My way on the highway

We visited lurray cavern on monday. We started from the house at 8 AM. The drive was very picturesque. S told me it would be better during spring. It was beautiful neverthless. Driving uphill here is definitely better than india because it is not steep and more gradual. S was an efficient driver. So we reached there by 11 AM. Then we spent an hour at the caves. The caves have formation based on water and salt deposits. One attraction was a place where the caves played music. At each place where there was a different shape, an electro-mechanical hammer was used to strike these rocks at fixed time intervals. The result different notes and sinful music. It is great to see how creative people can get. Even the "jala taranga" was discovered like this. After that we went to a maze and tried getting out of it. I felt like I was in the crystal maze:-) We did it with amazing speed. I mean we got out in twenty minutes. After that we visited the car museum. They had a lot of vintage car

On the 25th of december, the birth of christ, in a place where people celebrate this festival like crazy; what was I doing? I was gambling my friend's money to glory:-) We (S, parents and me) visited "the atlantic city". It was awesome. A bit garish, I mean all that "jhatak lighting". But the message of "larger than life" was delivered I guess. The casinos we visited the showboat, trump plaza, trump taj mahal and finally the alexandria (actually don't remember the name..some roman name). But we had only the guts to try out the slot machines. I had no idea about poker and was not willing to do the roulette. So we settled for the slot machines. At each place we saw our 5 dollars get swallowed. The thing is there is no logic involved in any of these things, it's just pure luck. I saw a lot of old people in all these casinos. I mean 70 and 80 year olds. I thought I would see more 40ish people playing. I guess they are the ones who have the money:-)

The last week has simply been amazing. I feel like a wondering gypsy. I mean travelling across india was fine but now across the united states..what can I say? Maybe a liberated feeling??yes Independance??yes Confidence??yes:-) Swas great. Her parents superb. It was a nice holiday. I reached baltimore by the grey hound to SN's house. It was a very comfortable journey. Sis meeting a classmate after two and half years and I am the first one she is meeting. So she was really looking forward to the trip and hats off to her to really "lay it down" for me. So today is day one. We went to DC. What a place. M now I understand why you were gushing. First stop was the capitol and we took the trip. Our tour guide was simply amazing. She explained the whole history of America and the working of constitution beautifully. The architecture was breathtaking. The fresco paintings on the dome of the capitol was 4800 feet wide. The supreme court building was majestic. I simply have no wor

I have started my holidays and the feeling is great. I went to Dr. Pradeep sethi's house for the weekend. As always when I enter their house, I feel like am entering haddows road in chennai. I just miss amma, dad and mals their. Even the room they gave me reminds me of my room in madras and the tv is similar to the tv at home:-) So we went shopping on saturday and then after that we went to a party in the evening. Sharadha and me tried to dress up for a change. Only then did we realize that we were such nerds:-)It's been a while since we've dressed!!! Anyway the men we met at the party were single but over the hill:-( So we just carried on regular conversation politics, india, music, babysitting?!**-()sjdja, sleep cycles of children, anyway it was all good info. I would say it helps you prepare for the future and I suddenly felt grown up!!! I mean i always feel like i am sixteen though I am twenty three:-) So that's that. The weather is nice and chilly and ideal for jus

I loved today. I spent the entire day doing nothing and I loved it. It was like life had stopped for me to just relax. I was unattached with no worries. It was pure bliss. I wonder whether people have such days. Lazy sunday afternoon where I've got no time to worry...close my eyes and drift away! It's nice to waste away your time like this. I read two totally useless romantic books and now I am reading this book "adultery for beginners". I love this feeling. And to think two weeks from now I'll be totally free. No more long nights and longer days. No more worrying about not exercising. Wow I cannot wait for this winter break!

I had a fabulous time this thanksgiving. We went to Phoenix and San Diego and probably saying "we had fun" is an understatement. Let me roll it down for you. We started from pittsburgh at 5:30 AM. Our flight was at 8:50 AM and a lot of people told us that travelling on thanksiving could be potentially dangerous (read "missing flights"), so better be at the airport two hours befor departure. We got our bus right on time and reached the airport at 7:00 AM itself. So we had some sandwiches and waited for our flight. The journey took about four hours and was long. But we slept through and were dead tired when we reached Phoenix. Sharadha's brother took us to his house. We freshned up and were taken to south indian udipi restaturant to have authentic south indian food. After the scrumptious lunch, we decided to head for the Grand canyon but as we didn't have that much time and we had all booking for San Diego, we decided against going. So that evening we were sh

It's beautiful! Everything is silvery white and the scene is breathtaking. It's magical to see how the whole place has transformed into a white fairy land. I mean this is what we saw in movies and in animation movies like snow white etc. Now to actually see it was a very surreal experiencing. I was ecstatic and was singing "Let it snow" and then "I'm dreaming of a white christmas". It's beautiful and there are somethings in life that money cannot buy and one such thing is nature's beauty. God is great leveller, everyone can enjoy such beauty whether one is rich or poor. I think I am one up on my Dad, he won't be the only one who can talk of experiencing snow now:-)

This is one holiday that I have heard so much about but am actually experiencing it only now. He he. There was so much of chaos in college today. You could see everyone packing their bags and getting ready to go home. I will be going with my room mate to phoenix. I hope we'll have a lot of fun. I am really looking forward to it. My school friends are all meeting up at LA and it's nice to read about them meeting up through people's blogs. It's nice to see they all are so much in touch. I guess I was the only one who kind of drifted apart after I left chennai...hmmmm ....so there is just this bond that we had. It's sad when people loose touch. I hope it ain't the same story with my college friends and hope that never happens. I don't want that to be a distant memory. I had so much fun when I met Anupama Dawson from school at madras. It was great, like we never parted:-) I have this huge deciding exam that is coming up and I am little (sorry very very nervous)

I am heartbroken. This is what happens when you try to mimic someone. I tried adding music to my blog and now I have nothing for the texan weekend blog. What a pity!! This makes you think that only paper will last. It has survived 200 years and I am sure will last another 200 years. And just yesteday I was using floppy disks to hold data and today my laptop does not have a reader for it! Gosh. So why am I writing a blog? Dunno I guess i am pure lazy to write in my diary that amma bought me from jaipur:-) On friday we had a rather later Navrathri celebrations at pittsburgh. It was nice to see a lot of ABCS dressed to their best and I felt ugly as usual (Please read this playing ugly by Jovi in the background as i can't risk attaching it to my blog:-( ). I wanted to stay later but unfortunately my room mate was leaving so i was forced to leave. I later found that there were buses available till 12. Damn! This always happens to me. I keep wondering whether I'll just wilt one day w

I was listening to Norah Jones and I felt this was an apt song for me too. I sometimes wonder we human beings are always striving towards that unreachable star. We always seem to be on the hope for something better. I wonder if it's really stupid of me to travel all the way to another part of the globe, to spend so much of money in pursuit of what? One way it's great, you get to see another part of the world, learn about their culture, learn about your own culture and get to interact with some new professors. Why is it that people who come here never wanna go? I guess it's the comfort i.e materialistic. You need to make a lot more money to get this in India but there is family and of course familiarity. Most of my friends are here. It's not funny the number of people from church park and PSG who are here. In fact I am not sure if I would have spoken to so many PSGians in chennai. I am sort of going through the same emotions that went through me while I was in bombay. I

I had written this long post yesterday because the weather has been so depressing but today I am back to being cheerful. I am off to niagara today. Raj Reddy has organized a trip for us students. ITs supposed to be the worst day to go to niagara weather wise. It's the last day of the fall attraction but nothing will deter the human spirit. I am wearing four layers of clothes apart from my down jacket. Hope it's not too unberable. I will post photos after we come back. Cant wait!

I am two days away from my interview with google and no I have not studied well. I spent a lazy saturday morning doing nothing. I spoke to my mum, then asif ghatala, then sowmya nayak. I bathed for an hour, what bliss! Just when I was in the mood to study, my friend called me from syracuse and we chatted for an hour. Then conferenced with another friend. Wow! I just spent time just like that till six. Then I got into the study mode and i did some timepass for sometime. But nothing fruitful. I guess some days are just meant to be wasted. I attended a meeting and just got off it and it's 2 AM. I have absolutely no social life. I mean it's saturday night and these people have to schedule a meeting only in the night when I am farting around the whole day. But this is where this onsite offshore thing comes. I am plagued by this, at TCS and now at school. God give me deliverance from this!!!! We will be going to niagara next week and I am really looking forward to that. I hope it wo

Yesterday was a beautiful day. My risk class in the morning went off well followed by me having a meeting with my team mates on the security assignment. It was a nice discussion. IN the evening I went to a concert by heArtbeat which is a band from chennai at the Frick auditorium at Upitt. Wow it was simply amazing! I was transported to another world for the one hour that I spent there. I wish I could have stayed for the entire concert but duty called. They played some very different ragams. One of these was very striking called "Rathipathipriya". It was a very romantic raaga, it reminded me of the song by MS "katrinilai varum geetham" and "kuzhal oodhi manam endra kollai konda pindra". The silent violin is something I have never heard of and it sounded very melodious. The other ragam was saladam and it had tinges of hindolam in it. I was not sure but after that song was over the person playing the ghatam said that it has tinges of hindolam and I gave mysle

This weekend, I was just looking forward to sleeping. I did not realize that I would be having so much fun. I woke up on saturday and went to play tennis in the morning, then I called up my dad's college mate, Dr.Pradeep Seethi, to go and spend time with them on saturday. The point to be noted is that my dad has never met pradeep uncle. The initial plan was to just meet them for lunch and come back home but I ended up staying the night. Let me start off by saying that there are very few people in this world who are very warm. Whenever I meet people who are warm, my faith in the world get reaffirmed. Dr. Seethi and Sonia aunty and their sons fall into one such category. They were super cool and so warm that I felt instantly at home, once I stepped into the car when uncle came to pick me up. Their house is on shadow ridge lane, a beautiful place. It's like a picture out of some discovery magazine. I was greeted to burritos and samosa and hot chai. Wow the way to my heart

Yesterday I spent the whole night working. You know me, in my twenty three years of working I rarely have done such a thing. Well I felt quite sick in the morning. Probably also because of self pity. Well it has been a month in America and how do I feel. Quite frankly I like it. The work is hard but it keeps you busy so there is no time to feel homesick. By and large people are friendly. I once read somewhere that when you visit a new country rather than learning about their culture, you come to know of your own culture. This is exactly how I feel. Of course you do not get to interact much with Americans because a lot of people in my department are non- Americans. In fact one can count the number of Americans and Indian Americans in the class. Today after class at 7:30 PM I met this interesting person in the computer science lounge. He was an American. His family had immigrated years ago from Ukraine. He wanted to know more about India and then about Indian women. He had watched a docu

This weekend, I went to atlanta to meet my soul mates from undergrad, Gopi and Divya. It was supposed to be a reunion Gopi, Divi, Indie, Raji and me. BUt Raji dropped out in the beginning itself because of the new orleans disaster. Indie was supposed to come till the last minute and then she had to cancel her ticket because her cousin was visiting her from england this weekend. And Indie being Indie forgot to look up this simple detail when booking her tickets to atlanta. Annway I was seriously upset that she was not there but was looking forward to meeting gopika and divya. So I left pittsburg at 3:00 PM by the 28X flyer which drops one off at the airport. I reached the airport at 4:30 PM for a 6:00 PM flight. But hey better late than never:-) So I went in and then looked around the pittsburg airport for a while and then waited in the boarding lounge. The learnings were that I had to take the metro to reach the gate from where I had to board. Such a difference from Indian Airports. Bo

Today we had a break from orientation. We have two days before class starts. On Sunday we have a picnic with the department. I hope it will be fun. Yesterday Gopika and Divya called up and made my day. It was so much fun talking to them. I was to go to georgia but tickets were a little too expensive. Well I am planning to definitely meet up with them before I go. What's the point of coming here otherwise? Hopefully when sriram comes something will work out. So today I took part in a psychology study and earned 20 bucks. I was so thrilled. GReat to make money to spend. we had to play two unbelievably simple and interesting games to play and earn the bucks. God it was good. Now that we earned the bucks we decided to spend it! So I had chinese food and my friend had indian . Mine sucked but hers was okay. This place called tech streets has trucks or mobile units which serve food. It sort of reminded me of PSG Tech back gate. Except there you get yummier things for 10 rupees rather tha

This week has been great what with so much free food and great fun things to do. Today we started off with continental breakfast (yum yum) followed by sessions on thrifty living at CMU. It was really amazing. All the teaching staff here are by and large very articulate and extremely witty. The dean of student affairs, Dr. Paul Fowler was amzing. It was such fun listening to him. The Vice provost of CMU happens to be an Indian and she also spoke really well. She basically stressed on mixing with people and really enjoying what you're doing as this is the only time that you have to enjoy yourselves. She said "this is the break that you have from society and family obligations. So do this for yourselves". That was really very stimulating. In the afternoon we had a four course etiquette lunch. The first course was soup, second course salad, third course was lasange and the last course desert. We had an instructor who lead us thru the whole meal. To top it we had a desert fair

I have not blogged for two days. This is what happened. On sunday I swam and played squash an sort of felt a little good because I got to do some physical exercise. Sunday night the indian student association organised an Independance day celebration. We painted a fence at CMU tricolored and just socialised with some Indian folks. There are a lot of Indians out here. We sort of form the majority of the International students. The sour point was that there was only cake and no free food:-( On monday our department called us for a welcome luncheon. It was really nice. The staff were very friendly and we had a good introduction to software engineering by one professor, Anthony. All the people here are very funny and extremely articulate. There is something to learn from that. Today is the first day of our International orientation. We reached here at 8:15 grabbed some doughnuts and coffee and had some good introduction about the US way of life. The OIE (office of International eductaion)

I am at CMU now and it still has not sunk in. School starts from tomorrow only, I mean the orientation. What strikes me after five days in America is that it is such a rich country and we are all really poor. I mean the cars, the roads, the malls, the houses etc. Everything is so big and massive. IT will take a while for India to get to that. No wonder we are called third world. It really makes no sense. Another peculiar thing is that there are only two sizes of people here either extremely fat or extremely fit. There are no in betweens. Everybody follows the rules and the houses look beautiful from the outside. I can understand why many Indians stay back here. They become slaves to all these material things. CMU is lovely. One thing I cannot understand is that the campus just spills onto the road. There is no compound wall. That is quite alien to somebody from India. People are quite friendly and helpful. Of course there are some people who are rude. But I think I've met only one

I watched this movie morning raga yesterday. The promos of the movie looked so very nice. It also has some brilliant actors as a part of its star cast. The only problem was that the movie had a very flimsy story line except for the carnatic music part, the music is nothing. They could have done a lot more. Lillette Dubey and Perizaad and the lead actor are like actors in a bad play. Even I would be able to emote better. Shabana Azmi is the only one who is a little believable. I leave on moday and I have not started packing as yet. Amma needs to help to carry out the mission.

The countdown before I leave has begun and boy is it madness! In all this rush I also need to meet up with freinds, go out for a movie, lunch and also do mundane things like help clean the table, clear out the cupboards. Yesterday I watched this yucky movie called dark waters. Sick and it is supposedly a horror flick but it was not at all scary. I went with a lawyer friend of mine from school. My parents helped me today by finishing off my errands at the travel agent and the automobile association. In the evening I went and bought myself a passport bag and a hand bag ( a good leather one). Then I came back home and helped my mom make dinner. I really have not done such a thing in a long time. Then I spoke to this other friend of mine who is getting married. She is one of those "socialite" types. They think they're cats whiskers. But she sounded quite nice on the phone. So we both carried out the fakeness for sometime and then stopped. Today I had a pow-wow with my pare

I thought today was going to be just a usual day doing my usual jig before I leave for the US on the 9th of August. I got up in the morning, took copies of all my originals and then worked on getting a duplicate license (yes lost the original). We (Mum and me) had movie tickets for parineeta at 4 PM. So we set out at 3:45PM just to realize that we left the tickets at home. Drove all the way back amist a heavy downpour and rushed up and got the tickets. The show started late so we caught the movie on time. It was beautiful. The story was usual hindi movie types but the cinematography was top class. It was such a good eye candy film. Saif Ali kHan looked hot and the new girl vidya balan looked stunning. The sets, artefact etc were a visual delight. wow! It makes one feel good to see all that glitz. Back home I thought life would be cool, I would unwind watching frasier and go off to sleep. But then I checked my mail and I had got some info from carnegie mellon that they had not got my in