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WE MADE THE HIGHEST RECORD SCORE IN THE HISTORY OF CRICKET WORLD CUP! Read here

Following the World Cup?

I have been! And I can't WAIT to hear about today's match results. India better win against Bermuda! I mean come on. If this had been a couple of years ago, I wouldn't have doubted the Indian cricket team... but this year, with BANGLADESH beating them, with IRELAND beating Pakistan... ugh. They're newbies! Newbies don't win with 5 wickets and 100 runs! I think the only exceptional case would be those of the people from land downunder. Australia's gone bloody ballistic with the number of runs they're scoring... 287 being their lowest. So today better be good! For the Indian team's sake (atleast upon returning to their homecountry, where people have been breaking into houses and burning effigies of the players after their defeat against the Bangla people).

This post is also interesting. Its sure to raise hopes.

Wow, it's spring break again

I swear, time flies way faster than any of us want! It's spring break (again!) and I can't help but reminisce about my last in New Orleans with ten wonderful people. I just updated the blog with pictures and a "It's been a year now" post, so do visit.

Doing nothing out of the ordinary this break actually. Continuing my work, and return for classes the week after. I really wish I could have gone somewhere this spring break... like to New Orleans again or MExico to volunteer. But being my first quarter at work, I wanted to stick with them and might go next year. Bet this year will fly by too! Or so I hope, haha.

Ohhh, and happy St. Patty's day! We had a lovely day with family friends at a local pub and it was lots of fun with the Irish jig going on, green beer, mozzarella sticks and Pepsi (for us under-agers). To top it all off, some good drunken Irish songs on my WMP playlist (yep, good to have friends with a thing for Irish/celtic music). A few are kinda catchy and upbeat, others slow and romantic. So download and listen to them when you got the time. Hope the weekend's going well! Slainte!

• Devil's Dance Floor - Flogging Molly


• Rattlin' Bog - Authority Zero


• Danny Boy


• The Rising of the Moon


• Irish Party in the Third Class (from the Titanic movie)


• Lord of the Dance


• Too-Ra-Loo-Ra-Loo-Ral (An Irish Lullaby)


• When Irish Eyes are Smiling

Another stonker by Nicholas Sparks

I seriously cannot stand overtly mushy, crappy novels. Unless of course the "Oh my love! Te emo!" sounds genuine... And it's written by Nicholas Sparks. After what seems like ages, I picked up a Sparks novel that my mom got from the public library and I have to admit, I was hooked. The new book's called Dear John and it's worth a read if you liked The Notebook (click to read here how much I obsessed over the movie version), Message in a Bottle (read it in 8th or 9th grade and it was the first official book that brought me to tears; The Phantom of Manhattan followed suit), A Walk to Remember, and even Love Story by Eric Segal. Although always and always, the endings are heart-wrenching and so... larger than life, I can't stop but wonder whether they are just stories or something even close to real. I like to think the latter, because on a number of occasions people I know personally (or not so personally) have proved it so. Sparks's writing is so simple and easy to relate to, one HAS to end up falling in love with the characters in the book, hold onto every single word they say and smile at the tiniest gestures of affection.

When you gotta watch a movie, you gotta watch a movie

With just a couple of weeks left before I go back to the hellhole called school (just kidding), I've been taking full advantage of my free evenings by watching movies, going out and taking pictures of the early signs of spring and everything that falls under the category of being called "laid-back". Oh yeah baby. It's been a good life.

So movies. I've been watching movies too. Not a lot though, for obvious couch potato reasons. I watched a movie by Satyajit Ray named Pather Panchali and I swear to God, it was good but it left me feeling rather terrible. Then the next day I decided to watch Little Miss Sunshine. It is now officially, in my BEST movies list. You have to watch it! (Unless you're the movie buff who's laughing their ass off on what I loser I am to watch it after the OScars and all the hoo-ha) But only after watching Pather Panchali. Both touch something deep within your soul and I'm surprised to have watched such similar movies (similar emotional intent) one after the other.

Funny thing... this diplomacy

I recently read an article in the NY Times that referred to the United State government's new policy of having talks with the "axis of evil" a.k.a Iran, Syria and North Korea. The first time (which was years ago) I heard of the US government's foreign policy of isolating the countries that did not comply with the whims and wishes of the US... it surprised me at first. Then the surprise turned to disbelief and then to anger and now, I simply shake my head and prefer not to go off on how pre-school'ish that decision was.

When we were young, we form clubs and people who don't agree with the club's rules are ignored and not a word is heard from them. Reason? Ha. Everything was about them rules, and there was nothing. As we grow older, great wisdom dawns on us and we think how immature we were then. You don't ignore your problems! You face them and try to reason out the best-possible solutions, even if it meant not having all the parties involved completely satisfied. Not everyone got their way all the time! Now to see the government behaving in that immature fashion makes all the behavior analysts very happy I'm sure. Toddler = immature. Teen = partial maturity. 20's+30's = mature. 40 plus = immature. Case closed. Simple. That's how the whole issue struck me as. Is that even remotely diplomatic? You put your hands over your ears and refuse to hear anything until the other country bends to your wishes?

Uhm. No. It's not rocket science to figure that out. The government now says it's opening up. C'mon. Who are we kidding here? They'll have the regular talks of oil prices, stocks, money, nuclear arms, yada yada. The government will put on it's Nosy hat and feed the press with information that is probably irrelevant, while cooking up something in the background. It's the same ol' story. Just the way they dealt with Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq earlier. But now they say, it's a "diplomatic initiative". Haven't we heard that before!

Let's say I'm interested how these diplomatic talks will turn out. After years of being isolated, I doubt one would welcome talks with open arms. Also would one go out there to please another, to an extent that it turns to servitude? Or even bend their backs to abide by the selfish policies of some country that claims openly to know the difference between good and evil? Like it was quoted in the NY Times article: "Successful diplomacy requires very careful preparation and very extensive follow-through."

I hope for once, people are good at keeping to their word and take a step in a mature manner after listening to all the intelligence.