Abhijit Athavale's Blog

No, I am not in North Africa or Arabia, but in historic Pune, the seat of Maratha Power. The Kasaba in Pune predates its eminence maybe by a thousand years, perhaps less. The Arabic and Turkish meanings differ somewhat, but not by too much -  A  kasbah  ( / ˈ k æ z b ɑː / ,  also   US :  / ˈ k ɑː z -/ ;  Arabic :  قَـصَـبَـة ,  romanized :  qaṣaba ,  lit.   'fortress',  Arabic pronunciation:  [qasˤaba] ,  Maghrebi Arabic :  [qasˤba] ), also spelled  qasba ,  qasaba , or  casbah , is a  fortress , most commonly the  citadel  or fortified quarter of a city. [1] [2] [3] [4]  It is also equivalent to the term  alcazaba  in  Spanish  ( Spanish:  [alkaˈθaβa] ), which derives from the same Arabic word. [5] [6]  By extension, the term can also refer to a  medina quarter , particularly in  Algeria . In various languages, the Arabic word, or local w...

The Moffett Field in Mountain View, California is a federal airfield that dates back to the 1930s. It's been turned into a museum now.  You can see what it looks like today in the photograph below: (Photo credit: Ikluft ) I lived in the San Francisco bay area for twelve years, but never visited this place despite driving on highway 101 umpteen number of times past a visibly huge hanger 1 (that you can see on the left of the runway in the image above) made for dirigibles (airships or blimps a la the infamous Hindenburg). We have seen a rather comical take on a Nazi blimp in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade: On a trip to the bay area this time, I decided to drive up; couldn't have asked for a better day - a beautiful, bright typical summer's day with a cool, cool breeze from the bay and not a cloud in the sky. This is THE California weather that people pay higher taxes for. A little bit of history of the Moffett field - several good web sites  discuss it in depth so I won...