Disclaimer: The following is a true story, and any resemblance to any real person, place or event is purely coincidental.
If you are one of those dial-up losers, please go hunt a whale and come back while the page finishes loading. The exercise will hopefully be worthwhile. For fuller details, click on each picture. And bring your kids! Here goes…
Not so long ago, far away from Hopeful Capes,
and a few hundred miles away from the surreally beautiful, jacaranda-lined streets of the city named after Andries Pretorius,
an African sun was slowly setting in the breathtaking bleakness of a long-awaited spring in the jungle.
A black princess named Hopeful was heading in the direction of Wall Street for a long drink with her friends.
She strayed away from her more conservative friends while chatting up a flirting Prince Subprime, the latter clad in a dapper, striped suit. “Come on, in vest with me, heheh”, the suit smirked.
Suddenly, Princess Hopeful was attacked by a violent group of blood-thirsty animals. Prince Subprime ran away in fear. He had only heard of a bear run, but what was this?
In a few minutes, Princess Hopeful was dead meat.
The world watched by, ostrich-like.
“No one was willing to stick his neck out for the princess”, she cried.
No, not even the heavyweights.
The big cat was sated, having had the lion’s share of the killing,
but his cohorts were behaving like Lehmann executives. In no time, the vultures flew in to take stock, and then waited patiently for payday.
Watching all this, an obscure Indian celebrity turned away indifferently, eager for relief from the heat and dust of jungle politics.
He was tired of the constant sale sell-offs. Every dip is a buying opportunity, the stock market pundits used to say. He was tired of buying.
By next day, he heard someone say, “The bulls are finished”, and wondered what it meant.
Want more stories? There is a Buffett ready!
(Pictures: all mine, taken with a simple Sony Cybershot 7.2 MP camera)
A Twist of Word and Mind 
Cool Story, Awesome Jungle Safari! Looks like you had great fun! Nice Pics. Obama is looking at Buffet for the Treasury. Wise man he is.
Doc! You have been away for days so numerous,
Having such fun in deep African wild,
While we wait for our dose of weakly humerus,
Spouting frustrations with expletives mild.
It’s Kenya I think. Great pictures Doc, and I specially like the elephants and the ostrich, with the rolling hills in the background. Creative presentation.
I should have added that disclaimer in my videos post..most of them were unable to see the videos!!
So u went to Africa!! wonderful snaps! U bath with your specs on? 😛
Welcome back!
@ Reema:
//U bath with your specs on?//
Don’t you see, that is to figure out those four knobs, to watch the interesting “sights” around (carefully masked from our view), and when they have disappeared, to read “the fearless gourmet” so conspicuously parked just a lazy stretched arm away.
great pics! so thats how you werent seen around these days!!
Just one point, the jungel rule is not politics, the big cats have their share as a daily way and they don’t “hunt” for pleasure unlike in the modern jungle!!
@ Nita:
Doc’s copiously planted clues suggest South Africa (well, let me broaden that by saying Southern Africa), not Kenya. And while I have not travelled in those parts, I suspect that the East African subspecies, Struthio camelus masaicus, has pinkish orange neck and thighs, and the neck is longer. Maybe Doc can confirm.
Vivek:
Struthio camelus is the name of the ostrich species, but if you add masaicus to that, it means a paralytic disease of the ostrich.
The male is black, while the female is grey. I rode on one (I never ride on males). Yes, South Africa.
Dinesh Babu:
Thanks. I don’t know what Buffett will do. I doubt he does!
Nita:
Thanks. Hope your hols were great. SA, not Kenya.
Reema:
There are times I use my glasses on when others normally would not….
Sakhi:
Actually, things are not that simple. I believe tigers would kill even if fully satiated, just for insurance or pleasure. Or maybe it is a reflexive instinct. Lions don’t kill normally if full, being lazy as a rule. The buffalo in the pic gave 700 kilos of meat to the cats. The big cat ate around 50 kilos!
Lovely pictures! And the story was nicely narrated… Looks like you had a lot of fun! 🙂
And I wonder if someone would come back and say that they caught a humpback while waiting for the page to load! 🙂
Doc:
First of all my apologies for missing out a crucial ‘s’. It should have been massaicus.
S. camelus is the species. The subspecies take on an additional qualifier which, for the native variety in Southern Africa is australis. My comment was directed at Nita’s speculation that it could be from Kenya (where the subspecies is S. c. massaicus.
Amazing how one letter missed can make all the difference between kinetics and inertia 🙂 . Thanks for the education on masaicus
I knew it Doc, when you said ‘chests and waists of females’ in your last post, you meant female animals.
That’s some unconventional mating 🙂
Loved some of ur pics – looks like u really enjoyed ur vacation !
Vivek:
Thanks for the dissertation on ostrich genealogy.
Do you eat their eggs for your wit, wisdom and work?
(I just had to use another w word to complete the sentence!)
Anshul:
Aha! So you saw through me.
Prax:
Yes, it is a lifetime thing: you know, one of the things one should do before one dies.
Doc:
I was thinking more of taxonomy than genealogy. And no, I rarely eat eggs. For rough-and-ready pearls of wisdom such as this, the WWW suffices; and since I figure you to be selectively monaural, just to preempt any tracking error, I mean the World Wide Web, not Women’s World Wrestling 🙂
“I was thinking more of taxonomy than genealogy.”
Drats! I knew I was getting the wrong word!
I am monoaural? Thank God, for a moment, I thought you insulted me by saying I am moano-oral!
Enjoyed thoroughly! South Africa looks awesome. And compared to what’s been happening in the stock markets around the world, the jungle looks like Sabarmati Ashram. Indeed, mama gnu must be telling her baby gnu to “be careful, little one. It’s a stock market out there”
@Doc:
The last time I called you something beginning with “mon…” it was “monomaniac”. If I remember right, you did not insulted then; so why this sudden monition?
Great pictures Rambodoc, you are having lots of fun it seems. Turn a deaf ear to the screams and cries of the bulls and bears while you are busy researching . A wise man once said-
Money will not buy happiness, but it will let you be unhappy in nice places
Great pictures, Doc! I especially liked the flowering trees lining the quiet street and the sun setting behind the branches. But what kind of wild animal was that lurking in the hot tub?
“But what kind of wild animal was that lurking in the hot tub?”
Paul:
Some horny Indian animal!
Prerna:
Wisely said indeed!
Naren:
Hahaha!
Wow! You seem to have had a whale of a time ( and that is the whale I’d have liked to hunt while I waited for the page to load) I can imagine how this whole trip helped you get to a zen state where you couldn’t care about bulls and bears.
Good one as always doc. Nice to have you back, and so ‘zenned out’ too! 🙂
You know, you are not that old!! 😉
Oh, great pics, by the way. Specially the Zebra ones. 🙂
Usha and Rads,
Thanks for commenting, and I am sorry once again for the delay in responding. The zen also consists of a long latent period in response, eh?
Amit:
Which *%^%&# ever said anything about me being old? Just tell me the name!
While you’ve been busy enjoying the green spans in Africa, Greenspan in America has been dropping some bombs – which actually were quite obvious to all except the faithful. 😉
As they say, der aaye, durust aaye – I hope. 😀
Which *%^%&# ever said anything about me being old? Just tell me the name!
R-doc, I heard it from the PYT who called you uncle. 😉
AmericanAmit:
Greenspan, Fannie and Freddie, the Fed, the paper dollar (without the gold standard) and the economy are all products and symbols of a regulated, controlled mixed market economy.
People spelled out doomsday for the market way back in the Depression, too, but now we know better. Markets in a laissez-faire economy can fail, too, but there is a role for creative destruction in life. Much like in the jungle!
WOW! Nice to have you back. You had a great time it seems. Wonderful pictures! It was worth the wait for us, I would say.
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