Aasim was given an exercise in creative writing at school.
The topic was “My School”, he wrote the best he could but the coup de main was somewhere near the last – It read – “To see a map Click Here” 
Category: Live Journal Entries
I am a bored man ;)
Eye of the Tiger!
I had always wanted to take a picture which literally represented a favourite song from my early college days…
Eye of the Tiger by Survivor.
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
Alcazar Cabaret at Pattaya, Thailand
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.
Back from Oblivion!
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!
39 Today
Reading what I wrote a year ago – I appears as if I was sounding almost pessimistic!
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
Photography continues – though I am now photographing different kind of birds…
I got the best Birthday gift of all – a set of 31 Asterix and Obelix Comic books!
In retrospect – it still does not take much to keep me satisfied 
Define Enterprise
Enterprise is the starship in Star Trek.
A blind date with Vultures
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 are fast 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….
Hmmm… may be more of her someday.
Signs of time
Another thing which I did for the first time in my life. I joined a gym! Yes, complete with a personal trainer and a nutritionist. No, I do not expect to be the next Arnie Baby, it became imperative due to the fact that self administered diet control and exercises were not enough to keep my lipid profile under control.
They have started me real slow and there are guarantees for no aches or pain but it did feel nice to be told that I do not look 40, perhaps a marketing ploy…
Yeah! I am *not* 40 yet but will be next year anyways – old men are sentimental right?
Anyways the work out was lots of fun and I do intend to stick to it specially given that Swati also goes to the same gym at the same time. Ah! you should have seen the crestfallen faces as she introduced me as her husband
Colors
A whole lot of things are happening most of them good some not so good but overall I would say that life is predominently colored eye soothing green like almost everything out here after the recent fury of rains. There are a lot of things to write but again the motivation to put it in the journal is lacking, I can fool myself and put it down to lack of time but it is not really that…
Photography continues but studio work has been restricted due to lack of time on Sundays… but yes I have been able to continue uploading pictures at NagpurBirds site and it as of today has 300 images. I am waiting for Swati to process some of her bird videos to put on the site.
Swati liked this picture of Common Jezebel butterfly very much, it was taken on a cloudy morning at f5.6/200th sec and a flash. Perhaps there were a few fine water drops on the lens giving the soft halo to some parts of the picture.