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Monday, May 28, 2007

2nd Welthiest man in SE Asia is a Srilankan Tamil Descent

Tatparanandam Ananda Krishnan (Tamil: த. ஆனந்தகிருஷ்ணன்; born 1938) is a Malaysian businessman and philanthropist. Nicknamed TAK, he is currently estimated to worth about US$7.4 billion[1], making him the second wealthiest man in Southeast Asia (and world's 99th). He is a regular feature in Forbes' Billionaire list.

Ananda Krishnan hates public exposure and is known to maintain a very low profile for a person of his stature. However, his hugely successful business activities always thrust him into the limelight and his name represents a huge business empire.

Early life
He was born in 1938 in Brickfields, Kuala Lumpur's "Little India" to a Tamil immigrant family from Sri Lanka and is of Sri Lankan Tamil descent (Ceylonese/Jaffnese).

Ananda Krishnan studied at Vivekananda Tamil School in Kuala Lumpur and furthered his studies at Victoria Instituition, Kuala Lumpur. Later, he attended University of Melbourne, Australia for his B.A. (Honours) degree majoring in political science. Following that, Krishnan obtained a Masters in Business Administration at Harvard University, graduating in 1964.

Business
Ananda Krishnan’s first entrepreneurial venture was in oil trading, setting up Exoil Trading, which went on to purchase oil drilling concessions in various countries. Later he moved into gambling (in Malaysia), stud farming (in Australia) and running a Hollywood cartoon studio. Soon, he diversified into a host of other business opportunities. In the early part of the 1990s, he started diversifying, in a big way, into the multimedia arena.

Currently, he has business interests in entertainment (Astro), space(3 Satellites) , oil, power, shipping, telecommunications (Maxis - Malaysia, Aircell - India), property and gaming (Pan Pools Malaysia). His companies operate in a most parts of the South East Asia. A quarter of his wealth comes from the gambling business (lottery, horse-racing wagering).He is also said to be behind the world's largest indoor Water Park in Tropical Islands,Germany with former Genting Group executive Colin Au.He is also pondering an online lottery venture in Russia.

Said to have an extraordinary entrepreneurial flair and far sighted, it was Ananda who sold former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad on the idea of the 88-storey Petronas Twin Towers, the world's second tallest building, which stake he has now sold off.[citation needed]
Fortune magazine, in a 2001 article, called him "Kuala Lumpur's Mr Big".

Multimedia dealings
He first came to prominence by helping to organize the Live Aid concert with Bob Geldof in the mid-1980s. In the early 1990s, he began building a multimedia empire that now includes two telecommunication companies - Maxis Communications and MEASAT Broadcast Network Systems - and has three communication satellites circumnavigating the earth.

He also effected the purchase of 46% of Maxis Communications, the country's largest cellular phone company, from British Telecom and AT&T for $680 million - raising his stake to 70%. Maxis has more than eight million subscribers, with more than 40% market share in Malaysia. Recently, Maxis has acquired AirCel, Tamil Nadu's largest cellular phone company and has plans to expand to rest of India. Maxis is also under negotiation to buy over and expand an Indonesian cellular phone company.[citation needed]

He is also the head of Astro All Asia Networks Plc, the only company currently providing a DIRECT to HOME TV satellite service in Malaysia. http://www.astroplc.com/05/ (accessed 18th August 2006). It currently broadcasts to Malaysia, Brunei and Indonesia.

In an agreement between Astro and India's Sun Network, Ananda plans to produce TV channels which cater to the Indian market, especially Tamil diaspora in countries such as US and Europe. Ananda also plans to offer TV services featuring Web-based interactivity.

Ananda Krishnan owns stakes in TVB.com (the interactive arm of Hong Kong's main broadcaster) and the Shaw Brothers' movie archives, which holds more than 800 movie titles. He also operates a chain of TGV multiplex theatres.

Personal life
Ananda Krishnan has been called everything from a recluse to a humble, silent worker. Not much is known about him and his tightly guarded private life because he maintains such a low profile. He is said to be the brother of late-Singapore billionaire Eliyathamby.

He is known to be apolitical.[citation needed] But he is also a close friend of both former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Dr. Mahathir Mohamad and Mahathir's former arch-foe Tengku Razaleigh Hamzah.[citation needed] He brokered the peace deal and healed the political rift between them a few years ago.[citation needed]

He is also known to be generous and donates to charities and temples as well as has established scholarships for the deserving. In 2005, newspapers reported that he had given away RM160 million to charities through his privately owned Usaha Tegas group of companies.Despite his wealth he still maintains and stays in his family's Minangkabau styled mansion in Kuala Lumpur.He was one of the earliest tycoon to own a Dassault Falcon private jet.

thanks:wiki

Tuesday, May 15, 2007

PHYSICS BEHIND THE SQUASH BALL

Found this article on the web.


PHYSICS BEHIND THE SQUASH BALL

Vijitha Herath of the University of Paderborn, Germany, writes on the issue:




Apropos the claim that Adam Gilchrist had a squash ball in his left glove during his innings at the finals of the cricket World Cup. Let me offer a scientific perspective.

A squash ball is a rubber ball. Unlike a cricket (leather) ball, it compresses when pressure is applied on it. When the pressure is released, it takes its original shape. In short, it acts like a spring ( e.g.: a motorcycle shock absorber). So what happens when a batsman has a squash ball in the palm of his bottom hand?

When a batsman swings the bat until it hits the ball, there is pressure on his bottom hand. This pressure compresses the squash ball thus storing energy in the ball similar to spring. Just after the ball hits the bat (ball still touching the bat) this pressure starts to relax while the bat is moving forward.

At the same time the energy stored in the squash ball releases its energy to the bat in the form of kinetic energy. The result is that the bat moves faster than normal (without a ball in the glove).

As a result, the release-speed of the cricket ball becomes faster resulting in the ball travelling further before hitting the ground. Therefore it results in more sixes and fours being scored.

The downside is because the bat travels faster than normal the batsman might lose control of the bat. This happened once in the Adam Gilchrist's innings when the bat slipped out of his hands and fell behind the wickets. If you have any doubts please try to do it yourself and see the result. In brief Gilchrist's use of the squash ball allowed him to hit the ball further in the field.

The above explanation clearly gives you an insight into the fact that the squash ball was used not purely as a protective gear but, as a performance enhancer to a player who was playing his last World Cup innings and did not care of the consequences, but was hell bent on rubbing some glory upon himself.

Monday, May 14, 2007

My Changi Experience

Singapore Changi Airport is recognised as one of the best airports in the world. With over 80 airlines serving more than 180 cities in over 50 countries, Changi Airport has established itself as a major aviation hub in the Asia Pacific region. When Terminal 3 begins operations in 2008, Changi Airport will have an annual handling capacity of more than 64 million passengers a year.

OK...now don’t yawn!! This article is neither a publicity campaign nor a stastical analysis of the airport. But if u are interested u can find out more details @ http://www.changiairport.com/. My Changi Experience is about my working experience in the airport as a part time customer service agent. Though I’ve worked there for only 3 weeks, I enjoyed it the most and had lots of interesting incidents, which I would like to share with u all!!

The first good experience for me was my uniform. The only thing that differs me from the co-pilot is that, I have one gold bar on my shoulder comparing to his three. Of course they have their cap and their coat, but they hardly wear it. I had this wonderful experience of small kids talking to me thinking that I was the captain, and some Non-English-Speaking people identifying me as the captain. It was very funny.

Arrival Controlling is another interesting aspect of the job, where u stand at the arrival gate, greet the passengers and give them directions or help them board their next flight. When passengers step into Singapore they see us first, and they are pretty excited or on a hurry to catch their next flight. The best thing about these passengers is that they speak English in an accent which is different from mine, or else they might speak a completely alien language. The most interesting and challenging part is to provide these passengers, with the information they are looking for. It is usually easy if the passengers are Caucasians. These whites don’t ask too many questions and are mostly English speaking and friendly, and understands the procedures well. Handling people from Japan, China or other non-English speaking people are very interesting because they talk to me in their own language thinking that I am a linguistic expert, and expect me to help them. Idiots...can’t they see my colour?? What I do is, I answer them back in Tamil, and give hand signals and directions. It might sound lame, but they usually get it!!
Indian passengers are always intriguing and interesting. For one thing they speak in their normal funny accent which is enough to keep me laughing for the whole day. And there are few who try to speak with American accent, and not getting it properly, resulting with the birth of Indian-American accent. It’s the most funniest. The irritating thing about them is that they want to ask every single thing to double confirm, and they have lots of comments to make too. The fascinating thing is that u can see India’s influence all over the world. I had flights from Beijing and San Francisco packed with Indians. I get to see lots of Thailand, and Indonesian passports with Indian names, but most of them are not Indians. India...incredible India!!

Now the Sri Lankans!! Yesterday I had a very happening flight from Sri Lanka. Minister of Justice, Mr Dilan Perera was on a transit to Singapore, attending some meeting in Seoul. I’ve never seen or heard of him, but this guy is arriving on my flight, and I was supposed to amend his hotel voucher to stay in the transit hotel. I was a bit tensed before meeting this guy, but apparently he was so gentle and friendly. An interesting fact was that he travelled in the economy class of Singapore Airlines. After that, I saw a guy with a shirt and pants and having a bag on his shoulder. He looked familiar, and a closer looked confirmed that he was Upul Chandana, A Sri Lankan Cricketer. I went to him and was like “Mr. Upul Chandana, can I help you??” He passed me his boarding pass and asked me where the gate was. I checked his name to confirm that he was the real guy. I gave him directions in English first, which he didn’t seem to have understood, then I switched to Singhalese, and still he was a bit confused. Its funny isn’t it, for a person who has travelled a lot to play cricket can’t find his own way in an internationally acclaimed airport! This so far my wonderful experience at the Changi, i'll share more, once i experience....

Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Spidy is Tamil


Spiderman 3, one of the most expected movies of this summer, opened up big all over the world. Good to see spidy having a big fan following and doing well. But thing that me fascinated more, on this 3rd installment of the spiderman series is that, it had a certain scenes which were like carbon-copied from tamil movies. Here goes the reseblences..

1) In tamil movies, when a character knows a secret, and he is so important that he cannot be killed off, and to tell the secret in the climax of the movie, they usually hit they person in question on the head. The injured guy will get ammnesia, meaning that he will forget the past for some time. The same thing happens to Harry Osbourne in the movie.
2) One of the most common thing in tamil movies is that the hero will be held captive, with his hands and legs tied up. The villain will run upto him carrying a sharp object, tryin to kill him. But suddenly a-good-guy, but must-be-killed-to-avoid-confusion character, will jump in between to save the hero. Same thing happens in S3 where osbourne jumps in between spidy and kills himself and therby saving spidy and the world. Like all the other tamil movies he leaves his last breath on his lovers lap. And as usual our hero, the spidy, breaks off the chain, and runs after the villain in anger!(no one knows why he couldnt break free when he was about to be killed).

3) Forgiveness is the trade mark signature of tamil movies, which has all those super, supreme, captain or ulitmate stars as the heroes. Here again "The sand man", alomost kills spidy, and spidy really dont have an idea on how to kill the sandy. But fortunately for him the sand man comes upto him and ask to be forgiven. Spidy might have thought that now as osbourne is dead and i dont know how to kill sandy, its better forgive him, than to make him a foe and lose his own life.

Spidy is an international franchise and its good to see, a movie which was aimed at all the international audience has all the elements to make a nice, good tamil film. It had romance, love break down, triangular love, mothers love, climax fight and etc. Songs were the only thing that lacked in spiderman 3.





Monday, May 7, 2007

Chennai 600028

Oh dont worry guys, this is not a complete movie review which usually acts as a spoiler and makes u yawn by the time u finish reading it. These are just my picks of chennai 600028.




1) The movie is about a bunch of guys in the area chennai 600028, and how they want to win a tennis ball cricket trophy. They beat their rivals in the semi-finals, so the all important final becomes the anit-climax of the movie, where they lose it to small kids comprehensively. It was a nice funny ending.

2) Like in all cricket movies, there is this one guy who cant catch the ball. And as usual he catches it in the semi-final, and was over the moon. But alas, the umpire says no ball. He cries and shouts and runs upto the bowler and tells, "i leave u alone because, only because u are my captain!!" Was another funny moment.

All in all the movie was actually quite intersting, considering the fact that the movie didnt have a good story to tell. Venkat prabu did a good job as a director. Mixed realism well with cinematic elements. This is a must watch movie for all tamilians.


Aussie da Pussy!!

The world cup started and ended pretty well, and as usual austarlia winning it, and as usual creating a big controversy. In 1999 pakistan played into the hands of the aussies, never tried to challenge them and played the worst final of all time. In 2003 India did chase, not goin after the actual target, but to get some respect. In 2007 Sri Lanka did a put a valiant challenge, and they chased bravely too. Fought till the last moment, until all the odds were against them. From the rain, to the light, to the umpires to the event officials, everyone was simply against Sri Lanka. Oh..And I forgot to mention the air-raid by on the Sri Lankan airport. The Australians knew that Sri Lankans are the only team which could challenge them, and they were well prepared this time around. Not with skills, but with criminal mind.

Gilchrist was the only batsman in the australian innings to score, and only he did have a strike rate of more than hundred. All the other batsman played an average innings against the srilankan attack, especially Symonds and Clarke, who were struggling to get the big shots against malinga, in the final overs.



Gilchrist scored 149 of 104 balls, and took the match completely away from the lankans. After the match, Gilchrist said he had "something" in his left glove during his innings and when he reached his century he repeatedly pointed to his left batting glove with his right hand.

"I had a little message, to wave to someone at home in Australia about something in my glove," Gilchrist told the post-match media conference. He then confirmed the message was for his batting coach and former West Australia player Bob Meuleman who, Gilchrist said, had advised him to carry a squash ball in his left, bottom hand to help him with his grip. "His (Meuleman's) last words to me before I left the indoor training centre where I train with him in Perth were, 'If you are going to use it (squash ball), make sure when you score a hundred in the final you show me and prove to me you got it in there'. I had stayed true to that."

Can a batsman carry an object, in this case, a squash ballnot connected with cricket to help him on the field? Did he secure the prior permission of the umpires? Was the fielding side captain aware of the use of the squash ball? Did (Sri Lankan captain) Mahela Jayawardene approve its use?

"Before the toss and during the match, the umpires shall satisfy themselves that (a) the conduct of the game is strictly in accordance with the Laws. (b) the implements of the game conform to the requirements of Laws 5 (the ball) and 6 (the bat), together with either Laws 8.2 (size of stumps) and 8.3 (the bails) or, if appropriate, Law 8.4 (junior cricket). (c) (i) no player uses equipment other than that permitted. (ii) the wicket-keepers gloves comply with the requirements of Law 40.2 (gloves)."


Some interesting facts that made Gilchrist and which won the world cup for Aussie da pussy.


1) Gilchrist never used the squash ball in the past and also in any of the other 10 games prior to the finals. Did the squash ball help?

2) Gilchrist was out of form and didn't score many runs in the whole World Cup tour apart from the finals. Did the squash ball provide Gilchrist the required assistance to bring him back to form?

3) The World Cup final was between Sri Lanka and Gilchrist (not Australia). All other in-form Australian batsmen were struggling to score except the out-of-form Gilchrist who had this squash ball to enhance his grip or did it?

4) Most of his shots, mainly his eight sixes, were massive and cleared the grounds. Did the squash ball help?

5) The number of sixes hit by Gilchrist amounts to eight in the finals, compared to two in the previous 10 games. Is it because of the squash ball?

6) Gilchrist's average without the last innings would have been a mere 30.40 compared to the 45.30 after the finals. Did the squash ball help to boost his average?

7) Gilchrist's strike rate without the last innings would have been 91.57 compared to the 103.89 after the finals. Again, did the squash ball provide that extra power?


Australia speaks a lot about cheating and legality of a bowling action in cricket, and they were extremely harsh against Murali. How do they call this kind of a cheating of hiding a ball inside the glove?? Are they so selfish that they don’t mind cheating, but won’t let others cheat?? How fair is this?? This is not the first time Aussies showed the world that they are pussies. Australian present captain, Ricky Ponting used graphite-coated bat to give him extra strength, before it was been banned. That’s why gilchrist used his ball only in the final, before it could be banned. No wonder the Australians have won the world cup 3 in a row.

The most disturbing of all is, a friend of mine, who was born and bred in Sri Lanka for 19 years, and recently left to Australia. He is just residing there for the last 6 odd months. He is such a big Australian supporter. He forgot his motherland...motherlanka.....Interesting to see how people change very fast. If he can forget his mother Land after finding a better land, what would he do to his mom when he gets married?? I hope to meet his parents in Elders care centre after he is married!!

Thursday, May 3, 2007

Hello World

Vanakan, Vanthanam, Namasthe, Namaskar, Ayubowan…oh and hi for making the trouble of clicking on my blog and started reading all these nonsenses.

Well first of all, i used to be a DVD player which only reads only good stuff. I only read very famous books, mainly because i am not much of a reader, and only good books keep me hooked to them. After seeing my best pals, parthz and juna, starting a blog, i was intersted to follow them, but the proper time didnt come. After buying a laptop and surfed through most of the good stuff in the internet, i felt like sharing my thoughts to the world, like my friends. But i hope my views of the world and life will be far different and intersting than theirs. So as it happens, i have upgraded my self to DVD-R/RW.

To be frank, i really dont know what i am going to write on my blog, or how often i am going to update it. But as far as i know there is going to be some stuff on my blog, and no matter what it is, it will be interesting. IF NOT………….(it might be boring).

While trying to find a name for my blog, i came across this word "Pandemonium". It means devils place. So u know what to expect….