Irritated

A mob threw glasses and bottles at the police. It was a full scale riot and people were being treated by paramedics on the streets in England. Yes, this was the reaction from the Chelsea fans back home, suffering a defeat in the Champions League final against the mighty Reds, namely Manchester United, in a nail-biting tie. There was no separating them even after 120 minutes of football.

Sir Alex Ferguson’s plan was working perfectly. Ronaldo skipping past Essien many-a-time and finally gave the Reds’ fans something to cheer about after a powerful header in the bottom corner left Peter Cech ball-watching.1-0. But, towards the end of the first half, a half-cross half-shot from Micheal Essien led to a couple of deflections and Frank Lampard found the ball at his feet and casually flicked it past the defeated Van-der-Sar below him. 1-1.

Chances didn’t stop there. Two shots off the woodwork from Drogba and Lampard almost gave them their first Champions League title. Brilliant work from Cech denied Tevez the late-winner he is famous for.

The second half was defaced by a flurry of cards, including a red for Drogba, for slapping Vidic across his face, just because Tevez didn’t return the ball back to Chelsea after they deliberately kicked the ball out of play for a United player injured. Yet, nothing justifies the slap. He deserved a red.

Refereeing was clearly unfair. Chelsea were denied many corners and a penalty kick. The bottomline

So penalties it were, the moment the keepers dreaded. In this case, the Chelsea strikers, because of their failure to score past Van-der-Sar in the Community Shield final shootout back last August.

Two a piece sent the keeper the wrong way. But the third one was a miss by Christiano Ronaldo, and Chelsea continued scoring. They just had to score the last one when their captain John Terry stepped up to take the last kick, slipped and fell… and missed..

Agony continued as Anelka missed and The Reds celebrated. Yes. They left Chelsea in second place. Yet again.

Indifferent

I came back home this vacations without a project to do, meanwhile many of my friends had applied for one and successfully achieved one. I had applied late, and added to that my not-so-great grades, contributed to my failure in getting a project.

Two days into my stay, we were at the airport expecting my brother to walk out of the terminal, he had arrived today from the same hell-hole the common man call Trichy. And then my parents meet the mother of this girl in my batch.

“She’s coming today. Yeah she’s got a project in so-and-so college and she’s coming to spend a week before going for the project.” A big smile followed. She asked me when I came and what I had planned. I replied that I didn’t have anything to do and would be jobless for the next 70 days.

Proud

I was just reading the newspaper today and I came across this article about a website which helps one build their vocabulary. That’s the good part. You are benefited whether you’re a student, teacher or an office-goer. Building your vocabulary always helps.

But the better part is, for every meaning of a word you guess correctly, they donate 20 grams of rice to the UN-WFP (United Nations World Food Program). Believe it or not, it’s true. Revenues are generated by advertisements on the page. Don’t irk, they’re not the annoying pop-ups and flashing things telling you that you’ve won a million dollars for doing nothing, but rather they’re quite relevant.

Free Rice is the organization I’m talking about, their website www.freerice.org is becoming increasingly popular and they’ve donated 31,788,161,190 grains of rice till date.

So what’re you waiting for?? Please spend at least sometime helping yourself to feed the needy and eliminate hunger. UN has estimated the cost of eliminating hunger to be $195 bn per year. This is being achieved by several countries contributing a part of their GDP to UN. Check out the full list here.

I think this is an excellent way of helping without much spending of time and zero spending of your money. And another lesson, please do not waste food, for you have no idea how many people will kill to eat that same food you’re wasting. Pictures of children picking up dustbins in urban neighborhoods in search of food really moves me.

I hope this post affects some, if not all of you. Please grab this opportunity to help the needy if you haven’t already.

Adios,
Hardik,
a.k.a. Voodoo