A day at the Cricket!!!

I had been to the Tri-Series involving the 'A' sides from India, Australia and New Zeland today. It was the match featuring India and Australia. The weather was perfect with clouds acting as the shades from the heat of the sun. 

Badrinath from India 'A' won the toss and decided to bat. This was my first time at the new Cricket Stadium in Hyderabad and i wanted to test out the camera of Ram as i was floored by it during the Vodarevu trip. So requested his camera for this match.

Shaun Tait and Geeves opened the bowling for Aus. Tait was fiery with the new ball and was able to generate good bounce and pace from this pitch. He ran through the top order by scalping Uthappa, Raina and Badrinath in his first 4 overs. 

Kaarthick, Asnodkar and Sharma tried to repair the damage but were only successful in contributing to the Indian woes. I have to say, Rohit Sharma along with Yusuf Pathan had quite a following among the crowd here. 

Yusuf was the lone successful batsman for his side today with Nayar and Kumar chipping in a bit. He had a 73 run stand with Nayar for the 7th wicket and the pair appeared like taking India to a respectable score of around 220 but once Nayar edged Noffke to Ronchi, there was a mini-collapse again to leave India tottering at 160-9. 

In came, Praveen Kumar and D. Kulkarni. They shared a last wicket stand of 47 runs. Praveen Kumar, known for his hitting in domestic cricket, connected a few today which enabled India to reach 207. Kulkarni for a batsmen coming in at No.11 looked very accomplished with the bat and had no business coming in at 11. 

Coming back to Ram's camera, it is a beauty. I was able to get some clear close-up action shots of the match. If not for the boisterous small crowd which didn't let me concentrate on myself, i would have got a lot of good pics. This just shows that i can give Cricket reporting a try again if i am be able to buy a similar camera. 

It was time for the Australian innings to resume, there was nothing to write about other than Ronchi Ronchi and Ronchi. The guy is an excellent hitter and took a liking for all the Indian bowlers. The team had 3 bowlers who played for India - Chawla, Kumar and Pathan. They were no match to the wicketkeeping dynamo. I was in awe of his hitting ability which left me wondering as to how can he be a failure in IPL!! 

Rain abruptly ended the proceedings and Australia was declared the winner. No complaints from any person as the Aussies were coasting to the win anyway. 

The one thing that left me in a bad state of mind about the match was the kind of crowd that was there. I really wish that whenever the BCCI decides to leave the entry to the match free, to have a seperate section for ladies as well. The crowd was so pathetic in their behaviour towards the players and in General, it creates a necessity for Women only stands when free entry exists and there should be a warning board to the players fielding near the boundaries informing about the same. 

The short report on the Aussie innings only substantiates as to what caught my attention in the second half of the game. Pathetic...

Vodarevu....

The last weekend was spent on the beaches of Vodarevu. It is a small beach resort located 70 km from Guntur by road. It was an outing with my friends in Google. I was undecided on going as I am not much of a water freak. However went ahead as I didn’t want myself to be labeled as a ditcher again!!

We reached the village at around midnight on Saturday, refreshed ourselves and headed to the beach at 1 AM!! Though it was dark, the first impression you get of it was its improper maintenance. We had a very good time that night though, with the cool sea breeze and the bright moon light dawning on us.

The next day was at the beach again. It was the day of Ganesh Immersion and so adding on to the waste particles lying around, a lot of the pooja stuff was thrown on the beach. You could understand it though as it is a major festival. However, It would be interesting to observe how this place is maintained on the other occasions.

There was an ITC Guest House nearby and it had the cleanest part of the beach. It turned out to be the major hot spot for us.

The place has lot of fishing boats with most of them being powered by small motors. The fishermen had agreed to take us for a ride in the sea @Rs 150 for 4 people. It was a good bargain and would have been worth the ride. Unfortunately, we got distracted by conversations and it got too hot in the day before we realized the missed opportunity.

During the day, we went around exploring the beautiful village. It is dominated by huts. We were told that about 2000 families stay here with each averaging 4 people. The USP about the village for me is its children. I had a great time teaching them how to take photos and making them take photos of myself with them. They took me to their playground near the school and played a game of Volleyball with them!! I was pathetic at it ;)

The accommodation is pretty economical here. A non- AC room would cost you Rs 200 while an AC room is available @ Rs 400. As per my talk with the Lodge in-charge, they tend to have rooms available most times of the year.

The part about the Village that caught my imagination was the number of posters of Chiranjeevi. Curious about his party prospects here, I chatted with a few people who were in their twenties about the political scene here. It is a Congress stronghold but they told me it would get strong competition this time as Chiranjeevi has the backing of the youngsters. Will have to wait and see for this interesting battle!!

Finally, Is it worth a visit? I would say Yes. It has a decent beach, good hospitality and is worth the money spent. I would discourage the female visitors traveling alone though as it doesn’t have many tourists from the Cities or abroad and so definitely a big NO if you are traveling alone. For non-drinkers, please do not spend more than a day here as there is nothing much apart from the beach and the liquor :(

I was curious about the reasons for the popularity of this place based on the above info (Vodarevu has ~3700 Google search results) – I was told by the locals that it has been used since the times of the British as the port destination and has always elicited positive responses from the tourists. Nah… I need a much more convincing reply than that.

It was interesting to note that the Govt of India decided to make this place a Shipyard and has served notices to the Villagers to vacate this place in the next 4-5 years. It appears that they would be given a compensatory land in Chirala and provided with jobs in the shipyard.

Good for this place I guess as I haven’t see much prosperity here.

Our first field visit as part of the Social Audit happened on Saturday, Feb 16. It was decided to start off from the office at 8.15 AM after having our breakfast. However due to some delays with cabs, we ended up starting from our office at around 10 AM. We had started with all the necessary things packed and ready to go.

It was a **-member team of Googlers from different departments with a goal of understanding the process and then working out the ways to make use of the Google products to smoothen the process.

We were required to visit theKarimnagar district for our Social Audit. The audit was arranged in the mandal of Bejjanki. The Bejjanki panchayat, around 150 km from state capital Hyderabad, conducted the social audit and scrutinized the works under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS). The works here ranged from construction of village roads to the tree plantation projects.

The people we met : -

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The report brought out many lacunae in the scheme and in its implementation. The problems listed in the report were such that some of them could be addressed at the local level itself. But others needed intervention at the state-level.


One of the major problems faced by the scheme is the delay in distributing wages to workers. It takes more than a month for wages to be distributed and as per the rules it should be done in 14 days. Another major problem faced was the improper execution of the tree plantation programs. The Government with the intention of providing employment to the workers initiated this program but had done no proper research in the sustainability of the life of these plants. Therefore more than 80% of the trees planted had died a slow death.


The session finished at around 4.30 PM. As it was getting dark, we decided to start our journey back which turned out to be a 4-hour journey due to the heavy traffic which was existent in the city.

It was the first Social Audit field visit for all of us and it turned out to be a huge learning experience to get to know the entire process and at the same time, it was important to appreciate various initiatives to prevent corruption in NREGA. For instance, the government of Andhra Pradesh has taken the bold step of paying all NREGA wages through post offices. This is an example of the “separation of payment agencies from implementing agencies,” recommended in the NREGA guidelines.


More information on the Social Audit Process flow can be found here - http://nrega.nic.in/MRD/MR_watch.htm

Slideshare.net - The YouTube of Powerpoint Presentations

We all have heard about and used YouTube. The reason for its popularity has been the volume of videos that are uploaded and the features of YouTube like we can comment on them, email the links to friends and add our own videos. Just replace the product of Videos with PPT Presentations, then you have www.slideshare.net

I came across this website a few days back and have been an avid user of it ever since. It has the potential to be a popular spot on the internet. It is a great resource for anyone who is into giving presentations - be it the College student or an Executive. You will come across some great slides that can be used in your presentations!!


I really hope Google acquires it sooner than later. It is a Google kind of product!!

There might be few concerns raised about good ideas being shared but I believe the more the number of ppt's you create and publish, the higher will be the increase in traffic resulting in improved prospects.

So do yourself a favor and check it out!!

Fresh Water from Sea !!!!

Pure drinking water at six paise a litre. This need not be a dream any more. The National Institute of Ocean Technology at Chennai has succeeded in putting together and operating a desalination system with a capacity of one million litres a day, which promises to make this a reality. Union Minister for Science and Technology and Earth Sciences, Kapil Sibal, said the quality of the water produced from the plant has been found to surpass even international standards. For instance, the level of total dissolved solid, which was a major parametre, was found to be less than 10 parts per million (ppm), as against the international standard of 500 ppm.
Describing it as a global first, he said though the system was based on the well known principle of flash evaporation, putting it together was an arduous task as the plant was mounted on a floating barge 40 km into the sea off the coast of Chennai. The technology involved was turning surface sea water into vapour in a vacuum chamber and then condensing the vapour using cold water drawn from the sea itself from a depth of 600 m.

Mr. Sibal said that having developed the one million litre capacity system successfully; his Ministry would now focus on up-scaling it to at least 10 million litre capacity systems with the help of the private sector.


I feel this is one of the biggest advancement to have been made in the recent times and that it has been done in India is great news for us. If true and scalable, this represents one of those single advances that will save future generations a terse fate.

Entire Coastal states can now be given water and irrigated in one go.


Technology export opportunities are also bound to come up. Not to mention, the Cola biggies now under fire in Kerala for depleting ground water, can breathe a sigh of relief.