Gun Bazaar of Pakistan

glumbert.com - The Gun Bazaar of Pakistan

This video shows a guy named Suroosh Alvi who uses his mom's connections to pass through the Khyber Pass into the region where the Daraa tribe lives in Pakistan to see the largest illegal arms market in the world. The tribe believes in 'many sons and lots of guns'. Over a thousand guns are made by hand every day in crude machine shops, and these are then supplied to Taliban terrorists through their network of cells.

Thanks Bob for sharing this video.

A special wedding gift

Here's a neat pic of Monami and I flanked by my best buddies from school at our reception (L to R - NP, Anand, and Rahul). Sumant, who made it to the wedding is not in the pic.



Their gifts to us were very thoughtful - a book on graphic art for Monami and the DVD of the classic Sampras-Federer game at Wimbledon 2001 for me. Rahul had actually read my post last year, and was sweet enough to buy it online and bring it all the way from Boston.

My in-laws visited us a few weeks back and had brought along various gifts from the wedding which we had left behind since we were travelling right after. After our in-laws left, we finally had time to sit down and watch the DVD.

It's really hard, and doesnt make sense to compare across eras, and Sampras was past his prime at the time of this game and Federer was still young - nevertheless, this is easily one of the most best displays of tennis I've seen.

In the first three sets, Federer has the clear upper hand, although he loses the second set to Sampras due to some unforced errors on his serve at a critical stage.

In the last two sets of the game, Sampras plays like the champion of old, serving and volleying beautifully, executing crisp drop volleys, and cracking passing shots on the run. But young Federer, appearing on Center Court for the first time ever keeps his cool and hits brilliant service returns (a remarkable feat when Sampras serves consistently at 136 mph), mixes up his serves well, strikes rocket speed passing shots on both his backhand and forehand, and comes up with some brilliant angles.

When Federer emerges the winner after 3 hours and 53 minutes of play and five hard fought sets (7-6, 5-7, 6-4, 6-7, 7-5), he is so overwhelmed by the moment that he forgets the customary bow at the end of the game!

While we received many lovely gifts, this one has been particularly special!

Delirium Café - Guinness record for most beers!!

Did you know that the Delirium Café in Brussels holds the Guiness Book world record for the most beers? It's located in a little alleyway 5 minutes away from the Grand Place in the city center.

You pass the sign of a pink elephant (BTW, I suspect the sign refers to the euphemism for delirium, "seeing pink elephants") and follow the stairs down to the basement, where everyone is seated on tall stools around large wooden barrels. The huge menu offers a list of over 2000 beers from various countries - and yes, Kingfisher was listed.

If you'd like to try a local beer, be sure to sample the dark Delirium and the Duvel ('Devil') - but be forewarned, they live up to their names! I didnt see any pink elephants or devils, but sure needed caffeine the next morning!

All across Brussels, you find little statues of Manneken Pis, a young boy pissing. Legend has it that the child saved the Grand Place by putting out a bomb by pissing on the fuse. What really amused us though was finding a statue of his female counterpart, known as Jeanneke Pis right by the Cafe!

A Maglev train ride in Shanghai

I made my second visit to China last month, spending a week in Shanghai. As some of you may know, the first operational high-speed conventional maglev railway in the world is the Shanghai Maglev Train which runs from downtown to the Pudong International Airport. And guess what, I rode it on my way back to the aiport.

Time taken for a taxi cab ride down the 30 km stretch: One hour
Time taken for the train to zips across the same stretch: 7 minutes!!!!

It hits a top speed of 431 kmph (see the snap I took below).



I took a multi-burst snap with the rapid exposure setting on (see below - top to bottom, left to right), which shows the train whizzing past a building.



Here's a short video clip I took from the window side as the train started to pick up speed - click here.

So how was the ride? Well, it was definitely very smooth and quick, thanks to the German engineering that enabled China to build this limited operational line. On the other hand, it may have been on the most boring train rides I've been on. I'd rather hang out of a slow meter gauge train anyday, watching the coaches snake their way across a bend heading in a tunnel.