Pediatrician and a Forensic Expert. A passionate PHP geek. Currently CTO, SANIsoft. Also a photographer, bird watcher, nature lover and a FOSS enthusiast.
“I hope you don’t think I’d ever do anything like that, I mean, just step out of the drier, if anyone were seeing me. It was just viewing.”
“Same thing, isn’t it?” asked Baley.
“Not at all the same thing. You’re viewing me right now. You can’t touch me, can you, or smell me, or anything like that. You could if you were seeing me. Right now, I’m two hundred miles away from you at least. So how can it be the same thing?”
Baley grew interested. “But I see you with my eyes.”
“No, you don’t see me. You see my image. You’re viewing me.”
“And that makes a difference?”
“All the difference there is.”
For many of you the above passage would be familiar, it is from the novel “The Naked Sun” by Issac Asimov where the hero has just initiated a Sci-Fi equivalent of a web-cam messaging with a beautiful murder suspect.
The photograph has not turned out 100% as I would have wanted it to be… I would have liked a wee bit more depth so that the details in the iris were more visible, however this will do for now
At first glance you may not know that the picture is any different from what you think it to be… but do read on!
The Alcazar Cabaret of Pattaya, Thailand is one of the major tourist attractions, whenever we returned from Pattaya we were questioned “Did you see the show?”. So this time we took time out to watch the 75 min sound and light extravaganza!
Started by the Phettrakul Family more than 20 years ago Alcazar Cabaret, which is located on Pattaya 2nd Road, originally, was a small theatre of 350 seats with 40 employees. It is said that the show was not well received in the early days however the owners persevered and today Alcazar features a theatre with a capacity of 1,200 seats & 440 employees. The theatre is equipped with state of art light & sound system featuring the ultra high tech “Circle surround sound DTS system” & the most modern computer technology. Today, the Alcazar Cabaret is World Class!.
This show stands apart in one more aspect all the beautiful dancers are transvestites or were men!
Indeed Swati’s remark at the end was true in more than one sense – this was so much like our Bollywood
Well judge for yourself – see the album with 47 pictures.
Must put this in words before it gets lost in drudgery of daily routine.
Returned yesterday from Pattaya – it was a business trip which we combined with a mini vacation but again thats not the point…
We could not take Aasim along right from the beginning so he managed to fly across on his own managing a flight change and a near complete night without sleep admirably well. So from Sunday to Wednesday it was lots and lots of fun, have a couple of hundred pictures but those will have to wait!
Well lot has happened in the past year – mostly on the work front – SANIsoft. Despite everything (read that as people being head hunted / quitting ) I have managed to train a line of second in commands, guys who can take a project to completion once the architecture is decided upon. This leaves me to overlook the macro aspect of the projects without getting tied down by minor details like parse errors.
I have also been spending a lot of time reading other peoples code and learning, in turn improving the code quality with the main aim being to perfect reproducibility of programming and easy transferring of domain knowledge….
Hmmm… the previous sentence sounds awfully like some marketing crap – in real world terms it basically means that any team can take up the work of another with minimal problems and we can train new people much faster than what it took before – end result is that we are much more productive.
We matured from a Partnership to a Pvt. Ltd. though most of it is just legal paperwork, it does poise us for a ramp-up if we need to.
On personal front there were several small but satisfying things.
For the first time in we got ourselves a *new* car – A brilliant Yellow WagonR Vxi – of course I got a bigger kick when Swati agreed for putting a DVD player in it!
For the first time I joined a gym and am sticking with it well
Sunday, 28th August, 5:55am – The phone rings, I spring out of bed, for once I had wished that it would indeed ring at this unearthly Sunday hour, voice at the other end said “Good Morning, 6:30?” I confirmed “Yes!” and kept the phone back in the cradle. By now Swati is up as well – “Raju?” she questioned, which elicited another “yes” from me. I was now out of the bed brushing teeth, Swati without a word brewed hot coffee for me (Did I thank you for that love? – Thanks anyways ).
I double checked my camera, flash, lenses, batteries. Put in the bread and jam sandwiches into the rucksack along with 2 liters of drinking water. Raju arrived on dot at 6:30 on his mobike, I was wearing my shoes sitting at the doorstep. Swati quickly ascertained from him as to which direction we are heading… a soft goodbye and take care… we were off!
OK! let me put the things in context here. A few days earlier some birdwatchers had reported White-Rumped Vulture (Gyps bengalensis ) sightings in Nagpur district and we were told that it is just 50Km from the city. Raju had finally managed to extract the details – I don’t know why but the older bird-watchers are very reluctant to share knowledge – of the location and that is where we were going. I am sure that if you are least bit interested in birds you will know that Vultures arefast disappearing from the Indian sub-continent and that our excitement was understandable.
We reached the first landmark village Umred about 45Kms fast enough and asked around. To our dismay we found that no one had seen or heard of Vultures being around for years… to further add to the disappointment we found that the next landmark village we were told about was in fact about 35Km further away instead of the wrongly reported 5 – the bright light at the end was the affirmation that the entire road was tarred and motor-able. Which indeed proved to be true, once again the when we reached the second village the actual site was still about 10Km and the description given to us matched to what the villagers described.
Our spirits perked up when after about 5Km we caught the first glimpse of the cliff we were supposed to reach. We were still in time despite being mislead about the distance. We ultimately reached near the base of the cliff at 9:15am, about 90Km from home.
Raju scanned the cliff face with his Binocs but I could spot 2 of the Vultures almost immediately with my naked eyes, Raju spotted 2 more – our excitement knew no bounds.
Even as I took out my camera we started walking up the hill to reach as near as we could. We knew we had just enough time with no room for errors – the air would soon be hot enough to generate thermals and the birds would glide out in search of food…
We took several pictures when suddenly Raju recalled that White-rumped Vultures preferred trees, besides these looked a bit different – so these had to be Long-billed Vultures (Gyps Indicus) and indeed he was as usual correct. At 9:45 they took to the air and it was then that we realised that there were actually 7 of these critically endangered birds!
With the birds gone we explored around the base of cliff and the cliff face a bit more. From the looks of it, Vultures have nested at the spot in the past and the numbers were probably much more.
We gobbled our breakfast while discussing how the spot can be further studied, interspersed with some lurid boyz jokes
Since we had come this long and we still had time, we decided to climb to the top of the cliff and see for ourselves how the view looked for the Vultures… This was also a sort of personal triumph because I am a wee bit scared of climbing (note: climbing not heights 😉 )
We started back for Nagpur at around 12:00 noon and reached back by 2:00pm as promised to Swati – right in time for a lunch of finger licking good Chicken Korma. Aasim and Swati had invited some of his friends over with their mother for lunch….
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– of the location and that is where we were going. I am sure that if you are least bit interested in birds you will know that Vultures 