July 25, 2005

Work an Hour for a worthy cause.....

My friends Bharadwaj and Gautam have been working with Asha Foundation for the past few years.It is a foundation that helps homeless kids in india thru donations and funraisers...

one such fundraiser is called "Work an Hour"...in this u can donate as much as you want
but the concept is to contribute an hour's pay for this worthy cause... please click
on the following link and work for an hour for the needy kids in India

http://www.ashanet.org/workanhour

Amazing run with the cricket matches for Akron Cricket Club

After I got back from india I didnt get a chance to write .... and I have been lazy in posting for a while now...

Its summer time in Akron and also time for some cricket....we are playing in the Midwest cricket Tournament which comprises of 31 teams from 4 states...its fun as it gives a lot of people like me who never got to play cricket with Season Ball and all the equipment back home in India a chance to play at competitive level....

This year we didnt think that we will be able to put 11 people together to form a team to represent Akron in the MCT .... but we managed to get some people from the neighbouring Kent State University and also a couple of guys from Goodyear....we started disastrously...losing the first 2 games...and one getting washed out....in the mean time me and a friend Raghav were in India...me for my sister's wedding...had a blast...once we got back we heard that one of the better players on the team had fractured his finger and we were looking down and out....then started our dream run of victories....we first beat Ohio State University then beat Nationwide Cricket Club and Everest Cricket Club (one of the better teams in the league) in a double header weekend in Columbus...all of a sudden people started noticing AKron CC and we were thinking of making the playoffs....we beat West Virginia University team last weekend and now were 4-2 after a 0-2 start to the season .... we thought that we wouldnt make the playoffs for sure...but becoz of this turn around we have a chance of making the playoffs if we win this weekend...the team we are playing is ECC whom we had beaten once....we ended 3rd in the pool and they 4th so only one team goes thru as the top 2 teams have already made it to the playoffs...so its do or die situation for us....we would have been in a better position had we not lost the first two matches but huge margins....that has made our net-run-rate less than that of ECC....

This year I have enjoyed playing cricket though I am not performing too well becoz of the team...it has been wonderful to play on a team where everyone is contributing to the victories...so far it has been a team effort with everyone chipping in with batting, bowling and fielding...

Abt my trip to India....it was an awesome trip !!!!!! I was attending my sister's wedding...I had missed her engagement and also all the other functions related to the wedding so I was determined to have a blast at the wedding making up for all the lost time for having fun....I did have a blast with all my cousins....they have all grown up and I actually can have a decent conversation with them other than movies etc....it was nice to see all my uncles, aunts and my parents and grandparents...I had only spoken to my Brother-in-law at that time so I was all excited to meet him in person....we had a nice time together....all in all I had a great time at the wedding in spite of my broken finger...actually I had a partner in by brother-in-law's brother-in-law...even he had a broken hand and we were given all special treatment and nice table to eat during the buffet...I enjoyed all the attention:)....the only bad part of the whole trip was the plane journey either way....on the way there I got delayed by 4 hrs and also got my bags a couple of days late and on my way back i was delayed in Paris for a day....it sounds like a nice break to have in paris...but I was at the airpost most of the time...will write abt that horrible experience in a later post.

I have a couple of conferences coming up and also writing my proposal so have been pretty bysu lately...the only low point of the past couple of weeks has been today as my first research paper as a First Author got reject by the biggest journal of my research field...but I will try for some other jjournal and see how I can change the paper for this journal.