I have a dream ... always

There is one specific reason why man kind is supposedly at the top of the food chain (Apart from the moot point that we made up the whole food-chain-pyramid-thing and put ourselves on the top). We are the only life form we know of that can dream. The amoeba might want to correct me on this but until it can establish meaningful two-way communication with us and then convince us that it does dream, I don't think we need to change our stand. I am discounting the various scientists who say that animals dream. Why? Because ... well because animals haven't told us that they dream (Duh!). Come on, are you saying you are going to believe it if some lab-coat says that your pet gold fish was dreaming about being a great white!?! Using their so-pis-ticated brain equipment and monitors, the lab-coats have only proved that the animals have a brain. While they are sleeping.

So we are better than all other life forms on earth because we can dream. What we still haven't figured out is the 'why we dream' part? We all know of the 'dreams' we have when wide awake. Those are the ones where we believe we are better than we actually are in life. And its obvious why we have them. We dream those dreams exactly because they provide an escape from reality and the mediocrity of it all. What we haven't figured out is why we dream while we are sleeping. (Going-off-on-a-Tangent-alert: Are we actually sleeping when we are dreaming?) Once we answer that question, I guess we can start working on the answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything. We could, potentially, also easily figure out the mysteries of the Higgs boson though it would mean that the guys running the LHC should stop running it and sleep in it. Anyway, all that is just a guess at this point. Coming back to dreams, once we have established the answer for 'why do we dream' we can move on to the more vexing 'why do we dream whatever it is that we dream'. I mean, if there is a formula for dreaming stuff up like a Kekule or an Einstein or a Mendeleyev or a Martin L. King did wouldn't you want to know it too? I definitely would pay top dollar for it (Actually I won’t. I am more likely to try and pirate it off the net or at least wait a few years for it to become more widely available at a fairly reduced price. I am cheap that way but that’s beside the point. It’s the thought that counts, right?). Especially if it helps me get rid of this recurring nightmare.

Like it says, it has been more than a decade since school and I still wake up with a cold sweat. I want to know why. I want closure.

PS: Just so there are no doubts, Chimps and Orangutans are not animals. They are just hairy man-kind. Extremely hairy.

Unlikely Home

Back in time when I was half my current age, I remember when almost every house had something called a 'ventilator' built into each room of the house. Not the hospital variety but nonetheless for the purpose of ensuring continuous airflow in the room. These were usually holes in the wall - about 6 inches high and about a foot and half long - right where the wall meets the ceiling. They used to come in different flavours too; everything from plain holes punched through the wall to ones which were covered with wire mesh to ones which had intricate masonry grills within them. Depending on your taste (or lack of it) and your purse you could choose your ventilator. I do not see them in houses and I wonder what happened since none of the new constructions I come across these days have these things. We sleep with the windows and doors of our room closed and the air conditioner switched off and I often wake up feeling the air has gone stale by the morning. I for one miss the presence of a 'ventilator' in the room which could help with this situation.

This however is not about me missing the ventilator though I think I did a fine job of giving that impression. I bloody well did say so in so many words. But this is actually about birds. If that has thrown you, don't fret. It was meant to. If it hasn't thrown you, then you are lying. To yourself and to whomever else you told that it didn't throw you. Please pick yourself up now and let me explain. You see, one of the advantages of having these ventilators was that the birds in the urban jungle actually had a cozy nook to go back to (I am actually referring to the birds of the avian variety which, fortunately for us, can still be found in our cities and towns albeit in rapidly dwindling numbers). Especially the smaller ones like sparrows. These birds saw the ventilators as the perfect spot for resting, getting out of the rain, building their nest, breeding and the whole related nine yards. It was a common sight to see a big mess of sticks and twigs right up there near the roof of a house. I do not know if the birds would have used the same nest year after year if they had been left undisturbed because usually the households tended to clean the place up and get rid of the nest. Even the most bird-friendly households would do it, after waiting for the young ones to leave. And I think, one of the reasons why these ventilators have disappeared from buildings slowly could be because people didn't want to handle birds and their nests along with the rest of their household. A pity, though, because it’s a loss to both of us.

Well all this reminiscing has come about because we have a bird take up residence in our house recently. Not in a ventilator though because a. the bird is not so old-fashioned and b. we don't have ventilators. It has found acceptable accommodations on our tread mill instead!!! We have one which spends all its time covered and unused and this must have been noticed because the pigeons have gone ahead and made themselves comfortable on it.

Oh yes. That’s an egg!!!

21-Dec-2012

Reporting live from somewhere in the south of the north pole and north of the equator from the eastern part of the world map. This is breaking news, though we are not sure what it is breaking.

We don't have to worry about the world ending today since it is already tomorrow in Australia!! This is coming in live from our correspondent Charles M Schulz. Early, unsubstantiated reports are also coming in that New Zealand might actually be further ahead into tomorrow than Australia is. On the ground in Australia, our field reporter Peanuts is reporting that Australia's tomorrow looks much too similar to the rest-of-the-world's today. Australia has strongly urged its brethren in the international community to learn from it's mistakes and work harder in the remainder of their 'today' to make sure that atleast they can enjoy a more spectacular and easily discernible end to the world. Australia is not able to pin-point what has to be learnt and improved upon though. We will be keeping track of the developments Down Under and will bring them to you as they might or might not develop. 

However, these initial reports have thrown a big-sized monkey wrench into the plans of various networks which were primed to bring the 'end-of-the-world' action live to our living rooms as it happened. The media - parked in their mobile units and packed in with their changing vans, make-up kits, boom mikes and cameras of all sizes - is currently cooling its collective heals on the beaches of Australia and doing its bit to improve the shore-side economy. With an eye on grabbing the mind-share, eye-balls, ear-space, head-space - and any other thing they can grab - of the global audience, many of these networks have plans for airing exclusive and in-depth 5 minute interviews with the harbingers of the end. The names of Jesus, God, Satan and Kalki are doing the not-on-the-record rounds but the general feeling is that they are ready to grab whoever makes an appearance. We are currently receiving reactions to these plans by the leaders of the major religions of the world from their private bunkers. They have criticized the networks of pandering to the global audience in these dire times and have accused the networks of being secular and not believing in their true God.

Our resident doomsday expert Maya feels that this overwhelming presence of recording, mixing, transmitting and manipulating equipment might have scared away the Gods of Doom which is why Australia is experiencing a 'To be continued' instead of 'The End'. There is however no doubt that our interpretation of and hype around the message from the ancient calendar is correct. In our studios we have an expert panel of eminent public personalities picked from the field of Commercial Cinema, Business, Politics, Reality TV, Sports and other prime time TV regulars on stand by to explain why the world has not ended, if it doesn't end.

Elsewhere, life continues as usual. More on this, after the break.

New Year - 2012

Its 2012 and I wish everyone a very happy New Year. 

Countdown - One

Finally, it’s the last day of 2011. And keeping to the theme of the last week, it’s time for the last list. The thing is, when you have as many things to do, to wish for and to want as I do, you know it’s easy to write lists. But when you are like me with all the wants and stuff, how do make a list of one? We, the wise one and I, have been trying to figure out just that and finally decided we will just write whatever we want to instead of a specific list. Moreover, I am not sure how much of a list it would be with just one item on it! :)

OK, it's not a list. But that still leaves me with the job of figuring out what to write about. There have been so many things that I have wanted to write about through the year but haven’t because I either didn't have the time when I had a subject or I didn't have the subject when I had the time. But mostly, I confess, I had subjects and time but just didn't bother to put finger to keyboard and type it all down. A year is a pretty long time when you look at it in terms of stuff to write about. Especially when the year in question happens to be as eventful as this one had been. I mean, the mind boggling economics of the world or of the Euro-zone in particular, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and Cuba, the revolutions in Egypt and its surroundings, the Bin Laden, the deal with North Korea and Iran, the earth quakes and tsunamis and tornadoes and floods and that is just a microcosm of what happened in the world at large. Closer home, we have had all the regular drama also called politics, anti-corruption movement, cricket world-cup, a win at the world-cup, F1, airlines going bust, scams, bigger scams, monstrous scams and I guess this is after I have consciously made a decision to forget or ignore most of what happened. Obviously it has been a very eventful year. And having not said a thing about any of those all year, it is now a toughie for me to pick something to write here about.

After sweating a bucket (literally) deliberating and thinking about this, I have finally decided on a topic to write about. I am sure it is sufficiently weighty to warrant this post on the last day of the year. So here goes. I am over-weight and I hate it. I have not done anything about it the whole year other than help it along. The thought of my weight has been “weighing” me down and on this day of this year, I have decided to do something about it. This is me doing that something about it – acknowledging it.

I guess this will do for now. I will figure out what else I can do about it in the new year. Ciao and have a good one. :)

Binary Countdown - 2

I like the way the new year is coming in this time. Having the new year start in the middle of the week usually leaves me sort of discombobulated. It neither puts me in the proper holiday mood nor does it feel like much of a change which I suppose moving into a new year should be. The way 2012 is planning to start, though, is the ideal way. It feels good to kick back and say TGIF, you get the weekend to highlight the holiday and on Monday morning your new year can start, prim and proper.

In case you have missed my count-down to the big day, it started with “Places I want to see” on Monday, “Things I want to do” on Tuesday, “People I want to meet” on Wednesday and “Professions I could have been in” yesterday. Now it’s today … errr, I mean Friday, we are 2 days away and keeping to the theme of this series, I have a list of two. Two events to be more precise.

• The return of Microsoft – Am I nuts or did you miss Microsoft’s demise? Neither, though you could make a case out for the former. I am not talking Microsoft as in Microsoft Windows 7 or Office. Rather I am talking about Microsoft Windows Mobile! MS, I feel, got caught out first by Apple and then by Google in the hand-held device space and has perpetually been nowhere to be found. Perpetually, that is, since the whole touchy-feely devices started flooding the market place. It’s been a good 4 or 5 years now since Apple, a so far non-phone player, hit the collective consciousness with the iPhone. This was followed by yet another so far non-phone player in Google flooding the market with their 'free' Android OS. And while these new kids on the block were out not only making hay but also effectively making their own sun-shine, MS was nowhere to be seen. And to think that MS was the only one among the big three software giants with a full blown presence in the area of handheld devices before the game was changed and they were left out! Recently however MS has been making all the right noises. The marriage with Nokia looks to be shaping up well (The Lumia phones look awesome. Don’t know how they perform though) and from all the scuttlebutt going around, Windows Phone 8 is shaping up to be a cracker. Here is hoping that the mobile market grows from a two-horse race to a three-horse race. Are you thinking why I am interested in this? Well, I am always in the market for a phone and the more I have to look at and decide between, the merrier. :) All the Android phones are starting to look like, well, Androids, there is anyway just one iPhone so it will look and feel like it always has even though it can talk back to me now, Symbian is dead (though I really like the N8 and E7), MeeGo was supposedly brilliant but was a still born baby, RIM is on life support and Java based OS’es have gone the way of the dinosaur. So that leaves MS as the remaining player who I can look up to, to inject the much needed differentiation in a space that is increasingly looking the same whichever way you turn.
• The US presidential elections – Yep, it’s a strange one for someone in India to be looking forward to, what with all the drama that Indian politics is capable of throwing up (and is indeed doing so right now!). But of late I have been fascinated by the whole process the Americans follow to elect their president. It all seems complicated and downright unnecessary but whom am I to complain. At the heart of it all is their two-party system consisting of the democrats and republicans and come election time, each party will have one elected representative trying to claim the White House for his (or her) own use. The democrats are going with their incumbent, so no sweat for them I guess. The thing that is holding my interest right now is what they call the nomination process to pick a candidate to represent the Republican Party. This process, which involves quite a few ‘debates’ between the hopefuls apart from the traditional campaigning seems like a great system. Given the televised nature of the debates, these essentially provide the presidential hopefuls a platform to reach a national audience from which to hawk their agenda much before they are actually in the fray for the top spot. At least on paper, this seems like a better system than that followed by our politicians which essentially consists of ceaselessly campaigning. Anyway, the main reason for following the US presidential elections is because whether I like it or not, the fortunes of our economy and the company I work in are closely tied to the fortunes of the US market and by extension, to the ideologies, compulsions, whims and fancies of those who make the governing policies for that market.

 Two days to go and that’s my binary list that I am looking forward to which I hope will keep me engrossed well into 2012.

No Bucket-List. Only Countdown - 3

I am changing my usual style today and starting off with my list. Today’s is going to be about ‘The Three Alternate Professions’ I usually see myself in. The boring background stuff will come later, if I feel up to it. ;)

• Racer – I love the idea of bikes and cars and speed, I speed unnecessarily on public roads and I claim to be good at it. Of course no one else has endorsed me but when you are as good as I am, you don’t need endorsement! Anyway, given this love for speed, it’s no wonder that I see myself strapped to a speeding missile with steering control and mixing it with the likes of Mick Doohan, Valentino Rossi, Casey Stoner, Michael Schumacher, Mika Hakkinen on a regular basis. But alas, as they say, all good things must come to an end and so it is with me when I have to wake up.
• Dancer – Remember dancing to music when you were a kid? Yep, I am referring to that un-synchronized movement of your hands and legs and out-of-rhythm shaking of the hips that we all did at one time or the other when we were still young enough to not care about it. Right from those days I have known two things – I can follow a rhythm and someone has to choreograph my dance always, even the aforementioned un-coordinated movement. So it’s pretty easy to imagine myself as ‘Mr. Twinkle Toes’. But make no mistake; it’s Mr. Twinkle Toes the back-up dancer and not Mr. Twinkle Toes the choreographer.
• Food Taster and Critic – I consider myself a foodie in the sense that I like anything that is labeled ‘food’. From high-brow to road-side and everything in between is a favorite. A couple of things stand in the way of me actually realizing this dream of being a FTC. My taste cognizance begins and ends with heat and spice, so I will probably miss out on all the subtle flavours (that’s what they call ‘bland food’ these days) and the fact that I am a vegetarian and am a teetotaler means that the piece of the ‘global-food-spread’ pie that I can dig into is comparatively small. But I have never let these facts get in the way of a good, mouth-watering imagination :)

So those are the three other avatars that I see myself. My main, and real, avatar is that of a ‘software professional’, which is a better way of saying that I write code for a living. Of course, I didn't set out to write code from the beginning. As I was growing up, there were the regulars like becoming a Pilot or a Doctor. After school, I did my undergraduate course in mechanical engineering. And yet here I am, 11 years after finishing college, pounding on keyboards and dealing with languages, syntaxes, bits, bytes and character-sets. “How come?” you may ask. It’s simple really. After 2 years of kindergarten, 5 years of junior school, 5 years of high school, 2 years of junior college and 4 years of undergraduate college (for a total of 18 years of 'sit-on-your-arse-and-study' kind of formal education) I was ready to stop studying and start earning. I took the first job that came my way and haven't looked back ever since. :)

If you have been following my posts these last few days, you would have noticed that this is not a “Bucket List”. No wishes here. I was going through the news-paper this morning and everybody and their uncle was on about either “2011 - The year that was” or “2012 – What to expect” or some similar thing. So the wise one and I decided that we will leave the wishing to the ones who do it so well – on nationally circulated news papers no less – and stick to general count-down lists to ring in the new year. That's why the foray into my imagination today. That being said, we are almost on the verge of tripping into the next year. Three more days to go.

Bucket-List Countdown - 4

Another new day and here I am to make a few more additions to my growing wish list. I have taken to calling this my “Bucket List” but given the rate at which I am adding to it, looks like I will be left holding an overflowing bucket by the time I am ready to kick the bucket. So I am thinking (Yes, I tend to do that. Sometimes) that maybe I should cut back on the wishing and hoping and wanting so that I don’t put too much pressure on myself. But ‘kya karen, control nahi hota’!! So this is the compromise I have worked out between me and myself. I will give in to the temptation today and get done with it. ‘Kal kya hoga, kise pata’! ;)

Today’s list is more of a Guest List rather than a Wish List. It is about folks I would love to meet. But it’s a slightly different kind of love I am talking about. Screaming their names to get their attention, hankering after their autographs and fawning over them don’t really figure in my plans. Rather what I would love to do is to have a one-on-one with them so that I get answers to a few interesting questions that I have.  So without further ado, I give you...

• Michael Schumacher – Given that my Formula-1 fandom began and ended with this guy, it should come as no surprise that he is the one I would love to get some answers from. The way I see it in my head, it would be a series of “What were you thinking” questions. Like “What were you thinking when you went straight into Damon in ’94 and repeated the same with JV in ’97? Couldn't you try something else?” ;) Or like “What were you thinking when you let Rubens through in the last second? That dude isn't worth the trouble!” ;) He he, if I get to meet him, I know it would be fun.
• The entire set of folks who fall under the category ‘Indian Politicians’ – Agreed that this is not a single person. But I really couldn't pick one, so I thought I would conduct an open house with all of them in one place. And once there, I think the things I want to ask them are pretty obvious. Like “Why don’t you guys grow up and start acting like grown-ups?” Or like “How heck do you plan to carry all that money with you once you die?” Or like “So when do you plan to stop acting like divas and start acting as public servants?” Or… well, there are probably thousands of questions I can put forth. But considering that they will all be under a single roof, I think realistically my expectations should be that they will be trying to shout each other down and taking the furniture apart to throw at each other and the open house would have to be ‘adjourned’ keeping in mind the safety of all concerned!
• Barack Obama – Yep, the current president of the USA. The same one who is, depending on who you talk to, the first Muslim, non-American to become president. I have just one question to you sir. Nobel Peace Prize! Why? How? OK, that’s two questions. Sue me.

and finally

• God – This is the big one. My very own ‘Interview with God’. Of course this pre-supposes that God is a person, which according to a lot of faiths around the world, is the first mistake I could make. Well, since I am the one meeting with him, I can imagine him to be whatever I want him to be. Wait, I seem to be very sure that God is a ‘Him’ and not a ‘Her’! Hmm. Well, for the sake of convenience and expediency, let me just imagine a ‘Him’. A ‘Her’ would only result in me doing a lot of flirting and not enough talking. So what would I ask God? There are a quite a few but I guess I will start with “Having made man-kind, was it so hard to put some sense into them?” and wing it from there.

Well that’s all. With 4 more days to go for the dawn of the new year, this here is my list of 4 that I would like to meet and chat-up. Here’s to the hope that at least one of these happens.

Bucket-List Countdown - 5

My previous list covered the 6 places I want to visit before it is too late to do the visiting. However, visiting places can be just that – visiting. You get on a bus/train/car/flight, travel for how-ever-long and reach the place. You see the sights, eat the food, soak in the atmosphere and you come back the same way you got there. It is just a visit, even though the place you have visited is on that “must visit” list of yours. For getting an absolute high, though, you need to not just visit but do something; something adventurous that you don’t / can’t / won’t do as part of your normal day-to-day life. Of course you can do weed or some of its more sophisticated relatives and get high, but that’s not what I am talking about. Neither am I talking about any procreational activities though I do realize that either of those can also definitely fall under the “adventurous activities you don’t / can’t / won’t do as part of your normal day-to-day life” category for some! ;)

With that mandatory clarification out of the way, let me now get to my list of To-Do activities. The “Bucket-List” grows! 

• My first experience of watching any kind of skating were the old broadcasts on TV about the winter Olympics and the ice-skating championships which the channel used to show as time and space fillers between regular programs way back when … I don’t exactly remember when but it was way back. What arrested my attention were the grace, the ease and the fluidity with which they were gliding and I have wanted to be able to do that ever since. I have tried my hand at skating a few times and having ended all those attempts rather abruptly after landing heavily on my bum I am still waiting to show off my grace and fluidity. With wheels, without wheels, wheels in two rows, wheels in a single row, blades, skiis, ice, snow, tarmac, it doesn’t matter how I skate and where I skate on, as long as I can. So on the list goes skating.
• What do Sly Stallone, James Franco, Tom Cruise and Hrithik Roshan have in common, apart from being good-looking actors? I can hear the ladies say “Does anything else matter?” but I am not a lady so I guess I am looking for some other common factor. To figure out this ‘other’ trait they share, try Cliffhanger, 127 Hours, Mission Impossible 2 and Lakshya and you will know what I am getting at. These guys made climbing mountains with nothing more that rope and pitons look easy. Do I hear you say, “It’s the movies, stupid.”? Well, I know it’s the movies and I know mountaineering is not a walk in the park, but hey if it can make me feel like Sly Cruise, I am all for it. :). Add mountaineering / rock climbing to the list.
• Next up is something that thousands of ordinary folks seem to be doing, in ever increasing numbers, each year. In fact my sister has done it last year and my best friend from college has done it and continues to do it every year. And this has sort of piqued my interest. A marathon, the full enchilada, is a 42.195 Kms long running race. Yikees!! The thought of that distance itself is scary, so I wonder what it is about running a marathon that is pulling in so many people away from the cushy comforts of their couches, into their running shoes and onto the roads. I would like to find that out, first hand. On it goes then to my list.
• If the challenge of lasting the distance is the marathon’s attraction, then power, torque, the smell of rubber and gas, the feeling of literally controlling your life with your hands as well as the feeling of being absolutely out of control are the attractions (fatal at times) of motor racing (specifically of the two-wheeled variety). Ever since I have been on vehicle without training wheels, I have raced and sped. And have fallen and been bruised, broken, scratched and mended. And have gotten back on the vehicle to resume the speeding and racing. Of course, all the speeding and racing is of the “traffic light GP” variety on public roads where the sheer volume of every day traffic and crowd means that all my racing happens at 50 Kmph! I would have actually been an amateur racer on two wheels if not for a conservative and “safety-first” mindset – my parents’ and mine. But all the same, it’s on my list because I would love to put my leg over a crotch rocket and let loose on a closed circuit where the only other traffic are fellow racers. No speed limits, no signals, no bull-s***. If not anything else, I will at least know whether I would have made it in that life had I chosen differently.
• The last on my current list of things to do is the one that scares me the most. But I am also super excited about it because I, for whatever reason, feel that I can actually do it. Am not sure how to explain that contradiction but then that’s not what I am trying to do here. I love being in water. Linda Goodman offers an explanation for that by saying that I am a fixed water sign, whatever that is supposed to mean. However the slight hitch is that I don’t know how to swim. My standard answer when anyone asks me about my prowess is water is to say that I swim like a rock! I usually stand on the shallow side of a swimming pool splashing around. On a recent holiday, though, I broke from convention and signed up for a snorkeling session in the sea. The taste of the underwater world (apart from the sea water that is) that I got during that time has got me salivating at the prospect of deep sea diving. Lots of colorful corals, lots of colorful fish and me in full scuba gear lazily floating among it all – bliss. :) 

So there it is. It’s now 5 days to go before the 12 takes over and this is going to be a list of my top 5 things to do in life, again in no particular order.

Bucket-List Countdown - 6

It’s nearing the end of the year and we, the smart one and I, are pretty much glued to our work laptops these days even when we are at home. For her this is an annual thing, what with this being the busiest time of the year for her company. For me, well, what else am I supposed to be doing when she is other-wise occupied? ;) Anyway, we were both busy being busy when she suddenly goes, "You know, there are only 6 more posts to go for me to reach 100 posts". Took me a couple of seconds to realize she was talking about her blog. It took her the same couple of seconds to come up with "You know, there are 6 more days left in this year, the two hours left in 'today' included". As I started the process of processing that apparently independent piece of information she was busy bridging the two observations and said , "You know, we should write something on the 6 remaining days". And that’s how this idea came about of a count-down, "Bucket-list" style.

So my list starts with the 6 places, in no particular order, I would absolutely love to visit before global warming, nuclear war and the Mayan calendar conspire to deny me the opportunity.

• Taj Mahal - Been there already, but I would love to go back with the smart one and hopefully on a day when the usually maddening crowds take a break from being maddening crowds. Why? I am a romantic at heart. That’s why. :)
• Petra - Have seen this only in movies. Notably in Indiana Jones and in Transformers and not so notably in a handful of Indian movies and have been in awe. A voice in my head keeps telling me that what I see on the big screen is all there is to see in Petra and a visit would actually be a letdown. But if I am hearing voices in my head, I am probably too far gone to actually listen to them, even when they make sense. :)
• Pyramids - The Egyptian Pyramids are another place of supposed mystique. Having heard and read all those stories about secret passages, dead souls waiting to be revived, ancient calendars, aliens, yada yada yada who wouldn't want to check the place out? And after watching "Despicable Me", I am going there armed with a safety pin to find out if the pyramids are all that they are made out to be or if it’s just a load of hot air.
• Marrakech – I am not sure what there is to this place except for maybe centuries of history but a couple of years back my previous company had organized a get together in this place and I didn't get to go. Apart from having heap-loads of history, I heard that it was a great place for relaxing and shopping (not sure how those two go hand-in-hand but stranger things have happened!). Marrakech, in Morocco, has been stuck in my head ever since.
• Grand Canyon – A freak of nature, if I can call it that. The vital stats - 446 Kms long, 29 Kms wide (at the max), 1.8 Kms deep (at the max) - themselves are staggering. Add to that the beautiful but bleak and desolate landscape usually shown in pictures and it is nothing if not intriguing. I would love to fly the entire length and breadth of it in a chopper. (Reminder to self: Wake up and count the money!)
• The Polar Ice Caps – Yep. Both would be great, one of the two will do nicely enough. I know I can't stand the cold, I know there isn't much in terms of sight-seeing. I also know that in the Himalayas during a mini (the teeny-weeny side of mini actually) snow storm I strangely felt at peace in the white surroundings. Guess I am just looking for something like that, magnified a whole lot more.

There you go! The places I would absolutely love to visit. Of course there are a lot more but when I got down to listing them, these were the toppers. I can only hope that someday I have enough time and enough resources to actually do the visiting.