High Bridge overlook

I sat down to update my blog today lest I forget my login/ pswrd ..hahaha.
With our lease coming to an end ,we decided to move to scenic suburbs leaving the downtown and checked out quite a few apartments before settling down to one cozy apt in Eden Prairie. We are now looking forward to next month end when we can shift and start living in a new place- that sounds exciting!. hmmm.

Now that the winter set in here,we have pulled up our hoods and find it difficult even to walk from the parking lot to the shop entrance and I think in a few days,I would start writing about "traveling to heated shopping malls":)

There is one place though, I can write about for today - St. Paul skyline from the high bridge overlook. We usually go here when dont have any place in mind and just wanna take a drive. The overlook provides a panoramic view of downtown St.Paul and the upper landing across the river. One can simultaneously see planes landing every five minutes in the St Paul airport , boats across the river and amtrack train chugging along on the riverside. wow!

With I-94 humming in the background, I take a step back and see where I(we) belong- and I see this fast paced, monotonous, repetitive but enchanting life that I can never get enough of and I am ready to jump back into it. Crazy crazy world with crazy crazy people :)

And "The Departed"... :)

Once we start off on the topic of movies or books, I think we can go on discussing the merits and shortcomings endlessly and opinions vary as much as the surnames in a phonebook :).
Now, that said, I can comfortably call “The Departed” as one of the most illogical movies made and vehemently so because it is being praised as this year’s likely Oscar winning movie. We usually check IMDB for any movie review before watching and this time too we did the same but it turned out that this movie did not deserve all the praise it has got.
Well, the movie goes something like this… the state police force is trying to destroy one of the top crime gangs in Boston led by Frank Costello (Jack Nicholson).
Willy Costigan (Leonardo DiCaprio), straight out of the Police Acadamy is assigned as an undercover cop to infiltrate the mob while Colin Sullivan (Matt Damon), a criminal is planted into the police department as an informer to Costello. Both these spies rise to a positions of power gaining trust and respect from their new bosses. But soon, the mob and the police get to know that there's a mole in their midst and both Willy and Sullivan need to expose the other to save their skins.
Until this point,I should say the movie was gripping…
But the movie comes crashing down and all hopes of a logical conclusion are shattered when they show Damon discovering that Nicholson is after all an FBI agent (!!??!!) planted to find out leaches in the police force.
Wait a minute, was all that brutal, in-your-face violence and raw dialogues just a cover( ???!!) And why in the world is the whole Massachusetts State police force chasing a man who is an FBI agent??!! They have done enough Cops serials, i guess :)
To top this all, Damon who is practically raised by Nicholson gets tipped off for being a mole (???!!)
Thank God,they atleast killed everyone in the end, so that way there would be no loose ends.
Yessir!, Jack Nicholson’s whirling devilish portrayal of an untouchable, perverted mob boss is reason alone to see "The Departed" and Dicaprio and Matt Damon are as good as always. So if you can ignore the glaring obnoxious faults in the story-line, you can still enjoy watching it.
Boy, I would laugh my head off if this movie picks an Oscar for Best Picture.

A good movie after a long while

It has almost been two years since I read the book “To kill a Mockingbird” by Harper Lee and today I finally watched the screen adaptation of this Pulitzer winning novel.The movie excels the book with delightful naration and perfect cast.

The story is set in Alabama during the times of depression where racial discrimination was the norm of the day. It tells us about a lawyer who dares to defend an innocent black man charged with rape of a white woman as seen through the eyes of his little girl Scout.

The sleepy town of Maycomb finds itself ensnared in a moral trial of Tom Robinson, a young black man falsely accused of raping an abused and ignorant white woman. Scout and Jem's widowed father,Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) is a deeply principled man and is appointed to defend Tom. It is a forgone conclusion that he would be charged for the crime and stands no chance of justice from an all-white jury. Though Atticus proves beyond doubt that Tom could never have done the crime yet he is sent to the gallows and even before Atticus can plead a second time, Tom gets shot in an escape attempt. The children come to respect their father for his values even while the villagers turn hostile.
Intertwined with this is the story of the children's encounters with their insane neighbor Boo Radley and how in the end he saves their lives from the blind hatred of the white woman’s father.
It is said that Harper Lee went through similar situations in her life and many characters in this story are drawn from her life.
Racism may be irrelevant in a world of today but sadly prejudice and injustice still are not.
Another novel on the same lines but more vehement and much more longer is "Roots" by Alex Haley...but the problem is this was made into episodes for television and I wonder if I can sit and watch all of it.

A day at the zoo

Winter is closing in on us, threatening to come down cold and heavy any time, any day and each day of the week is a surprise blessing or ...
This Sunday too was one such day and we were blessed when we saw a ray of hope and the feeling of warmth to step out in our t-shirts. Armed with a free ticket to the zoo –parking inclusive (courtesy Neera and Mpls Library) we ventured out to Apple Valley to meet our neighbors of yesteryears :).Check out Minneapolis Public Library for further details on the free ticket offer by Macy's. They are offering quite a variety of entry tickets to the museums, art galleries and Arboretum and it might be worthwhile grabbing a few.

Coming back to our story, we hadn’t planned anything else and we decided to pamper the kids in us:).The last zoo I had seen was in Singapore in 2004 complete with Night Safari and Jurong bird park. I had so thoroughly enjoyed it that time ,I was sure that Minnesota wouldn’t let us down.
Well, the zoo here is sure a nice place to visit and the animals are well cared for but I think even Indian Zoos have much more to offer- at least many more animals to see. Probably because of the severe weather conditions, they are unable to flaunt as many species. One of the main highlights of the zoo was the Wells Fargo Family Farm where you get to see goats, pigs, hens and cows- but don't we watch them everyday on our roads in India? Of course, it is very exciting for kids as they get to feed them and pet them.

kid feeding goatiee

The Empress of Blandings

The bird show is right now closed for a month for training so I cannot comment on that but the dolphin show...I cannot even compare it to the one I saw in S'pore. I would just call it informative about dolphins and its nice to watch the them perform cute little tricks.

Some of the must see in this zoo are: the Prairie Dogs-they are just so adorable! the way they dig holes, collect grass and are constantly on watch- ready to jump in the mud and hide themselves; Moose and Caribou- I never knew they were this huge and this lazy :) , tigers- if they are not sleeping they look awesomely majestic prowling about.
the cute little Prairie dog

Worth a visit once if you have kids...

St Croix State Park

We have been consistently traveling long distances over the past few weekends and decided it was time to take it easy and travel closer home. So we picked out the 34,000 acre St Croix state park located in Hinckley. This also happens to be the largest state park in Minnesota.
If you want to rest your tired feet and yet see some place, this would be it.
We took the 12 mile drive along the rustic road inside the heavily wooded area to see the fall colors. It was past peak and many of the leaves had already fallen or had turned brown. The entrance to the park (which was a good 4 mile) displayed the best colors.

Thro' the forest green


autumn comes to a close

I wouldn’t say, it was even half as good as Lutsen, but we can’t crib, can we.
We got up the 136-stair steep Fire tower for a scenic overview of the forest around us. There is a small landing on top of the tower to observe the whole forest and can accomodate a maximum of six people. I was very scared to climb up initially but somehow managed and it was truly worth the effort.

View from Firetower

It was almost 5:30 pm by the time we completed the trail and we wanted to go canoeing down the St.Croix River but it was closed for the day.
You can take a canoe trip ranging from one to four hours through the National Scenic St croix riverway and it costs anywhere between $30-$40. Check this website for further details. We plan to do this sometime soon.:)

towards the evening