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.