http://www1.snapfish.com/thumbnailshare/AlbumID=138614875/a=54889431_54889431/t_=54889431
Coming up next- Indy trip photos
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Tuesday, November 21, 2006
Vacouver Tourism - a trip to remember
This Thanksgiving break I thought of giving myself a big break and planned 2 trips back to back - Vancouver and Indianapolis.
Well came back from Vancouver and it is the most amazing city I have been to (besides Nagpur.) We were staying in Fairmount Waterfront hotel in the downtown (This post is all about show off ).
The trip started with us getting a speeding ticket (and I am pretty sure we were not speeding) on I-5 by a cop who was ambushed with a civilian car and a stupid radar. Once we entered Vacouver - we were amazed by the size of the down town - they had three clusters of downtown and beautiful bridges and mountains.
We reached Vancouver around Sun night. Spent most of the Sun night shopping. g3 got her cool new jacket in the robson street which you will see her waering in rest of the photos(from ESPIRIT).
Woke up Mon morning and admired the great view from the hotel- and pitied all the poor people who had gone to work that monday >:).
We went for some sight seeing - took a long route and accidentally entered the stanley park and got some good shots there.
The high point (both literally and figuratively) was the Grouse mountain - were we took a trolley (sky-ride) upto a snow covered mountain and hiked in the snow. The best comment was from Dami - "I can feel only 1 leg out of my four limbs!". It's funny even up there you can find starbucks equivalent coffee to defreeze yourself. It was fun playing in the snow (we invented and played the game of putting snow in the mouth of an huge open-mouthed grizzely bear's statue) and ofcourse we took our jackets off and freaked out in the snow for a moment.
Later -the suspended bridge - was spooky and amazing - at a point we literally felt that the bridge was swinging up in the mid air. They had a warning sign near their parking - "Warning - Car thiefs work here." but thankfully nobody stole our honda civic.
Later at night - we were back to downtown - our very own Robson street and went around for food and some photography -
We did som desi-pana by clicking photos with Ash and Shahrukh.
We also saw the steam clock in the Gastown.
Later at night we chatted and photographed a lot near the hotel ballroom.
Next morning we woke up and went to Granville island (which is a spread out version of Pike's market). The view of the waterfront from there was awesome.
Later we came back to Robson - to the Pacific Shopping Center where we had our lunch.
Also revisited the Stanley Park to see the totelpoles and the lady in swimsuit.
Finally took off via Surrey (which has 88% sikh and 8% hindu population) - stopped in a sweets shop - had samosas, jalebi and chai - since the owner's response was not very prompt we kinda left without buying any sweets :(.
All in all the trip was awesome - Vacouver simply rocks -The Robson street to me now is as familiar as the 148th Street. The downtown - the food - the varied cuisine - the friendly people (damn canadians as per D)just seemed perfect. However the best part in the trip was company of friends who were equally crazy and enthusiastic, equally unfamiliar with Vancouver and most importantly equally camera-phylic!
Coming up next - Indy pics.
Well came back from Vancouver and it is the most amazing city I have been to (besides Nagpur.) We were staying in Fairmount Waterfront hotel in the downtown (This post is all about show off ).
The trip started with us getting a speeding ticket (and I am pretty sure we were not speeding) on I-5 by a cop who was ambushed with a civilian car and a stupid radar. Once we entered Vacouver - we were amazed by the size of the down town - they had three clusters of downtown and beautiful bridges and mountains.
We reached Vancouver around Sun night. Spent most of the Sun night shopping. g3 got her cool new jacket in the robson street which you will see her waering in rest of the photos(from ESPIRIT).
Woke up Mon morning and admired the great view from the hotel- and pitied all the poor people who had gone to work that monday >:).
We went for some sight seeing - took a long route and accidentally entered the stanley park and got some good shots there.
The high point (both literally and figuratively) was the Grouse mountain - were we took a trolley (sky-ride) upto a snow covered mountain and hiked in the snow. The best comment was from Dami - "I can feel only 1 leg out of my four limbs!". It's funny even up there you can find starbucks equivalent coffee to defreeze yourself. It was fun playing in the snow (we invented and played the game of putting snow in the mouth of an huge open-mouthed grizzely bear's statue) and ofcourse we took our jackets off and freaked out in the snow for a moment.
Later -the suspended bridge - was spooky and amazing - at a point we literally felt that the bridge was swinging up in the mid air. They had a warning sign near their parking - "Warning - Car thiefs work here." but thankfully nobody stole our honda civic.
Later at night - we were back to downtown - our very own Robson street and went around for food and some photography -
We did som desi-pana by clicking photos with Ash and Shahrukh.
We also saw the steam clock in the Gastown.
Later at night we chatted and photographed a lot near the hotel ballroom.
Next morning we woke up and went to Granville island (which is a spread out version of Pike's market). The view of the waterfront from there was awesome.
Later we came back to Robson - to the Pacific Shopping Center where we had our lunch.
Also revisited the Stanley Park to see the totelpoles and the lady in swimsuit.
Finally took off via Surrey (which has 88% sikh and 8% hindu population) - stopped in a sweets shop - had samosas, jalebi and chai - since the owner's response was not very prompt we kinda left without buying any sweets :(.
All in all the trip was awesome - Vacouver simply rocks -The Robson street to me now is as familiar as the 148th Street. The downtown - the food - the varied cuisine - the friendly people (damn canadians as per D)just seemed perfect. However the best part in the trip was company of friends who were equally crazy and enthusiastic, equally unfamiliar with Vancouver and most importantly equally camera-phylic!
Coming up next - Indy pics.
Thursday, November 16, 2006
Resume
Was working on my resume - no not looking for jobs but for some other reason (after a certain age you realize that you cannot get a new job or a new guy in your life) - well cribs apart - was thinking about the extra-curricular activities. Some activities like organizing events, being part of various local committees (where we attended lots of useless meetings (and as the legend goes in every meeting we decided what to decide in the next meeting)) seemed fairly useless. But however, in those days they generated max enthu in me - I still remember editing the ACA newsletter with Pathak till 4 in the morning then, judging the softwares and finding bugs with Ankur all night (different Ankur - not you) before the techfest. In VRCE all my extra-cirricular activities were tightly coupled with what Vids did - and I guess that's the reason why inspite of being in different branch (I CS and she MET) we kinda amalagaMETed (sorry Vids I stole this word from you).
And I remember sitting and giving titles to every prof during departmental gatherings, or seniors at the time of farewell, making personality contest forms, deciding what to have as fillers in various events (for some strange reason, I didn't have so much of stage fright then), deciding on a theme while compering etc . I still remember the personality contest in 1st year when I turned up only to find 1000s (or more than that) people in the auditiorium all loud and yelling and my first instinct was to dig a well and jump into it, or the fresher's dance (which was quite a hit;)) and the fashion show (that we eventually converted into a dance). Actually I still remember one of the questions asked during the personality contest by a poker-faced guy("what if you were hillary clinton and bill clinton had cheated on you?" - ohmygosh!)
And yes I learnt a lot in my classes, lots more during the exams (when we really studied) but there are some core skills like -ability to work in a team, ability to act goofy, ability to approach new people (yes I was born and brough up as a shy girl unless VRCE happened), ability to tolerate untolerable people (still working on that) and ability to make new people feel at home (after bullying them to the hilt) - that I learnt only from these extra-cirricular activities.
But as morpheus said - fate has its own irony - none of these activities are part of my resume today!
And I remember sitting and giving titles to every prof during departmental gatherings, or seniors at the time of farewell, making personality contest forms, deciding what to have as fillers in various events (for some strange reason, I didn't have so much of stage fright then), deciding on a theme while compering etc . I still remember the personality contest in 1st year when I turned up only to find 1000s (or more than that) people in the auditiorium all loud and yelling and my first instinct was to dig a well and jump into it, or the fresher's dance (which was quite a hit;)) and the fashion show (that we eventually converted into a dance). Actually I still remember one of the questions asked during the personality contest by a poker-faced guy("what if you were hillary clinton and bill clinton had cheated on you?" - ohmygosh!)
And yes I learnt a lot in my classes, lots more during the exams (when we really studied) but there are some core skills like -ability to work in a team, ability to act goofy, ability to approach new people (yes I was born and brough up as a shy girl unless VRCE happened), ability to tolerate untolerable people (still working on that) and ability to make new people feel at home (after bullying them to the hilt) - that I learnt only from these extra-cirricular activities.
But as morpheus said - fate has its own irony - none of these activities are part of my resume today!
Wednesday, November 15, 2006
food for thought - North America versus India
Overheard:
In India and China everything is possible but everything is hard.
In North America there are things that are not possible but everything is easy.
That's the choice you need to make.
A nice song after a long time - incidentally this is number one in India (again overheard):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY_9Lc0v1Gs&mode=related&search=
In India and China everything is possible but everything is hard.
In North America there are things that are not possible but everything is easy.
That's the choice you need to make.
A nice song after a long time - incidentally this is number one in India (again overheard):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY_9Lc0v1Gs&mode=related&search=
What's the equation dude?
What the heck - I slog day in a day out - I see the scale going down - 115 - 114.6 - 114 - 113.6 - 113.4 and then it is 113. Wow! 2 pounds in 4 days. And then one temptation - one dinner out (that too vegan and with the skewed respective appetite dividing the bill by 1/2 didnt seemed fair (well it's my hard-earned money and that was a huge bill)) and that's it - its back to 115. What's the deal - how does it work - can't debug it - is there a neural net there (hell'lo!).
Well since the day I was mentally born - I have these two issues - that I am overweight and that I have a bad hairstyle.
For today, let's just talk about issue one. And for it I credit my classmate (MB) in 10th when we were having some height weight ratio determination - for my weight (which at that that time was same as it is now) - he had exclaimed - "Girl's mein highest". At that point it sounded as if it was something like a "aakashvani"(I am sure I saw some lightening also up there...).
Losing weight is not impossible - have done that once - and constantly do that in intervals- but this time just don't feel motivated. I mean the last successful attempt was when I was below 18. Now I am wiser (before saying anything remember that you dont know how wise I was at 18)- Well - if I lose weight - I am not going to change my wardrobe (will continue to wear my oversized jackets and jeans). I think I am fairly active (except for mandatory 9 hours of sleep), my friend's car will still accomodate me as the 5th passenger, my insurance rate, my house rent etc etc will not change, nor will my coding style. I don't have to worry about gaining weight, rather I will save myself from future disappointments incase I later gain weight.
Infact I think there are advantages of being over-weight - one being getting rid of the fear that you will be overweight coz dude (dudette) you already are (its all about having the security of having the best case equal to worst case)! You can poke fun at all those anoeroxic self-weight-obsessed girls (pamper your alter-ego that is). And well the biggest one being- people who really love you will have more of you :).
P.S - Told ya - shouldn't have gotten me drunk.
Well since the day I was mentally born - I have these two issues - that I am overweight and that I have a bad hairstyle.
For today, let's just talk about issue one. And for it I credit my classmate (MB) in 10th when we were having some height weight ratio determination - for my weight (which at that that time was same as it is now) - he had exclaimed - "Girl's mein highest". At that point it sounded as if it was something like a "aakashvani"(I am sure I saw some lightening also up there...).
Losing weight is not impossible - have done that once - and constantly do that in intervals- but this time just don't feel motivated. I mean the last successful attempt was when I was below 18. Now I am wiser (before saying anything remember that you dont know how wise I was at 18)- Well - if I lose weight - I am not going to change my wardrobe (will continue to wear my oversized jackets and jeans). I think I am fairly active (except for mandatory 9 hours of sleep), my friend's car will still accomodate me as the 5th passenger, my insurance rate, my house rent etc etc will not change, nor will my coding style. I don't have to worry about gaining weight, rather I will save myself from future disappointments incase I later gain weight.
Infact I think there are advantages of being over-weight - one being getting rid of the fear that you will be overweight coz dude (dudette) you already are (its all about having the security of having the best case equal to worst case)! You can poke fun at all those anoeroxic self-weight-obsessed girls (pamper your alter-ego that is). And well the biggest one being- people who really love you will have more of you :).
P.S - Told ya - shouldn't have gotten me drunk.
Sunday, November 12, 2006
Friends may come and go ...
But sisters are forever ...
Call from cherry -
"Oh aapke 11 baj gaye hain kya? Arre bahut late ho gaya"
Call from cherry -
"Oh aapke 11 baj gaye hain kya? Arre bahut late ho gaya"
Tuesday, November 07, 2006
Are we Alone ?
On of my friends in Pune (yes I have friends from Pune too - what do you think) once told me - "we are alone in life in our most heart-felt moments". His words never sounded more true ... though at that time it sounded contrary to the life I had - crowded - I had wondered for a long time - "Are we humans alone?" - aren't we social animals - part of a fabric - don't know whether we are alone may be yes - are we independent - well ...
On a related note - today in office A and L said that they saw a flying saucer (UFO category) outside the cafeteria - "Well again -are we humans alone?"
On a related note - today in office A and L said that they saw a flying saucer (UFO category) outside the cafeteria - "Well again -are we humans alone?"
Friday, November 03, 2006
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