Brazilian Players in EPL

Some time back, Big V and I were debating the usual La Liga and EPL strengths and weaknesses. And then Big V said that EPL has not much class because EPL consists mostly of European players who are very physical and do not play "Beautiful Football" like South American Players.
I totally agree to the fact that few years back not much SouthAmericans were there in EPL but now a days lot of them are coming over to EPL may be because of big bucks or stardom..whatever.. but bottom line is that there are players coming from south America to EPL and to prove my point I created a list of Brazilian players part of squad of current EPL. Here is the list ..

Team	Player	Position
Arsenal	Denílson	MF
Arsenal	Gilberto Silva	MF
Arsenal	Pedro Botelho	DF
Birmingham	Rafael Schmitz	MF
Chelsea	Alex	DF
Chelsea	Juliano Belletti	DF
Chelsea	Alcides	DF
Liverpool	Fábio Aurélio	DF
Liverpool	Lucas	MF
Manchester City	Geovanni	MF
Manchester City	Elano	MF
Manchester United	Anderson	MF
Middlesbrough	Fábio Rochemback	MF
Middlesbrough	Afonso Alves	FW
NewCastle United	Caçapa	DF
Tottenham	Gilberto	DF

PS.. The above table is compiled using wiki.. Thanks wiki for that :)

What a weekend..

What a weekend this was.. I watched 6 movies.. First of all I saw Dollars Trilogy (rating 10/10) A must watch for all movie lovers.

Followed by Paris, je t'aime (rating 7/10) 16 stories in 110 min, really nice concepts.. The diversity of the segments makes this interesting to watch, but as a film, it cannot be termed great. Still it is very watchable and a nice change of pace for the frequent movie goer. And especially this is a movie about love and emotion… so beware…. Also while watching this it occurred to me that “Dus Kahaniyan” might have taken its inspiration from this movie but again bollywood has failed miserably..

Then I saw Chicago (rating 8/10).. After watching “Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street”, I have developed a taste for musicals and I really liked this one as well. The story is good and star cast complements it very well. The music also scores and I liked all of the songs but my favorite is “They had it coming..”

To complete it all I watched Heat (rating 9/10).. I liked the movie before even watching a scene because of its star cast which comprised of Robert De Niro and Al Pacino. Wow what a combo.. who can resist such a movie and the movie doesn’t disappoint at al.. The story is intriguing, wonderful acting, good action sequences and above all mind-blowing dialogues delivered by two of the greatest actors of our times. This is just one of those movies where a great cast and director live up to their billing. Bottom Line . Watch it.

P.S. : I also found a new home this weekend :)

Dollars Trilogy

I just finished watching Dollars Trilogy directed by Sergio Leone. The trilogy consists of 3 movies which are A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1966). All starring Clint Eastwood (Blondie), who is an epitome of “TASHAN” in these movies.

Watching these movies was a thrilling experience; these movies have good story, amazing screenplay and above all great dialogues and music.

There were these really thrilling gun-shot scenes, and duels. What more can you ask for.

All the actors have acted really well in the trilogy be it Angle Eyes, Tuco , Indio or any other, but the centre stage is taken by Clint Eastwood, He is a cult in these movies.

Bottom line.. Watch it ASAP.. Enrich your collection... It’s worth..

A Time to Kill..

I recently finished the first novel of John Grisham “A Time to Kill”. The book is a legal suspense thriller as described by wiki. Well the plot did not have much of suspense because you could easily guess it from the very beginning. This is a story about a black man, who killed 2 white men because they have raped her 10 year old daughter and his white lawyer in a predominantly white county.

So as I said plot is pretty simple but the treatment is really a class. The story goes at a natural pace with author keeping you abreast with the racism that prevails in the society. The best part is he is not judgmental about any particular race and allows the reader to have his own views. Lot of characters with their own views about the situation comes into the play and as they have conflicting interests, the story becomes more and more interesting.

The best part is the final court case, where the author explains about the jury selection process and other legalities of the judiciary system. As they say it’s not the destination but the journey that makes it different. Same is the case here the court case has a lot of twists and turns which make it really a thrilling experience. So all in all the book is a legal thriller and a really good read :).

I am reader...

Well I never gave much of a thought to what I am reading.. or what I should read.. I dont have a particular taste in reading... so Reading for me is just a Time-Pass.. You dont have anything better to do.. get something and start reading.. That has been my philosophy for past 4 years.

I read my first English Novel (Bloodline by Sidney Sheldon) during my 3rd year holidays.. and thanks to friends, hostel library and second hand book store.. I have kept my habit of reading going...

Some days back i stumbled upon a site (www.librarything.com) . Its a place where you can catalog your books online.. So I decided to just create a list of all the books I have read so far..

I added all the books that I remembered and there were 80 books in my list..

I am so thrilled seeing the list that I decided to write a blog :)
If you want to see my book list its here (http://www.librarything.com/catalog.php?view=cyzak&shelf=list)

In the company of GODs

Maths and Physics are the two subjects that excites me a lot.. Along with Computers..
Recently I attended few talks on Graphics, Modeling, GPU's and so on.. and it was really exciting.. To me, The presenters were not Humans but were Titans and believe me the experience was heavenly.. It was just amazing . AWESOME

They were talking about multi-core processors, multi-threading applications and Graphics engine with ease. And in the core of all this was a lot of maths.. Partial Differential Equations that can easily give nightmare to anybody were discussed as if it is child play.. They discussed Heat Equation for negative time.. which I did not understand much but was totally fascinating like a fairy tale (I read a lot of them :))...

The Best part was Image processing.. so fast so sleek .. totally amazing..
And as a toping to all this was Image Search Algorithms.. wow I am contended :)

After the 3 day long seminar .. I am a "theist"

On a connecting note do listen to "I am Believer" ... really good song

Believe in Natural Building Material

I am about to write about my tryst with a natural building material mixed from sand, clay, and straw, dung or other fibrous materials, which is shaped into bricks using frames and dried in the sun. The structures made of it are extremely durable and account for the oldest extant buildings on the planet. Its buildings also offer significant advantages in hot, dry climates; they remain cooler as its stores and releases heat very slowly.

Well this is what the name of my new employer means at wiki :). So let me try to recapture my journey.. If I go back and try to pinpoint the point in the space-time fabric when the journey started.. It must be the day when juniorV and MLC engulfed me.. later on after a lot of lectures from my friends I forwarded my resume to juniorV.. who in turn forwarded it further..

Phase 1 : Written Exam
I can not claim that exam was difficult. There were two papers Engineering and Language. Engineering paper has mostly subjective questions on BST, PreOrder, Consumer-Producer, DFS and some m/c language stuff. I thought I had done that well but later I was told that I barely cleared it. Language which is in my case Java was bit simpler with a mix of objective and subjective questions, with questions on String, StringBuffer, cloning, threads etc.. Also there were 5 questions on J2EE, All very simple... and since paper was simple I could not perform as per my expectations and was really disappointed...
Unfortunately India lost to Australia in 2nd test the same day, when the draw was on the cards.. But the best part of the day was we all went to party at Runway9 and had a lot of fun...

I did not have any expectations so was really chill when suddenly next week I got a call for the telephonic round.

Phase 2 : Telephonic Round
This one was really a grueling experience.. The interviewer asked me a lot about the product on which I was working and had worked. This phase went for around 45 minutes, where in there were abstract questions on performance improvement and a lot of SOA based question to test the knowledge of my work. Thereafter he asked me a puzzle on primes and some questions on java, involving instanceOf, dynamic binding and inheritance...

By the time the interview was over.. all my hopes were also over.. And I was discussing the same with BigV when the auspicious call came... On-Site Interview

Phase 3 : On-Site Interview
I talked to a couple of friends and they had already told me that I can be sure of just one thing.. the procedure is very exhaustive and grilling. I prepared myself for the final battle..:)
The best part was they arranged for everything including tickets pickup and stay.. so on Monday morning I was at Office for the Interview..

It started with filling of a form, followed by a quant test which was very simple.. but then there was a DI test and I could not answer a single question of that.. the questions were not tough but somehow I could not answer... and I laughed at myself... It was all over..

But somehow they started my interviews

#1 .. The interview started with my work and dug deep into them .. confusing me and asking indepth questions on protocols, most of which I could not answer satisfactorily... Then he started Java.. Threads, Producer/Consumer, serialization, JVM memory mgmt, dynamic binding, class loader and algorithms .. Asked me to write a couple of programs as well..

#2 .. This was the best interview of the lot.. there were a questions on thread (a lot),inner classes, cloning, XML parser, Design patterns, dynamic binding, static so on and lastly algorithms.. I might have missed few topics but this interview was long and I was happy after this.

Then I had Lunch.. followed by HR interview..

#3 .. HR interview was simple and I was asked the normal question about my current work, reason of moving, kind of work I like and so on..

#4 .. This interview was really interesting.. It started with java cloning and then moved to algorithms with some maths.. I liked it a lot.. I had to solve/prove a couple of simple problems based on binary search and Fibonacci and then write a program on recursion.

#5 .. This was the last interview.. This one was more of a discussion which started with my current work and about the technology then SOA and its use and implications .. This one was a long interview in which I was also asked to write a couple of programs implementing simple algorithms.

In the end the long day ended... and the best part is I got call a couple of days later.. and I was on cloud number 9 .. :)