Gateway of India

Originally uploaded by neilmadhvani.

Felt a bit tired this morning as I didn’t manage to get that much sleep on the plane here (I blame the amazing video on demand service!)… but the buffet breakfast in the hotel was really superb. There’s so much choice – including the usual american fayre plus freshly made dosa, idli and pancakes, as well as curry! Yep, curry, for breakfast!

Saw so many things today – started off exploring the Juhu area. We passed through the areas in which lots of Bollywood stars live – including Amitabh Bachchan. Juhu Beach was much better than I had expected – the water certainly isn’t that clean, but it’s better than a lot of sand beaches I’ve seen in Europe.

We then went towards the city centre, through Marine Drive, which runs along the waterfront. In the city we popped in to the famous Taj Mahal Palace hotel and then saw the Gateway of India. The trains are so dated here and extremely packed all day – we even saw people riding on top!

The most impressive architecture we’ve seen so far is the Chhatrapathi Shivaji Terminus (Victoria Terminus) – have a look at my Flickr gallery for some photos of this, and some of the other things I came across today

Andheri (W), Mumbai

Originally uploaded by neilmadhvani.

After a really brilliant flight with Jet Airways, we arrived in Mumbai around noon, to be greeted with lots of sunshine and 34C of heat I was shocked at how run down the international airport looks – it’s meant to be a major regional hub, but is really very basic.

We haven’t really had a chance to explore much of Mumbai yet, but what has shocked me is the really enormous gap between rich and poor here – it’s much worse than I had expected. There are so many little children begging on the streets – extremely depressing… especially when you see the lavish hotels and restaurants that so many others enjoy.

It’s off towards Juhu beach tomorrow morning and then down to Marine Drive – hopefully I’ll have a lot more photos to share then!

St Paul’s Cathedral and the Millennium Bridge

Originally uploaded by neilmadhvani.

Just playing with my new Fuji Finepix S9500 – it really is a fantastic camera. I’m really looking forward to taking some good photos in India (off there on the 9th Feb!). Hope to do quite a lot of photo blogging, so watch this space

Thanks to Ed for the tip on linking Flickr with Wordpress – the Web Services (XML RPC) stuff works really well! In fact this blog post was made directly from Flickr! Top stuff…

I love Fotopic.Net – it’s a wonderful place to store photos from events, and as I much prefer taking photos to writing stuff for my blog (well, a picture is worth at least 1000 words isn’t it?!), it’s really quite ideal for me. However for some time now I’ve been looking for an additional easy-to-browse gallery to share my best photographs, and Flickr seems to be the answer.

So far I’ve uploaded some of the best photos (IMHO!) from some recent trips, and a few others taken in London. Please do take a look and see what you think

Of course photos from events etc will still continue to appear on my main photo gallery, with it’s much catchier URL

Here goes nothing!

Here are the 10 first place winners in the International Pun Contest.

1. A vulture boards an airplane, carrying two dead raccoons. The stewardess looks at him and says, “I’m sorry, sir, only one carrion allowed per passenger.”

2. Two fish swim into a concrete wall The one turns to the other and says, “Dam!”.

3. Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the craft. Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that; you can’t have your kayak and heat it too.

4 Two hydrogen atoms meet. One says “I’ve lost my electron.” The other says “Are you sure?” The first replies “Yes, I’m positive.”

5. Did you hear about the Buddhist who refused Novocain during a root canal? His goal: transcend dental medication.

6. A group of chess enthusiasts checked into a hotel and were standing in the lobby discussing their recent tournament victories. After about an hour, the manager came out of the office and asked them to disperse. “But why?” they asked, as they moved off. “Because”, he said, “I can’t stand chess-nuts boasting in an open foyer.”

7. A woman has twins and gives them up for adoption. One of them goes to a family in Egypt and is named “Ahmal.” The other goes to a family in Spain; they name him “Juan.” Years later, Juan sends a picture of himself to his birth mother. Upon receiving the picture, she tells her husband that she wishes she also had a picture of Ahmal. Her husband responds, “They’re twins! If you’ve seen Juan, you’ve seen Ahmal.”

8. These friars were behind on their belfry payments, so they opened up a small florist shop to raise funds. Since everyone liked to buy flowers from the men of God, a rival florist across town thought the competition was unfair. He asked the good fathers to close down, but they would not. He went back and begged the friars to close. They ignored him. So, the rival florist hired Hugh MacTaggart, the roughest and most vicious thug in town to “persuade” hem to close. Hugh beat up the friars and trashed their store, saying he’d be back if they didn’t close up shop. Terrified, they did so, thereby proving that only Hugh, can prevent florist friars.

9. Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him …(Oh, man, this is so bad, it’s good)….. A super calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

10. And finally, there was the person who sent ten different puns to his friends, with the hope that at least one of the puns would make them laugh. No pun in ten did. he he

Here’s one that made me chuckle:

Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn’t seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy takes out his phone and calls the emergency services.

He gasps: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator says: “Calm down, I can help. First, let’s make sure he’s dead.” There is a silence, then a gunshot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says: “OK, now what?”

Budapest was fantastic – much better weather than expected (> 20C!). The food was great, the people friendly and there was plenty to see and do. I was particularly impressed by the thermal baths – we went to the Szechenyi Baths in the City Park, which consists of three outdoor pools and several indoor ones, all at different temperatures. Just wish we could have stayed a bit longer to try some of the others out!

The photos are now online at: http://photos.neil.be/budapest

If you’re thinking of going to Budapest, I’d highly recommend the Normafa Hotel which I booked via GTAHotels. It’s on the Buda hills in an extremely quiet and tranquil setting. However the city is just 20 minutes away – the bus station is literally opposite the hotel and buses run very regularly for a cost of around 50 pence!

A restaurant we went to is particularly worthy of mention:

Mófarguru Restaurant
Attila út 125, Budapest I, tel: +36 1 225 17 48

The menu was around 200 pages long, and there’s the option of dining traditionally on the floor in cosy booths. The food was excellent too, and superb value for money. Very highly recommended. It’s less than 5 mins walk from Moscow Square.

I’m off on holiday to Budapest for around 5 days – this is my first trip to Central Europe so am very much looking forward to it. Just hope the weather holds out

I’ve finally got round to migrating this site over to something more dynamic, which will hopefully mean more regular updates After looking at various open source blogging and content management products, I decided to go with WordPress, as it’s fairly easy to configure and has a extensible architecture.