A fun read: http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

Its saturday, sunny, warm & beautiful - the sort of weekend we wish for all year in Seattle. I woke up early (very unusual for a weekend), made myself some quick breakfast, warmed a cup of milk and gobbled it all down. Got into my trackpants and drove out with the sun roof down.  I guess, I was enjoying the change and the morning breeze - so I was actually singing along with the bollywood music playing in the car. After about 30 min, I got to the field - a school playground rather and saw a couple of Indian girls with bats & balls. Considering that this is my first attempt at cricket ever, I was both a little intimidated & excited. It cant hurt trying was what I kept telling myself when I signed up for the practise sessions. And there I was.
 
No, I didn't find any hidden talents and no miracles happened. My bowling was too 'wide' or had too many 'pitches' apparently. My batting often missed 'connecting' with the ball, and in my fielding attempts I either missed catches or didnt throw the ball towards the bowler ... Oh and as a wicket keeper I let most balls pass through. I was struggling to get all the termilology & rules right, '1d', 'lbw', 'over' and what not. (In hind sight, It might have helped if I watched those cricket matches on TV with my family growing up)
 
Oh well, I am learning to play cricket this summer. We'll see after a few months if I develop any (people in the team seem to think that you got to be good at one of batting, bowling or fielding) talents in the sport of cricket.

I finally bought an xbox for myself. The only game I have tried so far is guitar hero and its been fun. The xbox live stuff is pretty awesome. Netflix streaming is probably the start of how we are all going to be watching movies soon. There was a time when I had just moved away from home and eating alone felt odd and sort of lonely; and here I am now, when I love coming home to nobody and eating on my couch watching TV. Good or Bad - who cares. It works and thats all that matters.

Coming back to XBOX, I am wondering what games to get that are fun to learn/play and dont have a steep learning curve. Drop me a comment if you have any ideas.

Initially there was no time and so I didn't blog. I was caught up with re-settling in Seattle & burning midnight (& weekend on occasions) oil to meet shipping deadlines. And then because I didn't blog for so long, I didn't blog. Doesn't make any sense. Well, here's breaking through the bloggers block.

I drove down from Vancouver to Seattle early this week with the bags leftover after the movers took my other stuff. I am put up in Seattle downtown temporarily until I find myself an apartment. Seattle downtown is fun, much better than my previous stay in Bellevue downtown though not as good as Vancouver city. The best part to being back though is the face to face meetings with people I work with. And that I can walk into people's offices instead of typing a formal email, making a call or using IM. Just the pleasure of being able to get an issue addressed right then is awesome.

I am thinking of making frequent visits to Bloomington in the next year. Something along the lines of spend  a few days every month and work from Bloomington. It will be interesting to make real world use of all the technology we build for remote scenarios.

We use Office Communicator internally at Microsoft for all our internal IM converstaions, audio/video calls/conferences, file transfer etc. In the past when I worked in IDC, Hyderabad, we used email and VTC for communication with the Redmond team. The last 3 months I have been working remotely from Vancouver with the Redmond team. Things would have been definitely tough without communicator. And I am not saying that just because I work in the Communicator team. The round table is pretty awesome too.

I visited Victoria last weekend, it is a small quaint town and the capital of British Columbia state. It has a nice English town feel to it. I visited the museum which had a section dedicated to the rich cultural heritage of the state. One of the exhibits was a couple, mannequins in Indian/Punjabi clothes. Another was a grocery store setup with various items that included naan, ghee, basmati rice, etc. The museum is pretty elaborate entailing lot of detail to procure the right ambience. I could only spend only 2 hours, if you happen to go, plan to spend a few hours just there.

I think that completes list of places to go to near Vancouver in the state.

I went on the “Sins of Vancouver” walking tour last week. This is a 2 hour guided walk along some of the shady parts of town mostly talking about the history of crime in the city and pointing out some of the landmarks left today.  As we walked along those few blocks, I saw several  homeless people, probably living on the streets off a cart most likely stolen from a grocery store. Noticed at least a few stolen bikes on some of the carts. I saw some people completely zoned out, men & women pushing syringes into their wrists etc.  Prostitution & drugs apparently have been to date some of the biggest concerns in the city.

Nothing much to add, except that I saw some of this, a part of the system.

... is good!

I had the best idlys, dosas and mini-south-indian-thalis after leaving India in Vancouver. There is a Saravana Bhavan here!! Yeah! Not the best service; but hey, the food is great. I hope they start one in Seattle. The Indian food here tastes considerably better than the Indian food in Seattle area.

In fact, you feel a lot closer to India in Vancouver. Surrey which is close to Vancouver is supposed to be like a mini-India with a huge Indian population. I haven't been there yet, even then you see or hear random things in Vancouver that make you feel like you are not far from India. I guess England may me part of the reason for the sense of commonality in the two countries. The other day I was flipping channels when I stumbled upon a punjab channel, apparently this is included in the standard cable package. I guess that speaks for the Indian population here. Its awesome seeing *curries*, tandoori chicken, samosas etc in any food court.

And the Indian dvd stores sell/rent pirated dvds. I have been trying hard to find a Indian dvd store that will rent good quality dvds; no success yet.

Oh and they have hindi movies playing in more than 1 theatre :-)