Archive for October 2008
Visit to the Opera House
This Saturday (yesterday) morning Nishanth and Abish left for India, and so that left us (Sridhar and myself) alone in the hotel. We decided to go visit the Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. To go to the Opera House, you would take a bus that would drop you off at the Circular Quay (which is at the end of the land). From there to your North East is the Opera House and to your North West is the Rocks and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. This was incidentally the first trip in a bus for us in Sydney.
We spent some time soaking in the beauty of the Customs House at the edge of the road where the bus stops. There is a huge courtyard in front and we could see some beautiful flowers in the mini garden in the front, and a couple of kids were playing hand-tennis (remember, hand-tennis, Ricebowl Avenue kids?).
From there we crossed under the Circular Quay Railway station to reach the Wharf and took the beautiful pathway that leads to the Opera House. The view on enroute is spectacular and the pix taken using the SE k550i doesn’t do justice to what we saw. I am not sure whether any camera could do 100% justice, but many would come damn close, I would have to say after checking out Apple’s pro-mode pix.
The Wharf was a flurry of activity with boats arriving and leaving and people hopping in and off. Then there was this AUD 60 per ride Oz Jet Boat ride. The driver who picked me up from the airport mentioned that the best place to watch the harbour was from inside out (from the sea). So I hope I will take a ferry boat one of these days to experience that as well.
After spending an hour or so at the Opera House checking it out from all possible angles, and soaking in on the beautiful view of the sea on either side of the Opera House, we walked down to the pier that is called the Man O War. This is now used as the landing point for the boats that has to reach this side of the Opera House or the Royal Botanic Gardens. We also saw how lucky the rich people here are. While we were there, a couple of beautiful girls came to the pier, and within a minute, a sexy boat came and their boyfriends were in that. Nice way to spend the weekend, I guess!
Next in line was the Royal Botanic Garden that is just opposite the Opera House. This is one beatiful natural park and the administrators actually request you to walk on the grass and to smell the roses! We would have walked a couple of hours inside that, and I guess we managed to cover about 25% of it. After all, the garden spans an area of 30 hectares.
The first stop inside the Garden was the majestic Government House in the Domain beside the Garden. It was designed by the architect who was involved in the design of the Buckingam Palace. Though we didn’t go into the building, the view through the glasses and the view of the House premises was beautiful. There was a nice looking sundial inside the premises, and it was showing the time without caring about sunlight savings!
It was well past the lunch time, we decided to take a break. It was after quite a long while that I was sitting in a garden to eat my lunch. After that we moved to a more sunny spot for a short nap of 45 min :). I was really thrilled to see that so many people pack their lunches and tiffin and head over to the park (since it is getting warmer here in Sydney) to spend more than a couple of hours. It is a perfectly great idea to pack your lunch and a couple of books (technical or otherwise) and lie down in the garden with the trees for shades and the sea breeze for keeping you cool. Of course, I forgot to mention about the almost unbelievable beauty of the harbour and the sea that is a few metres away).
After that we took the walk along the edge of the waterfront to reach the gate on the opposite side. The view from there was beautiful as well. We could see the whole City skyline plus the Opera House had the Harbour Bridge as the background!
Finally, after about 5 hrs of walking (a record for me this year) we decided to call it a day and returned back to the room. Thus ended a very very memorable day and the first trip to the Circular Quay. I am sure I will be back again to the place without worrying about taking pictures and to soak in the beauty and the serenity that the Royal Botanic Garden has to offer.
Here is the link to the pix:
Thanks for reading and have a great week ahead.
PS: Hey, did you notice that the Indian team is playing great cricket for a change? People here are saying that India is the next Australia, and they don’t think Aussies have the bench strength to regain the glories of the McGrath-Warne era.
Apple the pro
Last week I was chatting with Apple and he threw me a link — the link to some of the pix taken by him in Flickr — to the collection of some of his shots taken in the “professional photographer” mode.
To put it simply, most of the pix are simply breathtaking, and it brings out not just his mastery of the art, but also the beauty of the land we know as India. It also brings out the passion and the hardwork involved in composing the shots, getting the lighting right, ensuring you get the exposure right and so on and so forth (you say “so on and so forth” when you have run out of ideas and words, but just want to show that you know more than what you actually do, but just that you don’t have time to list them all down :).
Take a look and I am sure you won’t be disappointed. You can see where he is coming from and where he is going with his camera. At least now I know why he is not blogging actively these days. I do wish he would add more of his pix, and not just the best ones as per him. All the very best to him for his future endeavors with the cam.
Sydney ahoy!
I have uploaded a few (ok, a lot of) snaps taken on the way to, in and around Sydney. It has been a fantastic experience so far and I wish it would remain the same till I return back. I will update this post as I add more pix later on. So keep checking back once every fortnight or so.
Be warned that these snaps were taken using my good old SE k550i and so will not be as breath-taking as you or I might expect them to be. But they are still good enough to convey what I saw and experienced.
Jervis Bay Dolphin Cruise [includes a rather dark pix of Don Bradman’s home]
The four guys whom you see in some of the snaps are my colleagues — Abish, Nishanth, Satheesh and Sridhar.
One of the good things is that I get to watch live cricket that is going on back home between India and Australia. I hope Sachin and co. would deliver in the future innings. Otherwise, it might well be curtains for India’s fab four this year (except good ole Dravid, of course ;).
PS: I am thankful to Satheesh for some of the snaps uploaded. I have lifted them from his collection without asking him.
PS2: Apple wanted to know about what I eat here. Details here.
Update [19-Oct-08]: Updated some snaps to the Apartments album. Created two new albums — Office Snaps and random snaps from Week3. I have added caption to the new ones as well.
Update [19-Oct-08]: Good to know that the Fab Four are starting to click and good to see Ganguly scoring a hundred. You won’t believe me, but in Foxsports yesterday, they were discussing how good the Indian bowling is (especially the seamers) and how the Australians have to learn to reverse the ball, something that they are not able to do at the moment, and the Indians are doing it as early as the 8th over.
Protos' Musings 