August 15, 2003
 

Travel

On Monday night, I managed to get dialup internet access working from the apartment.

The last two days (Tuesday & Wednesday) have been fairly boring. Admittedly I did manage to get a lot of Indian food into the tummy, but the first restuarant I had some was called 'Sneha' (not sure where). I had a fairly heavy lunch (predominantly salad based) and so I was quite sad that the early dinner (7 pm because of a conference call at 8 pm) might possibly mean me not doing justice to the buffet on offer. I settled for a simple masala dosai. To me, the quality and price of the masala dosai are a fair indicator of how good a restuarant is. If it serves bad masala dosai, I normally dont even bother returning. I suppose I'll call it the Masala dosai index, similar to the Big Mac Index. Sneha's masala dosai looked yummy ... until the waiter brought the sambar. One dip of the dosai into the sambar confirmed my worst fears. He had served dal makhani, with rajma in it instead of sambar. I somehow managed to consume the rest of the dosai (the masala and the dosai also being substandard) and decided never to return to the restuarant. The irony of it all was that there was a board outside the restuarant claiming to serve South Indian dishes as well.

Yesterday dawned nice and bright. I had a nice South Indian thali meal at a restuarant called Udipi Palace in El Camino with a colleague. It was a real welcome change from the food that is allegedly Indian in the office canteen as well as the masala dosai (I'm very charitably continuing to call it so). I also bought some fruits, juices etc. for daily breakfast. Halfway through the day, I got totally bored with what I was doing. My manager suggested we go and check out some places around the area for cellphone deals. I told him I also wanted to see the nearest Amtrack station because I'd planned to visit a cousin at Emeryville. Then, suddenly, on a whim, I messaged my cousin saying I was coming there that night and told my manager that I was actually planning to take the Amtrack train to Emeryville at around 545 pm. We went to a couple of cellphone shops, the Verizon one didn't have GSM deals or rentals while the Cingular showroom had a sign which said back at 445 pm and evidently we seemed to be in the wrong timezone because it was 515 pm. We tried all sorts of ways to then get to the Amtrack station and finally managed to get there 10 minutes or so before the train arrived.

The journey to Emeryville was very nice and scenic, well at least the first half of it. I saw lots of open fields, ponds, pockets of water (estuaries/backwaters?), mountains, used car handling plants and other industrial plants as well (seemed quite atypical of the typical impression I had of the bay area, with just technology companies infesting the place). I got to Emeryville (I think there were around 4 stops in all from Santa Clara to Emeryville) in an hour or so and my cousin & her husband had come to get me from the station. I also bought some kind of season ticket which allowed me 10 trips between San Jose and Emeryville in a 45 day period for $59 (the standard one-way fare is $10). We took a bus home (free ride, my b-i-l knew the driver!) and chatted for a while, had some snacks. We then went out for a small walk around the apartment complex. It is located nearly at the peninsula, so there is water on 3 sides. I know I did state the bleeding obvious while saying that, but how am I to know if you still know a cape from a bay from an isthmus from a strait? Dinner followed, I stayed back for the night and took the 715 am train back to my apartment and then got to work. Idam adya blogantaha (pardon my Sanskrit, just fooling around with the alleged Devabhasha)

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

Rambled @ 4:54 AM

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