Ever been to a cricket stadium?

Mumbai Indians vs Kolkatta Knight Riders! The IPL marketing machine successfully sucked me into its cricket maelstorm and this was a match-up that finally brought me into a cricket stadium for the first time in my life!
Maelstorm it was definitely..with Wankhede Stadium as the vortex this time, and just my luck - its probably the last stadium you want to be a spectator in.
The in/out queues were crazy....the stadium was definitely overcrowded...and me and wifey promised ourselves that we'd never ever come to Wankhede again.Here's some of the things you should know if you're planning to be brave:
-If the match starts at 8, plan to reach the stadium by 6:30 because you should expect a queue and no one follows seat numbering, so you wont get the best seats if you reach late.
-You can probably sneak in a couple of sandwiches and a pint of mineral water in your shirt/jeans, but dont carry any bags
-Once you're seated, forget going to the restroom or going out for snacks - unless you dont mind negotiating local train kind of crowds.
-Wankhede has this stupid system of selling water in small plastic bags with a straw! each bag is 40 bucks (yes-40) and god knows where they fill the water from. I think its an organised ripoff, since they dont allow you to carry your own water inside.
-You can get an icecream bar for 40 bucks too...
-carry a radio if possible, since you probably wont be able to make out who got out and who came in to bat!
-There are NO FANS in Wankhede. Who the heck was the designer of this place? There is zero ventilation, and Wankhede probably owns the record for most calories burned by a crowd in fanning themselves.
All said and done, Wankhede is a sorry place to be in, and I hope they demolish it and rebuild it.
Obviously there are advantages to watching a match at home or at a sports bar, but there are some things only a stadium can give you...
- All the warm-up stuff before the match and in the breaks isnt shown on TV, so if watching some hunks in half pants is your thing, you'll love it
- The Mexican wave thingy is cool...ifyou start one..you'll love watching it ripple around the stands and coming back - we must have done some 5-6 continuous ones!
- The music and chanting in the stadiums is relentless and really funny!

I hope to watch a match in a good stadium one day..maybe in Australia.
But No Wankhede for me!

Dominos Pizza Again!

surprise surprise!
Someone at Dominos Pizza is actually generating reports on who usually orders what!
Today I got a mailer from them giving me discounts for the particular pizza that I usually order!
Now thats what I'd call using technology to drive sales!
Taking it further, wouldnt it be nice if they studied my ordering patterns and called me just when I was contemplating calling them.....?
Or would it be scary having someone predict your gastronomical urges?

Of Managers and Wives..

Its been a tough fortnight at work!! A few resignations, a few nasty customer issues, some idiotic internal processes and soon you begin to wonder about that annual holiday! Being a manager has its advantages (i'm still looking for them), but i'm pretty sure that the transition from individual contributor to manager is actually a jump across a wide bottomless pit...a pit that throws up all those twists and turns which suck you into the bottomless hole....
Well I guess I was more dramatic that I intended to be....but what the heck...it IS the toughest thing.....this move..
In other developments, I am close to being married for 5 years now...and I took a moment to pause and reflect on those years.Some things that came to mind....which I think I can generalize..
a) A wife always has multiple points-of-views , never a single point-of-view. Thats the secret of their versatility. We men are too engrossed in trying to be 'consistent'.
b) All storms are weathered successfully only if respect for each other is maintained.
c) There really is a genetic link between a TV remote and us men...and the rivalry between the remote and your wife is a pre-historic ingrained behaviour that you should not attempt to change/challenge.
d) oh well..i could only think of these in the pause i took...
Come to think of it....managing your team and your wife has some similarities...
you got to make sure there are enough goodies flowing in...they need an upgrade every year...couple of serious arguments and they might leave you...and if you get a new member in the team , you lose sleep worrying about whether they will all get along!!