Lets make a deal

I have always felt that I get the raw end of whatever deals that I make with people in my personal life. I am pretty good when it comes to negotiating with people when money is involved, but somehow I always end up losing out in my personal deals with people, mostly because they generally refuse to accept the existence of such a deal and question its validity.

But no more shall I suffer from such problems. This site should take care of things. It allows you to make deals with friends, family, employees or absolutely anyone. It then sends out mails to them and you can even opt for further negotiations. And I hope the site's tagline - "Asynchronous Negotiation Favors the Underdog" - proves to be true.

(Link courtesy : Marginal Revolution)

Sheep

After shifting to Pune and staying at the hostel, IO have found it increasingly hard to watch as much cricket as I used to at home. As a result of this, I mostly keep track of the latest scores via live commentary on Cricinfo. The commentary is nice and crisp and gives you a fair idea of whats going on, along with the constantly updated scorecard, which has everything you need to know - like the currently partnership, who is bowling etc. But the icing on the cake is definitely the random topics that come up during the commentary, as a result of which you don't miss the TV commentary that much. And this commentary involves not just Cricinfo's commentators but also a lot of viewers from all over the world. Most of the time, these chats are related to some famous cricketing incidents of the past or some anecdotes. However, at times, they tend to go totally off-topic, as during the recent India-NZ ODI. Here's a short sample of what was going on during commentary that day:

Suresh: "Seriously - what is the sheep:human ratio in NZ?"
...
Steve: "Good to see Rahul enjoying his stay in Rangiora (25km north of christchurch population 9,000). I wonder if he is being billetted with anyone or staying in a local motel overnight?" Must be with some sheep, no?!
...
t4jho: "11 Sheep for every person"
...
Farmer Bob: "According to the latest Agricultural Production statistics, released by Statistics New Zealand's Agricultural Production team, there were 40.1 million estimated resident sheep at 30 June 2006, which means that the sheep-person ratio has halved in the last 20 years, and now stands at 10 sheep per person. see http://www.population.govt.nz/myth-busters/sheepmyth.htm
...
Amit: "1:10......strange! Are those sheep owned by people or just forest sheep?" The sheep owns the people. Duh!
...
Alex from NZ sends us this: "At any given time a New Zealander can reach out and touch a sheep." No more dirty details please!

MK from Canada: "Why bother? India should just cancel the tour and go back home. I am amazed that Cricket is actually played in NZ."
...
Matt from OZ: "What else would you expect from a Canadian? You guys don't even play cricket."

Kody: "Whats all this nonsense about sheep? ... that pitch will be soaked by now!"

Cam from NZ comes back with this! : "Is it time to point out that Cows wander down the streets of several Indian cities?"
...

What fun.

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Staying with sheep, I recently saw Fergusson College's Firodiya Karandak performance. The story was about a guy who is visiting the Swiss Alps and meets an old shepherd high up in the mountains. Now the shepherd's role was being enacted by a girl. All of us who were there at the start knew this. However a lot of people came in late and had no idea about the sex-change. Hence when the guy approached the shepherd and asked for protection from the rough weather of the Alps, the guys sitting behind us started whistling loudly! At this point, me and Bhedas thought that the play might just turn into something like Brokeback Mountain. But alas, that was not to be. Since then, we have decided to think of various changes that could be made to stories so that they can be converted into Brokeback Mountain. More tales expected soon.