November is here

As October 2008 went by, I personally went through a lot of upheavals during it. It was full of twists and turns. But in the hindsight it was a wonderful month.
When you look back at a month full of action the month looks longer, I had lost my cell phone on the 1st of October in Singapore looking back it feels that it was almost an year ago.

This was a wonderful month for India too,

Chandrayan I, India's first mission to moon is successfully on its way. A lot of people question the $100 million spent on it. However, they fail to see this is the opportunity to capture the place amongst countries of the future. Who knows what we would find on the moon, who knows when we would have to leave this planet and we all know that moon would be our first step. But unlike other Asian giants China and Japan, India's mission is truely global mission, this one has instruments from NASA and European agency on board too. It's wonderful to see that the mission has been sent on an Indian rocket from Indian soil, that gives ISRO 'Indian Space Research Organization' a very lucrative venture into launching commercial satellites at almost one fourth of the cost of NASA, which it already does.
Chandrayan missions in the short term would be a three step mission. The launched one would act as a satellite to moon and would scan the surface for minerals and water buried deep into the moon's surface. The second one would be launched in 2011 would be an unmanned mission to land on the surface and dig deep into the right areas. The third to be launched in 2015 would be a manned mission and would explore opportunities for humanity to build a base there.

Second great news is the Vishwanathan Anand has won the World Chess Championship. Now he truely is a world champion. He has now won world championship in all formats of chess. Another major achievement is that he becomes first Indian and only Second non-russian to beat a Russian player in the direct one to one contest. This shows the domination of Russians in the game of chess. Anand's major achievement in last 20 years has been improvement of Indian chess environment. We now have 18 Grandmasters. However, when we compare that to 180 in Russia it looks miniscule. I still remember the title of SportWeek in 87 where it said 1 in a Billion when Anand became first Indian to achieve the Grandmaster level. From there Indian chess has come a long way.

Third was of course India beating Australia to pulp in cricket. How satisfying it is to see Aussies being beaten comprehensively. The pleasure of seeing a defensive Aussie team, playing to survive and draw the match and still being beaten to pulp is amazing.