Tuesday, October 07, 2008

Its a mad mad financial world !

This just takes the cake !

Its interesting to see what is happening in the financial world now... The poster-boy of capitalism and free-market economics needs legislative intervention to essentially take socialistic control of loss-making financial institutions. And the big daddy of the communist world is displaying a huge vote of confidence in the free market system.

Apparently, the Chinese have an interesting blessing - "May you live in interesting times"... It looks like those times are upon us now !

Sunday, October 05, 2008

Back from Agumbe

Just got back from a very interesting photography expedition in the heart of the western ghats.

The place is so full of interesting creatures & landscapes, that it is a perfect destination for someone looking to experiment with a camera. Now, I need to upload a few of my best shots, and wait for the peer verdict on my photographic skills !

That apart, the expedition reminded me of a trip that a bunch of us classmates went on, 10 years ago... We were young, foolish and full of adrenalin( yeah, me too... ), and we just headed out on a backpacking journey through the western ghats, covering Sringeri, Agumbe, Horanadu, Mangalore, Udupi & Marwanthe, in the course of a 7 day trip.
We shared 2 rooms between 8 of us, mooched free meals in temple towns, hitched rides on random vehicles, trekked through rainforests in our slippers, reached the top of a 200 ft waterfall, were foolish enough to crawl to the precipice just to see the bottom and skinny dipped in random water bodies... among other things !

We also watched Sachin Tendulkar single-handedly murder the Aussies in two dream innings at Sharjah (semis and finals). We did this while sitting on the street(literally, on the asphalt) in the midst of a motley crowd of drunks in Udupi.

And yeah, we did all this on a budget of around 800 Rs per head !