Jamaica - The Fastest Nation

Jamaica’s population of slightly less than 3million stands 1/5th of Mumbai population. Still this tiny island nation from the Caribbean has caught the attention of the entire globe by their stellar performance in this year’s Beijing Olympics.

By the time I am writing this, they have won 4 Golds and 3 Silvers (No bronze – either 1st or 2nd or move out of the business) and rank 13 in the medal tally. (India is ranked 42 with 2 medals)
But this blog is not a comparison of their performance with India. (I am sure there are enough nations above India like Mongolia, Estonia, Azerbaizan, Kazakhastan, Belarus and my favourite Zimbabwe which I would love to do the comparison with, but lets leave that for a later date).

What intrigued me to write this was: All the medals the Jamaican team won were in one game - Athletics and that too in the main races (100/200/400m)
For people whose curiosity can only be satisfied by facts and statistics:

• Gold Usain Bolt Men's 100 m
• Gold Usain Bolt Men's 200 m
• Gold Shelly-Ann Fraser Women's 100 m
• Gold Melaine Walker Women's 400 m hurdles
• Silver Sherone Simpson Women's 100 m
• Silver Kerron Stewart Women's 100 m
• Silver Shericka Williams Women's 400 m
  

Looks like a clean sweep right?

Not just that, out of the 4 golds, 3 were won by breaking records. (Usain Bolt who turned 22 today and nicknamed by the media quite rightfully “Lightning Bolt” is the first man to break both world records at one Olympics after Carl Lewis. But his lightning performance shadowed another Olympic record breaker Jamaican Melanie Walker in the 400 m hurdles.)
Equally interesting is to note their dominance on both men and women version of the races!

Now the experts for the next few months will keep debating as to what they eat and drink, where and how they train, where they work out, etc and etc but the bottomline is the end results. They didn’t participate in many games and hence by focusing on their core strengths, the Jamaicans stand so tall in the games. Simple: Focus, Focus and Win!
All I can say is they might be way behind in many other aspects but these performances have made them “The Fastest Nation” in the world.
Hats off to the Island Nation and now the Fastest Nation - Jamaica

Knock off the Zeroes

Technically speaking, this is not a blog, but an update on my previous blog (or keeping up with today’s terminology, it’s a sequel)

My last blog was on Zimbabwe people coping up with the practical issues of currency and inflation and how people can conveniently become billionares. The reason for me writing this sequel is to inform my readers that I have let them down. All the people who moved to Zimbabwe (based on my healthy advice); well your entire wealth has been wiped out by one simple decision.

Looks like Mr. Mugabe has paid heed to the bank’s problems of continuously printing higher denomination notes / system failures and bingo, he has a simple answer… knock off the Zeroes. Ten billion Zimbabwean dollars will be equated to one Zimbabwean dollar from today i.e. August 1. By knocking off the ten zeroes, (which was anyways worthless and couldn’t buy anything substantial), the problems of ever increasing zeroes has been solved. Well, isn’t it smart… what a solution… Just reset the counter when it reaches the limit and start again.

Not just that, to tackle the inflation problem, the government has decided to fix the prices of all goods (and I always thought the prices are governed by demand and supply)

The other problems are still existing including the paper on which the currency is printed which the supplier has stopped supplying to the Government. But I am sure they will get a solution for that as well.

Way to Go!...