Indian Cricket team sense a historic victory in SA

After taking the lead in the MTN ODI series , the Indian's have got their tails up and are riding the wave of momentum. Considering the kind of tracks we have got on the tour so far the next two will be no exception to the bounce, Morkel, Styen & co. Will the South African pace battery stop the raging bull in the last two matches or will this Indian team create history and walk away with the fist ever series win in South Africa. The stage is set for a cracking weekend which will showcase the biggest battle between the top cricketing nations. Will the Indian's be able to exhume the ghosts of their previous overseas excursions or will the Proteas manage to get past the tag of being "Chokers" ?  What do you think ? Vote on the debugging live cricketing poll and let us know your views

Power of Excel

The moment I log in to the office, the first things I need is an Excel spreadsheet. Whether it is getting the result of some calculations or providing a quick summary to my manager, excel has been doing it for me since the time I first stepped into office to start my professional career. This is not only my story but of millions of people around the world. MS Excel is the one of the most widely used software in the world, when it comes to the calculations or generating a summarized report. The first version of Excel was released for the Mac in 1985 and the first Windows version (numbered 2.0 to line-up with the Mac and bundled with a run-time Windows environment) was released in November 1987.

The Excel 2007 version which we are using these days supports much more data than its earlier versions. It has more than 1 millions rows & 16000+ columns. Excel 2007 also supports multicore processor platforms for faster calculation of formula-intense spreadsheets. Major benefits of this version include professional & better looking charts, much enhanced support to filters & tables. One change in this version which has left me speechless is the way we can utilize the feature of conditional formatting. Not only it shows the trends with the help of the traffic lights but can also show you in cell chart with the help of data bars. PivtotTables help me find answers to questions quickly, easily and responsively. I can drag and drop fields to make change the table's view.

Here are some of the things which I utilize for my work every day.

Turning 30 !! A journey into sheer madness

After a long day at work , i was coaxed by my sister into watching the new flick on the cinema screens. My wife's approval of the movie sealed my fate and we boxed into our car to be in time for the opening scene. There was a whiff of anticipation about the movie in the hall but my hopes of surviving this ordeal came crashing down with the opening scene. A sobbing woman who has lost both her love and job screams through the screen and sets the trend for the remainder of the movie. In between there are scenes of her floundering advertising career and her friends trying various things ( including a mindless shopping trip and a bachlerotte party ) to keep her mind occupied. Unfortunately all this drives the poor viewers ( us ) to the brink of madness. By the time the pacy ( oh i meant "racy" ) movie stumbles to the half way mark my cosy bed is reminiscent of a distant dream. To complete the torture the second half introduces "Nothing Different". More wine bottles are downed , cigarettes are stubbed and abuses are hurled. There is the customary gay couple thrown in to fill the obvious void that would have existed incase of their absence( pun intended ). As the end draws near , a sense of relief is felt across the hall. The makers of this disaster need to get a reality check ; Turning 30 is as good as turning 20,40 or 50. It is not a mark beyond which the dreams of our lives come crashing down.

I think directors of today are loosing the plot thick and fast. How can they think that sleaze can make the cash registers ringing ? C'mon , even Malika Sherawat's nude body could not bring any fizz in her last flick , Hssssssssss. The audience has grown up and will only reward movies which bring some entertainment value worth their buck. And as they say , for everything else there is the "Internet" :)

Airbus gets a $ 16 Billion New Year Gift from Indigo... India has not just arrived , Its flown onto the stage in style !!

India has created ripples in the Commercial Aviation Industry as Indigo awarded a deal to Airbus to buy 180 jets for its fleet. The order is being billed as " the largest single firm order number for large jets in commercial aviation history" and will definitely give its rival Boeing sleepless nights. Indigo plans to use these fuel efficient jets to cater to the growing aviation market in booming India.

Brushing away all the corruption , scams galore , poverty , lack of education and even lack of governance , i think India has time and again in the last couple of year announced to the world that it is no longer a nation of snake charmers. It is the centre of economic growth and not a bus to be missed. I think our generation is the sunshine generation and we are very luck to watch a nation being turned into a super power. We are where Japan was in 1960's & 70's and China early 90's when their economies just took off at an exponential rate. While there are sceptics who think that the growth in India is not inclusive but is restricted to only the privileged few , I think the notion is incorrect. Taking a few basic examples like the mobile penetration in India is one of the largest in the world with the current subscriber base at 660 million and rising , India being the fastest growing car market in the world in the last year. Closer home during a recent visit to my village in UP , i was surprised to see a shopping mart called "Hariyali" catering to the farmers needs and getting to watch a cricket match in the wee hours of the morning without having to switch on the genset was unexpectedly pleasant. I will not even mention a plethora of reverse mergers where Indian companies have taken over global giants in the past couple of years , as that would be termed as growth being driven by the "privileged few". Sure we have a lot of problems that still need to be overcome , but then a crown of roses comes with its fair share of thorns. While i do respect our nations media for having the ability to "bring out" a scam a day but i do sit back and wait for a day when a person from media is brought to task for any wrong doings. Sure Ratan Tata , Radia , Raja are now house hold names but i wonder why the initial noise around Barkha Dutt & Vir Sanghvi died down so quickly. Are power brokers exempted for all wrong doings if they are from the media ?

I think we should look past the media headlines and see our nation emerge into a super power. I think we should take pride in the fact that a Gurgaon based company has suddenly become the largest customer of aircraft's in the world. I think we should see that in less than a century we have moved from a nation where its citizens were not able to travel first class in locomotives to a country which has the largest railway network in the world. I think we should all stand up and tell the soldier who is braving the nature and the enemy , that he is protecting a nation of proud Indians and not just sceptics. We owe it to him and to the countless freedom fighters who gave up their lives selflessly for a dream. A dream that our generation has the opportunity to turn into a reality. I am a proud Indian and i choose to look at the bright side. Do you ?

Ganguly "Schemed" out !!

As the man who has grabbed the media attention in the past couple of days comes to term with the stark reality of being "unwanted", lets take a step back and think what has happened. Here is a situation where the nation led by the media is crying its heart out and terming the day as "Black Sunday" , while blaming the franchisees for working out a backroom agreement to leave the Prince of Bengal out of contention. Whilst it is an unfortunate situation to find an Icon player from the first season finding himself out of flavour we should remember that for the franchisees it is a business proposition and they seem to have favoured youth over the famed southpaws like Chris Gayle, Brian Lara , Sanath Jaysuria and Saurav Ganguly. Only time would tell if the decision made by the franchisee owners vindicates their stand or comes back to haunt them. Either way they have put the stake in the ground (while making quite a lot of our Indian players millionaires) and setup the teams that will be a part of the carnival in April. Ganguly has been offered a role in the capacity of a mentor by KKR but it seems unlikely that "Dada" would settle for the crumbs. In all this mayhem one needs to remember that Ganguly was the top scorer for KKR in the last season , a fact that would have made him confident of pulling off the $ 400,000 tab. As a fan of "Dadagiri" i hoped for a more ceremonial send off for a true legend but i still think that all the hue and cry about him not being sold during the auction is unwanted.

Chai Chai.... Chai..... Your favourite chai wala

Tea is undoubtedly the singular most consumed beverage in CSC . Having said that, it is not surprising that there are a lot of micro-entrepreneurs who thrive on the business of vending tea outside CSC. It is not far-fetched to say that these chai-walas, as they are fondly called, are a part of a million strong workgroup that can be found in every nook and corner of the country—from busy urban street corners to remote villages, at bus stands, railway platforms, footpaths, outside corporate houses, marketplaces, and many more such places. Ever wondered what are the business dynamics that seperate these micro-entrepreneurs from one another ? Is it the quality of the tea leaves , the milk , the "mystic" ingredient or the "perfect" combination ? What ever the reason we all have our favourite that we swear by. Lets run a popularity poll between two stalwarts in this "Industry" and see who has a better fan following...

Also visit our latest blog post about the much hyped IPL Auction http://debugginglive.blogspot.com/2011/01/ganguly-schemed-out.html