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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25 Random Things About Me…

I’ve been tagged by Praveen and pertaining to his tag, have to tell 25 random things (Note: This will be in a random order too).

1. As a child, I was very possessive about my parent’s stuff. I would bawl all over the place if anyone drove my Dad’s car or wore my Mom’s shoes and stuff like that.
2. I also used to be in everyone’s arms. If I ever walked, every few centimeters I’d start cleaning the bottom of my shoes with tissues. My Dad would eventually get bugged and just carry me after that. I barely walked even till the age of 5!
3. I used to cry a lot to go school. On the first day, the beginning of my school life, I cried all the way from home to the school banging on the car windows with my fists. I clung to my mom while leaving from home, then my dad’s watch at school. The servicemen at school ( 3 of them) finally freed my grasp on Dad’s watch and dragged me inside! Phew..
4. I am a total foodie and I love eating junk food such as burgers, pizza, French fries. I also savor several exquisite dishes from the continental, south Indian and north Indian cuisine.
5. Muli ke Paranthe with Curds (yummy!) is my hot favorite and the fact that not one place in Mangalore has authentic paranthas to serve makes me really furious. Especially at the Empire Mall, the paranthas there is an insult to the authentic ones. Even Punjabi Dhaba is disappointing.
6. I suffer from road rage. Most people who drive here have no road sense or driving ethics. Sometimes, I feel like driving with a crate of eggs so that I can throw it at someone who is an utter nuisance on road.
7. Books are my passion. I can read everything  that can be read. I can’t do without them…excellent stress buster.
8. I love playing ALL word games. Words add a dimension and depth to anything around or within us.
9. When I was small, my English was so sad that when anyone asked me if I ‘know’ English,  I’d say I ‘yes’ English.
10. I also used to create my own weird words to suit my convenience and the situation. For example, whoever or whatever used to bug/irritate me was called ‘pakaatali’.
11. I’m not at all  a morning person ( By morning, I mean the period between 7 AM and 11 AM). No matter what I do, I always feel sleepy in the first class of the day.
12. During my grade 9 summer vacations, I used to work part-time in the supermarkets trying to sell curry pastes every weekend and used to be paid Rs 200 for 4 hours.
13. My mother is the best person to go (window)shopping with as I won’t trust anyone else’s judgment. She gives great advice and has a pretty good taste (though sometimes there are clashes..but negligible!).
14. I can be very determined when I want to do something. If I can’t do justice to anything, I’d probably not bother about it. If I want to do anything, I want to make it really good.
15. Adventures gets my adrenalin pumping and thrills me (Mom thinks otherwise). I want to do a lot of things like sky diving, paragliding, space walking, mountaineering, white river rafting and many such things at some point in life.
16. I love dark chocolate. The bitter it is, the better. What a divine taste it has! Ferrero Rocher, Hershey’s Kisses and Snickers are my other favorite chocolates.
17. I hate travelling! Whenever I’ve got lots of travelling to do, I stay awake the full 24 hours so that as soon as we start travelling, I can just sleep it off.
18. The first drops of rain on soil tantalizes me…what a heavenly smell it is of the wet soil!! I love running early morning and the feel of the pleasant breeze on my face.
19. I love most Disney movies and all Disney Princesses. My favorite princess is Ariel, the little mermaid!
20. I have this real bad habit of involuntarily associating the subject with teacher. If the teacher is sad, then my subject suffers. I find it particularly hard to get over this but things are better now.
21. I wish I was Garfield… Then I could eat, sleep, watch TV without feeling like utterly wasted.
22. I can’t stand hypocrites, whiners, liars and those who want to be spoon fed and get on with life without a day’s work!
23. I usually don’t bother with anything anyone does, but if someone intentionally crosses my path and intends to harm then I know how to get back and what to do. When I really really get angry, I’m cold and ruthless.
24. I’m quite accomplished at playing agony aunt to all my close friends.
25. I wish I had some more interesting random things to write but anyway I think this should suffice!

del.icio.us Tags: 25,random,things,tagged,fun

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