Australian Open 2007 Finals

Fedex retained Australian Open 2007 title beating Fernando Gonzalez by 7-6, 6-4, 6-4. It was not an easy game for Roger though he won in straight sets. It was only in 1980 last that Bjon Borg won a Grand Slam title without dropping a set.

Gonzalez has a natural backhand and a cool temper like Roger. Sneither does he have the ferocious eyes of Nadal nor does he have the overconfidence of many other players and yet his play doesn’t show any mercy to the opponent.

In the last set when the score was 2-2, Federer was playing the game more like an art and soon it dawned on him that it will take more than art to tame the Chilean. Federer starting running around the court and tried to return every ball which is very unlike him and when he did so, the difference between him and Gonzalez was more than evident: Gonzalez was outwitted on many crosscourt and near the net shots.

To me it seemed that Gonzalez had the most powerful serves amongst all the top 20 in this tournament. For Federer, whenever Gonazalez was serving, the best thing might have been to at least return the ball back to the court, which always gave Gonzalez a comfortable position to score his point on the following shot while Federer was still chasing it. One of the organizers ended up saying that it took the great Roger to stop such a good player like you (read Gonzalez) in the finals.

All said Federer is Federer: the unstoppable, unbeatable and so be it…

Lt. Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore

Yesterday, the chief guest in our EKOM was none other than Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore. He speaks in English very fluently and his enunciation was awesome. He quoted that the best thing in Army for a leader is to return back the men to their families safe! He served in Kashmir for 3 years and none of his 12 men were even injured at the completion of their term (a laudable task if one keeps in mind the grave condition in Kashmir).

I dug up more on Lt. Col. Rathore and this is what i found in wikipidea:
Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore (born January 29, 1970, Jaisalmer, Rajasthan, India) is an Indian shooter who won the first individual silver medal for the country in 2004 Summer Olympics. His event was the Men's Double Trap. In 2005 Commonwealth Shooting Championships in Melbourne, he was the member of the winning team in the double trap event. He won the gold in the individual and team events in Men's double trap at the 2005 Asian Clay Shooting championships at Bangkok. The gold in the individual event was the third consecutive one for Rathore at the annual events after the ones in 2003 and 2004, thus constituting a hat trick.
He is a Lt. Colonel in the Indian Army.
He won the Arjuna award in 2003-2004 for shooting and the Rajiv Gandhi Khel Ratna, the highest sporting honour of India, in 2004-2005.
He is a recipient of the Padma Shri, a civilian award from the Government of India, and the Ati Vishisht Seva Medal (AVSM), a gallantry award for service presented by the government. He is the first officer (from the Indian Army) below the rank of brigadier to be awarded the AVSM.

Of fogged flights and new year

I peacefully spent new year at home. It was a relaxing and rejuvenating trip back home. Incidentally, it was also that period of the year where one finds the city enveloped with fog almost every morning. Our flight from Delhi Airport was supposed to fly at 5:50 in the morning!!! I received an sms at around 2:00 a.m. informing us about the cancellation of flight due to fog. It took me around 30 minutes to reach the call center executive of the airline and i could peacefully reschedule my flight to next day same time. Next day, the flight was on time.

New year resolutions??? Hmmmmm...take life as it comes...

Happy New Year to you all...

Adios.