Guitars!

Guitars have always been a part of my life. The association with the six strings has seen me through the thick and thin of life. No matter however little I may have excelled at performing with it, the guitar has helped me gather friends, sail through the 'ragging' period in college with relative ease, getting invited to parties where lesser mortals like me would have been forgotten about otherwise and of course, the opportunity to play with a band which actually 'got paid' for its performances! Picture above was taken at the store 'Guitar Center' in Las Vegas.

The one below was taken at a rather a unusually decorated Ozzy store 'Kosmic Sound' in Perth.

But the fascination with this instrument for an enthusiast does not remain to playing and listening. The myriad models of the guitar out there in the market is simply mind blowing! As a matter of fact merely learning about and following the numerous styles, makes, 'editions', technologies, etc. of the instrument in itself can be an engrossing past time or hobby. And only a genuine enthusiast and connoisseur can understand the value of a $25,000 Eddie Van Halen Frankenstein replica or a $17,000 Fender Custom Shop Stevie Ray Vaughan Lenny Tribute Stratocaster (one of which I could touch at a Las Vegas 'Guitar Center'!)

There is even a parallel art form of making miniature scale replicas of guitars which are interesting collectors' items for guitarists as well as non-guitarist enthusiasts. The pictures below are of such beautiful and spectacular hand made scale models of various 'famous' models and 'editions' of guitars at one of those colourful 'bazaars' in Fremantle, Perth Australia.

The little girl in the frame will give you an idea of the scale of the miniature replica guitars.

Smart Young City on Gas-Lift – Doha, Qatar

In petroleum engineering parlance gas-lift is a method of lifting oil from wells which do not have enough natural pressure in the oil bearing reservoir to bring it to surface.

Doha, the capital city of Qatar has risen from the Arabian desert sands bolstered by a skyrocketing economy driven by revenues from the huge natural gas reserves. It’s a brand new city with strange and spectacular skyscrapers that are products of the imaginations of the haute architects of the modern world.

And as with the rest of the Arabian countries of the gulf, the traditional ethos yet survive amongst the rising steel and concrete edifices.

The Waqif Souk is an interesting place to spend some of your time in Doha. You can soak in the traditional flavour of an Arabian 'souk' or bazaar, browsing through the little souvenir shops, lazying in one of the cafetarias or have a nice meal in one of the upmarket restaurants. No matter how hip or modern the inside of these places are, the facades are done up in the very traditional aesthetics.

Jal Tarang: Music from Water

That's the Jal Tarang. An ancient Indian concussion instrument comprising of a set of porcelain or bronze bowls (cups) of different sizes filled with water (coloured spectacularly here). The set consists of 15 or 22 bowls (cups), mostly only china bowls as preferred by artistes today. Water is poured into the cups and the pitch is changed by adjusting the volume of water in the cup. The number of cups depends on the melody being played. The bowls mostly are arranged in a half-circle in front of the player who can reach them all easily. The player softly hits the cups with a wooden stick on the border to get the sound.

Must be quite a task to tune this instrument!

This was in a Mumbai mall on Indian Independence Day 2009 and I was perched up in a higher floor to catch that 'top view'.

Las Vegas Surprises

In this age of Information Revolution it’s easy to become a ‘Mr. or Ms. Know-it-all’. You just have to spend some time on the internet and you can almost be there even before you are anywhere near it. Be it Youtube, Wikipedia, Googlemaps, or any such website, they can feed you with almost anything you want to know about a place. These days with the streetview option in googlemaps you can even take a virtual ride along almost any street in the developed world, specially the USA. So, well, almost nothing remains unknown when it comes to travelling to a new destination.
Yet Las Vegas surprises. Inspite of having heard, read, surfed so much about this place, it still held me in awe.

The Little Mermaid

From The Little Mermaid show at Disney Hollywood, Orlando. A lovely stage show with spectaular 4D effects. Flash photography was not allowed and so put my SLR to good use! I have often noticed that good stage shows can be photographed pretty effectively with high ISO settings (800-1600) with little loss of resolution. Guess this is mainly because of the high intensity stage lightings used. And even though I was seated at least 50 meters away from the stage and had to zoom-in quite a bit, I was more than happy with the results here!

Life Is A Highway...

The highways in the USA is a different world altogether. And for these truckers the highway is life. It was great to see this foundation of the US economy...I mean the highway system.

Tickin' Away

Time, the most ruthless of all. Never stops for anyone - ever.But again, also the greatest healer of all...

Our Petunias On A Rainy Day

The chill that descended with the rains reminds me so much of Shillong...