Annular Solar Eclipse in Bangalore today
Today was supposed to be the last day of the Ranji trophy final in Mysore, but obviously that won’t be needed now. Apparently matches in India have been rescheduled in the past to avoid eclipses.
Anyway, in a few hours from now, I plan to work from our office’s terrace and even if clouds ruin the show (which I am sure they will) I’ll enjoy the evening sky at noon.
8:26 AM IST It’s a very cloudy morning with barely a hint of breeze. Doesn’t look like this will clear any time soon.
10:15 AM IST The sun came out, but only just. It’s back to being cloudy. Worse, it might just rain. We’ll see. Off to work.
10:40 AM IST At work. A gentle breeze has picked up. The clouds are drifting leaving an occasional patch of blue through which the sun can be seen. We’ll hopefully catch fleeting glimpses of the eclipse.
10:54 AM IST On the terrace but don’t see the sun. The breeze is still around so there’s hope.
11:00 AM IST This is how the sky looks:
11:37 AM IST It’s still light and shade. The eclipse isn’t here yet. We’ll be seeing it live via the iSight camera on my MacBook.
12:01 PM IST The pinhole camera shows that the eclipse has begun! Still too bright for the camera but we are about to try.
12:13 PM IST The sun is obscured by the clouds. Hard to tell what’s up. Cannot even say if the loss in light is due to the clouds or the solar eclipse.
1:22 PM IST It’s very surreal here. The birds are beginning to get befuddled. The shadows under the canopies of the trees are crescent shaped. Nature’s very own pinhole camera!
1:50 PM IST None of the digital cameras (including iSight) work. We just get a flare of light - cannot underestimate even the eclipsed sun!
2:14 PM IST It’s fast getting over. That was fun!
2023-05-07: Updated links to point to https://wwww.espncricinfo.com rather than http://www.cricinfo.com/
There is no such thing as too much cricket…
…not here at any rate. Not even if it is a not-so-closely, not-so-keenly fought contest between India and Sri Lanka who’ve played so much cricket together of late that it’s a miracle to see Dhoni not do his press conferences in Sinhala.
Café Pascucci at MG Road has a big LCD TV inside that drew a small crowd of onlookers outside. I don’t know what’ll happen during IPL or the World Cup. I guess they’ll learn that big TVs tuned to cricket channels and glass facades are bad a idea in this country. The Reebok showroom on Brigade Road has a small LCD TV - where, by virtue of them being the official sponsors of the ICC, cricket must be the sole (pun unintentional) programming. But it drew a big enough crowd outside to probably start a mini-riot. The smaller the TV and the harder it is to catch a glimpse of the action on screen (let alone read the score), the bigger the crowd. Like moths flocking around the tubelights at a garish Indian wedding on a humid summer night.
A vignette from a vacation
A big German Shepherd, named after an American electronica musician quite popular in the UK, caused us considerable panic by charging straight towards us. Turns out, it simply wanted to play its own peculiar brand of “fetch” that involves the human subject kicking a piece of stone or wooden stick, which the canine will then promptly fetch and gingerly place at your feet. This was done till one of the parties tired out (invariably us).
The rules were quite like football in the sense that trying to touch the stone or stick with your hands carried a penalty - which in this case was the dog’s undiluted scorn that might have translated into a bite, causing you to lose the appendage that intervened for good.
A vignette from a vacation 1
A vignette from a vacation 2
All said and done, Moby turned out to be an adorable dog - like most dogs are. We might visit the Red Hills again just for a game of fetch with Moby.
Mumbai
I don’t get Mumbai. At its worst, I find it too humid, too hot and too crowded. At its best, I find it intimidating. A few photos from a 2-day stopover last month enroute to Pune.
A part of the city that tenuously (or is it tenaciously?) holds on to its older moniker of Bombay:
Mumbai 1
There is a very fine line between bold and garish. I am still not sure on which side of this line I should place the Hiranandani township in Powai. Is it brave to replicate elements of European architecture - complete with those tall columns, pediments, balustrades, arches, domes and spires (sometimes merely tacked on to terrace of a multi-storey apartment complex) - or is it pretentious?
Mumbai 2
Mumbai 3
Mumbai 4
How long does it take me to write a travelogue?
Well the Ladakh travelogue took a long time. The worst part was that I had no idea when I’d be able to finish it. For the next vacation (which hasn’t happened yet), I’ve decided to rein things in by using mathematics. This plot nails down how long it takes me to recount a vacation:
TimeToBlog
Not that it’ll help me put things down any faster, but still at least there’s the illusion that I am in control…