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.