Scottish highlands --a feast for nature lovers

Think of Scottish highlands! Picturesque mountain ranges, placid lakes and breathtaking valleys appear in front of your eyes instantly. The north and west of Scotland which is culturally distinguishable from the lowlands is referred to as the Scottish highlands. The highlands are mainly renowned for their serene and scenic beauty.

The drive from Edinburgh to the highlands is a feast for nature lovers, as Mother Nature shows her exciting colors all along the way. The entire stretch is covered by scenic mountain ranges and lakes. Narrow waterfalls amidst these mountains resemble a lightning that strikes a rain cloud.

Panchaboothangal

There are a number of lakes all through the way and 'Loch Lomond' is definitely the one to be mentioned. It is the largest fresh water loch ('loch' means lake) in Britain by area. The view of the lake with the surrounding majestic mountains is simply awesome. The blending of the clear lake water with the sky, mountains, cool breeze and mild sunshine reminds us of 'panchaboothangal', the nature elements land, water, sky, air and fire at one place.

Loch Ness

'Loch Ness' in Inverness is one of the most famous lakes and has the largest volume of fresh water in the whole of Britain. The never ending water will make anyone wonder if it is a lake or sea. Tourists queue up for the boat ride in "Loch Ness' to enjoy the scenery and to take a glimpse of the 'Loch Ness monster'.'Loch Ness monster’, popularly known as "Nessie monster' looks like a dinosaur and seemed to have been spotted by a person almost 1500 years ago. Since then many have reported seeing it but it has never been proved to be real.

As the boat dashes against the water current, we get drenched by the splashing water. You can also take a glimpse of the 'Urquhart castle' standing on the shore of Loch Ness. It is an old ruined castle of 13th century.

Apart from its scenic beauty, a Scottish highland also houses many castles. Inverary castle in Argyll is one among them. It resembles a fairy castle from outside and the interior is a miniature of the Windsor castle in London with majestic court rooms and kitchen. Unless you are a castle lover, this does not have much to speak for itself.

Eilean Donan Castle

Eilean Donan Castle in Kyle of Lochalsh (a village in Isle of Skye) is a must visit. Situated on an island where three great sea lochs meet, it is surrounded by majestic mountains and adds beauty to the beautiful island. The famous song 'Kandu kondaen' starring Aishwarya Roy was shot here. The breathtaking view from the castle can make everyone dance in glee, leave alone Aishwarya.

Highlands has not just caught the attention of Kollywood directors but also Hollywood directors. The famous 'Hogwarts express' in Harry Porter movie goes on the Glenfinnan bridge in Glenfinnan. To capture a good view of the bridge, you have to climb to the top of the Glenfinnan monument. Beware of climbing this, as the path is too narrow to get through for a fat person.

There is yet another fame to the Highlands. 'Ben Nevis', the largest peak in the UK is located here. A few minutes’ drive from Fort William, you can reach this peak's base. A cable car takes you to the top of Aonach Mor, a mountain adjacent to Ben Nevis.

Needless to mention the breathtaking view from the top, this spot allures many tourists to Scotland. This place gets more attention during winter for skiing and skateboarding in the snow and of course to see the snowy mountains.

A visit to the Scottish highlands is a good getaway from the hustle and bustle of city life.

Our travel

We (2 families) travelled from London to Edinburgh by coach on a Friday evening. From Edinburgh, we rented 2 cars for 3 families with another family joining us in Edinburgh. We drove from Edinburgh to Fort William on Saturday, covering 'Loch Lomond’, 'Inverary castle' and of course the natural scenery. We stayed in Fort William and went to 'Ben Nevis' the next day morning. The rest of the day, we visited 'Glenfinnan' and 'Eilean Donan' Castle and checked in at the hotel in Isle of Skye late evening. Though there is a road way to Isle of Skye, we took the ferry from Mallaig to reach the island to give a break to our drivers!

On Monday, we drove from Isle of skye to Loch Ness. After enjoying the boat ride in the lake, we drove straight to Edinburgh airport to catch our flight to London.

There are also coach trips from Edinburgh to the highlands. But if you can drive, I would suggest rent a car. We could not resist stopping at certain places on the way, which would not be possible in a coach. To mention a few; there was a gushing waterfall in between the mountain range, where we stopped to dip our feet.

When the sun came out after rain, a bright rainbow just popped up in the sky out of nowhere. We could capture it not only in our camera but also lock it behind our eyelids.

Weather

We went in late September. So the weather was mildly cold and just right. But Ben Nevis and Isle of Skye were colder. So, it is better to go with appropriate winter clothing. It also rains most of the time.

Accomodation

The first day, we stayed in a hotel called 'Spean Bridge' in Fort William. The hotel did not have good facilities and it was not worth the money. As we booked at the last moment, we had to go with it. I would not recommend this to anyone. 'Kings Arms' hotel in 'Isle of Skye, where we stayed the next day, was good with the sea view from window. It was close to the Skye Bridge.

Food

There are good Indian restaurants in cities like Fort William, Inverness and Isle of Skye. But on the way, there are none. Better to go with loads of snacks and drinks. There is a restaurant even in Aonach Mor peak. Nothing beats a hot drink in shivering cold!

Useful Android apps

After using Android for more than a year, thought I could share my list of android apps that would be useful to other android users. This assumes significance because of the fact that, there are too many apps in the android market offering the same functionality with a few bits of less or more features. It becomes really difficult to choose the right app for the right job.

I have divided this as Must-Haves, Good-to-have, Games and Specific-use apps. Must-Haves are required for the basic essential activities that you would want your Android smart phone to do. Specific-use apps are for a specific purpose based on the context.

Must-Haves

1. Astro File Manager/ES File Manager
   Astro is a File Explorer. As android does not come with a default file explorer, an app of this class is a must. Exception is Samsung phones that come with the "My Files" app, which is a basic file explorer. I chose Astro, as it is light on system resources including storage, never crashed, offers a smooth experience and does what it says. It also offers various tools, like sending a file via e-mail/bluetooth, app backup (I like this one as I can get the apk (android exe cum installer) for all the apps) etc. This was before the latest update to this app.
   
   Now, I have switched to ES File Manager as Astro's latest update was bulky and slow. ES File Manager has a better interface and a lot more options/features.
    
2. AndroZip
   Simple, basic Zip (compression) utility. This is needed to unzip your files that you may receive via e-mail.
    
3. ColorNote
   What the use of a smartphone if you cannot take notes? But oddly android does not offer any stock notes taking app. ColorNote is a note taking app, in which notes are essentially sticky notes. You can stick these notes to your home screen using its widget, which I found to be very useful. You can categorize notes using colors, justifying its name.
    
4. Astrid Tasks
   Talking about notes, to-do lists come to our mind. Astrid Tasks helps to take control of your myriad tasks from that bill payment to meet a friend at Starbucks. Its an easy to use personal Task management app with features even to set recurrence to daily, monthly, quarterly or even fortnightly as the recurrence pattern is set as every "n" days/weeks/months/years, where n can be any whole number.
    
5. Droidin
   Connectivity and social networks are the mantra of this age. Though most of the android phones come with a stock facebook app, that is not true with LinkedIn. Droidin was the only option, as only recently LinkedIn introduced its own android app after a lot of hue and cry from the android crowd. However the native LinkedIn app did not live up to its expectations as it is much resource hungry and slow compared to Droidin. So I am sticking with Droidin.
    
6. Moon+ Reader
   Again android fails to provide a stock eBook Reader. Thanks to the ever growing android market there are numerous choices. I chose Moon+ Reader as it provides the three important features, I needed - a friendly bookshelf, night mode and animated page scroll. Though I would like to have Text-to-Speech so that my books could be read out aloud, it is only available in the paid version and that too is yet to mature. Aldiko is one other reader which is as good as this (sometime even better). However I chose this as it needs lesser storage than Aldiko.
    
7. Swype
   Swype is an android keyboard. As the name implies you don't type but swipe to create a text. It takes a little bit of effort to switch to swype from a normal qwerty keyboard. Once you are used to it, there is no looking back. Its so much fun to write any big document, even with a small screen and small keys. A MUST have.
    
8. Llama
   Llama is a location aware app that makes your smart android phone even more smarter. It understands where you are and applies settings or triggers events that you had asked it to perform. For example, you want your phone to go to silent mode as you enter your office or you want your Wi-Fi to be switched on when you reach your home, Llama can do that. Llama does this without using your GPS and hence does not suck lot of juice from your battery. You just have to train this app to understand your location. That's it. A very smart app.
    
9. 3G Watchdog
   Not everyone has an unlimited 3G data plan. 3G Watchdog helps to keep a watch on your data usage and prevents you from breaching your data plan limits. It offers an excellent widget (which means the app should not be moved to SD), that shows the usage that on tapping provides you a summary of usage and how much will be consumed by end of your billing period.
    
10. K-9 Mail
    The default mail client has two important issues which made me to use K-9 Mail. One, it was never able to get Hotmail account configured. Two, on exchange 2003, it was not able to show me mail in HTML format. K-9 Mail is able to address both these concerns and it is free. However it has its own disadvantages. At times, sync-up is not real time. And does not mark your e-mails as "read" on the server, when you have in fact read that within K-9. Finally when your exchange server password expires, it just fails to sync up and does not tell you the reason. Yet, it satisfies its purpose most of the times. Along with this, I use Mail Droid for exchange server (my office e-mail) as it not only helps me view HTML e-mail but also compose an e-mail in rich text. Again like K-9, its a bit slow in sync-up, but yet serves the purpose.
     
11. MoboPlayer
    The stock android video player can only play limited number of formats. This pushed me to search for players that can play almost any kind of video format. There were several players in market that can do it. MoboPlayer is one. But its USP is, its less on resources, including storage supports gesture commands to adjust volume, brightness etc.
     
12. System Panel Lite
    System Panel Lite is a system monitor or task manager for Android. The functionality is very similar to Windows Task manager. This helps identify system bottlenecks and resource hoggers.
      
13. SwiFTP
    Copying files across your PC and Smartphone becomes more easy and natural with this app, that too wireless. This turns your Android phone into an FTP server, whose IP address is displayed to you. From the PC a network drive can be mapped to this IP address and used like a normal drive. No wires and most importantly your SD card does not go offline as it would with an USB connection.
     
14. Advanced English & Thesaurus
    An excellent English dictionary which and uses less resources, including storage. USP of this app is, you can download the dictionary database on to your SD card and hence does not need an internet connection to function, meaning offline dictionary.
       
15. Text Edit
    Sometimes you need a text editor to just type anything. A notepad would be one of the most used applications in a PC. I just wonder why Android missed such an essential piece. Out of the crazy number of text editors available in the market, this one is the most reliable text editor with all the essential features built-in, like Search & Replace and is also low on storage.

Good to Have

1. Unified Remote
   Another app that makes your phone much smarter. Unified remote turns your phone into a remote control for your laptop. There are others in the market, but Unified Remote provides customized remote for most of the PC applications like Windows Media Player, VLC Player etc., the basic one emulates the touch pad for your laptop. This app requires a server to be installed on your PC and should have Wi-Fi modem.
    
2. handyCalc
   This is a replacement for the stock Calculator app with a lot of added features.
     
3. Android System Cleaner
   Depending upon the Android phone you use, the importance of this app varies from "Good to Have" to "Must Have". On my phone, where the internal storage is dearer, this is a Must-Have as it helps me clean up the cache and history built up by various apps, releasing me the valuable storage with a click of a button.
    
4. ShopSavvy
   As the name implies this is an essential app for all those shop savvy mortals like me. Scan a bar code of any branded product with this app and it gives you the price of this across local and online stores and helps in your buying decision. However I hope this works very well in US followed by UK. Other areas I am not that sure.
    
5. handyConverter
   This app is an unit converter helps to convert any metric from one unit to other - convert miles to kilometers or Celsius to Fahrenheit
    
6. Speedtest
   Whenever I see my download gets delayed or my web page takes ages to load I use this app to check the speed. Very reliable.
7. My Data Manager
   Though 3G watchdog can keep an eye on your mobile data usage as per your plan, it cannot tell you which apps eat much of that data consumed. My Data Manager gives exactly that, data usage by app.
    

Games

I do not play much games. Found the small list below entertaining.

1. Air Attack
   An excellent war game considering the graphics and options. Despite rich HD graphics the game works with the storage required is very less. My favorite.
2. Glow Hockey
   Simple game. Addictive. Very good time pass. 
3. Angry Birds
   No comments. Every mobile or tablet platform has this.
4. Paper Toss
   Another Simple game. Addictive. Very good time pass. 
5. Traffic Jam
   Yet another simple game. Addictive. Very good time pass. 
6. Hungry Shark
   You are the shark. Catch and eat as much fish as possible. Avoid poisonous jellies or spiny fishes. Relish Bikini girls and savor daring boys.
7. Raging Thunder 2 Lite
   No game collection can be complete without a car game. This one is excellent.

Specific use apps

The following are some apps that are must haves based on specific instances.

1. London Tube Status
   Every London commuter needs this. With its widget the tube status updates come to your home screen. On selecting a line, you can even pick up a station and see the time by which the next train will arrive - same as the display on an underground station platform.
2. Pubtran
   Another London commuter need. Its a Tfl Journey Planner.
3. OysterMate
   Yet another London commuter need. Helps to see your Oyster Pay As you Go balance.
4. Got To Do
   A GTD app. If you are a follower of GTD (Get Things Done) philosophy of David Allen, this is a must. The USP of this app is, it is free and supports reminders. I am not able to imagine any app of this sort without a built-in reminder system. However most of them are without such a feature. But unfortunately, this app is no more available in the market. An alternate option is Shuffle. For reminders in Shuffle, one has to move the task to the calendar where a reminder can be set.
5. Tonido
   Tonido is an Android app for the Tonido personal cloud solution through which one can access their  home PC files anywhere anytime, if Tonido server is running on their PC.
6. ITA - Income Tax Act (India)
   Ready reference to Indian Income tax act
7. Yahoo! Messenger
   Name implies. With the video add-in you can do face calling. :-)

That's it. 

Hope this article helped you to find the right app you are looking for.  

Please share your android apps that you feel the best. I'll keep updating this list whenever I find a better app for a solution or an app that offers any essential functionality. One last tip - avoid any Task Killers as they do much bad than good. 

Key to your child's success

Your boss dumps you with lot of work. You get frustrated and think 'What's the point? He hardly acknowledges my work'.

The same thinking goes through your child's mind when you fail to appreciate his/her efforts. A mother asks a child (assume he is just introduced about plants at school) to write about plants. The child is enthusiastic and starts writing with the minimal knowledge he/she has about plants. With high hopes, the child shows to his/her mother.

The first few comments from her, 'What is the spelling for 'breathe'?'..'you have not written about photosynthesis'(not even realizing it is too much to expect at this age).

The child's face immediately shrinks and does not even hear the positive comments that she gives at the end. Next time , when the child is asked to write something, it will surely think of a way to escape..

It is unfortunate that human brain observes the negatives first before the positives, which is the reason for lot of relationship problems.. 

Just change your approach and say a few good comments to impress your child before pointing to the mistakes. After all , it is your child and you are not losing anything. Developing interest in a subject is more important than doing it right. This interest will go a long way in their learning.

In my personal experience , while teaching Maths to my 6 years old son, I realized this. Initially I used to give him Maths worksheets daily at home. Since I know his knowledge level, I used to give him the next level questions, thinking that he has to learn more. As it was tough for him, most of the answers used to be wrong and he lost interest in Maths. I realized my mistake and gave him easy ones on one day. He was able to complete all correctly and was so excited to get a 'fantastic' sticker and showed to his dad as soon as he arrived. The next day , I was surprised when he asked me to give him 'Maths' assignments.

I slowly increased the levels and changed the style and included other subjects as well. He does them with more interest than he used to do before.

Motivation is the key to your child's success. Open your child's heart with that key and you will be surprised to see his/her growth !!!