Desi Tamasha

The currently ongoing test match between New Zealand and West Indies is crazy: 21 wickets are down and 142.5 overs have been bowled. 545 runs have been scored at a staggering 3.8+ runs an over.

Test matches need to be reduced to 3 days at this rate.
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Seems like Google's big challenge is having enough data centers to grow their business.

Renewables and energy efficiency is the key to reducing emissions without the risk of a nuclear catastrophe.
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The live scorecards on Cricinfo are rather out-of-date: they would look and perform a lot better if they got rid of the "Refresh" meta-tag and used some simple Ajax instead. They have revamped the pages over the last couple of weeks and are still debugging them, but all with the old refresh tags.

Demographic challenges for China and India - nothing new here. Follow the link below...
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Akila says that an old house in Kalupur fell down because of the earthquake, but no injuries were reported. The earthquake was also felt in Delhi and Rajasthan. They claim that three shocks were experienced, the last one being the strongest (5.2 on the Richter scale).

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=23.7536+70.9374&ll=23.7536,70.9374&spn=2,2&t=k&hl=e

11:45PM IST, 5.2 on the scale, lasting for 6-7 seconds. 189 km WNW (295°) from Ahmedabad.

Not much damage reported, but everyone came out of their houses.
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Ladies and gentlemen, presenting the Democatic Indira Congress - Karunakaran, also known as DIC(K).

Continuing my mystery phase, I have borrowed a couple more books from the library: Corpse on the dike by Janwillem van de Wetering, and Murder must advertise by Dorothy Sayers.

I was talking to someone at work, and he's a big mystery reader. He recommended Dorothy Sayers, van de Wetering (Dutch) and a Swedish couple Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. He also recommends Giorgio Scerbanenco.

Mandar (big thank you!) showed us the Arastradero Preserve when he was visiting last month. Since then, I've gone there for a run every single weekend with some of the German interns at work. Gaurav joined us last weekend and today also.

It's an amazing park and a very well-kept secret, considering how close it is to Stanford and yet how uncrowded it is compared to the Dish trail. Even though the trails are multi-use, you rarely see anyone else. Every single time we've gone running, we have taken a different set of trails - I'm sure we haven't seen them all yet. These days it is all lush green too, which adds to its charm.

Anshu and I went to two banquets yesterday. The one in the morning was organized by Chhandam, Anshu's dance school. The one in the evening was organized by the Sankara Eye Foundation.

The morning event was a crisp production, with some wonderful kathak performances, and was free. The evening event was $50 per person, with some not-so-great entertainment and poor mc'ing.

Guess which one raised more money. Some of the single donations at the evening performance exceeded all the donations at the morning event. Quite mind-boggling. The Sankara goal was to collect $0.5M at the event, and they probably succeeded at it.

The Sankara message is crisp - we build eye hospitals in India. The Chhandam message is - we uplift you spiritually. The physical trumps the spiritual, or something like that...

Met a Kashmiri Pundit at the Sankara Eye Foundation Banquet yesterday. He says that the situation in Kashmir remains grim. The Kashmir Valley is completely out-of-bounds for Hindus. The entire administration lives in a single heavily-fortified five-star hotel in the Valley. It's amazing how the rest of India and world barely even understands this situation.