Beyond Here

The most interesting thing happened last night. I was at Vons doing groceries, when a friend (who had just walked out of Vons too) called up and asked me to step outside and look towards the sky. I rushed out and an amazing twilight show met my eyes. At first it seemed to be a falling missile but on closer look it seemed the trail had been created by a plane or rocket of some kind. I stood there baffled. Things became clearer today morning when my office mate told me ( he is interested in astronomy ) that a satellite was launched from some base in California. What caused this beautiful phenomenon probably was unburnt fuel particles and water drops in the rocket's contrail that sometimes feeze in the less dense upper atmosphere and get reflected by sunlight at high altitudes, easy to observe because the launch took place shortly after sunset. Here is a picture of what I saw as captured by a colleague at work in his camera.

While in Kauai, we chanced upon a number of beautiful flowers. A small trek and one was sure to chance upon some orchid or hibiscus of some kind. The local people as well as the tourists could be commonly seen wearing plumerias in their hair. I remember our monk guide at the monastery telling us that in Kauai it rains so much that all they needed to do to maintain the grounds was pot the plant and then just pray that it grow. And the technique never failed :-) I thought I will share some of the pictures in this post. Some of them are not in good focus, I guess I couldn't get quite right the technique of focussing on something up close. But there I was trying to capture some of them in my camera as soon as it rained (BTW there was no dearth of rain, you just had to wish it and it would come down) Hydrangea on the Pihea Trail It had just rained and we were on the Pihea Trail when we spotted bunches of Hydrangea. They looked really fresh with the raindrops on them. Red Ginger on way ...

On my third day of stay at Ann Arbor, I decided to visit the University and its campus. A striking thing about the Campus was the architecture itself. Some of the buildings were old and Gothic in style while others were more modern. The Law School Legal Research Building ( East Triforium) I especially liked the Law School or the Law Quadrangle as it is more popularly known. This beautiful Quadrangle was a gift to the university from William W. Cook who was an alumnus of the same school. Rumor has it ( Tip 1: Courtesy Sunit) that Cook wanted the building design to be inspired by the Law School at Oxford. But although he was involved with many aspects of its construction, he never came to Ann Arbor to see the magnificent facility either during construction or upon completion for the fear of it not living upto his dream.They say construction of the Quadrangle took more than a decade and rightly so, for I think it has resulted in one of the most beautiful student campuses I have ever se...

Last weekend I travelled to Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was my first visit since Sunit had joined MBA school. After a lot of lazing about, we decided to take a walk in the Fuller and Gallop Park. I name both because I am not sure which one we ended up in - Both were next to each other on River Huron and we couldn't figure out when one ended and the other started :-) The Parks had a river flowing right through the center and serene wilderness stretches around. There were some people canoeing in the river, some cycling about on some of the paved paths and some like us were just walking around enjoying the surroundings. There was this one particular stretch of boardwalk that ended in a rugged path along the river. We decided to walk it. We had just taken a turn back and I was just catching a breath when Sunit whispered - "Pooja !!! Look !". I turned around and lo behold, about 30 feet away was a family of deer. This was the first time I had seen one at such close quarters. I st...