humble or modest; they quickly consider themselves as one of the top players.

Humility is often mistook as being opposite of agression, which is probably important for winning in sports. Tim Duncan, Sachin Tendulkar, Rahul Dravid, all seem humble but are still very agressive when it comes to playing their sport. Television programs such as American Idol and Indian Idol do not seem to help the cause as well. Maybe my mom is right...this is Kalyug, and such things are bound to happen :-) Or maybe such things are needed to make progress...but can we call this true progress?

Incredibly funny movie reviews

These are reviews of (mostly) badly-made Hindi movies by non-Indians. Really funny!

Bollywood movie reviews

The first review that I read at that website was of the Hindi version of Superman...simply hilarious.
Review of Hindi Superman

A compulsive hooker...

...Shahid Afridi?!? :-) Well, that's what one of the commentators called him ;-) Anyway, it was wonderful to watch him hammer the English bowlers in the second test between England and Pakistan. All the bowlers seemed scared of him and resorted to bowling wides. In fact, the very first ball he faced was a wide (though, not given by the umpire); the next three were hit for fours! His next scoring shot was a six! Vaughan was looking desperately out of ideas on how to tackle Afridi. I think, on his day, he is easily the most exciting batsman to watch...there is nobody else who just goes after the bowling without any worries. I am now looking forward to the second day of play.

Here's a review of his innings so far.
Afridi's grand entrance