Broken Images

Broken Images, a Girish Karnad play starring Shabana Azmi was excellent. I completely enjoyed watching Shabana Azmi whose performance was absolutely brilliant in this one man play. :) If it comes to your city, I recommend going!

My First Finished Kakuro

I know it isn't exactly rocket science...but I'm happy I finished it. And for some reason I want to keep a record of it. :-p

National Geographic and Up.

National Geographic has always amazed me beyond belief. And they continue to stun me...

They actually made a house fly with balloons. Unbelievable! Check this out!

Jebel Shams and Wadi Nakkhar

We went with Uncle Latif and his wife to Jebel Shams and Wadi Nakkhar. Starting the day out, we thought we were going to a place that none of us had ever gone to before. Some discovery uncle had made on his flight to India sometime last year. His "discovery" of what he said was the Grand Canyon of Oman turned out to be the ever old Jebel Shams.

It has been years since I've visited, so though it didn't turned out to be a new spot, it was just as fulfilling. The drive up the mountains to reach Jebels Shams is just gorgeous. The stark beauty of the rocks is breathtaking. And once you reach the top, the gorge just entraps you. After walking along the edge and taking in the beauty for about half an hour, we drove back down to go to Wadi Nakkhar, which essentially is the bottom of the gorge we see from Jebel Shams.

Driving through the gorge with the sun roof open provided some brilliant views. At the very end of the drivable path is a little shop, of sorts. Here, an older Omani sells carpets woven from goat wool. Across the shop, is his house, hidden amongst date trees and almost camouflaged due to it's stone structure. Once could easily miss the presence of that house altogether. What a location to live in! In a wadi!

After visiting the store and purchasing some rugs, we found a flat spot along the wadi to eat our 'fabulous' (read: blech) lunch of meat and vegetables puffs and cheese sandwiches that we'd picked up last minute from Modern Bakery. I can't believe Modern Bakery turned out to be such a sore disappointment.

It was a fabulous Friday in Oman! :)

View on our drive up to Jebel Shams

View of the gorge from Jebel Shams

Stark beauty of Jebel Shams

A little shop in Jebel Shams selling goat wool products (keychain, slippers etc)

Wadi Nakkhar

A solitary house in the wadi

A shop in the wadi selling goat wool rugs

Book Roundabout - Featured on the Amazing Race!

This is the first time I've seen this roundabout. I will admit I was slightly excited since it was one of the locations for a clue on the Amazing Race.

Snorkeling

Taking advantage of the free water activities being offered at Le Meridien in Mauritius, Aafaq and I went snorkeling. We were lucky to be able to go because the trip was already fully booked. But, after a boring glassbottom boat ride, we waited to see if all the guests that signed up for snorkeling would show up. They didn't so off we went, flippers, pipe, goggles and all!

I had a fabulous time snorkeling. This was the first time I have snorkeled with the correct gear and I hadn't realised how easy it was. Swimming is quite easy in the ocean with the current helping you along and the salt making it easier to float.

One of the things I really enjoyed was as soon as you go into the water and start looking under at the fish, there was this one abundant species that were all 'looking up' at the snorkelers...like a kid looks up at an adult. So cute! :D

I saw 3 schools of fish amongst many many individual fish. One of the schools had really pretty thin silver fish soooo close to the surface of the water and they looked like they were taking in something with their mouth from the surface. However, if you looked at the surface of the water from above water, you wouldn't be able to tell there were fish under! I tried to follow the three schools of fish, but either they were too fast or swam to areas where the corals and sea bed was so high that I couldn't fit! :-p

It was such a nice hour-ish in the water. I was sad when we had to go back. Oh well...

These Websites Amuse Me!!!!

Pulitzer Prize Photo Gallery at Newseum

The Pulitzer Prize Photo Gallery at the Newseum is completely brilliant! This is my favourite photo of all the winners over the years. SOOOOO CUTE!!!

Look at what CVS just asked me to do!! :-o

Happy 2011!!!!!!!