Kishor Krishnamoorthi’s WebsiteKishor a.k.a Mjuboy’s Blog

Its the last quarter of the game.

The opposition is in possession of the ball and they are drawing close to our goal. As defence, I grip my lacrosse stick harder and get ready to face the opponent.

Number 88. He is already two thirds of the way across the field. He slips, and the ball bounces out of his stick and rolls a few feet away from me.

I run towards the ball and try to scoop it. I miss on my first try, and before I can try again, I hear a whoosh and look up to see a giant of a man charging at me  and BAM!

Blackout.

My eyelids flicker open and I can see that the game is in play again. I had only been knocked out for a millisecond but it felt like an eternity. I stand up with ease and see that the game has moved to the other end of the field and we are in possession of the ball.

Alex Reily moves up from behind the goal, dives and scores! We are still down by a few goals but it was a great shot.

And that, my friends, is a summary of the Lacrosse match I played yesterday against the East Coast Lacrosse Team after just 2 training sessions. I’m not going to lie, I didnt really play that well and did miss quite a lot of the throws, but I did try my best and I’m sure with more practice, I can definitely do much better. The team was very encouraging, all through the game, and even though we lost, we still felt like winners.

It was the first ‘manly’ sport that I’ve ever played. Donning shoulder pads, chest pads, elbow pads, gloves and a helmet, and with everyone given a lacrosse stick, it is as violent as games get. It was massive fun even though I got rugby tackled twice during the  game and my legs still ache.

The game taught me to learn to be aggressive and to man-up and do what must be done rather than cower in a corner waiting for someone else to do something.  It taught me to make quick decisions on  the field, alter game play to adjust to  the situation rather than strictly follow the instructions you were given at the start of the match. It also taught me that the objective of the defense was very simple ‘Dont let the ball get through’ but very tough to follow.

I definitely enjoyed playing Sports, after a very long time, and I can honestly say that I will be going back for more!

Life has been fine, its been 2 weeks since I got here but it feels like 3 days. I have settled back in well, and spending tons of quality time with my housemates since once term starts, I know I’ll be crazily busy. I do occasionally miss home, but  thats a part of life here and as U2 once said ‘Walk On’.

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It has been almost 5 months since I’ve gone gliding. According to my log book, the last time was the 16th of December which is definitely not in the near past. I did go Gliding yesterday though, the last few flights of the day, and it was exhilarating and I’d forgotten what joy it is to turn a glider at the touch of a stick. The first 2 flights were as usual, although I did get to do a considerable bit of the taking off and landing. The third and last flight of the day was the exciting one. The sun was just setting over the horizon and my instructor said that this one was going to be a fun flight. When you are sitting in a glider, ten seconds away from take off, ‘fun’ is usually not the word you want to hear. But before I could protest, we were in the air, hit a nice high altitude and started off the so-called fun part.

3 loops one after the other. And before my head could level itself, 3 rolls one after the other and finally to top it all off, an insanely high speed low pass across the control tower at about 225km/h.

It was definitely fun, perhaps some of the craziest fun I’ve had to date, and I can honestly say I’ve caught the Gliding bug.

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It was 7:30PM and we were standing in line to enter a very special place. The queue was long and when I walked through the doorway, I thought I had entered into another time machine. But I was wrong, it wasnt any time machine, it was just….Rollerworld! Europe’s finest skating rink! The very retro looking website is only a small preview of how retro the entire place looks. I loved the whole look and feel of the place, with all the 80s style decorations. And the 80s music blasting through the loudspeakers only helped in this transformation to 30 years in the past.

We expected about tweleve people to be there but to our complete suprise, the place was packed. Apparently, we were not the only ones who loved the 80s and it was good to know that. I would love to say that I was a master on the skates and pulled all  the women that night but that would be lying and lying is not good. It had been ages since I had been on skates and therefore, as one can expect, I wasnt the most graceful person out there. I took my time though and became pretty decent by the end of the night. I had a great time anyways, mostly because I loved the place and it was nice to know that the 80s werent dead.

Lots of people  were whizzing past us on their skates, people who looked way to old to be safe on a pair of wheels and people who looked like they might fall off any moment. Speaking of which, I did fall down once, but just once, mind you and it was all a part of the learning process so I just laughed it off. They even had a lovely diner and bar there, all designed as though they’d just been brought here through a time machine from the 80s. Its a wonderful place and I throughly enjoyed my time there. I strongly recommend a visit to anyone who visits Colchester, or even London for that matter.

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61 Years.

India is getting old. Almost as old my grandmother infact, who has been 65 for the past 10 years.

I wont lie and say they’ve been a fabulous 61 years filled with fame and fortune because they havent. India has had its share of ups and downs, booms and recessions and here we are today, with an inflation rate of 12.44% and more than a billion similing citizens.

Some citizens are smiling much more than the others, and possibly grinning broadly. And this would obviously include the newest citizen to make India proud, Abhinav Bindra who won India a Gold Medal at the Beijing Olympics. And according to news sources, it is India’s first individual Gold Medal since forever. Thats is quite surprising news and also an impressive feat and for this very feat, the government has kindly volunetereed to give him 1.82 Crore Rupees as a prize along with a lifetime of free travel in 2 Tier A/C Trains. Well, thats good for the reputation of the country and definitely good for him, he’s done his part for the country and now his name will go down in history.

As for the rest 999 Million people like me who still have to do our part for country, unless we become Politicians, hope is quite bleak to affect and inspire the country as much as Bindra has. However, the Indian football did their part as well by winning the 2008 AFC Challenge Cup against Tajikistan with a final score of 4-1. Well done to them, I did watch the match live and cheered for my country with all my heart.

Over the course of the 18 years of my life, I have read about many people who seemed determined to “change India” and “modernize it” only to be eventually faced with failure and blame the country for refusing to change. You cannot simply change a country in the blink of an eye, it takes lot of time, effort and evolution to take place. You can contribute to this process and maybe increase its speed by a tiny margin but thats about as much as the average man can do.

But why do you want to change the country? Is it to make it like UK or US or one of these apparently developed western countries? After having spent approximately a year in England, I have to conclude that even though life there is good and decent, its nothing quite as nice as India with the genuinely friendly people and the small things here which make life worth living. I believe that, with change, we may lose a part of these things that make India the great place that it is. I also believe that change is inevitable and it may be for the better or the worse and that can only be proven with time. Change cannot be forced, it must take its natural course and its own time to be efficient. People will grow up, and slowly, the entire nation will move onto a new path, in a different way and everyone will be happy with the direction of movement. And thats when the change will be deemed to be successful.

I remember my Politics lecturer at university saying that how he has no idea how democracy successfully runs in India because it defies every single defined condition necessary for a democracy and yet manages to maintain the world’s largest democracy. But he also mentioned some small points here and there and even though they seemed to be insignificant, they are the things that keep the country running. And those small things are some of the reasons why I love my country.

Nothing in the world except for death can seperate me permanently from my country, my motherland, my India. Mera Bharat Mahaan.

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Its been about 45 days since I’ve come down to good ol’ Hyderabad and I’ll be going back to University in just over a month. I’ve done a lot over the past month or so and there still remains a lot to get done before I head back to Essex.

Driving lessons have been going on well, I’ve had about a week’s worth of classes so far and I’m finding slightly difficult to coordinate all my limbs to do different things while still looking at the road but I’m sure it’ll become second nature eventually.

I was also accepted by Visage Images to publish photos on their website for sale. I still havent put up any photos yet as the agreement is still being processed but I’m sure they’ll go up within the next fortnight.

And yesterday, I had what was probably one of the best photoshoots ever at the local basketball court with a few friends. Two of them, Chris and Tharun were very helpful with the lights and all. Our main man, Ranjith was the model, and also did an excellent job. I’ve uploaded the photos from shoot on Flickr and you can see the set here.

And I’ve got a chunk of stuff to get done before I get back to Uni, which I’m trying to do little by little everyday so that I dont get a shock on the day before I go.

I’ve been following the Olympics with some interest, esp. after seeing the photography gear that they use to shoot the Olympics. Its very impressive, I highly recommend that you check it out.

Olympics Gear. Copyright of Vincent LaForet.

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The Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics was one of the most impressive ceremonies that I’ve ever witnessed in my life. Everything about it was simply spectacular and I didnt even feel the 2 hours fly while watching it. Infact, it was so amazing that the former Mayor of London, Mr.Ken Livingston who was at Beijing went as far to say that it was “the greatest show ever put on in the history of mankind”. I wont disagree with him and you probably wont if you watched the ceremony. I sincerely hope that you did watch the ceremony and if you didnt, shame on you, because even my driver watched it. Anyways, dont lose hope, you can see the photographs from the ceremony here.

The Ceremony kicked off at 8:00 PM on the 8th of August 2008 at the Bird’s Nest Stadium in Beijing with around 2,000 drummers playing their ‘Fou’ drums in Rhythm. I thought this was highly impressive and would’ve been content with just the drumming but there were still scores of more amazing displays to come. The huge LED Paper Scroll was perhaps one of the most beautiful and accurate display that anyone has ever seen. Another part, which was my personal favourite, was the movable blocks which moved in tune to each other and created some pretty darn spectacular movements. All through this display, I thought that the blocks were controlled by machines but at the end, the blocks opened up to reveal hundreds of grinning men waving to the crowd. I could go on and on about magnificent performances but am going to stop here since you can read about that at hundreds of other blogs. The pyrotechnics were very grand and striking and included some unique ones like smiley faces. You can see the photographs of the fireworks here.

Copyright of Clive Rose/Getty Images

Credit must be given to the Chinese Filmmaker Zhang Yimou who directed the entire show and all the participants who had practiced for over a thousand days. The management of the entire ceremony must also be applauded for pulling off the entire ceremony without any visible problems whatsoever. Also, to ensure that the ceremony would not be ruined by rain, extensive measures were taken to avoid any remote chance of a downpour. You can view a visual representation of these measures here.

The show was apparently attended by over 100 heads of state, the most ever, including our very own Sonia Gandhi, who I spotted smiling and waving, when the Indian team marched into the stadium. I felt a sense of pride and patriotism when the Indian marched across the stadium proudly waving the Indian flag and I truly wished that they would win some medals this year. The sight of 10,500 participants marching in the opening ceremony was formidable and comprised of countries that I had never heard of before.

What this means for the future of China

As can be expected from a show of such a large scale, it would brought in a humongous amount of tourists to the country. And when the number of people in the country increases, all the services catering to them would have to be multiplied as well. This would’ve meant more hotels, more restaurants, more taxis, more shops, and more money circulating in the economy. This itself would have been a good boost to the economy which will be kept busy over the next 2 weeks to cater to the various needs of the visitors.

The reputation of China in the public eye will also be heightened now that we have seen their might and what they are capable of. This is probably the best PR any country could ever get since it applies universally to all realms of life. People wont think too much before buying Chinese products, Chinese businessmen will find it easier to makes sales to other countries, and overall, Chinese people will be respected more in the international community. Minor mistakes made by China will be forgiven thanks to those 2 powerful hours of the opening ceremony which was watched by 4 Billion people across the world.

I imagine the Chinese leaders would be sitting together right now and congratulating each other on the awesome job they did to show the rest of the world what they can do and that they can make a difference in the world.

What this means for the future of England

Just like the Chinese leaders would be discussing the success of the opening ceremony, I presume the heads of England would be trying to come up with ideas for the opening ceremony of the 2012 Olympics which are to be held in London.

The Chinese have definitely set a striking impression on the minds of everyone and London will have to do an exquisite job to trump Beijing. And even if they dont plan to outshine the Chinese, they will still have to do a pretty good job just because everyone will be expecting something big after having seen this.

And doing something better is going to require a large amount of manpower, something which is not cheap in a developed country like England. People will have to dragged out from regular jobs to contribute to the Olympics, and many people wont appreciate that. And since England is a democracy, people will have the freedom to do as they please unlike communist China where people would either have the choice to participate in the Olympics or spend the rest of their life in jail.

A considerable amount of resources will have to be invested in R&D to come up with some new technology which the world has never seen before. Money will also have to be spent in acquiring manpower and that will take a big chunk out of the entire budget. I also hope that they manage to sort our all their transportation problems by 2012. Heathrow’s Terminal 5 may not even come close to the size and capacity of Beijing Airport’s Terminal 3 but it does have enough problems to cause headaches to 28,000 passengers whose baggage went missing during its month of operation.

Ideally, all the problems currently existing will be eventually dealt with and by 2012, there should be a grand perfomance awaiting us, or atleast I hope so.

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I went Gliding yesterday after more than a month. I’d forgotten how much fun it is to glide and had some very enjoyable flights yesterday. The weather has improved which made the whole experience more pleasurable and we had a great day out at the airfield.

GTA IV comes out in less than 2 days. I wasnt really anticipating the release of the game that much since I’m not as interested in games as I was 2 years ago when San Andreas came out. However, I did want to try out the game just once to see how it is and if there is enough improvement as has been publicised. And yesterday, I read IGN’s review of the game and they gave it a perfect score of 10 and called it ‘One of the best games ever’. I also watched the gameplay videos which are totally awesome. And some of my friends over at GTAGaming got invited for all expenses paid trip to New York by Rockstar Games to have a sneak preview of GTA IV, you can read about their exciting experience here. These events have reinstated my interest in the game and I look forward to release. You can see a countdown to the release of the game here.

I got a PC Sync Extension cable for my cameras flash so that I can fire both of my flash simultaneously indoors, I have taken some exciting photos with some new techniques and you can view some of these on my Flickr Stream and my 365 Day Project. I can also use my flash outdoors now, using the cable and I’ve been experimenting to get unique shots which can be seen in the links above.

I had an Economics Test a couple of days which went fairly well. My exams start on May 12th and ending on May 30th. I also got the result of my Politics Essay and I was quite happy with it as was my teacher.

In order to make my domain more ‘UK-friendly’, I have now redirected my previous derelict website and domain name – Cozmonite.com, to this site so that now anyone who visits that domain can click a link to visit this site which is my primary website.

And I have some big plans about the photo gallery which I shall try and implement soon so that it will be easier to view photos here.

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University of Essex vs. University of East Anglia.

40 Matches. 800 Participants. Two Universities. One Winner.

Derby Day is a huge sports event held once a year between the University of Essex and University of East Anglia. The event is held at both the universities alternating every year. This year, it was held here at Essex and all the participants from East Anglia came down here.

I was assigned to photograph all the hockey matches but ended up taking photographs of a majority of the events. The first hockey match was the mens and kicked off at 11AM. Essex won with a spectacular score of 8 – 3. This was followed by the womens hockey at 1PM which Essex lost but up a great fight and managed to get a decent score of 4 -2 even though East Anglia’s Women Hockey team was three leagues above ours. The final hockey match of the day was the mixed match and was quite entertaining. It was a very light hearted match and you could see that most of the players were having fun. We won this match too with an excellent score of 9 – 6.

In between all these matches and during the half times, I went over to several other matches to take a look at the scores and also to snap some photographs. One of the first ones I saw was American Football/Rugby which was quite exciting with a lot of action in the match and a huge crowd cheering them on. They won with a decent lead and while they were celebrating their victory, I headed down to the football fields and got a quick photo of the Womens Football team. I was running out of space in my camera so I came back to my room to upload the photos on to the computer and also made myself a simple lunch.

After that, I went down to the Sports Centre and got photographs of the womens volleyball which we unfortunately lost by a rather small margin. Once the volleyball got over, I went back to the football field where there were 2 mens football matches going on simultaneously on adjacent pitches. Both the matches were quite good and had a large supporting crowd who kept the matches alive. The teams managed to win one match and draw the other one.

We had a quick stop at Womens Netball and after a couple of photos, took a break and went down to the bar. We got ourselves a free meal each since we were volunteering to help out with Derby Day. After the meal, I headed downstairs into Sub Zero to watch boxing. The audience for boxing was beyond what I’d imagined and the sound of the cheering could be heard all the way to the top. The fights were a bit bloody but still very enthralling as could be seen by the roaring sound of the audience every time a powerful punch was thrown.

I came back to the flat for a hurried meal and went back to the Sports Centre for cheer leading which was pretty good, I must say. It was one of the final event of the day with only mens basketball remaining. As of now, I think Essex should have won Derby Day but we cant be sure until the final results come out. However, I do expect Essex to win since we won a majority of the sports including Athletics, Horse riding, Pool, Cricket, Basketball, etc and the scores when I last saw them were about 17 – 11 to Essex.

Photographs are being processed right now, I shall upload them as soon as I can.

Update – I have received confirmation that Essex has indeed won the Derby Title with a final score of 21 – 18.

Update 2 – I have uploaded the best photographs from the events, you can view all of them here.

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Two Words – Mind-Blowing!

I went for Gliding today, and we spent almost the whole day at the airfield. After a very small intro talk to the basics of the various parts of the glider, we were ready to fly. I was the second person to fly, and after seeing the first glider go flying into the air, I was quite anxious to try it out.

The gliders are propelled into the air by means of a cable attached to a winch, and once airborne, the cable is released. The time spent on land is hardly any time at all, the glider is almost instantly in the air and in a few seconds, at a steady altitude of more than 1000 feet. The feeling you experience in those initial moments is something that words cant describe, its just amazing.

On the first flight, I was run through the basics, and I was given control of the glider for about a minute or so. The glider was very responsive even to the slightest movement of the control joystick and pedals. It was fun having the whole glider under my control, I played around for sometime before the instructor took control again. The second flight was exclusively for taking photographs so I was happy clicking away to glory while we did a good round of the whole airfield.

I took a break after the second flight, and had lunch before the third and final flight. The third one started off like the others but once we stabilized, the instructor asked me ‘Do you want to have some fun?’, and I think I said ‘yes’ because right after that, he said ‘Okay, hold on tight’ and nosedived. We were at around 100 knots, which is about 140 miles an hour, rushing towards the ground when he suddenly pulled out of the dive and took a steep left turn. The turn continued into a circle, with the left wing facing the ground, and the glider was at a right angle to the horizon. It felt totally crazy but great at the same time. After landing, the instructor told me that we were facing around 4.5Gs during that crazy maneuver.

This was all in an army base, I managed to get quite a few good photographs of the place and the gliding and the great sunset. I had a wonderful experience, I’m already looking forward to the next gliding trip.

I’m feeling tired now so I’ll upload the photographs tomorrow.

UPDATE – I have uploaded the photographs and you can view them here.

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We had tryouts for the football team today. And for the tryouts, the put us all into teams and we played matches. And to be perfectly, I had never played so much football continuously all my life. I played from approximately 2 hours which drained our every single molecule of energy from my body. And the worst part was that I wasnt even that good at the game, I barely managed to play satisfactorily. And the game was also quite intense and serious while I was looking for something more casual and fun. After the 2 hours, I decided that I cant play such dedicated football and should probably try out the other sports or just play some casual football here and there.

We didnt do much today, time flew by without us realizing it. I organized my timetables for the lectures and classes on Google Calender along with SMS alerts, which is pretty useful. We only have about 7 hours of lectures the coming week, and the week after that will have classes too which will make a fuller timetable. I also took my 1000th photograph with the new camera yesterday, and it is certainly a pleasure to take photos with the camera.

The internet speed here is mind boggling fast and I’ve been watching several videos on YouTube over the past few days. We had our Freshers Fair yesterday, I only joined a couple of clubs for the time-being but I can join several more online throughout the year depending on my mood.  More updates of life here and photographs coming soon!

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