The final year trip…yawn…

I’ve been really busy and been feeling lazy additionally, hence the late post. We are finally through with our final year 3 day trip to Munnar, Veegaland and Fort Cochin. Before I begin my tirade, let me quote that am not a cynic but only someone who would prefer atleast moderate organization of stuff before leaving for a trip. I would be completely wrong if I said I didn’t enjoy at all. I mighty enjoyed it mainly because of the company but the trip was ok.

The train journey was amazing.None of us slept on our journey to Ernakulam and we hung around the train doors, standing and talking with lots of interesting stuff happening in the background, which I’m not at liberty to mention :)! We reached in the wee hours of morning, crashed at a pretty ok hotel for few hours and left for Veegaland in the late morning.

Tip#1: We paid INR 110 (with discount) for the hotel/travel home we stayed in. It was not very good and quite dusty. I’m very particular about the bathrooms which were really sad in the room we got plus no hot water facility too. It was manageable since we barely stayed in the rooms but if you do go there for  a longer time, be sure to take a nice hotel since hotel rates are quite cheap compared to Bangalore and Mangalore. A good classy business hotel with AC, standard mini bar and the works would cost around INR 1950 (same thing would cost INR 4000 upwards in Bangalore) and a basic hotel with good rooms and nice clean bathrooms can be easily gotten for around INR 300.

    Tea estates on the way to Munnar

We then made our way back to the hotel where few rested and few partied the remaining night. The next morning we left for Munnar where we stayed at S.N Tourist Home which was very comfortable . The journey was breathtaking and beautiful with so many tea estates spread over! It was a nice change from the heat. The temperature was around 17 degrees Celsius in the evening and dropped as low as 4 degrees in the wee hours of morning.

Tip#2: Carry lots of warm clothes, inner thermal wear, mufflers, gloves and anything that can keep you warm!!It’s really really cold. Even Ooty or Kodaikanal was not so cold when I’d gone there in winter. Infact I even lasted the rainy, chilly evening in Ooty after taking bath in ice cold water. But Munnar is soooo cold that I can’t even imagine what it’s like right now!

 

Kundala dam pictures above and supposed echo point pictures below.

Next, we visited the Kundala dam the same day we reached and did some boating there. That was the first time anyone of us rowed and it was fantastically enjoyable! We halted at some more places (one of which was a supposed echo point that doesn’t echo properly) to admire the view, grab a bite and click photos. And then, some of the brighter ones decided to go to some sunset point like thing after half the sun had already set catching some jeeps and the saner ones went to the tourist home hoping to start the bonfire at 7. The bonfire got crapped out since the sunset-seeing folks reached back between 7:45 plus by the time everyone gets ready it would’ve been atleast 8:15 and deadline was 9 so paying 3000 bucks for such a short time was not worth it! I’m extremely sad to tell that this is all we did in Munnar. Here comes the next tip

Tip#3: Munnar is truly beautiful, picturesque place. You can go trekking, paragliding, cycling , visit tea estates and sample some tea. There’s even some waterfalls called Valara nearby and I saw some National Park signs too ( Was hoping to go there and see tigers!). There are a lot of places in and around Munnar which can be thoroughly explored. So plan well and in advance.

On the way from Munnar to Fort Cochin (above)

    Fort Cochin

Ok…from here everything went in a haze. We left from Munnar on the third day where the organizers were divided over going to Kerala backwaters or Charai Beach. We ended up going to Fort Cochin and explored several islands….The church was closed there since we reached after 5 so didn’t see the burial place of Vasco Da Gama. We then travelled over 2 hours to reach the beach at night! The third day was basically a mess. For those who didn’t get into the water at Veegaland or did any boating, it was pretty disappointing for them.

We really never explored the place or anything just travelled majorly from place to place. Fortunately, the air bus was excellent and I managed to sleep through the low-high altitude transition and that took care of my travelling woes!

Tip#4: Know what you’re getting into before you set out for any trip. Think twice if plans are being made dynamically and on the spot. To really enjoy Kerala and see what the place actually has, it is very essential to make a detailed itinerary and stick to it zealously thereby saving time and trouble!

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Why Water Kingdom is the reigning king of most water parks!

I’ve been to Essel group’s Water Kingdom in Mumbai, Black Thunder and more recently GRS in Mysore and Veegaland in Cochin. Closer to home, I’ve been to Manasa in Pilikula few kilometers from Mangalore but that is nowhere in the race for a truly fantastic water park.

1. Unlike GRS and Veegaland,Water Kingdom has only wet rides and is completely separated from Essel World which has only dry rides. Both, Essel World and Water Kingdom, together are impossible to cover in one day.
2. Water Kingdom and Essel World together span across 64 acres as against 28 acres of Veegaland and 30 acres of GRS.
3. The former is very concerned about cleanliness and hygiene. Taking a shower is compulsory before beginning your escapade into the realms of Water Kingdom unlike the other 2 water parks.
4. At any point of time in Essel world, you can enter Water Kingdom through entrances in the middle and vice versa.
5. Only nylon clothes are allowed and anybody dressed in anything else is barred from entering the water. So you’ll never see kids bobbing in the water in their school uniforms(eww!) as in Veegaland and GRS!
6. Essel World is any day, trillion times better than what Veegaland and GRS have to offer in terms of dry rides. GRS scores the worst here as it doesn’t have any thrilling rides for adults, dry or wet! Simulation rides are extremely disappointing and rollercoasters leave you yawning in both GRS and Veegaland.
7. Water Kingdom has a fantastic loooong Drifting River for lazing about and floating in bliss. I was disappointed that Veegaland didn’t have anything like that. GRS has a fraction of Drifting River, called the Lazy River, which flows past the lawn of a vegetarian restaurant and I swear I saw some of those small kids washing their hands in that!(yuck!!!)
8. I rate both GRS and Veegaland very poorly when it comes to food. Most South Indian water parks think that providing meals is the ultimate favor they can bestow upon people! Well..it’s not…I eat meals at home, I like to have some other stuff when I eat outside. In Veegaland, even the fried snacks at some other place was sad and cold! Water Kingdom has McDonalds…Beat that!!And Essel World has Dominoes pizza outlet amongst several food kiosks!
9. Water Kingdom has excellent merchandise and some real quality stuff.
10. Lockers and changing rooms are quite good in Veegaland and GRS but Water kingdom still scores here too. It’s clean and looks better.
11. You cannot rent nylon outfits in Veegaland unlike the other two. Not that it matters much, you can wear your jeans and jump into the pool there. No one cares!
12. The wave pool at Water Kingdom is really huge and beautifully designed and is best left without comparing it with the other 2. (I’m tired of trashing the other parks!)
13. Aesthetically, Veegaland and GRS cannot ever match up to Water Kingdom’s stature.

Water Kingdom is truly the finest and best I’ve seen so far. It’s a world class park. You can enjoy even if you go alone!!! If there’s one must-visit water park, Water Kingdom should top your list any day! It has spoiled me enough not to appreciate the other parks I’ve visited henceforth! I rate them in the following order

1. Water Kingdom
2. Veegaland
3. GRS
4. Black Thunder
5. Manasa. Sorry! not on the list.

 

 

The first 2 maps are that of Essel World and Water Kingdom. Compare them with that of GRS (third map) and Veegaland and see the difference! 

 

 

 

  

P. S : Now I’ve also been hearing lots about Wonderla in Bangalore, obviously from the ones who have never visited the Essel Group’s park. Looking at its map below, I don’t have any expectations.

del.icio.us Tags: Essel World,Water Kingdom,Wonderla,GRS,Veegaland,water parks,attraction,rides,Mumbai attacks,cochin,Bangalore,Mysore,McDonalds,Dominoes,comparison,best

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Text-Speech from a file in C#.Net

I’ve just started doing some programming in C# using the .NET framework since it’s a requirement for my final year project. In this post, I shall show how to read out loud the contents of a file stored in any drive. I’m doing this on Microsoft Vista SP1  so it already has all the speech APIs as the speech SDK 5.3 is already inbuilt in Vista. In case you’re doing it on Windows XP, you’ll probably need to download the speech SDK from Microsoft Downloads site. However, the latest version for download is 5.1 I think, definitely not 5.3.

So, open a C# console application in Visual Studio 2008. I’ve already created a file called text.txt in the drive named X. This can read a text file stored in a pen drive also.

In the Solution Explorer on right hand side, right click References. In the Add Reference, select System.Speech from .NET tab and click ok. Add namespace System.Speech and System.Speech.Synthesis as shown below.

using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.IO;
using System.Speech; // required for speech utilities
using System.Speech.Synthesis; // required for speech utilities
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{ 
    class Program
    {
        static void Main(string[] args)
        {
           //Create an instance of class SpeechSynthesizer 
           SpeechSynthesizer cerra = new SpeechSynthesizer();           
          //ReadAllText opens the file, reads all content and closes it. The output of this needs to be converted to string and given to cerra
           cerra.Speak(File.ReadAllText"X:/text.txt").ToString());            
        }       
    }
}

The above can read only text files as of  now. It does not work with DOC files and encoding comes into picture here, so trying to figure that out yet. However, in the next post let us make cerra read out the results of a query from a SQL server database. Till then signing off… Au Revoire.

del.icio.us Tags: visual,studio,2008,vista,service pack,speech,synthesis,sdk,C#,console,application,reading,file,pen,.NET

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