Padma Shri

I really don't know why they keep giving out these awards like candies. Just take a look at this page. This year's notable winners:

• Akshay Kumar: This year, he gave us some of the best movies of all time - Singh is Kinng, Jumbo and Chandni Chowk to China. Yeah! Doesn't he deserve the award for acting in all these movies and raising the standards of Indian movie industry??
• Aishwarya Rai - Don't even get me started on this ******** whatever.....
• Helen - Remember the item girl? Yeh mera dil from Amitabh's Don??

Just when I thought no one can make it worse than this, our Indian officials say "Yes, we can!!" Take a look at this. They gave the award to the wrong person.

"The Padma awards committee seems to have conferred the prestigious Padma Shri award in the field of art and culture to a man who turned out to be an exporter of shawls and not a national craftsman. The blame game has already begun with senior government officials saying they had never recommended Hashmat Ullah Khan's name in the first place. Khan was nominated for the Padma Shri under the art, culture and literature category. Then it was corrected to the craftsmen category, but when the hunt for Khan started after his nomination, it was found that no craftsman by that name existed in Jammu and Kashmir."

Congratulations to all the winners!!! Jai Hind!!

Microsoft Tag

Just wanted to try this... Try it out if u have a Windows Mobile. Download the app from here to your mobile. Open the app and point to the bar code below. It will take you to my facebook page :)

Again, instead of working with the traditional barcode, they have opted in for a proprietary format. I don't think this will even take off.

A new way to connect to the world

Finally, I got myself a smartphone. It's Sprint's HTC Touch Diamond - connected to the web 24x7 now!!

India @ Golden Globes

As I was watching the Golden Globes today, I was amazed at the Indian representation there. It was because of Slumdog millionaire. I blogged about this movie last month - definitely one of the best movies of last year. I did not expect it to win to 4 awards - best picture, best director, best screenplay and best original score (A. R. Rahman).

It was great to watch Rahman receive the award watched by almost the entire Hollywood. When the movie won the best picture award, everybody went on to the stage to collect the award including the hero, heroine and Anil Kapoor. Shah Rukh Khan was also on stage for like 1 min introducing the movie (Knowing that he will never have the opportunity to win something like this, he makes use of his PR skills to get himself onto the stage). BIG CONGRATULATIONS to A.R. Rahman and to the crew of Slumdog Millionaire. The movie is opening this week in India and I'm sure its gonna be a big big hit as the news channels will be covering this story for at least 2 days.

Heath Ledger won a posthumous award for The Dark Knight. In the television category, 30 Rock (I blogged about this show in November) won a lot of awards - best show, best actor (Alec Baldwin) and best actress (Tina Fey).

Let's see if Slumdog can repeat this for the Oscars!

Go Gators!!

Yesterday, the Gators won the NCAAF National Championship by beating Oklahoma 24 - 14. This is their second win in three years. They won the championship in 2006 (which was my first semester at UF). They also won the NCAA Basketball National Championship in 2006 and 2007!!

When the Gators won the Championship in 2006, Tim Tebow was a backup quarterback to Chris Leak. He went on to win the Heisman trophy in 2007 (even though it was a pathetic performance from Gators that year). This year he was one of the four finalists for the Heisman. He lost it to Sam Bradford of the Sooners, but led the Gators to a victory again the Bradford's Sooners. I hope he returns to the team next year! Here is a small video that I put together with all the pictures I had. I'm having fun with the new Windows Live suite. Its awesome!!