Modi: modi vilyadu papa

The social networking age as come to India. As I write this blog it could take down the most powerful man in Indian(World) cricket.

But why 'modi vilyadu papa'. Translation of this is something like "you me outside now". Modi tweeted it to Tharoor. He did take down Tharoor, but i think he might have gone down with him also. The next few days will answer it. But now I am interested in knowing how many more big people is it going to take down. But more importantly will we know the full picture. Guess time has to answer the question.

The year I had to re-learn to walk and cycle

Well it has been a horrible winter so far. It started as i was sitting in my office and started snowing. I was like nice. This is so beautiful. I left office, and the whole road outside my office was grid locked. Also found out the next day that most of the highways were also grid locked. Woke up the next morning to see everything white. It looked beautiful to the say the least. I was happy.

But the snow did not melt for a week, and it had slowly turned to a ice. And every time it melted a fresh layer of snow followed and the cycle continued. With a layer of ice on the road and side walk, cycling and walking became a huge challenge. Every step I took I had to be extra careful, and the back wheel of the cycle was going anywhere but straight. It just got worse when turning. So I had to relearn both the arts (is it right to call it an art?) and I must say it was fun.

The winter seems to be coming to an end. I have had enough of the snow. The last 3 months have been difficult to say the least.

Looking fwd to spring and summer 2010. But i do rialise that the next winter is just 9 months away :(.

Pisa and Florence.

Well my latest trip was to Pisa and Florence. Finally Italy baby!!!!! Have wanted to go the country since the day I landed and must say it was no way disappointing. But the journey to Charleroi was an ordeal. Had to battle some cold wind, snow, delayed bus and a bus which refused to start and get moving once it reached.

Land at Pisa airport and luck finally changed. Got out of the plane had some warmth. Mind you not warm by a summer standard, but warm as in not low single digits. Also the forecast had predicted snow and rain. So that is why I say the luck finally changed.

We headed straight to the famous Leaning Tower from the airport. Had some pizza for lunch and learnt something very interesting. Till a few years back it was frowned upon to eat pizza for lunch in Italy. If there is some community in the world which is as passionate about its food as Indians then they are Italians.

After food clicked a lot of photos of the square on which the tower was. There is not much more to see in Pisa. But I must say, the town looks very similar to an Indian town. But was easily one of the most beautiful squares I have visited so far.



From there we headed to Florence. Upon reaching Florence we had dinner and rested. Next day morning we walked towards the Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore. The ‘P’arty boy kept insisting that you will be amazed by walking out of a small street and seeing this huge structure. And he was so right. Walked out of a small street, and out of nowhere this huge structure pops up. It just feels so out of place, which became even more evident from the Piazzale Michelangelo ( a high point in the town which gives a good view of the town). It is so much bigger than the surrounding.



From there we headed Uffizi Gallery. I am not a museum kind of a person, so did not enjoy this so much. But the view of the town from one particular window was perfect. The brilliant part about most of the European towns/ cities I have visited is the there is always a river/ stream flowing right through it and they have some of the most beautiful bridges over them. Florence was no different.



We could also climb the dome of the basilica. The view from the top was breath taking. Also since it the highest part of the town, the sun had a direct view. We sat on the sun and enjoyed the view from there. Very peaceful and warm :).



Now for the nit picking part of the trip. The food for as good as it was, it was also equally pricy. I would say same rate as Leuven for a meal. I was expecting it to be a tad cheaper as was the case from my previous trip to the Canary Islands.

But over all a wonderful trip with a wonderful group of people. Let me exploration of Europe continue.

Violence News it is

Has news reporting become all about reporting violence. The top 3 headlines on today's news were all on violence all as a result stupid govt policies. What can we do about it?

Adios great bowlers

Well this is a small report of what is happening in world cricket. A lot of people have already written about it and yet i had to write about it because i am seriously dis-heartened by what i saw. In a recent ODI between India and SL there were 800+ runs scored. To a few people it might have been great cricket. But to me it was utterly disgusting. Cricket to me is a contest between bat and ball. But the t20 format and certain ODIs on flat dead track is so boring. It has become a contest to see who can hit the ball harder and longer. Cricket to me is a beautiful where a reverse swinger from a Waqar and Wasim is bending into the batsman foot and a really talented batsman like Tendi or Lara digging it out. That makes for super viewing. If this is how cricket is going to be played i am sure in the near future if I am given the responsibility to lead a side, I would play 11 batsmen. And hope that 10 of them can turn their arm (one keeper). Not bowl those amazing in-swinging yoker or a nice drifting leg-spin. But just turn their arm. Coz anyway the batting side is going to score at 8-9 an over. I would atleast be confident that I will be able to chase down that target with 11 batsman on my side. Adios great bowlers of yesterday. The likes of you the world might never see again. They say proof of the pudding lies in its taste. Just look at world cricket and how many great bowlers do you see. There are a lot of good bowlers, but no great bowlers. Most teams till the recent past did have great bowlers. So there you have the pudding and the taste also.

Brush with Belgian Royalty

Well it happen a few weeks back that the Princess of Belgium visited our lab. And I had an opportunity of seeing a real life Princess LIVE. This is the first time in my life that I have seen royalty in such close quarters. I know it looks very lame for me to blog about this, but lets face I was super excited the day it happened. So I just wanted to share my excitement with a few ppl who read this blog. Here are a couple of photos from the visit. I am barely visible on them, but I am in the same frame as Royalty. How many of you can lay claim top it ;). Click on the photo to enlarge them and then have a look :).

The Finale

When on trip you tend to a remember a lot of things. But if it ends on a bad note it has a very bad after taste. If we think back we generally first think about that one point, irrespective of how good the rest of the trip was. But luckily for us this was not the case. In-fact, if anything it ended on a very tasty note :).

We were driving back to Leuven from Neuschwanstein Castle, we decided to stop at Stuttgart. Since Germany in general has a higher population of Sri Lankan Tamil folks than Belgium, we dropped into a restaurant of theirs. And the food was bloody hell tasty. But sadly for everyone other than me I can truly say that the food made them cry. They had something called Chilly Parotta. It was a kind of dish where you will find some parotta in-between green chillies :). But other wise the food was damn good.

To reach Stuttgart we had a brief stop at the Foggensee Lake. It was a very tranquil lake. We managed to see only one more family other than us the few minutes we spent there. But from what i saw, it looks like a very popular summer lake, where you can have a nice relaxed swim.

The drive up to the lake was relatively more relaxed/not filled with arguments. I guess all of us had a huge 'HANG OVER' of the fairy tale land called the Neuschwanstein Castle. The sight of the castle it self was breath taking (Before we left Leuven, Dr. H wanted to see a landscape where there would be layers of Green, autumn colours and snow in the horizon. I would say we got to see atleast 2/3 of that.) At some-point in our life we all would have read about this very typical European castle hanging over a cliff covered with snow. We were refueling our fuel guzzler when we saw this sight. We had left the castle come down hill and stopped to refuel. The sight of this was breathtaking. If I had even an ounce of poetic skills (which i do not) in me, it was an ideal setting to write one.If you can see the castle in the center of the picture, we had come down from that very place. It was snowing there. On some level i was keeping my fingers crossed to meet my Cinderella there. The setting was perfect for it. That was the first time that i had experienced snow fall where i could actually see the flacks properly. It did not snow in Leuven 2 years back, and last winter i was back home.

The inside of the castle some how did not impress me as much as the Mysore Palace in terms of grandeur. But what impressed my was the well known German efficiency. The Q system was beautifully divided into 3 Qs. One for the present tour group and 2 previous ones. All leading to the same place, but for different langg. I can just imagine the chaos which would have existed in India for that kind of a system.
And o yea being a foodie, i cant forget to mention one more small point. We had some amazing sweet bondas at the castle. It was so cold and the hot bondas were like a heaven sent food in this already heaven like place.

p.s. Had loads of fun in the trip, hope to repeat something like this again sometime in the future. And a million thanks to the drivers and the other guys who were part of this trip. Hope to many more like this with you guys. And yea next time is going to be the BMW 7 series or the BMW X5.

pss: The whole blog is in reverse chronological order. Just some expt I am trying.