Spelunking and the new Tarzan…

With a title that makes no sense to the prospective reader but still hopefully manages to evoke some curiosity in him (or her…I am not an MCP), I shall first clarify on the new Tarzan issue.

The online edition of India oldest English newspaper gleefully announced last week that Salman Khan is going to play the role of Tarzan in a forthcoming movie. I am wondering as to why this made headlines. Like every other movie of his, even in this one he will not be wearing many clothes except for the bare essentials. Even in this movie like previous one, he will enact the role of a young man who has grown in the wild and undomesticated. The headline would have made much more impression if in his forthcoming movie he announced that he would be completely clothed the entire time. Now that’s a news story which would have even displaced the current prime minister and his ongoing tryst with the Left from the front page. I am now expectantly waiting for the release of this Hindi Tarzan so that I can write a review on it. I am also curious to know if the Indian Tarzan will be from the northern wilderness of Uttarakhand or from the southern wilderness of M.M. hills (previously ruled by the erstwhile Mr. Veerappan).

With the Tarzan clarification out of the way, this weekend saw me Spelunking in a place called Rosh Hanikra near the Lebanese border, which means cave exploration by the inexperienced (Courtesy:- Wikipedia). Didn’t need wikipedia to tell me that I was inexperienced in this. I did realize this myself. An amazing place where the Mediterranean Sea makes amazing caves inside the mountains. But somehow the British had already reached there before the sea in world War2 to make a railway line. Trust the colonial British to be everywhere. I shall leave the reader with 2 pictures, the first one of the caves itself and second one on the Lebanon border, pointing to the directions of Jerusalem and Beirut.

The photograph incident and another lockout….

I have recently drawn another ground breaking conclusion. It goes like this. The more technologically advanced a particular country is, the more difficult it is to find small services like public phones which accept coins, passport photograph services, public internet cafes and photocopy machines.

I was in dire need of some passport sized photographs so I headed to the nearest and the town’s largest mall where I was told I could find this service. Upon reaching the far end of the third floor, I saw a certain kiosk which had a camera inside it. This looked like what I was looking for. There were no instructions on how to operate this thing and what it was capable of doing. After putting in coins equivalent to the Indian 100rs, the camera snapped some mugshots of mine. Then the most shocking thing happened. An automated voice from the machine told me that it was now ready to print a portrait of me based on the photos taken. There was no mention whatsoever of any passport photograph at all. I am now currently owner of a portrait of mine on an A-4 sheet which cost me 100rs and which is worth nothing in the open market or the black market. With this disappointment, I headed to the other end of the mall nearly 200m away, where there was one more such machine. But this one made photo stickers and was even costlier. I still do not understand as to who is using photo stickers of an unstandard size and where. But looks like lot of people are since the machine seems to making some money. I actually saw someone print out 16 stickers bearing his face. Needless to say, I did not lose some more money here. After searching all the nearby malls for a photograph, I was still unsuccessful. 2 days later, I am now the proud owner of 6 passport size photos of mine. A discovery made the following day was that the store in my very own place of work actually provides this service. To put it in my own poetic way, I had a flower blooming in my own backyard and I was searching for florists all over town. Ok, bad analogy. I am not exactly a poet and don’t ever wish to be.

Another discovery made the hard way was that there are parking lots in some parts of the world that do close in contrast to India where nothing ever closes. I reached late evening to the parking lot where I had parked my car earlier and to my horror found it was locked. How I got out of this mess is another action packed story which I shall tell the gentle reader some other day.

On a final cryptic note, there will be some more group photographs of the October and November events that I wont be a part of. :-(

The away series…

As the intrepid explorer continues his vacation and tries the make the most of it by getting ample rest and food before he heads back to the holy land, he cant help but compare this trip to that of the Indian cricket team in Australia.

The intrepid explorer has been found wanting on bouncy tracks like that of Perth. The footwork and technique was lacking and he was unable to handle the pace attack at all. But now that he has a feel of the pitch and the harsh conditions, he swears to be back for a return revenge series in a few months, hopefully well equipped to handle the bowling this time. He also realizes that good technique and perseverance is required like in Test matches and that a Twenty20 like casual approach will not work.

He shall ramble on no more on this topic.

Tool’s rendition of the Led Zeppellin classic “No quarter” is simply superb and does more than justice to the original.