I am a big fan of Real Madrid football team. I didn’t start my affection for them when the galaticos came. I liked them before that, when Claude Makélélé was running the mid field for them. And Raul was the king of Spain. Every touch he took was a goal, and Roberto Carlos was taking those stunning free kicks. Then Luis Figo came and later Zidane, it was almost perfect team then. And who can forget watching and enjoying them just passing the ball around. It was magical, thats how i became their fan.

Now its seems that every player that is big come and plays and leaves the club as its some kind of bus stop. No one is staying there and there is no team building. They bring new players and hope it works and it never does.

Its sad to see them suffer like this, will they ever get back to those days. Where there were no super stars just team players. And they became famous because of their team play, now everyone plays for their own career there is no team play.

If some one at Real Madrid is listening please let these superstars go and bring in team players.

Here is my opinion of the current crop of players.

Iker Casillas – Still best goal keeper in the world for me. I don’t think anyone makes as many saves as him in a match. Buffon has a strong defense infront of him, Casillas doesn’t. Please never leave.

Míchel Salgado – Scraps for the ball and is the teams muscles should stay.

Pepe – Very good defender should stay.

Sergio Ramos – Younger Robert Carlos hits crosses like he did when he played for Real should stay.

Fabio Cannavaro – Not that impressed, wouldn’t mind if he leaves.

Marcelo – Scraps for the ball and put in lot of effort should stay.

Gabriel Heinze – Not as good as Ramos could get more attacking player, please leave.

Fernando Gago – We need some one like Makélélé or Zindane in the mid feid he is not either of them, please leave.

Wesley Sneijder – Please leave, has not impressed me.

Arjen Robben – Too many touches and too selfish to play for a team like real madrid.

Guti – Over rated please leave.

Diarra – Could improve please stay.

Raúl González – He is still the king for me. Make him the sole forward and give him all the passes and confidence. He struggles now mostly because he tries to pass to other players who are not in the same wave length. Never leave can’t see you play for any other club

Gonzalo Higuaín – Its like a crap shoot with him one game he is all firing and the next he can’t been seen any where near the ball. Wouldn’t mind seeing him leave.

I am writing this after seeing them struggle against liverpool and go down 5-0. Its sad to see a team which reached such heights as 9 champions leagues struggle like this.

Mind you unlike others i have to stake awake upto 3:00 am in the morning to see them play. I don’t mind seeing them lose as long as they play well. Before the galaticos came, fast attacking football with crosses and darting runs and some style. Please bring that back, hope they improve soon.

If you are a new passenger who is for the first time taking a flight. Here are the things to look out for and the procedure of boarding you maiden voyage.

First getting tickets you can get a ticket online or directly at the airport.

Once you buy the ticket online just make a print of it and bring it to airport.

Once you reach airort if you haven’t bought your ticket you can buy it here.

There are trolly like the ones at super markets where you can put your luggage and drag it rather than carrying it like i did.

Keep your photo ID and ticket ready because you will asked for it at the counter and sometimes even at the entrance of the airport.

Once inside check you luggage first, which is just taking you luggage for scanning where it will be scanned and tagged.

Then go to the counter to get your boarding pass. Their you can also check in your luggage.

Once you get it just go and wait for your plane.

Before you are taken to runway they will ask for your boarding pass. You will again be asked for boarding pass when you are about to enter the plane.

You will have to switch off your electronic device while taking off and landing.

Best part about the taking off for me is the speed the plane gets when on runway. It feels like you are in a racing car strapped and all.

Once the place takes off the run way you will definitely feel it. Its pretty similar to the experience you will have when you ride a roller coaster.

If you have a good pilot you will rarely feel the altitude adjustments (plane adjusting its height by either going up or coming down a bit ) which are hard to get used to for the first time.

Same thing goes for the landing. The landing part is pretty staright forward, but the altitude adjustment before the landing is pretty scary for the first time user.

Once you land you will be taken from the run way and you can collect your luggage that was tagged  on a conveyer belt like you see in the movies.

Then just walk out of the airport and you are done with the maiden flight.

Which i took recently, Try and fly new airlines like Kingfisher at least for the first time. It make a lot of difference to your first experience. They have new flights even though they cost more than others you will get a better experience out of it.

Pack lightly for the first time, don’t take too many gadgets and things etc.

Don’t eat too much before you fly, if you get motion sickness there is a bag in front of you that you can use to vomit in. To avoid that don’t stuff yourself too much.

Its a special feeling to fly and doing it for the first time is even more special. With prices so cheap you have to fly at least once.

I recently started noticing more and more people are getting married after falling in Love and not the traditional way of arranged marriage.

Why is this happening, why are we seeing more of these marriages ?

Are they just rebelling for the sake of it or is the culture and trends influencing them to do this.

Is it a good thing i am conflicted, i myself married in a Love marriage that was arranged.

Many parent and elders who follow the old traditions think that Love marriages are bad and don’t last long. I know many marriages that have fallen by the way side that were Love marriages. But is it because the Love marriage trend only started recently and so not many success stories to show for. Where as all the marriage that took place in India were arranged marriages until the recent past.

Arrange marriages have their problems too, but not as many as the Love marriage.

I will save my opinion for a few more years.

Let me know what you think is the best way.

The dream car of many India will come on sale in India on March 23rd. The are claiming that they can only produce 3000 of them a month you might have to wait a bit longer even if you make an order today.

I am happy for the people who will be able to afford the car. Now they too can wait at road blocks and traffic jams and pay the high fuel charges.

I really wish Tata’s could have made some thing really revolutionary by putting some eco feature in it. If they really wanted they could have made a electric car for that price. Which would have been really revolutionary.

Imagine this, a electric scooter with a range of 100 km costs around 25000 Rs. Just put two scooter together and that would only bring the price upto 50000 Rs. They could have gotten a body and rest of the car features for the rest of 50000 Rs.

Since they were building new plants they could have easily made a factory that could manufacture electric cars cheaper. Its all about the will and they could have found a way to make  electric car that could have cost under 100000 Rs with a range of 100 Km or better. Which could have been revolutionary and made India lead the way for rest of the world.

Go here for more information about Tata Nano

I never thought getting things done in mac would be this hard. First i must confess i am coming from windows 7 to mac. So it would always be a struggle. Some of the small things you take for granted with a windows machine are hard to do with a mac.

For example something as simple as a paint program. There is none on mac that comes bundled, i really was surprised. How hard can it be to make a paint program like windows paint.

Second thing i realized pretty soon is most useful apps are paid ones. Mine might be a specific case because i have a strange problem and needs for application.

Here are the things i wanted to do on a mac and the stuff i couldn’t do.

Renaming multiple files – There is no easy way of doing it. On windows select all the files and hit F2 and give a name and windows renames all the files. On mac you have to go and create a automator action to this. Which i did and it only worked the way i want after some tweaks. This shouldn’t be that hard. There is a free program on windows called Fsresize which allows you to do with with more control. Like the order in which you want to put your photos etc. So far i haven’t found a program to do it for free.

Resizing Images and watermarking them – I think most people now a days do that. There are some free alternative that do that but my was a special case i want a image water mark. In windows i used to do it with Fsresize which is a free program. It has so many features. There is nothing that comes close on mac, you can whip up some automator programs but you will have to make compromises. I have tried every way, finally i settled for Imagewell which is a big compromise compared to windows free program Fsresize.

Search and replace html pages – there is a free program for windows called notepad++ which does this very well. But on mac there are half arsed programs like Text wrangler etc that do it. But not as good and simple as Notepad++. Hope someone ports this free app to mac. Many paid options are available but i am not interested in them i want free alternatives.

Image editing – As i mentioned earlier there is no native program like paint to edit images. But luckily there are some free alternatives. The best one out there is Seashore which is a free program that allows you to work with transparent images which is what i wanted to do. Here too paid apps are available but are very expensive or some times too limited.

Indian Language support – I just want to read them, i don’t even need native support just browser support for this. But that too doesn’t work. So i had to use parallel and run windows to get Indian languages.

No email programs – Here too i have strange problem i think many have, i have to check multiple yahoo, gmail and hotmail accounts. On windows i used to do it with pop popper a free program. But on mac there is no alternative for this, even programs like Yahoo pop don’t work on mac.

No good ftp program – on windows there are many free alternatives. On mac i am using a firefox add on called fireftp to do ftp. Which is a sad state of affairs. I know there are free programs like cyberduck etc but they don’t work as well as fireftp which is sad and shameful.

And the final big one is Blogging – On windows there is windows live writer which is the best blogging software out there, but on mac there is no alternative for this not even paid ones are that good. So all i can do here is hope Microsoft brings a mac version of this program soon. At the moment i am using scribefire a firefox add on to do the blogging on mac.

There are many more nagging things like the lack of support for data cards from airtel, reliance, etc. Small programs like iphone browser, autotext, etc. Since mac doesn’t have such big market share many don’t even bother about making the drivers or a mac version of their software.

When i decided to move to mac i never thought i would have to make so many compromises. It was so tempting to move back to windows by installing windows on mac.

There are many good things about mac, but only if you are willing to work with the operating system limitations which are every where. Unlike windows where you can do what ever you want which ever way you want.

I will soon write about apps i am using on mac which make it at least tolerable to use a mac.

But the Apple hardware is excellent, i love my aluminum mac book its gorgeous and when mac is running on it. It last for more than 6 hours on battery. So far that is the only thing keeping me from switching to windows.

Mac is fine for you, if you just want to write some stuff and listen to music and movies and browse a little. If you want to do anything little complicated you are out of luck with mac. You will find road blocks everywhere.

Unless you were out where there were no tv’s, papers, mobiles you might not have missed the news that this movie has won 8 oscars for 10 nominations it received. In those it includes the coveted best picture and best director trophies too. I am happy and all that but should we be proud of that.

First of all it was a movie mostly made by british technicians and directors. There were some indians involved too but look at the prizes other than the music and sound editing all the awards went to technicians outside India. Even though the story was written by and Indian it doesn’t make it an indian movie. Should we be proud that, none of the film industries in India found this story interesting to make a movie it took people from outside India to make such a movie? What does that tell us about our own movie industry? I don’t have anything against any British technicians or the indian technicians who worked on this movie. All I am saying is this movie was not made for indian audience and doesn’t come from the indian film industry.

The content of the movie also should not make us proud. It showcases the poor and poverty and intolerance of India. Which I don’t claim doesn’t exist, but I would have been more happy if it showed the communal harmony that most of the indians live in? And the tolerance of people against multiple faiths, cultures, etc.

I am happy that this movie won awards but I am not proud of it. When a movie that was meant for indian audience done by the indian film industry with leading indian actors then I will be proud of it. Even if it won in foreign language category. Something like Lagan or Chak De, would have made me proud.

But i am happy for all involved in Slumdog millionaire.

Unless you were under a rock, you would have heard everything about Steve’s health issues and his 6 month medical leave etc.

But the real question is…

Is Steve Jobs that important to Apple.

For all the reports i have seen of the few days about his replacement it looks like Tim cook is the one who’s really making all of it work and Steve was a just a good show man.

Most of the design is done by Jonathan Ive, video of him talking about the aluminum mac book was anything to go by he looks like the only guy who could design such stuff with out any input from others.

Then the question is what is Steve’s roll in all this. Is he there to make sure no buttons are put on it or to make sure you don’t get cut and paste, Or make it a carrier locked phone etc. And i could go on and on.

Because if you think of it all these things don’t make any business sense. If it was up to Tim Cook he would have gone with iphone as a open device and not locked to one carrier. It makes a lot of business sense to do that. They could have sold twice as many as now.  Can you imagine an ipod that could play only one music labels songs.

So could Steve Jobs leaving apple improve it from where it is right now?

I think so, Music industry will be more than willing to make deals with Apple without Steve Jobs, same goes for movie industry or any other partners for that matter.

I am not saying Steve Jobs doesn’t bring anything to the table, but for what he does bring there is  far more baggage attached with it.