Congratulations to all the winners of Indibloggies 2004.

A special congrats to the two “old” men of blogging – Kiruba (Lifetime Achiever) and Madman (Best Topical Indiblog and Best Designed Indiblog).

And three cheers to Amit (Best New IndiBlog and Best Sports IndiBlog) for such great writing, especially from the tsunami affected areas in TN, Kishore (Best Indi-Photoblog) for his amazing pictures and Lazy Geek (Best Humanities Indiblog) for his insightful writing. And Debashish, the organizer who finally comes out of the closet!

A few days ago, Amit discovered a case of plagiarism in the blog world. I guess it should not be too surprising, since all it needs is a copy paste and voila, you have a post ready. Of course, most of prefer not to stoop down to those levels.

But some others have no second thoughts of any kind. Read more about it at Madman, Shanti and Amit’s place.

After being told politely that he was plagiarising, the gentleman under scrutiny claimed innocence saying he had no idea that he should not be “copy pasting” material off other blogs and passing it on his own! And not only copying, the guy is apparently doing a whole lot more.

I love the way Kalyan has gone off to the wild and is having these great jungle adventures! Don’t miss his latest post and pictures about a tiger killing a deer.

Early Saturday morning (I wish I could wake up so early on work days!!) we went for a drive towards Hoskote. Passed some lovely scenes on the way. There is a water body before you reach Hoskote, called Yelamalappa tank, where we had spotted pelicans when we had passed that way enroute to Chennai. On Saturday, we decided to go back there for a closer look.

Unfortunately, pelicans (and most other birds) are painfully shy and this is the closest I could get!

Besides pelicans, there were herons, comorrants (small and large), swallows, kites and some I couldn’t identify – birds of all shapes and sizes. A lovely place worth visiting if you like nature and birds.

You can view all the pictures here. I’ve added some more pictures to the Sunsets and Sunrises gallery. And the Mahabalipuram pictures are here. And the kingfisher, iguana, crocodiles and turtles are here. A big thanks to Madhu (once again) for installing this really cool image gallery, which I have been having great fun with. I shall definitely need some more disk space at the rate I’m going!

The Chennai-Cuddalore pictures taken during the Jan 14-16 weekend are also uploaded now.

In the evening, after French class, caught a play called Creeps at Rangashankara. It’s by a German playwright, Lutz Hubner and is about a television show by the same name, which is looking for a VJ. Three young girls come together for the audition and then try and out scream, out act, and out play each other for the role – all for different reasons. Unknown to them, they are actually all being taken for a ride by the director. While the acting was pretty good, I think a lot of the play “got lost in translation” (as Vaish termed it). It is, I suspect, an even stronger play in German. But it was a decent effort and worth a watch.

And for the culturally inclined, there’s some more events coming up this week. A photography exhibition by the Indian Institute of Science is on the 29th and 30th. On Jan 26th, there are 2 films that will be screened at the Karnataka Chitra Kala Parishad at 7.30 pm:
- CROSSING THE LINES: KASHMIR, PAKISTAN, INDIA (47 minutes)
- INDIA AND PAKISTAN UNDER THE NUCLEAR SHADOW (32 minutes)

They are by Pervez Hoodbhoy, who has written and spoken extensively on
topics ranging from science in Islam to education issues in Pakistan and nuclear disarmament. He’s also been a faculty member at the Department of Physics, Quaid-e-Azam University, Islamabad since 1973. Should definitely be worth a watch. If I can finish all my revisions for my exams, I am hoping to head to the CKP in the evening.

Last time, the Lalbagh Flower Show was held, I was just beginning to experiment with the SLR and had great fun clicking pictures. The show is on again and will be going on the whole of this week.

My first installment of French exams on Saturday. Time to get back to the books and do some serious revision! Sigh, so many things to do. And it’s the end of January already! Is it true that time flies faster when you get older? Heh!

When I first met fellow blogger Aqua in Bangalore, one of the first things she told me was that little Aqua was also on the way :)

And little Aqua did arrive on January 21st, right on time, says mommy. This means she will be one punctual child! I went to see the bonny baby on Sunday and fell in love right away! She has beautiful and cute eyes (from the mother) and an intellectual look (from the father ;). Congrats, Aqua. Here’s to a whole year of sleepless nights now!

The total aid package approved for rehabilitation and reconstruction in the tsunami hit areas as announced yesterday. According to the Finance Minister, P Chidambaram, this is the first installment of the relief package. We hope it gets to the ones who need it the most, and in time.

I laffed and laffed when I read about Usha’s encounter with my pretty little doll while I was away in Chennai last week.

Vaish was the chosen one to check in on Kit Kit while I was away. Along with Usha, both of them came around to my place and seemed to have quite an adventure there. Vaish even called Kit Kit a “puppy”. Kit Kit, understandably, has not recovered from the insult ever since!

She was telling me about aliens in the house after I got back. Now I know she was referring to both of you! But a special thanks for being such nice aliens, says Kits. And she hopes you will visit her again. Meow!

~~~~
Envelop me in your orange glow
Show me the way
As my wings tire in the evening light
Get me to the place I will be safe and warm
The place I call home
~~~~

We were on our way back from Hampi, about one hour away from Bangalore when we chanced upon this sight.

As you might have gathered by now, sunsets and sunrises are an immense source of fascination for me. I have spent quite a few rolls of film trying to capture the skies!

Here, I tried to capture the winter sky in Bangalore before the warmer days hit us again. It took me a few tries since it’s usually around 6.00 pm or so when the sky turns a brilliant and beautiful purplish pink (and only on particular days!). So anyday, I’d get home around that time, I would perch myself on the building terrace and hope for the best! One of my attempts…