crane-ial stuff

one of the recent forwards in an egroup was the story of an Indian crane operator, Babu Sassi.
while that seems to be a hoax - per the hoax slayer, it led me to look more closely at the construction cranes that seem to surround our building.
one HUGE concrete tower of residences that are coming up on a reclaimed land [which had drain water flowing in that area and landfilled over the last few years.. and two commercial complexes - one a hypermarket and another a five or seven star hotel to be operated by the Taj group, adjacent to a bowling alley, multiplex cinema halls and an ice-skating rink!
i have been watching the construction progress over the last few months.
the first glimpse of the crane - which i later came to know as a tower crane - was what appeared to be scaffolding and a 'helicopter cockpit'.
i wanted to see it put together, but unfortunately, that happened when i was travelling one week.

last week, i suddenly noticed that the crane had grown taller! it seemed to have risen with the construction - having completed the concrete work for 5 basement levels of parking and slowly rising over the ground level.

after some web research i found that it was a self-erecting crane! neat concept of bootstrapping applied to a practical problem.