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.

Seattle doesn’t get a lot of snow, when it does get some snow like for ½ a day or 1 day, most people work from home, kids skip school, shops close early, ... you get the picture. This year Seattle saw quite a bit of continuous snow. Enough that the governor had to declare statewide weather emergency.  I worked from home for a week. I drove around only for a bit and quite carefully. My car is a front wheel drive and I had been meaning to get snow chains. All stores in Seattle area were out of chains – apparently my tyre model is the most common. One evening on my way back from a grocery store, I tried driving down this small stretch of steep downgrade road to my parking garage, over what looked like packed snow. As it turned out it was ice and my car skid by 180 degrees on a 1 way street. Braking, steering, mumbling etc didn’t change the course of the car, A few pedestrians did run frantically though. That incident was scary, I parked the car by the street side. Either the snow had to melt or I had to get snow chains to be able to move around again. Next 2 days neither happened, I stayed home mostly and travelled on foot to get food & basic supplies (that includes ice cream). A day later, due to circumstances, I decided to drive to San Francisco. When I went to my car, I saw this. People do have a sense of humor. At least it didn’t say “Wash Me” like some other cars I saw. With all my inexperience I tried to shovel the snow away from the front tyres to get the car out. With help from some strangers, the car was out on the road again. I had to stand in line to get chains at a store, some of the gas stations in Redmond were out of gas and so I had to drive around a couple to finally get premium gas only at one distant gas station. When I went to get some food at a 7-11,  I thought that the staff there was unusually nice & friendly ... and then I noticed Fox News crew with the camera focused on the staff. I should have checked the news that evening to see if I was caught on camera buying ice cream.

Next day early morning, I started the much dreaded road trip. Had the skidding accident not happened 2 days ago, I probably wouldn’t have dreaded it as much.

A 11.5 hours drive took 18 hours, but thankfully there were no incidents. Some season to remember. I have never seen so many driving rules being broken; you could pretty much park anywhere not fearing getting towed/ticketed, you could drive in any lane, some went up the wrong way on a 1-way road, Cars/Trucks took any lane on the interstate, pulled over anywhere with/without emergency lights flashing, … While some of this was amusing, most of the stuff I saw around made me strongly wish that everything would return to normal. There were several accidents, tons of vehicles getting towed probably coz they got stuck in snow, ambulances & paramedics all around, cop cars all over, people crying … Quite sad that this was happening to many of them just before Christmas. Fortunately for me, I got to San Francisco on Christmas eve and got to spend the vacation with Roshan as planned. Except the whole order of places had to be changed/re-done with all reservations going for a toss because of the timings.

We spent time in parts of California and drove back via Nevada. I got to see pretty much all terrains on the road trip. It was quite beautiful. US has vast amounts of land with pretty much nothing. It was all quite pretty. When we got back to Seattle, it was drizzling and it was grey. Sigh, what a beautiful city and what crappy weather. Most of the year, Seattle is cold & grey & wet – and you are seeing it out of your window from a closed office, apartment or car  like watching a movie.

And with this trip the longest road trip for me has been 4150 miles. I will upload some pictures here.

The last one year passed by so quick, then again so much happened in the last year. I lived in US, India, Canada and back in US. I had series of events celebrating my wedding. I ate so much food when in India that on one occasion I threw up. I lived by myself in Vancouver and have started doing the same in Seattle. Having always lived with room mates (well, never shared a room, but shared the apartment) in the past (or siblings before that), this has been an awesome experience. Having a whole house to myself – tons of storage, exclusive access to living room & dining room space, using the bathroom as & when I want to, calling friends over as I deem fit, playing loud music late into the night and err paying all utilities (no this isn’t fun) … I am loving the change. For as long as it lasts J. I had my first experience shipping a product. Had some crazy work hours when in ship mode – all worth it at the end of course.  I observed my first fasting ceremony (karwa chauth) this year  – Unlike the glorified image that I had thanks to the hindi movies, it is quite difficult. And Roshan obviously has not seen Shahrukh Khan observing. By late evening, I was raging with hunger.

I have rented an apartment in Seattle downtown. Since I didn’t want to be in a tiny studio and wanted to be in downtown and not have room mates, I have decided to make it worth the money (rent, parking, …) by making sure I have fun, I *live* in the *city*. Unlike just surviving in the boring eastside (Redmond, Bellevue, Kirkland) (sorry east siders – I was you one time). I have decided to live in the less boring Seattle. So one of my resolutions is to walk & explore downtown. I am located opposite to the sculpture park and very close to the water front. Another resolution is to dine & wine at many of the cafes, restaurants, bakeries & pubs in Seattle. I have a growing list that I want to cover in the next 1 year. Lots of eating to do! I so miss Vancouver downtown!

I am ashamed of not keeping all my resolutions from last year (especially the gym one); I am going to shamelessly carry that one over. Though in my defense, the wedding & all the travel is a good excuse.

I am considering getting a XBOX for myself this year. Though I didn’t enjoy HALO, the last time I tried it for 30 minutes. Big learning curve there, esp for the impatient.

When in Vancouver, I had enrolled for Shaimak Davar’s Indi-pop (read as Bollywood) dance lessons and wasn’t too impressed by it. I am hoping to find something better in Seattle.

Here’s wishing everybody a Happy New Year!

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.