Last day and the last entry for the year of 2006. This is the silhouette of Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in South Bombay. This reminds me, I have to finish my image gallery of South Bombay before January is over.

This is a fire hydrant in my office building. The word aaag actually means fire in Hindi. It could have been spelled with just two “a” but I guess they put the third one in for good measures or maybe to add more emphasis to it. Sometimes I find it funny the way they write things. There is open and shut with directional arrows Aaag goes with India to complete the name but it looks like “Open aag” and “shut India” to me. Just like “Horn O TATA K Please” written behind trucks in India.

“They expect me to keep this whole patch of the JV Link Road clean, that too when construction is going on in Fantasy Land and there is so much loose sand here and to make it worse, there are 50 trucks a day carrying sand passing through this gate. What kinda trick they expect me to pull outta my arse?”

Quite literally actually. I don't know where these came from but the have been in my house for some time now and I decided to take pictures of these when I ran out of other things. I took some images then cleaned them up to take more pictures. These pictures are of the cleaner versions. As I realised, Mr. Abraham Lincoln did needed a good wash.

I know the Christmas is over but I just can't resist posting this image because I quite like it.

I came to know about boxing day only after I went to Australia. I still don't know what exactly it is but what I do know is that the Australians always play a cricket text starting this day and this year is no exception. What makes the Boxing Day test all that more important is the retirement of Shane Warne and Glen McGrath and Warne's chance to pick up the 700th wicket. Personally I feel it is a little harsh to make them play right after Christmas, what do you think?

Christmas wishes to all the readers of Picturejockey. Have a good time and thanks for all the support you gave this site in 2006 without which it would have been difficult to find the inspiration and motivation to post an image everyday. This is the picture of the desk of one of my colleage.

We have a contest in our ofice on Christmas and there are various competitions including the decoration of work station. This is one of those desk that was competing for the first prize. Traditionally the people in the graphic design are supposed to be creative but once a year it is nice to see the creativity of people from other fields too.

This is the Christmas Tree in our office. I took pictues of it last year as well an the challeneg this year was to do something new and I was not really able to do it. It was a little disappointing as I was not able to take as good pictures as last time.

This was taken at the same time at this shot. Sometimes when he is in a happy mood, he obliges me with very good poses like this one. As I am posting this image Manu is sitting in my lap telling me “Manu phas gaya” (Manu is stuck while looking at this picture.

From my bedroom, I see this. I hae no way to be sure but I guess this is the Filmcity in Goregaon. Sometimes this place is lit very brightly as seen here and sometimes you get to se spectacular fireworks too. If this is not filmcity then it must be some hotel or something else where a lot of parties happen. All the people who have been saying Lumix has noise should look at this picture.

Same shoes as posted yesterday. As you can see these are placed quite neatly there. Maybe these are discarded or maybe these belong to one of the security guard of our society.

I am not sure if these shoes were discarded because they were kept alongside a bicycle and not just thrown. If these are still in use that I have to say that these are really unfortunate as they are way beyond their age of retirement I can see them aching in every crack and wrinkle. If still used, they are a very good pick for FILA to advertise. Reebok, Nike, Adidas, are you listening.

“Normal is sooooo boring.” said one female pigeon to another. “I am sick of dating these same old grey males ever since I first went out with Patrick. I want to be adventerous, to be different. Have you seen Roger, the new guy with black and white feathers. Oooooo, he's so cute and so so so different. If he doesn't ask me out for a date in two days, I will go and ask him myself.”

The girl on the right seems to be excited about something and I am sure it is not Saif Ali Khan. I have never been able to understand what goes on in the heads of girls so won't even try to guess. Spotted these girls returning home from school from my window last Saturday. Thanks for all the lovely comments in the past few days, keep them coming.

I thought she was left wide eyes by the new winter collection or the new range of accessories until she came up to me and said, “Do you see that handsome mannequin that has just come today? Would you be kind enough to introduce us?” This is a mannequin in the District Center Market in Janak Puri, New Delhi.

A few days ago I spotted this peeping-tom looking in the bedroom of my next door neighbour. When the parrot saw me with my camera, he shouted “Hey! I have got an excellent view of the bedroom from here. If you let me use your camera, I will share the pctures with you.” It was a tempting thought but I decided against it.

There is nothing special about this shot but I posted it just to give you an idea of the size of the tomatoes I posted yesterday. The bigger one is one of your aveage size tomato and the small pebbles around it are the small tomatos that we had for lunch in spinach on Sunday. The macro settings from earlier shots explain the reason in lack of details in the big tomato.

We decided to make small tomatoes and potatos in spinach on Sunday and before these were cooked I decided to take some pictures. Slicing this tomato here was a little tricky as cutting it without kinds squzzing it in not so easy. These tasted good in the dish Mira made and tasted good raw as well. I have not done any food photography and this also doesn't qualify as one. I am thinking though that maybe I should take some pics of the food we cook and post it here. How small these tomatos were? You'll find tommorow.

The scale of this cup and teapot is still not perfect but is definitely better than what you saw yesterday. Actually Mirs bought two tea sets from Powai the other day. One was a miniature and the other was about regular size but the teapot was stil not as big as it should have been. I guess need to put the kettle back on stove to fill this cup.

Well not really, though I did managed to stop drinking coffee when the doctor suggested without any significant problem.I bough this cup from Janak Puri during my last visit to Delhi and the tea pot is a set of tea set that Mira has that she bought from Powai. We have bought quite a few such things as this small teapot that we thought we would use to display in our house at certain places but earlier we were a little lazy to do that and now Manu won't let us keep anything breakable in open.

I am back to posting images of Bombay and photographed from across the Oval maidan in front of it. This is the Bombay High Court. It is situated next to the Rajabai Tower which actualy is visible in this shot as wel, right in front of the Bombay Stock Exchange, towards the right. I am not getting much time so the progress on the Bombay Picture Gallery is slow but it will be there sooner of later.

This is Manu on the staircase leading to the terrace of our house in Delhi. This is one of his favourite place and he like to sit of these stairs. Right now he is sitting next to me and telling me that he is wearing “challap” (slippers in ths pictures. He also said “Bharat bhai” when he saw this picture. Bharat is my nephew who lives there.

Thanks for all the comments yesterday. Some people asked what it is and how it works so here is another shot of the top, this time showing the complete toy. It is actually quite simple. You hold the ring and pull the string and it spins. You can then put it on ground, your hand or just keep holding it. Manu likes it on his hand as it tickles his hand. As kids we used to play with different kind of tops. Tops that used to hava a nail on wich they used to spin and there was no ring in those tops either, you had to wrap the string and throw them on the ground.

People who visit this blog regularly are aware that I am really fond of Delhi and while in Delhi, one place I always visit is the Dilli haat. This wodden top was bought from there during my visit earlier this year. Apart from this, I have bought a few other things as well including tiny kites that I have been planing to put up on the wall for some time now.

While taking the pictures of the car I had just bought, I decided to bring in the other one as well that I bought some time ago. The new car looks like the Renault and the old one like Ferrari. After Ayrton Senna the driver I have liked is Schumacher and it is sad that he has quit F1 racing. What is even worse is how closely he has missed this year's championship.

I find it amusing how these toy makers change around the sponsors' names since they are not the official merchandise of the original companies. elf is called eif and Mild Seven is Zone Seven and many random words like auto, turbo and racing are stuck here and there. I think serious copyright issues are there inspite of those name changes.

OK, here we go again with toy cars. The day Manu was coming from Delhi, I went to a supermarket and picked up this car from there. Once with Manu, it would not have looked the same so the same day I took out my camera to take some pictures of it before I gave it to Manu. Two more such pics will follow.

Today manu turns two. As I am sitting here editing his picture and posting this on the site, Manu is standing next to me on the chest of drawer recreating his pose on left and saying "papa dekho" (look at me dad). The picture on the right is for my brother as he has one of him where he was standing in almost identical pose when he was this young. Today I am thinking about what we have done in the past two years after Manu was born and an year before that which was nothing less than a solitary confinement for Mira with noone to speak to and me being at work. Today let's raise a toast to a better future, for Manu and everyone else.

Thanks for all the comments on yesterday's post. My knowledge about plants is absolutely zero adn I don't know what these flowers are called. I named them Keopard flowers because of thespots on them. In size they are a little bigger than the ones posted yesterday and like those, these are also found inthe terrace garden of my brother. Those who asked about the size of the flowers yesterday well one of those in full bloom was less than one inch tip to tip.

These flowers grow in the terrace garden of my brother. Earlier we used to have a couple of plants in our balcony, the we planted some catus on our terrace but those were not loked after with much love. It was only my brother got interested in plants that we have a complete small garden on our terrace.