I’m used to doing nothing special on New Year’s Eve and I planned on doing the same this year too but it turned out to be surprisingly different. My cousin and bro-in-law called me up on 30th night and told me that we were going to go to Wonder La, a new amusement-n-water park just outside the city, the next day. Now I remember going to Appu Ghar in Delhi as a kid some ten years ago and loving it but I wasn’t sure if I’ll like it now. And I’ve never been to a water park in my life cos I somehow considered then a waste of time. So I was apprehensive about the whole thing but then something is better than nothing so I went.

And I’m happy that I did. Cos I had a blast there. It’s really a fun place. The most fun that I had was in the wave pool where artificial waves are created. Now if you remember, I have never been to a beach so this was as a first for me. I also discovered that I could be a really fun person when taken out of my natural habitat.

There was dancing in the evening which was thankfully cut short by the New Year fireworks at 7pm cos the park closes down by 8pm. I could take very few pics cos my digicam’s cells went dead. You can see few more photos on my flickr page.

We came back to the city and went to a nice restaurant for dinner, which was also the first time I went to Koramangala. Reached home at 11.40pm in time to usher in the New Year. Mom called me at 11.50pm anticipating the cell phone network jam at midnight. And the networks did get clogged up. The first call I got after midnight was at 12.34pm from my sister. And a few minutes later, I got my first SMS of the year from my bank that my salary had been credited to my account. Great start!

Note: This post was supposed to be published yesterday but since my boss’s boss has finally figured out that maybe I come to the office to work, I have almost no time left for blogging.

Here are a few pictures I took this weekend.

The Bell

No, I didn’t buy this bell! It came with my room. It was hanging from the drapery rod. On Christmas, I cleaned it, took this picture and put it back up. This is also the first time most of my blog readers can see me. Sure, its just a hand but still.

The Thing hanging from the ceiling

This is the weirdest thing that came with the room. I think one is supposed to place a bulb inside it. I never did. In fact, I’ve never cleaned it. You can see the cobwebs if you look closely.

City Map

I bought a new map of Bangalore on christmas eve. I am a mapfreak. I already have 4 different maps of the city but this is the most detailed and i guess the last.

In other news, a hawker on MG Road asked me if I wanted to exchange money. I was surprised. I stuck around for a while to see if he asks others but he only asked a caucasian couple. It made me wonder if he thought I was a BOF (i.e. opposite of FOB. BOF is an intelligent term coined by me for all the indians who have just returned from a foreign country after a long stay.) I don’t look like a BOF, do I? Not that there’s anything wrong with being a BOF but I don’t want to counted as somebody I’m not.

I am still trying my hand at photography and I don’t think I’m very good at it YET but since most of you (which means two people) said they would like to see my photos, I present before you few of my pictures.

But before you see these, I want you all to remember that I’m an amateur photographer so no criticism will be tolerated.

The photo you see here was taken at Ulsoor Lake last Saturday.

Click here to see all my photos on flickr.
Let me know what you think of my photos.

So I’ve been exploring flickr for the past one week and since it provides a nifty “blog this” feature, I’ve created a photo-blog to share my favorite photos with all of you. Its called “Creazione Artistica” (name – courtesy Akanksha). Visit it now. It has some really cool pictures. And bookmark or syndicate it so you never miss all the great pics i post there.

As you all might remember, I love skyscrapers and skylines. I also frequent a very popular urban centric forum called skyscrapercity.

Now, I started visiting this forum way back in 2003. At that time, there were hardly any Indian forumers but as time passed, more and more Indian forumers joined in and now there’s even an Indian subforum there. So it seems like more Indians are interested in skyscrapers. Also, till some time ago, there was a dearth of good high quality pictures of indian cityscapes and skylines but that seems to be changing too.

The following are few new images of Mumbai (India’s best skyline) taken from the forum. These show some new areas of Mumbai and few old ones from new perspective. Please click the images for a larger, better view. The third picture is the best of the lot, in my opinion.

All images are copyrighted by their respective owners.

Just when I was about to go to bed last night, I saw something moving in my (unused) bathtub. I moved closer and it was this thing.

Now, I had no idea what this thing was. I had never seen anything like this ever before in my life. I assume its some species of centipede.

I thought I will wash it down the drain but soon I realized that it could swim very well. So I thought I’d push it down the drain forcefully with the help of a bucket full of water and my bathroom mop but every time I pushed it in the drain, it reappeared after a few secs just like those nasty ghosts in the horror movies who just don’t die and resurface to scare you. The thing moved so quickly in the water, it was scary.

So I was left with no other option. I had to kill it cos no way in hell was I going to sleep with this monster moving around in my bathroom so I employed my mop as a weapon and soon it was dead. But it didn’t go down without a fight. It took more than 15 seconds to kill it. Well, all’s well that ends well!

EDIT: oops, I forgot to mention the inspiration for this post. Atif has had several run-ins with intruders in the past including this recent one. We are together in this fight against intrusion of all kinds.