Corporate America, cricket, movies among others

It's been a while since I posted my previous blog. I haven't mentioned this before, I am currently doing an internship with General Electric Fanuc Automation, in Charlottesville, Virginia. I started out on 23rd May, 2005 and will work with GE until the last week of August. Incidently, Charlottesville was recently voted as the best place to live in America, by Frommer. To read more about this click here. For reasons which I won't divulge, I contest this claim. On the work front, things have been good. I spent the first 3 weeks updating the UL files for various GE Fanuc products. Underwriters' Laboratory (UL) certification is needed for GE products before they can be released in the market for which the files for the products have to be updated with information about every component in the product along with the component number, component rating and the vendor name. These files had not been updated by GE for more than 4 years now, as a result of which a lot of changes had to be made on them. I would be lying if I said that I enjoyed the work as it was fricking monotonous. However, last week I was informed that I would be working on developing a software for GE for which I have started reading up on Visual Basic 6.0. This programming language is similar to C programming, and I am having a good time learning it up.
On the 8th of June, I bought a Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop. It's a pretty sweet l'll thing, with 1.5GHz Pentium processor, 512MB DDR RAM, 60GB hard disk space, CD and DVD R/W capability. I got a free color printer with this laptop, though I haven't opened the box containing the printer yet, and don't see myself doing so in a while !! As luck would have it, had I waited for a couple of weeks, I would have got the same model for a couple of hundred bucks less.
I feel empowered with a laptop as now I have something to keep me busy in this small town.

Last weekend, I visited New Jersey for the second time in less than a month. This visit was a pure accidental one. A fellow co-op at GE was driving down to NJ to visit his family and I took this as a good opportunity to make a social trip to one of my relative's place which I hadn't visited in a while. The best thing to come out from this trip (apart for the delicious food ofcourse) was that I watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith. The movie was pretty good, however, it din't quite live up to its hype. Cinematography and execution of action sequences were top notch and so was the acting of the lead star casts, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. This pair seem to be making waves in real and reel life. I finally managed to catch up with Ocean's Twelve last night on a DVD from Blockbuster. Movie was good but wasn't any match for its prequel.

The week gone by was a stange one in sports. On the cricket field, Australia suffered 4 consecutive defeats in a week. Ponting laughed off his side's 100 run defeat at the hands of England in the 20-20 fixure, was "embarrassed" and "frustrated" by his team's inability to defend 342 runs in 50 overs against a modest Somerset batting line up. However, no one was prepared for the epochal victory the minnows Bangladesh pulled off against triple world champions Australia at Bristol. For sometime now, critics have been baying for Bangladesh to be stripped off their test status but in the wake of this giant killing act, they might be eating their words. This defeat left the aussies red-faced like never before and the poms revelled in it like never before. In less than 24 hrs of suffering on of the biggest upsets in history of one-day cricket, Australia blew hot and cold before getting Pietersened as they lost the ODI to england by 3 wickets. Every non-australian cricket supporter seemed to have enjoyed seeing aussies get pummeled to submission over the last week. From the look of things, this Australian team seems to be on a decline and age might just be catching up with one of the best teams to have ever walked on the cricket field. All this talk might be premature, but from what we saw this week, things don't bode too well for the kangaroos in the upcoming ashes. Not that anyone is complaining though, because most of the people have for sometime now got tired of aussies trampling over all their opponents. A special mention for that man Kevin Pietersen. From time he bust into the scene against South Africa last winter, he has been on a roll scoring centuries at will. He ability to win matches from hopeless situations with his big powerful hitting might just be a short in the arm for england as they attempt to bring the ashes home after 8 futile attempt.

The US grand prix. this weekend, was embroiled in controversy as 7 out of the 10 teams using Michilen tires pulled out before the race leaving only 6 drivers to compete. Michael Schumacher won one of the most farcial "race" in the history of F1 and catapulted himself and his team in contention for the driver's and constructor's championship. For the record, Indian star Narain Karthikeyan finished at a career high 4th position. This race has left a bad taste in the mouth of the fans and the race's future in America is being speculated by critics.

I still haven't uploaded the blog about my trip to New york last month, but I promise it will be up very soon with the pictures..So long ....
P.S: The controvesy regarding Advani's comments on Jinnah during his Pakistan trip came to a predictable end with his withdrawing his resignation from BJP. Now, how many of us din't expect this.. Things people do to stay in the news.. phew