Long time no post... but lots of rain and some gardening !

It is more than a week since I posted something and all that has happened in the meantime is rain.. Lots of it... Saw "Matrix Reloaded" last Wednesday, a day before the official release. No. Not on bootleg copys downloaded off Kazaa, but at the premeire show at Movies 10 at Nelsonville. More about it on another post soon. I got lots to say about the movie. Positive things though.... Yeah.. about the rain now......

It all started with the International Street Fair on Saturday. Warm weather and then a light drizzle that continued through the day, effectively ruining one of the standout events in an international student's calendar here at OU. After doing next to nothing last year, I decided to volunteer for some stuff and started handing out the pamphlets advertising our stall. I had thought that it being just a drizzle, just my cap would suffice, but apparently I was wrong. In no time, I was drenched. As I am bound to do, I did finish handing out all the pamphlets and then took my place near the stall, standing in the middle of the cordoned-off Court Street to invite passers-by to take a look at our stall and sample the tasty Indian foodstuffs and the henna. Btw, henna was advertised as Herbal Tattoo, which I think is too cliched even for the standard American student who troops in for a better look. So next year, better term! By the time everything ended at 5:00 pm, I was too wet to come to the lab and tell you what happened. So went home and called it a day, of course after a meal of rice chilupas and Pepsi at the ubiquitous Taco Bell at Court Street. One femme fatale was with me through the day and I think the potent combo of wet hair and the cold Pepsi perhaps gave her this bad cold that has lasted over this week. That is another lesson for you all. Rain with all the wetness does not go too well with a cold Pepsi...

Sunday dawned and all day the sky threatened to break down into a sweat. So much that our expedition to survey the new OUCC ground was done with much trepidation. The ground adjoins the campus driving range and is really picturesque. We got there at four and as much as we tried, the lawn mower that we borrowed from a well-wisher refused to start. The non-OUCC member who accompanied us tried all his engineering ingenuity, but he was unable to do anything concrete till yours truly put his thinking cap on (which had been placed at another spot to mark one end of the pitch). But credit is due to him for the prompt application of whatever advice that yours truly had to give him. Finally after an hour, the machine was up and running and the area intended for the pitch was finally marked (by slightly lesser grass and weeds) against the surrounding undergrowth.

Sunny Monday dawned and after an uneventful day at the 292 lab, we made our way across to the ground where some more gardening needed to be done before the pitch looked anything like a pitch. We had borrowed a tiller this time from the Campus Facilities department and we proceeded to till the pitch area and then used a shovel to remove the darned weeds and grass off the area. We marked the pitch area and decided that only a half pitch was going to be possible with the limited manpower and other resources at hand. One good news was that the facilities department had taken responsibility of mowing the whole ground (other than the pitch area) for us. So the West State Street ground would finally look like the Cummins ground at Columbus (Indiana) rather than the GE ground at Cincinnati where the OUCC has played some memorable matches over the last couple of seasons. I think it is worth mentioning here that yours truly made his OUCC batting debut as opener in the Cummins ground with a chancy and yet well made 22 out of a total of 120 odd, a performance that parallels his debut for the Master Blasters back in 1997 at the SCE-A ground, which was actually as a first change bowler bowling military medium, returning a three wicket haul at a miserly average over a full spell of 4 overs, bowled on the trot.

Rain came back to Athens on Tuesday. But this was perhaps a boon because work at the West State Street ground progressed beyond expectations and the pitch is ready for leveling and the other activities. It is also worth mentioning that the ground perhaps lost a chance to rival Canterbury albeit in a more dubious manner when a strong root was found snaking down right in the middle of the pitch. The root was defaced after considerable discussions to let it grow, which would have made the ground the only cricket ground in the world to have a tree right in the middle of the pitch. I wished we let it grow because if Canterbury can have a tree inside the boundary and carp about it, why cannot we have one in the middle of a pitch.. Beats me!!!

Today was D-Day. It is sunny now. But Facilities have not gotten hold of the soil that they promised to give us. So today's work had to be put off to tomorrow. Tomorrow, we shall put some new soil on the pitch area and level it using the pneumatic leveller that the Facilities guys are giving us.

And just now I noticed (from the traffic reports of my blog, courtesy Bravenet) that this blog has been featured at this week's Bharateeya Blog Mela. Thanks Kingsley!!!! And thanks to all you guys who read this blog daily (or am I thinking too much of myself and this blog). My only request to all you readers, is to just leave a message on the ZonkBoard on the right whenever you are here, so that I dont have rely on the traffic reports to guess who read this blog and from where..

Note: This is solely my blog and intended, among other purposes, to boost my ego. And though I do question the veracity of Badri's (albeit unspoken) claim that he is the originator of Cogito Ergo Sum (as mentioned in one previous post), I whole heartedly agree with the phrase. May Monsieur Descartes rest in peace.

QOTD: "The future belongs to those who prepare for it today." - Malcolm X