Animals Galore!!

For my ypp friends who wanted to know what the monkeys in our locality look like. (They are sitting on the complex boundary wall.



Some more animals, Ray with a camel, and me with Nero!

Biker Babe

I am now officially a Biker babe. I've got a new bike, and I'm a babe in the woods on using it!!

Unlike most kids who learn to tricycle, then cycle/bike, then motorcycle/scooter and then drive a car, I went from tricycle to car jumping all the intermediate stages. Hence, I'm in the small minority of adults who have never ridden a bike. So how did I end up with a bike....well I was conned into it by my hubby!!

It all started with my hubby getting interested in biking and a magazine article that talked about going green and cycling to work. A general interest turned into something serious as my hubby's office planned to shift closer to home and biking to work became quite a feasible idea. Spurred on by the eco-friendliness of the concept and his growing interest, I promised to buy him a bike for his birthday. So he did a lot of research, joined forums, contacted people, dragged me to showrooms etc. etc. You can read all about his research here.

When we landed up in the Merida showroom, the very helpful staff helped him make his choice. Little was I to know, I was going to get conned into buying one too. I've reached the ripe age of 30 without having a pedal at all. Suddenly, everyone around me was gushing how good it was...visions of the happy couple biking around with a dog loping with them entered my head, and in a weak moment I gave in.

So now I'm the tentative owner of Juliet 100-V, with not much clue how to go about it. The showroom guy was really helpful and taught me how to get on and off the bike - a big consideration as given my height (5 feet nothing) this first step itself felt quite daunting. But I mastered the tilt and mount mechanism and felt pretty confident of going ahead.

The bikes came home on Saturday night and Sunday morning saw us at an obscenely early hour at the park, trying out our wheels. After some shaky starts, I did manage to get a rhythm and cycle in a straight line. Not bad for a first day. I seem to have kind of got the balance, keeping the handle bars straight and trying not to wobble is a different story!! And of course my bum hurts...those cycle seats are hell on the butt, specially generously built ones.

But I'm hopeful for the future....and hopeful about losing some weight at the same time.

Arrr Me Mateys...

Puzzle Pirates is a MMORPG that I've been playing since August 2005. I've always loved computer games, but only the strategy kinds. I'm not into the general bashing each other up or driving like a maniac games.

I came across Puzzle Pirates completely by chance. At that time, I hadn't got into mmorpg games, though I had been playing offline rpgs. I never expected to stick so long with one game! It started off as a general distraction and has ended up as an active hobby!

As the name suggests, its a world of pirates, but a complex world involving not just piracy at sea, but economics on land, and social networking with other players. There are different types of puzzles, some which you need to sail your ship (called piracy puzzles), some to produce goods (called crafting puzzles) and some games for entertainment (called parlor games). Its a thriving economy for the pirates, based more on a puzzle mode than actual bashing up of each other with blood and gore galore.

It is rated an Above 13 game. I was pleasantly surprised to find that I was playing not just with teenagers, but with active gamers of all ages. The social networking goes beyond piracy and you get to know some of the people really well. It is also very addicting. I find myself logging in almost daily, either to actively play or just to check up on the shops I run, or even to spend some time playing cards with other players (or mates as we pirates call 'em).

This game also helped me during my sabbatical from work. A lot of people wonder what you do sitting at home all day. Well, I used to spend my time on the game and it can be very very absorbing...sometimes too absorbing!! Some activities do require you to be on for long periods of times, others you could just pop on and off. I know some mates just log on and keep doing other work, keeping checking in on ypp as break relief.

As with other mmorpgs, your statistics soon start defining you. You get ratings for each puzzle and these are relative to how well others are playing the game. Based on how you do in the puzzles, you earn piratey money (poe - peices of eight) which you can spend on clothes, houses, furnitures, trinkets and parlor games.

The game is offered in two modes - subscriber and doubloon. There are different servers catering to each, which are completely different worlds (or oceans as we call it) which do not interact. In subscriber mode, you subscribe for a period of time and keep renewing your subscriptions and this opens up the entire game for you. In doubloon mode, you can purchase doubloon, which allow you to play different facets of the game. Though the doubloon mode is more popular, I started with the subscriber mode and am happy to stay there.

The game graphics are more 2-d cartoon based, but the real fun is the interaction with other pirates, on sea piracy, treasure hunting at Atlantis, and playing around with the economy. All said in done, a puzzle pirate's life is a good life ... Yarrr!!!

Confessor

Confessor is the last book in the 'Sword of Truth' Series by Terry Goodkind. It was released around end 2007, but is yet to reach India. I'd been looking on the bookshelves for months but with little success. Then my thoughtful hubby ordered it from firstandsecond.com for me in June. It took 2 months to arrive, but arrive it did yesterday afternoon to my utter surprise (my hubby never told me he had ordered it...in fact he had almost given up on it!)

It had been a long long while since I had read the last book - Phantom. But I remembered the plot and was dying to open Confessor. Took me 6 hours (ended at some 4:30 in the morning) of continuous reading to finish it. Goodkind's books look enormously fat, but are extremely absorbing. Confessor, being the last of the series, and a conclusion for the plot and its many sub-plots was utterly un-put-downable!

It didn't really matter that I had read the earlier books a long time ago. The author manages to recreate main plot elements every time he refers to situations in the earlier books and making the connections to the events happening in this book. I loved the Boxes of Orden plot loop taking you back to the first book in a spiral which completes the plot circle and yet takes it to a much higher, even grandiose level. The Ja'La - Game of Life, is fun, reminiscent of football or rugby knockoffs. The symbolism of Richard playing against the emperor, both in the sports game and in the larger plot is made increasingly obvious, focusing on the use of strategy on Richard's part and brute force on Jagang's part. Actual magic, spellwork and their intricacies are far fewer than the earlier books.

Characterization is Goodkind's strong point. I liked the fact that the seemingly infallible are also human, demonstrated by Zedd and Ann, both humbled by Nicci's reasonings at different points in the book. Richard, the hero, of course, remains infallible; though his love for Kahlan, and struggle to express his love versus maintain a 'sterile field' give a human touch to the character. The revelation of the book is really Nicci, coming through both in her thinking, her devotion and her restraint. Her redemption reminded me of Severus Snape in the Harry Potter books. Her dignity in the face of brutality from Jagang, temptation from Ann and treading the fine line between sorrow and respect for Kahlan, I thought this was dealt with superbly!!

Not so well dealt with were Kahlan, Rachel and the Sisters of Light. I felt all of them got the short shrift, especially the first two. Kahlan's character for me was mostly a spectator throughout the book, despite her central role in the entire plot, especially the climax. How she maintained the sterile field and fell in love with Richard again, was a critical plot component, yet largely left to the imagination of the reader. Not only that, she just meets Richard a handful of times from a distance, never speaks to him directly. Yes there is a connection between , but the book's expectation from the reader to accept seamless-love-at-first-sight-from-a-distance seems a bit too optimistic! Especially when Nicci explains earlier that emotions need to be allowed to grow on their own. That sure was some fast growth!

Rachel, I felt was the most underdeveloped character throughout. She plays an important role here, yet her background is left to a brief few liners in the epilogue. Her importance, though hinted at by the characters, is never full developed. Her character, apart from her skills again is large a void. I thought this was a character, with the potential to start a complete new story arc, but woefully underutilized. Jillian, the other little girl, too was a disappointment. The dream casters vs dreamwalkers I thought was a very interesting sub plot, but very cursorily dealt with.

In this battle of good versus evil, I felt the author was very squeamish in killing off the strong characters. Before he does kill off one good character, we're treated to a long discourse by the character, revealing her mistakes, making us like her a little lesser, and generally not particularly affected when she is bumped off. Others come close to death, but not close enough. The bad guys are generally done with in the end, the Sisters of Dark providing the perfect oppurtunity for Richard to explain how he had grasped it all while others sat expecting doom. This, a recurring event from all books, is a bit exasperating really. There are some clues, but mostly the hero works it all out in his head, and the reader is told the solution in the end of the book, instead of allowing the reader to pick up clues and start building towards a solution in the end, even if the final key may rest in the hero's final speech. This made the novel a bit patronising to me. Not to forget the long ideological essay on life, freedom and other good things which Richard embarks upon after vanquishing the evil. I can't tell you much about it, I skipped the pages (yes pages not one page). It elongated a well-begun climax to the point of nothingness for me.

The final chapters, epilogue really, tells us where everyone is and gives an insight into their lives post all the turmoil. I love epilogues. Its a joy to see your favorite characters in a normal setting, not fleeing for their lives, getting out of trouble, getting into trouble and killing people all the time. For me, this really ties the final knot.

In the end, I do recommend the entire series. The biggest plus is the plot arc, which swoops, swerves and comes a full circle. The characterization is done well, the plots are intricate and in the beginning feel unconnected. But the connection of the plots, the slow emergence of the larger picture, is the high that thinking readers look for. The writing style is crisp except in places where it goes into interminable ideological monologues. There is brutality, but remarkably less actual killing of the strong characters. Denna, keeps coming back from the underworld anyway, so death isn't much of a character stopper here. Some books are more readable than the others. The Confessor works, because it completes the arc, because it connects the dots, because it's Richard's final triumph...and because by the end of the series, we all love Richard.

From Dust to Clouds

Well, my blog about my dog has flourished far better than my blog about myself. So here is something to prop up this one.

Clouds and sky formations fascinate me. I like to take lots of pictures of them. Usually I'm stuck only with the mobile camera so they dont come out all that well. Here are some anyway.

From my recent trip to Ranikhet: I love the layering of clouds here. Blue sky, light white clouds, thick white clouds, dark black clouds, light grey clouds. It was raining on and off and the clouds were simply racing across the sky...it was wonderful to watch!

The clouds completely shrouded the view of the Himalayan Range. But in this one you can see Mt Trishul on the right, partially obscured by the clouds.

In Gurgaon: On one of my evening walks with my dog. I saw this lovely formation of a golden sunburst breaking through the clouds. Absolutely Divine!

From a trip to Pattaya, Thailand: In the first photo, I was struck by the Orange/Black contrast and the lovely reflection on the sun on the sea. One of the rare occasions I had a proper camera.

From the same Pattaya trip as above, in fact just a few minutes after the earlier photograph! A wider angle and a longer zoom brought in more of the sky, more light and more color. Blue and orange seem a garish color combination, but nature makes it work.

From my earlier flat in Mumbai: What can I say, despite the years that have passed, and the poor quality of my mobile camera, that was some view!! Both taken on the same day, same place, just a little variation in time.

And the wide angle: The depth, the space, the colors and the forms of this view make me catch my breath each time I look at it. And I feel truly privileged that I saw this sight with my own two eyes.

And in panaromic version.