Looking for a view

A piece of art or a picture you say? Righto! Pop came these photographs to my mind. And since I will be on vacation for a fortnight I am scheduling it on Friday night (thanks Linda for the early prompt 😉 ) and I promise I will come back and check out your posts on this prompt later.

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A scene at the Fota Wildlife park, Cork, Ireland.
Me: There is supposed to be a Panda bear here. Do you see him anywhere?
Friend: Nope… He might be hiding.
Searching the trees for a while. Almost at the verge of giving up when my friend points me to the tree above.
Friend: There…do you see him? (Points above in the trees)
Me: I only see the tree leaves…Damn..I shouldn’t have removed my zoom lens and packed it in. (It was getting very cold, windy and there was a slight drizzling of rain too at that time)
Friend: Look behind those leaves…

Me: You mean this one?

Friend: Yes.

(Panda : God…won’t she leave me alone in peace?)

Me: Let me try a little bit from here. Might get a good view.

Me: Damn… Why can’t I get the focus right!

(Panda: Still not going to pose for you lady…Why do you think I climbed up all the way here… Go away!)

Me: I will try one more shot and then we will leave him to his sleep

Me: There! Finally! It can’t get any better than this. I am happy with this view. Come on, let’s go.

(Panda: eye roll)

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Post for this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday prompt.

Your Friday prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday is: “view.” Use it any way you’d like. Enjoy!

 

 

SoCS Badge by John Holton@ The Sound of One Hand Typing

imaginary vs the reel

Getting sick in the middle of the week has its own advantages I say. First, I got to work from home (even though one day I was too sick to work after half a day but still managed to complete the work) and second, whenever I went to take some rest I managed to watch some of the GoT episodes and voila! I completed watching the first season. I had watched almost 5 episodes last Sunday, so only five were left to watch over the week. Since I knew the story, some episodes were easier to watch and of course I wasn’t surprised by anything here, because it almost followed the book to the last word. It was a very neat adaptation in that aspect. No story here and so no spoilers. Just some of my thoughts about the first season. For me it was more of associating or even comparing the faces in the TV series to the faces I had imagined while reading them. I had seen the first episode of the first season sometime back (it was a long time back infact), so I knew some of the characters who appeared in the first season (not all, just some like Ned, Tyrion, Bran , Dany, Khal Drogo). The ones I knew were already there in my imagination while I was reading the book. But the rest , now that I have read about them in the span of 5 books this is what I felt.

Cersei wasn’t exactly the way I had imagined her in the book. I felt that she was too smug for that character and seemed too disinterested. The picture of her in my mind was a little more cunning and vile with a wicked smile.

Jofferey, I hated that character more and more as I saw this actor playing it. It was a very good choice of cast in the TV series. I wanted to say something here, but since I already said no spoilers I am keeping quiet. 

Sansa Stark, one of the characters I didn’t like and yes, while reading she reminded me of Bella a lot from the Twilight series. But again the choice of the cast was good because this girl, no offense dear, really did look stupid enough (courtesy: her acting 😉 ) with all that star in her eyes and the teen drama and all.

I also liked Catelyn in the TV series. She is one who matched my imaginative Catelyn.

Jaime: Now is it just me or did anyone else find a similarity between this actor and the ‘Prince Charming‘ in Shrek 2 ? He reminded me of him so much. I was wondering why he felt very familiar. To be honest, he wasn’t as good looking as it was described in the book and my imaginative Jaime was a little bit better than him. At least it wasn’t as disastrous a portrayal as Edward in Twilight by Robert Pattinson. Thank God for small miracles. Since I am not a big fan of Jaime as such, he is OK.

Another interesting cast was Littlefinger. Now that guy really looked cunning (and looked good too). And way better than how I had imagined.

Varys: I thought Varys was supposed to be a little lithe and lean because he keeps crawling everywhere and all and was a little surprised to see the casting here.

Arya Stark: Perfect and matched my imagination.

The rest were all OK. It was like remembering back the important points in the book again. They could have done without too much sex though, at least in some place, even though the book is full of it and violence too. For e.g. the scene where Littlefinger is talking about his lost love, I know he needed a opening to reveal a little about himself, but I wouldn’t have imagined a scene as one that was shown.

Will have to start the second season next week sometime.

     

 

Imagination is the beginning….

Self Confidence has never been my forte, thanks to all that stuttering and other experiences. But that doesn’t have to be that I have to appear to not to be, you know. It is helpful in one way or the other, at least it has been in my case.

When I was working far away from home and I had to travel to another unknown metropolitan city , again alone, I was scared to my limits. Because that new city was nothing like my hometown. It was huge and it was easy to get lost or even get kidnapped. I was supposed to meet my friend in the railway station and was instructed to not move from the platform what so ever happened unless I spot my friend. Now , with all that warning, you can imagine what I would have thought about this place. As if Goblins are waiting to snatch me as soon as I land, if I don’t wear my safety cloak. In fact this place was where I did my kindergarten, but that was long long and so long ago and I don’t remember a single incident about it. When I landed I had to wait for quite some time (this was the ages of no cell phones) and endure the looks of the porters and fellow passengers passing by. They could have thought of me as another runaway (in fact I was there for meeting my friends and to attend an interview). But irrespective of how scared I was and diffident I was, I definitely looked sure and confident and even tough. Thanks to my Taurean physique and my mean and get-lost looks I kept throwing at people who even tried to step near my space, I was able to survive not that one time, but every-time I had to visit that huge maze of a place. And that kind of feeling happens to any new place I visit alone.

Even when I joined my current organization, one of my friends commented how I always looked put-together (don’t know what that means) and confident with my stride and looks that I could easy pass off as being a manager (yeah, right!!!). No one knows how my inner workings are always a mess every-time I had to be in a new place or surrounded by new people. But yes, that look does earn me some points, where people think twice before speaking unnecessarily and I am  always able to keep people at arms length before I let them in my circle, if I ever feel comfortable with them, that is.

I know my self confidence is very low. But when faced with situations which demand it, I always try to imagine that I am confident enough or at least make up my mind to not show it in my face or my body language. That imagination is really the beginning of the creation of a facade which gets me through that situation at that time. I would love to have it all the time, even though the constant imagination has done some wonders and has made me much more confident that I was earlier (say around 10 years ago).