SEPTEMBER SPORTS

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If you are a SPORTs fan, You gotto Love September.
First of all, Cricket Season will be back this month. India will be playing in Sri Lanka and then Champions Trophy.
If Cricket is not cup of your tea, Dont Worry, the most exciting Sports in the entire World, Yes, The Real Football, is back. English Premier League is in action and this time, it wont be just Top 4 or Manchester United at top. Chelsea will give a tough fight and Tottenham Spurs are already spreading the winning virus. Spanish League will be exciting as ever as Barcelona and Real Madrid will gear up with their big stars.

As far as America is concerend, People will forget Obama and Healthcare for a while as College Football begin this week with NFL beginning next week. Patriots Tom Brady is back and Tebow's Gators are raring to go. I am picking Chicago bears from National League while McCoy's Texas will have undefeated season.

US Open (Tennis and not Golf) began today and Murray, Roddick and Nadal will try to stop Federer winning it all but no one is going to Stop Williams Sisters.

Last but not the least, Baseball season will have the most exciting finish of September it has ever watched. Watchout Yankees, Red Sox is healthy now and to their full strength. Even though, Red Sox may not win American League East, they will definately win against Angels and then Yankees and then the World Series.

VONAGE

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Vonage, one of the leading brand in Voice over IP phone has came up with the new package deal. This new deal gives ability for subscribers to give free unlimited call to India from USA. It also includes many other countries that you could give free calls to, for example, Canada.

It has a fixed Price menu with 25 bucks and few taxable junkies which makes the total bill goes upto 33$.

At start, It is a very lucrative offer as you can do unlimited calls anywhere in USA as well as India. However there are two minute catches.

Catch number 1 is that the plan can change anytime. That is if you have say, verizon or AT&T or Comcast as home phone provider and you change your services to Vonage. After 6 months or so, Vonage can start charging you as on per minute basis. Lets just say, Vonage will not change their rates, still their catch number 2 is very tricky.

One of their clausses says, there is a limit of 5000 Minutes on outgoing calls. Meaning, whether you gave a call to USA or India, maximum in a month you can call is 5000 minutes. At start, 5000 minutes seems like a huge number. However, that is not a case for people like me. I work from home many days (practically 20 days in a month). I have to be on phone for an average of 6 hours. 60 Minutes multiplied by 6 is 360 minutes per day. 360 minutes multiplied by 20 (days) is equal to 5200 Minutes.

This 5200 minutes is not calculating my international calling or weekend calls. Even then I would exceed for an about 200 minutes.

Then I checked my Reliance Calling card bills. It seems, I have been calling around worth of only 20$ per month. Plus, I am investing money on Reliance (Ambani Brothers, Gujju's, Mumbaites and an Indian) rather than Vonage Company.

So, Overall, even though the lucrative offer is very good, it is not good enough for me to cancel my Verizon Phone Number and use it for both USA as well as India calling.

Also, I am not the frequent caller to India so, to pay 33$ Per month only to call India and have another USA Number is not something, I am willing to take rightnow.

So, Bon Voyage to Vonage Offer.

Friday Golf

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Kaminey

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It is a risk. I saw Luck and did not saw "Love Aaj Kal" and was going for "Kaminey". Everyone knows that Love Aaj Kal is a hit movie. However, Love Aaj Kal is based on proven formula of "Love", bollywood's favorite theme.

Bollywood is making Love Stories ever since 1940's. Ofcourse, Every Love Story is different but then there is nothing novice about it. It is very difficult to convince myself to go to Theater to see a Love Story now.

Luck was different but I admit it was a bad decision to see that in theater. However, Kaminey is definately worth the effort. If I have to narrate the story, it is Bollywood's version of Slumdog.

Story of two brothers, living in the slum area of Mumbai, growing up differently. Salim and Javed wrote wonderful stories like this in 70's with Amitabh, with my favorite being Deewar.

However, what makes Kaminey different is Vishal Bhardwaj. Screenplay of the movie is very powerful. Movement of Camera to take different scenes are just fantastic.

Two stories moves completely parallely just like we have scene in Pulp Fiction or many Tarantino or Guy Ritchie style movies. If you are avid bollywood follower, you would be taken back by a huge surprise. At times you would have no clue in what is going on.

There are lot of things written about Shahid Kapoor but I was most impressed by Priyanka Chopra. Although her accent needs some improvement but still she was able to convince viewers of Marathi Mulgi. Actually her role is quiet small comparatively but it has all the shades, Comedy, Aggresiveness, Sensuality, Drama, Tragedy, Action as well. I wish this could have been made 10 years back and Madhuri Dixit would have been perfect for this role.

Story has different caste of people from Marathi to Afghani, and Africans to Bengali and ofcourse, Sharmaji from UP. There are well written, sarcastic dialogues of "We dont do unneeded war, we are not Americans" OR "If UP people disappear from Mumbai, Milk would be less sweet" etc.

Most Impressive part of Story Telling is, Telling a Story without a dialogue or song, For Example: The Chart written in Shahid's room defines his character that he is GOAL oriented individual or slogan of "Apna Hath Jaggannath" just outside bathroom.

When you need to show the climax with WAR kind of situation in slums , you need camera to be placed at distant while when there is a situation of sensuous kiss, you need camera with close-up. You dont need song to ruin the story telling and hence run the story with song of marriage. When Suresh Wadkar sings with Sunidhi, its like Class meets mass.

There are enough messages in the movie, with use of condom as well as how money and situation brings out "Kaminapan" from people. Or How much political our politics is or how corrupt our Law and Order situation is.

There is lot of Comedy (specially, between Priyanka and Shahid) as well as situational comedy due to "Haklapan" of second shahid.

Actually, I would like to see this movie second time to perhaps better understand it.