Labor Day weekend

Its been a long time :)

After a long long time, got a chance to be behind the wheels again.
Had a trip to Minneapolis for the Labor Day weekend. A Kia Spectra. 1200+ miles. 3 of us. Was nice to clock 120 mph, that’s more than 190 km per hour, and the vehicle was still ready to be pushed harder. The only deterrent was the threat of a speeding ticket. I wont mind a ticket to hit may be a 150+, I am going to rent out a better beast :) (eying on a porsche ;)

They are right, to experience the American way of life; you need to hit the freeways. I am sure I can drive for days at a stretch in conditions like this. Hit the road early, and before you realize, you wud have covered miles and hours. Have breakfast from Denny’s or IHOP. Enjoy those egg delicacies, bacon, sausage, pancake… More miles and hours… time for lunch. Its absolute bliss.

And that too, leaving for a destination which is 400 miles away, with the help of a couple of google map print outs and reaching without cross checking with a single soul. Can’t think of doing the same back in India.

The funniest part was, even though we could escape tickets when we were cruising at 120+, we got caught towards the end of the journey. When we were just 15 mins away from our place on our return journey, we got a speeding ticket for driving at 53 when the limit was 35. :) I dread to think of the consequences had we been booked when we were doing the actual stunts :))

We have been to AJs (that’s what Ajay calls himself these days) place. The eligible bachelor of a cognizant company who goes around in a red Mustang has turned himself into a superb cook. His culinary and bartending skills have touched envious heights :) Food and drinks were just awesome! A trip to Duluth to complete the weekend.

A picture tag

Here is tag from Alexis. Sorry Alexis, I am a bit late :)
Here I go...

1. Most desired celebrity


Aishwarya Rai
I am crazy about this super personality. Indian but truly international. A face which will cheer you up and a smile that will knock you down.

2. Want to do this some day



Scoring a goal in a world cup match. Going out there in the middle, sharing the same field with those giants, and then tossing the ball in.

3. Want to visit this place


Yea rite. It’s a podium. Yes, an F1 podium. I am crazy about driving. So nothing like being invited to that ‘place’ for all the right reasons :) Let me make it clear - I dont follow F1, just that I am crazy about driving.

4. Random Favorite


Do you recognize this guy? Yea he is the living legend - Diego Armando Maradona. God of millions of football fans. I like him for his heroism in bringing up his club and his country from nowhere to the spot light. And then for fighting all on his own and coming back even after being ignored by everybody else, . This god was there in the stands this time, for each Argentina match, cheering them. I admire him for his spirit.

5. I was tagged by Alexis.
Comment:Post the picture of the place where you were tagged, and if you picked up the tag yourself then the picture of the place you picked it from. Click on the image to see the enlarged view.


Tagging the kickass dude.

They hit 'me' once again

Of all the places I have been to, Mumbai is my dearest. I simply adore the spirit of that city, the feeling of being treated as a ‘Mumbaikar’.

And those bastards hit me where it matters. This is not the first time, and probably this wont be the last also. But then, we don’t care. We will fight back. Just to prove all those bastards wrong, we will stand on our feet again, continue our work as if nothing happened.

Long live the brotherhood!

One around, two on top

I know I havnt been so regular at blogging… had loads of work… tuff days… conf calls… dead lines… escalations… all typical stuff of software industry.

Now the first phase is over… I will be here for some more time, dunno if its for good or bad. :-)

Another long weekend. July 4th weekend. Since 3rd is a working day for us and our project kicks off on that very same day, I cudnt take a day off and plan for a trip… So I am stuck here.

Since I didn’t have anything to do for the evening, I thought of getting a hair cut done. By the way, I got up late, and was watching both the soccer matches, so it was 6 when I left my house for the haircut. Since this is a long weekend, most of the saloons remained closed…I wandered a bit and finally managed to find one… I checked the timings and it was supposed to close at 7:00 PM and it was already 6:50 PM. The lady allowed me to sneak in even though I didn’t have an appointment. Thus far things were working fine.

Ok, so this “hair stylist” wraps me in a black coat, and looks at me for directions… I said “Just a regular trim”. She replied “Just a regular cut?”. If only I had answered in the affirmative, everything would have gone well. But at that split second another conversation flashed through my mind. Sometime back I had asked my friend abt hairstyles here, and he had said something like ‘One around , two on top’ – which I understood to mean something like they make it somewhat close on the sides and allow double of that on the top.

So this bit of information was retrieved by my brain cells, processed at lightning pace and was delivered as output to the hair stylist. Should say I was trying to impress her by showing my knowledge about the ‘in-style’. (Heck, this one around thing is something which every T, D and H knows. So there is nothin much to show off in that) Anyways, I proudly proclaimed ‘One around, two on top’. She gave me a quizzical look and offered “That would be too close, should I try one around and three on top?”… I was like, well, err, ok, fine, go ahead.

The action that followed also took place in lightning speed – She took out a trimmer, put size 1 blade and mowed the entire left side of my head in one swing :-(. Before I cud respond, I saw the skin of my head on that part of my head :-(. It was bad enough. Then I thot – Ok, may be she will now trim the hair on top with a pair of scissors and adjust it a bit… I was waiting for her to finish off the side job and then instruct her on how to trim the top floor. I saw her changing the blade. I thot she was going to make sides smoother or something, but what she did was changing form size 1 to size 3 and mowing down a part of the hair on top of my head :-(. Its not as close as the sides, but then having 1 millimeter hair at some part of your and having 3 millimeter hair at other parts looks almost the same. :-(

Now I look almost like I did a clean shave. I wont forget the way my roomie was rollin on the floor laughing when he saw me after 'the cut'. Dunno how will I show my head in the office now. Have decided one thing – no more going for ‘in-style’ things. “Just a regular trim” is all I am going to say in any saloon for as long as I remember this.

Oom-pithe-tal

Oom-pithe-tal (OPT) is a French phrase which can be loosely translated to mean ‘the state where life is ordered and tranquil’. I have been experiencing OPT ever since I landed here in Chicago…

1. When I landed, I was supposed to be here for a week (for the initial kickoff) and then move to Troy for my onsite assignment. But then the plans got changed and I was asked to continue here. My house lease plans went for a toss and I had to intrude into one of my friend’s apartment. I didn’t know that was just the beginning of things to come.

2. The apartment complex where I decided to stay had strict rules about its tenants and guests. They didn’t encourage guests using the tenant's swipe card for admittance (yea, we had to swipe a card each time we entered the building), so my friend had to see me off and pick me back each time I went out and returned.

3. I couldn’t receive my parcels as I didn’t have my name on the apartment mailbox.

4. My project work sucks.

5. I applied for an SSN, and when they sent the card, it was bounced because I didn’t have my name on the mailbox.

6. I applied for a bank card. The first card which the bank sent had the same fate as that of my SSN card. I applied again, and asked them to send it to the local branch. I went there and collected it, started using it. On the third day, when I swiped my card after buying a cold coffee, the cute lady at the counter smiled at me “This card is no good”. Transactions were declined on that card. I checked with the bank, they said there was a ‘lost or stolen’ reported against the card. The lost or stolen was in fact on my first card. Somehow they messed it up. I had to wait for another week to get my third card.

7. I still havnt applied for my driving license.

8. I applied for a credit card. It was declined. I know you are not surprised, so here is the rest of the story. I had citibank calling me three times, conducting a session for me and my friends before I left for US, educating me about the benefits of the card they are going to give me. They even followed up with a mail after me reaching here. I finally applied and they promptly rejected.

9. I used to stay at the 46th floor and the reception for my cellphone was pathetic to say the least. I used to get connected once in a while; I tried drawing a pattern between the connection availability and the strength of wind, but cant say I was successful.

10. My friend fell ill.

Finally to take care of 2, 3 and 9, I shifted to a new apartment.

11. After moving in, I realized that my new place has absolutely no connectivity for cellphones. Before this, I used to get calls, only problem was occasionally my calls were dropped. But here, I don’t even get connected, so don’t have to worry about dropped calls any more.

Now I am eagerly waiting for the next bazooka my way :_)