No Plastic Zone

Bannerghata National Park – Herbivore, originally uploaded by ubababu.

I was out on a day trip to Bannerghata National Park this saturday. It was a wholesome treat to the family and my camera eyes. The Grand safari was the most enjoyable with a good glimpse of the wildlife – Lion, Tigers (yes 1411 Tigers left and I saw 2 of them here), White Tigers. I am uploading the photos to Flickr as I go.

The Safari area and the Zoo is a no plastic zone. The guard at the entrance, checks the belongings, breaks open all the snacks that are in plastic bags and puts them in one plastic carry bag that we have. He does let go of water bottles and a carry bag or so. This is very reasonable as one would need to drink water and would also need a bag to carry some dry snacks.

The result though is misuse by our folks, even after calling it No plastic zone. I have no idea how this particular Aquafina bottle appeared there, but it sure seems like they should do something about it. How would it feel, if you have an empty Aquafina bottle for lunch or a snack? Exactly how, that deer is going to feel. The Biology is the same.

Be Responsible, Rules are there for a reason!

Soulful Music

Soulful Music, originally uploaded by ubababu.

He was playing it for the love of music. Of course there were one dollar bills in his Tip Bucket, one of which was mine, but they were there merely to take care of this survival. So that, this man can live and bring the music alive. In the noise of the Kansas city Farmer’s market, The African American Man in a Cool shirt provided a beautiful ambience in a corner. It was simply beautiful. Can you see the music he is playing?

For more photos, Please checkout my Flickr Pool.

Airport Transit

It is easier to cross the city of Madurai from One end to another by foot, than it is to transit from One terminal or a Gate in an Airport to Another. So, in a 24 hour Flight journey from US to India, it is actually difficult to transit than sit and burn your ass off inside the aircraft.

The amount of effort required for the travel is governed by the following equation:

E = F + iT

Where E is the Total Effort for Travel. F is the effort required to fly in the aircraft. T is the unknown amount of effort required to walk from one Terminal to another. “i” is the ego in you that tells that “I can definitely do this” and it gets reduced from “This is a piece of cake” feeling to “Holy shit! I am completely screwed” feeling.

The above equation is valid only for those who travel alone. For all those who travel with family (especially kids or 1 kid who can do stuff that 2 kids do) the equation grows to the power. The modified equation is:

E = (F + iT)^n

Where ‘n’ is the feels like factor of number of kids ( and not the actual number of kids). So you may have only 1 kid but that kid might put on a nice airtime travel show equivalent to 3 kids. In this case your n is not 1 but 3. Usually if you have 1 kid, n is always greater than 1. But if you have a kid which yields a value of n < 1, I need to borrow your kid to brush off some of its characteristics to mine. Call me … Seriously!

The following are the challenges of Airport Transit: (what, you thought it ended with the equation?)

1. First of all, Good luck with getting down from the aircraft. The moment the seat belt sign is off there will be a race as to who will get up first, get their gear and head to the aircraft exit. It doesn’t matter that it takes at least 30 seconds for the door in the aircraft to open up to the exit, everyone including the folks at the last row will be up on their feet. If you feel you may not be able to compete with them, just sit back and be the last one to be out. If you think you can, you should have prior experience in Military, American Football and Wrestling, in order to succeed.

Note: If you try to accidentally push the guy behind you in the aisle, you might be able to see a beautiful sight of falling Human Dominoes. But don’t try that, you cannot run far off from the victims.

2. Let’s assume you got off from the aircraft in One piece ( 2 pieces if you are carrying a small handbag or a laptop bag, 10 pieces if you have a kid). The trick now will be to find the sign board that says “GATE C25 with an upper arrow mark”. After skimming through a crowd of people wandering the airport, security staff, airport staff, duty free shops, gorgeous European women you can finally spot something close – GATES C with a upper arrow.

NOTE: The GATES C sign arrow mark does not in anyway mean that your gate is right around the corner. I think they should intensify the arrow mark or color it to show how far your Gate is.

3. You will now start your transit locomotion by Walk, then get on an elevator to go one level down. From there you will walk a long way by foot, by flat escalator, by foot again, by flat escalator again and then finally you will get another elevator to go one level up. It is not over yet, You will have to now Catch a train because Gates C is in another terminal. All this while you will keep seeing the very same “GATES C with an Arrow Mark” board.

4. As soon as you get off the train in another terminal, repeat Step 3. It will seem like you are going towards the horizon, it actually is so! But don’t get too excited when you start seeing GATES C10-25 sign board with Arrow mark. You may still need to do 30% of step 3 before you reach your final destination. Back up 3 Gates, in case you want to Hit the Restroom.

I wish Airports were like Madurai Airport. There is only one Gate, you walk through that Gate you will be inside the airport and walk the other way you will be outside the airport. Humans love to make things complicated.

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Jet Lag

Jet lag is a phenomenon where a person gets from a place of one Timezone to a place of another timezone in a high speed jet, while sitting his ass off and doing nothing nothing but sleeping, eating and watching a Tiny monitor. Obviously because of the huge difference between the speed of the jet and the speed of the person’s rear, there is a Jet lag. (Note: Jet Lag is not the reason for Flight delays and Jet Lag has nothing to do with Jet airways or Jet Lite).

CODE LAG

A major section of Software Engineers travelling from US to India seem to sleep well during nights without the supposed Jet lag. This is due to the fact that they sleep at work staring at the computer. So if you suffer from lack of sleep due to Jet lag, just imagine yourself looking at millions of lines of C++ or Java code or just imagine looking at a Powerpoint presentation from your HR Department. These things knock you out immediately. I call this Code Lag.

JETTY LAG

While packing, always remember where you packed your underwear. Write it down somewhere or just mark the suitcase. You can also try to keep your underwear in the same suitcase where you carry your expensive new electronic item like LCD TV. The Indian Customs department will do the rest to mark it with a huge ugly cross mark with a chalk piece. If you forget where you packed your underwear then you may have to spend a day inside out in the old underwear, until you find fresh ones or buy new ones. I call this Jetty Lag (Originally coined by Chutneycase in a different context involving super models and what they wear and don’t wear).

SHIT LAG

Shit may come and Shit may go, but Bathroom remains forever.

So obviously whenever you get bowel movement, you just go to the bathroom. If your bowel movement had to happen only in the morning then your bathroom will disappear for the rest of the day and reappear only the following morning.

Since Jet lag confuses your whole body, it can also confuse your internal drainage system. Usually you will be in a fit, do I go before dinner or right after dinner. Do I have enough urge before dinner? Should I eat more to get the push. This my friend, I like to call Shit Lag.

Note 1: Bathrooms are not of standard shape and size in India. So if you are going to be in a place unfamiliar to you, walk to the bathroom and take a look. Depending on what you see there, control what you eat (Otherwise, be ready to sit in an awkward position in the Autorickshaw, till you reach familiar surroundings). No one knows when shit happens!

Note 2: If you see a variation in the speed of shit release (either an increase or a decrease) you are either having diarrhea or constipation and it has nothing to do with Jet lag or the speed of your rear in the Jet.

FUTILE ATTEMPTS

The following attempts will not cure Jet Lag:

1. Running in the airplane as fast as the Jet. I mean if you do this, you will practically knock over the crew selling expensive but duty free stuff, pass through the business class, break open the cockpit door and jump out of the airplane through the front glass window. Don’t try this, even at home.

2. If you are not a Software Engineer, obviously it is difficult for you to imagine millions of lines of code. You can try to imagine yourself as an Indian Govt. servant working as a Head clerk at the Treasury, sipping single tea while staring at a stack of dusty files. Sleep will come automatically.

3. Do not attempt to wear 2 underwears, to avoid forgetting where you packed. This will backfire by creating extra space in your suitcase for your wife to carry some more stuff that may increase the weight of the suitcase by 0.5 Kg, even though your underwear weighs only 0.05 kg.

4. Do not attempt to predict the time of the bowel movement. It is as uncertain as the electron in a Heisenberg uncertainty principle. If you predict a time and stay in your familiar place, it won’t come. If you predict the place where you will feel the movement, it won’t be at the right time. You have to go with the flow, I mean literally.

Colorful Flowers

A recent trip to the Arboretum made me realize how beautiful colors can be, when they were spread over flowers. I present to you a Haiku Slideshow of beautiful flowers waiting to be seen and loved.

White:

Fusion of Colors,

White contains them all, uniformly.

Yet, We don’t see any!

Orange:

When I woke up White,

She turned lovely Orange bright,

to give Sun a fight!

Red:

I tell her firmly,

Light is why she is pretty,

turns Red and angry.

Pink:

Anger made her sink,

But I loved her every blink,

She just blushed with Pink.

Yellow:

She showed all her glow,

Called me a friendly fellow,

and then turned Yellow.

Colors of Flowers Haiku:

So many colors!

Would they be full of beauty,

Even if we do not see? (Edited: has to be 5 syllable, it was 6 earlier)

Mini Travelogue: Rend Lake

Not often when people are looking to take a break during a Road trip for lunch they end up in a Rest area adjacent to a Lake. We were fortunate that on our recent Road trip to Nashville, we decided to skip the current Rest area and go for the next one after 60 more miles on 57 South Freeway and ended up in a Rest area by a beautiful lake – Rend Lake.

Rend Lake is located in Southern Illinois, one of the five states we pierced through before reaching Tennessee. We started off from Kansas went through Missouri, Illinois, Kentucky and reached Nashville, Tennessee. Rend Lake didn’t look like a place you would mark for a visit, unless you live in that area. That was why even though Rend Lake was just another Water body, we were able to enjoy it as we ended up there unexpectedly.

The breeze was warm and the sight of the lake was beautiful in the afternoon. There were people walking their dogs, dozing off under the tree. There were also folks riding on their boats in the lake and driving water scooters. It seemed like a fun place to be. We sat on a picnic table just by the lake with our home cooked Puliyotharai and some Chips, Chivda, Karasev. It was a heavenly experience for a lunch during a long Road Trip.

Rend Lake is a loveable place.

This ends the Travel experiences from my recent Road Trip.

Mini Travelogue: Nashville Ganesha Temple

On the same Road Trip that we went the other day, we also went to the Ganesha Temple in Nashville, TN. Nashville is located somewhat south east of Kansas city and hence the place was hotter and humid than where we came from. The heat from the morning sun, a warm breeze and a feeling of running drops of sweat between my body and my T-Shirt made me feel like I was in Chennai. The place was just about 3 miles from the motel that we stayed. The Gujarati Motel Keeper bhai guided us to take the easiest street route that would be just under 3 miles, while the GPS lady showed us a freeway direction amounting to about 20 miles. We had a hunch that our bhai was more accurate and we followed his advice.

As we travelled down Hickory Blvd, we slowed down a bit and the temple was on the right and it was a bit difficult to spot the sharp right entrance. For a moment I thought we were being kidnapped by our friend as he took a quick sharp right turn into the Temple Entrance. We might have missed it if we didn’t have enough time to brake. The temple was slightly uphill. As we parked the car and stepped out, we saw a brilliant building with a golden colored pillar in front. The entrance of the temple was as usual from the side and the exit was from the front. I keep wondering why this is so in most temples here in US.

The temple had a series of stairs leading to the top as it was built on a small hill. It made it look like one of those hill top temples in South India. The day we went in, there was also a pooja going on for Puri Jagannath. The Jagannath statue was very big. Photography was not allowed inside and hence no pictures. The main deity is Lord Ganesha and this is one of the biggest I have seen. I can say it was almost as big as the Mukkurini Vinayaka in Madurai Meenakshi Amman Temple.

This temple was bigger than the one in St. Louis and it was quite an ambient place. It was a sunday and hence we did see a lot of people coming in. There was also a stall just inside the Temple Hallway, marketing some guruji’s preaching materials – books, CDs and also advocating some preaching sessions for a hefty sum ( I think $260, and that is costlier than an iPod Touch 8GB)! and Oh this was done by Americans!

PS:

OFF TOPIC – TWITTER:

I have plunged myself finally into Twitter. It is quite interesting and easy to quickly put one line updates of your life on the web. If you are on Twitter, let me know and I will follow you. You are also welcome to follow me if you want to hear weird things like:

“I think a man has to carry two wallets to keep his sitting position balanced, otherwise he is tilted like Earth’s axis.”

“Glass is a supercooled liquid and doesn’t flow like a liquid and so is hard stool !”

“Whenever I see the button labeled “Quick min” on the microwave oven, I can’t help but think “Is Quick Min quicker than a minute?” “

“Barney is purple and green in color for a reason. If it was black and white people would mistake it for a cow.”

“A lot of people would have had high self esteem if we had Anti-Gravity Weighing scales”

“The friendliest of all Dinosaurs that are not real is Barney.”

“I was a born genius, Education ruined me. I then gave birth to another genius and now I am planning to ruin her.”

“Hi guys … am new to twitter. It is strange that at some point everyone is new to something “

These are some of the interesting update messages I have on my Twitter page so far and I will try to update with more as I go. See you there in Twitter!

Mini Travelogue: St. Louis Hindu Temple

Hindu Temples in US are more like community centers. They are usually just big hall buildings with dieties around the hall. The hall is also used for community activity and celebrations of occasions like Diwali, Ganesh Chathurthi, Sivarathiri, Durga Pooja etc. I haven’t visited a lot of temples here in the US, but the ones I have are like this. I have heard temples in Pittsburgh, Chicago are very good. I haven’t been there.

St. Louis Temple stood out in the way it is built. The Gopuram and the art work on the walls around it made it look very much like a temple in India, even though it is nothing compared to the stone made ancient temples in India. The Gopuram and walls are painted white which also makes it different from the stone Gopurams in India.

Even though the front has a nice big door like that in India, the access was through the side where you had to leave your shoes and coats, take a hand and feet wash and then climb up to the temple hall. The statues inside the temple were also very nice. The main diety is Lord Venkateswara and then you have other dieties like Ganesha, Durga, Navagraha and all those standard Hindu dieties.

Photography was not allowed inside the temple. The temple in Dallas did allow us to take photos though and also the temple here in Kansas. I guess rules are different in different places. Also, this temple had a dress code. We were not supposed to be wearing shorts, but since we drove down to the temple we were wearing trekking shorts due to the weather. The manager in charge was polite though and said it was ok for us to enter the temple in our shorts since we had come a long way. But we respected the temple rules and grabbed a Dhoti from the manager (No, not the one he was wearing). The temple was loaning dhotis to those like us, just the way they do in temples in Kerala.

The only thing was if we had to reach our wallet or the phone in our shorts we had to pull up the dhoti like Raj Kiran and reach for it like a village idiot.

As for women, they are not allowed to wear micro mini skirts, tube tops, tank tops. Alas, there is no saree available for loan if you end up in the temple this way.

PS: This is my 100th post and it seems I have crossed 10K hits on the stats. I would like to thank all of my readers who have been part of this. I really appreciate it.

Road Trip Facts

Road trip can be fun, but:

1. The total time taken for reaching the destination is calculated with the formula:

Total Time = X + iY

Where X is the estimate of time duration provided by Google Maps.

Y is the Total Rest stop time that we are planning to take.

i is the Number of Insects that come and hit your car Windshield to commit suicide.

2. Murphy’s Law of Road Trip states that “If it is your turn to drive the car, and if a freeway can be closed then it will be closed and you will have to follow the Detour for some unknown amount of time”. During this condition, following the GPS will lead to going round and round the same place like a daredevil stuntman in a cage. If you are yet to have lunch at this point, you will feel like a highly charged particle going around the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), not that I have any experience of going through it or knowing how it will be.

3. Freeways are built by human beings and is not a direct creation of God. Hence, freeways are subject to Natural damage and will need to be worked upon once a while. So if you are not surprised at Road Construction signs then you are an Atheist, Otherwise it may be your first road trip, just make sure you don’t fall behind a truck. If you fall behind a truck don’t curse God if you are an Atheist. If you don’t understand this then you will scream “Oh my God!” whenever you enter a Road Construction zone and fall behind a Truck that won’t budge a single mile per hour beyond the posted speed limit.

4. If you miss an exit the GPS lady will automatically adjust to your fallacy, recalculate and provide you with a new route automatically. This does not mean in any way that the GPS lady is in love with you or attracted to you or having wet dreams about you. But the problem is, you will fall in love with this lady and you will be obsessed with touching her once a while to find out the route, next rest stop exit, restaurants etc.

5. You will love to compare the number of miles you drive with the distance in India. What you can cover here in 4 hours will need about 8 hours in India. So as we drove 600 miles one way during the trip we had travelled from Madurai to Chennai (444 Kms or 276 miles, which takes about 8 to 9 hours by train or 10 hours by road), had a little business meeting and then drove back from Chennai to Madurai all on the same day. It is fun to do this comparison.

6. Did I say the GPS lady is not in love with you and certainly not having wet dreams about you? Yeah, don’t even have second thoughts even if you are desperate.

7. Law of Road Trip Inertia: When you reach the destination, come to a complete stop and retire for the night, you will still be feeling that you are in the freeway. Your dreams during the night will involve rectangular sign boards of different colors and shapes, speed limit signs, white dotted lines and the Voice of the GPS lady (But no, the GPS lady isn’t going to dream about you)

8. Your back will hurt. Resistance is futile. If you manage to sit in a yogic posture in an attempt to minimize your back ache, your neck will hurt. If you try to nullify your neck pain by bending down slightly, the pressure will be passed down to your rear. In any case, atleast one part of your body will ache and you will know more about it during the night at the motel.

9. The big circular red sign with a slash in the middle that comes up on the GPS screen when it becomes horizontal doesn’t indicate that you have to keep your coke can perfectly aligning with that sign. Now, this is a kind of wet dream that the GPS doesn’t want to have.

10. The probability that a Super 8 motel franchise is run by a desi is 1 billion to 1. So if you end up in a Motel run by a Gujarati Desi fellow, please do not hesitate to ask him for directions to the Ganesha Temple. He will be much more accurate than the GPS lady by 18 miles. Do not be afraid that the GPS lady will break up with you, remember she wasn’t loving you in the first place.

11. It is easier to pass Trucks when they are not there. Trucks are like Auto Rickshaws in India. You never know about their driving style. The time between beginning to pass the truck, driving a safe distance ahead of them and changing the lane back to the right lane is slightly short of 25 blight years, where 1 blight year = 1 blinking light from your Indicator.

12. For every 30 miles on a given freeway there will be an Indian restaurant named Tandoor. How else when you drive on a freeway with nothing but mountains and forest on either side with SUVs threatening to pass you anytime and Road construction sign popping up randomly between kids getting restless in the back seat, the GPS lady shows up with Tandoor Restaurant in Clarksville, TN coming up in the next 27 miles? It is either a freaking coincidence or there is an Indian Restaurant named Tandoor in every 30 miles of a Freeway. I am fairly comfortable believing in the latter.

Wise people used to say “The Journey is the Reward”. Road Trip has a lot in store for you as a Reward. In spite of all the buts you will love it because Road Trip to me symbolizes freedom.

Road trip is always fun.

PS: For the last time, GPS lady definitlely is not in love with you, now get over it.

Photo Slideshow: Kansas City Zoo

Kansas city zoo is one of the vast zoos I have seen. As a child I was fascinated by the Vandalur Zoo in Chennai. But KC Zoo is probably ahead of it in terms of size and organization. The zoo is organized as different continents – Africa, Australia, Asia and different animals feature in the continents separately. Of this, Africa is the biggest and probably has the most animals. The zoo is so huge you will need a full day to see it. Africa alone will need you half a day to cover it. Most of the animals are not caged. They are placed in naturally formed habitats with trails and observation points created for visitors divided by fences and trenches.

Leopard, Cheetah, Giraffe, Zebra, Rare Orangutan, Chimps, Baboons, Camel, Kangaroo, Elephants, Flamingo, Secretary bird (Don’t ask me why it is called so), Ostrich, Lemur, Meerkat, you name it they got it. The video of the Tiger playing with a ball was taken from the same place.

Here, I offer you a slideshow of the best zoo I have seen so far. Click on the photo to go to flickr to view the rest of the photos.

Video: Tiger having a Ball

This is a video of a Tiger playing with a big ball. I took this a couple of months back at the Kansas city Zoo, Missouri.

You can also download the video in fully quality Quicktime/Apple TV Format at the Internet Archive.

Mini Travelogue: Times Square

Perhaps one of the busiest place on earth is Times Square in New York City. But on the day we visited the place, it had just done raining and there were not many people trotting around. So we got the place all for us to enjoy. It felt slightly like Vanilla Sky when Tom cruise runs into an empty Times Square street, but pretty soon people started filling the place up. It was lights everywhere, an electronic artificial non-green Diwali, happening every evening/night over there. How did Al Gore miss this?

And that concludes my several part series of Mini Travelogues from my trip to Niagara Falls/NYC. I hope you enjoyed it and I am looking forward to share more of Travel stuff in the future. I will wrap it up with picture of the NASDAQ board.

Mini Travelogue: Empire State Building

They were temporarily calling it Empire State Rebuilding because they were making maintenance and enhancements to beautify this tall observatory. Since they were Rebuilding, we had to catch the serpentine queue through a labyrinth of halls and rooms which lead us to a tiny room with about 6 elevators. We got into one of these and went up till the 80th floor. We were dropped off there and had to go through another maze of rooms with AC vents and wires hanging off the ceiling that lead us to another set of elevators which took us till the 86th floor.

We were so restless that we were wondering if we will be made to catch a hot air baloon at the 86th floor, jump off from there with a parachute, cut off the parachute at a certain altitude, grab hold of a pole, slide down, catch a rope and do a MI-3 stunt to get back on top of the building. But the 86th floor was there and we just had to walk out into the observatory. It was actually just a tiny row around the top of the building that definitely cannot handle a lot of people. We did manage to enjoy the aerial view of the city but were unable to name the buildings that we saw – Building 1, building 2, building 3 with the Crown, a church, Building 4 with Thundu and Jatti drying in Mottai maadi, you know all that stuff.

All of this lasted only about 10 to 15 minutes before Varuna bhagawan (Rain god) decided to do his act. It was getting stormy with lightening and we were asked to get inside the glass shelter, through which we could still see the ground act but not so enjoyable. I liked the Space Needle in Seattle and John Hancock center in Chicago much better than this one.

If you would like to visit Empire state make sure you check these 2 things:

1. That it is not rebuilding.

2. That it is not raining or going to rain or chances of rain.

Mini Travelogue: World Trade Center Site

September 11, 2001 is an unforgettable and painful day for the people of United States. Two tall buildings, called the World trade center that stood proud and prosper fell down to ashes within a few minutes. Will this phoenix rise from the ashes? It is believed so and the construction has begun to rebuild WTC at the same site and they are likely to call it Freedom towers but use the same name WTC, to reference it. A phoenix will remain phoenix even after it is reborn from the ashes.

It is hard to show something that is not there. Look for cranes and construction equipment in the picture.

The Phoenix will always rise from the ashes.

Mini Travelogue: Wall Street

The Dalal street equivalent in the United States is the Wall Street and Vice Versa. With huge amounts of dollar transaction everyday at Wall Street, one would expect a lot to see at the Wall Street. But it was quite the opposite. Wall Street was a small Sandhu (Street), in fact you can just call it a bondhu (Hole or a small street). The only noteworthy thing to watch in that street is New York Stock Exchange (of course, what else did I expect? Ranganathan street equivalent?) which will be closed after 4:00 PM (duh!).

The Street is preceded by a statue of a bull, like Nandi in front of Shiva linga. The Bull symbolically marks the stock trading term “Bulls” (The ones who think positively about the stock market and always get into buying a stock). Tourists were found petting and taming the bull from all sides.