Cruelty

Yesterday I saw a program on NAT Geo featuring Bad Behavior on the part of lions. The clipping showed a live baby elephant being eaten by a pride of lions. The pitiable thing about it was that the baby elephant made no attempt to run away nor did it cry out. It just lay there and was eaten by the lions. The worst thing about the program was that the people who shot the scene allowed the incident to take place without lifting even a little finger to save the baby elephant. That was the most cruel part of the program. The narrator simply stated that the baby elephant died subsequently. Cruelty at its height.

Australia And New Zealand

Went to Australia and New Zealand from the 22nd. September to the 30th. September. Spent seven days in Australia and visited the cities of Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. Spent two days in New Zealand at Auckland. There were a total of 92 members in the group that went visiting made up predominantly of Doctors and their families. Visited the Melbourne Cricket Grounds and the Fitzroy Gardens at Melbourne. Here are a few pictures of Melbourne. The first two are views of the lounge at the Kuala Lumpur Airport on Malayasia where we had to break our journey. Then comes the lounge of the Ibis Hotel that we stayed in Melbourne. Then come some views of Melbourne taken from the highest point in Melbourne followed by pictures of some sculptures at the Melbourne Cricket Grounds and then by some flowers at the Fitzroy Gardens Conservatory. The next one is a picture of a dog that we saw when we went shopping at the China Market. There was nothing much to see at Melbourne. In fact there wasn't much to see in Australia.

We then went to Sydney where we had a guided tour of the famous Sydney Opera House. There was a rehearsal going on in one of the theaters and the acoustics were simply awesome. Then we went to the Water World which is an aquarium housing some of the sea life of Australia. Here are some pictures.

We then went to Brisbane. There wasn't much to see in Brisbane except the Movie World which houses some of the memorabilia of Hollywood. Here are some pictures taken at the Movie World. Had a scary roller coaster ride in Scooby Castle. Saw a 4D movie of "The Ice Age - Return of the Dinosaurs"

From Brisbane we went to Auckland, New Zealand. New Zealand was better than Australia. After arrival at Auckland we went to see the Waitomo Glowworm Caves that are situated some 60 km away. This was a visit worth experiencing though all the glow worms had to be seen in pitch darkness and pictures could not be taken. It is a sight to be seen. Though it was not like the glow worms that we had seen in Malaysia. Here there were millions of them flying about in the darkness. Here in Auckland we visited the Government Gardens which was very beautiful and then we went to the Auckland museum which houses Maori artifacts. We also visited the hot geyser springs at the outskirts of Auckland and the mudflats. Here are a few pictures.

We left for India on the 30th. via Malaysia (transit) reaching home at about 2:00 a.m. on the 1st. of October.