Durban - day 1 - uShaka

I reached the place, had a coffee, freshened up and was set to start explore Durban. Caroline told that it would be a good idea to go to uShaka that day as it was the first day of the holiday and hence less crowd. I went to uShaka and got myself a ticket to the uShaka marine world.

The marine world in the aquarium is amazing. You get to see a lot of different fish. They are so colorful and i guess each fish is specialized in a different way. The aquarium is nicely built - its like a tunnel with glass walls inside a lake or a sea. It was big and they kept all kinds of fish from the tiniest to the sharks and tortoises and what not. There is also a chamber where they have kept snakes and spiders!! the chamber is really scary - you will be watching a snake which will be almost dead and suddenly from no where u will hear a loud sound which scares you to a jump.
So that was the aquarium and actually you can spend the whole day by just watching the fish. They are so beautiful.

Then there is this seal show. They have made a funny play or something where in the seal also has a part. I did not know that they are so intelligent. It can clap and dance and do other intelligent things. It was very interesting to watch this show.

After that i saw that the crowd was going to a theater kinda stuff where in the actual stage is a pool. There was the dolphin show!! It is one of the most fantastic things i have ever seen. There were some 3 dolphins and they were dancing in such a synchronous way that i dont think anybody can match. They also had put some nice music. So it actually looks like they are dancing to the music. But actually they are just listening to the whistle and watching the signs made by the trainer there. Anyways you can forget the whistle and the signs and think that they are dancing to the music. Its lovely !! One of the dolphins was around 30 years old. I did not know the they can live for so long. It seems they can live for as long as 50 years!! It was an amazing show!! the money was worth it.

So that was the end of the day. I had few beers and left the place. I had to find some place where i can find dinner. I went to a place up north called Umhlanga rocks ( it is pronounced as umshlanga - in afrikaans h and l together make shl !!). I found an Indian restaurant there which had a buffet. It was not that good and not bad also. But the owner was saving power on AC by keeping it off!!

I was tired at the end of day 1 and went straight to the guest house and slept. So that was day 1 for me in Durban. It was good :)

Durban - day 1 - the flight

I am deviating a little bit from the main flow here which was science. But anyways the title is Eureka and it means ' i found out'. And here i will tell how i found out Durban!!

27th April and 1st May were holidays in SA and i took the Monday off. I had five days and i decided that i will go and see Durban. I booked a return flight from Cape-town to Durban on the SAA. I found a place called 'The Palms' on the net which offered B+B facilities and the prices were reasonable and i booked the a room for 4 nights. I rented a car as well without which its impossible to travel in SA.

So it was all set. The flight to Durban was at 6.15 in the morning. Naren dropped me to the airport. The weather was not too good for a holiday. It was raining badly. Not a good start at all.
I got myself a window seat and sat looking outside at the sun-rise. For a moment i imagined myself to be outside earth somewhere in the sky and watching this plane. We were actually rushing towards the sun rise. It was beautiful to watch the sun come up (or technically speaking - the earth rotating towards the sun) .

The plane was traveling at around 850 km/hr and the earth rotates at around 1600 km/hr. So effectively we were rushing towards the sun at about 2400 km/hr ( actually it will be little less as we were traveling at an angle to the equator and not parallel to it) The distance between Durban and Capetown is around 1700 km. So the sun comes there around 1 hour early than in Capetown. Pretty interesting calculations!!

As the plane added around 850/km hr speed, i could see the sunrise at almost 15 minutes earlier than i would have seen it in Capetown!

Anyways, i was doing all this calculations and also savoring the colors of the sun rise and the landscape below. When i landed at the airport it was cloudy and looked as though the day was going to be like that all through. I got my car and with the road map given by Caroline (The owner of the guest house where i had booked ) i was able to reach the destination. I missed only one turn on the way! i could see many roads named after Indian names - Himalayan road, MG road etc.. my first Durban Indian exp. I had many more to go still!

Why do people age and die ?

Here is again an explanation found in 'the selfish gene' regarding the phenomenon of aging and death.

Aging is attributed to a lethal gene which gets activated only after a certain point of time. Why has this gene survived ? simply because this gene does not come in the way of reproduction and such stuff. If this gene had got activated much before, say at the age of 11, then, probably it would not have survived.

Why isn't there an allele(competing gene - which has some other effect than aging) for this gene ? May me at some point of time because of mutation and such stuff it may get created. Or may be it was there before and people used to live for ages and it got extinct because of natural selection - it wasn't favorable! As to why it is, requires another session of thinking.

The master programmer

Back to the genes. Again according to Richard Dawkins:

The gene is a master programmer. He draws a beautiful analogy between the chess playing computer and the gene as below.

A programmer feeds the chess playing program into a programmer taking into account the rules, strategies and many other things. He does not feed each and every scenario into the computer. That would take a hell lot of a memory. Based on the program, the computer analyzes each scenario, simulates different moves and chooses the best move by which it can survive for a longer time.
This is exactly what the gene does. It writes a master program which, like the chess program, basically contains strategies,policies to survive. Based on this program the survival machines(we and all other living things) are built, which again works based on the program's strategies and try to survive as long as possible!!

Why is the earth round ?

Why is the earth round ? Here is a simple explanation that i found in Feynman's lectures on physics:

It is because of gravitation. Everything attracts everything else. Earth has attracted itself as far as it can. Hence the shape. It is not a perfect sphere as centrifugal forces at the equator makes it a little elliptical.

Interesting!

The Selfish Gene

Have you ever thought that your gene can be selfish ??

I started reading this book 'The selfish gene' by Richard Dawkins and i was struck with amazement. Dawkins has presented a totally new picture of life altogether. It was very witty of him to think that way - out of the box. Here is what i have grasped from the early chapters:

Billions of years ago before 'life'(we still dont have a definite definition of what it is) started there was nothing on earth. Then gradually atoms began to combine and form molecules under certain conditions. Molecules then began to interact with each other and form complex molecules. There was a 'natural selection' involved here at a very low level - molecules choosing other molecules.

Slowly, some of the complex objects began to become stable and they started to replicate under some conditions. Here comes 'survival of the fittest'. The objects which replicated faster, which survived longer and which can inhibit/destroy other objects gradually became predominant.

From now on we will call these Objects - the genes. later on these genes started using the available material to build coats around them - for protection. They developed mechanisms to
get substance into the coat - use it - throw whatever is not necessary out and all that stuff.

The coat gradually became more and more complex and advanced and the gene started creating parts and delegating some specific work to those parts. It happily sat inside and controlled all the work. the genes learnt how to survive effectively.

I guess thats what we are today - 'survival machines' for the gene - the selfish gene.

I have started getting a wierd feeling about this whole idea. I am just a sack-full of some selfish genes which just get work done by me and they survive!!

Think about it :)