A trip to Halibut point and Wingaersheek beach

Finally it is warm in Massachusetts. It was a Saturday and I and a few friends decided to make most of it. We decided to go to the above mentioned places.

The journey was different this time. I generally avoid driving such long distances (~55 miles). But this time I wanted to. We were 5 in my Blue Accord Sedan and 3 in my friend’s coupe of the same make. I thank my co-passengers for having faith in me. There were just 2 odd moments once where I got really scared as a music started with a big blasting sound and I imagined it as a honk. The other one was I got carried away in conversation and had to merge to the interstate very close. My lane changes were discrete and not analog, but apart from that it was fine. And most importantly I liked it. For the first time I really liked speed.

Let’s move on. So we reached this place called Halibut Point State park. Primarily it was a quarry way back in the past and now there is a small pond. On one side of the pond wall there is the sea and a World War 2 watch tower on the other side. The other car was late (thanks to my awesome driving) and we started playing Frisbee and soccer in a picnic area. Soon the others joined us. We played a unique combo of playing soccer and Frisbee together which slowly changed to a game called donkey. After around an hour we realized that there is too much non-zero mean noise in the rule and we set out for the trail.

The trail around the quarry was small and non extensive but when we reached the other side, we just went towards the sea. It was a rocky beach with the water just hitting the rocks. The water was ice cold but it was still fun to wet our feet. I monitored a 0.5 cm fish stuck in a crevice for a long time until another string wave took it away. Wonder how it would survive in the ocean.

There were curious stone structures on the way back which reminded me of a game I used to play: Pittuk. But some people thought it looks like Stonehenge. We set out to make one. We did make it but then destroyed it as well. It was fun acting like 5 year olds amongst an age group with average age of 26 :-o.

Next on our way to the beach, we stopped by at Rockport downtown for lunch. The place called “Rockport House of Pizza” though had good food but an absolute rude waitress who flustered a lot and was seemed to be angry on the fact that she has to make so many checks. Though yelp.com rates it good, I think it’s bad.

Anyway, next we went for Wingaersheek beach. There was a huge crowd. My last few visits to the beaches have always been to the ones either too small or too less occupied. This was full of people. We did our bit of people watching, sitting on rocks, playing in water and burying the feet in sand. There were a set of little girls who had long hairs. They played a game of dipping their hair in waiter and then splashing it all around. It was fun. The beach had rocks in one end which reminded me of the rocks in NITK beach and the zillions of associated memories. On te other end, there was Ipswich river bay and this entire place was in Gloucester. Sounds as if we are in the middle of England.

Amongst the songs played in the car, my favorite was Flight IC 408. Youtube Link

7th on BigB blog

Hi,

Not that I am a big fan of Big B, but yes, I do like his blog. And today I gotto be the 7th one to comment and the first time I really tried. The comment makes no sense but see for yourself.

Indienglish is phunny

A small post here. I realized that there are some funny usages in tamil, marathi and bengali. These are when someone tries to communicate in these above languages but using English alphabets. Here are soem of them:

In tamil, an extra h is used for everything. Though I have started using 'th' for the first sound in 'Taj' (Thaj Mahal sounds so funny) but I cannot just get used to 'dh' for the first sound in 'the'. Funniest is the usage in the name 'Darshan/Darshana'. In tamil, it becomes 'Dharshan/Dhaarshana' which has a very derogatory meaning in hindi/sanskrit.

Next is Marathi. For some reason marathis think z is 'jh'. And hence jhootha becomes zuta. Jharna becomes zarna which may not be that hhilarious, but somehow irritates me in the same way as the sound of metal against metal.

Equally, if not more in the usage of 'v' by bengalis. Bengalis think 'v' is 'bh'. So the very common word for good i.e. bhalo is spelled as 'valo'.

As an end note, this fondness of non bengali speaking people with the word bhalo can be quite misleading as it has such close relatives with very different meanings. Here is a list:

Bhalo Aachi are 2 words meaning I am good.
Bhalobashi as 1 word means I love.
Bhalo Bhashi 2 words actually mean " I float well" but some people think that it is same as bhalobashi which is I love again.

Fashion

Looks like it is becoming the most used word nowadays. We have been bombarded with fashion weeks. And they appear to occur almost every month. This year, the best actor (female) awards and best supporting actor (female) awards both went to the actors in the movie fashion. After this sudden bursts of Delhi and Mumbai fashion weeks back to back, many of the bloggers have started writing about fashion shows and they are more or less in the negative tone. I really like the fashion shows and unlike a single working professional who will be out having fun on Saturday evening, I am simply sitting at home, I thought I will pen my thoughts on this.

I will begin with hat I like in the fashion shows and later delve into what fashion means to me.

For whatever reasons, we all have either secretly or openly watched fashion TV. People like Sushma Swaraj planned to ban it, but could not stop the curiosity of the people watching it whatever may the reason. Knowingly or unknowingly, we became familiar with the terms like “fall-winter”, “spring summer”. We came to know that Milan is the fashion capital of the world. Though we always think LA will be more fashionable considering Hollywood factor, actually New York is the place of fashion. In general we started getting used to the famished looking people walking on the screen. And thus we all learnt the basics of fashion.

Needless to say, India caught up with it and the small fashion industry got more and more limelight. Few fashion icons joined the movies and then fashion shows became more important. Add to it, the burst of 24X7 news channel and the advent of color in newspapers. There had to be more flashy things to show to attract more viewers and the result is the overdose in true Indian fashion. Whenever we like something, we overdo it to an extent that we ourselves start hating it: Candle marches, social networkings are just to name a few.

But I enjoyed this overdose of Fashion weeks a lot. Every morning amongst the gloomy economic news, the mud slinging of politics and the daily terrorist attack stories, I really look forward to these skinny models walking on the ramps wearing clothes which nobody would ever wear in public. Some people object to this very fact that why show something which nobody will ever wear in public. Well take it as a form of entertainment just like IPL or EPL.

Anyway, fashion shows always remind me of the fashion show in my undergrad college. There used to be only 1 or 2 nice looking girl in every batch. The fashion shows became all about choosing which girl from the 1st year will be chosen for this coveted job and the show always happened to be 4 women (1 for each year) surrounded by 20-30 men. It was hilarious.

To me fashion can come in any form. For example, election fashion. Sarah Palin had her own fashion. Queen and her pearls are another fashion statement. Sonia Gandhi, Vasundhara Raje are the fashionable amongst Indian women politicians. Amongst the men it is Murali Manohar Joshi, P Chidambaram, Arun Jaitley and even Varun Gandhi.

The biggest fashion in India always comes from movies. I still remember the number of friendship bands we wore after kuch kuch hota hai, and how all of us in undergrad tried hard to keep small triangular stubble on our chin. Aamir khan has been the person who always starts new trends. Surprisingly, amongst women, I think it is not Aishwarya Rai as much as it is Kareena Kapoor. Whether it is her avatars with Tushaar Kapoor, or as Poo in K3G or in Jab we met, her fashion has always percolated the deepest.

As I write this big an article on fashion, I realize that I myself dress in the poorest form imaginable. This blog attests the same. More for carrying the guilt and less for people to see, here are two more How not to’s:




1) How not to dress for a wedding
2) How not to dress in a beach
3) How not to stand next to objects which make you conscious of your height.


Adios