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!