More Pictures...

What is it that they say about pictures saying more than a thousand words... Some lazy guy made that up!!!

Not Yet Ranting!!!

I missed Diwali big time this year…. missed the sweetmeats, muruku, the pattas (actually I don’t miss the noise, but the lights and soundless stuff are pretty), dry fruit hampers, colours and everything… Dad said he did not buy sweets this year… That’s a lie! I know how much he loves sweets and is waiting for an excuse to buy sweets! He probably said it to make me feel like I’m not missing anything or he’s had a check up and the doc’s told him his sugar levels are touching the sky! But I’d like to think it is the former :-D! Heard about Diwali celebrations in some asharam some 45 minutes drive from where I’m staying. Too far to make it there.

This week was one of those I-wish-the-week-would-end-NOW kind of weeks. I ran out of instant coffee – my favourite – that I brought all the way from home. Had a fire accident in the kitchen when I was trying to heat something in the oven and there was smoke in the whole apartment luckily the smoke alarm did not go off. Missed Diwali but I already mopped about it enough. Weatherwise too it’s started turning cold here, but I’m getting used to it. Tried some Pad Thai that came in a ready to heat box and that is the worst Pad Thai I have ever tasted, even called the company and told them it tasted like spaghetti NOT Pad Thai!

The town is getting ready for Halloween. i see pumpkins of all kinds – quite literally, there is the real one i.e. the vegetable, ones made of cloth, nylon, rubber, plastic, glass, metal and every imaginable material. Next weekend should be interesting!

I think I’ve caught the Kodak itch again… been clicking anything and everything. I find it very therapeutic to go for long walks or bike, as long as my legs will let me, and I know it’s something I don’t have time for at home. I’m enjoying that and some evenings out with friends and coworkers! Wish my friends were here too!

Been reading blogs and finish reading couple of books I started few days ago. Waiter rant is turning out to be one of my favourite blogs. This guy is really good. He writes simple stuff, very matter of fact, slice of life and is very popular by the looks of it.

This other blog belongs to a girl from Baghdad. I smell a rat here… I don’t think it’s a 15-year-old girl’s blog at all. We Indians love conspiracy theories. Here is mine… I think it is one of those pro-war propaganda sites created by the US Army or some similar organization. Something is not right here... I’m going to research this some and find out what I can.

Hey, I don’t believe this but I just hear fire crackers go off somewhere at a distance… Is that a sign? It’s strange but I feel much perkier again.

Six weeks down and six more to gooooooooooo!!! Yyyyyaaaaaaahhhhhh!!!

And there is an answer for every question ever asked somewhere there...

Haven't exactly been in the mood to blog these past few weeks... but here are some pics from my weekend away from the city.

Recently read these lines and have decided its going to be my motto...
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream." -- Mark Twain.


Sky mocking the tree?


Nature's strokes


Pretty and pink


Enter...


Cerdar forest


One chasing the other

Three weeks down and counting…

I’ve had so much to do this past week…pheww…. I’m glad it’s over! Pretty busy with all the new procedures and systems I have to learn. Some of them I wish I never knew…like number stamping -- who number stamps anything these days???

I’m surprised to see a very paper-and-pencil-based office when the rest of the world is moving to e this and e that. And you would think America being one of the most technologically advanced countries would have embraced and evolved a tech savvy solution faster than anyone else. Well they missed the bus on this one!

Something we have never worried ourselves about is the number of hours we put in rather than as long as it takes for the job to get done. There is no concept of putting in extra hours to get a job done. Going by labour laws in America I guess it would just be too expensive to pay overtime, but hey what ever happened to getting the job done and then leaving!

What have I been doing other than work and spend 17 to 18 hours in a in front of my computer? I went to this Indian restaurant and stuffed myself, it felt sooooo good to eat alu gobi and nan, my first taste of Indian food in three weeks…emmmmm.

Oh yes, the high point of the week was this jazz performance I went to by an amateur band at a bar called the “Elephant Room.” The band was called Drop Trio and they call their music spaceship jazz… it was not earth shattering or anything spectacular but I enjoyed it – the percussionist was the best. All the members of the band hold fulltime jobs elsewhere, one a computer programmer and the other two I don’t remember, but they find time on week days and even weekends to perform.

I’ve been told Thursday nights have become the new Friday nights in Austin. Anything and everything interesting supposedly happens on a Thursday night. Bye bye TGIF it’s now TGIT. Laid back and easy going is what I would call Austin. Most people are friendly and helpful and they do know to have a good time. Back home, sometimes I think we take things maybe too seriously. But things have been that way for most part of my life, I’m used to that. I like the pace of things at home. It is frenzied and everyone always seems on the go. It may be the very reason for burnouts happening all too often, but what the heck I like it all the same.

And my latest acquisition is a bicycle – borrowed from a colleague at work. The very first time I tried to ride it I found myself drifting automatically to the left of the road…aaahhhh! Thank god it was a one-way street and a Saturday afternoon. I keep having these thoughts of being hit by some speeding vehicle. I don’t want to die or even be in hospital in a foreign country. So tomorrow I get myself a helmet just so I feel safe -- and I know it wont keep me on the right of the road! I’ve been driving in India of all the places and I don’t believe this sissy traffic is freaking me out.

Tomorrow starts another, I hope, short week …