Early Mornings

I love mornings.

Everything is so fresh and the pale sunlight streaming through the window blinds assures me that it's going to be a wonderful day once again.

The air is crisp and I just can't wait to get started with the day. Oh the joys of eating breakfast.

However ...

Early mornings are a totally different creature. It's dark and cold and the breeze that a little later in the day would freshen you, makes you wish that you had stayed indoors.

Compound that with waking up when you are dreaming about something wonderful, is not the best way to start a day, especially to the harsh ring of the stupid alarm !!!

Yeah, yeah I know, I am personifying an alarm. It gives you a perspective about how much I hate early mornings, doesn't it? :)

Love the sunrise though.

The Parting of Friends

People of the world.

I have had the fortune of having been friends with some fantastic people. Not only have they made good friends, some of them have become close enough to be a part of my identity.

Till now, I have always been able to associate parts of my life with some dear friends and their companionship. Through school, junior college, undergraduate college and graduate school I have always had one friend of mine from the years past to accompany me on my new adventure.

Sure, I made new friends as I went along. However, there was always at least this one person, who was my link to the past, preserving a sense of continuity. A friend, whom I could turn to when things were not quite all rosy.

Today, one of these special friends moved out and on with his own new life.

A loss of continuity. Some people experience this early in life, some later and some never.

Is it good or is it bad? I don't know. It's a change and therefore has all the pluses and minuses that go along with changes.

I know one thing for sure though. If there is one thing that makes me truly sad then, it is the parting of friends, especially friends like these.

Good Bye Manan. I will miss you.

I am back !!!

If anyone has visited this blog, I would be seriously surprised.

I really, really want to be back and I plan to spend some time writing stuff soon.

One of the reasons I am back is I wanted to put something on my Orkut profile as my homepage.

Let's start off with my visit to the Luray Caverns in Virginia. These caverns are located underground in the Shananodoah River valley. Fans of the song "Country Roads" by John Denver will know about this river.

Well, it is an unbelievably beuatiful place, and I could really understand why he yearns to go back home.

Then we went to the caverns and that was a surreal experience. I had heard about stalactites and stalagmites, those wonderful rock formations formed over millions of years by water dripping from the ceilings of these caverns.

I never imagined that they would look so nice. The lighting of the caverns accented their natural colours and they looked wonderful.



These particular caverns are so big that the lowest point in the caverns in well over 100 feet underground (Think of it as 10 floors below the ground and you will get the picture) and the whole tour through the caverns covered a path of over a mile.

At one point there was a small lake, but the water was so still that the ceiling was reflected perfectly and it was difficult to make out that there was really no rock formation on and below the ground.

One of the things that was probably unique to these caverns is that there is a musical instrument that they have constructed using the rock formations. Some of these rock formations are hollow and when struck with a small hammer oscillate at a particular frequency generating a musical note.

They have everything automated and they even played a small piece of music for us.

Fantastic trip.