London buildings...

London, in terms of buildings, definitely has a really good balance between the old and the new. At many places I saw the two worlds clashing, wierd looking modern buildings of glass and steel standing next to old, elegant, brick and stone buildings, maintaining a pleasing contrast. Here are some examples:

This was visible from the Westminster bridge...


Don't remember where I took this but found the two buildings next to each other very striking...


The next two are while walking from the London bridge to the Tower Bridge on the southern side of the Thames river. The walk from between these two bridges is something I would recommend to everyone. There are a million things to notice there...

Portland Aerial Tram

The aerial tram is a 3 minute ride to the top of a hill to the Oregon Health and Science University and definitely a must see for people visiting Portland. Here are the mountains that were visible...

Mt Hood


Mt St Helens belowing volcanic smoke...

Aww nuts!!!

Manged to finally get one picture in which he was staring straight at the camera and the camera didn't shake :)

Places...

Trillium lake...Trillium was the name of the first company that I worked for after graduation...

Madras!!! Well, I didn't take the 26 East to check if they too have their version of the 'Sarvana Bhavan' ;-)

beaches and waterfalls...

...of Oregon

Oregon...pristine

After covering nearly 600 miles of 'Oregon Scenic Byways' over the weekend, pristine is the word that comes to mind. Pristine in the sense of beauty and serene but also untouched and uncorrupted. How do they manage to keep such vast expanses of natural beauty in so much 'order'?!? Even in the remotest of the places it looks as if someone has just mowed the grass and pruned the trees...

But, no doubt, the place is amazing. The weather was not the best but the drive was totally worth it. I covered the Oregon coast from Newport to Astoria on one day and the Mt Hood scenic loop the other...

On the costal drive the highlight was the Yaquina Head Lighthouse built in 1873. The winds were howling and the view form the lighthouse was nothing because of the heavy fog rolling in but whatever was visible and the lighthouse itself were quite nice...

SF run...

The Twin Peaks in San Francisco were the target of my run in SF. I started running from the Mission street in the general direction of the hills. It wasn't a good idea to run uphill after a week's layoff from running but it was a nice sunny day and very ideal for running. Obviously I got lost but finally did manage to make it all the way up to the hill right besides the Twin Peaks called the Sutro hill which I now found out is about 50 feet taller than the Twin Peaks anyway ;-). The Sutro hill has a huge and very peculiar tower called the Sutro tower on top of it. I had my camera with me in a pouch that fitted very nicely in my hand and took some pictures on the way up and made mental notes of the rest that I wanted take pictures of on the way down, here they are...

This was another one of those steep streets that I ran up. Well I ran up this one but there were several on which it was just not possible to either run up or down. Check out that striking dark red, maroon tree...

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Finally I spotted the Sutro tower right in front of me and I took this without stopping on the way up the final uphill street...

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Below is the 'Transamerica Pyramid' building (taken with 12x digital zoom), a fairly prominent part of the SF skyline...

And lastly the Golden Gate bridge was visible from the top. The bridge is now 70 years old...

Building mural...

This was the mural on the side of a building in SF city. It is one of the best murals I have seen. I don't think the panoramic picture above captures the painting too well. Maybe the close-ups below capture the uniqueness of the painting...

More SF...

Another house from SF with really nice flowers growing up front. Unfortunately the camera shook a little and the picture didn't come out too clear...

San Francisco

The sun was out today and the walk through SF was spectacular. You can see it for yourself below...

Here is a panoramic view of the city...


Here are two differently coloured but typical SF houses standing next to each other...

Butter and Mashed Bananas

Saw this play a while back, 'Butter and Mashed Bananas', with a remarkable storyline, fantastic acting and great direction.

But first let me see if I can outline what this play was about. Was it a jab at our society? Or was it an uppercut to our politicians? Or a left hook to the system we live in? The play was damn funny but extremely thought provoking at the same time. It was very innovative, saw lots of things being depicted in such noteworthy new ways…

But why the hell am I having a tough time describing this play??? It is actually straightforward…it is about a boy who is born to parents, by accident I may add, who belong to the opposite ends of the political and social ideology in India.

Growing up the boy faces struggles to find his own identity, always torn between his parent’s choices. The boy grows up to become a world famous author and writes a brilliant book but surprisingly the book goes completely unnoticed in India. He finds out that his book got censored and did not even make it to the Indian market. He tries to make a film to reach out to the country and that too gets censored. He questions, who is this censor board? What qualifications to they have and what are these limits they agree upon and who decides them? Why is the censor board so random even though it consists of highly reputable people with degrees from the most well known educational institutions of the world?
Anyway his life continues and he decides not to give up and to do something about the system, he joins politics. There he finds himself caught in a terrible mess just because of making some simple statements like “Truth shall prevail” and “The culprits should be caught”. He tries hard but finally other politicians join hands and overwhelm him. He slips away from people’s memory and unappreciated in his own country he fades away…

I don't think the short description here in this post is going to convey how good the play was. The music, played live, the brilliant acting, the directing and the simplicity of it all actually made this play extremely enjoyable but only by actually seeing it will you be able to appreciate what it is and what it does…

Two articles worth reading in the otherwise pretty much useless 'Bangalore Times'.

The first one is featuring Aparna Sen. I have loved all her films and admire her work a lot. I think she is one of the best Indian directors ever.

Here is the article about her and her upcoming film: I can't make those feelgood, laugh-a-line films

The second one is about probably a lesser known person, Gerry Martin. He is the first Indian National Geographic adventurer specializing in snakes and crocodiles. I had seen him once on Nat Geo when he was trying to catch a Cobra for an anti venom institute. In the program, even though Gerry manages to get a hold of the Cobra's head, somehow the snake manages to bite him on his hand. Gerry, actually unfazed, proceeds to bag the snake, gets behind the wheel of a car and drives himself to the hospital. He explains that the reason he himself is driving is to keep himself alert. Gerry points out that the cobra's venom affects the nervous system and in order to fight that he should remain alert and not slip into a lethargy [sic ???]. He gets an anti-venom injection and then gets discharged from the hospital the next day. He then adds "I don't hold a grudge against the snake, what would you do if someone was pinning you down, holding the back of your head?"
Here is the small article on Gerry: Gerry Martin, Wildlife Expert

Now Tigers...

Early numbers from the ongoing Tiger census being done by the Wildlife Institute of India indicate that there is a decline of 65% in the Tiger population in Madhya Pradesh, which has the largest population of Tigers in India. Also indications are that the other areas in the country will see the same or increased rate of decline. In 2001 and 2002 a Tiger census had estimated about 3700 Tigers left in the country.
Looks like while the Tigers, an endangered species, have done well in the conservation and reservation areas, they are pretty much getting wiped out from the outside areas. Poaching is the main culprit for this dramatic decline but the key thing that Wildlife Institute of India suggests is "effective tiger conservation would only become a reality if reserves are connected to one another so tigers have a larger population and area to breed and hunt." But this is not the reality today and "habitat destruction and human encroachment were leading to declining numbers."
This is just real depressing news, the final census number is likely to be anywhere between as little as several hundred to a maximum of just about 2000.

Delta and Dawn

Delta and Dawn are the two humpback mother and calf whales that lost their way while migrating from probably somewhere near Oregon on the US west coast on their way to Mexico. The mother and her calf appear injured and the mother has a deep gash which probably came after being hurt by a ship's propeller. This may have caused the mother to go off course and swim up a river. They have been swimming upstream for nearly 2 weeks now somewhere around Sacramento. The theory is that the mother may have brought the calf up to safe water to help the calf recover.

There have been rescue efforts involving scientists going on to return the whales back towards the ocean. They are nearly 90 miles up the river and returning all the way back to the ocean is a long and arduous journey that will probably end when they swim under the Golden Gate Bridge into the Pacific. Currently the whales had been successfully made to head towards the ocean but they turned back up river and returned about 3 miles. They are now about 65 miles from the ocean.

Humpback whales are an endangered species that were ravaged by unrestricted whale hunting and their population reduced by nearly 90% at one point and were almost brought to the brink of extinction. Humpbacks are famous for their 'Whale Song' which has been an area of research for long. Although whales cannot survive long in fresh water, the mother and calf are looking healthy. I really hope they make it back safe to the ocean...

21.1kms

After doing the full marathon, 42.2kms, at the Bangalore Marathon last year, I decided to do the half marathon, 21.1kms, in this year's marathon which happened to be a midnight one. This time the objective was to train right, perform strong and hit a target time.

The Bangalore Midnight Marathon was organized on 19th May. The organizers claimed that we were creating history by running the first ever midnight marathon. My main aim was to have a much stronger run this time and since it was a night marathon which meant much lower temperatures, really focus on getting a good time in. I set myself a target of at least 2 hours 30 minutes, otherwise I find myself a lake or something and go jump in it, and at the same time I was dreaming of a sub 2 hour run. Seriously I only dreamt of sub 2 hours, awake I knew it just wouldn't happen ;-). Anyway I finished the run in 2 hours 15 minutes. The official time is awaited but my stopwatch indicated 2:15. Wall Street and Dalal Street would have been so happy, I gave an outlook forecast of 2:30 to 2:00 and hit it bang in the middle :D

The course was fairly tough one, for me. It was a circuit of about 5 kilometers and you had to run around 4 times to complete the half marathon. It consisted of 5 uphill sections and about 3 flat and downhill sections each, making it a fairly tough course. Couple of the climbs were pretty treacherous, anyway loaded with carbs throughout the day and appropriately rested to remain fresh at the start, the race started. I made a mistake on the first round itself, in that I carried a full one liter water bottle with me, long story forget that but I shouldn't have done it. That took a lot out of me. In my practice runs I had usually covered the first 5kms in about 26 to 28 minutes and so while I was expecting to cover the first round in 28 minutes or so, this time round it took me nearly 32 minutes. I finally chucked the bottle and from then on the second round roughly took me another 32 minutes, the third round about 34 minutes and the fourth round about 37 minutes.

The fourth round, what can I say, "I" missed it! ;-)
My mind was there, my body was there but "I" wasn't! Those two kept arguing about they should stop and walk, no they shouldn't but in any case I was somewhere else. Don't know where, somewhere floating around I guess. So during the last round the mind kept winning and the body tagged along like that faithful Pug dog in that Hutch ad for quite a while but at the steepest climb of the course the mind finally relented to the body's demand to walk that section. But at the top of that climb as soon as the mind saw someone overtake them, the mind booted the body in the behind and they were both up and running. They immediately overtook the overtaker and from there on they ran all the way to the finish line including the last uphill finish. Thanks guys!!!