Writing to Good Fortune

Recently I heard of the autobiography of the English cricketer Kevin Pietersen. It came as a surprise to me as Pietersen has been around the world cricketing fraternity for just few years now. A bit of searching in Amazon reveals that most English cricketers have authored a book or two. From Mike Atherton and Graham Thorpe to Andrew Strauss and Freddie Flintoff, all of them have books in their names. I can understand that there would be interesting aspects and lessons to be learnt from the lives of experienced people, but why are youngsters jumping in so early to tell the world about whatever little that they have experienced? An answer seems to lie at the money to be made in the biography books market. To take an example, Monty Panesar, the relatively new spinner in the English side, has got a deal of more than 300,000 pounds for his autobiography. I am not sure as to how much these guys make by playing cricket, but the money from writing is definitely something substantial to grab.

Moving away from cricket, the other autobiography that's making news these days is the one by the Pakistani president. I checked the price of the book in a book store and decided that there are many worth while things that I can do with that sum. Well, with the amount of money involved, the book is already going to make its Urdu debut

If only someone promises me a decent amount for my life's story, I might as well jump into the pool

The Afghan - Book Review

"Disappointing" would be the right word. The book isn't too bad, but it just couldn't live up to my expectations. The usual twists to the tale in Frederick Forsyth’s novels are missing and the novel has a straight forward and dreary story line. The elongated descriptions on current world scenarios could have also been reduced.
The storyline is about infiltrating the Al Qaeda (blow me down! Microsoft word recognizes this word and does not through a spelling error!) by faking a British ex-soldier to be an Afghan, and thereby spoiling a major terrorist plan. I don’t intend to give off the whole story, but then, there isn’t much anyways to say. There is something about the base of the storyline that is troubling me. The hero’s mom is the daughter of a Brit and an India, and the hero is brought-up in Iran. How could this make him passable for an Afghan? I don’t think Afghans look like Indians.
I have argued with few persons on the greatness of Frederick Forsyth’s style. I am regretful in accepting that I am one down on the argument.

Optimistic Pessimist

I guess it has been sometime since I wrote anything about my life. On the professional front, there hasn’t been much of a thing happening. The project that I was involved in got over and I'm experiencing a lull before the storm. But I guess I would prefer the storm to the lull. I have wasted a week doing nothing much except few odd jobs, utilizing the table tennis facility in office, and letting the idle mind play devil's workshop.

I believe that I was pessimistic last week. Or wasn't I? Since it is my belief that I was pessimistic, I should have been a pessimist. Or does my optimism on my pessimism make me an optimist? Whatever, I am now in the process of getting my mind back on track. I am true believer of positive thoughts providing positive results. Or atleast that’s my self perception (Isn’t “self-perception” an oxymoron?)

By the way, I celebrated a "Birthday vaaram" (Birthday week). As it happens, my Tamil and English calendar birthdays fell on the same week, but there was some confusion prevailing over the exact English date of my Tamil birthday! As a true consultant I chose the option that yielded the best result..... best result for me ofcourse. I chose to have my birthday celebrated on 3 days (albeit Mom had confirmed the exact Tamil b'day date).

I received an enormous number of birthday wishes in orkut. Though the pessimistic part of me keeps pointing to the hours I spent replying to each and every wish that I received, the optimist in me says that I should be happy about having so many friends