Return of the King...

Winston Salem:

One last look at the empty apartment. It doesn't hurt much. I realize why. It was a good decision to move to this apartment, seven months ago. It would've hurt like hell had it been the old apartment on Magnolia that was leaving back. That place had plenty of memories - good and bad, but mostly good - associated with it. That was the place where we built our dreams. I had to see it once again.

I took Magnolia once again, and had one last look at the apartment on the second floor. And bade a goodbye.

CLT:

Of all the airports I have been to,(not that I have been to all that many) I would say CLT is the best. Free wifi kicks it right up to the top of the list, if you ask me. Flight delays are no more an issue. Who cares when you get to chat one more hour with friends? Why don't they do it at all the places? No, I wouldn't take the excuse of logistics. I wouldn't mind paying a dollar or two either. Alas, if only someone thought about the business sense in it.


JFK:

I had almost 3 hours at the airport. One thing I totally fail to understand is why people mess up the security check queue. Hats off to the patience of the TSA guys!

A380:

Bloody Hell! I've heard of a 'Palace on Wheels', but this is a 'Palace with Wings'! It is huge - no, gargantuan would be a better fit. And the legroom. Whoa! The personal information center just flashed the aircraft's current ground speed: 1009 km/h. What? Holy Cow! And it is totally silent. And smooth.
You will get used to its sheer size and the features that augment it - things like the huge curving side wall,and the flashy, wood-paneled flight of stairs that lead up to the holy mecca of luxury, the First Class - pretty quick. Then you start fiddling with the entertainment system. Hundreds of movies, thousands of tracks, four on-board cameras, podcasts, live news feed... Enough to keep you occupied through the 13-hour flight.

Once the bird was down on the ground, I took a sneak peak at the cockpit. The captain showed me how the controls worked and explained the fly-by-wire system. Pretty slick. And yes, he told me the the Cargo Door Actuator works like a charm (of course!) ;)

Got a co-passenger to take some photos. I will be uploading it as soon as I receive those.

Dubai:

Shopping is all you can do inside the terminal. Duty-free shop after duty-free shop tries to get you spend the last of your cash with 'great' offer. But I see the prices aren't any lower than what I have seen in the best deals in the US. There was one lucky draw ticket that caught my eye, though. A $500 raffle ticket for an Aston Martin DB9. And the total number of tickets is only 2000. So a one in two thousand chance of winning an Aston Martin? Sound pretty tempting!

Kochi:

Finally! Hot and humid at 4am. It feels good to be home.... (Boy, I better get used to the sticky feeling at the earliest! )

Silence and Sunday Post Meridiem

It is so unbelievable how everything could be so immobile. Each of the huge trees outside my apartment that make a canopy of soothing shade out on the front yard has a million leaves; and each of those leaves may very well have been carved out of stones, for they are so still.

Have you been in a situation where the whole world around you stops moving and you are the only one that seems to have any life? The trees, branches and leaves, the blades of grass, the fallen leaves on the road, the bushes, the air, the buildings, the neighbors, everyone and everything seems so dead and mummified. Even the sun's rays are staying away; may be they are afraid they might impart a life to those dead. Absolute silence, a state of absolute rest. More like a state of rest in peace. That is this place, Magnolia Street in Winston Salem on a cloudy Sunday afternoon.

I've been here for a year now, and the defeaning silence was what caught me off guard when I started living here. It was unbearable for me who had lived in Bangalore for 3 years. I wanted to yell out, "MAKE SOME NOISE, YOU ZOMBIES, I'M GOING CRAZY!" But then I started to like it, and I got used to it. I don't feel anything these days, unless it is a Sunday afternoon.

Now, it is one of those Sunday afternoons.

Long long time ago....

I haven't been here in a while. This place looks so strange to me now. Feels like going into one of those old, unoccupied dusty houses... Something makes you want to go back, but there is nothing to go back for. At least it makes you think so for a moment.

At one point in time I wanted to convert this to a Photoblog (yeah, call it laziness because then I could escape with posting a few pics and captions instead of trying to make some sense out of random words), but time proved I was too lazy to do that even. May be I had more important things to do. May be.

Anyway, I can no more do it, even if I wanted to. So let me get back to words.

Sin City

I gambled in Las Vegas! (And of course, lost. Well, thats what the casinos are for, aren't they?).

I have never seen such blatant display of wealth and opulence anywhere else. It makes you believe that money has no value in that place (and thus make you feel less guilty to part with your own money). We tried our luck at the Roulette table, and boy! isn't that an addictive game! We won a few hands first, and started losing steadily after some time. I should've remembered the basic rule in gaming: keep moving if you start losing; at least it will give you a new perspective (I don't know how that will make a difference, though)...

Everything is big and flashy in Vegas. It seems world's 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th biggest hotels are located at Vegas. We stayed in one of those, named Luxor which is built imitating an Egyptian pyramid.

Check out a few pictures at http://www.flickr.com/photos/subhashnm

Does Buddha still smile?

Does he see those children of his, who are driven away from their land, looted of all that was theirs, deprived of their identity, tortured, whose youth being fed mis-information and drugs?

God, will they ever get their land back?


Watch: Cry of the snow lion

The eye

I'd say my wife has a better sense of photography than me. She just loves camera: her dream is to take a movie with Mohanlal and Nandita das doing the lead roles. She's not quite there yet, but I'd say she does much more justice to the new camera that I've bought than me, and gets a lot better photos out of it. I have a lot to learn from her... (I hurt my ego here, sigh!)

Below are a few snaps clicked by her.

Across seven seas...

Its all dusty here. This place smells of old paper and brings back old memories. May be I should wipe it clean now...
I bought a new camera; an Olympus Evolt E-500 dSLR. I like it, it has so many features, and a good pair of lenses in the kit. Went to a park near to our apartment in Winston-Salem in North Carolina and clicked some pictures... It has been one of my dreams to own a digital SLR, and finally, I've done it!