Stoner wins the Laguna Seca US Grand Prix

The young pretender is all set to be the King. Casey Stoner dominated the US Grand Prix taking his form from qualifying to record his 6th Moto GP win of the season increasing his championship lead over Valentino Rossi from 34 to 44 points.

Dani Pedrosa and Nicky Hayden of Repsol Honda and John Hopkins of Suzuki overtook Stoner on the 1st corner but Hayden and Hopkins ran wide and collided while trying to cut back in, sending Hopkins out of the race and losing Hayden valuable time and retired with 10 laps remaining while Hopkins eventually finished 15th.

Chris Vermeulen on a Suzuki who shared the front row with Stoner, stuck his Suzuki down the track and finished 2nd on the podium [And being rewarded for the same by the 2008 contract with Suzuki]. Rossi ran 4th in the early stages was passed on by Marco Melandri, who turned in his best ride of the season just 24 hours after his crash during qualifying to finish 3rd, who in turn signed in with Ducati to ride with Stoner for 2008-09.

Rossi finished 4th followed by Pedrosa, the last GP race winner finishing 5th with Roger Lee Hayden [Nicky’s brother] on a Kawasaki finishing 10th on his MotoGP debut.

European GP: Alonso has the last laugh

Alonso, thanks to the rain God, took full advantage of a late rain shower to oust Felipe Massa and claim his third victory of the season. The race was action packed and full of extraordinary scenes at the early stage of the race when six drivers - including Hamilton, whose World Championship lead has been cut to a paltry two points - crashed out within thirty seconds when the Nurburgring was hit by a virtual monsoon. Incredibly, the race then re-started twenty minutes later in near perfect conditions before a late shower produced a final twist and enabled Alonso to pass Massa with the McLaren and Ferrari cars banging wheels.

It was a memorable race for Markus Winkelhock the local hero in his first race as he took the pole positon on restart because Spyker had taken a remarkable gamble and started him on intermediate tyres. He was overtaken by Massa, Alonso & Co., and eventually retired ‘cuz of his Spyker Ferrari engine giving away.

Kimi’s bad luck continued as he was forced to retire from a certain podium position on track, as his Ferrari engine gave him problems by intermittently cutting out. Kimi crawled back to the pits on Lap 35 and finally coming to rest at the side of the pitlane.

Mark Webber [Red Bull] finished third in a thrilling finish as he lost control going into the Schumacher-S on the final lap of the race, under extreme pressure from Alex Wurz. He just about managed to get it back together again and scrambled through the final corner with Wurz on his gearbox to receive an ecstatic welcome from his mechanics on the pitwall.

Overall it was an extraordinary race with good fortune and bad fortune for many of the front runners [only 13 out of the 22 finally could finish the race], but finally Fernando Alonso had got some good fortune and should be thanking the rain Gods for it, for if the 2nd rain showers would have taken another 20 odd mins to hit the tarmac, it would have been another story with Massa thanking them for the delay.

Going forward to the next race at Hungry on 5th August, Ferrari will have their work cut out as summed up nicely by Kimi in the post race interview “We have a very competitive car but clearly we have to improve on the reliability front."

Dani Pedrosa dominates Sachsenring MotoGP Deutschland

Dani Pedrosa finally earned a long deserving victory for Honda in 2007. Pedrosa had fantastic start from second place on the grid, leading throughout the race, maintaining a quick pace that proved too high for competitors to catch and finishing the race ~13 seconds ahead of Loris Capirossi, the old warrior on a Ducati who rode at a steady pace to finish second on the podium. Nicky Hayden, who took the third podium spot, making great comeback from 14th on the grid, completed HRC Repsol Honda success.
 
Colin Edwards provided some consolation to Yamaha finishing 4th after making a comeback from a distant 13th grid position as the more prolific Rossi crashed in lap 5, while trying to overtake Randy de Puniet for 6th place. Rossi will be under tremendous pressure as the MotoGP moves to Laguna Seca, where Rossi does not have a history of great results in the past.

Casey Stoner missed chance to make maximum of Valentino Rossi retirement as he finished race in 5th place, extending championship lead to 32 points followed by Marco Melandri, who looked strong in first part of the race.

Luncheon at the Oriental Octopus

I thank Rajiv Bhai for the great luncheon at the Oriental Octopus at Savoy Suites, NOIDA. The restaurant offers cuisine from eight different countries. (The original Octopus at Habitat World is an IHC `members only' restaurant.)

Oriental Octopus, Noida was the Runner-up in the BEST MULTI-CUISINE RESTAURANT Category, The Today Golden Plate Awards 2005 and you know why, as you enter the Octopus. The relaxed ambience, notes of Jazz and hues of purple décor comfort you and emboss upon you a sense of expectancy, of a memorable dining experience.

The crispy fried noodles served as snack along with the drinks was great and the Khao Soi- A Burmese/Myanmar and Northern Thai chicken noodle curry was a pleasant surprise. As recommended by Rajiv Bhai, we went in for the legendary Burmese curry with wheat noodles and a whole host of accompaniments. It was a gastronomic delight. The fragrant fusion of barbecue, garlic, sugar, chillies, lime, seasonings and peanuts stir your taste buds and senses. The food was rich yet subtle.

Do try out the Satay from Indonesia, the Singapore Chilli Crab, Thai Tofu in chilli, garlic and basil.

If in NOIDA do visit and savor the culinary delights.

Thanks a lot Rajiv Bhai and I do owe you the Baskin-Robbins Ice-cream that we missed out while rushing back.

Use Your Illusions

Life is an illusion...
.... a mere kaleidoscope
Life is a myth and so is reality
I'm real...the world hypocrite
Dreams all but hallucinations
Thousand baboons sucking blood;
Evil Devils conjugating in hoods...
In the pale moonlight, like an old worn out holophote bright
Reproducing parasites- the law of nature stands.

Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer (2007)

Went for a luncheon and later ended up watching this flick, and family enjoyed it. Much better than part-I, this one has a tight storyline starting with Silver Surfer crashing Reed & Sue's wedding and to wreak havoc across the globe, leading to its ultimate destruction by Galactus, dramatic return of Dr. Doom and finally the F4 with help from Silver Surfer saving the earth.
Dr. Doom is a hit-and-miss as the silver surfer enjoys most of the focus. There is good humor provided by Johnny Storm and The Thing. The Galactus-side of the story seems interesting but probably needed more exploration.
The SFX are much improved and much improved storyline make the movie enjoyable, specially to watch with kids.

Our Digital Life

The digital revolution is all around us. Day by day we are storing more and more information in the digital format. Today everyone has tons of photos, home movies, DVDs, documents, music and face the same issue - what is the easiest way to manage all this media and make the most out of every bit of your digital life.

The answer which could almost satisfy you is Apple’s iLife software suite which comes bundled with every Mac. The software suite consists of iPhoto, iMovie HD, iDVD, GarageBand, iWeb and iTunes, to collect, organize and edit the various media elements, transform them and share in form of slideshows, movies with various format support (bluetooth, webstreaming, HD, Quicktime, iPod), books, colorful calendars, hollywood style DVDs, podcasts, and attractive online journals.

The Mac with all these goodies (really cool software tools) is a great experience, as it automatically invokes the relevant tool required the moment you connect your digital camera, hanycam/video camera, digital media player, or aux. line in. No installation of extra software or drivers etc. required (typically you will need all that in a Windows setup). Plus, no hassles of virus or worms as Mac OS X is quite stable and secure, 64-bit UNIX based.
The icing on the cake is that all new Intel Macs can dual boot Windows XP through Apple’s Boot Camp Utility and the cherry on the icing is the full-screen Front Row media experience — with its intuitive menus, large text and brilliant graphics — lets you browse the music, photos, and videos on your Mac with the Apple remote shipped free with your Mac.