Madras Crocodile Bank Trust

I've been in Chennai for the past 7 years and I never found time to make a trip to the Crocodile bank. So, last Saturday, almost on impulse, took my camera and went to Croc bank. It's a 30 KM ride from the city. I took the ECR all the way to the Croc bank, and on the way to the Croc bank is the Muttukadu Lake. You can see some beautiful birds, fishing.



Croc bank comes on the left side if you are going towards Pondicherry on the ECR. The fare is Rs. 60 for an adult and the Rs. 20 for a still camera.

The first thing that catches your attention inside the Croc bank is the shade and the trees in that place. Just lovely and peaceful! One of my herpetophile friends loves it so much that she wants to live there, I'm not sure it will be safe with so many crocodiles there!!

Once you go inside the first pen has close to 70 crocodiles in it. It looks scary, except after looking at it for 30 seconds, one gets the feeling that most of them are not even real crocodiles. They are still as a stone and just lie there lazily basking in the sun. But when they do eventually move around, they look real scary.



There are close to 25 pens with different species of Crocodiles and a lot of interesting cartoons too :)



There's a separate enclosure called Snake Haven, there, of course, are snakes! Some not available...



There is also some active entertainment (as opposed to the VERY passive crocs just basking in the sun), you can see specialists extracting venom from snakes and
You can even watch them feed the crocs at additional charges.



Lot of relatively active turtles and tortoises to see around..

Takes two to three hours to go around the whole place. It's a great place to take the kids, they'll surely love it!!

more pics from Croc bank

Cheers
Joe

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Tanjore Trip

It was good! :) One of my team mates (colleagues) got married on 27th Jan. First of all, Congrats to him and God bless his married life!

The reception was on 26th Jan. That being a national holiday, we guys (from office) decided to go for the reception. We started from Chennai on the 25th night by train. I have to mention that Indian railways has gone really bad now. Earlier it used to be only rats, now there are rats and the resident cockroaches. But then there is an improvement too, to be able to charge laptops and mobile phones. So I was able to watch a movie till 4 AM. :)

We reached Tanjore by 7 o'clock in the morning of 26th Jan. We got out of the train and were greeted with this wonderful view.



Went to the hotel (The Oriental Towers)




Its a real good hotel for a town like Tanjore. Eight storey, I guess.



Well maintained, has a swimming pool and if you get a room like mine (room no. 715) then you can have beautiful view of the temple top.






Then we went to visit the periya temple (means "Big Temple")and yes it is really big!
Built by this Chola Raja







Some better Tanjore pics are available here.

Then we went to the Tanjore Sivagangai Park. Not much to see there, but if you are going with kids, it's definitely a great place. There is a mini zoo with peacocks (and Peahens), foxes, deers, Guinea pigs, rabbits, pigeons, parrot, oh and lots of "love birds"... :)

park pics are available here.

On our way back to the hotel, we had lunch(very good lunch) at the marriage hall and slept blissfully at the hotel for four hours before going to the marriage hall for the reception.

Joe

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Micromax Q3

Bought a new mobile recently, micromax Q3 for Rs.4000



Till now I have used 1 Siemens, 1 LG, 1 Samsung, 2 Nokia's, 1 Motorola

So I will be reviewing this mobiles compared to those.

A review in my own terms:

Keypad : QWERTY - it takes close to 100 text messages for the brain to grasp the "QWERTY" way and unlearn the alpha-numeric way!

Big enough screen (not those tiny ones!)



External memory card - yup, Ive put a 1 GB mini SD
Audio player - yes, good (7/10)
nice headphones too
Data cable - ya! duh...
Camera - 1.3 MP - not really that good, but chalega :) (5 / 10)
FM - ya
OS - The univercell site says "JAVA".. LOL :) and the Matrix site didn't have an info on that

Dual SIM - ya

Wi-Fi - NO :(

Comes with a good looking pouch!


User experience :
Nice to carry around. Not too big, not too small. Not heavy. BUT the user experience (usability)is not as good as Nokia or Motorola. Of course, Micromax has to do more research in that field. BUT, AGAIN, for 4k this mobile is worth it (do check out a 3 month post-purchase review later, before purchasing!).

Warranty : 1 year

Price : Rs.4000 @ Cell World
Will cost you 4,300 at Univercell

If you have any other questions regarding this mobile, let me know!

Overall its a good mobile for 4k. Usually inexpensive mobiles show their true "color" as the days go by and I will update that too in this blog!



Cheers

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An offer I couldn't resist!

There are two types of politicians (both are, of course, corrupt) - ones that don't do anything for the money that they take, others do something worth the money. An example for the latter is Laloo. I liked the funny entertainment he used to provide, like this one:



And there are cops who do the same too. I was caught for "over speeding" near Raj Bhavan (The Governor's place!). The cop pulled me over and asked me if I knew what speed I was doing. I told him that I think I was doing close to 50 KMPH. He showed me a device in his hand that is supposed to measure the speed and told me that I was doing 75 KMPH. Who am I to call a cop a liar?! So I stood there for some time (5 mins)and tried to start a friendly conversation. He was a friendly cop and I told him that I have to rush to office. He told me that I have to pay a fine of Rs.300. I just gave him a smile and told him "come on, sir. You can let me off with a warning, I won't do it again."

This is when he made an offer I couldn't resist. No, I don't own a stallion, whose head I found on my bed the next day! His offer was that if I could spot all the cameras in that junction, he would let me go with a warning. I was thinking "Is he for real?! What the...". :)

Anyway, that junction being an important one, had lot of cameras. I figured I might as well give it a try. I spotted 11 cameras and told the officer that there are 11 and I showed him the eleven.

He asked if I was sure that there were only 11. The tone was almost an imitation of Big B from Kaun Banega Crorepati. I told him that I was sure. He told me that there were 13 and he started counting and showing me the cameras. After 11, he stopped. Either he realized that there only 11 cameras or there were 13 and 2 were stolen recently!! :)

Since I won the "challenge" I was about to leave and he stopped me saying "you haven't paid the fine "

:)

cheers

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On air on Chennai live 104.8 FM

WOW!! What an experience! This is the closest (yet!) I have come to being on radio as n RJ. During my second and third year of college I used to listen to the only channel that played English music - FM Rainbow from 7pm to 8pm. Listening to those spontaneous RJ's and hearing them interact with different people (strangers), I wanted to become an RJ . But that dream never came to pass and this (today on air on Chennai live 104.8) experience was awesome and closest I got to that dream.

I took part in a "debate" (more of a general discussion) on the subject " Is Facebook A Welcome Tool To Win Friends & Influence People?" and I was speaking against the topic. Went to the studio a bit early as I wanted to make sure nothing stopped me from reaching my "dream" and destination on time :)

Met the lively, friendly RJ Sanobar. She has so much energy (contagious!) which passes it on to you... And I needed that, given that it was 8 AM and I'm used to waking up 9 AM. :)

The show began at 8 30 AM. And I met with "moderator" Sanjay Pinto and "my opponent" Joshua. I was under the impression that Joshua wouldn't have radio experience ("what's the probability that he will?!" I consoled myself) BUT he did have a HUGE experience. He was an RJ on AIR for FOUR years. Then I "slightly" freaked! :)


But Sanjay did a good job of making me feel real comfortable and once the session started it was nothing but FUN!!

(The one farther is Joshua and the other one is Sanjay Pinto)

BTW, this is how the studio looks! :)

guest mics on the left(3 of them) and one big mic (as if telling the guests "I'm the boss") is the RJ's (Sano's)



Cheers

Joe

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