After a month-long hiatus...

All,

A month and five days have passed since my last offering. I have been compelled to publish something new on my blog after Pooja's earnest request to me to be my "overtly scathing nonetheless cocky" self. While I would like to think of myself as something entirely different, understandably I would be lying out my skin. However, before I become such an abomination, I would like to apologize profusely for the absence of providing my readers with any new "whining offerings" as they have probably become quite accustomed to reading on my blogpost.

A few things have changed since my last post, way back on the 25th day of January. Work has started in full-swing. Made me almost feel responsible. More than likely that none of my readers would have expected this from me. All the same, I certainly feel quite old. Close to five weeks of work has finally brought out the adult that was so well-hidden in me for close to five years.

Significantly, I have had the wonderful opportunity to live without Internet (yes, no Internet in the 21st century in the US of A) for close to 3 weeks at my new apartment (my first one at that).

When I started this post, I had no real topic in mind. I was told to provide you with words on my "loneliness, change in attitude to life and reduction in my obnoxiousness". However, as many of you would attest, I have had none of these profound changes in life. I still remain quite happy with my single-bed apartment with no roommate. I still retain a very positive outlook to life. Importantly, I still remain as obnoxious as ever - in fact, I may have reached a level of cockiness I have never reached before.


Seeing that even the suggested topic has been mooted, I will revert to bashing the quality of customer service (or the lack thereof) from AT&T. Consider that, at one stage, I was down $200, had a DSL wireless gateway in an apartment that apparently could only receive U-Verse and two orders that were cancelled without my knowledge. It took me a two-hour verbal shouting match with the AT&T support line to get the connection switched to U-Verse for free with a free modem/wireless-gateway. All this took a ridiculous 23 days to get organized. Ah, I never faced this problem EVEN in the bureaucracy that is India.


Apart from the lack of Internet connection, I have a wonderful time enjoying the freedom that a single BHK apartment provides. No, I do NOT have any naked Thursdays (refer Friends Season 8), nor do I have naked any-other-days.But I do have ample amount of space and a lot of time to myself. By "a lot of time", I merely mean the evenings after work and weekends. After all, I am a working professional now. No more a student with infinite free time. Coming from a student of Tech, I must really miss school life to actually recount the infinite free time that Tech used to regularly provide us!!


Enough pointless rambling. I am certain this post was pretty shabbily done. I felt it so. Need a better topic for next time. I believe they call it "writers' block"?? Am I a writer after a mere four ordinary blogs? I wonder...


Best regards,
AGS

In love with San Francisco

I have always disagreed with my peers at Tech that living in the US (read Atlanta as this is my primary point of reference) can get boring for people from vibrant cities like Mumbai or Bengaluru or Chennai. Ignorance is bliss. Enlightenment came in the form of San Francisco.

I spent a total of 30 waking hours in the city. During this period, I was able to visit the Golden Gate Bridge (obviously), Fisherman's Wharf, Ghirardelli Square, Crooked Street, Golden Gate Park, Ocean Beach, Alcatraz Prison as well as eat at a Vietnamese, an Italian, a Mexican and a "garlic" restaurant for lunch/dinner. All using a combination of an awesome public transport network and long walks.

Hear ye, o tourists to SF:

1. Try visiting SF on a non-foggy day. Understandably, this is bloody difficult considering SF is known for the fog. 
2. Use public transport only to get to the general area of visitation - it is infinitely better to walk through the streets of SF in spite of gradients reaching up to 70 degrees as this allows you to actually feel the vibe of the city. Plus, in most cases, you save a lot of time this way.
3. Being a vegetarian, I was unable to "pig out" in Little China. However, for ones willing to experiment with their food, this is probably the proverbial "heaven on earth". Apart from Little China, go to "Stinking Rose" without fail. Anyone who does not go to this place has not seen San Francisco at all!!! Note that, you must take your own breath-mints to this restaurant, as the ones that you are given at the end of your meal there is woefully inadequate (check out http://www.thestinkingrose.com). You are bound to have the opportunity to taste a million different cuisines (including Pakistani-Indian food at every second street), so always be prepared to keep your pockets a little loose and ensure that you have a cast-iron stomach. Also, "Sunflower" (the Vietnamese restaurant that I went to) is ridiculously good for food that is nowhere close to being expensive (even by student standards).
4. Make sure you spend at least an hour or so sampling the drinks and chocolates at Ghirardelli Square. I regret not doing that :(... Btw, the Gingerbread Latte is to die for...
5. Cycle (or walk) across the Golden Gate Bridge - whether or not the weather is ice-cold. It's a tremendous experience! You can rent cycles at reasonable prices almost everywhere in the city.
6. Alcatraz deserves 4hrs even though they "expect" you to finish the tour in 2hrs. And believe you me, you are actually creeped out when you "enter the 'hole' and close your eyes, imagining that you are imprisoned there". Weirdly enough, Alcatraz was apparently amongst the very few prisons (if not the only one) where the prisoners were treated extremely well, with three square meals a day apart from daily exercise and the like. You can also see a lot of the run-down structures from the movie "The Rock" starring one really bad actor, Sean Connery and Ed Harris.
7. Ocean Beach (the last station on the J line in the train system) is one spot that is generally overlooked by almost all tourists to the city. At this point, you are bang in the middle of the ruins of a salt-water spa on the Pacific Ocean next to the western edge of Golden Gate Park. It's an awesome place to be around sunset. Moreover, there is a cafe on the beachfront that offers the best Irish Coffee that I have ever had in my life.

You have 7 not-to-miss things to do and have about 24hrs to do them (with the remainder for the other touristy stuff like Fisherman's Wharf, Crooked Street, etc.)

I assure you that you will not get tired...

San Francisco will not let you get tired...

Have fun...

En Route to San Jose

I begin to write this while on an American Airlines flight to Dallas, TX. Flight took off well on time, definitely not like the flights to/from anywhere close to The Big Apple. Saw on the news that most flights (international or domestic) have been delayed for close to 9-10hrs. Kind of reminds me of my flight to Mumbai, India last year, when I had to take a connecting flight from Newark to Mumbai by Continental, but could not do so as my Atlanta-Newark flight was delayed - weirdly enough, the delay was primarily due to on-ground fog at Atlanta.

Anyway, my longish wait at the Atlanta airport provided me the opportunity to participate in a few interesting conversations with fellow travellers. I wanted to highlight a particular one with a mechanic (well, I'm certain that was NOT his rank - he just mentioned Mechanical when I asked which division) in the US Army posted in Baghdad. While I am definitely not in favor (or favour, depending on which part of the world you are reading this from) of the invasion, it was very fascinating to hear his experiences as an on-ground personnel in the region. He spoke about rockets being fired at their base in Baghdad on Christmas Eve, and nonchalantly mentioned one guy getting injured. There was no doubt in his mind that war in the region was inevitable. While there was clear happiness that he was returning to Nebraska for the holidays, there was a tinge of sadness on learning recently that he was due to return to Baghdad a day after his birthday in May.

The Atlanta-Dallas leg of my journey to San Jose was well on time, with the flight offering various comforts such as a ridiculous cost for WiFi as well as general airline discourtesy. Contrary to my expectations, the passengers were not offered any in-flight meal (read as peanuts or pretzels) along with the customary solitary beverage (Coca Cola FTW!) and ice. Luckily for me though, unlike my usual stinginess, I had purchased (it almost hurts to even type that word out) some wonderful coffee at Starbucks along with an equally wonderful banana-walnut muffin that provided me sustenance during my day of starvation.

As we were approaching Dallas, our pilot announced the various connecting flights that passengers on the Atl-Dall leg had planned on taking, and along with the flights also mentioned the various gates that connecting-passengers needed to go to. Apparently, the DFT-SJC (Dallas Fort to San Jose) flight was to depart from Gate C25, with our ATL-DFT flight arriving at Gate C27. Under normal circumstances, as a close-to-starved passenger, you would be extremely pleased to know the departing gate beforehand, as well as the bonus piece of information that you have a near-non-existent travel distance.

But lo behold!

On arriving in Dallas, I found out (much to my dismay) that my flight was not boarding anywhere close to C25. Heck, it was not even in Terminal C. I had to travel all the way up to Terminal A, Gate 20. Luckily, however, as with most airports (I'm guessing) in the US, all terminals are very well connected through a train service within the airport premises. The train in Dallas Fort is very well-organized with two trains circling the four airport terminals - one in the clockwise direction and the other in an anticlockwise one. But still, I wish I had been given fair warning from the beginning.

While waiting to board the aircraft, I received an email from my roommate, Sarath. The email merely had a subject line to it (understandably, a Bill Monk email soon followed). Electricity bill for the month of December: $430. What the f@#$???!!! That amounted to around $155 per head (including the Internet bill, of course, I'm a Georgia Tech graduate - my Math HAS to be awesome), just for the month of December. I mean, What the f@#$?! It was painful enough to go through the entire month with poor insulation and even more miserable heating, and to be saddled with a bomb for an electricity bill. Not fun. And most certainly not fun to see that before an awesome trip to California!

Armed with another muffin to provide me sustenance on a close-to-four-hour journey to San Jose, I proceeded on to the gate of departure, boarded the flight, and snoozed my way to glory. Frickin' four hours to do pretty much nothing. Apart from drink the complimentary beverage on a fairly cramped aircraft. And of course, bemoan that cursed electricity bill.

I feel I whine too much.

Morning of graduation...

All,

I begin this after Varun Murthy (my current room-mate) has just commented on my Facebook status (one of the million status "cribbings" of mine), but you guys will see it on the morning of or the morning after the grad ceremony. I first thought of posting something about my grad days - something along the lines of the famous (or rather not so famous, considering that my reader base was an appalling five, including yours truly) Google Docs "thingy" that I had started last year, but failed to finish.

However, I felt that the following would make more sense than filling up a few kilo or mega bytes in the Google servers with student ramblings (the ramblings will come soon though).

In this first post (after a hiatus of three years), I will try to make a feeble attempt at keeping the viewer(s) of this blog follow me for the lifetime of the same, of course, in the hope that it lives longer than a fruit-fly.

The first few readers of this blog are, in all likelihood, family and friends. People that I must have invited, requested, emotionally blackmailed, begged, pleaded and possibly even bribed. Yes, you heard that right. Bribed. With money. Those awesome pieces of paper with either a Mr. Lincoln or a Mr. Franklin or the Mahatma on one of its sides. Although, those who know me well will know that I am too kanjoos and "cheap" to part with these "awesome pieces of paper".

Rs. 176,000,000,000,000. The figure splashed across the headlines of Indian newspapers over the past three-four weeks. When you put in the zeroes, the numbers seem to be terrifying. Although, I guess if you start bandying about "1.76 lakh crores", it still seems unfathomably massive. Anyway, to the ignorant, that is the amount that the exchequer has lost in the 2G scam and, more importantly, shame on you for not keeping track of the news.

Prior to this, Adarsh Nagar happened.

Scam. The buzzword over the past six months or so. It started with the Commonwealth Games. The Games that was to highlight India's glory to the world. The Games that was projected to signify India's coming of age. The Games that was headed by an ex-IAF pilot. (@ Prateek Sharma: If you are reading this, I bet you would have said "Pata hai"). I believe we will be bidding for the Olympic Games. Well, duh!

Five months. Three major scams.

This is not including the bribes to traffic cops (pandu havaldars), Government babus, etc. and black money involved in real-estate and tax evasion.

As a desi graduating from a Masters program in the Land of Opportunity, I wonder if there is hope left back home. A number of my erstwhile colleagues from University of Mumbai landed in the US for their respective graduate programs. How many plan on returning home? How many talk of returning home? How many are honest enough to talk of never wanting to go back to the land where you need to bribe the local telephone exchange for a connection, the land where you walk through slums to reach your Antilia, the land where you get paid a measly Rs. 8 lakhs as a graduate student from the US, the land where you are a citizen, can vote (that you still don't is a debate for another day) and not a foreigner stealing jobs, the land where your roots lie, the land where you get bhel puri, paav bhaaji, and what not at 3am?

On that thought, I take your leave.

Until my next,

Aditya