September 17, 2003
 

Personal

I got back home on Saturday midnight. The journey back began with some hectic packing on Thursday night and Friday morning. Friday morning was essentially ctrl-z [that's undo, for the windoze users] of the previous night's packing. I arrived in the US of A with a suitcase and a travel bag, I was returning with 3 checked-in pieces and 2 cabin baggage pieces. Thats due to some shopping and some gifts received. I got dropped off at the airport around 11 am by my manager [again! THANKS A LOT!], well in time for the 230 pm flight. I checked in without any problems about the extra pieces of baggage (the weight was never going to be an issue). I did some chocolates shopping at the airport duty free shops and then boarded the flight. Thankfullty this time around, the movies were better than the ones shown on my way to SFO. From San Francisco to Frankfurt it was the Rowan Atkinson wacky spoofy comedy Johnny English. I had seen the movie earlier, so I slept through some of it. We landed at Frankfurt around 10 am local time. Since I wanted to get hold of some euros, I bought some chocolates. The problem was that there're no 1 euro notes. So I ended up carrying a fair number of euro coins, which would no doubt add to the weight of the aircraft. At Frankfurt, there was a ridiculous charade of asking all passengers [including those who had boarding passes] to stand in a line for a boarding pass verification. If the airline was so unsure about its boarding pass issuing processes, then why make the customers uncomfortable?

Bruce Almighty was the English movie on the Frankfurt - Bangalore flight. I'd not seen it before, so I tried to see all of it. It was funny in parts but it really did remind me of two recent Tamil movies - Baba and Anbe Sivam. The parts where Bruce questions the existence of God and then God manifests himself, gives him the boon to be God for as long as he wanted as long as he made agreed to some conditions, Bruce testing out his newly acquired powers and then realising that it was true and using those powers to make things better for himself, for others around him etc. ... these reminded me of Baba. The parts of the movie where God tells Bruce that there's a God in everyone, some of them know and most others dont realise it. Doing good deeds is one of the best ways to experience God etc. ... they reminded me of Anbe Sivam. The makers of the movie seem to have been "inspired" by these two Tamil movies. The other thing I noticed was that the movie also bore a strong resemblance to an earlier Jim Carrey movie - Liar Liar. The other movie on the flight was a pathetic Hindi movie, which I'd never heard about, so I chose to skip it and caught some sleep, anxiously waiting for the landing around midnight.

We landed just around midnight on Friday-Saturday. I managed to get through the immigration queue fairly quickly (I noticed that there were quite a few counters open, good to note that) and then went to the baggage claim. I waited for nearly 45 minutes for my 3 pieces of baggage. It seemed like a combination of Wordsworth and cricket. I was either saying 'Stop here or gently pass' or screaming to myself 'Not mine, yours'. Finally, at close to 1 am, my bags arrived - as the adage goes, when it rains, it pours. I got home around 130 am after failing to wend past an army of pre-paid taxi drivers, each promising the same rate. I wondered 'Guys, where's the competitive advantage? What about pricing strategy?!'. After some chitchat, I slept at around 230 am.

Got into work on Monday, found that my desk hadn't been setup yet [we're in the process of moving premises] and that just gave me another excuse to go home in the afternoon.

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

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September 12, 2003
 

Travel

I know it has been a while since my last update, but I've either been too busy or too lazy. Last week was fairly uneventful. During the weekend, I managed to meet up with a school friend on Saturday and caught up on life. We had a nice buffet lunch at a restuarant called 'Passage to India', the variety of sweets on offer was really amazing. On Sunday, I went to the San Francisco zoo with cousin & her husband. The zoo was very good and quite huge. We saw giraffes, penguins, kangaroos, polar bears, cassowaries etc., so there were quite a few animals which were unusual in that environment. We also managed to attend a feline feeding session (lions and tigers). It was really thrilling watching the animals roam restlessly in the cage, where they had been brought into from the open guarded/moated area where they normally lazed around, waiting for their food, wondering why on earth they couldn't even eat in privacy. I wonder what animals think when they spot us humans in zoos, do they wonder why these puny weakling like bipeds are caged?

We returned to Emeryville around 8 pm and saw Kannathil Mutthamitaal (2nd time for me) on DVD. Most definitely a good movie, but one of the things that still concerns me was why the parents informed their adopted daughter about her origins when she had just turned 9. Why 9? Why not say ... 13?

Day before yesterday, a colleague treated us to dinner on his birthday at a place called Kokila's Kitchen [I know, its a rather shady sounding name!]. We then went to another colleague's house to watch a movie 'Phone booth'. Nice rivetting thriller, even though the fact that the pizza delivery man was never going to be the killer was pretty obvious.

I had to go back to Emeryville yesterday evening to collect my cameras which I'd forgotten behind on Sunday. The return to Santa Clara via Amtrak was absolutely painful. The train arrived 15 minutes late, then it had an unscheduled halt shortly after Oakland to let some other train service pass, because Amtrak uses some other rail service's network in this locality. Shortly after Fremont, there was *another* halt for nearly 1/2 hr. Meanwhile I'd managed to get in touch with a school friend earlier yesterday and we'd fixed up to meet for dinner. There were two problems: He did not know how to get to the Amtrak station and my train was getting delayed bigtime. Ultimately I landed up more than 1/2 hr late and we went to his place. He got married a few days before I did and I couldn't attend his wedding. So after dinner, we spent time seeing his wedding album. He'd already seen my uploaded album.

I leave for Bangalore via Frankfurt tomorrow at 2 pm local time. So this will be my last blog update from this trip to the US of A. Catch you later from Bangalore!

Oh, and before I forget: More photos uploaded: San Francisco and Sunnyvale/San Jose etc.

---

Politics

Today is the 2nd anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The scale of the functions organized to commemorate [is that the right word?] it is much lesser than last year, I hear. Yet, the shrill rhetoric by Bush and co. does not abate. Everyone is talking about the thousands of Americans who died in those attacks. The government talks about making sure something like September 11, 2001 never happens again and that it'd be better to face the terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan than on American soil. Fair enough, except they forget that policies pursued in Iraq and Afghanistan are bound to rebound on them. You cannot enforce US/European style democracy on Afghanistan or Iraq [or Iran or Palestine or Syria or Pakistan ... you get the drift]. If you tried to do it, prepare for the retribution.

I've wondered for the last two years about how the formidable defence apparatus of the USA allowed the attacks to happen. Even allowing for the first attack happening too fast, it is difficult to believe that there were no fighter planes summoned up once it was known that not one but two flights were hijacked [it can't be difficult to figure that out, the weather was clear and the flights definitely went off course]. Michael Meacher, an ex-cabinet minister in the Tony Blair government has raised a few issues. I dont know if it was a publicity thing, but he does raise some pertinent issues.

Did the Indian government did something to remember the Indians who died in the WTC and Pentagon attacks? I'm fairly sure there were lots of Indians who died, some of them Indian citizens as well.

Labels: iran, travelogue, usa 2003

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September 05, 2003
 

Travel

I got dropped off at Oakland Airport [well in time!] by my manager who, as you'd have guessed by now, is very helpful in matters of transportation [aside of course from the fact that he is really a good boss]. Didnt really have any hassles with the security, except I was asked if my shoes had metal in them. Seeing the quizzical look on my face (which actually meant 'What the hell are you talking about? I've never heard of shoes with metal in them'), I was let go. The flight journey wasn't really uneventful. Just after take-off, one of the passengers a couple of rows ahead of me fainted. I'm not sure why he fainted, but he did. A doctor was located in the passenger list and the patient was given oxygen and made to rest. I flew JetBlue airways, which doesn't give meals on board - just snacks. I'd eaten some cake at the airport, so I wasn't feeling too hungry. We landed in JFK airport around 530 am. I was picked up by my aunts and we went home. I was really feeling sleepy, so after informing folks in Madras that I'd arrived, I just crashed, hoping to wake up around 8 am. It was 10 am when I did.

After lunch, my cousin and I went off to roam around Manhattan. We took the train to Grand Central Station. It really does look good. We then walked to the Empire State building. There was a security check inside. We cleared the test and went off to the combo-tour: The skyride and the observatory. The skyride simulates an aerial view of NYC as if you're riding a helicopter. The seats move according to whether the screen is showing a turning to the left/right/swivel etc. Its quite enjoyable, but it was really short - just 15-20 minutes. I thought it could have lasted at least 1/2 hr. We then went to the observatory, which is nothing but the top floor [86th] of the Empire state building. The view of Manhattan and its surrounding areas was really good, in spite of some fairly murky weather following some showers.

Having done the observation, we walked through Little India and then took a taxi to Battery Park to catch a ferry to the Statue of Liberty, which I suppose is currently the only thing Yanks like to associate with the French. Because of security considerations, there's no docking on Liberty island, you only get to go past it. The harbour cruise we took was quite good. We went past Ellis island, Liberty island, parts of Jersey city and also under the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. The narration on the cruise was quite hopeless unfortunately. After alighting from the ferry, we walked to the World Trade Center site. It is MASSIvE, 16 acres apparently. You don't appreciate the actual area covered by the buildings because you're used to seeing just two very tall skyscrapers on TV, the actual area of the entire complex isn't too obvious. Work was underway for the reconstruction using the new model which has been approved. A history of the WTC as well as photos of how Manhattan looked right from the early 20th century till the inauguration of the WTC also can be found on the site. We then took the subway to Times Square. It is an extremely glitzy place, advertising hoardings all around the place. Dinner then followed and it was well past 10 pm when we got home.

The next day, we had lunch with Krithi's parents and her brother-in-law. There was a lot of chatting and good food. In the evening, my cousin and I went to a mall nearby to do some purchases. At night, we tried looking out for Mars. I dont think we quite got to agree on whether the celestial body we saw was Mars or not. It could have been Jupiter or Venus or even Saturn. Does it matter? Oh, I forgot to mention this in the last blog, but I managed to get a snap of Mars on Aug 28, the day after it was closest to the earth.

On Monday, I switched base to where Krithi's parents were staying, with Krithi's sister, brother-in-law and his mother. Krithi's sister has just given birth to a baby, so I took some photos of the baby. Then the usual chatting, food etc. In the evening, we went to a nearby Ganesha temple. It was quite impressive, spick and span. I wonder why temples cannot be maintained similarly in India. I dont imply that temples are unclean in India, but the fact that I didn't step on a single puddle is testimony to the fact that the authorities (obviously the laws of the land do come into the picture here) are ensuring cleanliness.

I caught my flight back to Oakland on Tuesday morning, this time it was uneventful. I landed at Oakland around 1030 am, was picked up by my manager (AGAIN!) and dropped off at the flat ... and that was the end of my 3 day weekend in NYC.

I've reorganized the photos section, by creating folders and using filenames which sound like captions.

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

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August 30, 2003
 

Travel

Few more colleagues from the Bangalore office have come visiting here. So in the last couple of days, we've had dinner at Indian restuarants. Yesterday I had masala dosai at Udipi palace. It was just about so-so, not enough salt in either sambar or the masala or the maavu. The Saravana Bhavan masala I had when I went there alone was quite good. I'm still on the lookout for better places. Reader contributions and experiences are welcome by email :)

London had a blackout yesterday which affected most of its railway system and life in general. I haven't read too many details but it seems odd that barely a couple of weeks after New York and other areas in the east coast of the USA got affected, London is affected by a power crisis. I think there's more to it than meets the eye. Terrorists could be assessing the impact of causing such power shutdowns on life in general. Obviously people are going to be in a state of paranoia, wondering if it could be a terrorist attack or not. I'd really not rule out sabotage, the way the NYC officials did almost immediately after the blackout occured.

I'm off to New York for the weekend (incl. Labor day on Sep 1st: Hey thats another odd thing isn't it, the world over, workers' day is on May 1. Apparently US labourers are special?). I hope to see a lot of NY along with meeting relatives etc. I wonder what the security paranoia is going to be like: I'm told checking is much stricter on domestic flights (and well, for a good reason, the flights which hit the WTC were domestic ones, not international ones. The hijackers were trained to be pilots in the US of A, not in Afghanistan/Pakistan/Iraq etc.). I was wondering about whether I could go and catch some of the action at the US Open but the tickets were rather steeply priced. Besides I have no idea which match I would be going to. I'm not terribly interested in watching a singles game and now that the Paes-Navratilova pair isnt playing this year, I wonder who to watch.

Anyway watch out for the updates from NY.

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

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August 28, 2003
 

Travel

Back to the travelblog. On Saturday, I met up with a college friend who works in Mountainview. We went to Saravana Bhavan on El Camino (yeah, the same one I'd plodded to the other day). I had a nice south Indian meal. We then decided to go to Stanford University's mall. It really looks FAR from being a typical university mall. Just about every shop has very high priced branded goods. I wondered how the students afforded it. My friend informed me that Stanford students typically *are* rich but more importantly, Palo Alto (which is where Stanford is) houses most of the tech richies. The Stanford mall is the only big shopping centre in the area. We hung around the place, window shopped bigtime and then went to his house. He's a pseudo-bachelor now, wife in India [no gory details please. Don't spread rumours!]. He's married to a CM's daughter. So his wedding reception at Delhi was attended by everyone who wears Khadi (I am not aware of the equivalent attire/uniform for female politicians), right down from the PM to PAs. I got back home around 630pm to find a notice on my door which said that since there was a broken pipe in the apartment complex, there'd be no water supply. This dashed my hopes of giving the cupboard which hosts my unclean clothes some breathing space. Meanwhile my cousin at Emeryville asked if I was ok with turning up there on Sunday. Torn between washing my clothes (and having something to wear come Monday) and meeting people rather than being stuck alone, I opted for the latter. Lo behold! Shortly thereafter, the water started flowing through the pipes again and the clothes (and the cupboard) had their moksha. A note in passing: The last two times I'd washed my clothes, I'd wondered why they'd put up two washing machines next to each other in the flat. I thought one of them was a top loading type while the other was the front loading type. I was thoroughly embarassed (adding to the previous occasions) to find out that the other "front loading" washing machine was in reality the clothes dryer. At least this saved me the ignominy of spreading my wet clothes all over the apartment in the hope that they'd dry soon.

On Sunday, I planned to take the 950 am train to Emeryville. The problem was that it didn't arrive until 1030 due to some technical problems (or technical snags?!). When it did, after Fremont, the train just stopped for nearly 15-20 minutes. No explanations offered. I then thought to myself that I'd pretty much heard/experienced all that we think happens only in India - long immigration queues, massive powercuts, trains not on time, unscheduled stops (pottaanda signalla, in Tamil) and water not flowing in taps. In fact the last one made me feel fondly proud about dear old Madras. I landed up at Emeryville nearly around noon. We got a few DVDs to watch [Darna mana hai, Tarkeeb & Deewaaren]. We ended up watching Darna mana hai first. It was quite an ok movie, except perhaps a little too disjoint because there were a total of 7 plots/sub-stories. Some of it was also a little macabre. I liked the one featuring Vivek Oberoi and Nana Patekar. After a brief rest, we went to another side of the Emeryville waterfront. This time I caught a beautiful sunset and also managed to see the Golden Gate bridge in some clearer weather. Photographs uploaded. Some of the snaps were not taken at Emeryville, instead one was taken at the workplace and a couple of others in the parking lot of my apartment complex. We had some snacks, then took a long walk to the supermarket, bought some groceries, got back home and watched Tarkeeb while having dinner. It was an absolutely rotten movie. Too predictable, sans any story etc. I wonder how on earth folks like Nana Patekar & Tabu agree to act in such drivel.

I woke up on Sunday morning, took the 8 am train (instead of the 7 am one) back to the apartment ... or so I thought. The 8 am train goes uptil Oakland and I had to take an Amtrak bus from there. The bus left me at the Santa Clara Amtrak station (which is where I normally board/alight Amtrak) but I couldn't find a single shuttle in sight. Even the taxi service said they don't handle passengers at the Amtrak station (I wondered why!). So I had to depend on me being a biped, walked nearly a mile to the apartment, got ready to work and landed up to start a new week.

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

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August 23, 2003
 

Travel

Nothing happened during the weekdays, except that I made a total ass of myself at the Valley Transport Authority rail station on Tuesday while returning to the flat from work. This was at the Borregas station. I normally use the Lockheed Martin station both ways. Borregas is nearly as close to the office as Lockheed Martin, so I decided to try this station. I sat down on the bench provided, waited for the train to arrive and sure it did. I got up to see how far away it was and I was puzzled to see it was on the wrong track. As it came closer to the station, I realized I'd been an idiot. The train was on the right track (right as in right, also as in not wrong), I was waiting for it on the wrong platform. I'd forgotten that vehicles moved on the opposite side of the road from India. I tried making a dash for the train (seems to be a permanent feature of my blog eh?), but failed miserably. At least I'm certain not to repeat the error.

This led me to wonder about the oddities I find here:

• Vehicles driving on the right side of the road. My manager insists that the American way of driving was right, since they invented the motor car. As with most things American, there's a lot of aggrandisement and a myopic view of the world. The truth lies somewhere in between. My counter question was that well, it was the British who invented the horse carriage and the other earlier vehicles which plied on the road, so why not follow the British system?
  
• Electrical switches that you need to flip UP to turn on lights, air conditioning etc.
  
• Plug points where you dont need to flip up the above switch because the moment you put the plug wire in, electricity flows
  

Readers are invited to send in their suggestions. They will be added here, with credits.

On Wednesday, I decided I needed to have some decent Indian food. I found out that there was a Saravana Bhavan in Mountain View. After work, I took the VTA to Mountain View and asked around. I was told it was down the road, get to El Camino and take a left. The last two sections were appropriate. In fact the first bit (down the road) was also right, except it was a walk of nearly 1.5 km (a mile or so). I kept walking and finally managed to reach the restuarant, passing several other desi restuarants along the way. I had a nice tiffin of mini idly, mini masala dosai, rava upma and a sweet. Then I decided I needed to buy some stocks for dinner, like frozen chapatis or prepacked sabjis. I asked the chap at the billing counter about where I could get it. He said I could get it just after taking a left on Bernardo avenue, walkable distance. It wasn't until I kept walking for nearly 3 km that I realized he may have been an Olympic 20km walk medallist. While 3 km may not sound like a big distance, especially when I'd had dinner, you ought to take into account the fact that I was unprepared for it and was also lugging along 2 bags, one of them having a laptop and the other having a jacket, camera etc. I kept walking, walked on a freeway and then ultimately got to Bernardo avenue. The shop was Nilgiris! I bought chapatis, an aloo mutter pack and bourbon biscuits. Now the next problem was about getting home. I had to find a cab because I had no idea where the nearest VTA station was and I didnt want someone giving directions saying it was just down the road or a walkable distance. I went to a Ford Lincoln Mercury showroom since that seemed to be a good landmark to ask the cab to come to. I called the cab company, the taxi arrived around 930 pm or so and I got back to the apartment safe and sound.

Yesterday, there was a training session at work and I made a reasonably well received presentation on the work the team was doing in India. Last week there wasn't much work to do, work load is increasing slowly. But I hope I can keep updating the blog regularly.

Btw, here're a few photos from my trip. The ones in there were taken at San Francisco/Emeryville.

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

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August 20, 2003
 

Travel

Thursday and Friday were fairly monotonous and boring. Sat in on a couple of meetings, didn't do too much work. On Friday, I left for Emeryville to spend the weekend with cousin & her hubby. I didnt even do anything interesting/talk-worthy for lunch or dinner! However, that wasn't quite the case over the weekend. At Emeryville, we watched a hilarious early 1990s Tamil movie (Michael Madana Kamarajan) and then decided sleep was needed. The next time I saw daylight was when it was past 9 am. We got dressed, ready to land up in San Francisco, just as Sir Francis Drake had done, over 500 years ago.

First up, we went to Pier #1 and there was a Mahatma Gandhi statue, presented to San Francisco by the Gandhi memorial foundation. Even though I couldn't spot any pigeon/bird droppings on his head, it wasn't exactly a great place to have a statue of such a man. Einstein's words reverberated (well, that's a wrong way to put it, given I've never heard Einstein speak): Generations to come will scarce believe that such a one as this walked the earth in flesh and blood. I believe there are efforts to relocate the statue to a more respectable location. Even more strangely, we couldn't spot an Indian restuarant in that pier. We had lunch at a place called 'Naan & curry'. The food was quite decent and the tea with which we ended our meal was very good. After that we took the cable car up the steeply inclined roads of San Francisco (I think the roads are so because San Francisco was built on hills, correct me if I'm wrong) and reached Fisherman's Wharf. It offers a great view of the sea, Alcatraz and the surrounding area. We loafed around, took photographs, saw an entire pride of sea lions (I'm sure pride is the wrong collective term. But what is the good word, to quote Sabira Merchant?), had ice cream, panju mittaai (for the uneducated, it means cotton candy). Then we went to Ghirardelli square, which is also one of San Francisco's historic landmarks. It is also very famous for the Ghirardelli chocolates and we got a few free samples while ambling into a chocolates shop. We then headed to Union Square, another of San Francisco's must-see places. This has a lot of shopping malls around it. There's also a tall Corinthian column celebrating a US admiral's victory over the Spanish navy. I suppose that must have been the Spanish-American war, which resulted in independence for the Phillipines (well not really independence, they were transferred from Spain to the USA), Cuba and also the annexation of Hawaii into the US. Pretty ironic that the US fought Spain for Cuba's independence and now Cuba is a country non-grata for its USSR affiliations. After that, we took the BART to Berkeley and had a nice South Indian meal at Udipi Palace.

Sunday was much more relaxed. We played table tennis in the morning, had a picnic lunch near the flat, beside the sea and then set out for Bay Street in Emeryville. Mostly window shopping, far too costly and not enough attractive sale offers on. We had a coffee at Starbucks, unfortunately I didn't have enough time to leaf through more than a few books for free. We then stepped into the IKEA showroom. It is MASSIVE. You can buy pretty much every home related item you can think of. A one-stop household items shop and the prices were quite ok too. Dinner was at California Pizza Kitchen. Post dinner, we continued sitting at the table and chatted till around 1030 pm and then headed home.

On Monday morning, I added the Sacramento-San Jose Amtrak express to my list of trains which I've boarded barely before they left the platform. This time it wasn't as bad as my earlier experience with the Shatabdi express from Madras to Bangalore. I didn't (and couldn't have) board it as it left the platform, but I just about barely made it. In the evening, I did some grocery shopping: bought rice, chips & coffee-cream mix (for the early morning coffee, which has been rather non-existent of late. Had puliyodharai saadam and thayir saadam for dinner along with fruits and went off to sleep after hanging around on messenger till midnight.

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

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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

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August 13, 2003
 

Travel

This blog is being posted from a place with temperatures of around 28-32 deg. C, it is on the coast, a movie superstar is entering politics. You could be forgiven for thinking I was talking about dear old Madras (calling it Chennai REALLY is pathetic). But no folks, I am writing this from Sunnyvale, California. After a long 6 month wait (well not really an eagerly expected kind of wait though), I finally landed up here on Sunday afternoon after nearly a day's journey from Bangalore via Frankfurt.

The flight journeys were fairly uneventful. However the security procedures and queues were quite irritating. At Frankfurt, there was a special security check for all passengers bound to the US. As my hand luggage passed through the checking machine, I was asked if I had a nailcutter. I replied in the affirmative. I was told that I could not take it with me because it also had a knife in it and that I had the option of leaving it behind in Frankfurt and collecting it within 6 weeks. I was about to show him my toe nails to make him see reason on why I really desperately needed the nailcutter and that the nailcutter's knife was so blunt it could never possibly drill a hole into his peabrain, but I thought it would possibly trigger off some stench alarm if I removed my socks which I'd been wearing for 12 hours or so. I agreed to his proposition to leave the nailcutter behind and nearly signed the form, when I thought I heard him say I could collect it after paying 7 Euros. A quick mental calculation with my lightning fast brain told me that leaving the nailcutter with the airport folks would cost me around 350 Rs. and that it would make a lot more sense if I bought something in the US rather than pay this kind of amount. I just walked away thanking him. I'm sure he's thanking his lucky stars. I wonder how many nailcutters the security chap has stored away at home. Or is he starting a departmental store in the near future with all his prize catches? Oh, and I nearly forgot, the movies on both flights were terribly hopeless. I couldn't stand more than 10 minutes of each. In fact I've even forgotten what their names were.

I landed up at San Francisco around noon local time and then was led to the serpentine queue where visitors to the promised land (the modern one) were lined up. Amazingly enough, the queue for US citizens and Permanent Residents was equally long. Hmmm ... no discrimination. Yet why do we keep getting complaints on how the immigration queues in Indian airports take nearly forever? I was in the queue for nearly 2 hours and I got the passport/visa stamped without too many questions, collected my suitcase and even evaded the customs folks after walking through the green channel in spite of the various podis, chips, biscuits, chocolates etc. I had brought along. I was never planning on sharing my beloved 'Brita' biscuits with them anyway.

My manager had come to the airport to receive me and he dropped me off in the apartment. On the way, we passed by the Oracle campus and he also mentioned that a place beyond our field of normal vision was Stanford University. I called him up after I'd settled into the apartment and had a quick bath and we went out to buy a calling card and had dinner at a Mexican restuarant. This was my first experience with Mexican cuisine. I hope I did have veg stuff, but it certainly tasted so. Baked beans, rice and some crackers which were so similar to the 'Thattai' you get at home except there was no taste in it. I returned home, called up Madras and a cousin in San Francisco and promptly crashed at 9 pm.

I woke up at 7 am yesterday and tried to figure out how to get the coffee maker to work and I couldn't. So I skipped coffee (a very rare occurence in my life) and took the cute little local VTA light rail train to the office. It entailed around a 15 min walk from the flat to the station. The train takes around 15 minutes to reach the station where I get down. There's another 10 min walk to the Yahoo! office. I got my access cards etc. sorted out, sat in on a meeting, met a lot of the folks I'd only ever known over Y! messenger, went to a group lunch, checked my mail, did some work etc.

Thats when the ridiculous happened. I'd noticed on Sunday evening that Mr. Sun was still out even though the time was nearly 8 pm. So while I was busily working and chatting yesterday evening, I was blissfully unaware of the fact that the time was 7 pm and not 4 pm as I had presumed. I'm no Luddite so I am not going to give any excuses for me trying to figure out the time from the sun rather than from the watch I was wearing. (Besides which Luddite would use e-mail and instant messenger, anyway?!). Having realised my folly, I raced out of the office, caught the train, stopped by for dinner (paratha) and got back to the flat.

Today I got the laptop working and so am completely and officially at work now. More later ...

Labels: travelogue, usa 2003

Posted @ 12:48 AM

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