Friday, February 27, 2009

Cape Cod - II

The next place in our itinerary was supposed to be our prime destination - the
Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. The wildlife had a different meaning from what we had imagined. I guess we should not have overlooked the statement in the website, "While the resident deer and fox may elude you, sanctuary wildlife also includes turtles, frogs and fiddler crabs". Frogs and Crabs for wildlife? Blistering barnacles! When I enquired at the front desk about wild life they said that we will not get to see most of them during the day, and that we will see birds and if we take the longer trail then we will get to see........ Geese! But the initial disappointment apart, the place is truly scenic. In the clutches of winter the sanctuary glistened with its frozen lakes and sheared trees. The evening sun provided a beautiful streak of light through the branches of the trees and the odd sounds from the birds added to the beautiful ambience. I only wish I could be here during fall.


A trip to Cape Cod without a visit to the beaches? No way. The kind lady at the sanctuary's front desk suggested the First Encounter beach to us. The beach had nice layers in the sand that looked markedly different from what I have observed back at home. Other than the beauty of the sun at dusk, the only other thing of note there was the water that gave us a lil surprise. We were standing close to the waters and noticed that the land where we were standing was fast becoming an island as water started filling the area behind us. But nothing to worry, it would have possibly raised to just about a foot. But then, was something to think back on.


All in all it was good trip and we were happy to hit the road after so many months of staying indoors. Cape Cod is good now; it would most probably be great during summer/fall.

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Cape Cod - I

Some trips are remembered because of the marvel of the places visited and some are remembered just for the travel and the friends. The trip to Cape Cod was of the latter type. After staying indoors for all of winter we decided to make a trip to any place to celebrate the last week of being together as one of our friends was bidding adieu. Well, I am tempted to say that it was more to console him than to celebrate as he is going to India to lose his bachelorhood. But then, that's a totally different subject.

We made the plans on the eve of the travel. Desperate googling revealed few places that sounded great and we made a decent plan to cover 3 of the 4 regions in Cape Cod (the upper cape, lower cape, mid cape and outer cape). The route to the different places was sandwiched between trees that would have looked astounding during summer or fall. They did not look too bad even in their winter outlook of baldness either.

The first place that we visited was en route in Rhode Island. There was a flower and garden show that happens only for 4 days every year, may be to mark the beginning of summer. The show was pretty good with nice arrangements of flowers varying from a simple bouquet to the garden in front of the Eiffel tower. There were also many vendor shops for garden set-up and maintenance and other miscellaneous shops. The place was good, but I don't think it was worth the $17 entry fee.

The second place that we visited was the Cape Cod natural history museum. The website suggested it would be a good place to watch the flora and fauna of Cape Cod, but we got a different opinion when we reached there. A discussion with the person at the front desk revealed that the place was not what we expected it to be and she was kind enough to suggest that we can go on the John Wing's trail at the museum if the exhibits do not interest us. The trail lead us through woodlands into a marsh land and then to the beach. The place reminded us of villages back home. Wonder why we do not make those as tourist destinations.


To be continued

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Saturday, February 21, 2009

Muslim Law

The Pakistan government has made a deal with TNSM (a militant organization in Pakistan) to impose Shariat law in seven districts of the North West Frontier Province. The western nations are raising voices against the deal. But this blog is not about whether the deal was right or wrong. I merely want to understand as to what Shariat is?

Like Hinduism, Islam also has different variants. The major ones are Sunni and Shia. The Sunni Muslims follow an elected leader and the Shia Muslims follow a leader who is supposed to be appointed by God or the Prophet. Both the divisions follow the Quran. From my understanding the Quran contains compressed information and Shariat was formed to provide rules for all activities in life. But if Shariat is the Islamic law, shouldn't it be already active throughout Pakistan? What is this new thing about implementing Shariat in the north eastern province?

My guess is that Shariat is an old school of thought and was replaced by the Modern Islamic law, and that the Shia Muslims are trying to get Shariat back. Guess I need to do some background research on this.
Tit bit: India and the Philippines are the only countries in the world which have separate Muslim civil laws
Update (20-July-2009) based on inputs from a friend:
Islamic rules are based on 2 things - Quran & Hadith
Quran is revealed from Allah and everything in that is mandatory for a person to follow.
Hadith are the sayings of Prophet Muhammad (Peace be upon Him) . Among Hadith there are few which are mandatory to follow and some are optional.

So Quran & Hadith together define way of life for Muslims and also Quran & Hadith lay down rules and regulations for an Islamic form of Government. Islamic form of governments donot have a constitution written by Human beings. Rather rules laid down in Quran & Hadith are followed for running the government (This is the basis of Shariat form of government).
Now coming to countries like Pakistan, they have their own constitution (which is not in accordance with quran & Hadith) . Hence it cannot be termed as an Islamic Country for their system isnot Shariat compliant ( i.e, based on Quran & Hadith).
So for a country to be termed as an Islamic country the constitution of the country should be in compliance with Quran & Hadith, that is, it should be shariat form.

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Sunday, February 08, 2009

Wheat Vs Rice

Whenever the talk about fitness comes, my friends ask me to shift from rice to wheat. I have been curious for some time about the nutritional values of both the cereals. Few clicks in wikipedia gave the required values. The below comparison is on the expected lines except for the fat content, which is quite a surprise.


If we consider the Indian diet, apart from the above absolute values I guess we have to consider the fact that we would eat less grams of Chapathi than rice. That would be a substantial reduction in calories straight away.

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Thursday, February 05, 2009

Geography Bits

Geography was always a subject of disinterest for me. Except for some amount of "Australia - Flora and Fauna" and "The South West Monsoon", I don't remember much from the geography classes of school. But God has been great in working out my travel calendar and has provided a good bit of opportunity to see places. This has increased my interest in the world and the different cultures. Of late this interest has still been increased by.... a game! The Travelers IQ challenge game has been interesting and educating to me. It hasn't thought me too many new things, but has served as a refresher, a sort of catalyst that helped fill the void. My increased inquisitiveness made me research a bit on things that have confused me for years. Here are few things I learnt in geography recently, but wish had known earlier 1) Croatia is a country that came out of the erstwhile Yugoslavia. I had somehow thought that it came from USSR. Frederick Forsyth's "Avenger" helped me understand that Yugoslavia split into Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia, Montenegro, and Serbia 2) West Indies is not a country! It is an ensemble of countries like Jamaica and Barbados that play as a single cricket team 3) If someone had asked me for the countries in the Australian continent, I would have probably said Australia, New Zealand, Tasmania and Papa New Guinea. Well, I am not sure of New Zealand anymore. Wiki says that New Zealand belongs to a continent called Zealandia. I get a bit confused in these kinds of trivia since I studied in school that there were only 7 continents and Zealandia is not one of them. 4) There are several countries that belong to multiple continents. My ex-colleagues from Alcatel who have traveled to Turkey have told me that Turkey is transcontinental. But I got to know of few more countries like Indonesia, Russia (though we all associate it with Europe, it is actually 71% in Asia!) and Egypt. Did you know that a part of Italy, Spain and Portugal are in Africa?

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