New Camera
Feb 11, 2010 Photography, Travel
Gifted myself with a new camera, a couple of weeks ago, so was busy researching on it. This is a Nikon 3000, it came with a 18-55mm Kit lens, Kit bag, 4 Gb mem card, etc.. .
The Camera as such is excellent with a wide range of enhancements, the zoom is the only thing that hurts. I certainly do know the metrics behind zoom lenses in SLR cameras, but having got used to a superzoom (FujiFilm S5700) for more than a year, I find this very hard to get used to. But if you go to a store and check the price of those super zoom lenses for SLR’s you wont think about them.
Here are some of the snaps taken with the new camera
Also see, Snap from Kodaikanal trip Jan 2010, taken on my friend’s Sony A200 DSLR
Tags: chennai, D3000, Kodaikanal, Nikon, Photography, Travel Blogs
Trip to Ooty
Apr 17, 2009 Photography, Travel
Lazinees in blogging
The last time i blogged about travel was in late may last year after my stavanger trip, although i have been traveling to a few places i havent found time to blog about my travel experiences. Here is the list that i have missed to blog about , Hyderabad Trip – Jun ‘08, ECR Trip – Aug ‘08, Coorg Trip – Oct ‘08, Pondy – Jan ‘09, Bangalore – Feb ‘09, Thiruvannamalai – Feb ‘09, ECR Again- Apr ‘09 and now Ooty Apr ‘09. Coorg Trip was really amazing, more than 2000 kms of travel on bus during 5 days, I can only regret that i couldn’t manage the time to blog about that experience. Bangalore trip was highlighted by our lunch experience at Nandinee. All done and said, lets talk about this trip.
The plan.
Shetty (quoted among one of the greatest civil engineers of all time for creating the plan and the arch. design to build a flyover between Gwalior and Chennai) now wanted to build a flyover between Chennai and Bangalore, and we wanted to find a place where we can plant the foundation stone. After rounds of meetings we finally decided that instead of starting the flyover construction from the ends, we will start it from the center, the center point being Ooty hill.
- If i didnt get kicked for this, then there is a serious problem out there… he he
The plan actually was because we had a long weekend, and we wanted to celebrate a few events. so we decided to ooty, as it happens with every travel plan involving me, we had nothing inplace until we started out for the trip. the only things that are confirmed with us are the return tickets from coimbatore to chennai on monday night.
Thrusday evening
4:00 PM at office, I start off to koyembedu, so that i can catch the bus, which praveen told me to be a super deluxe, i will try to post a photograph of the bus here. This is by no means a super-deluxe bus. When we were boarding the bus, joseph asked the conductor, if it was a video coach. The conductor replied to him saying that this is a video coach, but the passengers should bring their own TV’s, he was true, there was a tv provision, but no TV in it.
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| From Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Friends) |
5:30 PM The bus starts off from bus stand.
7:30 PM The bus halted 45 Mins in pallavaram, due to a small accident.
9:30 PM The bus halted 1 hour due to noise in the Tyre, this is getting us frustrated now, first the bus, now the delays.
6:00 AM next day, the bus which is supposed to reach Coimbatore already, hasn’t even touched erode yet.
8:30 AM at last we are in Coimbatore
Friday Morning
After the breakfast we start off on our second phase of our journey, the uphill travel through the mountainous terrain of the nilgiris. But wait, this cannot be as smooth as expected. We get to the bus stand to catch our bus to Ooty, this is where we get our first shock, there is a queue, at least 150 Meters long, and people waiting for more than 1 hour at the first few places. Now we realized that this wont work out for us. We wanted to find a alternative, all my efforts of trying to book a bus through redbus.in were ineffective since, they didn’t cover that route.
Joseph came up with a idea to get to connoor and then to reach ooty from there. So we took a bus to connoor, this bus was terrible than the previous bus, the standards of buses are getting sicker and sicker.
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| From Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Friends) |
After 90 mins on our travel and say 13 kms off Connor hill top, our bus breaks down. Then we say, wow, this is what we are waiting for . they funny thing is that once we get down form the bus, say 20 of us, the bus starts up, and the bus leaves us, we were under the assumption that the bus will stop somewhere near to pick us up, there was nothing to worry, since the conductor was walking with us. But the bus didn’t stop for say like the next 750 M / 1 Km. We were walking , walking , and walking… the shades gave us some relief, although the uphill climb and the reducing air density as we climb upwards were talking a heavy toll on us, and finally the bus reached connoor and then we took the next bus to Ooty.
Friday Afternoon
A bus from Connor drops us in ooty now, tired and restless, we have been traveling on road for more than 20 hours now. We dropped into to the hotel room, to take some rest.
Ooty
If we had to go by speculations climate in ooty during this time is supposed to be terrible , it was really bad during the second day, when it got hot upto 28~30 C. But teh first and third days were ok, it was cold enough for someone who came all the way from chennai.
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| From Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Friends) |
We did a lot of sight seeing and shopping during the 3rd day. I will have to write a separate blog about that in case i had to explain the details. It was a nice weekend getaway to relax ourselves from the fast paced offices that we work for.
The Down Trip
The down trip was not as eventful and the upward trip, as we had confirmed ticket through the travel and we had already exhausted all our energies to take any risk. We traveled form Ooty to Coiambatore on Sunday evening, to reach Coiambatore on sunday night. One full day rest at koovai on monday and repeat biriyanis at koovai thalapakettu, had spoiled our plans to visit the koovai kutralam. We didn’t manage to acheive the core goal of the trip which is the treat from shetty. But nevertheless it was great fun we had during the four days.
Albums
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| Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Friends) |
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| Ooty Trip -Apr 2009 (Photography) |
I am still here.. haven’t quit blogging yet
May 29, 2008 Fun, General, Photography, Travel
For all those who were thinking that i had quit blogging…. bad news .. i m still here just that i am not finding enough time to work with google tools (gmail,gtalk,analytics,adwords,docs,calendar…. and this one blogger).. I have been quite busy these days (everytime i say this, i want to give some other reason but couldn’t find one).. if you wanto know what happened in between last blogpost and this one is that i travelled to two places one long trip to my office headquarters at stavanger(March) and one short but enjoyable trip to pondy after that(April). Pics posted below. Try here : http://picasaweb.google.com/itkrishna
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Tags: Blogs
Photography – the old NEW hobby
Feb 25, 2008 General, Photography, Travel
Hi, all
Its been a long time since i had posted anything on this blog. Reasons are simple, i m too busy with my work, havent found time to travel or to take a few snaps. There are too many things happening over here, couldnt catch up with everything in these schedules. Well the good thing is that i managed to find a small trip to coimbatore (fotos below) and an across the border view of kerala for a couple of days and i have got a new prosumer camera (FujiFilm s5700) for myself and what next would you expect me to do all these times… its only been fotography.
Coimbatore Trip
Photos near pallavaram hill
and i seem to be learning a good amount of photography skills as well, look at my best photographs collection.
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| Art of Photography |
Tags: Airport, Coimbatore, Corporater, Pallavaram, Photography, Travel Blogs
Stavanger – Norway
Oct 1, 2007 Photography, Technology, Travel
Norway was my next travel destiny after Gwalior trip this April. I have been waiting for a long time to run-away from this tengshn-filled IT world. No trips in May, June and July meant that I have been waiting for something big to happen, never thought that I would end up travelling to the top end of the hemisphere.
This one was to a place called “Stavanger” in southern Norway, a small city with the Size of 1/17th of Chennai and a population of 120 K. Stavanger houses the Global Headquarters of Corporater AS, where I am designated to work for a couple of weeks. Stavanger is a beautiful place to live in, its lush green everywhere cold air blowing all the times, the place is quite windy, but you can manage if you are not as thin as me.
When I first got the info that I will need to travel to Norway, I was kinda worried, I thought is this some sort of punishment for not doing the work right , I thought Norway is completely filled with ice and I will shiver to death if I had to go there. But only when i m there I came to know that Norway is not that bad (at least Stavanger is not that bad). I never got a chance to see the ice. It doesn’t mean that it doesn’t snow in Stavanger. It jus means that you are reading an august-posted-blog in December (wake up ? ). The good climate in Stavanger is because of the hot winds from the Atlantic Ocean. So if you end up in this beautiful place in the end of august you have 2 choices to call yourself, Lucky or Extremely Lucky.
Technology and Norway
Norway has a lack of human density, for a city which can be called as one by global standards (back in India, Stavanger will not even qualify for town-status) there are very few people to live in. If you walk on the road you won’t see a human being for miles. And this is a country which tries to compensate its lack of human resources with technology. Almost every shop in Stavanger has a website (bolia.com, kvadrat, deal.no, datakjeden, it goes on…). Wherever we go you will end-up finding a wide amount of automation in systems that were otherwise considered to be manual. I suppose there are very few police (I am even afraid if there are any), becoz I have never seen a police guy during my whole trip, other than the guy who was diverting traffic towards airport on the last day. It seems that all traffic violations will be billed at you residential address. Hotel check-in and check-out is automated and you are debited on your credit-card (I don’t know about others, but at smarthotel.no it is the case). It s really funny that you don’t find these designations in Norway which we consider to be assumed as default in India, I have listed some of there
- Lift Operator
- Bus Conductor – (I am from Chennai, yes)
- A guy issuing tickets for parked vehicles
- Traffic Constables
- Room Boy
- Security (Other than the guys with big guns at NATO office)
Norway and India are at two different ends when it comes to population, one is suffering from decrease other by increase.
Prices and Lifestyle
“Norway is Expensive”, there is nothing much you can do about it. So don’t try be creative to find best deals. The best thing to do in Norway with prices is to forget about it , stop converting NOK2INR or stop going out. I did the first two and it did really worked out well.
Here is a small indicative of prices in Stavanger
- Coffee = 20 NOK (140 INR vs 5~10 INR)
- Coke(1/2 lt) = 32 NOK ( 224 INR vs 20 INR)
- Cigarattes = 80 NOK (560 INR vs 40 INR)
- Beer = 60 NOK (420INR vs 63 INR)
- Mentos = 15 NOK ( 105 INR vs 15 INR)
- Bus Ticket (Stavanger to Sandes in a Volvo) = 27 NOK (200 INR vs 20 INR in Chennai, 40 INR in Banagore)
The prices are relatively 10 times of what they cost in India, Its infact quite simple to manage, just assume you are spending Rupees instead of Kronas, 20 Rs for a coffee: ok, 27 rs for bus ticket : ok
About the people, Norwegians are shy and nationalistic. They are not open to talk to strangers, but they are helpful. If you ask them a route to some place, they wont say ” I am shy i wont talk to you”,instead they do help you . One strange think about Norwegians is their proud feeling about their country, they are always kind of asking you about Norway, well thats funny.
To be honest, the strangest thing about Norwegians is their insatiable appetite for acknowledgment:
“What do you think of Norway?”
“What do you think of Norway’s nature, athletes, politicians, musicians and (yes, I really heard
this one:) women?”
“why one earth someone expects me to comment about Norwegian politics in 3 days”
I’m not going to claim to be in possession of any facts or statistics, and perhaps the fact that I’m not a Norwegian and that I personally knew very little about Norway before travelling here, colors my impression. However, I do think the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants do not like or dislike Norway. Quite frankly, it’s not that they don’t think much of Norway—it’s that they don’t think much about Norway.
And, to be honest, I’m envious by this kind of proud feeling among people.
Nature
Fjords
Fjords are crazy formations of sea that you will find only in Norway. Fjord looks like a river but it has the source at the other end. They are a formation of sea towards the land. The complete western coastline of Norway is covered by fjords and they are beautiful.
Pulpit Rock
Pulpit rock is the destination point for any traveller to Stavanger. its a view of a fjord from a cliff top 600 mts above the sea level and a near 8 km mountain climbing track.
Its sheer fun to be on top of cliff to view the fjord, with a fear of being blown away by air.
DalsNuten
Dalsnuten is near Sandes (* a twin town of Stavanger), its a small mountain( i am not used to the word “hill”, otherwise i would have called it a hill). this is a place where my mountain climbing skills are put to test and certified a “fit”. Its a easy climb, i was shivering in the beginning but i was able to catchup and do it with ease later on.
Cricket for Brazillians
We found friends with the two brazillian guys Christien and Roberto who had come into stavanger to wind-up a business deal with us. We were discussing about lifestyles in our countries, prices and a wide range of things. Finally we went to a restaurant to have pizza, and we were discussing about sports, thats when Roberto quoted about cricket saying
“Oh that strange game where you hit the ball with some kind of a stick instead of kicking it…” I just managed to imagine some batsman kicking the cricket ball to boundary… ha ha ha . Then it was hard time for both of us (maddy and me) to explain the game with little references to baseball. I was really amazed when someone asked about cricket to me, in here its a part of your daily lifestyle that you can’t imagine a person not knowing about cricket.
One more amazing fact about the people there is, many of them know about “Vishwanathan Anand” more than “Sachin Tendulkar”, well that hurts me badly.
Beach
Our team mates had planned a team outing on a friday . This is the funniest one, from the morning everyone were talking about this team outing at the beach, I am from chennai, this is where marina beach and few other big beaches are located and I frequently travel to the arabian coastline too, So the moment someone says the word beach , the only thing that comes to my mind is open sea with atleast a 180 degree view of the horizon. But when we went 2 the team outing at stavanger i came to see the smallest beach i have ever seen in my life, i think it should be termed as backwater rather than a beach.
Way back home
Tor Inge, our CEO was grateful enough to pick us up from the hotel and drop us at the airport at 4:00AM in the morning, just when he has a flight to catch at 8:00AM in the morning. Well i got only one word to say “Great”.
I was a nice morning flight from Stavanger to Frankfurt. Back at Frankfurt we had a nice time shopping with the euros left with us. The flight back from Frankfurt was really empty , there was so much space inside. Maddy told me that its quite rare to find flights being so empty. There was a nice looking air-hostess. You can find beautiful girls anywhere on earth but these airhostess are just awesome. They look soo confident but still listen soo patiently to whatever stupid things we say. They smile a lot. There was one beautiful indian-look-alike ,who came to me asking for drinks, i ordered a coffee. She gave me a make-
yourself-coffee kit comprising of cream, coffee and sugar. Just when i thought of protesting over such unconventional way of serving coffee she smiled at me broadly and moved on to the next row. Again who wants to waste the short interaction time with a beautiful girl complaining ? Damn these airline guyz might have been recruiting psycology phds.
Landing back in india was really a happy moment, and i reached home by some 12:30 am
Tags: Brazil, Corporater, Krishna, Madhavan, Norway, Stavenger, Travel Blogs
