And the Academy award goes to....

The California Academy of Sciences !!!

For engaging and educating Jr. and the little one for an entire afternoon.

For now will leave you with these photos. Very busy at work and will possibly spend 15-20 mins every night to update this one post..

Will be lucky if it is done by Friday.

In the heart of San Francisco, there is Golden Gate Park
In the heart of that park is the California Academy of Sciences
In the heart of that is a swampland exhibit
In the heart of that exhibit lies....

see you later..

Albino alligator!

ps. Reader does not do justice to these photos.. please see them with the intended background here...
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Pretty posers

The kids, were supposed to pose with the Golden gate in the background..

Jr. who is a pro, just turns on "smile on tap".

The little one on the other hand, was not in her mood. She was toying with daddy. On the one hand she wanted to pose for him, but on the other, she was pissed off that he wanted her to distract herself from all the things happening on the vista point and look at the same lens she has been staring at, at various vista points! The expression on her face, priceless.

The next day at Carmel by the Sea, she wanted to get her feet on the sand. While all the other three females in our entourage stayed put inside the van, sighting obvious reasons like temperature, wind speed etc., the little one walked out of the van with me and San's uncle, walked all the way to the sea and walked back. It was very windy and a little chilly and she wasn't wearing her jacket. On the way back to the van, we walked past a rock and she said "Daddy, put me on the rock and take my picture!"

and I did!

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The tourguide becomes the tourist ?!

One of the books that stuck to my memory from the college library reading days is "The Stone Leopard" by Collin Forbes. In that book, the line that stood out was "The hunter became the hunted!".

Along similar lines, someday I plan to become a tourist for the very same places I take visiting relatives, in my role as the family tourguide.

San's uncle was here this weekend, after attending a conference in the east coast and on his way back to India.

"Two and a half days in the bay area, maximum coverage!" declared the wife. I took up the challenge and inspite of one of the worst wheezing attacks in recent memory on Friday night, went on to drive to the following places:

The livermore temple (this was not a tourguide thing, just the usual drive and back)
The Mystery spot (my 8th visit to the place, 4th on the tour)
Santa Cruz boardwalk
Route 1 from Santa Cruz to Golden gate bridge with stops on the beaches.. (yes, we ate the packed Tamarind rice and curd rice on the beach, and yes yes, it was delicious, as usual!)
The golden gate bridge (somewhere in the 25-30 range on this vista point)
Crooked street (same thing.. and not once have I actually managed to take in the beauty of this street because as the driver I am always hanging on the steering wheel for dear life on the way up)
The chocolate factory (this, like the temple is just plain fun)
Carmel by the Sea (6th trip)
Monterey Bay aquarium (4th trip)

400 miles of local driving with lots of help from my friends Pseudoephidrine Hydrochloride, Azelastine Hydrochloride, Loratadine and of course Salbuterol who came through and helped me in some tough spots!

There will be some detailed posts with pictures of this hectic travel experience.. but leave you here with the customary stitch shots of the Golden Gate Bridge.

This is one tough place for a merge shot but is also a good candidate for the shot. Even if you have a lens that goes to 18mm, you cannot capture the panorama from the vista point. That said, you need multiple shots.

Let me explain why is it a difficult place for stitch photos. Too many moving things, the water, the boats, yachts, the vehicles on the bridge, not to mention you and the camera (it is very windy at the vista point). You are better off trying this when :

a. there is good visibility

b. there are not that many vehicles on the bridge (at least avoid the huge trucks which move bigtime between your continuous shots)

c. avoid big barges on the water which also move perpendicular to the bridge. If they move parallel to the bridge, it does not matter much.

d. Use a tripod and swivel the camera across

e. The biggest thing I realized...do not do this in AUTO mode.

Go focus on the bridge in auto mode,
find out what the camera thinks is the best aperture and shutter speed,
then go to manual mode,
reduce the aperture by one stop to allow more light in (go to a smaller number),
decrease the shutter speed by one (ie., if auto says do 1/250, then do 1/400th of a second)
and then sweep the camera and shoot in manual mode.

f. Do NOT change the zoom throughout this sweep. That messes things up big time.

g. If you are worried about barelling (when you stitch a photo panorama, you get a barrel shaped composite picture, with the ends becoming short and the center long), shoot with the camera rotated 90 degrees. Take more shots, vertically and stitch them!

Now, hope all that advice works for you. I plan to take my own advice next time (there will definitely be another next time) and do all of the above instead of just some of the above.

ps. Don't try to upload them in blogger with the original size. You will probably get an internal error! Resize and then upload, save yourself some pain.

Now, my dear friends are inviting me to a party. Got to run. Ciao!

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SSDP an update..

Same Shit Different Place : An update from the previous post.

I was reading the links provided by the anonymous commenter on the area that is the center of the controversy over the new Chennai airport location. I also got an update on the situation of the immigration protests on a followup news item on NPR today!

This is Deja vu of SSDP in slow motion. You wouldnt believe the similarity of the way people are treated by governments across the globe and how people treat the government !! Maybe most of you readers are worldly wise to know this. But I can write about this because I am just growing up!!

Why the comparison ?

Apparently the people in Chennai in that area were encouraged by the local politicians and MMDA (Madras Metropolitan Development Authority) to put their life savings and build houses in that governmnent owned land! How could people build houses with their life savings in a land where they do not own "patta's" a.k.a "title deeds". Maybe I should find some spot in Madras and start building!! I thought it was the poor people erecting tatched huts (something that can be done in a day or two), but NO! There are brick and mortar buildings that would take months to construct. How could someone be so naive and build a house in land that they couldnt possibly own? And if they have been given some certificate by the government or its agency, they should be able to defend themselves legally against any attempts to evict them. But I am really torn because,
a. Today, the bad guys seem to be able to manipulate gullible folks with effortless ease!
b. These guys could have been led on by the same local politicians who are tryiing to make it look like they are protecting these people today!

Anyways, the links were informative. Next time please put your name when you comment.

Now back to San Francisco :

Apparently the IRS has set up a website, hotline so that the "illegal aliens" like a commenter pointed out, can PAY THEIR TAXES !! We dont want these guys in the US but we want their money!! These folks are paying their taxes to show that they are "law abiding" and they do it to win some brownie points with the INS in case they are legalized later! They actually played a piece from the automated IRS (Internal Revenue Service) which says "if you are unable to get a TAX ID number because you are here as a ....., do ....". The article also interviewed some dude who spoke in Spanish and said "no American wants to do what I do here. I have been working here for 10 years because of that". Then the reporter went on to say that if only these people could be legally brought into the US to do these jobs ("sheetrocking, painting, washing dishes in restaurants, etc.), there would be no issue!

I thought we get our news from the media. Looks like they will take alternate sides every other day on issues like this!! One day they will do an expose on the poor folk. The very next day on the government!

I will toss a coin for tomorrows news updates. In the meantime the lesson from this for me is "Governments will be governments, and gullible people will stay gullible! The poor (including the lower middle class today), will always get the shaft!".

I think I have finally figured out why I still have these takes on these "isssooos"! All said and done I have "lower middle class values", something that was pointed out a few years ago by a friend in the USA!! Now that will be a post for another day, when I am fully awake and in a good mood and can proofread before I hit the publish button!!

Acronyms and more..

YIMBY !

(Yes, In My Back Yard. I thought I was being creative and had coined YIMBY based on NIMBY. Went to WIKI and YIMBY is not just there, but there are YIMBY movements across the USA to bring affordable housing to certain areas !!)

The mouth watering goes on..

SSDP : (This one didnt turn up any WIKI hits. SSDD stands for "Same Shit Different Day". SSDP is Same Shit Different Place! (I will take all credit for coining this one). Why SSDP ?

Two different events in two different places.

Chennai:

We are flying from Chennai to Singapore on our way back, and they give us some Malay Straits newspaper in Tamizh. The newspaper was obviously pro Jayalalitha(opposition party) and was pretty much a government bashing propaganda machine. The headlines was about how the Airport Authority of India had spotted a location for a new Chennai airport but they couldnt go through with the plans because
a. some people had illegally erected huts in that location and
b. a political party called PMK had threatened to protest, move against the local government, etc. etc. they tried to evict those people or even try to relocate them and pay them monetary compensation.

I was planning to write about this, especially after my experience at the Chennai Airport where the place is operating at pretty much maximum efficiency just to keep the existing number of flights moving. If they add more flights in and out of the place, they will have to expand.

San Francisco :

Was listening to KQED (local public radio station) last week and the headlines ? A whole bunch of people protesting outside the Immigration office in San Franciso (Dept. of Homeland Security which encompasses the former INS or Immigration and Naturalization service). They were protesting the raids that have been taking place over the last 9 months where 13000 illegal immigrants have been caught and deported. The DHS says they are specifically targeting repeat offenders who are illegal and are involved in shady activities. The people outside are saying (and I kid you not):

"people are scared to send their kids to school or go to the local doctor because they are worried that they might be picked up by the DHS". If you are living illegally in a country, shouldn't you be worried anyways ? They were claiming the raids are a slap in the face of the immigrant community, especially after all the immigration reforms promised by the newly empowered democrats. But the bottomline is, legal vs. illegal!

Before the illegal immigrant community decides to flame this post, I would like to mention why I even put this in the blog. A couple of years ago, San and me were going towards downtown San Jose. The car in front of me was swearving, speeding and we could make out that it was either a bad driver or someone who was not aware of rules. Just while we were talking about it, the driver sped up to cross a light which had already turned yellow. Problem was that this was a light where the perpendicular road was a highway exit, that too at an angle and the people standing at the exit had already started turning. This driver went and hit the first car that came out, smack in the middle. The car spun a few times and came to a stop. The middle aged lady who was hit had to break open the window and get out. She was bleeding from all the cuts and bruises. San and me went to help her. The cops came and we were held as witnesses.

The car that ran the light was actually being driven by a lady. The minute she realized that she had hit the car, she ran out and the guy who was with her in the passenger seat went and sat in the driver seat. Later while we were helping the lady go to the ambulance, this guy walks up to me and says "please say you saw me driving the car!" and walked away.

There were other witnesses as well. All of us told the cops the same story! That the driver was actually the lady and had given a description of the lady. 10 minutes later the cop told us that she had been picked up and was an illegal immigrant and that is why the guy was trying to cover for her!! My take on it was that if you are illegal, by the very definition of the word, you have no respect for the law and you are going to be a menace to others intentionally or otherwise.

But Chennai or SFO, people who do things that are illegal, still think they have a right to do what they want and actually protest, strike, etc. and get to bully the guys who are actually trying to do their job. SSDP !!