With no worries about attending to a 9 to 5 job or getting too busy and having to go to work even on a holiday, I am back doing what I love to do. I started the vacation with a bang, giving some work to my photography gear. Here is a picture a of a pair of common mynahs on a wet and cold Saturday morning.
I have been pretty busy lately. Just before my sabbatical is about to begin, a flood of work has kept me busy and quiet. That has not given me a chance to do a trip or go out and take some pictures. Most of my time is spent at work, at home or shuttling between the two in Bangalore's never ending traffic jams and roads inundated by incessant downpour. But I am not complaining. On the contrary, I am excited as hell that I am going to say bye bye to work by the end of the week and spend 6 months as a free birds doing what I love. Ah! life, Here I come!! :)
Silently, some one is creating a series of blogs to create attention and trying to build up crediblity of IIPM and Arindam Chaudhuri. There is something common about these:
1. They all are freshly created blogs with no history or archives. 2. They share the same one-post content.
They even used the name Sri Sri Ravishankar and Steve Ballmer to add more crediblity. Is IIPM trying to take on bloggers using blogs or is some casual observer playing pranks? Sound interesting anyway. I have a feeling its the latter. Check them out yourself. I just bumped into a couple of them via technorati.
Update: I just noticed that searching Technorati and Google Blogsearch for IIPM floods you with only these kind of blogs and you will have to dig a bit to find blogs that carry the real issue. A strategy for bombing search engines?
In an interesting and astonishingly stupid manner, a remotely known unheard MBA institute called IIPM has issued a legal notice to a blogger claiming Rs.175 crores in damages! Reason? He linked to a story which did not put IIMP in good light. I am joining bloggers all over in support of Gaurva Sabnis, the blogger in question. It is important to note that IIPM has not restricted itself to legal ways and notices but making an attempt to harass Gaurav by many means which lead to Gaurav having to quit his job. Join me and many more in support if freedom of speach and expression in India and raise your voice against IIPM's cheap activities. And thanks to IIPM's stupidities, without which no one would have realized their *REAL* credentials.
Also see the almost official campsite of protesters against IIPM and register your blog there in protest.
I have a kitten 'Putti' which is around 3 months old. I am beginning to feel that she has intelligence that is on par with humans. Proof? On Sundays when my ToI is delivered home, I give her the glossy supplement to read. And instead of reading it, she just goes aggressively on it and shreds it to pieces. Now that’s exactly what I would have done with the Sunday Times supplement and so would lot of people! I find that reason enough to believe that my cat is intelligent and thinks very much like humans. Don't you agree? :)
Continuing the series on archives, today is the day of birds. I love to shoot them the most, but never actually managed to get any good pictures of them. Nevertheless, I have kept trying with a small degree of success. Posted here are a couple of them - a rose ringed parakeet and a grey heron in flight.
Visiting the Himalays was one of my childhood dreams. And when I made my first visit to the mighty mountains, I knew I would be up for a great scenic spectacle. But what we saw was way beyond my imagination, it was a beauty that would filled my eyes, it was a picture that I would long for when you are away from it. It filled my heart with pleasure and contentment.
Samiti Lake is situated on the way to famous Gochela pass. We hiked continuosly for four days to reach here, and it was worth the effort. I have written a detailed story of my trek to Gochela where you can find more pictures from the place.
Agumbe is the rainiest place in Karnataka, probably entire South India. When I was there 2 years back, the driest times were when it was drizzling. But most of the day(and night), it poured. We even took a 2km walk in that pouring rain! There was intermittent rain even when I was taking this picture. For us Indians who love the activity brought in by monsoon, this is a place that must be visited in rainy season. Though I find the rain as the primary attraction of the place, it is more known for its sunset scenes. This picture was taken leaning on the edge of the waterfall holding the camera with my hand stretched into the space.
Pictures from Alaska are the next in the archives series. If Yosemite was fascinating, Alaska left me breathless. I saw an overdose of beauty scattered at every corner of the earth. It is hard to find a place that is not covered with snow. Alaska offers a variety of visual treat that is hard to come by anywhere else. Glaciers, polar wildlife, mountains, streams and alpine vegetation, and a railway line that traverses through all of these make me long for more of Alaska. Life here may be tough for residents but a traveller never fails to romanticize it.
This is a time to look back at old photographs posted at surplus musings. I will be posting some of my favourite images from the past - one or two a day for reminder of this week.
To start with is a picture of Vernal waterfall at Yosemite National Park, California. My first serious tryst with photography happened in this place. Although this and other pictures taken when I was here were taken using a one time use box camera, I spent a lot of time walking around the park and taking pictures. And I loved the results.
Yosemite National Park is place of beauty that can be described by no words. The rivers, streams and the huge rock structure make Yosemite a place of unmatched splendor. See pictures of the park taken by Ansel Adams and the National geographic.
I am starting a blog project in Kannada. This one is going to be a community blogging project where people contribute posts for the blog. The blog is still in evolving stage. This being my first community blogging project, I will be going slow on giving out invites since I want to watch and observe how is it going to work out. In the meanwhile, if you are well verse with writing in Kannada and have some blogging experience in any language, and would like to contribute, let me know so I can email you next time I plan to add more writers. It will be good if the wanna be writer has studied Kannada as a primary language at least until class X(so that you have some essay writing experience).
