Return Journey Fiasco

My return flight from Chicago O'Hare International Airport was scheduled for 6.20 pm on Thursday. I had decided to drive to the airport and return the car at the AVIS location there. I had seen the route on Google maps, but I had forgotten to take a print-out of it. All my Illinois maps were also packed in my bags. So I decided to risk relying completely on my memory, which turned out to be a bad idea. It didn't take long for me to be lost in downtown Arlington Heights, and time was slipping away. Just as I was about to stop and ask for help, I spotted a road I'd seen on Google maps and heaved a sigh of relief. I soon got back on track, fueled-up the car and reached Avis.

It was an emotional moment for me to say goodbye to the dark gray Hyundai Sonata that had been my constant companion for the last two and a half months. The AVIS shuttle dropped me off at the airport. After checking in my bags and passing through security, I settled into the United First Class lounge waiting for the announcement of my flight. One is really pampered and treated like a celebrity at one of these lounges! Traveling first class also means you're the first into and the first out of the aircraft and your bags are the first to show up on the conveyor belts :)

Boarding the aircraft, taxiing on the runway and taking of happened as usual. Once in the air, I reached out to the buttons on my armrest to tilt my seat into a more comfortable position only to find a small sticker on it that said "Defective - defect # 438". My seat would not budge from its initial upright position. That would mean I would have to sit straight in that position for over 8 hours till we landed in Frankfurt. That would also mean that my company is paying a first class fare for me to sit in a seat that is worse than an economy class seat!! I immediately called one of the flight stewardesses and expressed my displeasure about the whole situation. After discussing among themselves for a long time, they finally decided to exchange my seat with another passenger. The other guy was probably traveling for free or else who would agree to sit there? Also, he was all pally with the staff on board, so I suspect he was a United employee. Anyway, I got a proper seat, and the rest of the flight was very comfortable indeed.

Once in Frankfurt, I made my way to the United lounge, took a shower, had breakfast and settled in the lounge waiting for my next flight announcement. BIG MISTAKE!!!
My next flight from Frankfurt to Bangalore was a Lufthansa and this was a United Lounge, and they wouldn't announce departures of flights other than United. By the time I got suspicious and went to the lounge reception, it was too late. The lady said that my flight had already departed, and I would have to take the next flight. Imagine my horror when she said that there were no more flights to India that day, and the one to Bangalore the next day was all booked. I would have to take a flight to Mumbai the next day, and then another one from Mumbai to Bangalore. All of this would cost me about 200 Euros (a cool 12500 Indian Rupees). But since I didn't have a choice, I gave her my credit card and asked her do whatever she thought best while I waited in the lounge cursing myself :(

After about 5 minutes, I heard them calling my name over the intercom; and I slowly walked to the reception to find out how much damaged my pocket had suffered. Now comes the best part...
Imagine my surprise and joy when the nice German lady at the reception said that my original Lufthansa flight to Bangalore was delayed and I could still make it if I hurried. I could not believe my luck and nor could she. She said she wished some of my luck would rub off on her. I hope it does, because she was a very pleasant woman indeed.

From there I ran like a madman through the mighty Frankfurt International Airport so that I would make it in time to my departure terminal. People all around were staring at this psycho running like that, but I was too overjoyed to care. I made it well in time and got my boarding pass. Everyone else in the terminal was sulking because the flight had been delayed for about 2 hours, but I was the only one who couldn't stop smiling. They must've surely thought I was insane :)
In my hurry, I forgot my Wrangler jacket in the United lounge itself - but I'm still not complaining. I'm just glad I could catch my flight!!

My Lufthansa flight was Business Class but I would say it was as comfortable as, if not more comfortable than United First Class. There was a South Indian woman sitting next to me, who had been upgraded to Business Class since she was carrying. This was her first time in Business Class and I spent some time showing her all the cool stuff at her disposal :)

Thankfully everything else went well and I landed in my own dear country a little after midnight, on Saturday, 27th September 2008.

Time To Say Goodbye

I was proud of Project Sears, and I wanted to keep it. But then, to fly it halfway across the planet would involve rolling it up and placing it in one of those tubular containers. This, I was sure, would damage my beautiful piece of art :)
Also, I wanted to keep something in Libertyville for Satya & Chebs and the other guys to remember me by. So I decided that Project Sears would stay in the country in which it was made.

I had already kept the big poster in the boot of my car, and in the morning took it to office and kept it in Chebs' place. I'm sure he got a shock looking at the enormous Sears in his cube! Everybody liked it, and we also chose a place where it would be put up.

Those guys promised to send me a snap of it when they had put it up, but that snap has still not come. I hope they have indeed placed it there as promised. I need to remind them to send me a snap asap, and when they do, I'll upload it here as well.

Chebs, Praveen & I had a quick lunch at Viccino's, after which I said bye to everyone and left. Satya was not at work, but he called me to wish me a happy journey.

The Sun At Last

I was pooped by the time I finished Project Sears. I must've fallen asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow, which was around 3.30 am. At 5.30 am the alarm rang, but this time I couldn't press snooze and simply go back to sleep like I had done on countless occasions over the last 2 months. Had I done that, I would've missed the sunrise over Lake Michigan yet again, and I didn't know when (or if) I would get the chance to see it again.

So in the next 10 minutes I was out of my bed and in my car, driving towards Sunrise Beach. This time I followed all the posted detours, and managed to get there at about 6.30 am - well in time for the sunrise.

After parking the car I walked down to the beach and positioned myself on the rocks. The Sun did rise but unfortunately it was a cloudy morning, so the charm just wasn't the same as last year. Nevertheless, I was proud to have caught the Sun; so that I could finally strike-off all the entries in my "To Do in the US" list.

<- Destination

Sunrise Beach and The Rocks ->

<- Lake Michigan & The Sun

Project Sears

The evening of 24th September, 2008; my last evening in the US. I was working late that day, getting all my documents in order so that there wouldn't be any problems during my return journey. But before I left, I had to complete my experiment, the one I called Project Sears; and go and catch that elusive sunrise :)

I left work at around 9 pm and drove to Fedex Kinko's at the intersection of Butterfield and Peterson. Luckily it was open and I was able to buy 4 large sheets of chart paper. Then I went back to the hotel and borrowed some cello-tape from the hotel reception, and got to work. First I had to stick the 4 large sheets together to form the base. Then one-by-one I had stick all the color print-outs in the right order to bring my Sears Tower to life!!

[put the pic on the floor here]

It was back-breaking and time-consuming work and by the time I was done, it was 3 am. I took my finished masterpiece to the hotel reception and asked the guy to click a few snaps.

The master and the masterpiece ->

Then I bid goodbye to him because that would be the last time I would be meeting the friendly man. I took the large poster out and kept it in the boot of my car, so that it doesn't get damaged.

<- Sears in the boot!

I finally hit the sack at around 3.30 am only to be rudely awoken by the alarm merely 2 hours later...

The Elusive Sunrise

If you haven't watched the sunrise over Lake Michigan, you have missed something...
You can only watch this sunrise if you're somewhere on the west side of the great lake, and thankfully, that's where Chicago happens to be.

During my previous US trip in 2006-2007, I had witnessed this sunrise twice; once with Moiz and Ramesh, and then again with Vignesh & Ramesh. Of course, if you want to experience it, you have to sacrifice on your sleep a little, conquer your laziness, throw yourself out of bed by 5 am and get out of your house by 5.30. If you consider that I had done this twice, you can probably begin to imagine that there must be something to this special sunrise.

I'm sure it'll be a great experience to watch it from anywhere along the west coast of the lake, but we used to go this particular place called the "Sunrise Beach". From Mundelein you have to keep going east on Route 176 till you come to a fork on the road. Here you take a left, and you'll eventually end up at Sunrise Avenue. You have to park somewhere here and walk down to the beach, where you can sit on the big rocks by the water and wait for the Sun to rise.

When I was still in India planning for this 2nd trip, watching the sunrise in that particular place once again was one of the things high on my "To Do" list. But unfortunately I procrastinated over it for so long that it was already the 23rd of September and I still hadn't done it. So I decided that I would finish it off on the morning of 24th no-matter-what.

Come 24th morning, I struggled to wake up but somehow got out of bed and into my car and started driving. What I had not accounted for (simply because I was unaware of it) was all the construction going on on Route 176, and all the detours thanks to it. It didn't take long for me to lose my way, and by the time I got back on track, I could see the full Sun in the sky right ahead of me. I was really disappointed because this meant that now I had only one more opportunity, on my last day in the United States, to catch that elusive sunrise!!

Skydiving

My Orkut status now reads, "There are 2 types of ppl in the World - those who haven't jumped off a plane, and those who HAVE". I'm proud to have crossed over to the "have" part of the divide!

Some of my friends have been for a skydive in the past and I once had a long chat with Ravi about his own skydiving experience. At that time I never thought that I would ever have the guts to jump off a plane like that. But on 18th September, the idea to actually experience it first hand came into my mind. The coming weekend was my last in the US on this trip, so I had very little time to play with. I quickly asked Andy & Vishwa if they would be interested, but unfortunately they had "terrory" and "pricey" issues :) So I posted a thread on the Chicago group of CS to see if anyone there would be interested. A few guys were, but the timings weren't working out for them. I realized that if I had to do it, I'd have to do it by myself. I called up many places around Chicago hoping to find a good deal, but skydiving being an expensive affair, it would cost me $300 at least (including a video of the jump). At this time, I was still unsure if I had it in me to go ahead with such a scary looking adventure.

On Friday, 19th September, Ravi & I went to a Malaysian restaurant called Penang in Arlington Heights (the food is a little expensive but its good. The first item on the list of appetizers - Roti Canai - is just superb!!!). I told Ravi about my skydiving plans, and he asked me to go ahead with it. It was here that I decided I'm going to do it, no matter what the cost. I spent the whole of Saturday mentally preparing myself and waiting to see if someone else would join me.

It seemed like all the mental preparation was a waste because I couldn't sleep a wink on Saturday night. It was a mixture of the adrenaline in my blood and the terror in my heart. I was just rolling on my bed trying to sleep, but all I could think of was whether I would be lying on this bed the next night. I must have drifted off to sleep around 4.30 am just to be rudely woken by the alarm at 6 am. Got ready quickly and left the room around 7. I had chosen Skydive Chicago in Ottawa, IL for the jump because they were the only guys who could accommodate me on such short notice with no reservation. After some difficulty in finding the place, I finally reached there around 11 am.

Once there, they give you a form to fill which in short says that you're jumping of your own volition and nobody can sue them if anything goes wrong. You have to read all those clauses and sign in multiple places. The words "may cause PERMANENT INJURY or DEATH" appear all over the form. This is when another wave of fear caught me and I found myself asking, "Should I do it or not?". I could've just dumped the form and walked away because I hadn't paid the money yet. But I gathered up my courage once again and just went through with the process and paid up. Then we were taken to a classroom where an instructor showed us a video and explained some basic things. After that, they said that I had to wait a long time for my turn to jump, so I walked out to the field to look at some of the other jumpers. Looking at all those people doing their jumps successfully gave me a lot of confidence. There was a small mishap when somebody landed in the middle of a corn field harder than he/she would've liked; but I heard that it was nothing major.

Finally, after what seemed like ages, it was the turn of my 'load group' to take to the skies. I got into a jumpsuit and they fixed the harness to my back. I met my jump master Enzo and my personal paparazzi Kenny. Enzo gave me an altimeter and my diving goggles and explained the basic stuff once again. After that we all got into our small 23 seater plane that would take us to 14000 feet (about 4267 m). I looked out of the window at 2000 feet, and it already looked quite high! I couldn't even begin to imagine how it would feel at 7 times this height. At this point, the needle of your altimeter and the popping of your ears have a very significant effect on the beating of your heart :) In the flight, Enzo buckled his own harness on to mine and explained the procedure once more. After about 15 minutes of boarding the craft, we reached the required altitude and then it was go-time. One of the crew members opened the door and we were hit by a blast of cold air. One-by-one jumpers in front of us started exiting and we were slowly but surely moving towards the door. Once there, we took 3 short breaths with the up-down-up motion that we had practiced, arched our body backwards and jumped.

Almost all first time jumpers experience a 'sensory overload' at this time and I was no exception. Since your body doesn't know what to expect when you jump off like that at 14000 feet, your senses send more messages to your brain than your brain can handle. So I simply cannot remember the first few seconds. Later your brain adjusts and thats when you really feel the biting cold and really enjoy the free fall. The feeling is more like flying through the air than actually falling. Kenny the photographer came and held my hand and spun us around as all the 3 of us continued to fall at around 120 mph (about 192 kmph).
All this while, you just have to keep your back arched and smile for the camera. You should also keep looking at your altimeter, so that you can open the parachute when you reach an altitude of 5500 feet. This is what I didn't do because I was too busy with other things - like posing for the camera, for instance!

Thankfully, Enzo did that part and released the chute at 5500 feet. At this time Kenny continued to free fall, and opened his own chute at about 3000 feet. The free fall is an extremely rapid, bitingly cold and furiously noisy 60 seconds; whereas the chute descent is a very silent, calm and serene 10 minutes. Once the chute opens up, you can talk to your jump master, look around and enjoy the beauty and feel the deafening silence. If neither of you talks, the only sound you'll hear is the wind against your chute. Enzo showed me how one can control the chute with just the 2 straps in your hand. I was amazed to see that we could go fast, go slow or even come to a complete halt as if we were driving a car. These modern day rectangular ram-air parachutes are far superior to the round ones that we are so accustomed to seeing in the movies. If you're skilled at handling one of these, you can control exactly where you land. That's when I realized how the skydivers of the Red Bull Air Force managed to land so perfectly on top of the jump platform on the day of the Flugtag.

After about 10 minutes of floating in the air and maneuvering the parachute, we gently landed on the ground sliding on our butts. The first words that Enzo said to me were, "Welcome back to Earth!". I was more relieved than anything else at that point of time. This was followed by a brief post-jump interview with Kenny and then Enzo signing the jump certificate. So this makes me a CERTIFIED SKYDIVER!!!!

Some snaps from the day:

<- Enzo & I before getting into the plane

The leap of faith ->

<- The point of no return

Free fall ->

I have a video of the entire jump but its about 200 MB in size. I haven't been able to upload it to YouTube yet. Once I have it there, I'll embed the video here as well.

Twenty Six

That's how many years I've been around for now. I just celebrated my birthday yesterday. "Celebrated" is really not the right way to put it. "Spent" would be more like it. As usually happens with all my birthdays, this one was also very ordinary.
Here I must say that my 25th birthday was probably the best one I've ever had. I still vividly remember P coming and waking me up early in the morning, making me get ready in record time, giving me all those wonderful gifts and making the entire day very special.

Coming back to the present, yesterday was like just any other day. Woke up late as usual and got to work late. Took chocolates for my colleagues, then went with them for a normal lunch and to a Starbucks for coffee later. Uday bought me coffee there, so I did get a b'day gift after all :) Spent a long time replying to all the birthday wishes on Orkut and Facebook!

People usually go to a temple on their birthday, but I can't remember the last time I did something like that. I'm sure my old pal Kini would've made up for my lack of piousness by visiting the Gods many times during the day (Kini and I share the same b'day btw).

<- Satya says, "Pass the camera".

Chilling at Starbucks ->

Slaps and Punches Gone Wild

Yesterday while randomly stumbling about the Internet (using stumbleupon of course), I came across a shocking video. Its the video of a particularly shameful incident on an Indian reality show. The show supposedly aims at instilling self-confidence in youngsters.

There must be a hundred sites that have embeds of this particular scene, and I'll go ahead and become the hundred and first. Watch it for yourself:



I'm not sure whether everything that happens in the video is real or staged. But it sure seemed very real to me. Let us assume for now that it is indeed real and not just an act.
What I find most appalling about the entire scene is not the contestant slapping the hostess, but the fact that some 20 guys got together to beat up one lone guy. What a bunch of cowards. Disgusting.

Now I'm not privy to what agreements the contestant had to sign before being allowed to participate. If he had already signed stuff that clearly said that he may be subjected to mental or physical abuse during the show; then he should've just stood there and taken her slap. But if he didn't, then I believe he should sue these guys.

I'm totally against violence in all its forms, and I'm particularly against violence towards women; but the way this particular hostess was behaving, I thought she deserved what she got.

If you're interested there's another video that shows what happened before the incident above, available here.

Why it is risky to park in Chicago...

Somebody put a dent in the side of my car when it was parked in one of the streets of Chicago. This happened when we were at the Flugtag. I'll have to go to Avis and report this. Luckily, my rental agreement will cover this kind of damage.

Flugtag!!!

In German, Flug = Flight and Tag = Day; so Flugtag means Flightday. And flight day it was on Saturday, the 6th of Sep in Chicago. The Red Bull Flugtag was held amidst much fanfare on North Avenue beach on the shores of Lake Michigan.
The Flugtag is a crazy sport where people build crafts which are "supposed to" fly, with only human strength to power them. They take these crafts over a platform built over a body of water, perform a short stupid skit on top of the platform, and push their "flying machine" over the edge along with themselves. You would think whats the point of such a crazy stunt, but when you hear that over 80,000 people came to watch 29 teams do just that, then you realise just how much people enjoy stupid fun!

Anand and I left early so that we could get good places to watch the show. That was a smart move because it took us almost half an hour just to find a place to park. We made it well in time and settled in right next to the pier where we had an amazing view of the platform. But unluckily, the organisers thought that the place was unsafe, so they fenced off the edge of the pier, thus restricting our splendid view. For the next 3 hours, we just sat there twiddling our thumbs. Finally, after what seemed like ages, there was some activity when 4 sky-divers from the "Red Bull Air Force" jumped off a plane and skilfully maneuvered their parachutes to land on top of the platform. That sure was very very impressive!!

Then the actual show began, when one by one all the 29 teams did what they had spent so much time and money on for the last several months. The winner was a team called "The Crustacean Avengers" who flew a distance of 120 feet.

In the middle of the thing, there was a crazy guy (who was probably stoned or something) who climbed a tree right behind where we were sitting and started throwing twigs and people below. He didn't stop even after repeated warnings from the crowd, and finally 2 cops had to come and get him out of there :)
We also met a nice German chap called Daniel who had come to see the show since he had a lot of time to spare!

Some snaps from the day:

<- The platform to "fly" off from
(with The John Hancock Center in the background)

->

An Iraq war veteran singing the US national anthem

They pushed... they flew...

and they crashed...

<- The cops came to take the psycho away

Anand, Daniel & I ->

Flugtag in USA: http://www.redbullflugtagusa.com
Flugtag on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flugtag

9-1-1

911.

Almost everyone who lives in (or has ever traveled to) America knows what 911 is. If you're reading this post, you're definitely literate, and know what the Internet is. So it would be a very safe bet to assume that you know about 911 too. In the extremely remote possibility that you don't, I'll tell you. 911 is the phone number to be dialed in case of an emergency in the United States or Canada.

Have you ever wondered why 911 is 9-1-1 and not some other random number? One can reason why an emergency number would be 3 digits long (the number has to be short so that it can be remembered and dialed quickly; and 1 or 2 digits may be dialed by mistake). Also, having 2 common digits in the emergency number would probably facilitate easy recall.

But this still doesn't explain 9-1-1. 

That was what I was wondering on the way back from Rosemont with Anand (aka Andy) on Sunday. I spoke my thoughts out loud, and Andy came up with an explanation. Andy's explanation may or may not be true, but it is definitely a plausible one! It goes thus:

"During the time 911 was introduced, phones would have had a circular number plate. They would've wanted two numbers with a lot of separation, so they chose 1 & 9. Two 1's were chosen as dialing 1 would've been fastest".

A circular number plate looks like this:

(photo courtesy: http://www.oldatheart.co.uk/old-phone-4.jpg)

Googling for the answer to my question brought me to this page. It has some interesting trivia, but it doesn't seem like anybody has concrete proof of the origin of 911. If any of you has any info to share on this, I'm all ears!!

Although 911 is meant only for emergencies, there are people who call the number for various stupid reasons. Check out this video for instance:

I've had a 911 experience myself!!

When I was returning from Detroit, I stopped at the Indiana Welcome Center, just before entering Illinois, to take a leak. It was late in the evening, and the place was closed. Just when I turned to go, I noticed a small red suitcase near the entrance. I thought about it for a while, and then finally dialed 911 to report the unclaimed bag. A police officer came along in some time and asked me some simple questions about the bag. Then he thanked me for reporting it, and asked me to carry on. That was that. I don't know what was in the bag, who had placed it there, or what eventually happened of it...

I've asked myself a number of times if I would've done the same thing back in India (i.e. would I have called the emergency number 100 and reported the unclaimed suitcase?). I might have done so, but I would've hesitated a lot more. In the US, one can be certain that a call to 911 would be taken seriously and investigated. Would the same seriousness be there in India too? (Considering that in India the threat from an unclaimed bag would be more than it is here!)

Maybe they would take it seriously in India too, and my uncertainty is based on the uninterested attitude of the authorities towards most other things.

That aside, I also wonder what would happen if an American were to go to India and face an emergency situation. He/she would probably dial 911. Would it work?!!

So I believe that there should be ONE emergency number worldwide (maybe 112, because its treated as an emergency number in at least 45 different countries according to this Wikipedia article).

India happens to be one of these 45 countries - Wow!!!

That's all I have to say about emergency numbers. At least as of now :)

Labor(ious) Day!

Phew! Labor Day was indeed a laborious day for me. I've been out shopping the whole time, but I'm not quite as finished with shopping as I'd like to be.
I think the biggest obstacle is the sheer number of choices I have!!
Can you believe it took me almost an hour to buy a single poster?!!!

I think this country has everything in excess. For instance, suppose you feel like having ice-cream one fine day. First you'll have to choose where to buy it from, from among the many super markets around. Once you get there, you'll be greeted by tall rows stacked with so many ice-creams that it would probably take more than a year for all the kids in your town to finish off. Say you pick the vanilla flavor, you'll still need to choose from at least 10 different brands. Once you pick a brand, you'll have 10 slightly different flavors of the vanilla flavor itself. By this time, your urge to eat ice-cream would probably have vanished, but you'll still go ahead and buy it because you've already spent so much time and effort in choosing it :)

Intuitively, one may feel that more the number of choices one has, the greater the chances that one actually makes a purchase. But apparently, this may not be true according to this article: Why we buy what we buy. Its rather long, but you'll probably find it interesting if you like economics and stuff.


With me not getting tickets on the days I want, and people in my team wanting me to stick around in the US for some more time; my assignment may just get slightly extended. We'll have to wait and watch how things shape up in the next few days.

No snaps to upload today...

Manipal Alumni Meet and AKKA World Kannada Conference

For the last 2 days, Anand & I have been making our way to Rosemont (about 20 miles north-west of downtown Chicago) to attend the Manipal alumni meet and the 5th AKKA World Kannada Conference.

The Manipal alumni meet was planned such that it coincided (in both time and place) with the AKKA convention. The meet was held in a conference room in the Doubletree Hotel. Anand and I were not only the youngest people in the entire room, but also the only MITians there. All the others were Doctors who had studied in KMC years before! We met the current CEO of the Manipal Foundation, Mr Bala Warrier and his brother Dr. Raj Warrier, the current Vice Chancellor of Manipal University. Both the Warrier brothers were friendly down-to-earth people with whom you could carry on a conversation on varied topics.
After the meet was over, Anand & I stayed around to help them collect their stuff and drop off in Mr. Bala's room. In return, he gave us guest passes for the AKKA convention, that would've otherwise cost us a cool $225!!

Thanks to the passes, we went back the next day (i.e. today morning) to attend the convention itself. There were some stalls put up by various organisations of Karnataka, along with some cultural programmes. Since we were not really interested in the whole thing, we just had lunch and left in some time.

<- Entrance of the AKKA convention

Anand & I at the lunch table ->

Tomorrow is a holiday (1st Sep being Labor day in the US). But I'm going to be busier than I am on a workday, since I have to go around shopping for stuff to take back when I return next weekend!!

A Great Woman; A Great Life!!

This post is dedicated to my Great-Grandmother who passed away yesterday at 8.30 pm Indian Standard Time, at a ripe old age of close to a 100 years. Her death didn't come as a shock, since she had been bed-ridden for the past few months, and everyone knew that the end was near. She was a highly respected and deeply loved lady who was known to everyone in the family simply as 'Amma'.
She had married my Great-grandfather (who was a Customs and Excise inspector with the then British Government) at an early age, and together they had 9 children.

She was my first teacher ever, and always had a proverb ready for any situation. For the last 25 years, I could brag that I still had my Great-grandmother around, but sadly I can't do that anymore.

She was the glue that held our entire big family together with everyone coming home to Mangalore at least once in a while to meet her and seek her blessings. How attached we all stay together in the years to come is something only time will tell...

May her soul rest in peace.

In the US again

So many times it has happened that I was doing something wonderful, something I would want to read about in the future and remember, and so I would tell myself that I would make a blog entry about it. But every time I either forget to write it, or am just plain lazy :(
I've given up now, and resigned myself to accept that this blog is always going to be on and off.

Here I am sitting in front of my laptop at close to midnight in a small village in the north west suburbs of the beautiful city of Chicago in the US of A trying in vain to remember all that has happened in the past few months and trying to cram all that information into a single blog entry. But the sheer magnitude of that task has already begun to demotivate me, so I'm going to cut the long story short.

One fine morning my manager comes up to me and asks me to start packing my bags because I'm to fly off to the other side of the planet asap. But my visa had expired so I had to start the long and boring process of getting a new visa. The visa interview in Chennai proved to be a welcome mini vacation thanks to some good planning and some great company. We could manage to sneak in a small trip to Pondicherry (now Puducherry). But we sure would've enjoyed the trip much more had the weather not been so unforgiving on the sweat pores.
Once I had the visa it was just a matter of time before I was on my way to the US. Many things about my workplace may be bad, but long distance transit is definitely not one of them. After all who would complain if he were treated like a King on Lufthansa business class and United Airlines first class!

<- Frankfurt Airport

East coast of Lake Michigan ->

It didn't take long for me to get over the jet lag and settle down to work here. This time I'm alone on an assignment here, so it can get boring sometimes. But I've been trying to keep myself busy with some trips over the weekends.

I had been to Oshkosh, Wisconsin a little ago to meet Liz (through couchsurfing). It was a fun trip with some violin play, some sun tan, some river walking and a lot of cultural exchange.

<- With Liz at her apartment


Last weekend I drove to Canton, Michigan to meet Kiran uncle and family. Saw my youngest cousin (as of today) Neel for the first time.

<- With the Canton cousins!

Almost in Canada ->

Later Kiran uncle took me to downtown Detroit where we tried our luck at some of the slot machines in Greektown Casino. Also went to the Ren Cen and walked a bit along the Detroit Riverfront (with Canada on the other side). Had some amazing home food prepared by Swati aunty (she also froze a lot of it so I took take it back with me!!).
The drive back from Canton was a really long one because I went down south to Ohio, drove along one of Ohio's scenic byways, entered Indiana from the west and then traveled north-west towards Chicago.

<- The Man and The Moron (at Fort Recovery, OH)

St. Augustine Church, Minster, OH ->

Stopped for a break at the Indiana welcome center just before entering Illinois, where I found an unclaimed red suitcase. This prompted me to make my first ever 9-1-1 call. A cop showed up soon enough after which I was back on the road. Reached home after midnight after a 9 hour drive!
Drove 833 miles this weekend :)

27 Dresses

Watched 27 dresses at Inox..
Okay type romantic movie - the kind most girls would like.. I wouldn't say I totally enjoyed the movie, but at least I wasn't bored..

Navin's good news...

This last weekend went by in a flash, and it doesn't even feel like there have been 2 days between the last post and this one. I was working late into the evening on Sat so thats one day down right away. Sunday started off as a boring and lazy day and I wouldn't have gotten out of bed had it not been for Vance's phone call. Met Ballu after more than a year (he was down in B'lore on work). Had lunch at Empire with Vance, Ballu and Roshan (Vance's cousin).

Navin called later in the evening and broke the good news about his wedding to Smitha on the 27th of April. It'll be great to meet my dear old pal and one time room-mate when he comes down. Kini also will definitely come for Gupta's wedding so it'll be like a small time reunion :-)

Watched Die Hard at P's place late into the night. Finally going to sleep at 2...

Christina & Soni - Part 3

P and I met Christina & Soni for lunch today, after which we gave them a guided tour around the office. Like everybody else who comes to Motorola for the first time, I think they were pretty impressed with the entire facility.

Later went to Ice & Spice for dinner, where I finally took a few snaps...


Then went to Majestic railway station to see off the 2 girls.

Later discovered the letter that they left for me!

Christina & Soni - Part 2

It simply would not be right to call this post "Christina & Soni - Day 2", the reason being that I left for work even before they'd woken up, and I reached back home from work after they'd slept off :)
But I'm still going to keep that title for this post, for lack of a better one.

More people from my team quit today. Over the past couple of weeks, I've suddenly become one of the most senior people in my team! This definitely means a lot more responsibility for me, and a wonderful opportunity for me to prove my worth..

Christina & Soni - Part 1

Rewind to 21 Feb 2008 - Its been yet another boring and uneventful week at work, and I'm totally demotivated with my pay and my growth in the company and the kind of work I'm doing. My uninterest obviously shows up in my body language because Krish pulls me into a conference room in the evening and asks me what's going on? I ask him for some time, go to my cube, collect my thoughts and go to him again. We go to the conf room once more, and I tell him all that's bothering me the last few months. He understands everything and tries his best to justify the way things are; and finally asks me to take off the next day and get a long break. I obviously jump at it, because a long break is exactly what I need. I remember I slept like a baby that night, because I knew I would have the entire next day to do nothing!!

That's how I ended up in P's house on a Friday morning burning DVD's using Prerna's laptop. And that's when I saw Jana's mail sent to some of her Indian friends, asking for help. Two of Jana's friends were coming down to India in March, and they needed some place to stay in Bangalore; and someone to help them the first few days. Without a second's hesitation I shot off a reply saying that I would be more than willing to help.

Forward to the evening of 11th March 2008, i.e. yesterday. I take 4 print-outs from office with "Christin", "a & Soni", "Welcome " and "to India" printed in huge letters. I reach home, stick the 4 sheets on a chart paper to carry with me to the airport in the morning. Then I frantically try my best to clean up the mess in my place (cleaning up may not be the right term - hiding all the mess is more like it). Finally around 1 am, I lie down to sleep with a satisfied look because now my home is at least resembling a place inhabited by a human. Sleeping so late cost me bad, as I had to wake up at 4.30 am, take a lightning quick shower and head to the airport. By the time I parked my motorcycle, and reached the arrivals area, the Jet airways flight 9W2411 carrying Christina & Soni had already landed. I spotted 2 'firang' girls looking like fishes out of water, but before I could call out to them, they went right inside again. I waited with my big banner for another 10 minutes, and they came out once more. This time I started waving my big banner to catch their attention, which thankfully worked. The smiles that crossed their faces when they read it told me that I had found the right people!!

We took an auto home and chatted away till 7 am. They told me things about Germany and what they did back there; and I gave them some gyaan about India and the people here. Then we went to one of the small South Indian places on Thippasandra main road, where they had their first Masala Dosa!!
I also got Jana's gifts - a letter, a T-shirt and a German bar of chocolate through Christina.

Met Jana's close friend Vinod later in the evening and went to Hard Rock Cafe and Leela Barista. Unfortunately, somebody flicked my cellphone at the Barista :(
But as they say, "S*it happens!"

Liar liar, pants on fire!!

The last post in this blog ends with "to be continued...", but unfortunately thats a big lie; because its never going to be continued. And that's not just because my chain of thought at the time I started that post has been long broken, but mainly because I'm just way too lazy to even bother to complete it. So, here's a new blogging resolution: I'm never again going to end a post with "to be continued..." bcoz there's always a big risk that that may also turn out to be a lie.

Had I not gone back on my word of continuing the previous post, you would probably have read about my 6 month long trip to the United States and my 2nd Ladakh trip with my MIT pals. The 2nd Ladakh trip is something I'll cherish till the end of my days on this planet. Those were 3 weeks for which we had planned for 5 months. 3 weeks when the sound of those Royal Enfields would ring in our ears as we tucked ourselves into bed each night. 3 weeks when our laughter echoed through the Himalayas through teeth chattering with the cold. 3 weeks when a bunch of close friends got bonded forever with the glue of having achieved a long held dream. 3 weeks when our motorcycles broke down a million times but our spirit never did.

Check out Sushil's amazing work that sort of documents "The Breakdown Gang"'s memorable Kalkaji to Khardung-la ride: