Platinum tours

thanks to tourist websites, people invariably choose LA to be the destination most of the time for a holiday. a lot of my friends fall into this category too.

to me, LA is city primarily for the rich. stars live here, but their hangout areas are off-limits for people like us. if you observe carefully, most of the adulations comes from celebrities. they have their expensive private neighborhoods, clubs, beaches and many more.

but still I manage to entertain my friends by having a "platinum tour" of my own :) it includes a photo session at the Grauman's Chinese theatre, where they get to match their palm and foot with the imprints of the celebrities (one of the most stupidest acts I have ever seen :-)), a drive down sunset blvd, some stops in Beverly Hills (evertime I take a new st, and invariabley will get lost :)), window shopping on Rodeo Drive (this is a must, as most of the people would have already seen Pretty Woman), and continue all the way to Malibu beach. then I would mention that the famed Baywatch was supposed to be shot in Malibu beach, but called off later on. this obviously would have an effect, as some would start imagining a bikini clad Pamela Anderson running towards them :)
Finally the tour would culminate at Malibu temple, just to wash away any sins we had commited that day :)

Now I'm thinking of adding a few more locations and making it "Platinum Plus". More on that soon :)

still edible....

Its been about 2 months since I came back from my India visit. and I'm still relishing my mom's cashew cake :-) even I'm surprised that it hasn't gone stale so far. wow, what a longevity.

atleast I'm reasonable, its only 2 months and afterall its a cashew cake. one of my friends' mom made some sambar and dal when she visited him. he had it for the next 3 months, until she came back again to make more :-)

ahhhhhhh persian girls

Last weekend, me and a couple of friends went to a persian restaurant. it was a hip place... nicely decorated, great ambience, good food.... yada yada yada. but it was the persian girls who distracted us to the max extent. never have I ever seen so many attractive and gorgeous girls in one single place, not even in vegas :-)
I know middle eastern people have sharp features, but these were more godly. I couldn't help the jealousy when I looked at the persian guys who accompanied them. this is not fair :-)

unnecessary inauguration

so Bush is officially elected President of the US for a second term. if you didn't know, he had a lavish inauguration today. the cost of the event was around $40 million. do we really need this kind of celebrations, especially for a second term? he can't run for the post again, so why not enjoy the incentives :(

this money could have been used for more important things. for e.g. we could have added 10 more cops permanently to the city of LA, where security is sold for $1 a pound.
else the soldiers in Iraq could have been given a bonus.

I saw an interview of a soldier who just returned from Iraq after losing his hand in a battle. obviously he couldn't continue. but the poor guy had worser news awaiting him. the pentagon demanded back part of his sign-on bonus. upon his inability to return (he is poor and homeless too), the pentagon reported this to the credit agencies, thus plugging all the hopes of any assistance to him.
I saw this on NBC a few weeks back.

of being honest

couple of yrs back, I bought some CDs from CompUSA. the total was $42 and there was a mail-in-rebate for the same amount, hence making the purchase free (I always failed to understand this logic). usually it takes about 8-10 weeks to get back the money. In my case I didn't receive any for about 13 weeks.....so went to the shop and explained them the situation. surprisingly, they trusted me and gave the money immediately. they needn't have done so, but still gave me my money.
a day later I got the rebate check. since CompUSA was honest, I decided to give this check back to them, I didn't want the double discount. while I was on my way to the shop, I was day-dreaming that the shop manager would be impressed with my honesty, and would allow me to take any one item from the shop, and so on (yeah just like they show in the movies) :) unfortunately all I got was "Make sure you endorse that check correctly; thank you" :(

last week I got my mail-in-rebate check for a purchase. I received 2 checks instead of one. now I dunno what I should do :)

as an interim solution, I have deposited both the checks :)

An Informative Novel

Just finished reading Angels & Demons, by Dan Brown......the same author who wrote 'The da Vinci Code'.
A very thrilling and informative novel. It literally takes you on a tour around Vatican and Rome. gives a closer look at the Papal elections, the power structure of the Roman Catholic Church, the Sistine chapel, St. Peter's Basilica, ancient symbols, and many more. one can also know more about the marvellous works of Michaelangelo and Bernini, and the Renaissance Art in general.

It definitely inspires the reader to visit Vatican and Rome, to enjoy and appreciate the famous art works.

visit this site to see those original markers and locations mentioned in the novel. Beware, it has some spoilers too. I would advise you to see them after you had finished reading the novel.

Now I have started reading da Vinci Code, expect to finsih it by this weekend. I have bought a special illustrated edition of the book, has pictures of the paintings and markers mentioned in the novel. that makes it more exciting :)

you can get these books from Amazon.com, cheaper than Borders and Barnes & Noble......a must read.

Newton's 3rd Law and Commenting on Blogs

"For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" - says Newton. I doubt this fundamental law.
blogging becomes very interesting when you know that people are reading your blog. you know that by simply looking at the comments section. Some people, like Sud, know that a bunch of people read, though strangely nobody comment on their blogs (Sud again).
as usual, girls get the maximum attention. while we hope to get atleast 5-8 comments (sometimes we even go zero), the female counterparts garner atleast 15. do they reciprocate those comments......hmmmmmm not really. Not to the extent they get....Oh c'mon its only 15-20 replies :)
this mis-match leads me to suspect Newton's 3rd law - hehe

Disclaimer: Classical laws don't hold water in sub-atomic levels, I'm not even going there :)

24 and SUN TV

this is a hit series on fox. after 3 successful seasons, the 4th season premiered yesterday. never expected it to be this good. usually only movies are large-scale thrillers. trust me, 24 has outperformed most of the actions movies, in terms of super-action and performances as well -- all being a tv drama series.
I'm just trying to compare the kind of series that are aired here to the ones on sun tv. while the former is trying to scale new highs, the latter puts more energy, only to take it to lows that mankind has never heard of :)
maybe the sun tv producers just thought that its the job of the movie industry to get inspired by the west, as they have done evidently by naming their industries bollywood and kollywood :) In my opinion, thats all the hindi and tamil movie industry have done so far!

"India's population would have been higher"

as we all know, a lot of americans and europeans are pretty unaware about India. All they can think about India is snake charmers and people riding on top of elephants. In the case of americans, its even worse, because for them the universe comprises only america and nothing else.
and these days whenver I talk to someone, somehow or the other the converstaion topic
auto-pilots to marriages in India :) while my responses would be mechanical, their reactions would be astronomical.
well I can't blame them, as "making out" in Indian terms is going out :))
but one of my colleagues came up with an interesting (hilarious too) observation about the state of affairs in India. his take on conservative India, "India's population would have been 3 billion if people were as liberal as here (hmm.... are they?) and went out on random dates" :)

I didn't know whether to cry or laugh, but later on made a little sense though :-)

a mischievous propaganda

as with any disaster and the ensuing relief co-ordination operations, the current tsunami tragedy is full of controversy. I feel that all the allegations against the U.S, that it is "stingy" and "failure to alert on time", are baseless. I don't know what the critics are expecting here.

Is the U.S stingy, absolutely no. The contributions from U.S should also include the contributions made by the people who live and work here, not just the government alone. A lot of companies are matching their employee contributions. Also, how much can the government give when it finds itself mired in trillions of dollars in deficit? Its really puzzling to find that people's memories are short-lived. remember gujarat earthquake relief???

Secondly, the allegation that the U.S failed to alert nations like India, and Sri Lanka about a possible tsunami. first off, there are no sensors on the Indian ocean to detect one. All that was detected was an earthquake, with its magnitude and epi-center. This was un-precedented, and at that time the authorities were only guessing the possibilities. Moreover are we prepared for such warnings? The information about the earthquake was available to the whole world on BBC in a matter of few minutes. I don't see if there was any information denial.

lot of tabloids and newspapers continue to carry on this malicious propaganda. its enough to just raise such allegations, let alone justify it, to cause a significant damage to the relief operations.