In God's Own Country (Visit to Alleppey)

Me and my wife visitied Alleppey (in Kerala) last weekend. We just wanted to gear into some sort of relaxation mode and get away from the hustles and bustles of the traffic-congested city of bangalore. Mann ! what a relieving experience it was... The place is so full of beautiful still lagoons, surrounded by a zillion palm trees and rich greenery .. Calling it a nature lover's paradise would certainly be no mistake.

I was long interested in travelling in a house boat (known as kettuvallam in native language) or riding in a canoe through the still backwaters of kerala. We booked ourselves for a day cruise in a houseboat, which in itself was splendid. A ride on a houseboat is a fabulous way to explore the fascinating beauty of the backwaters. There was a in-house cook who cooked us delicious lunch. The backwater ride along with the gentle flow of breeze in the sunny weather, through the palm fringed narrow canals winding through the vast expanse of paddy fields and tiny huts lined up along either sides of the canals, was really a bliss.

After around 6 hours of journey, the housboat left us at this beautiful resort, called the 'Coir Village'. The resort was located on 3 tiny islands amidst the scenic backwaters (see the first photo) This place is rightly called the 'Venice of the east'. Seeing is believing ... Here are a couple of smaller version of the photos.

Allepey, in God's own country, was indeed beautiful, with sparkling backwaters, rich lush greenery and mellowed silence.

The Fourth Estate's erratica

There was a really catchy news piece in the paper today. The heading read 'NRI voted one of the world's sexiest man alive' .. With all due respect, the news itself was not weird. The weird thing was - it not only appeared on the main page, but also, occupied more than 25% of the first page. !!! (Atleast, thank the devils for not putting it as a headline) This kind of worthless news making its way right to the first page and that too, in a major daily in Karnataka (and also India) strikes to me as particularly insulting to all other major events happening all over India, in political, social, economical and business sense .. This news is just pure-tabloid material and to top it all, that 'sexiest-man' is not even a pure-bred indian and our drowning media celebrates it high...

Are we running short of first page news' or what? Is the media just captivating on the vicarious desires of modern attitude of Cosmo-Indians ? This news piece doesn't deserve more than 4" x4" space in some inconspicuous corner of page 6 .

The Queue Problem ...

I had been to Landmark @ the Forum mall in Bangalore to buy a gift for my wife on her 26th birthday .... (she's gettin' old !!! :-) ... It didn't take much time for me to pick up the gift, since I had already decided on what to get ... So, I picked up what I wanted, paid the bill and was waiting in a really longgg queue for gift-wrapping the stuff.. The funny thing is, if you want a nice wrap, you have to pay an extra 10 rupees (or) you have to settle for the ugly wraps that they provide.. I seriously dont know what's wrong with those folks for giving such 'good-for-nothing' wraps.. Alright now.. I bought a nice wrap and joined the queue.. I didn't complain about the long queue, only because there was a very pretty girl standing right behind me and she even asked me something about those free and no-good gift wraps.. And to oblige to her question, I was telling her something, when I noticed this guy (3 positions behind me in the queue) with a lovely parker pen set.. He seemed to be very impatient standing in the queue..

Now comes the Queue problem. To understand this, you first need to know how the queue looks like out here.. Since, it is not a perfect world, the queue, too is also not a single wavy line .. its kind of shaped like a cone.. See what I mean !!! the top portion of this cone-shaped queue is towards the counter, where atleast 4 or 5 ppl who are standing at the head, think they have reached the counter first, somehow defying the laws of physics ....

So, after 30 mins of waiting (and standing next to that pretty girl) and having almost reached the counter, I suddenly notice this guy ahead of me, trying to sneak in and get his 'Parket-Set' wrapped (again, with those stupid ugly wraps) .. What the @$%& !!! I called this guy up (with my voice raised a little) to 'inform' him that we are all waiting in the Queue ... Everyone heard me whine, including the girl.. You should have seen the guy's acting skills.. he put up a real-good cameo role of not knowing nothin' about the queue.. He most definitely would have impressed the judges at the Oscars ..

Whew !!! So, after this little scene and a winning smile/acknowledgement from the girl behind me, ... I moved to the head of the queue, only to find that an old man has already jumped ahead of me and is in the middle of gift wrapping his stuff ... Alas !! all in vain .. The old man had got some Tin-Tin books, maybe, for his grandchildren .. Atleast, he would go home as a happy man ...

Hmm.. The queue problem continues ... Oh !!! and by the way, I bought Harry Potter's Goblet of Fire book to complete my wife's HP collection ...

Choosing my Blog title

Took me a long time to figure out an apt title for my blog. It took me even longer to figure out that there is a well-defined process for that.

Step 1: Think what you are goin' to say (or not) to the world in your blog.
Step 2: Now, think of a title for what you wanted to say in Step 1.

This so-called 'well-defined process' is really not as simple as it sounds. I mean, if you are so into giving quite a bit of attention to nitty-gritties of a simple title (or life or whatever), then, this task is bound to take a while (atleast for me ...) At the end of my irregularly winding thought process, I settled for 'Random 2 cents' (atleast, thats what its goin' to be for a while ..)