69 minutes, 10Km, 26th year :)

I completed the 10Km run in 69 minutes today... This run was a non stop one with a walk of 200 meters after the 6th kilometer. Felt happy by this achievement, that too on a day when I enter the 26th year of my existence in this world

World No Tobacco day and Sunfeast 10Km

Today is ‘World no tobacco day’ and today Sunfeast conducted the 10Km run in Bangalore. Except for two small posters no others sponsors including Sunfeast / ITC had posters emphasizing the tobacco health warnings.

How would Sunfeast do that when its parent company ITC is a leading tobacco company in India? Did it forcefully prevent other sponsors from hoarding No-Tobacco displays?

Spotted the black rumpted flameback

I spotted the black rumped flameback last week in our 'Global Village Tech Park' office campus. I thought it was a normal sparrow from far...but as I approached, I could see its red crest and golden back and black & white breasts.
I postponed my lunch and went in further to enjoy the woodpecker's colors amidst the coconut trees.
It was too awesome sight to express it in words...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-rumped_Flameback

Mella mella ennai thottu...

yuvan shankar has done an excellent remix of his father Ilayaraja's musical piece in the movie 'Sarvam'. The hero of the movie hears this music piece whenever his lover is around.

Today I fished out this song from youtube; the original song starts as ' Mella mella ennai thothu....' where the woman wants her lover to caress her in a staccato...Ilayaraja's prelude is also a staccato of violin chords, joined by the guitar with the flute mellifluously filling in later.

I am always against remixing of old songs...but yuvan has done a great job by keeping the original pace and instruments and improvised the recording.

Golden vines...intertwined with her thoughts

Golden vines intertwined with her thoughts...

I loved this still in the recent Tamil movie 'Sarvam'. I liked the lighting, background, her poise, costumes...amazing.
Kudos to the cameraman and costume designer.
Overall the background music score by Yuvanshankar was good.
Camera at most places was the bokeh type shots where the focus is on the subject with the background fading; this was a little annoying to me. And the next major was silhouette shots mostly with blue or red backgrounds. One shot was with the sun in the horizon...
The sets and lighting of the hospital shots in the first half were too exposed and swallowed the subjects unless the costumes were dark colored. In one shot, the same white color costume in the above picture amidst the hospital white background was too bland.

Rain rain come again

Walking in the rain is one of the activities that bring out the child in you…and yesterday I felt like a six year old boy :)

Returning from office by the 8.15pm cab was really boring with people hooked on to their iPod or cell phone talk or on to their own dream world. Just 10 minutes before my stop, rain lashed with heavy winds and woke the guy who was sitting opposite to me. He woke up angrily and took out an umbrella with a heavy sigh and probably wished that the rain would stop.

The rain sprayed on my face with the wind and I wished that the rain would continue...My wish was fulfilled...

Walking some half a kilometer in rain, slow and steady…enjoying the water drops engulfing my thoughts; I remembered my childhood days in Assam. The monsoon sweeping the town, myself on the front lawn playing like mad in the rain, my mom tired of calling me inside and sitting on the portico with my younger sister, then a three years old baby. From 3.30pm till 5.00pm fully drenched in the rain, I went inside only when my papa came back from work…After having a glass of hot milk I was floating paper boats in the water puddles with my sister looking at them…

Really nostalgic thoughts…thoughts of my childhood suddenly flashing and flooding my thoughts after about twenty years…

Watching the weaver

Weaver
Originally uploaded by Puneeth B C

I was delighted by the sight of a dozen weaver bird nests...They were deserted. Late after few minutes I planned to hide myself and hid nearby amidst tall grass bushes. This is the place where I watched their entire behavior pattern from close quarters...about 5 feet from their nests.
The weavers hopped from branch to branch, each time inching towards their nest and each time surveying their territory. Most of the time they were holding long stalk of grass in their tiny beaks. These yellow crested weavers land straight on top of their nest and with the help of their feet and pointed beaks weave the grass stalk into the existing structure. This was at the end of 15 minutes an now I wanted to call Puneeth so that they can be shot through our lenses.
I and Puneeth scrambled on our knees and positioned ourselves but the weavers sensed some risk...they came closer to their nest and again retreat back. Now we resolved to lying on our chest...he with his camera and I with my friend's binoculars. This time we ended up with some good shots. All the muted conversations and sign languages helped us. This was at the end of sixty minutes.

Watching the weaver, we lost our sense of time...We got to know how many minutes passed only when we were returning back from the small stream near which the weaver's colony were...

Spotting the Bee-Eater

Bee-Eater
Originally uploaded by Puneeth B C

Puneeth called me last Thursday and asked if I can join them for the trip to sight the flock of bee eaters that had arrived somewhere on the outskirts of Mysore adjoining the Kaveri river banks. We started late evening and reached there around 10.30 pm...the whole village was asleep except for few who were returning from the city. Our enquiries about the directions to the river banks arouse suspicion of the villagers...we were noted and tracked... Finally we went to the shores and surveyed the site. The moon was shadowed by the clouds then. With the help of two local villagers we camped on the outskirts of the village. Seeing the starry sky and those flickering fireflies made me feel heaven.
Sighting the flocks of bee eaters perching everywhere...it was a sight that defies expression. The intricate colors on the bee eaters neck and the body was awesome through the binoculars. Along with the flock we spotted a pied kingfisher, brown hornbill, white throated kingfisher and a family of weaverbirds. The weaverbirds caught my attention and it calls for separate attention in my blog as well. See you soon with the post on weaver bird...

This photo was taken by Puneeth...