What a way to end the day!!

Actually this post was supposed to be published 3 weeks back.....

Being at work till 12 in the night was a bit tiresome, lack of sleep and the trek the day before added to the strain.

I started home around 12 in the night and was instantly rejuvenated by the sight of empty roads and the feel of cool breeze running over my skin. Wow......what relief , after getting used to the packed up roads, driving on empty roads smoothly without the usage of gear and clutch felt great. I reached home in 22 minutes, which at normal times takes a minimum of 75 minutes.

After having a hot water bath, decided to watch a good movie from the dump of 160 GB of movies I have. This time for a change, I wanted to watch a Hindi movie and somehow I decided to watch Johnny Gaddar.

Right from the first frame, the movie registered in my mind that it is something different. The movie was so gripping that I hesitated to even go the the loo pausing it. What I liked the most about the movie is, We get to know: who is the bad man, what did he do and how did he do but still the suspense is carried throughout the movie.

Hands full of work, Cool ride on the bike, Hot water bath and a great movie, that's what I call a great day!!!

Project Zoological Park

King of the Jungle, For the complete set, check out Picasa and Flickr

I have visited the Zoo many times from my childhood and every time it seemed more and more interesting, in spite that it did not change a bit from past 20 years. Same sloppy maintenance of the place, the animals and not to forget, the visitors who feed and tease the animals in spite of hundred boards asking them, not to feed and tease animals.

This time was a bit special as I was accompanied by my third eye and our great gang(Vivek, Danny, Ashok, Shyam, Sai, Veeru, Vijay). One speciality of our group is, its a mix of people who want to take photographs and guys who what to hang out with others and basically the mantra was to have fun!!

Being a Sunday, there were lots of Families with kids and couple of schools bringing kids to the Zoo trip(Hugh, thank God I remember my school taking me to the Zoo on working days).

We clicked our way through the roads, talking, sharing knowledge about the animals and frowning regularly at the people feeding/teasing animals. I cant believe that most of the times its the grown ups who are feeding/teasing animals and what to say about the kids, they obviously follow.

We went to the so called Lion, Tiger and Bear safari where animals are supposed to be roaming free and we will me taken in an secured mini bus. To my surprise, even in there the lions were caged, did not see even one lion roaming freely. In Tiger safari, we have seen 2 tigers free and rest were caged and in bear safari could see only one bear.

But, overall the trip was awesome. It was like, even a day more at the zoo would not justify to see each and every animal at leisure(I guess Danny would kill me at this thought).

Below are the few snaps that I got from the trip to the Zoo. For the complete set, check out Picasa and Flickr

Back to back

Hunting

My Personal Fav: Croc basking in the Sun

Indian Rock Python

You there?

I am asking this question to you...GOD....where are you?

I know you are there, 'cause if you are not there every one would have been equal in all ways and there wouldn't be all these differences that we are seeing in class Homosepian.

Strange, you are! You do not give 'everything' to any person. You deprive them of at least one thing.

You give Wealth, deprive us of Health

You give Dreams, deprive us of Wealth

You give Children, deprive us from fulfilling their Dreams

You give happiness, deprive us of Children

You give life, deprive us of Happiness

You give Love, deprive them of Life.

No matter how much positive we are, put in hard/smart work and try to find happiness in what ever we do there is one factor controlled by an infinite energy which is beyond the reach of mankind, which most of us call as GOD.

...and sometimes he/she is harsh.............

Another rocking weekend!!

After many weeks, I had a rocking weekend and there are three reasons. One: After 6 weeks I am in Hyderabad 'only' on a weekend, Two: I joined my friends back on our weekly trekking and photography expedition after a break of 2 months, Three: I have completed PC game 'Microsoft Halo 2'.

After playing Halo 2 till 3.30 AM, I woke up on Sunday 6.00 AM when one of my friend called me to remind me of our expedition. After gearing up, we(Vivek, Sajjad, Afra & Saif) started on a hunt for a good elevated ground with rocks. We drove around Gachibowli and Nanakram guda for around 45 minutes and were surprised to see that most of the mountains which we treked earlier were just a pile of crushed stones now. All this due to the courtesy of Lanco Hills and Outer Ring Road.

We parked our vehicles near the Outer Ring Road, which was under construction after Nanakram guda and started walking in reach of mountains.

A big rock being bored to plug in dynamites

From the Outer Ring road(Under Construction) after a walk of 2 Kms or so we saw a pretty tempting rock formation and we decided to conquer that. The red arrow in the below picture is where we reached 90 minutes later.

Target visible

Birds feasting lazily in the fields on the way to the mountain

I guess I scared them

A closer look from the base

Peacock and Peahen

I have to say that this rock was a mini wild life reserve. Just after 10 or 15 minutes into the trek, we saw around 15 to 20 Peacocks and Peahens flying into deeper zones after they sensed trespassers(us). Apart from these, we saw numerous Rock Lizards, Rabbits, Owls, colourful insects. I wished I had more time to sit patiently so that the birds come back to their ease. One sad part is one day or the other, this Rock will also be blown off in the name of industrialization or modernization...haaa...sometimes....technology sucks!!

After an hour of treacherous and difficult trek which left me with bruises on hands/legs and a cut on the palm we were on top on the rock..yes..top.....it felt like we were on top of the world.

A view from the top

Distant view QutubShahi Tombs from top of the mountain

Distant view Golkonda Fort from top of the mountain

Me Jumpin.........

Sajjad and me Sky diving.............just kiddin......we were jumping off the rock

The blow shot, I got it on our way back through the fields. This is my best and favourite shot of the expedition. I think I will have to keep a day to just shoot these birds. they were awesome, with the little time I had, I clicked what all I could. :-)

Lets Synch..........

I tried to tell u!!!!!

(Some were I found this poem and just wanted to share it with all)

I tried to tell you I love you
but the words were hard to find.

I'm always thinking about you
you're the only one on my mind.

Oh why do I act so shy forever hiding my face
I should learn to laugh and not to cry

put yourself in my place.

There were times I tried to kiss you but something told me no.
You wanted me to hold you but

I kept letting you go.

I'm afraid that I am not the guy
you've searched for all these years.

I will kindly leave now don't you cry
try to hold back your tears.

It's been so long I haven't seen you
for quite awhile

When I think of how we me met it only
brings back your smile.

I remember when I held you then and
told you we'd never part

I loved you then, I love you now and
I'll hold you in my heart.

Class 7C*

'Class 7 C', Seems like a movie title right? But it is not movie this time, its my class when I was studying 7'Th standard in St. Anthony's High School, Himayat Nagar, Hyderabad.

Few days back, when I was searching for something and was emptying all the racks, one of the photographs slipped out and it was of Class 7 C. One glance of this photograph brought in loads of memories. I was always fortunate to have great set of Friends where ever I am and same happened with the school too. And being in one school from Kindergarten to 10'Th standard fetched me a great set of friends.

Below is that photograph and from it, I remember most of the boys and few girls. So, I have named the boys in row and girls, just who all I remember.

Names in bold: we are still in touch ; Names in normal font: I just remember the names

Top row(L to R): Rajani Kanth, Pragati prasad, Bindu Sagar, Bharat Bushan, ??, Jagadish, P Vikranth, Me, Sunil, Sridhar, Deepesh, Sumanth. 2'nd row(L to R): Kalyan, PY Kiran, Ramu, Maruthi, GS Vikranth, ??, Ramana, Ravikanth, Ravi Prasad, Rama Krishna, ??, Yadiaiah, Girls: Chandana, Rajani, Shailaja, Ananta Lakshmi, Shilpa, K Shailaja, Sruthi, Deepika, Usha, Ujwala

Talking about school days, I had lots of interests rather than interests I can say that I was mad of many things. To name a few, collecting pens, playing video games, spending on my Bicycle and to top it all, I was great admirer of Dinosaurs, yes! Dinosaurs.

Everything I had, used to have at least one dinosaur on it. Book covers, Labels, bags, lunch box, pens and when ever I get some time, I used to draw pictures of Dino's. I had a 2 foot skeleton model of T. Rex and loads of Dino stuff that I can gather. I used to read about Dino's, Dream about Dino's and always think about them. At one point I even considered to be a Paleontologist. I must have watched Jurassic park at least 200 times.

When I think about it now, I feel crazy. Now I realize why people around me used to call me crazy at those times. But my love for Paleontology never ceased and some where in the remote corner of my brain, I still want to be a Paleontologist. :-)

BTW, our class teacher, Pankajavalli teacher is the best teacher in whole of my schooling and my love for science developed from her teachings only.

School days are funny days...........

P.S: I am not sure why, Sundeep and Rameshwar are missing in the above photograph.

*As far as I know it's 7'Th class but there are fair chances for it to be 8'Th class too.

Gosh!! Its been 9 years

Yes, I feel exactly like that when I think about it. I am taking about start of my 'Happy Days' i.e., my first day in Engineering collage. I still remember the first day, 23'rd November 1998. In another 2 days, it will be 9 years, sooo long but it seems so short, the memories are still very fresh.

As I said earlier, there is lot and lot more to come from these days on this blog and for convenience I have labeled these special posts with "'Happy Days' Forever".

For now, I just have to say that I will be off for rest of the week and have no access to Internet. I will be back with more posts from next week onwards.

Finally, to all my friends out there(From School, Collage, Graduation, work), I miss you all and thanks for being with me all the time!!!

Chao!!!