Things have nere been worse,
Things have never been better,
the glaciers and the poles are melting the earth is getting warmer,
we can now settle down on poles too and eat penguins.
the forests are getting smaller and smaller
we'll have more buildings, more farms,
more animals are on the verge of extintion.
we anyway need more space for humans
The riots are getting bloodier and more violent.
We now have one effective way to control population.
You are getting older,
You are getting wiser
the prices of eveything is going up.
you are more spiritual and less materialistic
The houses are getting smaller,
There is less space to clean
the trains, buses and planes are getting more crowded.
More the merrier, we have more company
I guess I will do something about it
Things are just perfect.
HAPPY NEW YEAR

This is avery fine example of going back to basics. To catch the fish you don't need fancy equipment. What you need is a bait o attract the fish and a string wo which you can atach it. This man has a bait on a hook tied to just a fishing line, no rod required.

So it is finally here. The last weekend of the year 2007.In three days we will be in the year 2008. Tell me do you really feel excited and happy that an year is coming to an end and a new one is about to start. A lot of people feel quite excited that it is going to be fresh start and they will be doing things differently and things will be so much better. I personally believe nothing changes except the date and expecting things to be different just because an year has advanced is a little stupid. Tell me what do you think.

Ignorance is bliss and I tend to ignore reading bad news and head straight to the funnies so I generally don't read news on how all the open spaces in Bombay are quickly vanishing. Only a few days ago there was news in Hindustan Times that the open spaces will remain open for now (Well, you can't prevent the headlines from jumping straight on to you.) I was thinking that although we are cribbing about the shrinking open spaces, we are not doing anything with whatever open spaces are still left.

This park is about a kilometer away from quite a big population but you don't see anyone coming to this park. Opposite this park is a green belt. I am sure in a city that was managed a little better, that place would have been converted to a nature trail or something like that as it includes the Jogeshwari caves too. But what have we converted it to—An open loo? In the morning one can see a crowd of people going there with a bottle of water to take a dump. As a city do we even deserve open spaces, I guess we are not responsible enough to be given access to these places.

While taking pictures in the park on Christmas day I said to myself that the sun is too bright and it is not an ideal day to take pictures outdoor, specially this kind as I was getting shadows and highlights that were too harsh but while I was processing the images I realised that I can play around a little and get them to look different...different and good. At least that is what I feel, do let me know if you like this image too. A lot of plants are labbled with their names, I guess the next time I go there, I should write down the name of this plant.

On Mental Floss read my memories of some of the vehicles with engines inadequate for the kind of jobs they were made to do.

Holidays are a little boring when I am home alone. There are a few places I want to visit in Bombay and now when I can, I don't feel motivated to go there. I have tried working as well but it is very difficult for me to concentrate on work on the weekends and I just don't seem to be able to get much done. Yesterday I went to park next to Kamal Amrohi studio and got some good pics that I will be posting here.

While selecting the pictures I noticed something and that explains the title of this image. When I know I will be posting a few shots of the same subject, often I save the best for last and this is particularly true if I start the series mid week. I try to post my best shots earlier in the week when there are most people on the site. There are others too who post their best images last, David is one example. I don't know what sort of logic Ashish uses who posted 40 odd pictures of Disneyland recently. Tell me what do you do while posting a series of pictures. Do you post your best images first or last or is there anything else that you consider too.

Merry Christmas to all of you.
We have the woolens to save us from the cold but these pups rely on each other to keep themselves warm. You feel sorry when you look at them and realise that only one of two will survive to be an adult. The rest will die-some will be run over on the road, some will dies of other reasons. On the other hand if all the pups survive the number of stray dogs in the city will go past human population.

Manu is happy in his winter clothings.He is three years old and already knows what is cool and what is not. The shoes he is wearing was bought from a shop only a few days ago in Delhi and he selected which shoes he wanted to buy. Actually he has been doing that for some time now. It is only a matter of time before he refuse to wear the clothes he doesn't like. This is the second picture take using the phone camera.

As in image this ha nothing special but there are two things that are special in other ways. First, this is the first image I have posted here that is taken using a phone camera. The camera is okay and gives decent enough results if the light is good. Second is Manu is wearing something he usually don't get a chance to—winter clothing. It doesn't get cold in Bombay and we generally don't visit Delhi in the winters so we don't have too many woolen clothes with us here and when we had to visit north on less then a day's notice, we borrowed a jacket from Manu's friend he is telling every single person that “This is Dhawal's jacket”.

Yesterday I wanted to talk about another problem that is bugging me but decided not to crib about my small-small problems while I was talking about such a tragic event. One thing that keeps frustrating me is our being in Bombay. I wanted to be with Mira at this time and could have spent more time with them had I been in Delhi but the distance now is too much to keep going back so frequently. This is not the first time this has happened, we have missed all functions and celebrations including the weddings of our cousins in the last 4 years.

I thought if I should write it here or not and finally decided that I should. We, especially Mira, are going through a very rough time. On the 15th of this month, my father-in-law passed away. What makes this tragedy even worse and unbearable is that fact that my mother-in-law died a little more than a year ago. In about a year's time Mira has lost both her dad and mom. Both time Mira had gone to her home to look after them till they are in a better health and both times she ended up attending a cremation. Her father was in a hospital in Chandigarh and breathed his last barely half an hour after we got there.

While some people are big fans of Vijay Mallya and Kingfisher, I personally didn't find it to be remarkable better than other full service airlines but that could be because I flew Kingfisher only twice and that too in economy class. One thing that I did notice is that Kingfisher staff calls the fliers “guests” instead of customers or passengers. This reminds me of Niruls's. The then Managing Director of that place Mr. Deepak Nirula insisted that all the people should be addressed as guests and one could even lose his job for calling someone a customer or anything else than a guest.

One more thing I liked is the opening of the welcome address by Vijay Mallay. He acknowledges that the “guests” had the choice of other airlines but they chose Kingfisher and thanks them for that. Another thing that caught my attention was that his staff was personally selected by him and after hearing that I was sort of expecting Yana Gupta to be bringing me my lunch. Must say I was disappointed.

As I was boarding the plane, I was the first one to hand out my boarding pass to the Kingfisher personnel who was also talking on the radio. He tore it and gave me this stub keeping the bigger stub himself. I paused and looked at him and he sort of looked at me with the same surprised expression as I had so I asked him if the part of the boarding pass he had was meant for me. “No sir, it is for us.” He replied. Differentiating yourself from the competition is good but I am wondering if you need to do something like this or is there a practical purpose behind giving the passengers the shorter stub.

This can may be crushed physically but the same can't be said about his spirits. He still has aspirations to be reincarnated as a Mercedes Benz and with the focus on recycling more and more, there are good chances that he will make it and I guess he already has some plans for the bullies back at the popularity poll. I guess there have been enough pictures of soda cans and we need to move on to something else now. What say?

“Think! Think hard next time before you pineapples and kiwi fruits mess with us grapes and the rest of the fruits. This time it is just a few dents here and there. Next time we won't be so kind and leave you in a shape even the recyclers won't touch leave aside your buddies who ran away to save their skin leaving you to take all the beating.” This is a conversation that took place between rival fruit flavoured soda cans at a poll for the most popular fruit flavour soda. I mean if the political parties in India can do it, why not the soda cans. Wondering what if these cans were in Pakistan.

Yes indeed. You are polluting the air and not just by the awful smell but by releasing greenhouse gases. I read the most amusing piece of news that claims that Australian scientists have discovered that kangaroos release less of those harmful gases while farting than cows and they are planning to transfer the stomach bacteria from kangaroos to cows to make their digestion more efficient. Never mind the emission from the factories and from our cars, the gases passed by cows and sheep need to be controlled. I am surprised that I have not heard about the human fart. With six billion of us, I guess we can dramatically slow down the global warming if we stop farting.

BTW, what does the kangaroo gain by farting less harmful gases? Well in an environmentally conscious world, it ends up in your plate replacing beef and lamb. Care for a kangaroo burger? Or would you rather have a glass of kangaroo milk?

Don't use a light bulb, use a CFL. Don't use an elevator, use stairs; they are good for you and the environment. Use public transport instead of driving. These are only a few of the suggestions offered by people concerned about the environment. If we do follow them, we may be able to slow it down but I strongly suspect if we will be able to prevent the doom, just like the judgment day in Terminator. This is because we can't do anything about the real cause of this mess—us...way too many of us. Rabbits often get blamed for their reproduction rate but if you see the increase in the human population has been a lot higher than the population of the rabbits. I can imagine god desperately trying to save us and finally getting up and walking away “To f*#@ with you. I can't be bothered about preventing you from doom anymore if you so strongly insist on killing yourself.”

I am wondering how much recycling will really help. We have been changing things in order to prevent the environment and it doesn't seem to be working out. Instead of glass bottles, we decided to use plastic bottles for milk and other drinks and now we are worried about our landfills piled with non degradable plastic. We are thinking of finding alternative to fossil fuel but how effective it is going to be really. The electric scooters seem attractive but if everyone is driving those think about the amount of extra energy we will need and how is it going to be generated. Even if we make something that runs on something as easily available as water, how much would it help? In most cities we have a shortage of water, one can imagine the shortage of water, and real and manmade, if all cars run on it.

I was thinking that the baloons and ribbons on the walls would come off by the time the party was over. But I was wrong, no kid asked for a baloon or pulled the ribbons and all of it was still on. After being kept there for some days, the ballons deflate or burst or come off the wall but we usually we don't take off the decoration after a party. May sound stupid but I like to leave it on as the reminder of nice time we had.

If someone says Happy New Year, you say Happy New Year. If someone says Happy Diwali, you say Happy Diwali and with the same logic, if anyone says Happy Birthday, you way Happy birthday. Manu kept wishing everyone a Happy Birthday who wished him on his third birthday. We kept telling him he is supposed to say Thank you but I guess he liked Happy Birthday better. At school too his teacher exclaimed “He is saying Happy Birthday to me!” They made him feel really special and he was quite happy with all the attention.