My Travellogue: Tips for Visiting Scotland.

Having been visited Scotland 3 times in different weather conditions, one in Peak Winter (Christmas time), Start of Spring (April) and Mid Summer (July), I would like to provide my 2 cents of advice for any future visitors.

Point to Note: My trips are all planned from London. As i stay in london.
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Travel: Best option to book your tickets is by National Express Bus. www.nationalexpress.com. If planned well advance, you can get tickets for as cheap as 1 or 5 GBP per head one way.

Stay: Always plan your stay to be based out of Edinburgh. In Edinburgh the B&B/Hotels cost between 30-60 GBP Per person per night. You can search many B&B in this – http://www.visitscotland.com/. It depends on the time of your travel (summer/long weekend). I would suggest you to go for Serviced Apartments rather than B&B’s (In case you are family 3-4 or more). Most of the times, you may find Apartments come for much cheaper prices than B&B’s. One of the guys with whom i stayed was http://www.scottishapartments.com/. Last time i stayed, the Apartment is in Royal Mile (Main Tourist Street - All attractions are in that Street) with my views of St. Giles Cathedral from My Bedroom Windows. It was excellent..

Tours: For Highlands’s tour, Best option, i would prefer is rabbies tour. I would suggest 2-day Tour of LOCH NESS & INVERNESS HIGHLAND. I have been on this in Christmas ’08. It was worth it. You can look out for many other tours by rabbies. But would suggest rabbies only rather than any other, as the tour guide/driver was pretty good and also the tour is very well planned giving us time everywhere and above all this – its 16 member (max) van. So makes difference!!!
http://www.rabbies.com/index.asp

In the event that you have only time for a 1 day tour- then any operator should be fine. As the third time i have been to scotland, i booked for 1 day Highlands tour from rabbies. It was OK.
If you have time, Visit Isle of Arran as well. It is good place to visit (Of course in summer). For this you may have to catch a ferry/train from Glasgow). I have not gone to this place, but heard it’s a nice place. http://www.visitarran.net/

Of course, over all of this, dont miss visiting Scotch Whisky Distilleries as part of your trip. Its worth it. And i would say, Visiting Scotland without getting to know about Scotch Whisky is Only Half-complete. :-)

IPL : Deccan Chargers vs Rajasthan Royals

This is what i call a Match Winning Performance of the team. As i mentioned in the last blog, Replacing Ryan Harris with Vaas is a very wise decission which paid off at the end. And Dwayne Smith replacing Gibbs was a bold move but defined the match.
Suman, as seen in the previous matches, was very good batting as opener. He did his job well may not be great. He just needs to work out in staying little long and playing bigger innings.
Rohit turned out to be true golden duck and as Gilly mentioned may be he is running for Purple cap rather than orange cup this year.

I would like to see the same line up to continue and keep winning. 

IPL Match Report: Hyderabad (DC) vs Mohali (KXIP)

With the Australian players available, both teams made sure they included them in their line-up. Punjab, drafted Brett Lee in place of Yusuf Abdulla and Deccan replaced Dwayne Smith with Andrew Symonds.

An excellent start given by Gilchrist didn't last long but T Suman had made it up by keeping up momentum as he took on the bowlers from the moment he arrived. Except for couple of deliveries in his knock of 27 off 17 deliveries, i was very impressed with Suman. His batting was effortless and elegant. Straight six of Chawla in the ninth over was an example of it.
His shots are not of traditional pinch hitter quality, they have true class in them. A very good young talent India can look forward to.

Then came the record partnership between Venugopal rao and Symonds, i would say venugopal rao has played much sensibly this time. He took over the charge of attacking the bowlers intially when symonds is low in confidence and trying to get his touch. And when he is all set blazing, he rotated the strike giving symonds strike. One key over is the 17th, when Rao scored a six and boundary off Mota's final over. Before that Mota had dream figures of one for seven in three overs, which was runied with 17 in the 18th.

One thing that differentiated Punjab is their bowling. Piyush and Mota had expolited the slow pitch very well, which was lacking in Deccan Chargers attack.

Deccan Chargers bowling attack was seen as tooth less with none of them other than Ojha performing well. As the popular Telugu Movie Dialogue goes "I make the rules and I break the rules". Symonds has his own version as "I am the creator and I am the destroyer". He proved this for second time. In the inaugural edition match against Rajasthan Royals, he saved the team while batting with a fantastic century but he gave all the runs required for opponents Win while bowling. Yesterday it was the same, while he batted superbly ensuring team posts a big target, he bowled the 9th over to give away 20 runs. I think the Deccan Chargers have to note this point from next matches, Symonds can do best job in only one either batting or bowling. Especially when he played a superb batting knock, never give him a chance to bowl. :-)

From my perspective, key over was 19th over bowled by Ryan Harris which changed the match. Gilchrist should have opted for his golden duck rohit or venu. Gilchrist should look for better options in subsequent matches as ryan proves to be not so effective. RP Singh's bowling is also very poor, may be he is only good at hard pitches rather than these slow pitches. He has to add this ability to his sleeve, which would make enable him to be a great bowler.

Overall i would say, punjab is not at all effective either in bowling/batting/fielding and its only because of Deccan Chargers poor bowling they won the match.

Why AIG not Lehman - Behind the Scenes Story

Why US government has bailed out AIG but allowed Lehmann Brothers to collapse. This was one question circling around the world for some time. The facts behind is explained in this blog below.
 
The Goldman infallibility myth - http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/2009/03/the_goldman_infallibility_myth.html

An eyeopening blog showing how worse the situation is and how poor the governance over  banking/finanical services industry is. Atleast now, world has to come forward with some strict governance policies.

When i said governance policies, i doesnt mean its only for BFS industry but also for the so called Tax Payers also, Developed Countries should change their policies around how people think - "government support them whatever they do". Its the responsibility of tax payers to analyse and think ones own financial status before embarking into any credit based loans/ cards etc., As long as the tax payers dont change their attitude, this crisis would keep hitting back with more force.

Excellent Initiative - Felt Very happy

"Jaago Re" - Initiative which is highly appreciated. This would make the Largest democracy in the world, a true power. Educated voters excercising their vote would make a difference, i believe. Hope my company would participate, as well every corporate, and help our democracy.

watch out these links

http://www.tata.com/company/releases/inside.aspx?artid=oJbaL9LmLPs=

http://www.jaagore.com/

Snowfall in London - Cats and Dogs!!!!

Its snowing in London....Heavy snowfall it has seen for last 18 years. Around 15cm snowfall...Priya is excited seeing the first ever snowfall in her life. Of course its the same for me seeing such heavy snowfall. :-)

I am reminded of famous song from Die Hard 2 - "Let it Snow....Let it Snow..."

Ideal World - My view

I dont understand why the media/world is very interested on the origin/color of a person. In the last few days or even months, every form of media, whenever they talk about America and recent elections, they refer to Barack Obama not just as Barack Obama but as first black president or first black democratic candidate, first black etc.,

Why should the Media refer him with his color. I understand, the world has seen worst racist times in the past, but now atleast in 20th century, the same world is united (atleast to outside) in condemning racism and number of laws and Acts are created. In spite of all that.....

Why should he be referred as First Black President of America, why not treat him as any other person (as human infact) and say 42nd or 43rd or whatever president of America. Why should the media be allowed to refer by his color.

Yes he may be first person or a 100th person, which is known to all or not, i would say media should not use the ethnic/color as in referring a person. There will be cases where in some parts of the world untill the media said so, people would not have known him as Black or White. If on the streets or any public/private place a person being referred by his color is not accepted and is tagged Racist remark, then this is also the same and Media should be brought into court.

I still strongly feel the world or larger part of world still has this menace "racism". When a world renowned media company refers to 26/11 attackers in Mumbai as Gunmen but the attackers who attacked their part of world even if its of smaller scale than 26/11 Mumbai, are referred as terrorists - proves how deep this bloody menace is.

My view of ideal world would be to refer a person just by his name rather than ethnic/color. As first step towards it, We need to get the Rule or Act that should ban this usage by Media.

Wish you all a very happy and succesful New Year 2009