We had exactly 5hours in Cape Town on our way from Manila to Durban and we believe we managed to do our best to have a feel of Cape town in that short few hours.
Here is the recipe.
Go to the AVIS car rental and ask for Jameal as you come out of the customs area.
Drive staight to the table mountain. The cable car takes you to the top of the mountain and the 360 degree view on the way is just our of the world.
Table mountain is a place where one could spend the full day sunbathing on a good day. The view around is just brilliant, specially on a day with good visibility.
Coming down from there, drive through the coast line to Clifton beach. Its a white sand, clear blue sea beach with plenty of sun worshippers around. Its not unusual to have few very shapely women teasing the sun and lesser mortals with their ample breast!
Spend sometime there. Better you have taken your packed lunch there and have hired an umbrella at 25 rand.
Drive through Miami (palm tree line road is the connection) to the Sandy Beach. Its a nude beach full of large stones and waves repeatedly creating huge fountains. Its a must see place if you are gay! On a good day, walking aroud there would be just devine. Its was devine indeed!
Rush to the hunter bay area to have a peep at the seals who come to chilled at the shades of the beats anchored there. We saw five large seals in that natural setting. The white pigeones blend nicely with the bay atomosphere.
Its time to drive back to the ariport. Jameal will make sure you are back dot on!
Will add the awesome, out of the world photos once these are downloaded when Im back in Manila.
-From Bevearly Hill Hotel, Durban, South Africa
positivism- negetive press
Last week, I was a part of a war game for a launch of one of our product in China and one of the risk that was identified as BBS, blogs.
We all aggreed that negetive opinions in blog could spiral into something big and hence damaging. The logic being people dont say good things about anything in their blogs but use it to talk about something they didnt like.
It got me thinking as to why do we talk sponteneously about bad things as a natural tendency? Even I have done it before to crib about the bad service provided by Fed Ex and KLM in Manchester.
I guess when we a good experience, we feel great about it and feel thankful; and joyous about it in a personal way. Our own good experience is a unique experience and we rationalise in out mind that I as a person had something for that good experience to have.
However, when we have a bad experience, we feel powerless against a big company and evenif we wish to sue it, we know we cannt. Hence, we use our blogs to creat bad advertisement for that particular company as a means to damage it and have some revenge.
Hence, I have now decided to talk about good experiences conciously henceforth.
This was not the only decision I took sitting in my warm room in cold Shanghai.
May be because Im a cancerian, may be because I grew up on chairty of my uncle and aunt, I have this abiding fear and insecurity about future which makes me want to save every penny I earn. God has been very kind to me and I believe I have managed to save some decent amout but everyday I revise the saving target upward. It creat distrurbance in out family and I have decided to pray everyday and dont interfare with Prinx on her shopping anymore. Rather, I will pray for properity to flow in our life in abundance and I believe this will happen soon. Prayers are always answered. God is great!
Its 11.40 pm now, this posting is from Chaingi airport. Im on my way to Durban on an offician trip. Before coming, I told Sheena that Durban is rumoured to be unsafe. After five minutes, he came and told me that we would buy the car in Manila and I dont have to go out to buy it and I should stay in the hotel. Such a nice boy he is, our dear Shenna. God, please bless him in abundance for good health, education, a great comfortable life and anything that he desires.
We all aggreed that negetive opinions in blog could spiral into something big and hence damaging. The logic being people dont say good things about anything in their blogs but use it to talk about something they didnt like.
It got me thinking as to why do we talk sponteneously about bad things as a natural tendency? Even I have done it before to crib about the bad service provided by Fed Ex and KLM in Manchester.
I guess when we a good experience, we feel great about it and feel thankful; and joyous about it in a personal way. Our own good experience is a unique experience and we rationalise in out mind that I as a person had something for that good experience to have.
However, when we have a bad experience, we feel powerless against a big company and evenif we wish to sue it, we know we cannt. Hence, we use our blogs to creat bad advertisement for that particular company as a means to damage it and have some revenge.
Hence, I have now decided to talk about good experiences conciously henceforth.
This was not the only decision I took sitting in my warm room in cold Shanghai.
May be because Im a cancerian, may be because I grew up on chairty of my uncle and aunt, I have this abiding fear and insecurity about future which makes me want to save every penny I earn. God has been very kind to me and I believe I have managed to save some decent amout but everyday I revise the saving target upward. It creat distrurbance in out family and I have decided to pray everyday and dont interfare with Prinx on her shopping anymore. Rather, I will pray for properity to flow in our life in abundance and I believe this will happen soon. Prayers are always answered. God is great!
Its 11.40 pm now, this posting is from Chaingi airport. Im on my way to Durban on an offician trip. Before coming, I told Sheena that Durban is rumoured to be unsafe. After five minutes, he came and told me that we would buy the car in Manila and I dont have to go out to buy it and I should stay in the hotel. Such a nice boy he is, our dear Shenna. God, please bless him in abundance for good health, education, a great comfortable life and anything that he desires.
Taal Volcano, Tagaytay -1st Jan, 2008
What does bengalee's in West Bengal do on 1st Jan?
Well, picnic.
So, us three bengalee families in Manila did thhe same on 1st Jan.
We drove down to Taal Volcano in Tagaytay. A very plesant drive and lot of turns going up and down which I negotiated for the first time and it felt.
The Banka ride to the volcano was eventful. Though it's suppossed to be a lake, there were lot of waves and we got completely drentched. since, it was cold, it was tough and difficult for Shenna. It took us around 30 minutes to reach there. It was raining intermittently to make the situation bit more difficult. We needed dry cloths and we paid extra to buy these.
Horses were waing for us and we went up the hill for another 45 minutes to reach the point which provided the awesome view of the crater.
We could see smoke coming out from some places and the air ddid have te acrid smell of sulphur.
Seeing the volcano, knowing its still active though largely dormant, inspired awe and told us again how little we know of the earth and how much we depend of God for sustainance.
The ride back in the horse was much more pleasant and even the boat ride was much more pleasant since we had leart from experience and accoringly seating arrangments were done.
Highly recommended to make the trip if you got a day to see around Manila.
Tata India launching People's car? my Foot!
Its deeply disturbing that today Tata India unveil their $2.5k car which will play havok with the safety, polution and quality of life in India in particular and world in general.
Given the attractive price, it is bound to be a success. People fed on relentless consumerism have come to believe that owning a car is an achivement in life!
The logic for this car is that life of people having scooter is pathetic and they would be now blessed with a car to take around their family. Unsaid is, probably now they will compromise on the tutor for the child or the vitamin for the elders inorder to pay the increased gasoline bill.
It looks cute and filmsy!
The safety of this car is likely to be questionable. If Tata India was scrupulous and confident enough, they should have launched in Europe first to develop credibility before thrusting on a 3rd world country like India. They cannt have done that since their safety standards wouldnt be acceptable in Europe. Time will tell if and to what extent they have compromised on safety aspects. They should get it Euro cleared.
If their was iota of sense in Tata India, they would have worked to adopt green energy or economical rapid mass transportation system.
Gasoline is allready subsidized in India and this launch will mean that Goverment of India would spend more on Gasoline when this money could be productively used to uplift the pathetic infrastructure, education, health care.
That will mean higher car density in all cities in India. This will burden the allready burdened infrastructure in India and commuters will spend more time on road.
Polution will zoom up. It will contribute handsomly to the global warming. While the world is walking towards mass transport system, India is walking backward towards individual cars. Its a resoundingly regressive development.
From the bottom of my heart, I wish failure of this launch of cheap car. They are touting it as people's car and hoping that they can fool the people so that they dont see the harm it will do to generations of Indians and later, Im sure other 3rd world countries.
Given the attractive price, it is bound to be a success. People fed on relentless consumerism have come to believe that owning a car is an achivement in life!
The logic for this car is that life of people having scooter is pathetic and they would be now blessed with a car to take around their family. Unsaid is, probably now they will compromise on the tutor for the child or the vitamin for the elders inorder to pay the increased gasoline bill.
It looks cute and filmsy!
The safety of this car is likely to be questionable. If Tata India was scrupulous and confident enough, they should have launched in Europe first to develop credibility before thrusting on a 3rd world country like India. They cannt have done that since their safety standards wouldnt be acceptable in Europe. Time will tell if and to what extent they have compromised on safety aspects. They should get it Euro cleared.
If their was iota of sense in Tata India, they would have worked to adopt green energy or economical rapid mass transportation system.
Gasoline is allready subsidized in India and this launch will mean that Goverment of India would spend more on Gasoline when this money could be productively used to uplift the pathetic infrastructure, education, health care.
That will mean higher car density in all cities in India. This will burden the allready burdened infrastructure in India and commuters will spend more time on road.
Polution will zoom up. It will contribute handsomly to the global warming. While the world is walking towards mass transport system, India is walking backward towards individual cars. Its a resoundingly regressive development.
From the bottom of my heart, I wish failure of this launch of cheap car. They are touting it as people's car and hoping that they can fool the people so that they dont see the harm it will do to generations of Indians and later, Im sure other 3rd world countries.
How to teach a child to read and write?
Well, I dont know what is te sureshot way of doing it but we are trying and we are hopeing it works. Shenna is now at a stage where we are trying to help him become literate and numerate.
On maths, he seems to be in a better place. He can count upto 1000 and can do additions upto 10.
Intially, I played this game of additions with marbles and it helped.
So he is okey with maths.
Teaching him to read and write appear to be much more demanding and slower process since inherently these things are tough and we are not trained in doing it. What we have done is thar we have done some research and we have talked to our friends who have done it sucessfully.
Firstly, I have consicnously tried introducing various words to him early, I have done some reading to him when he was just about a year old. These seems to have worked since his vocabulary is excellent. He takes pride in using difficult and interesting words.
We often do bedtime reading. Being obsessed with car, he loves to listen to racing stories. It helped.
Since last several months we play word game and I feel happy that I stuggle to keep up with him sometimes. He has fortunately got an excellent vocabulary by now.
Phonetic is key to reading and wrting and he seems to have pickedup some of it. He can easily read and write most of the two and three letter words. Dona has helped him enormously with these.
We encourage him to write and lot of times he is not keep to write. We feel it is changing since we have built a bit of reality into it. We encourage him to write whatever he feels like and gently nudge him to write something new everyday.
I was trilled few days back when he came and told me that I have a message. well, he was being asked to do maths that the message I had was, ' Do I hav to do it?'. So we are hoping that he is gaining confidence about writing.
We now see him trying to do some reading at bedtime. We obviously help him.
We have a running word file for him where we encourage him to write something everyday.
We all the time encourage him as we bellieve encouragment can go a real long way to help a child achieve anything.
We are grateful to Kumon. They have a lovely Japanese system of teaching and it hhelps build a routine in the child. Kumon is costly but very effective.
We are wating for the day when he will read stories to us. we hope it to happen very soon.
As parents, we are doing our best to help him, if you have more ideas on this, we welcome you to share here.
On maths, he seems to be in a better place. He can count upto 1000 and can do additions upto 10.
Intially, I played this game of additions with marbles and it helped.
So he is okey with maths.
Teaching him to read and write appear to be much more demanding and slower process since inherently these things are tough and we are not trained in doing it. What we have done is thar we have done some research and we have talked to our friends who have done it sucessfully.
Firstly, I have consicnously tried introducing various words to him early, I have done some reading to him when he was just about a year old. These seems to have worked since his vocabulary is excellent. He takes pride in using difficult and interesting words.
We often do bedtime reading. Being obsessed with car, he loves to listen to racing stories. It helped.
Since last several months we play word game and I feel happy that I stuggle to keep up with him sometimes. He has fortunately got an excellent vocabulary by now.
Phonetic is key to reading and wrting and he seems to have pickedup some of it. He can easily read and write most of the two and three letter words. Dona has helped him enormously with these.
We encourage him to write and lot of times he is not keep to write. We feel it is changing since we have built a bit of reality into it. We encourage him to write whatever he feels like and gently nudge him to write something new everyday.
I was trilled few days back when he came and told me that I have a message. well, he was being asked to do maths that the message I had was, ' Do I hav to do it?'. So we are hoping that he is gaining confidence about writing.
We now see him trying to do some reading at bedtime. We obviously help him.
We have a running word file for him where we encourage him to write something everyday.
We all the time encourage him as we bellieve encouragment can go a real long way to help a child achieve anything.
We are grateful to Kumon. They have a lovely Japanese system of teaching and it hhelps build a routine in the child. Kumon is costly but very effective.
We are wating for the day when he will read stories to us. we hope it to happen very soon.
As parents, we are doing our best to help him, if you have more ideas on this, we welcome you to share here.
Pagsanjan Falls, Laguna, Philippines
Three bengalee families, nine of us including 6 month old mini drove down to Laguna to experience the very famous Pagsanjan falls on 25th Dec, 07. Its a very pleasant drive for two hours from Manila. The roads are great and the country side of Philippines is just awesome.We did the ususal hagling over the kayak price and then statrted the journey. Shenna was apprehensive initially, speecially whenever we faced the rapids and there were many rapid on the way.
The boatmen are very skilled and its delight and awe inspiring to see them skillfull manage the rapid and take people safely ahead.
The views on the way are what movies could be made off. Being on the small kayak, one gets the sense of being truely small while looking at the stones rising on both sides covered with dense jungle everywhere eyes can travel. Looking up, one can just see bits and spices of fragmented sky.
Bangkok water market is very famous and this place could be a better sucess if only anyone paid that attnetion to it. Living in Philippines, I often the sense that this is a country which never realised its true worth. One probably needs frustrations and irritation regarding the present status to achieve progress and Filipino's are too happy to feel much sadness!
The falls is really worth seeing. The water gushes out of the fractured stone and one could see particulate moisture everywhere, such is the speed of the gushing water! There was cave behind the falls and we took a banana boat to go there. We didnt know what we were asking for! As we neared the falls, more and more water engulfed us very rapidly and it became difficult to keep ones eyes open! Once we entered, the caves, it was pitch dark and we took some times to recover from the beating from water that we got! It took sometime to fathom what was it actually! Coming back was lot easier. In the picture, the cave is covered with the water curtain!
I feel small children below four and people with heart problem or ashma shouldnt venture to the cave,they maynt be able to manage this bit of extreme experience.
There were not too many food joints around that place in Laguna, so we made peace with Jolibee.
The drive back was equally pleasant but we came back tired. Shenna slept throughout the drive back home in Manila.
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