Idle musings

    Thanks to my brother, ten of us in our family enjoyed a four day stay at Kabini Jungle Lodges and Resorts from 24-Dec-2024 to 27-Dec-2024. The time spent together was memorable.     On 24-Dec, a Tempo Traveller picked all of us from our homes. My wife and I were the last ones to board, being closest to Mysuru road on which we had to travel. The vehicle was clean and well maintained. Our driver drove steadily, speaking only when he was spoken to. We stopped at a restaurant for breakfast. The crowd was pretty heavy. Since there were ten of us apart from our driver, finding a table for all of us together took some time. Breakfast was relished. I notice that whenever there is an early start, I feel hungrier earlier than usual. It was the same here: all of us were ready to savour breakfast. A couple of days ago, we discussed about visiting Srirangapatna or Mysuru on the way, but on 24-Dec after breakfast, all of us felt that going to Kabini directly was a be...

One has heard of father-in-law, sister-in-law and other “in-laws”. I coin a new term today: “friend-in-law”! My wife has a friend from her working days who she has known for more than twenty years. The friend, her husband, their daughter, my wife and I visited Puducherry recently. I had half a mind not to write a blog post, since we had visited Puducherry earlier. My blog post https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.com/2012/12/a-recovery-smart-phone-and-trip-to_1.html shows my impressions about Puducherry in 2012. What is the point of repeating myself? Then it struck me that I have written about Dubai thrice, the first time at https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.com/2003/06/dubai-2003.html , then https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.com/2008/01/dubai-and-uae.html and also at https://fewidlethoughts.blogspot.com/2013/12/my-nieces-dance-recital-and-dubai-again.html . My wife’s cousin spoke with me a couple of days ago. During the conversation, I spoke about the Rajgiri fort that we visited on t...

Unexpectedly, I travelled to the Netherlands for a week on work recently. On the professional side it was good to see the collaboration, team work and learning in a well organized workshop. This blog post focuses on the places that two colleagues and I visited in the course of the stay. I plan to use photographs as the starting point to describe my feelings, thoughts and experiences. NOTE: I have avoided using names as much as possible.   Our Dutch colleagues did not like the fact that the onset of summer has been delayed this year. Rain and lower temperatures (around 15 degrees Celsius) have been around longer than expected. Still, my colleague and I did see pretty flowers while we went for walks in Eindhoven. The freshness and rich colour of the flowers were a treat to my eyes. My thoughts went to my wife who appreciates the beauty of flowers far more than me! I had never such a big cluster of hydrangea flowers bloom so well, seen here! Eindhoven is a city that houses 32...