Two years in US

It’s been two years since I have landed in US. I was sent to US on a short 6-month assignment which lasted only for 3-months, but was immediately relocated on a long term assignment within the US. During this period met some wonderful people and boy oh boy I have tons of memories to cherish for rest of my life. Made some new friendships which are going strong and hopefully they will last forever.

Some memorable events in past 2 years are:

• My first cup of coffee in Starbucks at Philadelphia airport (First thing that I did as soon as I landed in US)
• Watching US open Men’s single finals at Arthur Ashe Stadium.
• The ELTP-242 reunion (sort of) in Vegas (Myself, Sumit and Ravi though Kiran missed out)
• Visiting Google Campus in Mountain View
• Skiing in Lake Tahoe
• Road trip from Atlanta to Washington DC (Drove some 800 miles only a week after I started to learn driving)
  
  And finally I wish to express my gratitude to few people who made my life in US a lot easier:
  
  Amit Baid - Learnt a lot from you dude (What to eat in a restaurant, How much to tip, which cocktail are good, car driving, car insurance, vageera vageera…………. I guess I can write a book of it :) )
  
  Amit and Sunita: For all the wonderful weekend getaway and weekend games.
  
  Muthu Pandian: Dude thanks for talking to me on all available topics in the world.
  
  All my Roomies and Ex-roomies for tolerating me!! (Iranna, Ranadheer, Venkat, Prashanth, Deba, Gopi, Guru, Hari, Sateesh, Prabhakar and Kunal)
  
  Sunil Shivanand and Sumit kumar: For all the trips we did……. And I know Euro trip is still pending.
  
  Siva and Vasu: For being great colleagues and supporting me at work.
  
  Sheetal: For always remembering me to Visit India (Well I promise that this year I will plan to visit India :) )

Thoughtful Cricket Fan

Date: 27-Mar-09

2nd Test Ind vs NZ Day-2 session 3

India started their first innings after New Zealand declared at mammoth 619. Sehwag started batting at his usually style smashing bowlers to all round the corner. An Indian fans banner read “MAN is a FREAK” SEHWACK

Vettori came on in early and sehwag smashed fifth delivery of the over to a SIX and the next ball he went for another slog and was out caught behind. The same fans banner then read “MAN is a FREAK IDIOT” SEHWACK

The Curious case of Band-Aid

Have you ever given complete attention to food while eating it? I mean 100% attentive on the food that you eat. Look at each bite of food carefully before eating it? Well i had to on last weekend. I was at my friend’s place and my friend’s wife had cooked mouth watering dishes. The dishes were dal tadka, tomato curry and shrimp curry. Chapathis and pappad were in abundant to support those dishes. All the dishes were well organized on the dining table and we were about to start the lunch, my friend’s wife made a statement that the band-aid that she was wearing on the right hand index finger is missing and she thinks that it might have come out during cooking. We looked at each dishes stirring them but were unable to find a band-aid in any of them. Then the next question came to mind was whether the band-aid has melted in the dish. Be what ever the case we had to eat the food as a lot of hard work was involved in the cooking and the food looked delicious and the other major reason was it was raining and were lazy enough not to go out for lunch. Then started the part of eating where we checked each bite of food for band-aid or something that looked similar. We took 45 minutes and finished the lunch but we were unable to find the band-aid in dishes. Till now we are unable to find the band-aid and it has been a curious case of a missing band-aid. It has been a week since this episode has happened and none of us had any stomach upset. So all is fine :)

One year back

Have you ever wondered what you were doing exactly one year back? Well I guess you need good memory power to accomplish this task :). This Saturday I was sitting all alone in room and nothing to do, just browsing the net and suddenly this thought came by as what I was doing a year back. The next moment I was checking my mailboxes. I started checking all my older mails. I exactly reached the mails I received one year back and started reading them. Oh man those mails bought some good old memories. Thanks to GMail which made Delete button a history and provided virtually unlimited storage space. I guess I haven’t deleted a mail from past 3 years :). It was really fun reading all the old mails and this in turn helped me pass some of my free time.

Rafa all the way

Wimbledon-2008
Men’s final – Sun, 6 July 08
Roger Federer vs Rafael Nadal

One of the greatest match in the tennis history and I am thankful to god that I was able to watch this match. On this weekend I was holidaying in Las Vegas and I saw the whole match on the big screen TV in the sports betting section of the casino. Initially I thought I was the only person following tennis in the casino but to my surprise around 100-200 people were watching the match.

I was cheering Nadal all the way, and when he committed the double fault (5-2) in the fourth set tie breaker and eventually lost it, I thought Federer would win the match. But Nadal held his nerve and won the match. At last Nadal was able to break the jinx and win a grand slam on grass.

I have booked US open men’s single final ticket and hope that these two great legends meet in the final. If that happens then one of my dreams will come true. Watching live two great legends play will be a life time memorable event.

Spain won the Euro cup this year after 44 years gap and now Rafa winning on the grass court. I guess this year belongs to Spain.

Go Rafa Go……….

Casino Trips

It has been 14 months since I have landed in US. Every month since then I had been for a trip. I guess I have visited more places in US than I did in India. It may be because of the insecurity I was feeling that I would not last long on my onsite assignment; I wanted to see as many places as possible in this visit. Out of the 14 trips I have done 9 of them are the Casino getaways. The casino getaways I did are:

Atlantic City (Twice)
Reno
Tampa
New Orleans (clubs too are awesome at this place)
Bay St.Louis
Lake Tahoe
Cherokee
Biloxi

And for the coming long weekend (July 4, 5 and 6) I have Las Vegas trip planned.

Its not that I have a gambling addiction, but as soon as I get to know the place has a casino I tend to favor that. The passion and the energy level in me doubles as soon as I enter the casino. I like the fun of playing in the casino. I always set a limit before I enter the casino and I stick to the limit( well only 2 times I have crossed the limit but otherwise I am OK)

Well I am practicing Poker now a days and I intend to play Poker World Series in days to come. Watch out for the next millionaire :)

And well if you are curious if I am winning or losing, hmmm I am in negative territory right now.
Well as of now I am very much looking forward for my Sin City trip….. Vegas baby Vegas.

I Like

I like talking over silence.
I like tennis over cricket.
I like Mallika over Aishwarya.
I like whisky over Beer
I like Laalu over Gowda
I like beauty over brains
I like Newyork over Sanfransisco
I like Blackjack over Roulette
I like Mitsubishi over Toyota
I like desktop over laptop
I like Creative over Apple
I like IE over Mozilla
I like talking over SMS
I like Dravid over Sachin
I like Nadal over Federer
I like winter over Summer
I like thriller over romantic
I like Kannada over hindi
I like weird over common
I like spending over saving
I like sarcasm over nice