What?!

Two Thanksgivings ago I was on a cruise ship en route to the Bahamas when I decided to try my luck at the 3-card poker table at the casino. After all, I thought, how different could it be from good ol' teen-patti. My luck alternated between good and not-too-bad for most of the session till I was dealt a hand with three queens. Whoa! a trail (as we Punjoos call it) - surely I was really going to rake in the moolah with this one. However, a fellow gambler with a straight flush walked away with the big pot. I was sure the dealer had erred, but decided not to protest out of fear I would be thrown into the Caribbean by the casino goons.

To figure out what had happened, I did what any sane person would do - I Googled it. And Google, with its infinite wisdom and mathematical logic revealed that a straight flush is indeed harder to get than a three-of-a-kind when playing the three card version. What?! We've merrily been playing flush for eons, completely oblivious of the true math of permutations and combinations!! I swore the next time I sat down at a teen-patti table, I would enforce the right rules.

..But later thought better of it. After all, the thrill of getting a straight flush is nothing compared to the chills that go down one's spine at the site of a trail.

... And Cricket

As the balmy temperatures of 2006 become a distant memory, I look back at the spring and summer with fondness. After all it was this year that I learnt of my becoming a father all over again. Vacations to Orlando and London. M turning 3.

... And cricket.

(Hard) tennis ball, make-your-own-rules-as-you-deem-fit, LBW?-what-the-heck-is-that? cricket.

Thanks to the initiative of a couple of die-hards we started playing at the ungodly hour of 8 AM on Sundays. Granted that most didn't make it at the appointed time, matches however began around 8:30. Many didn't make it on all Sundays - hung-over, partying all night, working all night, couldn't get up, spousal reprisal. Despite the odds, the lure of a work-out and the astro-turf at UC drew a core group of players that got a decent game going.


Amid the cacophony of flailing arms, miffed catches, excuses, twisted knees and pulled muscles were moments of fun, competition, exercise and brilliance. Asthma and ulcerative colitis notwithstanding, I look forward to summer 2007.