Isle La Motte

Contuining the postcard series ..

On a recent visit to Vermont, went all the way upto Burlington.
Its on the shores of lake Champlain, which separates the states of Vermont and New York and in this lake there are numerous islands, all connected by roads.
Is beautiful to drive along the lake-side roads.
On one of these islands, Isle La Motte, there is a shrine called st Ann's Shrine.
The picture featured here captured my attention, showing elegance, desolation and symmerty. Also, the purple coloured tree looks striking in front of the greens and the Blue of the sky !

Postcards from Boston

Planning to start a Postcard series, for the Boston cityscape in particular and maybe others too.
For all the high end Mega Pixel count, realised that when viewed as a Postcard with borders, a picture looks the best.
Hoping to keep this up on a regular basis .. and comments and criticism will only help me improve :-)

so here goes


Acorn Street, Beacon Hill, Boston.
Considered one of the most photographed Streets in the US, time has stood still here.
Cobbled streets and Gas lit lamps and windows adorned with beautiful flowers, a walkers paradise.
Placed my S1 IS on the pavement because I wanted a long exposure shot and then realised that the angle was perfect to capture the quaint cobble stones.

Bereft of Rock, I turn to some soulful Ghazals

Not sure if I have lost my music collection or left it back home .. miss it and hoping that at least its safe at home ..
Computer's also been cranky and somehow not able to tune into launchcast, that was a pretty good source of music for sometime .. now have to listen to my meagre collection of Megadeth and Enigma .. over and over again ..
I long for some Metallica, Staind and Led Zep ..
But of late have been re discovering ghazals. Have always liked it and had heard quite a bit to them .. and looks like this enforced exile from Metal\Rock\Alternative is not such a bad thing.
Got a Punjabi roomie who has a large collection of Ghazals and luckily many of them were common between my earlier collection that I had become familiar with.
Loaded my 4 Gb player with a random set of songs and have been enjoying them during the daily commute and at times in Office too.
The vast differece bet Ghazxals and Rock has not been escaped me. I like varied forms of Music, mind you, and is a nice experience to explore Ghazals deeper.
My Roomie helps out with a couple of tough words which might have roots in Punjabi but there are pure Urdu words that fail us both and we try and figure what they might be
Ghazals have their soul in the lyrics, most of which deal with Love and Longing and in most cases Booze as well :-D .. strange ? U need to just listen to any random song and there will be mentions of "jaam", "maikhana", "saqi" etc ..
Some of my favourites have been sung by Jagjit Singh, who i think has the cleanest of voices ever and my other favourite would be Ghulam Ali whos is unmatched in pouring his feelings into the song.
there have been songs which I like and am not sure who has sung them, there is a large contingent of pakistani singers who excell in this field, Noorjahan, Begum Akhtar and others .. am still a long way from claiming mastery on Ghazals and Ghazal singers :-)
But having a good Hindi background did help me in following the lyrics and nuance's that are so very important to this form of music.
Great to listen to at almost any time, especially when you are missing someone, missing home or in mood for some introspection.
Current tripping on "Tere Aane Ki Jab Khabar Mehke" by Jagit Singh .. is a beautiful romantic song and Singh is at his vintage best.
As Mcdee's says - "Am Loving it" :-)

Am digressing here a bit, but the Macdonalds here are sad for Veggy's .. I mean, the UK macdee's had some awesome Veggy Burger's.The Veggy Burger here, if you are lucky to get in any of their outlets, tastes like the bottom of my sole, which however clean it might be is not appetising ! I used to swear by the Macdee's in UK and the ones in Blore are not bad either are they ?
PS: No questions or wise cracks about how I know the taste of my shoe Sole ..

Of Pristine Lakes and Windy peaks .. something was amiss

Was a good weekend, and though was a long weekend, had one of the best outings on just one of the days.
The plan was to go to the state of New Hamshire for the first day, come back and head Southwards to the state of Rhode Island.
2 Romies were enthu and thus started our journey .. NH is pretty near and except for the whole world landing there at this time of the world and clogging the Interstate 93, we made good time ..
The plan was to cover Cannon Mountains, The Flume Gorge and the Echo Lake.

The Cannon mountains have arial tramways which take you to the peak in 7 min, 7 odd min of awe and frantic clicks on the camera wanting not to miss a single angle of the beautiful scenic view ..
The top has a small snack bar which was strangely closed, except for a few cookies and refreshing drinks, so we decided to carry on exploring, grabbing a few chcolates for refreshments.

There are a couple of nice walking trails and once we started, I felt something was wrong .. not wrong .. something there .. just out of sight .. or maybe somee glaring absebnce. I couldn't place my finger on it and it kept nagging me for sometime till suddenly it hit me .. there were no papers\plastics\chocolate wrappers anywhere in sight .. and that was the thrill of it ..
you can hike here for quite sometime and not meet anyone and the place gives you the feeling that you are the first one there .. discovering the beauty in all its granduer ..
It does make a lot of difference, the wrappers et all spoil an experience for what it should be .. and its sad that almost all of the walking trails I have been back home have glaring reminders of chocolates, cigaretts, Beer and what not's ..

Have vowed to join in on the group which organises cleaning trekking trails back in Blore and do my bit when I can ..

After the mountains went to the Flume (http://flumegorge.com/), a beautiful natural wonder, a chasm in Granite , with a waterfall that becomes a stream running the entire length of the Gorge .. it was indeed gorgeous ...
what more could I ask for? there were covered bridges in there which are a speciality of the NH region and was picture perfect .. (http://www.bridges-covered.com/cov_pics/flume_nh.jpg)
took in the range of 200 photographs and have tried my best to capture the beauty of the place .. and apart from a few .. have sadly failed ..
To end the day went to the Echo lake .. and the lake had a beach !!
we were there at the right time, just before sunset and was a great way to end the day...

The trip back was quite, with each of us trying to index out the memories of this trip ..
we were checking out the snaps and to the beats of Enigma sometimes, Jagjit Singh soemtimes hummed along, sated with the beauty of New Hamshire ...

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On the return journey, was looking out for visible signs that we had passed over from NH to Mass and couldn't .. then realised that its not like back home when you are coming back from TN to Karnatak where in all the signs and letterings change in language :-D .. everythings the same here !!

will try and write about the Rhode Island trip .. but it was dissapointing .. so in case I dont .. no loss ...

Tennis and the T

The usual struggle everyday, wake up and walk to the Subway and if lucky get a seat and nod on n off to sleep,
the time the T (subway in Boston) takes is around 15 mins so its an awkward amount of time to spend, usually carry a book with me
Terry Pratchett has been a good companion for amny a ride and the last book I read was The King of Torts .. got my hands on it and read it cos I didnt have anything else at hand .. had even fin readin the Canon S1 IS manual .. and if I could would hav ready the espanyol version too :-)
Today was different as was feeling more sleepy than usual when from the corner of my eye happened to look at the newspaper being read by the person sitting next ..
Sania Mirza, the latest teen sensation or somethn along the lines .. tried to surreptiously read what the article was about, and turns out she is turnign quite a few heads with her twinkling nose ring and how she being a orthodox Muslim and yet wears tennis attire ... seems she has a bodygaurd after receiving threatening letters .. oh yes, there was also a mention that she played good tennis ..
later on out of curiousity checked on espnstar and saw another article on her..
http://www.espnstar.com/tennis/tennis_newsdetail_1618608.html

If she wins her next round match, she will face another 18 year old ... Sharapova ..
Looking forward to that match