IPL Cricket – A Production, kind of like broadway

Thanks to my husband as I had mentioned in my earlier post, we have IPL Cricket subscribed in our home. It is not a sport I tell you. It is a major production.

• Bollywood/Kollywood mascot/ambassadors for each team
• Celebrities and big corporations owning the teams
• Skimpily clad Redskins cheerleaders (They are fully clothed in matches held in Chennai.. Whatever!!)
• Musicians like Hariharan, Shivmani performing for the audience
• Bollywood music over the breaks
• Bollywood actors doing stunts during the breaks
• Strobe lights
• Players from all over the world playing for Chennai, Mumbai, Jaipur, Hyderabad etc.
• And oh yeah, I forgot,  20 overs of cricket

It is a production indeed! My belief that cricket matches are fixed is getting stronger by the day due to these productions!

But one thing, I have to agree is, some of the matches are thrilling and worth watching when comparted to the lousy movies that are shown in the TV.

Update:

Today’s Harbhajan slapping Sreesanth incident proved all my points true. It is a broaday production only!!

Riddle-me-Ree, Who can she be?

 

Greetings wonderful MTBs!!!

and good work to all of you!

For having solved the riddle before

I give you all this clue.

 

The letter ” R “

 

Write it down, add it on…

And let’s move on to the next little song.

 

“The fruits of her labour

Blessing and a boon

The peapods swing to the music

And she dances to their tune

She plays a fair game

Klutz is her middle name”

 

Solve it and you get your lead

Misguess, and you lose your speed

Solve it slow but solve it now

And before you go, take a little bow

 

Go to ‘Comments’ and leave me a clue

Tell me which blog you are off to.

Good luck! Good luck! Be on your way.

You have your work, cut out for the day! 

 

Cricket and me

When I was in high school, I used to take off from school to watch cricket and my parents were ok with it.(Yes! We are a crazy family). Once I moved on from home to work, I slowly lost interest. Once, the match fixing scandal broke, I totally lost interest. My husband is still crazy, he used to go and watch cricket matches overnight on a weekday. He would watch cricket in stranger’s house, cousin’s house. He had no shame. And finally he bought the dish services last year and started subscribing for cricket matches much to my annoyance. He subscribed for the IPL cricket matches recently. I made so much fun about it. How can someone pay and watch a cricket match between Chennai vs Hyderabad?  I was totally not interested. So I thought until I saw the Chennai vs Mumbai match today. Though I thought I was not interested, the name Chennai super kings had some effect on my heart and I badly wanted them to win. And to top it all, the match was so close that my heart was in my throat during the last 2 overs of the match. Finally Chennai Super Kings won much to my relief! Looks like I still have a little cricket left in me though it is not the same as it was when I was in high school! To my defence, I still think it is all fixed and staged. But I cannot deny that it is good entertainment.

Sad plight of Tamil Nadu

Came across this video today. Pretty old interview. But relevant event today. Really felt sad for the state of Tamil Nadu!!

My dad was very moved seeing this video!!!

Cruise tips

Booking

• Booking in advance gets you the best staterooms and also it is cheaper
• Priceline has good deals, but if it is a large group, I feel comfortable calling the cruise line directly

Food

• Lot of vegetarian choices available
• There is an option of booking Indian vegetarian food for the formal dinners. Talk to your maitre’d on the first day about your food preference.
• Many soups have chicken/beef broth in them, so enquire if you are particular
• Need to book dinner time while making the reservation. Usually they have time slots like 6, 6:30, 7, 7:30. So please pick the one that works for the entire gang.
• For dinner if you are going as couple, you have the option of booking your own table or booking it along with others. Table sizes Small, Medium, Large

Kids/Children

• Kids have lot of activities, pools, camp, daycare, etc
• Daycare for infants cost about 6$ an hour. Not too bad

Weather

• It depends on the time of the year and where you go. Cruises from Florida are usually warmer than the ones from San Diego. We went during the first of March and it was quite cold and windy on the deck

SeaSickness

• Thankfully none of us got seasick
• We had one person in our group who was pregnant, we bought those seasickness/motion sickness band for her. It helped on the road trip, she didn’t need it on the ship
• Staterooms in lower levels and in the middle are more comfortable. Less sea-sickness

StateRooms

• They have staterooms with balcony. They get sold out pretty fast
• There are rooms that can accomodate 2,3,4 people in a room. The ones that can accomodate more than 2 people usually have pull out beds. Watch your head when they are pulled out. Many people from our group got pretty badly dinged

Immigration

• We had people from all our the world. The reason we chose Mexico was because they let US tourist visa holders with multiple entry US visa to travel without any additional visa