Pride Parade - Censor Cleared ones

Pride Week is an event held in Toronto, Ontario during the last week of June each year. It is a celebration of the diversity of the LGBT community in the Greater Toronto Area. It is the one of the largest organized Gay Pride festivals in the world, featuring several stages with live performers and DJs, several licensed venues, a large Dyke March, and the Pride Parade.

In 2004 the Toronto Star reported that 1,200,000 people lined the parade route. The festival is often touted as being one of the largest cultural festivals in North America and the 12 city blocks that make up the festival site is closed to vehicular traffic.

Here are the photos, which have been cleared by the censor ;-) for the rest, mail me.

Volleyball match

Went to Centennial Park's Beach Volleyball courts for some action packed games of Volleyball. It was a thrilling way to end our tech-fest week "Prevoyance 08" unwinding all techy-talks with ungeeky acts including random b'day bumps to Muthu :)

Check my album on Picasa for better resolution pix.

Niagara @ night

Talent Day at TDC

A lovely day celebrated for a noble cause. We celebrated talent day, with people pledging for others to perform any item. I was asked to play the balcony scene from "Romeo & Juliet". Luckily, my moustache gave me an edge over Alex, who had to play Juliet :D. Sailendra's dance was one of the highlights as well. Some of the photos are uploaded here and the most in demand video of us playing the romantic scene, which finally became comedy, because of our pathetic act :p.

However, the cause was fulfilled, as we collected some good money for donation towards disabled children.

Talent Day at TDC

the world's worst poet

It gives me a sense of satisfaction, that I am not branded as the world's best poet, though I tried hard for it. However, read on about the person, who has managed to keep this recognition:
(As published in National Post)
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Posted: June 11, 2008, 2:54 PM by Marni Soupcoff
Ian Hunter
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On May 16, a collection of 35 poems by William Topaz McGonagall (1825-1902) was sold at auction in Edinburgh for more than $10,000. That's not a high price for, say, a single poem by Robert Burns. But for McGonagall, known as "the world's worst poet," it is remarkable.
In his day, McGonagall was often pelted with eggs and rotten fruits at public recitals (often given in pubs to protest against excessive drinking). McGonagall would be sad to learn that perhaps his most famous poem, Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silver Tay, is used in schools as an object lesson in how not to write poetry. When he died penniless in 1902, McGonagall was buried in Greyfriars Kirkyard in Edinburgh in an unmarked pauper's grave.
Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silver Tay!
I hope that God will protect all passengers
By night and by day,
And that no accident befall them while crossing
The Bridge of the Silvery Tay, For that would be most awful to be seen
Near by Dundee and the Magdalen Green.
McGonagall must have had a touch of the prophet about him because a decade or so after he wrote that poem (in fact on Dec. 20, 1879), the Tay railway bridge collapsed in a gale; there was a train passing over and 75 passengers plunged to their death. An inquiry concluded that the bridge (rather like McGonagall's poems) was "badly designed, badly built and badly maintained." On hearing of the disaster, McGonagall felt compelled to compose again:
O ill-fated bridge of the silvery Tay, I must now conclude my lay, By telling the world fearlessly without the least dismay
That your central girders would not have given way,
At least many sensible men do say, Had they been supported on each side with buttresses,
At least many sensible men confesses,
For the stronger we our houses build.
The less chance we have of being killed.
Born in Edinburgh of Irish parents, McGonagall followed the weaver's trade, although without much success. In June 1878, he was sued by a Dundee grocer for theprincely sum of six pounds; the best McGonagall could offer was to repay the debt at the rate of three shillings a week. When the grocer protested that it would take 120 weeks to repay, McGonagall solemnly insisted that he could not do more because his primary responsibility was to the muse of poetry.
Since the time of Robert Burns (1759-1796), all Scots poets have attempted to write about Nature's glories and the lessons she imparts; McGonagall was no exception (however lamentable the results):
As I chanced to see trouts leaping in the River o' Glenshee,
It helped to fill my heart with glee, And to anglers I would say without any doubt
There's plenty of trouts there for pulling out.
McGonagall also fancied himself an actor although (perhaps understandably) his services were seldom in demand. On one occasion, he paid the Director of a theatre to be allowed to play the title role in Macbeth. McGonagall persuaded sufficient friends and acquaintances to attend the play as to avoid a financial disaster. But it was not an artistic triumph; at the end, when Macduff should kill Macbeth, McGonagall became convinced that the actor playing Macduff was deliberately trying to upstage him, and he refused to die.
One of the most poignant incidents in McGonagall's career occurred in 1892 when, following the death of poet laureate Alfred Tennyson, McGonagall walked the 60 miles from Dundee to Balmoral Castle through pelting rain in an attempt to persuade Queen Victoria to name him as poet laureate. The castle gatekeeper informed McGonagall that the Queen was not in residence (which was untrue) and McGonagall gathered his greatcoat around him, turned and trudged back home. This humiliation did not deter from lauding his Sovereign in verse:
Beautiful Empress of India and England's Gracious Queen, I send you a Shakespearian Address written by me.
And I think if your Majesty reads it, right pleased you will be. And my heart it will leap with joy, if it is patronized by Thee.
As will by now be obvious, McGonagall was deaf to poetic diction, meter and rhyme, and had nothing to say. As one critic put it, he was "so giftedly bad he backed unwittingly into genius."
In 1894 McGonagall became Sir William, having been knighted in absentia by King Thibaw Min of Burma and given the title White Elephant of Burma. McGonagall henceforth used this title shamelessly to promote his verses.
But it is McGonagall who has laughed last. For over a century, his poems have never been out of print. There is a McGonagall Square in Dundee, and a McGonagall Society which assembles once a year to eat a banquet in reverse order, starting with desserts, moving through entrees, and concluding with appetizers. The world's worst poet lives on.

Dear omnivore

A great article published in National Post. Worth reading, whether you are a vegetarian, egg-etarian or Non-Veg:
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Taylor Clark, Slate.com Published: Tuesday, May 20, 2008
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Admit it, my flesh-eating friends: You know nothing about us vegetarians. So read on. I believe it's high time we cleared a few things up:-

Every vegetarian remembers his first time. Not the unremarkable event of his first meal without meat, mind you. No, I mean the first time he casually lets slip that he's turned herbivore, prompting everyone in earshot to stare at him as if he just revealed plans to sail his carrot-powered plasma yacht to Neptune.
For me, this first time came at an Elks scholarship luncheon in rural Oregon when I was 18. All day, I'd succeeded at seeming a promising and responsible young man, until that fateful moment when someone asked why I hadn't taken any meat from the buffet. After I offered my reluctant explanation -- and the guy announced it to the entire room -- 30 people went eerily quiet, undoubtedly expecting me to launch into a speech on the virtues of hemp. In the corner, an elderly, suited man glared at me as he slowly raised a slice of bologna and executed the most menacing bite of cold cut in recorded history. I didn't get the scholarship.
I tell this story not to win your pity but to illustrate a point: I've been vegetarian for a decade, and when it comes up, I still get a look of confused horror that says, "But you seemed so ... normal." The United States boasts more than 10 million herbivores today, yet most Americans assume that every last one is a loopy, self-satisfied health fanatic, hell-bent on draining all the joy out of life. Those of us who want to avoid the social nightmare have to hide our vegetarianism like an Oxycontin addiction, because admit it, omnivores: You know nothing about us. Do we eat fish? Will we panic if confronted with a hamburger? Are we dying of malnutrition? You have no clue. So read on, my flesh-eating friends -- I believe it's high time we cleared a few things up.
To demonstrate what a vegetarian really is, let's begin with a simple thought experiment. Imagine a completely normal person with completely normal food cravings, someone who has a broad range of friends, enjoys a good time, is carbon-based and so on. Now remove from this person's diet anything that once had eyes, and -- wham! -- you have yourself a vegetarian. Normal person, no previously ocular food, end of story.
Some people call themselves vegetarians and still eat chicken or fish, but unless we're talking about the kind of salmon that comes freshly plucked from the vine, this makes you an omnivore. A select few herbivores go one step further and avoid all animal products -- milk, eggs, honey, leather -- and they call themselves vegan, which rhymes with "tree men." These people are intense.
Vegetarians give up meat for a variety of ethical, environmental and health reasons that are secondary to this essay's goal of increasing brotherly understanding, so I'll mostly set them aside. Suffice it to say that one day, I suddenly realized that I could never look a cow in the eyes, press a knocking gun to her temple, and pull the trigger without feeling I'd done something cruel and unnecessary.
I am well-aware that even telling you this makes me seem like the kind of person who wants to break into your house and liberate your pet hamster -- that is, like a PETA activist. Most vegetarians, though, would tell you that they appreciate the intentions of groups like PETA but not the obnoxious tactics. It's like this: We're all rooting for the same team, but they're the ones in face paint, bellowing obscenities at the umpire and flipping over every car with a Yankees bumper sticker. I have no designs on your Camry or your hamster.

Now, when I say that vegetarians are normal people with normal food cravings, many omnivores will hoist a lamb shank in triumph and point out that you can hardly call yourself normal if the aroma of, say, sizzling bacon doesn't fill you with deepest yearning. To which I reply: We're not insane. We know meat tastes good; it's why there's a freezer case at your supermarket full of woefully inadequate meat substitutes. Believe me, if obtaining bacon didn't require slaughtering a pig, I'd have a BLT in each hand right now with a bacon layer cake waiting in the fridge for dessert.
But, that said, I can also tell you that with some time away from the butcher's section, many meat products start to seem gross. Ground beef in particular now strikes me as absolutely revolting; I have a vague memory that hamburgers taste good, but the idea of taking a cow's leg, mulching it into a fatty pulp, and forming it into a pancake makes me gag. And hot dogs ... I mean, hot dogs? You do know what that is, right?
As a consolation prize we get tofu, a treasure most omnivores are more than happy to do without. Well, this may stun you, but I'm not any more excited about a steaming heap of unseasoned tofu blobs than you are. Tofu is like fugu blowfish sushi: Prepared correctly, it's delicious; prepared incorrectly, it's lethal.
Very early in my vegetarian career, I found myself famished and stuck in a mall, so I wandered over to the food court's Asian counter. When I asked the teenage chief culinary artisan what was in the tofu stir-fry, he snorted and replied, "S--t." Desperation made me order it anyway, and I can tell you that promises have rarely been more loyally kept than this guy's pledge about what the tofu would taste like. So here's a tip: Unless you know you're in expert hands (Thai restaurants are a good bet), don't even try tofu. Otherwise, it's your funeral.
As long as we're discussing restaurants, allow me a quick word with the hardworking
chefs at America's dining establishments. We really appreciate that you included a vegetarian option on your menu (and if you didn't, is our money not valuable?), but it may interest you to know that most of us are not salad freaks on a grim slog for nourishment. We actually enjoy food, especially the kind that tastes good. So enough with the bland vegetable dishes and, for God's sake, please make the Gardenburgers stop; it's stunning how many restaurants lavish unending care on their meat dishes yet are content to throw a flavorless hockey puck from Costco into the microwave and call it cuisine.
Every vegetarian is used to slim pickings when dining out, so we're not asking for much -- just for something you'd like to eat. I'll even offer a handy trick. Pretend you're trapped in a kitchen stocked with every ingredient imaginable, from asiago to zucchini, but with zero meat. With no flesh available, picture what you'd make for yourself; this is what we want, too.
For those kind-hearted omnivores who willingly invite feral vegetarians into their homes for dinner parties and barbecues (really! we do that, too!), the same rule applies -- but also know that unless you're dealing with an herbivore who is a prick for unrelated reasons, we don't expect you to bend over backward for us. In fact, if we get the sense that you cooked for three extra hours to accommodate our dietary preferences, we will marvel at your considerate nature, but we will also feel insanely guilty.
Similarly, it's very thoughtful of you to ask whether it'll bother me if I see you eat meat, but don't worry: I'm not going to compose an epic poem about your club sandwich.
Which leads me to a vital point for friendly omnivore-herbivore relations. As you're enjoying that pork loin next to me, I am not silently judging you. I realize that anyone who has encountered the breed of smug vegetarian who says things like, "I can hear your lunch screaming," will find this tough to believe, but I'm honestly not out to convert you. My girlfriend and my closest pals all eat meat, and they'll affirm that I've never even raised an eyebrow about it.
Now, do I think it strange that the same people who dress their dogs in berets and send them to day spas are often unfazed that an equally smart pig suffered and died to become their McMuffin? Yes, I do. Would I prefer it if we at least raised these animals humanely? Yes, I would.
Let's be honest, though: I'm not exactly Saint Francis of Assisi over here, tenderly ministering to every chipmunk that crosses my path. I try to represent for the animal kingdom, but take a look at my shoes -- they're made of leather, which, I am told by those with expert knowledge of the tanning process, comes from dead cows.
This is the sort of revelation that prompts meat boosters to pick up the triumphant lamb shank once again and accuse us of hypocrisy. Well, sort of. (Hey, you try to find a pair of non-leather dress shoes.) My dedication to the cause might be incomplete, but I'd still say that doing something beats doing nothing. It's kind of like driving a hybrid: not a solution to the global-warming dilemma but a decent start. Let's just say that at the dinner table, I roll in a Prius.
Finally, grant me one more cordial request: Please don't try to convince us that being vegetarian is somehow wrong. If you insist on being the aggressive blowhard who takes meatlessness as a personal insult and rails about what fools we all are, you're only going to persuade me that you're a dickhead. When someone says he's Catholic, you probably don't start the stump speech about how God is a lie created to enslave the ignorant masses, and it's equally offensive to berate an herbivore.
Because, really, peace and understanding are what it's all about: your porterhouse and my portobello coexisting in perfect harmony -- though preferably not touching. We're actually not so different, after all, my omnivorous chums. In fact, I like to think that when an omnivore looks in the mirror, he just sees a vegetarian who happens to eat meat. Or, no, wait, maybe the mirror sees the omnivore through the prism of flesh and realizes we all have a crystalline animal soul, you know?
This is excellent weed, by the way, if you want a hit. Hey, while you're here: Have I ever told you about hemp?