Cape Cod - II

(Part1 of this post is at http://ramanuj.blogspot.com/2009/02/cape-cod-i.html)

The next place in our itinerary was supposed to be our prime destination - the
Wellfleet Bay Wildlife Sanctuary. The wildlife had a different meaning from what we had imagined. I guess we should not have overlooked the statement in the website, "While the resident deer and fox may elude you, sanctuary wildlife also includes turtles, frogs and fiddler crabs". Frogs and Crabs for wildlife? Blistering barnacles! When I enquired at the front desk about wild life they said that we will not get to see most of them during the day, and that we will see birds and if we take the longer trail then we will get to see........ Geese! But the initial disappointment apart, the place is truly scenic. In the clutches of winter the sanctuary glistened with its frozen lakes and sheared trees. The evening sun provided a beautiful streak of light through the branches of the trees and the odd sounds from the birds added to the beautiful ambience. I only wish I could be here during fall.

A trip to Cape Cod without a visit to the beaches? No way. The kind lady at the sanctuary's front desk suggested the First Encounter beach to us. The beach had nice layers in the sand that looked markedly different from what I have observed back at home. Other than the beauty of the sun at dusk, the only other thing of note there was the water that gave us a lil surprise. We were standing close to the waters and noticed that the land where we were standing was fast becoming an island as water started filling the area behind us. But nothing to worry, it would have possibly raised to just about a foot. But then, was something to think back on.

All in all it was good trip and we were happy to hit the road after so many months of staying indoors. Cape Cod is good now; it would most probably be great during summer/fall.

Cape Cod - I

Some trips are remembered because of the marvel of the places visited and some are remembered just for the travel and the friends. The trip to Cape Cod was of the latter type. After staying indoors for all of winter we decided to make a trip to any place to celebrate the last week of being together as one of our friends was bidding adieu. Well, I am tempted to say that it was more to console him than to celebrate as he is going to India to lose his bachelorhood. But then, that's a totally different subject.

We made the plans on the eve of the travel. Desperate googling revealed few places that sounded great and we made a decent plan to cover 3 of the 4 regions in Cape Cod (the upper cape, lower cape, mid cape and outer cape). The route to the different places was sandwiched between trees that would have looked astounding during summer or fall. They did not look too bad even in their winter outlook of baldness either.

The first place that we visited was en route in Rhode Island. There was a flower and garden show that happens only for 4 days every year, may be to mark the beginning of summer. The show was pretty good with nice arrangements of flowers varying from a simple bouquet to the garden in front of the Eiffel tower. There were also many vendor shops for garden set-up and maintenance and other miscellaneous shops. The place was good, but I don't think it was worth the $17 entry fee.

The second place that we visited was the Cape Cod natural history museum. The website suggested it would be a good place to watch the flora and fauna of Cape Cod, but we got a different opinion when we reached there. A discussion with the person at the front desk revealed that the place was not what we expected it to be and she was kind enough to suggest that we can go on the John Wing's trail at the museum if the exhibits do not interest us. The trail lead us through woodlands into a marsh land and then to the beach. The place reminded us of villages back home. Wonder why we do not make those as tourist destinations.

To be continued

Pongalo Pongal

It was a sudden decision to try making Sakkara Pongal to celebrate the festival of Pongal. A quick chat with mom and an online recipe made me understand that I did not have the key ingredients (cashew nut, raisins etc) with me. But I had decided to go ahead and make whatever I could. The initial part of keeping rice with water and milk was too simple. Then came the tough part - powdering jaggery. With the rule in this country that not much of sound should come from the apartments, breaking jaggery with a mallet was not the best of options. Still I started doing it till I felt like I was hearing shrieks from the below apartment. Then sprung the ideas of cutting the jaggery with knife, using a can opener to crush the smaller pieces, using the fruit juicer etc. Ideas came and ideas went, and so did 1.5 hours. Tired of the effort I chucked the process and used whatever small amount of jaggery powder I could make till then. According to the recipe I was supposed to put 3 cups of jaggery for 1 cup of rice. Well, I had put half a cup of jaggery for 2 cups of rice. Hmmm, too much sweet is bad for health I added rice to the jaggery paste and then added some ghee and cloves. Voila, sweet pongal was ready. Just that it was too solid to be called pongal and had too less jaggery to be called sweet. Anyways, I did not indulge in finding a new name for my latest invention.

My apartment mate liked it and so did I. The sweetness was less but I preferred it that way. The thing that took 2 hours to prepare was over in 15 minutes. Yep, satisfaction!

Bhasky reminded me of the Pongal that we celebrated 3 years back in Indore. Nostalgia -> http://sbhaskar.blogspot.com/2005/01/happy-pongal.html

Things That I Will Miss

With just about 25 days left for me in this country I wonder on what all I would miss of this place and its people. Let me see…

Library: A huge public library near office that has every book I would want to read and every movie that I would want to watch. That too for free! I am surely going to miss the Saint Paul public library.

Sports: Be it tennis or table tennis, the court is either inside the apartment or right next to it. And again, free! I’m not too sure if it is the availability of the court, or the availability of time that is differentiates US from India. Also the availability of treadmills in the apartment itself is bliss for people like me who are lazy to visit a gym. (Though unfortunately the treadmill in my apartment stopped working in October ‘07 )

Time: As hinted early on, time is a huge factor. In India I never felt as if I had time for anything. Long hours in office regardless of the amount of work, spending time with family, and the like consume time in India. All those things are absent in the US. Get out of office at 5:30 pm and think of something to do.

Change of seasons: Having grown up in the hot-hotter-hottest Chennai, it has been a revelation watching the different seasons in the US. Enjoying the different faces of nature in the same place is marvelous.

Traveling: Not that India does not have places to visit. It is just that I become totally lazy when I am closer to home. Also the lack of company matters.

Lack of pressure: I am pretty sure that the minute I land in Chennai the usual “You are still with the same company?”, “Your friend of a cousin of a friend of relative is XYZ in company ABC after being just a BSc” will all start. If I lose hair in US due to change of water, I lose more hair in India due to pressure.

Movies: With the amazing internet speed and time at hand, I can watch so many movies online. I don’t think I ever fancied movies back home.

Concern for the physically challenged: Everything in US is made with the disabled people in mind. The pavements have small slopes for wheel chairs to get in from the road, the restrooms have lower urinals for the handicapped, buses have lifts and wheel chair restrainers, doors have a button to open them automatically so that people in wheel chairs need not struggle holding the door and the wheel-chair at the same time. If not anything else, this concern is something that I wish India could ape from the US.

So, do I like US more than India? Not at all. The above are things that I like in the US, but there is surely lots more to India than what US can offer me.

Football - Not Soccer

You cannot work in India and not know cricket. Everyone talks about it and you would feel left out if you do not have any interest in the game. A similar scenario prevails in the US with respect to American football. For a starter it is only Football and not American football anymore. The Football that we used to know in India and the rest of the world is Soccer here. Since I came to the US with the decision of not staying here for more than a year and since I was too lazy to start following a new sport, I was oblivious to football, NBA and baseball. The other 2 are fine, but not knowing football seems to be considered equal to blasphemy here. Good mornings are followed by discussions on the game and team lunches are filled with football opinions. Forget the Americans, even desi lunch and dinner chats center around football. I was still stubborn not to follow the sport but then the local team here, The Minnesota Vikings, started performing well during early December and the discussions in office became even more frequent. So I started learning the basics of the game and watched few minutes of some games.

As fate had it, the Vikings crashed out of the tournament as soon as I built some interest around the sport. Not that I am big fan of the team, I hardly know any player. It is just that the talks in office have reduced and following a sport is always easy when you support and follow a team. But let us see. With this new found interest I might follow the play-offs and determine a favorite for next year’s season.

New York Trip

The places that we visited at the big apple and my opinion on them:

The Statue of Liberty: It's a world wonder. What more to say? The statue and its ambience look awesome. The view of Ellis island on the way back is also good, though I did not step inside Ellis island and check what actually is there. There is also a good view of the New York skyline from the statue. Unfortunately it was too foggy when visited the place that the skyline was barely visible. Not too sure how foggy it generally is, but my guess would be that it could only be better.

Wall Street and Surroundings: The financial street looks like just another street. May be it looks different with the hussle and bussle of a working day. The bull in the adjacent street is also a tourist attraction. The trinity church and the adjoining skyscrapers are a good sight.

Ground Zero: What remains of the WTC building is a huge pit and heavy machinery working in it. The WTC station has a good design in front of it.

Brooklyn Bridge: This Bridge looks great. But the nearby bridge (don't know it's name) looks even better.

Saravanas: The saravana bhavan of TamilNadu fame is the one that I had lunch in. There are a lot of Indian restaurants in Lexington avenue and one needs ot be careful while selecting a good restaurant. There is a "Saravana Bhavan" which is not the one in Chennai. The one by the same name in Chennai runs here as "Saravanas". The food is tasty but a lil bit on the expensive side.

United Nations: The UN office has a guided tour every 10 minutes or so. They take us around the different chambers and provide us a lot of information. After a period of time the information that reflects off the brain but it is still a good place to visit. The sculptures and paintings are very nice to see.

Central Park: Just another big park. By the time I reached there it was too dark to see and enjoy the serenity. The rain also did not help much.

Times Square: If bright lights and huge billboards attract you then this is the place for you. But then, yours truly went there just to add it to his resume.

Ranganatha temple, Pomona: The Ranganatha temple of the Ahobila mutt is a beautiful temple. Atleast for a person of my background it radiated bliss all around. If my memory serves me right, the different sannidhis (sanctum sanctorum) starting from left clockwise are - Adhivan Sadagopan, a painting of Sathyanarayanar, Vedantha Desigan, Thaayaar, Ranganathar, Venkatesa Perumal, Aandal, Ramanujar, 44th Jeeyar of Ahobila mutt, Lakshmi Nrisimhar with Chakkarathazwar, Aanjaneyar, Garudazhwar. When we went there, Perumal was in kannadi aria (glass house) and a lecture was going on in front of the Sathyanarayanar painting.

Boston Trip

Some people have all the luck with flights. Yours truly not being one of them, my flight got delayed again and I reached Boston at a better-than-usual 2 hours delay. Given my trysts with flights, a 2 hour delay is as good as no reaching early.

On Saturday (Dec-22) morning my cousin guided me around the city of Boston showing me the prominent places. We started off with a drive from Natick to Alewife. Then we took the famous Boston subway from Alewife to Harvard. So at last I got to see the place where all those HBRs are produced. Since it is vacation time, no students or activities were visible. All that was there were groups of tourists taking pictures in the synagogue for business studies. I too took few pictures to say that I am a Harvard passout.. err I passed via Harvard. We then took another subway train to Kendall and passed via MIT as well.

The walk along river Charles would be scenic during most of the year. But given my timing I had to concentrate more on the ground to avoid slipping on the snow, than on the river and locale around. Still, it was nice to walk around the river and over the bridge.

We took the redline subway again to Downtown Crossing and changed to the orange line and travelled to the Hay market. We visited the Quinsy market, which is a big place with a variety of cuisines, and the Hay market, which is a farmer's market. The scene near the river was good with a view of the airport at a distance. We then passed through the New England Holocause Memorial. The memorial consists of glass towers with information on the holocause written around. Smoke rises from below the towers as one passes through them.

We ended the tour with a trip to the Prudential tower wherein we had our lunch at the Qdoba Mexican Grill. The prudential tower would have been a shopper's paradise, but then my cousin and I do not fit that bill.

The day was tiring with long walks, but was also satisfying given the extent of the city that we covered

Black Friday Sale

It was a tempting offer. Though the configuration was not what I desired the $300 price tag impressed upon me. I had decided to checkout Circuit City on the day after thanksgiving to checkout their laptop sale. As a good planner I enquired with my colleagues on their experiences with the Black Friday sale and deduced 11:00 pm to be the time that I had to reach the store. Yes my dear people who have had no experience of this sale, you have to queue up outside the shops well before midnight to get a shot at the awesome deals. None of my friends were willing to come to Circuit City as most their desired items were on sale in Best Buy. Staying outside a shop in the Minnesota weather for 6 hours in the night is no mean effort. I needed company! So I changed the plan from CC to BB.
The mercury scale read 18F (-7C) and so padding started. I had a jacket over a sweater over a sweat shirt over a t-shirt over a thermal. We reached BB at 11:30 pm and it was quite a sight. I felt like the most under-prepared person over there. Whoa! People were there with tents, fire, comforters, chairs and what not. The line extended to the side of BB and I lost most of the hope of getting the door buster deals. Still, we decided to stand in the line to experience the adventure. Few minutes in the line made us recognize that we were the only guys "standing" there. So we sent one of us back to get a comforter or a blanket on which we could sit. By the time the guy came back, the people behind us were joining the queue in their cars itself. Not a bad idea when the other option was to risk being held as part of the sale in the form of a frozen statue. When our friend retuned, we made him park the car in the queue and entered the comfort of it. We gave the chairs he got to the others outside and also had couple of them share the car space with us. One of them remarked “This feels like the pent house”. The other said, “From now on I am going to empathize more for the homeless”. Such was the cold outside. The temperature should have gone down by atleast couple of more degrees. I was thankful to God on the day after Thanksgiving.
At 3 am the shore keepers came out distributing coupons for the store buster deals. It was time to abandon the coziness of the car and enter the bitter world of bad weather again. Within few minutes I felt numbness in my feet that turned to pain even sooner. It didn’t take an Edison to deduce that people around were not dancing, but moving their legs just to keep them going.
Though there were about 60-80 people before us, we managed to get some sleek deals’ coupons. I got the Sony Vaio NR110E for $400. It is listed in Amazon for $800!

Success at the end of perseverance does taste sweet. After my friends picked up the things that they wished for, we stood in the serpentine line for about 20 mins just to pay for the items and get out of the shop. This is one heck of an experience that none of us is going to forget in a long time.

Malaria Country

There was a blood donation camp in office yesterday. My only worry was that a person donating blood should show a form of identification and I didn't have any with me in office. Still I went ahead with a colleague of mine to see if I can go around the rule. But as it happened there was another rule that we were against. We were from India!

According to the lady from Red Cross, India has malaria and so people who have visited India cannot donate blood for a year. Since I had not just visited India but lived there, I cannot donate blood in the US unless I live here for 3 years!

The lady said "Meet you after few years" and I just said "Not Happening".

Lightning Though My Lenses

Aug 11, 2007
I was reading till late as it was a Friday night. When I switched off the lights to go sleep, the place still looked bright. At 4 am in the morning, it looked as if God was testing his lights :)
Shot with a digicam and so the clarity is not that great.

Multicultural Adaptability

Most IT folks from India travelling abroad for the first time would have had the experience of attending some kind of course to make them aware of the cultural diversity between countries and help them adapt to the new culture. It is quite interesting to note that even people in US get trained to appreciate the culture of the Desi folks they would be working with. A colleague of mine once explained how the course helped him in understanding certain things about India and Indians. It was pretty nice except for few things that he said that were not applicable to India. Seems his instructor told him that whenever he had to eat in an Indian's home then he had to leave some food unconsumed in the plate to indicate that he was full and satisfied. I have always known the Indian etiquette to make a person complete his food in entirety. In my first company there was a manager who used to tell me, "In a country where there is a pocket of people not having enough food to keep them active, wasting food should be made a criminal offense". Not that I waste anything, but then I was managing the social welfare committee of the organization and this dialogue came while discussing about the possibility of transporting the unused food in our cafeteria.

Coming back to the multicultural training given to the US people, some of my colleagues recently attended one of those trainings. I was very curious on what they learnt about India and enquired about it. I shocked to hear, "If we had not heard about India from you, then we would have believed all of what the trainer said". Seems the trainer was neither a person from India who would know the country, nor an American who would better appreciate the cultural difference. The trainer had showed some clips of India, all from the places exhibiting poverty. Just few weeks back I had shown my colleagues my presentation on India that we presented in a local school. After watching the natural splendour in my presentation, they were bewildered at the pictures shown to them in the training. I was heartened to hear from them that they understand that every country in the world has places with poverty. I was even more heartened to hear them appreciate the respect given to elders in India. A colleague said, "I give respect to elders, but am still instantaneous in my replies to them. May be if I had followed your culture, I would be more organized and thoughtful over my words". Definitely a different way of looking at things.

Most of my colleagues understood that they cannot generalize any set of people. A simple example quoted by them was the difference between the people in the east coast and west coast of US. Everyone's different, and my colleagues have a better understanding probably because my team has had people from the east, west and south of India. They recognize each of us to be a different kind of person, and I recognize them the same way.

LV to LA to MN

We started from the Hoover dam at around 2:30 pm, a good 10.5 hours before the scheduled departure of our flight from LA. LV to LA is supposed to be a 6 hour ride. We had all the time in the world with us.... or so we thought.

The return journey was fine till we reached the outskirts of LA. One of the friends had to be dropped at his home near the Universal studios. The guy took the wheels and I had no idea that he was going to miss the directions. The poor guy, to his defense, had moved to LA only 2 weeks back. I, of all people, cannot blame him given my own directional sense. This guy missed the route, and circled around for a considerable amount of time. After enquiring at a shop, he was finally able to make it to his house. By this time, the tension had built up.

The guy who took the driver's seat next raced to his home. We had to pickup his car from his place, drop the rented car at the airport, and rush to another airport for our flight. In all the tension, the guy took I-5S instead of I-5N, and we were lost for the second time in an hour. When we finally got the right route and reached the airport, the rental office had closed. The instructions there said that we had to park the car and drop of the details in the envelope provided. Two issues - 1) There was no envelope provided and 2) the details asked for included the parking slot number and there were no numbers in the parking slots. We ended up doing some alter arrangements and rushed out of the place (a day later we found that we penalized a day's rent for returning the car late).

We reached the LAX airport at 12:40 am believing that we were well on time for the 1:00 am flight. But then, the airline rules had it that we were supposed to be there 45 mins before the flight departure. We were not being allowed to check-in and we had company on that count. The other guy and the girl who were in a similar spot were doing the fighting while yours truly was trying to figure out alternate strategies. As it turned out, a) there was no way to get into the flight, b) the best the airline could do was to put us in "standby" for the next day's flight, c) Standby meant that we would get our seats the next day if the flight had free seats, d) Airline staff do not reveal if there would be seats available in the next day's flight, e) a new ticket for the next day would make us pay an additional $180. We left the airport with the thought of having our bank balances reduce by the said amount.

I called up the airline reservation number as soon as the clock struck 3:30 am PST and told my story to the nice lady at the other end. When I told her that I wanted to book a new ticket to avoid the issue of not getting a new ticket the next day, she said "No need to, you are excellent'. I asked "Does that mean that there are many free seats in tomorrow's flight". The lady replied, "I can't say that but you are excellent". I remembered my services marketing class where I learnt that the good nature of one person changes the impression of the client on a company. My impression on the airlines just got a lot better.

This blog is getting too big. So I would just end saying that I finally reached home, just a day late, without paying a penny extra, and not feeling tired since I slept the whole extra day I had in LA. Happy ending!

The Las Vegas Trip

I will remember the drive to Las Vegas for just one thing - getting up in between my sleep to see a guy glancing at me through the window of the car and turning back to my friend and saying something like "Sir, the speed limit in this city is 70 miles. You were driving at 85. I will issue you a ticket". He sounded as though he was giving a movie ticket. Anyways, not getting perturbed by such trivial things (?) I resumed my sleep.
We reached LV at around 3:00 am. Having had my sleep in the car, I woke up in time to utilize the complimentary breakfast at the hotel. Unfortunately the rest of the gang was ready only by 12:00 pm. There have been times in my stint in the US when I have repented not getting my driving license. This was just one of those instances when I had to stay idle for few hours just because of this handicap. One more issue was that each member of the team was of the opinion that someone else had planned the trip. There was no plan and hence no direction. So a pseudo-SUV and a 7 seater followed each other into the Las Vegas strip without knowing where they wanted to go.
We started with the MGM casino. Frankly speaking I did not see anything special. It had the usual stuff that I have seen on TV. Some people crowded around an enclosed area for the attraction of the casino which turned out to be couple of lions. We headed off to search for another attraction called the Mirage volcano. Our sense of direction took us through Harah's Casino and another place before we reached the Mirage casino. One thing of note is that the monorail journey gave a good view of the city. At the Mirage we got to know that the show would start only at 7:00 pm. So we ended up experiencing gambling in the casino while waiting for the show. Now you know why the casinos have shows, and why they have them only at particular timings. In the excitement of the slot machines and roulette we missed the 7 pm show and were in no mood of waiting another hour for the next show. After checking out the tiger reserve, we came out of the Mirage (get it?). The next few hours saw us roaming in the streets of Vegas visiting Caesar's palace, Bally's, Bellagio (the fountain looks great), and giving Paris a galnce from the outside. I guess we spent more time searching for Chipotle than any attraction in Vegas. Chipotle has been one place where I feel comfortable with the food. It tastes just like the food back home.
After a peaceful night's sleep, and once again waiting till 12:00 for the others, we headed off to the Hoover dam. The enormous traffic increased my expectation only to be disappointed on the sight of the place. While we were at the dam a damsel cried for help. she shouted help several times and said "someone has gone down". Quite a few guys looked down the dam with concern. But then, the guy who was being referred to had justed fainted on ground. Guys were smiling at each other while the cop car raced in with water.
After that, started the ride of a life time....

Memorial Day Weekend

I have always been a bit lazy starting for a vacation. But once the journey starts I will be in it with all enthusiasm and the end of the journey would be marked by fatigue. This has been the case some time now. But the Memorial Day weekend vacation is something that differed in quite a few ways than my "ideal" vacation.

The plan was to go to Los Angeles, check couple of places in a day, drive to Los Vegas, spend a day and a half in LV, drive back to LA and take the flight to Minneapolis. Sounded a bit hectic, but the reality was more than just a bit. We landed in LA at 12:10 in the morning. To start with, the friend who was supposed to pick us at the airport had a production release issue and was still in office at the odd hour. He came to the airport directly from his office and went back as soon as he dropped us in the hotel. The next plan was to get ready in the morning and wait for the friend to take us to the Universal studios. Little did we know that the guy would spend the rest of the morning in his office. But the poor fellow did turn up at around 11 am and we took the "30 min" ride to Universal in about 1.5 hours as the city bustled with the long-weekend traffic.

We started our tour of Universal after some more delays at around 2:30 pm. A bit of planning inbetween the rides made sure that we covered all the major attractions there.

Shrek 4D
Pretty good if this is the first attraction that you see in Universal. Otherwise one might find it to be a dead horse after the other attractions. Also, since I had done some homework on the show, I missed the surprise element. While people were laughing or sighing when water was sprayed over their face when Donkey sneezed on the screen, I was left saying "Ok, wikipedia was right on that one"

Jurassic Ride
This was the ride for which we were in the queue for the longest time. But it was sure worth it. I was in the first row of the cruise and so had the surprises really surprise me. The dinosaurs came out of the water just when I neared them and sprayed water over me. Cool, literally. The ride ended in an awesome way with a near vertical 85 feet fall. When we came out of the ride there were pictures displayed taken during the fall.

Studio Tour
I expected the run of the mill "See this to your left, see this to your right" kind of thing. But the studio tour was very exciting. It did have the usual stuff of showing the studio, the sound stations etc. But it also had some excitement with the flash food, the tremor at a subway station, the "Jaws" shark coming out of the water near the tram, water bisecting and giving way to the tram, the dance of "The fast and the furious" robotic-cars etc.

Terminator 3D
This show was a combination of actors and animation. The 3-D animation part was especially good with the flying machines looking as if they are coming right in front of our face.

Revenge of the Mummy
After the Jurassic ride I was not expecting anything more exhilarating, but this ride went to another level. It was a high-speed rollar coaster that went both forwards and backwards. It was lasted just few seconds, but the thrill is worth....well, making me stay from roller coasters for some time.

Water World
Water World is a live show (no animations or rides). Actors perform stunts in and around water.I sat in one of the front rows not noticing the sign "Soak Zone". At 8:40 pm I could have lived without getting drenched in water. The show was good.

I guess all of us were satisfied by covering most of the rides in a short span of time. I was particularly happy that my planning had helped us in using time optimally. With this satisfaction, we left Universal heading towards Las vegas.

Hindu Mandir - Maple Grove

It was a sudden decision on Saturday to go a temple. I started off with my apartment mates to the Hindu mandir in Maple Grove, which is a 40 mile drive from my place. The drive seemed to take more time than it should have, but I am not complaining as it was pretty smooth and the natural splendour around kept me engrossed. The last 100 meter stretch though reminded of Indian roads with potholes ensuring a bumping ride. I guess that too added to the experience.

The temple looked good both from outside and inside. Though some of the sannidhis are still under construction, the general ambience inside reminded of the temples back home. The main sannidhi is that of lord Vishnu with the sannidhis of Thayar and AandaL on either side. To the left were sannidhis of Vinayagar and a Lingam. The entry to the sannidhis to the right was closed, probably due to construction. I could see one sannidhi to house a deity similar to Puri Jagannath. I could also deduce another sannidhi to be of Ram, as Shree Ram was written around it. The AandaL sannidhi has urchava moorthies of Ramar, Lakshmanar, Seetha, Anjaneya, and Chakrathaazhvar. I am not sure if the other sannidhis have urchavars.

There was Rama bhajan going on in one of the halls. I went for having lunch in another of the temple halls and found that they were celebrating Sri Rama Navami on Saturday itself though the festival is actually on Tuesday. Nice timing for my visit! The food was provided free on the occasion, but that just made me add few more dollars to the donation. The organizers are doing a very good job of running this place, and I feel that it is only fair that the devotees contribute to their capability.

All in all, it was a nice ride, good darshan, and happiness and tranquility to the mind.

Mall of America

On Friday, I visited an interesting place - The Mall of America. The place is HUGE. I guess it would take 3 days just to look around the whole place. Unfortunately I had just couple of hours owing to my unscheduled visit. A friend had come to town for some official stuff and I had to show him around the city in the evening. Having been in this city for few months now, I am assumed to be the expert of the place. but my earlier posting would have sure conveyed the message to my reader that I haven't actually been roaming around the city to know much of it. So, I did few last minute enquiries on the places to visit in St Paul and found this mall of America to be the one that had most people interested. Understanding the mammoth dimensions of the place I also enquired for the things-to-see in there. Well, background work does help, and in this case lead us directly to the under water adventures aquarium

The aquarium is enormous with about 4,500 sea creatures in it. It was a different experience looking at the sharks and sting rays swim around us showing their fiery teeth. But still, at the end of it, I felt a vaccuum. Guess I was expecting some kind of surprise element to it.With the time limit dawning upon us, we decided to skip the fun rides and just roamed around the shopping centers in the mall. Nothing much to my interest there, but this place would sure be a shoppers delight. So all you guys with girl friends, come to this place if you want to see your GF really happy. Or skip the place if you are more concerned about your credit card bill.

Chutti!

There was an announcement in office yesterday evening that the weather was getting worse and employees should make their judgement on when to leave. A colleague translated that "make a judgement" means "Stay in office". Anyways our floor was more or less empty by 3:30 pm. while driving back "P" and I were commenting that people were over reacting and that the place didn't look that bad. But then, there are times when you state, and there are times when you eat... your own word that is. Everything was fine till we arrived in front of the garage door. The car slipped sideways and stopped just short of hitting the garage card-sensor. The car was caught in snow and was not budging regardless of the amount of push on the accelerator. I got down to check if there was anyone around from whom we could borrow a shovel. The wind was strong, blowing snow and blindfolding me. P started shoveling with his window scrubber. After some effort we were able to get inside the garage with the car, but it took me few minutes to stop shivering.

Outside my apartment (Last weekend - before the snow storm)

The morning today started with the usual early rise and preparations to get to office. P was planning to work from home which meant that I was left to catch a bus to office. I called up the snow alert number at office to find that they would update the status only at 7:30 am. I usually leave home at 7:30 to catch the bus. But with the weather being bad outside, I would need atleast 5 minutes more. The main issue is that partners (offshore service providers) are not allowed to work, or even enter, office during holidays. So if I reach office and it turns out to be a holiday, then I might not be allowed in. The worst part of the scenario is that the first bus to get back from office is at 3:40 pm. What will I do in the roads, in this condition, for so many hours? I decided to check with the alert number once again, and, to my comfort, the announcement was already on for the office being closed. So here I am doing velagiri during day time while being paid a dollar salary.

Talking about salaries, the placement report from my alma mater is out and seems impressive.

Snowy Times 2

It has been some time, but I will still go ahead writing about last Sunday's events.

Some of my friends and I had planned to go bowling on Sunday. By the time all of us got ready it was snowing heavily and we had to put our plans on hold. The snow abated by afternoon and we started off. This time around I was ready to face the stuck door and the path snowy outside the apartment. One of my friends had parked his car outside the apartment and I entered it with the hopes of having a no-adventure journey. But then, the same old villain - snow - had other plans. The heap of snow around the car was so high that the car's wheels were getting stuck in them and we were not able to get the car out. We abandoned the car and walked to the apartment of another friend who was to join us. His car was safely parked in the garage and he was able to get it out with less of problems. Thus began the day's journey that was good for the initial part. We went to the bowling alley and spent the next couple of hours trying to incorporate some style into our otherwise simple throw-it-in-the-center technique of bowling. Nothing much improved and I soon reverted to the simple way of doing it. The others kept trying new styles and maybe that's why I scored more than everyone else in 2 of the 3 games that we played.

We left the bowling alley with the intention of having lunch at an Indian restaurant. The next quarter of an hour was spent trying to find the restaurant that one of us had suggested. Then the cars turned towards a known Indian restaurant about 10 miles away. I guess I would not have thought of travelling so far just to have food, but then when you get a free ride why even think? On the way I suddenly heard the shriek of the friend who was driving. He was desperately pushing the brakes which seemed to be following the disobedience movement. Within seconds, our dear old friend ice (or sleet?) made sure that our car slid and banged into the rear of the jeep upfront. Suddenly all the bizarre American insurance stories came to my mind. Good time to think about work! Everyone except one person was in a state of shock. But the only person, the driver of the jeep in front, just drove continuously as if nothing had happened and drove into the gas station at the corner. Our car also followed to the gas station as we were running out of gas. I couldn't believe it, we were running into this person again whose car we just bumped and caused I-don't-know-how-much damage. But then my friends were polite enough to go to the other car and check for damages. The driver of that car, a lady, confirmed that there were luckily no damages. Both cars had minor scratches, but neither of them cared much. I guess I was the only hyper reactive guy in the scene. Anyways, my friend who was driving was also shaken and he was more than careful during the rest of the drive.

The lunch at Nalpak (Earlier called Udipi) was awesome. This is the second time I was having food at this place and it has impressed me both times. It is a typical Indian place with Bollywood film music playing in the background and cricket on all TVs, but the star attraction, atleast for me, was the food. The day ended with a return journey wherein we got lost on the road, went around a bit, and more importantly reached home in one piece.

The news as of now is that a snow storm is expected anytime. Looking forward to more exciting days ahead

Snowy Times

It has been an eventful weekend considering my penchant to stay at home and celebrate laziness. On Saturday I was to help a colleague "P" in doing a half-a-day presentation. I woke up as usual, got ready as usual, and left the room as usual. But nothing after that was usual. The apartment door seemed to be reminding me of my need to visit a gym. But then, it actually reminded something else.... the heavy snow predicted by the weather men. The snowfall had been heavy enough to have the snow in the ground raise and block the door from opening. Anyways, the rice and dal cooked by my roommates for the previous night did have some effect on me and I prevailed over the door. The next step was to take about 50 steps to reach the road from where I would get my ride. My first step went into the snow... a bit too much inside for my comfort. Then the sight of few patches of non-snowy areas brightened me up. I felt that the snow might be slippery and the clear patches might provide me a safe route. The next step that was supposed to lead me to safety out of the slippery snow turned out to be the contrary. I am still not sure, but recollecting the way the patch shined it would not be a bad guess to state that it was ice. I guess you can imagine what would have happened. Well let’s just state that there were more parts of my body that were in contact with the ground. Anyways, a 7:40 am start meant that there were no kids (or girls) around to laugh at the incident. I gathered myself and made a conscious decision to keep away from the "safe" patches and into the snow. A colleague came to pick me up and, after his car came to a slipping stop in front of me, there were no incidents till we reached the presentation hall.
A week back "P" and I had discussions over the best laptop to buy among HP Pavilion, IBM Lenovo, and Sony Vaio. P kept insisting on Vaio and I still ended up buying HP. P is a proud owner of a Vaio, but fate struck when his laptop failed to start before the presentation. We were not carrying the presentation by any other means, and his lappy did not give even give a blinker of hope, literally. It had no sign of life. The minutes that followed were filled with plans B to Z that we never thought of earlier. Let me keep the specifics to myself and just say that the presentation went fine. And yes, breakfast and lunch also were fine. Can't help mentioning them as they were the second set of things that motivated me to the Saturday presentation. Oh, by the way, P's laptop started functioning at 2:30 pm. That's when we ended the presentation.
I spent the rest of the day with my own laptop trying to figure out as to how a windows file got corrupted in it. The good news is that the system is working now. The bad news is that it does not have any more of the contents that I put in it. Ofcourse, it was a conscious decision to chuck away my unfruitful attempts of repairing the system, and to revert it back to factory settings.
This blog has become big with just Saturday's happenings. I guess the Sunday events wouldn't mind waiting till tomorrow to enter the virtual world.

Rise and Shine

The weather is changing for the better and it feels awesome. I never thought that I would find 3 degree celcius to be so comfortable. But I am not alone on that. Some of my colleagues also expressed their delight at the temperatures today. Well, having experienced sub-zero Farenheit temperatures for the past couple of weeks, the temperature outside is definitely a pleasant change. The best part is that things can only get hotter for the next week or so. With a new laptop, mobile connection and good weather, things seem to be getting brighter.