Prologue

India vacation was a much awaited vacation. In the past I had visited home (home has become a rather overloaded term. Here I mean where I grew up) every 6 months or every year if not more often. This time it had been 1.5 years since my wedding & the last visit home and so the yearning to visit folks had grown. Phone calls saying that this was too long a gap and I was too far … and the usual stuff that nri daughters hear their parents say were coming in. Ofcourse the timing was intentional, I wanted to go to Cochin in the winter and the only choices we had with Roshan’s vacations were between summer & winter break.

The Vacation

My port of entry in India was Mumbai and the airport looked better & bigger than I remembered. My first reaction everywhere I went was why there were so many people. And why the rush. People never respected lines and queues, whether it was to pay a bill or get into a shuttle or board a plane. Not like the plane would take off without somebody or the next shuttle won’t show if this one got full. This wasn’t anything new, I see it everytime I go and I get annoyed each time. I started sampling food at airport and was extremely pleased. Next few days in Cochin I was thoroughly pampered with lots of delicious food.

Cochin has the same roads but many many more cars and so the traffic is painful. I wasn’t driving but even being driven around was stressful. After a day or 2 I got used to the honking; towards the end of my trip if I didn’t hear enough honking I’d wonder if I was still on the main road. Cochin had 1 mall the last time I visited and this time when I visited, the city was suddenly springing with malls. Apparently, India’s (or was it Asia’s?) largest mall ‘Lulu’ is coming up close to where we live in Edapally. It was still in the works when I was there. I visited Oberon mall which is relatively a new mall in Edapally, it was impressive considering its predecessors - Bay Pride, Penta menaka and GCDA. Despite 3 or 4 floors of basement parking, in the evenings parking lot is full and vehicles park outside the mall on the road many times blocking the traffic. Talk about lack of entertainment options… its like the whole city is in the mall. All this when Oberon doesn’t have a multiplex, my brain explodes when I try to imagine the crowd when it has its multiplex up & running. In the past, the only entertainment I could think of in Cochin was to watch movies.

I was impressed with the changes the city has had. I saw restaurants (in Bangalore & Chennai too) that had menu items with diet icons indicating that they were healthy options (still no calorie count – I am happy about that), restaurants that had child seats and malls with a dedicated play area. Oh and also a decorated xmas tree with fake snow. Where was all this when I was growing up!?!

While many of the hoardings there still are of gold jewellery, I saw a lot of new ads mostly related to cell phone providers or homes for sale. GCDA shops make me wonder what they did before cell phones came around. Talking about cellphones, I was quite happy with cell phone plans in India – the ease and low cost are a huge plus. With high GPRS costs, a lot of the folk don’t have data plans. SMS is pretty big, 15 min after Roshan got a new SIM he started getting spam sms-es. My siblings and even my dad text a lot more than I do.

India is a lot more expensive than it used to be a few years ago. Prices of food, clothing, and groceries are 4 times the cost they were. I was quite appalled at the costs. There were several instances when I thought US was cheaper.

After 4 or 5 days in Cochin, Roshan and I headed to Bangalore for a few days. Bangalore looked completely different from what I remembered, the last time I was there was in 2004. I couldn’t recognize MG Road at all. All the outskirts were now a part of the city and were apparently more “happening” than the “happening” parts in the past. There were new flyovers and some cool looking public transport buses that were air conditioned. Metro rail construction was in the works. More coffee shops and more restaurants and more chain stores had opened up. All super pricey which makes me believe that people’s earnings in India have also multiplied many fold in the last few years. Going from Cochin, the driving sense felt a lot better. I had some really good food in Bangalore … oh Bengaluru.

From Bangalore we left for Chennai for 2 days. Chennai city looked extremely good – very clean, wide roads, huge flyovers etc. Marina beach looked much much cleaner and well maintained than it did a few years back. We had some amazing food in Chennai. We heard about a hole in the wall authentic Sushi place in Chennai and decided to check that out. It was pretty good, while we were there we didn’t see any other Indians. The weather in Chennai & Bangalore was just perfect. Only if we had that all year round in Seattle :-)

We got back to Cochin in time for a friend’s wedding. I have been to only 2 or 3 weddings in Kerala and 3 or 4 weddings outside Kerala. For a person my age that is an extremely low count of wedding attendance. I probably just don’t remember how it used to be, but I was a little shocked to see people rushing to get food even at the wedding. Of course they wouldn’t run out of food, it’s an Indian wedding after all :-). My sister said that it was pretty normal as everybody wanted to leave soon once the wedding was done.

Next day, I visited Thodupuzha and Karimanoor with Roshan and his family. Apparently after you get married the newlyweds need to meet everybody in the family. Besides my parents, my relatives are mostly in Rajasthan and northern parts of India, I am guessing we’ll visit some of them during our next trip to India. This trip we tried to cover Roshan’s side of the family. The drive through the country side is beautiful. Away from the traffic, noises and crowds I could see why I loved Kerala growing up. The lush greenery, lakes and mountains even after all these years continue to mesmerize me. Each visit during this trip left my stomach fuller and fuller. I have not eaten so much meat in such a short span of time before. (Remember I grew up in a vegetarian family). I can’t complain, everything tasted so good :-)

We got back to Cochin and 2 days later left for Wayanad. This was a family trip. We visited Bandipur National Park in Karnataka and Muthanga Wildlife Sanctuary in Wayanad. Both are good forests, we just had the wrong expectation that we would see some wild animals on the safari tour. We saw monkeys, deer, peacocks and chickens. Elephants too but they were chained close to the entrance and hence not exactly in the wild. Wayanad may be a good place for non-Keralites to visit but for somebody who’s grown up there, I was quite underwhelmed. Pookot lake, Sulthan Bathery Jain Temple, Sita devi Tears lake, Luv Kush temple etc were nothing out of the ordinary. The walk to Edakkal Caves and Soochipara waterfalls was fun. The caves themselves were quite good too. We ended our trip at the falls where students kept coming in batches and leaving. It looked like a popular excursion spot.

We got back to Cochin in time to celebrate New Year’s eve with friends and family. We spent the next few days eating and shopping. And before I knew the trip was over. All the plans of sitting down with my folks and having long conversations and playing the silly indoor games etc didn’t materialize. Oh well. Next time eh?

Epilogue

(Like a wise friend said) "The thing about getting married is that the no. of people you meet double, the no. of ceremionies and functions you need to attend double up but your time stays the same". I hadn't factored this in in my planning. So, I didn't end up visiting or calling people I normally would. On the brighter side I did travel within India, I did go back to Mullapanthal for the spicy food (and this time I had 2 glasses of the repulsive toddy), I did try a lot of food and many new restaurants and I travelled by air, train, bus, auto, scooter and car within India. Yay!

One of the early mornings here, we took a walk to the fish market. Its the biggest fish market I have ever seen, Pike's place market looks like a tiny sample before this :-). The people moved around stuff within the market on these cool little vehicle thingies, quite innovative I must admit. We saw a lot of the sea creatures, many alive, some frozen, some being sliced ... pretty much all the phases it goes through after it is caught and before it reaches our plates. There was a guy cutting huge blocks of ice and sending up this machinery where it would go in and come out crushed. People would come on their vehicle thingies to buy crushed ice. I was staring at these shrimps moving in the little tank they were in, when the seller smiled and in what seemed like a gesture to help me see/photograph, pulled a shrimp out of the water and pointed at me. My knee jerk reaction was not appreciation but a loud scream seeing the shrimp wriggle for its life. He ofcourse immediately put the shrimp back into water and stepped back. Oh well :-(

We had japanese breakfast outside the market. The fish doesn't get much fresher. And bingo, I tried raw fish for the first time!! Just so randomly, just like that. I am also trying to eat with chopsticks. So far so good.
 
I often struggle finding  petite sections in stores in the US when buying clothes. Ever been in a situation where you love the clothes but they are almost always a larger size? Here while trying slippers on, my feet felt most comfortable in the LL size which is probably a double large or extra large equivalent. I am guessing that buying clothes here may be a fun experience. The japanese girls are so petite. I may be a large after all :-)
 
I love all the expressions and the giggles. People are very friendly. Many go out of their way to help. I asked this girl which train I needed to take to go some place and she stared at the map for a few seconds, asked me to wait, ran and came back with somebody who spoke a little english. Similarly Roshan asked some guy if he knew of a laundromat close by, after some communication struggle the guy called his friend on his phone and Rosh talked to the guy on phone.
 
We visited Akihabara, the elctronic city which besides electronics has lots of japanese porn, comics, dvds etc. Women dressed in kimonos and school girl clothese were handing out flyers on the sidewalk. We also visited Shinjuku (sort of like Times square) and Ginza - they have huge shopping areas and a variety of pubs and restaurants. Lots of people. I noticed very few couples though. Most were by themselves or few guys togther and few girls together. I proably have seen 3 young couples holding hands (and no PDA) and walking so far. People in Tokyo are probably too busy to date. There is a vending machine for almost everything - drinks, food, cigarrette, dvds, posters, t-shirts ... Rosh and I wanted to watch sumo wrestling in Japan, but its not happening in Tokyo at the time we are here :-(. I hope we get to catch a geisha performance in Kyoto. I got to see Kendo, it was pretty cool.

Pachinko is some game that a lot of the middle aged men seem completely engrossed in. I have seen 3 pachinko places so far and people are so intently playing, I have no idea how its played and why its so interesting. The only equivalent I know is how some of the older people spend hours on slot machines in Vegas. If I knew the game, I probably would only play and do nothing else while in Japan (I get hooked on to games easily), so may be I wont find out.
 
I love Tokyo! (Few pics on http://www.flickr.com/photos/dolly/sets/72157621763892903/)

Roshan's internship gave Rosh the choice of doing it in New York and part of it in Tokyo/London. Rosh picked Tokyo. After his internship we thought we could take some time off and tour Japan. So here I am, in Tokyo, the start of my 2 week vacation this summer.I flew in from Seattle to Japan last night, it was a 9 hour flight - not so long international flight for somebody who's been flying internationally between US & India mostly :-)

Unlike my other flights, where the advise it to sleep as much as possible on the flight, this time I didn't sleep at all on the flight. That helped coz after dinner I could fall asleep like other folk here. So jetlag has been gracefully handled.

The first thought when I got off the flight was 'whoa this is warm'. People starting taking layers of clothing off on the walkway. When I finally stepped out on the street to get some food, it was after sunset and still super-warm. Very much like Indian summers.

I am quite puzzled about how the subway stations, roads, sidewalks etc are so clean. There is no trace of trash, paper, wrappers nothing... And there are no trash cans or bins visible. I am hoping in the next 5 days of stay here I can figure out how this is possible.

I am staying in Central Tokyo (Shimbashi) and the view from our room (on the 34th floor) is breathtaking. I think I may have brought some of the Seattle rain here. It rained today and the forecast shows temperatures as 30C (~80F) with showers/clouds rest of the week. Hopefully it will not interfere too much with the sightseeing & exploring plans.

The plan is that after this week in Tokyo, Roshan and I will leave this saturday for Nikko. 2 days in Nikko, 2 days in Kyoto, 2 days in Nara and 2 days in Hakone. Then ofcourse fly back to seattle.

Stay tuned.

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 :-)

I figured why the Indian brides appear shy with their heads bowed down on their wedding day. I did too on my wedding day. Given that this wasn't an arranged marriage and that the groom wouldn't escape if he found out that I was not a traditional shy Indian bride, I had no reason to feel compelled to be *shy*. So no pressure of any sort. However, there I was ... looking & behaving like any bride I had seen. As a kid when I saw weddings I often wondered if the bride wasn't curious to lift her head up & look around, especially at the groom, after all in a typical arranged marriage you would expect high levels of anxiety. Even a kid knows that!

Nobody told me, and may be I am disturbing some layer of something somewhere in the whole Indian matrimony experience thing...by saying some of this, but here it goes. So, in my case I had to start getting dressed at 7.00 am for a 9.00 o'clock scheduled wedding that started after 10.00 am or so. Wait, I didn't have a watch on me, but that is what it felt like. I had some professionals help me with my costume, headgear etc  stuff. The first thing they told me was to visit the restroom as I would not be able to do that the rest of the day. Yeah surprise No. 1. Then the ordeal began. My hair is barely shoulder length and so they started attaching really long fake hair. This was my chance to see how I would look had I been a 18th century classical dancer. I don't know much about classical dance, and if you could tell that, it was no genius. They drilled a whole packet of hair pins & more, used thread to tie things together and pulled things left right & center to make sure things didn't fall off. A Maang Tika was also clamped on to me. The fake hair was probably as heavy as me, and I found it difficult to move my head up. It reached below my bottom, they plaited it and tied it with a parinda making the whole thing even longer. They then attached strings of fresh flowers to my hair to add to the weight and size of things. And thus I grew heavier. Oh and the chunni had to cover a part of my head , so they clipped that to my crown. And so the whole long hair thing was covered behind the chunni. Was there a point then, I thought. Then the whole series of ghagra, jewellery, bindis, safety pins etc followed one after the other and sometimes in parallel. A pull there and a push somewhere continued while I was hoping that I would emerge out of it all as a brave bride. I also had to wear a nose ring hoop with a little chain that was pinned to the side of my hair. The hair-do sort of took care of restricting the up movement, the nose ring would help in restraining the left right movement. That is a shy bride in the making. I had never worn a nose ring before, so it was awkward feeling some kind of metal inside my nostrils. I even wondered for a moment what would happen if I sneezed. Then the "being a brave bride" drive hit me and I was distracted by the photographer.

So, I looked down as I walked down the aisle balancing the weight on my head wondering why women had to work so hard on their wedding day when I lifted my head up to see the groom on stage wearing a turban and a feather standing up, a heavy sherwani, a shawl, a sword and the joothiya (uncomfortable shoes). Oh I forgot to mention it was hot on stage with the fire on and fans turned away. I walked up smiling.

"This is going to be so much fun" were my thoughts as I plunged into the whole marriage experience.

It is the first time I guess I am living in a real downtown. Seattle downtown looks pale in comparison to Vancouver downtown. I am loving being here. The best part is that as soon as I step out of my apartment, there are tons of small & big cafes, resaurants, bars, clubs, shops etc. Loads of stuff happening, people walking all the time, and high levels of energy around. I have stopped driving when in downtown as finding a parking spot is painful and pricey. Instead I have started walking to most places. The weather is great, we have long sunny bright days so I have no complaints about walking. There are several activities/events happening all the time in the area which keeps life interesting even for a newbie. Ofcourse all this comes at a price, a pretty high one when you want to live in downtown. As a temporary setup I am fine with this, but I think I would need more breathing space and more room to live in especially if I have visitors & guests.

I work in Richmond which takes me roughly about 45 min by car. I am trying to get myself to take the office shuttle. The drive is annoying with a lot of construction going on and several detours and the traffic in the area. Apparently the city is getting ready for the olympics in 2010. Already? That is what I thought too.

I landed in Vancouver, Canada yesterday and have started work at Microsoft, Canada from today. I hope to be back to Redmond in the beginning of October. Haven't seen much of the city yet so not much to say there.

After a series of events celebrating a certain wedding in India, I am back from the so called *vacation*. Ofcourse the bride never has a real vacation, as I have come to experience. In all fairness, I did have a great time. Its just that so much happened in such a short time, I am still recovering. The only annoyance that kept growing on me was the photographers interfering and asking us to repeat actions so they could capture it. Oh and the fact that I had to smile through all of it. For a few hours I thought I would not smile for a whole year after that.

Nothing much changes in life as Rosh and I continue to live in different cities/states ... for that matter even different countries now. The only change I see is that we now cannot ignore the spouse section in the visa, insurance, bank etc application forms. And a ring on my finger. And people saying "your husband" :-)

I also visited Agatti island in Lakshadweep in India last week. The blue-green sea is beautiful. I would love to go back there, next time hopefully in a non-monsoon period.

I am flying to India next week and am having to do a million things before the trip. Since I will fly to Canada from India I need to pack carefully. Things to take to India and then to Canada and everything else to be packed up and left somewhere. I am having to vacate my apartment which is the biggest pain of all things. I will worry about finding a place to stay when I come back to US in Oct.

For now, the one thing that keeps me excited is the thought of getting good food. I miss home food and Kerala food. Yummm.

Just 1 week :-)

I just learnt about the concept of a wedding registry. I had heard about wish lists and seen lists of gifts that kids wanted for Christmas etc in US. Recently, I heard about a wedding registry where the couple to be married put up a list of presents they want (usually pointing to the model/color/size of products in specific stores). People pick a gift from the list and cross off that item.

Sounds terribly non-Indian, doesn’t it. That is what I thought. Ofcourse from a practical point of view, it is nice that you don’t end up getting 4 copies of Star Trek!

One of those cultural things... First you shake your head then you move along :-)

I may be working in Richmond, Canada for a few months because of some visa issues. While normally I would have been very excited about working for a short while in a new country, right now I am not too happy about it. Bad timing.

From what I hear there are good Indian food choices. We shall find out in a few months and see how true that is.

Looking at the Indian restaurants in the area, I have a half baked idea about a new business idea. (I have a few of those). Of course this is for when I hit the jackpot and am like 50 years old and ready to move away from computers. Not very soon :-)

So the new business idea is to start a Kerala food restaurant. The closest I know of, is a few thousand miles away. The restaurant will be started as a social service and not as a *business*, as in making profits will not be a concern. As long as no losses are incurred, I would think of this as a successful venture. Of course I have worked out some aspects in detail in my head and not thought about several other details.

Going back to moving to Canada, I am thinking how different things are going to be from the US. I have only been to Vancouver & Whistler in winter for snowboarding and had seen a lot of international crowd and heard a lot of British English. I doubt that is typical though.

I am also toying with the idea of staying some place where I can bike to work everyday. After all its going to be summer. Its funny how summer sounds so appealing to me in US & around. Making a trip to India in summer has the opposite effect. I will be making a trip to Kerala in June, in the thick of the monsoon. May be then I'll stop complaining about Seattle showers? Nah!

For over a month now, I have been observing how every morning when I step out of my apartment to the parking lot, my car is loaded with bird shit and all the other cars to either side of my car look clean. I had seen something similar in a movie long ago and it had seemed fuuny then. Now, its just irritating. It does not make a lot of sense to me (You may argue that I am not a bird etc, lets not get into that).
 
My car is green in color, there is a black car to its left and a red car to its right - aren't those colors more attractive? The branch of the tree over my car is dry with almost no leaves, the branches leaning over some of the other cars are much wider with leaves & flowers. (Now don't remind me that I am not a bird yet again).

When I came back form Bloomington after a few days of vacation, I was surprised by the amount (I am positive it can't be just 1 bird) of bird droppings on the windshield, window panes and roof of the car. That was one time I wish the Seattle rains had poured heavily & washed off the mess. I was forced to go for a car wash that day. The reason I did that was to avoid any unprecedented attention.  A week before that I had driven to the grocery store & parked my car. I sat inside for a bit before stepping out. It appeared to me that every person that passed by looked at my car and the droppings with *amazement*. The car glasses are tinted, so they probably didn't notice me in. Some of them even pointed the car to their partners and giggled for a bit.

I have now decided to catch the bird in action one of these days and shoo it away hoping that it will be scared enough to not come back to that very spot. If not that, then at least I know the ... uhh face behind the mess.

What do you do when you feel low? I have noticed that I stay home & watch movies.

Having a bad day? ... sit on the couch all day, eat junk and watch whatever movie you have. Listen to music that will help intensify what you feel, Decline all invitations...Ah, be a loser in short. Sucks eh?

Instead, I should just go to the gym or something. I sometimes even go shopping and come back without buying anything. I guess it is better than going on a spree and regretting later.

No, I am not particularly feeling *low* at the moment, but irritable enough to crib & whine.

I got back from Bloomington today. I carried two small bags with me to Bloomington with the intention of checking in one & carrying the other with me. However, before entering the aircraft the officials claimed to have a full flight & so checked in what was to be my cabin baggage.

So I reached Indianapolis airport with just a purse. Yeah, both my bags didnt arrive :-(

(If you are wondering what the big deal is, you don't know my history with travel & bag loss)

So no gloves, hat, maps, directions, ... and the weather was just perfect. Snow, rain, ice :- all but the sun decided to welcome me in Bloomington.

On my way back to Seattle, I got both my bags, flight was on time etc. Too smooth & simple to be true? Yes, a friend who was supposed to give me a ride form the airport didn't show up & didnt answer his phone.

I am beginning to believe that I may be jinxed with respect to flight journeys.

On the bright side, both my missing bags were delivered on the same day to Bloomington, my vacation was fabulous (I just kept wishing I had made the trip earlier, sigh!) and I did get back home 3 hours after landing in Seattle. Oh and its a sunny day here.

I am in Bloomington from Friday - Monday(Feb 22-25). Going after almost an year, I am actually excited. I hope the weather forecast is right and it is not snowing or raining.

Nothing much on the agenda except meet friends from school & take it easy. And give Rosh a hard time :-)

I thought I had a clear notion of what curry meant before I left India. Now I am not sure. However, I do know that curry wrt thai, malysian, Indonesian & chinese food is different from curry wrt Indian food. I often wondered what curry powder that Indian stores sell is. I thought it was powdered curry leaves, until I picked one packet. The powder was yellowish orange in color and the leaves are green in color. Also the powder didn’t smell anything like curry leaves. It didn’t smell like any masala (spice) I had known. Then I thought curry powder was probably people’s notion of spices that go in an Indian dish [so does that mean dish == curry?]… so would that be like garam masala? Though ofcourse not all Indian dishes have garam masala. It is all very confusing.

While we are at it, I also want to point out that nan, roti, chicken curry & paneer are only a subset of Indian food. Back in India, every state has its own cuisine, dessert etc where some things overlap with some neighboring states and others are completely distinct. Kerala food for example is mainly rice based, a lot of dishes are cooked in coconut oil, curry leaves & coconut are ingredients in most dishes. I am yet to find a restaurant in Seattle area that serves Kerala style food. The closest we get to Kerala food is idlis, dosas & vadas. Which probably is more Tamilian than malayali. (I Think)

The last time I had Kerala food with my non-Indian friends, they were amazed & said they had never seen & eaten any “Indian food” like it. Many of my Indian friends back in Kerala were surprised with they were served “dal-baati-choorma” or even carrot halwa. Not to mention mom’s hurt feelings when one of them asked if the halwa was chutney (chammanthi).

And on that note, I need to get back to cooking my chicken err … curry.

I finally bought tickets to Bloomington. The idea of visiting Bloomington has been brewing for a while, and now I am going back finally. I miss several small things about Bloomington - esp being in downtown. I guess if I was living in seattle downtown, I wouldn't miss it as much. I miss biking & walking to a lot of places, I miss the small town feel & I miss wearing trackpants. But given a choice between living in Bloomington and here, I would pick here anytime :)

I am in Bloomington during the last but one week of February. I am going to freeze but driving in snow is a lot better experience in Indiana as opposed to Seattle area.

Next weekend some of us girls are driving to portland. It is supposed to be a book club retreat which reminds me I haven't read the book yet. Initially we were going to take a train & I was all excited about going on a train for the first time in US. However some girls wanted the comfort of being in a car and avoiding walks....sniff...and so a car it is.

I also may be driving to Vancouver for a weekend trip sometime this month. I am liking this. I am thinking of getting a GPS though that would mean the end of some adventure :). In my case I think it will also save time & increase potential places to go to.

I have been busy with work, apartment hunting, car hunting and unpacking my things that arrived from Bloomington. I gave up on the plan for staying alone for a while because of the high rents near the Microsoft campus. So I spent more time finding an apartment where I was mostly certain of finding a suitable roommate. I am now settled and unpacked in a 2 BR condo near Bellevue downtown. Its about 10 min drive to where I work. The only problem with the place is that I cannot bike either way. Its steep and way too tiring for me judging by the look of it. That would mean driving to some bike trail & biking. I wonder if I will do that.

I now have a *real* car, its a volkswagen passat glx. The good thing about it is that its fully loaded, all bells & whistles. Small change from my first car. :-) I knew nothing about cars a month ago, and now I actually know a fair amount. No technical details, but about model/make and such. I learnt that the favorite desi car is Toyota Corolla. Next probably the honda cars. I am already thinking about what my next car will be. I am tempted to get a convertible, it will be fun in the summers. But we'll think about it when we get there. Winter is creeping in and I need to buy some new winter gear. My Bloomington snow jackets etc will probably be of no use here.

I am yet to explore Seattle like a tourist. I am hoping to do it on my own or with other newbies. There are three things that I put on my (stretch) goal list when I moved in.

1. To go to a gym

2. To go to office early & get out early (along 8-5 lines) and

3. To make more women friends.

I have failed in all 3 so far. Well actually, making women friends has probably been a success as in I do hang out with women more than I did ever since high school. That is one flip side of being a part of computer science. As an engineering student, the men:women ratio was very high during my undergrad, same with work life & grad school. And so, during my vacation I sat down and thought about the fun discussions that I have had in the past in women only groups... and I decided that I should do something to ensure that I do not miss out completely on those.

Though this is not my first visit to Redmond, this is the first time I am looking to live in Redmond. The longest I have stayed here is for 3 months as an intern during summer last year. As one may guess, it is different trying to settle in. I was hoping to find an apartment for myself close to campus but the rent is making me reconsider the roommate option. I also need to buy a car soon. If Bloomington needed a car, then this place demands one for sure. Public transport in both the places I have lived in US is poor.

On the bright side, I bought a new cell phone, actually a pocket PC - the 8525. Its cool.

My journey from India didn't result in any (baggage loss) surprises except that I was 9.5 hours later than expected thanks to missing my connection flight from New York. So not completely uneventful.

I am flying out of Cochin tomorrow after an unexpectedly long but rather pleasant vacation. Now that all work permit & visa issues have been resolved, I will join Microsoft, Redmond again as a SDE, this time full-time.

I have a 30+ hour journey ahead, phew! I am carrying two Kushwant Singh books along, these days I seem to enjoy his writing quite a lot. I hope I do not have any *interesting* stories to tell about my baggage at the end of this :-)

I am reading some books by Kushwant Singh and came across a sher that I found very funny. The situation is that when Kushwant Singh visited his birth place Lahore he met the minister on a formal dinner and “offered him an appropriate sher (verse) for his next confrontation with orthodoxy”:

Mulla, gar asar hai dua mein

To masjid hila ke dikha!

Gar naheen to do ghoont pee

Aur masjid ko hilta dekh.

There is an english translation that I didn’t find so funny but will quote here

Mulla, if your prayer has power

Let me see you shake the mosque!

If not, take a couple of pegs of liquor

And see how the mosque shakes on its own

He then goes on to talk about the difference between Indian & Pakistani college girls saying that in India one looked at a group of girls and tried to see if there were pretty faces whereas in Pakistan it was the other way round, one tried to see if there was anybody not pretty.

While my vacation in Cochin has got prolonged I am making sure I read, eat & sleep as much as I can. In short, I am having a good time.

I recently got an invite to join Shelfari through email and I decided to join. It suggested that I sign into my gmail address book so I could look up who's already on shelfari. It showed me a (rather small) list of people already on the network and I intended to send them add requests. Instead what seems to have happened is that every person/unit I have had any correspondence with through my gmail id was sent an invite. Uggh. I do not like the idea of gmail being smart enough to store every email address I communicate with. Stop watching so carefully and ask me if I want to save any of these.

So, if you got such an email from me, apologies. It was unintentional.

I finished reading Harry Potter 7 and it meets my expectations, which was very high. At least one of the hopes (snape) came out true out of the two (snape & dumbledore) I blogged earlier.

Roshan is reaching Cochin tomorrow after 2 years in US and a 24 hour delayed journey. I am excited to hear what he has to say about the place, people etc after this gap.

Welcome back to India, Roshan :-)

I got back from chennai yesterday after a great time & some adventure with shopping in the busy streets of T-nagar.

Going from Cochin, Chennai was a pleasant change. The roads are much wider and traffic controlled. Also there are some signs of night life, like the number of autos and people after 9.00 pm. Shopping was great fun, loads of variety, choices, big crowds and unbelievable amount of bargaining. Oh how I easily fit into my old shoes and enjoyed bargaining! Its quite a skill and my sisters think I am good.

I did not like Chennai because of my not-so-good ~2 months experience with the place after my undergraduation, as is indicated my my previous post. I think its a little unfair, it was the first time away from home and having to do things I had never done before all on my own with limited resources was a little overwhelming. But, now I like chennai enough to say that I would consider it over Bangalore to stay in if I were to choose between the two. The weather & water is a problem, some stretches of drives bear such fragrance that one would feel completely knocked out but the congestion in Bangalore is a bigger problem IMO.

Now I am very happy to be back home, Harry Potter & the deathly hallows is on my table and I have decided to read it slowly (i.e. as slowly as possible). It is sad that there will not be any more waiting for future Harry Potters :-(

I grew up in Kerala but never went to a local toddy bar, never had sea food in a restaurant and never had any ayurveda treatments done. Once I stepped out of Kerala, the curiosity arose and I wanted to try everything Kerala is known for. I had never tasted toddy and more importantly never seen a kallu shaap ... it was this unspoken men-only place I occasionally saw in malayalam movie clips. During my last trip to India, I asked some friends for good seafood restaurants. The recommended upscale places turned out to cater too much to non-keralites especially to the foreigners. And so the taste was far removed from authentic Kerala style seafood. The other strong recommendation was toddy bars which came with a warning "ofcourse you can't go" :-)
 
My brother in law discovered this place called mulla (jasmine) panthal (roof) in cochin, which apparently has a website & even an orkut community dedicated to it. Before going we called up and were briefed about the place by a friendly manager who said it was fine for "families" (meaning women folk) to visit and they were given separate rooms but that it essentially was a bar. And so my sister, brother in law and I set off for lunch at this place. It was a much longer drive than we expected and stopped at several places to ask for directions and everybody just pointed ahead asking us to drive ahead further. Reminded me of the "abhi dilli (delhi) door hai" episode. Finally far from the main roads, in an alley lay our destination. Yeah it was a Harold & Kumar's white castle moment.
 
The usher helped us park the car and showed us the way in. We were seated in a room and briefed about how their toddy was made. We were then served with an earthen pot full of toddy (2 litres as we discovered later) and glasses. Toddy smells repulsive and tastes even worse, to the untrained palate such as mine. Once we settled in we ordered a whole range of dishes including karimeen (pearl spot) fry, prawns, kappa (tapioca), kokku (crane or stork from description) & duck (my first time). The food was delicious, a banquet I must say. Tears flowed profusely, sweat trickeled down our bodies but there was no stopping us from munching the super spicy prawns. Once I was done with food, I was curious to see what the rest of the bar looked like. So I asked the man in the group to accompany me, my sister was too stuffed to walk. The place looked busy & big. I suspect not all local bars are this big or spacious. The food was inexpenisve compared to any other place I have been to but some local folks say that for a kallu shaap its expensive. I am positive I will go back there atleast once more during this trip.
 
That is one more thing knocked off the to-do-before-I-die list.

I am reading gone with the wind at the moment. It is a book I have picked and never gotten very far a couple of times in the past due to various reasons, lack of interest never being one. As a teenager I would have been completely taken on by a character like Howard Roark in fountainhead or Rhett Butler in this book. And to some extent even Ashley Wilkes. My gut feeling is that it takes a woman to write, imagine, describe & build a strong male character like these. [Let us not argue over whether a man can write it or not. He possibly can, trying hard to think like a woman but he may not choose to ... dwell on all the fine details that women tend to. Possibly different ones. Or wait, let us argue.]

Now I suspect it is an impossible character, quite removed from reality & existing in works of fiction only. They sure make an interesting read.

My plan to visit Rajasthan had to be called off due to flooding in Gujarat & Rajasthan. Trains are being delayed & re-routed, so my folks thought it best to travel at a later date. Unfortunately that means for me, the trip wont happen this year for sure. And who knows when, if at all. I was looking forward to a scenic train trip via konkan and meeting up with people in Rajasthan. Too bad :(
 
This also means that I need to think up of some alternate journey so I make good use of my short time during this trip in India. Then again, with rains pouring as hard as they are, there are hardly any choices. I am definitely upset about this trip getting cancelled as there were so many things I had planned on doing - seeing camels, desert, peacocks, mehandi, clothes, doing shopping, trying rajasthani food, meeting lots and lots of people (family largely), taking pictures & just the different air & sand that is so unique to the state. And to think that a few weeks ago I was dreading the heat ... oh well!

Two weeks ago when I came to Cochin, I was pleasantly surprised to see that folks at home separated out plastic & trash as plastic was picked only once a week and trash on a daily basis. Last week, it was announced that plastic, metal, glass, egg shells (why?), paper & coconut fibre would be collected only on Tuesdays & remaining trash everyday. While folks are initially finding it difficult to make it a habit to separate out trash and there is ambiguity as to certain wrappers being plastic or not, I am happy about this big change. Hopefully it is a step towards a better Cochin.

Last week I travelled a bit & found Calicut railway station cleaner than any railway stations I have been to in the past [which is not a small number :-)] . Apparently there was a 2 week cleanliness drive with banners all over the station requesting passengers to use dust bins, not to spit tobacco etc. And for once it looked like it was working. I am not sure if in the recent years there has been this kind of drive in other parts of the country. Cochin & Shornur railway stations looked the same as they always have except for some computer kiosks installed for railway information access.

Next month I am travelling to Jaipur & I hope the railway stations on the way are cleaner than they have been years ago. My memories of travel in north India date back to at least 5 years ago & are full of extremely unclean areas in and around railway stations, for that matter most public transport locations. I also realize why as a kid I never liked travelling in India. Lack of clean toilets. Now it seems like the pay & use toilets in ladies waiting rooms in stations are kept clean. Phew. Travel aches. Disgusting topic. So moving on, I have a nice, adventurous journey planned out for july that takes me through Jaipur, Jaisalmer, Udaipur and our family place. Nice because some of these places are beautiful & I saw a few as a teenager. I am sure I will see them different now & I have a digital camera now. Yay! Adventurous because it is going to be in the scorching heat around a desert.

Finally, after switching blog hosters we have a blog up and running again. The down time was quite annoying especially because I had finished with IU & was free like I haven't been in a long time. I spent a couple of weeks in Seattle having my first experience with 2 cats as pets and changing from either running away form them or driving them away to missing them wake me up by scraping my door in the morning & running after me until I serve them stuff with my breakfast. I think I am going to get cats as pets. So much easier than a dog. Considering that I never had a pet before & am generally uncomfortable around creatures rubbing their fur or licking me, this is a huge step!

I flew Air India for the first time this week & since the number of hops were 1-3 less than my usual, I actually got all my bags. The worst leg of my travel was from Delhi to Cochin, the crowd & the pushing & shoving their way through every little gap to get ahead in line at the airport was quite frustrating.

Haven't stepped out of home yet in Cochin but the rain & the smell of wet earth are so reminiscent of childhood. I look forward to this vacation in India.

So, I can swim the breadth of a pool now. Free style & back stroke. I still need to get comfortable with breathing in water and expending lesser energy than I do now. But being able to swim feels good, after 2 months of struggle.

There are so many things to keep in mind while swimming, I just don't have that many buffers. A little like learning to drive. So, hopefully with more time in water I'll internalize some of these things and the book keeping won't be as cumbersome. The length of the pool makes me nervous, just the thought that if I stop I will drown is scary enough. It is one of those initial mental block things I guess.

Swimming has changed a few things like the days I swim I have to eat well before & after swimming. Boy, does swimming make you hungry or what! The intake of water has increased many fold when in the pool. It is not intentional. I spend a substantial amount on parking every class. Sometimes during the session I know my instructor is talking to me only through his body language or coz I see his lips moving, my ears are full of water and I feel stupid trying to make sense of what he said. There should be an easy way to get the water out of your ears spontaneously.

I have been busy with random things.

The good - Spring has begun here, the weather is great (yeah, its shorts & bike time again!!), the car is running fine and I can finally use an arm for swimming.

The bad - I have been keeping unwell and am still unwell.

The good - I have to book tickets to India, I am planning a 2 month vacation in summer in India

The bad - I have to pay for the tickets

Besides school, I did a bit of travelling to discover that "Hot Springs" in Arkansas is a myth. Hot springs, Arkansas does not have any hot springs left, yellowstone national park is still the only place I have seen real hot springs & plenty of them. Mammoth caves in Kentucky on the other hand has some beautiful caves with some fabulous stalactite formations.

We had a snow storm last week and my classes got cancelled for 2 days. The weather was bad, there was no question of driving. After a few days, the snow began turning into ice. Here are some pictures taken in the last 2 days. You can click them for better clarity.

And today there was lots of water, thanks to the sunshine after what feels like a looong time. (temp: 6C)

I got back to Bloomington 2 days ago. No points for guessing that both my bags didnt make it. One was delivered yesterday to my house, the other hasn't been spoken of yet. Its funny how on the way to India, I enjoyed the flight food and ate everything that was served and on the way back how everything tasted bad and I got back to my old habit of selecting 1 out of 5 things to eat & wasting the rest.

I ate the best french food at Le Petit cafe in Bloomington, today was my 2nd brunch there. Great food and great service. Thanks to Kyle  for introducing the place to me.

Tomorrow I shall start the final semester of my course. I have the liberty of choosing anywhere between 1 and 4 course(s) this semester. I have enrolled for 2 courses, I can't find a 3rd interesting course. I am wondering if I should look outside of computer science. I have one week to finalize the list.

I miss India already but its great being back in Bloomington. Sort of enjoy the streets and campus with no students (most are yet to come back from the break). Strangely my car seems to start without any trouble. What a pleasant surprise!