Man on the Clapham omnibus

One has to admit no matter how strong a team is and not matter how much quality is in there, fitness levels and determination among players can still turn the picture around.

The best example, one will find in the end of the season.Liverpool have a big squad , but also serious contenders for multiple titles.The Toulouse rout was a chief example of this.New changes coming in fresh and eager to prove themselves.Rafa has done something new here and tats what good coaches do.He did not go out and buy the best player in every department but got 2 good players in every position and now enjoys the sweet problem to mix and match.

Well Liverpool may still be about Gerrard, He is our icon and everything to us.But yesterday , without him we still did really well.I know Toulouse is no Chelsea, but we dominated the game just like we dominated Chelsea.And if everybody cribs , Gerrard is the difference , we don’t care do we.He is the difference, we all know it and we are proud of it.

After drinking a lot of water in the beginner’s pool, my instructor thought it was the time to enter the bigger pool.

He said it was 15 deep and asked me jump and reach one end.Yes , It seemed like a joke and in my own sane way i ignored it. The shock was when he pushed me in the water and for once i saw only water all around and nothing else.My mind said the survival instincts are going to kick in and i was gonna swim!!! Alas , Its a well established theory on Dogs and not me .as i huffed and puffed my way , my instructor was happy and said ‘Good’ with a smile.

Bhaya oiytha ?? (Has the fear gone now ?) i choose not to answer, But what happened next was even worse , I was asked to dive in vertically and the dare devil that i am ,  i did.

I kept going down and almost to the bottom of the pool and then huffed and puffed my way up , but not to the other end.The instructor has to push me to finish my ordeal.

Ivaga oiytha ?? ( Is it gone now atleast ?)  , i laughed and he gleamed , but only one person really saw the light here.

Could not avoid but notice they were pouring in more water in the pool , once i had finished.

So far frankly , who likes the best big buy of the 2007 season ?

Nani – No way.Chelsea was right , he is no way worth that much money. the money greedy Malouda looks promising but is 28 already and has shown signs of weakness in premiership . Arsenal hardly bought anyone.Spurs always buy and Liverpool have bought one Gem.Torres.We all know he doesn’t score 25 goals but i think between him voronin and Kuyt and of course crouch we have 50-60 goals.He has the physical presence , the pace , the strength and quality to be the one to replace the probably irreplaceable M Owen.At 22 , he is every penny worth in my opinion, what i see of him so far , i like it and the prospect of him getting better , enthralls me even more.

Bright days ahead for LFC!!!!

I am one among the last persons to ever feel sentimental after a touching story , the only feeling i get is why do people think that this can ever happen.I was slated to be an unemotional person for the same and this made me think is there something i have actually missed.

I mean how difficult could it be , 2 people fall in love , their parents break them up , they fall in love again and …. (spoilers, aargh..) .Not like we haven’t heard of something like this.So i decided to concentrate and not use this movie as a weapon to put me to sleep early.For some reason , the movie seemed to draw me into it.I mean as crazy as it sounds, why would a man build a wonderful house of his girl’s dreams even when he knows that she might never come back.Can people really keep such promises.Just as i was about to dismiss this as a waste of time, from somewhere the word Taj mahal came to my mind(probably because he builds a house which is totally white) and here it was , the greatest monument in the world built to remember someone.May be its true , may be there is something about love that would make someone work everyday to build a house for someone he might not see again for the promise he made to her.

How did he do it , i remembered someone telling me

Faith makes all things possible , love makes it easy.Well the movie was still so-so to me , pretty decent not bad and worth watching once.But its all the more important because for once it has made me think, and thus i ended up watching again and here are some of the quotes i got from the movie.

— I am no one special. Just a common man with common thoughts. There are no monuments dedicated to me and my name will soon be forgotten. But in one respect I have succeeded as gloriously as anyone who ever lived. I’ve loved another with all my heart and soul and for me that has always been enough.

—The best love is the kind that awakens the soul; that makes us reach for more, that plants the fire in our hearts and brings peace to our minds. That’s what I hope to give you forever.

This was the best one in my opinion……

Noah: Well that’s what we do. We fight. You tell me when I’m being an arrogant son of a b**** and I tell you when you are being a pain in the a**. Which you are 99% of the time. I’m not afraid to hurt your feelings. You have like a two second rebound rate and you are back doing the next pain in the a** thing.
Allie: So what.
Noah: So it’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be really hard. And we’re going to have to work at this every day. But I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, forever, every day.
Too much love to take!! , gotta play some Quake now …..

My instructor(s), tell me that as they said i could now swim in less than a week.But supposedly my legs would not come up the water.It seems like it did come up and then it went down again.Now how am i supposed to know ? my head is down in water struggling to breathe while i frantically spread my hands to catch the railing at the other end of pool.

An then , he said my knees would bend and they should not.So , i kept my knees straight and hit my legs hard as if i was matter of life and death.but alas , i must have moved half a inch(I would strongly suspect it was because of others who were swimming beside me).He looked at me , just the way Einstein’s teachers looked at him when he must have written a super intelligent essay.and , he walked away.And so i still swim , thought not sure how my knees feel about this.

Spanish(or should i say catalunyan) wine makers should produce the best wine shouldn’t they , as they probably have the best weather for it.But as it turns out French is the term associated with wine more often.

So i jumped at the opportunity while i was touring Barcelona to visit the wine yards of this premium Spanish/catalunyan wine maker.The location if i am not mistaken  is Penedès which lies somewhere between Barcelona and Tarragona.The place lies in the mountains surrounded by beautiful mountains.

The guide who spoke pretty good english showed us around the place.It started with a movie and the legacy of torres family and their years of experience in cultivation wine and its science. There was also a clip which enlightened us about the seasons and the soil.We then moved on to the closets which stored the barrels and i learnt about the age of wine.

6 months(young Wine) , 12 months(medium) and 18 months old(old). The wine is placed usually only for so long in barrels which help them in breathing(oxidations).The barrels have pores thus allowing the wine to breathe and oxidise. Also when the wine is packed in a bottle , it can still get better , however that is called improvement rather than aging.Which means its not necessary that wines stored as long as possible are the best .The barrels have to replaced once every 6-7 years because their pores get closed.They are made of oak.(French and Chinese both make these now).When the pores get closed the same barrels are used for brandy or other drinks(of course after they are washed).

Next it was the trip to the fields , where i could closely observe the way the grapes grew , nicely covered by other shrubs(Forgot the scientific term for that) protecting the graped from extreme heat.The soil here is good for the wine as well.Since the place is half way between the Mediterranean and the mountains , it has the mix of both weathers.

The Wine tasting in the end was fun and refreshing after the walk.We tasted some of the award winning Torres wines and the wines were offered in cheap deals as well , but unfortunately i could not buy any because i could not carry them back(Sad but true).We also viewed a collection of wines which were from the early 1800’s and has bottles of the best wines produced(read as best crop and weather) and i noted down some off these as the wine produced in these years were probably the best.For the layman , every wine bottle has the region , the manufacturer and the year of manufacture.So the best wines do not always come from the a good region(like burgundy) or a good manufacturer(tortes,pinot etc) , but it also depends on the year.

All in all a fantastic experience.

“Of all the causes which conspire to blind Man’s erring judgment, and misguide the mind; What the weak head with strongest bias rules, – Is pride, the never-failing vice of fools”

Alexander Pope quotes (English Poet, 1688-1744)

Well even a half blind referee would see that was no foul, yet 5 feet away from it,One man made a  judgment that could prove crucial in this year’s league.I know Chelsea fans would always go back to the so called invalid goal of Luis Garcia,but even a man with the best of eye sight would not have made it right.What would this win ahve done to liverpool , given them enough confidence that they dominate and finish chelsea off, instill a deep sense of fear in already scampering mourinho and also stopped their momentum and give other teams hoops that they cant always come back from goal down.

Chelsea did play well and fought bravely while their highly acclaimed and costly players were in some sense being over shadowed at anfield , Liverpool put on a mighty performance worth enough to be regarded as title contenders.

But instead of the players coming in the limelight , the man with no style decided to barge in and makes one after  the other a set of decisions which would have put even a fool’s wisdom to shame. No one can disagree that he lost control and clearly he officiated in high profile match , so the FA must think he is one of the top referees.Every player is gonna fall dramatically and collect as many yellow cards as possible in a game while our Mr. style robs the game away.

And , so what is his punishment , FA grants him a week off .You gotta say he got some STYLE!!!!

If you are a watcher of the Simpson series , you wont be disappointed by the movie.

Well the theme is hardly complicated,Mr Simpson causes contamination on the global scale by dumping his new found Pet , a Pig’ s crap in a lake.Well , what follows from there on is a story of a true hero who transforms from a rather selfish human to the one who realizes that he can survive only if other in the society do too.

Its a short movie, but nevertheless a funny one and sure to tingle few funny bones.

Looks like the water level in swimming pool has come down.I have been drinking a lots of it.I can float for great distances in the pool.The instructor who has thus far been critical of me ,now finds a jazz in me.Apparently not everyone can float that long (him included).He blames it on the placement of fat composition in the body(i assure i have had nothing to do with that).

Well the good news is that i can float 3/4ths of the pool and bang my legs to complete the remaining distance(sometimes).

Time to go , gotta clear the water from my ears now!!!

Bonjour tout le monde !!

The objectve of the post is to figure out the raison d’etre of”

why the people of France are so typically ….. French” ???

I speak some french enough to survive France, but nothing to be proud about.Personally France is a complete country to me as far as a viewpoint of a traveler is concerned,It has the mountains , it has good weather , beaches , valleys , chateaux , wines etc etc ….. but the common complaint still seems to be the people of france.Supposedly they are …. French .

Yes, i get it , they are french cause they live there … But , french people are so typically “French” replied my friend.Finally he shrugged me off saying i would not understand that cause i always spoke French(what i presume is French) in France.

Maybe there is some truth there, maybe the French really do not care much about the English speaking people.But then i was surprised to find out that a lot of other Europeans(non English speaking) have their reservations about the French too.

Is it really true that the attitude of French people towards non-French speaking individual is , lets say non conducive. but the complaint seems to be that even people who can speak English in France prefer not to.I must agree with that part though.Well but even when they do , we label it french accented english don’t we.And we have our share of laugh about it.

I have traveled most parts of France and have had absolutely no problems, though sometimes when i don’t know the French word (le mot en francais) , i have a tough time.But never has anybody laughed at me.I have never seen any other country where people seem to love their language and tradition so much.It is this richness that typically attributes to the “Frenchness”(if i may call it so) in the French.

No you do not have to learn French to travel there( it is a wonderful language nevertheless), guess we just have to accept French as they are … , I wonder if someone else has their experience to share.(I doubt since i am the only person in my blogosphere .. maybe some unlucky would would come around by mistake and force to reply)

Au revoir !