weekends to enjoy.... weekdays to recuperate

thats been my case for the past 1 month. we should all unite and demand for a 'recuperating day' after every weekend. I've driven close to 3500 miles in the last 5 weeks, most of 'em during the weekends.
this weekend I was again in the San Francisco bay area. went to a movie called "Madurey" (tamil movie), another 'serious comedy'. there were only about 15 people in the theater and we passed on comments liberally. also had a sneak peak of a telugu movie running in the adjacent hall :)

coming weekend is a long weekend, where am I going.... where else ... again to SF bay area. but we are also planning a trip to Mt. Shasta.

fridayyyyyyyyy.........

friday is the best day in life, for working people. while in school I often wondered as to why the losers (read - working people) revere it so much. back at school, all days were the same. we used to get the projector from our research lab, and watch movies at home on a monday afty. labor day, consumer day etc. didn't bother us at all.
but now, weekends are like boons, let alone long wekends. and a great depression sets on sunday evening, the thought of another weeks' work.
Its friday today and I'm HAPPY :)

What is permanent

well I'm going to get a bit philosophical in this blog. I have started to wonder as to why I'm leading my life like this... not in a disastrous manner but just why this way. when I left India 4 yrs back, I missed my family and friends a lot. then after some time I made new friends over here. Just when it started to get really wonderful, a couple of guys graduated and went back to India altogether. sometime passed before I moved back into a comfort zone with new friends, alas, I graduated this time. and that was really hard as I moved into a completely different area with none to talk to. even after a yr, its pretty much the same state. sports is my old and trusted friend that keeps me going, whatever it is. this summer was great though, as my sister is here for an internship at my company. but she is also leaving, and I'm back to square one --- stateless entity. looks like nothing is permanent, I wish me and all my friends had opted to stay in India itself, that too all in the same city. after all life would have been more happier.

I'm now hunting for activities to keep me occupied. LA is huge, I'm sure I will find something soon.

"I'm neither"

this was an interesting incident that happened last december. our company sponsors a grand holiday party every december. last yr was my first, and being a 'village' man, I didn't know what o do at the party. so I approached Manny, an office colleague. this is how the convesation went ......

Me: hey Manny, what do people do at the party man
Manny: you just come with your date, which can be your wife, girl friend, or just a date for the night. there will be ballroom dancing and dance with her.
Me: (thinking....damn man, I don't have a girl friend, and how would I get a date in one week) hmmmmm....
Manny: so bring your date
Me: well ..... I don't have a girl friend
Manny: Oh not a big deal at all, you can get a date for the night
Me: I see
Manny: there are some girls in the production dept. looking for a date for that evening. I can help you
Me: well... I'm not sure If I will do that
Manny: why not. are you gay
Me: (taken aback) NO
Manny: oh so you are straight
Me: I'm neither man
Manny: (speechless and still faced)
Me: (what the hell happened to this guy) see ya.

since I didn't have a girl friend/wife/whatever I thought I'm just "plain" (yeah one of my thoughts), and said I'm neither. Later on I learnt that "i'm neither" in that particular context meant that I'm bi-sexual :) no wonder Manny was speechless.

Master of all trades

I always used to wonder if becoming a master of all trades is ever possible. sometimes it does wear us down when we start thinking of all the stuff we have to do. a run down to the grocery store for a gallon of milk might seem a herculean task. and these are the very moments that discourage us from pursuing some new things. I always wanted to learn the guitar, but successfully managed to excuse under the pretext of lack of time. now I'm thinking of picking up keyboard, atleast I can try out the carnatic swaras that I learnt long back, this should take little time as compared to learning guitar.
why I'm writing all this??? I happened to listen to some melodious songs from dhool.com. Nope, the composer wasn't Ilayaraja, it was T.Rajendher. as most of you know, he is the producer, scriptwriter, director, music composer, lyricist, dialogue writer, art director ... and many more for his movies. ofcourse he also plays the lead role, thankfully he doesn't sing :). and amazingly he has excelled in all the above areas. those songs are on par with ilayaraja's 80's meoldies. the song, "ithu Kuzhanthai paadum thaalattu" from 'oru thalai raagam' is a class apart, the lyrics are wonderful.
T.Rajendher is indeed a master of all trades. I can only wish to be as versatile as him, in life.

what a scam ... water scam

last week I was complaining about gas prices ... a gallon is about $2 in california now. but just realised that water costs more than that. a gallon of mountain spring (?) water costs about $2.5, and that too only if you buy in bulk. damn man, a lot of californians buy bottled water which costs more than gasoline, and still bitch about gas prices. fortunately I'm one of the few souls that believes tap water is still potable :) this whole thing is a scam, water shouldn't cost this much. "better standard of living" would be the counter argument ... hmmmm
california buys water from its neighboring states. most of the lakes here are man made and big aqua ducts, again man made, carry water into these lakes and further into big cities like LA. I have seen these aqua ducts while driving along the inland. these are well maintained and pure enough for drinking purposes too. needless to say that these lakes are also used for recreational purposes, which reaps millions every yr. while seeing these, I'm only reminded of our 'original veeranam', 'modified veeranam', 'new modified veeranam'........... 'new veeranam' projects to bring water into chennai from veeranam lake (which is in the same state too) that is about 150 miles away. the original project was started about 35 yrs back. I guess even my kids won't see veeranam water in chennai :) (probably my parents made the same statement that time :))
again a major scam.

lake tahoe ..... and a tip for our captain

this weekend I was in a lake tahoe. its a beautiful lake, situated somewhat north east of San Francisco. bunch of my friends in San Jose had planned out this trip and I joined them. we camped near the lake, and this was my first camping experience too. I enjoyed it, except for the stoneage restrooms :)
about the lake itself, arguably the bluest of the lakes I have seen so far. interestingly I have had aerial views of the lake twice before, while flying somewhere. from that altitude, it looked really small, obviously, as our jet crossed it in a few mins. this time I was stunned by its beauty and size. It took us nearly 1 hr to reach the other end of the lake. we took a gondola ride (not a boat, but a suspended cable car) to an elevated vista point. it gave us a nice panoramic view of the entire lake and the surrounding mountains, for me it brough back the memories of my previous aerial views :)
a few of us split and headed out to Reno (a mini vegas in nevada) on saturday night and chilled out. it was a nice place, what the heck I lost again on gambling. on sunday morning, I did kayaking, again for the first time, and surprisingly it came to me very easily. it was a lot of fun kayaking. the water was only knee deep for about half a mile and that was a bonanza.

tahoe lake is so huge that nearly 330 million gallons of water evaporate every day. for our politics aspiring captain, this maybe it. if he could somehow devise a way to channel all this evaporated water into tamil nadu, he could be our next chief minister. even superstar can't stop captain. c'mon captain, show your skills.

where was the planning...

well get ready for another spike in gasoline prices at the pump. Oil prices per barrel have hit a record high this week (as high as $45 pb). just when the prices seemed to stabilize it has hit a new high.
I'm really disappointed to see this even after a significant U.S/U.K presence in the middle east, particularly iraq. accept it or not, I thought U.S presence in iraq is generally good for the global economy, primarily being an alternative for OPEC. no, I don't want to discuss if attacking iraq was right or wrong, I'm just concerned about the consequences.
its more or less now clear that iraqi wmd is more of a myth than a fact. oil was the primary goal, by this time we should have had a drop in the prices (as an end result). was the administration so foolish to think that merely attacking iraq would fill in the coffers? where was the planning.
I know its unreasonable to expect the president to be a master of all trades, but atleast he could have had better advisors.
maybe they could use this as a lesson before they attack iran :)

Flavor Graveyard :)

last week I was watching a show on 'America's top 10 ice cream palaces' on the travel channel. there were lots of interesting stuff. among them the most attractive one was the ben & jerry's flavor graveyard. thats right, its a graveyard. they maintain a real graveyard with graves of the flavors that vanished from the market. It was really funny.
I was expecting Girardelli's (its in San Francisco) to show up in the list, surprisingly it didn't. I liked their ice cream, the one with the hot fudge. But another ice cream parlor in SF made it to the list (I forget the name). weird, they have an avocado ice cream.
Also if you have time, watch Ratzenberger's 'Made in America', again on travel channel. its on tuesdays, 9 - 10 pm .... worth watching.

Why Horoscopes

ever wondered why horoscopes (birth charts) are still in existence. well I did and it didn't make any sense to me anymore. this is not about bashing our old Indian traditions, but it is more of adjusting ourselves to the current trends.
Horoscopes, as we know, is formulated based on the time and day of the particular year we were born. calculating this is no big deal, even I can do it. all you need is a 'panchangam' (general star chart) of the particular year and you are all set to go. but predicting someone's future, based on the horoscope, is a controversial topic (well atleast for me). Its like nutrition and dietics, there are zillions of theories, and all contradict each other. you just can't trust one particular method. and thus people end up visiting scores of astrologers in their life time, eventually spending a lot of money. and whats the fun in life if you were to know your future?
I think horoscope based predictions are mere probablistic methods. all the theories of predictions are definitely based on a database of lives of various people who had similar birth charts. the database is not there, but the theory is definitely in existence. and this had been in existence for more than 2000 years, we have references to horoscopes even in epics like mahabaratha, and silappathigaaram. meaning, all these predictions originated from a society that was entirely different from the one we are in right now. so why bother at all.
another big business is horoscope matching for marriages. it was reasonable a few decades back, when people didn't interact that much. but now the world has shrunk, and open-mindedness is the order of the day. even family backgrounds shouldn't matter beyond a certain extent (a prospective alliance needn't be stopped just because the sister of the bride was a divorcee).
I undesrtand that this a deep-rooted sentiment in the hearts of many people, and shunning it totally is very hard. my only request to them is to sit and think about this, and I bet they will understand it is only for the betterment of the society.

Another Bollywood movie

yesterday I was crazy enuf to watch this hindi movie 'Main Hoon Naa'. Oh my God, what an unbelievable crap. usually such so called 'serious' type movies become a big comedy, that we can just laugh the whole time, and mock it constantly. a classic example would be our dear captain's Narasimha. actually narasimha isn't that bad at all, its just a fantasy spin. It had some hilarious scenes like electricity getting electrocuted (yeah its complicated, but trust me :)), dogs listening via wireless headsets, and ofcourse some "amazing computer graphics". without any doubt, narasimha was a big hit.
coming back to Main Hoon Naa, this movie didn't even qualify to become a 'serious comedy' type. the scenes were really crappy and disgusting. I don't want to discuss the story, its just another bollywood movie. what caught my attention (ahem...) was the western influence on the movie. the plot is set in darjeeling, a hill station. people eat Lays chips (an american brand) and go to prom (yeah PROM). background music was copied from mission impossible. the funny thing is they wanted to simply ape the western style without analyzing at all, and thus SRK ended up sporting an earring in his right ear on his prom night :). earring on a right ear is a GAY symbol in the US. haha, I couldn't help laughing.

Oh November, where art thou .......

I'm eagerly waiting for the month of november........the hilarious Seinfeld shows will be available on DVD. only the first two seasons I guess, but still worth the wait and buy. I don't know whats taking them such a long time to release it in DVD, when relatively newer shows are already available.
I've heard stories of some friend's friends having videos/CDs of a few seinfeld shows, but never actually managed to meet the concerned people. I'm even thinking of starting a fan club, within my friends circle. Wanna join :)