Indy Telecom & Industrial Media

No, I am not talking about Skyline Chili, although I do love their food. Here is a picture of Cincinnati taken from Newport on the Levee, right across the Ohio River.

We visited the Cincinnati Museum of Natural History & Science yesterday. It was loads of fun. Fun pictures are up on Flickr.

This Sunday, my parents, Lana and I went to the Cincinnati Zoo. It’s apparently one of the country’s top five zoos, but our experience there definitely did not reflect that claim.

First of all, we had trouble finding the place - the signs were wrong, and we kept going around in circles until we decided to finally stop at one of the entrances. I walked in and talked to a woman at the office, who then agreed to open up that gate and let us through.

Once inside, we realized a couple of things. First of all, the layout of the zoo was not particularly straightforward. Secondly, a lot of the animals were off the exhibit or were big disappointments. They did have a wide variety of themes and there were some very interesting animals, but we were still a tad disappointed at the fact that a lot of the animals that we were interested in were unavailable.

On top of that, they did not even have some of the more famous animals available - and I felt quite bad for some of the ones that were indeed being displayed. For instance, they had the Polar Bear out at when the weather was 100 F outside. The poor animal was panting and trying to cool itself off in the water, but I imagine that the water and the land itself would be so warm for it to rest inside. That was just plain cruel.

Anyway, here are some interesting pictures of the zoo from the visit. Enjoy.

Yesterday, we were at the WTA Tour Cincinnati Women’s Open semi-finals here at Mason, OH.

The first singles match was between Akgul Amanmuradova of Uzbekistan and Akiko Morigami of Japan. While it did look like Amanmuradova was a shade more skilled, she gradually seemed to grow weaker as the match progressed and lost to Morigami. The final scoreboard read Amanmuradova-Morigami: 7-6, 4-6, 3-6.

The second singles match was between Sania Mirza of India and Anna Chakvetadze of Russia. While Sania was seeded #3 and ranked #38, Anna was seeded #1 and ranked #8.

Sania won the toss and elected to receive — which made sense as the game progressed because Sania did tend to have a lot more faults and hit the net a lot more often than Anna did. So, she was indeed better off receiving rather than serving.

Sania did play a decent game, but unfortunately she lost to Anna in the end. The final scoreboard read Chakvetadze-Mirza: 6-2, 5-7, 6-3.

Unquestionably, Anna was the better player — she seemed more talented and it looked like she was making Sania run every which way on the court. Also interesting was the fact that Sania’s serves were nowhere as fast as Anna’s and she had far fewer aces than Anna. She also seemed to have a much better temperament than Sania, who seemed to question half the decisions the referee was making.

Right after she lost the match, Sania threw her racquet on the ground and stomped off. She seemed rather grumpy, and in fact refused to even sign autographs for anyone.

While I went there supporting Sania, I was rather shocked to see her behaviour - true, she’s a human being too and she has emotions, but her attitude and game-play was probably the worst of the four that I had seen playing that day.

At the end of the day, I think Anna Chakvetadze just earned herself a new fan. Besides, she’s way prettier, too. =)

And oh, here are some more pictures from the tournament for those who are interested.

Update: Anna Chakvetadze won the Sony Ericsson WTA Tour singles title of the year here in Cincinnati, while Bethanie Mattek  and Sania Mirza won the doubles.

Happy Fourth of July and all that. I was out last night with my family and Lana to watch the balloon show at Coney Island Park here in Cincinnati.

It was pretty but a bit of a let-down when the balloons did not take off. On the other hand, the fireworks were fabulous. So, here are some pretty pictures (of the balloons). Enjoy!

Here are some pictures of Lorikeets from the Aviary at the Newport Aquarium.