SprangleBlog

Lost in Delhi; Found in Manhattan

I was fortunate in the taxi driver I’d hired for a day-long tour of New Delhi highlights chosen from my guidebooks and research. First of all, he showed up on time. He was dressed in a clean shirt and trousers. A promising start that he eventually fulfilled.

I gave him a list of places I wanted to visit. He actually studied my list . . . asked a few questions about why this and why that . . . made a few suggestions, which I accepted . . . and then revised my list in a logical and do-able sequence. I really enjoy encountering professionally competent people.

Unfortunately, probably due to my own carelessness and incompetence,  I’ve lost my notes for that day. With the exception of a few scraps of paper, they are gone.

To make matters worse, when I got home a month later, I discovered that the CD onto which I had transcribed the day’s photos (along with once-in-a-lifetime shots of my days at the Taj Mahal) was somehow damaged. Meanwhile, I  had reused the camera chip and over-wrote whatever might have been stored there.

Attempts to read the disk only revealed there were 232 photos, but nothing more than their assigned numbers and date. No images. I tried many recovery software programs. None worked. I turned the disk over to various “experts.” None were able to display the pix.

But some 5 months later, while in downtown Manhattan with a few minutes to kill before an appointment with a client who wanted a web site makeover, I stepped into a photography shop on the north side of Chambers Street, a few steps west of Church Street.

Shortly thereafter, for a $10 fee, I had a new CD with all the pix restored. Some of them can be seen in the “Delhi Day Tour” posts that follow.

It was a poetic example of competence at opposite ends of the world. The recovered images appear throughout this journal

• Not Good At All- Dengue Fever in India News online says there is a dengue fever outbreak in Delhi. Here's the report from a newspaper there. Published 2006-10-07 10:59 (KST) In India, almost 3,000 fresh cases of mosquito born dengue disease have been detected and more than 35 deaths have been recorded all over the country. The national......
• Open For Business What a shock. I just used my debit card at a Bank of India ATM in Delhi to withdraw pocket cash. WARNING - do not casually discard the little printed receipt that the machine spits out at you along with the cash. Burn it to ashes and crumple those into......
• The Maze The free ride in a three-wheeled auto-rickshaw from the Varanasi train station to the Scindhia Hotel was far and away the wildest I've ever had in my 73 years of traveling the world. It was a real live version of the roller coaster that many know as "The Mouse." The......

• Tiger Woods Text Messages: Flat-Out Ridiculous [/caption] Even for a guy we knew cheated on Elin Nordegren with eight mistresses (and counting) Tiger Woods surprised us with the content of these text messages. At times dirty and at times emotionally vulnerable, his texts and emails to mistresses Jaimee Grubbs and Rachel Uchitel paint quite the portrait......
• Fallene Cotz SPF 58 Water Resistant UVB/UVA Sunscreen for Sensitive Skin, 2.5-Ounce Tube User Reviews Send this to a friend Fallene Cotz SPF 58 Water Resistant UVB/UVA Sunscreen for Sensitive Skin, 2.5-Ounce Tube Manufacturer: Fallene Customer Rating: List Price: $26.00 Sale Price: $16.50 Availibility: Usually ships in 24 hours Free Shipping Available Buy Now Product Description Fallene Cotz SPF 58 is a......
• Violin For Dummies User Reviews Send this to a friend Manufacturer: For Dummies Customer Rating: List Price: $24.99 Sale Price: $15.55 Availibility: Usually ships in 24 hours Free Shipping Available Buy Now Product Description Take a bow and start playing tunes with this friendly guide! Whether you're an aspiring classical musician or......