Friday, February 27, 2009

Foy's Lake



































































2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sorry I haven't written in a while. I've been busy doing too many things and the winter here is getting me down. I don't ever recall taking a "winter break", but this year I am flying to Houston, Texas, to spend several days with my niece and nephew after I finish a series of meetings in Baltimore and Washington. So it's off to the States for "March Break", but not Fort Lauderdale -- not my style.

"Foy" -- what an odd name for a Bangladeshi Park? Is it Irish or English? or something like that?

Your pictures remind of a several places I've been to since youth: I grew up in The Bronx in New York, and as a teenager, we used to hang out around the banks of the Bronx River -- a mud soaked thing that ran through the borough, cut through the Bronx Botanical Gardens and the Bronx Zoo, enroute into the Hudson or East River or whatever. I recalled that muddy bank kind of affair when I saw your pictures of Foy Park. Actually, the portion where the Bronx River goes through the Bronx Zoo is a bit like your Foy Park, but with live animals.

I also think about parts of the Don River or Humber Rive or the Rouge in the Toronto area, but I'm not a river bank kind of person any more. I've never been close enough to the Don River [what a great Russian allusion...as in the book, Slowly Flows the Don (which is definitely not about Toronto)] to be able to claim I traipsed along its banks. The Humber is so much more interesting when crossing a bridge or viaduct over it, and the Rouge is fascinating at the point where it spills into Lake Ontario, within radiation shot of the Pickering Nuclear Power Plant. The Niagara River is an insane cataract, aka the Falls, upstream, and a bit too wide and swift to appreciate downstream as it spills into Lake Ontario at Niagara on the Lake.

These are all rivers, not lakes or parks around lakes. It seems that Toronto the green is river country, with just one in-city lake or pond to consider: Grenadier Pond in High Park in the south west end of the city.

But in cities and towns in China, lakes abound -- either constructed or natural. One of my favorites is the Western Lake District in the ancient city of Hangzhou...made quite famous in classical Chinese poetry. One boards a small lake boat in the evening, bringing a "picnic" of Hangzhou chicken [another story for another time] and rice wine, and simply floats along as the pilot/oarsman steers with his/her feet from island to island and the sun sets in the west.

There is no herd of abandoned sea creatures to adopt, although one of my Chinese colleagues asked if I ever had squirrel stew as his response to seeing one of these furry little creatures scurry up a tree. When I feigned stupefaction at the idea of eating road kill, he said: that's the difference between you westerners and us Chinese. You think that's cute; we think it's food.

I noticed among your photos one poor creature with an eviscerated belly. Although the steel ribbing is plain to see, one wonders what caused the attempt on the creature's well being. We trust it wasn't a vein attempt at looking for food.

I get the impression, simply by the clothes you are wearing, that it is not searingly hot or outrageously humid. I apologize for such a Canadian turn on weather in the conversation, but it somewhat surprises me. I was expecting hot, steamy, humid, sweat dripping, pollution hung, heavy grey atmosphere -- something I encounter in places like Beijing and Shanghai, and can only guess at Mumbai and other parts of India. Be that as it may, Chittagong looks quite comfortable.

Well, enough for now. I want to get through some of your other blogs that I've been ignoring.

Victor

রেজওয়ান said...

Thanks for visit Bangladesh.
Best of Luck