Water Water every-where do I walk?

The Ancient Greeks were right.....it rains when the Gods are angry.
Gods must be really angry at the Metropolitan City of Chennai. It has been raining heavily for the past couple of days.
The Gods must be angry with the fact that when there are not proper roads to drive and sidewalks to walk, why build flyovers, bridges and subway.
The Gods must be angry with the city that lacks sense of cleanliness - the waste, the filth all lying around in the streets
The Gods must be angry with the fact that the city has so much of noise pollution and blaring loud speakers at temples (in the name of Markazhi masam) esp. in the musical month of December.
Or may be it is just the Gods way of washing the city off its sins

Whatever it may be - Though I watch and hear all the above stated common-sense and administrative issues, but Today - all I was able to see, hear, touch and feel were the moments with someone special, all walking down the streets of Chennai in the pouring rain :)

Microsoft goes soft

My buddy wanted a Windows XP Professional CD, so I decided to get him the CD through my employee purchase program. What transpired after that is so hilarious....
I get an email from Microsoft saying that they will have to backorder the CD, so my friend decides that he does not want the CD anymore. I email the support and cancel the order.
A couple of days go by and my buddy emails me saying that he has been charged for the order. I then contact the support and they inform me that the order might have been shipped out; they suggest that I wait for the CD and then return it to get the refund. We wait for 20 days and nothing gets delivered.
I contact the good ol' support again; they say "Sorry about the confusion, we will refund your money back". Finally we get the money back. You would think the story ends here.
One fine day, my friend gets the CD we had 'ordered'. This is turning out to be one 'Not a penny more, Not a penny less' sort of a thing.
We are now thinking of returning back the CD lest we get another refund....

Boycott Indian Cricket

All what was asked was to win two matches and the group consists of Bangladesh, Bermuda and Sri Lanka. Is this the Indian cricket team's view of making the obviously easy Round-I so complicated? I mean just forget for a minute that you are chasing 255, is it an impossible task to even score 200+ as a team. Seriously, what made this team go to the world cup final last time around? What did poor Bermuda do to incur the "strong" Indian score of 414 (and that too Indians struggled to get the last 2 wickets!!). If at all Bangladesh lose to Bermuda to give way to India to enter the next round, I think they should call it quits and not play the next round. Prior to terminating the match-fixing in cricket, we should terminate the India cricket team (and the so called fans!!). Whenever asked prior to world cup, the constant answer was 'Vision 2007' and 'World Cup Winning Team' - was this the outcome they were preparing for?
Poor Woolmer, what did that guy do to land himself in the hands of death. I tell you something even better, the whole Indian XI should be guillotined (only if that is legal!) or just face social boycott altogether.

Will the cricket sponsors at least learn now to start spending their money on other teams or sports instead of Indian Cricket?

Memorial Day 2006

I really needed a break, so was excited to head to Seattle. Hari, Sesha and I were planning to go around Washington State for the long weekend. Rain welcomed me to Seattle and little did I know that it was just the start of more impending rain.

After renting the car, we headed to Tacoma and stayed there overnight to head to Mount Rainier the next morning. It was of course raining all the way to Mount Rainier and once we went up to 4000 ft it was snowing and was impossible to go any further. We headed to Seattle downtown to make our day a little more active...After a visit to the Pikes Market Place; we headed to Space Needle where we attended the "NORTHWEST FOLKLIFE FESTIVAL". It was a fun filled evening watching all the performances, listening to music and going around visiting the stalls.

Saturday - We drove to Olympic National Park. The weather was very decent compared to the rest of the week; it did not rain as much though it was cloudy. We trekked almost 10 miles totally. Olympic National Park is a beautiful place to visit; it has everything from snow capped mountains, rain forests to beaches. We hiked to the Sol Duc Falls and we then headed to Hoh Rain Forest where we hiked the "Spruce Nature Trail" and "Hall of Mosses Trail" and we started driving towards the beaches of Olympic NP. After visiting the First, Second and Third Beaches we hiked the "Rialto Beach Trail" and went up to the "Hole-in-the-wall". We were all tired by the end of the day.

Sunday - The least planned day of the trip. We wanted to go whale watching in the San Juan Islands. We of course started driving to Anacortes on a raining morning. All the whale watching outfitters did not have any available space for us. We immaterial decided to take the ferry from Anacortes to Orca Island, we took our car along as well (The WA State Ferry is relatively cheap - they charged us only 65 bucks for the car and 3 passengers). At the end of the day we were not able to make it on to any of the whale watching boats; we just drove/walked around the island.

Monday - After a "wet" and nice time in WA we headed back to our places. Seattle is a nice place....but I would not want to live there - it is too depressing for me to live in a place where it rains most of the time.

Anyways back to work now...

Till Next,
~M

'Duh' Vinci Code

I headed home (RIC) after 3 weeks...it is always good to be home. I had enough of eating outside that I just wanted to cook and have my meal which is exactly what I did.

I am sure most of you would have read the very popular fiction 'The Da Vinci Code' by Dan Brown. I wanted to see the motion picture which released this past weekend. Lester and I headed to the movies on Saturday and entered a full theatre to watch the movie. Personally, I felt that the movie did not do justice to the very entertaining book. The movie lacked the quick pace which the book offered. Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing and Jean Reno as Bezu Fache were excellent. It was a long 2 and half hours movie.

Back in Los Angeles after a very brief relaxing weekend in Richmond. I can't wait for the Memorial Day weekend to enjoy the break :)

Till Next,
~M

Back in SFO

Wanting to relax after a hectic work week, headed to SFO and met up with Lester, Sesha and Badri. Of course it has become a protocol to go to Saravanna Bhavan when I am in the Bay area. Also watched MI-3, a total logic-less time-pass movie.

Saturday - Lester, Sesha and I drove along Route-1 heading south and went all the way till Julia Pfeiffer Burns State Park. It was of course a beautiful drive and I was stuck by awe watching the McWay waterfall - This waterfall empties itself to the Pacific Ocean. One can also see the ocean is the true aqua-marine color - an awesome sight. We headed back to San Mateo.

Sunday was a more relaxed day. After lunch at Amici's pizza, which is by the way one of the best pizzerias I have been to, we went to the 'Book Buyers' store and after hanging there for sometime I flew back to L.A.

Till Next,

~M

82 not out!!

So TamilNadu swings to DMK this time around...TN maintains the alternating party governance trend.
Karunanidhi will be sworn in the Chief Minister for the fifth time. A coalition rule in TN is going to be an interesting change in the political landscape of the state. 'Captain' Vijaykanth was sure a surprising factor this elections. The IITian party Lok Paritran put up a good fight against some political heavy weights as well.

Hope the winning party gives good governance and not just some 'color' TVs.

~M