Random thoughts

I had started this post writing about the messy traffic situation in Bangalore. As I typed out each line, I seemed to raise my own blood pressure. The keys on my keyboard were feeling the effects. Having written about two paragraphs, I gave up. There is just no solution to this mess they call traffic here. Even if the infrastructure is improved, the people here are just so mentally tuned to drive crazily that an improvement is not in sight.

So after a difficult two paragraphs, I selected all the text I had typed out and erased it. It was just not worth it. I was letting my blood boil, when clearly theres nothing that can be done to improve the situation in the next decade atleast. So why let it affect you? So I decided to chuck all that and write about happy things. Happy thoughts for happy people.

The weekend is almost here. The plan is to go to Innovative Film City, Bidadi tomorrow and maybe even try to go see the Sholay site at Ramanagaram.

In football news, there is a controversy brewing about the reason why England was not able to qualify for the Euro 2008. Sepp Blatter seems to feel that because there are so many foreigners in the English clubs, the budding English players don't really get a chance to play and improve. That certainly makes sense to me. Even in the IPL there is a restriction of 4 foreign players per team (and I think that should stay). If this kind of rule comes into effect in England, some budding English players should get a chance to perform.

The Euro 2008 starts tomorrow. I will put up predictions for each match on the day before and results of the matches after they happen. Lets see what kind of accuracy level I can achieve. As with every big tournament, many of the international players who perform well will suddenly find themselves in the transfer market. Big clubs will try to lure the best performers.

Prediction:
Switzerland 2 - 0 Czech Republic
Portugal 3 - 0 Turkey

Nintendo Wii

We became proud owners of a brand new Nintendo Wii (a leader in the seventh generation of home consoles), when our friends in the U.S. decided to gift us one. What a fabulous gift it turned out to be.

 

The most distinguishing feature of the Nintendo Wii is the wireless remote which can double up as a tennis raquet, a baseball bat, a golf club, a bowling ball, a boxing glove, a billards cue, a fishing stick, a gun, and even a table tennis racquet (I could have gone on and on, but due to a paucity of time of the reader, I have kept the list short!)

 

Let me take a simple example of Golf. In the golf game, one uses the Wii remote as a golf club (one can change the club style, i.e., driver, iron, wedge, putter) and standing in the stance as if one was actually on the golf course, swing the wii remote to hit the ball down the fairway. Putting is more difficult, as one needs to control the power of the putting.

 

Thanks to the Wii, I can play my favourite sports, and in my favourite place, HOME! I can have my daily exercise without going to the gym. Just play the boxing game, and that is more than enough exercise for one day. The Wii also has a training center, in which one can take part in some training exercises to help in increasing accuracy, stamina and balance. There is also a "Wii fitness age" section in which the Wii will challenge you to some tasks and depending on the gamers capability to take up those challenges (one challenge is to hit as many home runs with just 10 throws of the ball) the Wii will calculate the gamers fitness age on three criteria, i.e., balance, speed and stamina. The fitness age would be between 20 and 80. I took my first fitness age test yesterday and got a rating of 31!!

 

The Wii will definitely bring about a revolution in gaming, making game playing more realistic and a wholistic experience.

 

I'm off to improve my Wii Fitness Age!

 

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 (Pumped up)