Laazy Saaturday

Sunrise today was as it always is, early early in the morning. My morning began at around 12:30pm. Breakfast was skipped altogether. Lunch was 3 french toast sticks and a couple of potato filled perogies. The biggest thing we did today was to build (read - assemble) a tv stand. My friend bought a tv yesterday. We lugged it to his 2nd floor apartment at 1am last night. I guess that explains the "early" morning today. They have made so many advances in technology, I dont understand why they cant design in a couple of hand-grips that you can lift a tv up with. I mean, come on, only the extra extra rich people can afford a fork-lift and a 100 assistants to gently place a tv in a probably enormous living room in a palatial house. But for the rest of us, the 12 steps up to the 2nd floor with a 100 lb tv are really dreadful!

The rest of the day was spent watching movies (on the newly bought, above mentioned tv.) Yep, we went to the video store 4 times today, exchanging, and re-exchanging movies.
We watched:
Flight 93
Dude, Wheres my car?
When a Stranger Calls
Sienfeld (I dont know which season)

Well, tomorrow we've planned to get out and go visit a couple'a places. Lets see if we do accomplish that, or if tomorrow is the same as today! Its already about 2am now, I better retire for the day else it'll be today all over tomorrow again!

The Golden State

Yep, I finally got to visit California! Got up and left, is more like it.
This trip was completely unplanned - no maps, no directions, no looking up points of interests, no charting out the course for the weekend, no reservations, no bookings, nothing! I bought a flight ticket, and reserved a car online, thats about all the planning for the trip that I did!

I ended up at San Jose airport, enthusiastic, excited, and full of energy. I get keys for the car, dump my stuff in the back, and turn on the ac to counteract the mid-day heat. And then.. blank. I didnt know what to do! I had no maps, no idea of where I should go, no idea of what I should do! So, I went back to the counter and got a basic monochromatic map of the area. Now I knew which interstate looped around, and which one went to San Francisco! I had to pick up a friend who had come a day earlier, so I couldnt go off to San Francisco on my own. So, I made a short term goal of going to San Jose downtown. By the time I finished that, my friend called, and I went to pick him up. The rest of the evening, we spent oogling at the offices of Yahoo!, Sun, McAfee, Adobe, etc.

A cloudy overcast Friday morning saw us negotiating the traffic in San Francisco. I must say, no offence of SFians, but you guys really drive slow! 70% of the people are at the speed limit, the rest are at less than the limit, ofcourse, with the occasional punk at 75 or 80. You should come to Dallas. Everyone drives not less than 5 over the speed limit, unless theres a watchful cop car in view.

San Franciso is a very welcoming city. Seattle, somewhat geographically similar, has a snobbish air to it. We visited the usual tourist spots - the Golden Gate Bridge, Muir Woods, the crooked street. We missed ChinaTown and Alcatraz. I loved Fisherman's Wharf. My purely vegetarian friend had a hard time inhaling the air filled with sea food aroma! I had a crab cake at a street vendor. The warm crab cake with hot sauce, standing out on the street, with people milling around, shopping, laughing, dipping large pieces of sour dough bread in their clam chowder, the slighlty chilly weather, with a hint of rain, beside boats tied up at the dock, wonderful!

A late-late-night drive got us into Los Angeles. Inspite of our enthusiasm, we could rise and shine only around 11 the next day! So, we ditched our plan of visiting Universal Studios, and went around instead to Malibu, Santa Monica, and later Hollywood! Gosh, Malibu - if you line up 15 cars, 12 of them would be either a three pointed star, a prancing horse, a beemer, or a 911 and its cousins. Eye-candy indeed! I liked Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. Its like a perennial party, with street performers, fashion concscious people, and lotsa good places to binge. We had friends and friends of friends join, making us a group of a dozen chattering primates. We had New York style pizza standing on the street. It was fun!

Later in the evening we went to Hollywood. After paying an atrocious 12 bucks for an hour's parking, we strode along the famous Walk of Fame, juggling to seep in the Saturday night party atmosphere, and the stars of famous people on the pavement.




Retiring back to the hotel rather late at night again took its toll, and we were about 2 hours behind "schedule" on Sunday. Sunday we went to Universal Studios. I loved the studio tour. We had a camera/battery/compact flash card crisis, but managed to click enough pictures. There were a couple of rides, which werent as exhilarating as those of Six Flags, but they were ok.



We finally bid good-bye to LA at 6 in the evening, and relied on the irritating GPS in the car to get us back to San Jose. We got about 2 hours of sunlight before sunset, and the views of the moutains going out of LA were really wonderful. More pictures. Finally, after missing a highway, the GPS made us come through THE only toll road near San Jose! It was like reprimanding us for making the mistake. We payed 3 bucks for a piece of road. But that piece of road was over the bay, and it was pretty scenic at night too; during the day I'm sure it must be beautiful.

We reached around 2:30. An hours rest, and then it was back to the airport to catch a flight back. I really enjoyed this trip. Mainly, I learnt that not evey minute needs to be accounted and planned for beforehand. Things magically happen. People recommend things to do, sights to see, when you are thinking of what to do next! Everything falls into place. Ya, we missed out on some sights, but we really enjoyed the ones that we did see. I would go back for a trip anytime!

Its okay sometimes..

Its okay sometimes to make wrong decisions. All decisions need not be the right ones. Its okay sometimes to not plan anything at all, just go with the flow, and see what happens, how things turn out. Its okay sometimes to not know whats going to happen next. Its okay sometimes to (most of the time you should) do something if its going to help others even if doing it is of absolutely no interest or profit to you. Its okay sometimes to make mistakes.. you wouldnt experience what you did if you didnt make the mistake. Its okay sometimes to do things out of sheer passion, even if they dont make any logical sense. Its okay sometimes to let the heart rule your actions, rather than the mind. If we all did all the right things all the time, life wouldnt be so exciting now, would it?

Bu212

Tomorrow, well, today for that matter, is my last day as an official student at Mississippi State University. I graduate on Saturday. Done. I have finished my Masters finally. It took a while, but I enjoyed the journey. As I sit here typing this, I sit at a table that I just cleaned up, and boxed up most of the paraphernalia (read - mess) that makes this corner of the room mine. I will finally leave my much-coveted window seat. Its good-bye time to the lab. I had foreseen it coming soon.. but somehow, I feel it has come without my knowing of it. Its been my second home.. well, I must say first home since I must have spent more time here than at home. I have learnt a lot of things in this lab (more technical than philosophical ofcourse.) I hope I have imprinted on it at least a little bit of me as I leave.

Things change, and life moves on. We have to accept change.. I am so ready for it..

Manual or automatic? Why is life complicated?

I've been thinking.. Manual or automatic? Well, this thinking is for the next car that I'll buy.. but not for a good while though. Its a battle constantly waging in my head when I dont have anything useful to do.

I read some columns that compared manual transmissions with automatic transmissions. The virtual consensus was that manuals are much better (I'll elaborate soon.. patience my good man/woman) than automatics. But experts say that with technology heading the way it is, the gear stick may become as obsolete as wind-down windows are presently.

After having driven a manual (the dear ol' Santro, as an example) and a number of automatics (mainly here in the US), I seem to long for the gear stick. The manual gives you control of the car.. The automatic - just sit and steer.. No fun at all. Manuals have been known for better performance, better mileage (though, the figures of present automatics can easily hold their own in a fair debate), lesser maintenance worries, lower chances of the transmission going bust, better control and feel of the car. Mainly, manuals are FUN to drive, more driver-interactive. Automatics on the other hand are more convenient to use (read - in stop and go traffic), no juggling the clutch, brake, gear, wheel, mirror, indicator, blind-spot while trying to merge onto a freeway.

The main concern regarding manuals is the re-sale value. Since most cars in the US are automatics, and a majority of people prefer automatics, the re-sale that you'd get for a manual may not be as much as an automatic. However, think of all the fun that you'd have driving the manual around all the time that you've had it, which you would've been devoid of if you'd settled on an automatic instead. Hmmm.. interesting trade-off.. Well, most of Europe has manuals.. So, you could potentially go sell your manual there, after, ofcourse, spending vacation money (or for that matter, new car money) on shipping the car across, shipping yourself across, the excise, import, and immigration formalities, and then the only remaining thing - convincing them with a hundred odd reasons to buy from you.

Then, there are these manu-automatic cars.. I'vent driven those as yet to give my 2 cents on them.. But I'd probably feel cheated in them.. They'd give you the illusion of being in control of the car.. but it'll shift up or shift down on its own if required.. Booo. Also, most manu-automatics are +/-. Here again, you dont get the actual pleasure of shifting the gear-stick into a 4th or 5th (or 6th if you're really rich and/or in a Mercedes or Porsche).. Boo again. And not to mention, no clutch. Booo booo.

If you drive to work and drive back home everyday on the same piece of road, you could have some fun revving a manual around.. or the calm convenience of letting the automatic gear box do its thing (mainly, among other things, taking away the sheer joy of driving.) I'm biased towards manuals. So, any ardent automatic fans out there, please let me know why an automatic.

Orkutted

So, finally, after much resistance, I finally gave in to the orkut craze. I already have my profiles at a couple of other websites, and the thought of reentering all that again was putting me off. Also, I already had enough things to do this semester. So, I did not even give it a second thought.

But, finally, 2 days ago, I signed in, made a basic profile, and took a look at it. And lo, I found so many "long-lost" friends! Most of them are already in the US, and most of those in the US are in places that I have already visited, or I keep visiting occasionally! And most people commented on me getting onto orkut a bit late.. I guess I was out of the loop for quite a while.

But I'm glad I didnt get onto it before. I have just spent the last 2 days there, searching for people I knew, or how some people I knew knew some other people that I knew. If I did this during my thesis submission and presentation periods, I'm sure I would have messed up somewhere.

Anyways, as they now say, keep scrapping!