Saturday, July 30, 2005

Supercycle Watering Stand

What do you do if you are tired after a day's work in the yard and need to water the lawn? In particular you have to focus on watering a particular spot of the lawn for a concentrated amount of time, as its a 'brown' spot? You use the Supercycle Watering Stand, of course!


Supercycle to the rescue

Pros: You can go back to your BBQ.
Cons: After some time you have to move the bike to water another spot.

Coming soon: A way to use the variable Toronto water pressure to automatically turn the front wheel of the bike to and fro, enabling a sprinkler like system to water all around.
Paradox: This will create a Perpetual energy machine.


A closer look

Yard Work Ahead

Gotta do some yard work today. Weeding. Watering. Mowing. Raking. Have been really putting it off.

Will get a better picture of Dad's apple "tree". Just fooling around with a camera on hand. Too lazy to get to the yard now.


Dad's Apple Tree

Sunday, July 24, 2005

Fishing Is A Cruel Sport

I say this not because we did not have much luck today. We did - caught several, most of which were thrown away, 1 keeper bass, 2 others lost (right at the moment of haul), discovery of one "aquarium" spot - so called because the just dropping the line meant you caught a fish. However the fish we were fishing for - largemouth bass - was unfortunately in short supply.

Why is fishing cruel. Consider how we put the live bait. A bunch of worms, kept in soil and stored in a small cardboard box in a freezer, is our bait. Before casting, a worm is selected and taken out, and cut into pieces (while alive) with a scissor. One of the still wriggling pieces is then attached to a hook (sorry - driven through the hook, impaling the part), before the whole arrangement is submerged into water.

Today we went one step better. Having negligible luck with our worms, we saw what the Oriental anglers next to us were doing. They were using crayfish (a cray fish is a very mini lobster, the size of your little finger). And so we bought a bunch of them (live ofcourse), and then proceeded to do the following:

A crayfish was selected. Its arms (pincers) were then cut/broken/torn off. The tail was then cut/broken. What is left of the now writhing creature is then impaled on the hook, like a stake being driven through its body, entering the soft underbelly and piercing the rigid shell on the other side. Then ofcourse it's thrown into the water to be bitten by a fish that will taken get its lip stuck to the hook and move and cause the hook to pierce through from under the skin and come out impaling the fish through its gills.

As I said, a cruel sport.

Sunday, July 10, 2005

Ottawa Trip


Below the Parliament buildings


What's growing out of Rupam B.'s head?


Canada or Bangladesh?


Size doesn't worry Rupam B.


Nazneen Bhabi sure knows how to pick 'em


Fupa-fupu trying fishing Canadian style


The Catch of the Day


Lights and Sound Show - Parliament Hill


The Eternal Flame at Parliament Hill


Ottawa Night Life - It Ain't John and Richmond


The Pike - 24 hours later

Wednesday, July 06, 2005

It's London in 2012

On the drive to work listened live as the IOC awarded the Olympics to London for 2012. I had hoped it would be London, it's just one of the greatest cities (and a great multi-cultural one at that) of the world. What made this even better was that London beat Paris in the final round. Chirac and Blair had been having a go at each other for some time, including the most recent - a food fight! Whenever I was at London, I was struck by the history, culture and atmosphere of London. I am sure they will have a great Olympics.

Friday, July 01, 2005

Bengali Mela at Dentonia

Dentonia always beings to my mind the image of a dentist, with his painful scapel ready to drill into your mouth. Thus Dentonia park always brings to mind a scruciating slow torture image. Which is usually what these Bengali melas are. Two years ago they had a fight over a soccer match that resulted in a stabbing - no kidding! And it was because of some silly reason such as one team having one player missing or something like that.

There was one such mela today at Dentonia but unlike the previous ones this one seemed to go on well... for most part. The performances were half decent, but the stalls weren't. Most of them sold ladies' clothes only, that too outdated styles that many women had no problem buying. And if you read my gripe before about local food being overpriced, one stall was selling biryani for 9 bucks. Who in their right mind would buy biryani for 9 bucks?

I met one of the volunteers who told me the amazing story about the power supply. Apparently the power for the concert was supposed to be supplied by the city. For some reason something happened and in the end, the organizers cobbled 100 feet of electric wire and got the power from a nearby house! They plugged it into the wall socket where the stove usually goes!

Which was unfortunate because the power went out just when Ms Alamgir was warming up the crowd with her songs (the one really decent act on the show). Probably some one in the house turned on the light and the fuse blew.

This was touted as a Canada Day Bengali Mela (for whatever reason). There were actually lots of people with a bunch of Canadian flags, handing them out freely. Probably more of our sponsorship scandal money at work. Later we actually went and did something about Canada Day by watching the fireworks at Mel Lastman Square.


Say cheese before you take th--what the ****!


As with any Bengali event, there was no shortage of people.


What's the guy behind me looking at?