Last Week in San Diego

Finally, its the last week in San Diego. Last three months of my stay here have been memorable, some very good, some bad (especially in last one month). Being an optimist, I will take forward the good memories with me and hope that the bad ones are long forgotten and I apologize, if I have hurt anybody during this phase, as it was unintentional. Probably its the life's way of testing our strength and ability to handle the adversities in life and if we make through it without much damage, we end up to be a better person. Failure gives us Experience, isn't it?. (Damn!!! this is sounding like sad end of an art movie :-)..Okok..enough)

Now the good part. We wanted to take some final good memories from here and we ended up enjoying it on the beaches of San Diego (thats what its known for, right!!!!). Again went for surfing with viju's cousins and it was fun. Good part which I liked about surfing was the body wet suit. It creates those six pack abs which we always dream of :)). The other thing we did during the weekend was beach volleyball. We played around 5 hrs of volleyball. The last time I played volleyball was 5 years ago in Burlington in a league match, the day before I met with the gruesome ski injury. Took sometime to get back in the groove and once in the groove it was fun. Even though we lost all the games. Apparently Viju's team won which consisted of her cousin and some European guy. Finally we rode a jet ski. It was fun until Viju's cousin tried to copy the dhoom movie's stunt where Abhishek Bachan jumps the jet ski over boat and shoots the villian. In our case it did not jump over but it just sat on another jet ski. Apparently making us meet the cops for the first time here. Overall it was a thrilling experience.

Overall it was a good 3 month stay in San Diego and this weekend I'am going back to Amherst where I dont have to stop at a traffic signal too long and I can see more greenery.
Next blog will be from a student in Amherst ;)..Hope he has time to write it.

Smile

Its almost the end of my stint in San Diego. One thing noticeable about this place, apart from scenic beauty and theme parks, is its desi population ( this mite be true with the bay area also). People might have heard about little India, but I feel that the term "little" is a misnomer. It should be little America in Big India. :-)

The places I have stayed in US have always been small places with very little desi population and we could easily count all the desis in town and we knew each other very well. When I first came to San Diego I was amazed by the desis roaming around ( even desis in loongis with their bluetooths, as my friend, Ajay, would say it). So I was keen on meeting the desis around in San Diego. So, on my first visit to the Walmart ( someone would say "cheap walmarters", but I dont care, I'am not rich either) I bumped across a desi couple. Viju and myself smiled at them and introduced ourself. To our surprise, the desi couple gave one hard look at us and just walked by. We were like "dude, are we fugitives or what". Anyways we said may be they were not in the mood. On the same day, we met the same couple in the movie theatre and again the same reaction. We were wandering " whatz going on. Have we been banned by the desi community in San Diego".

The next day we went to a grocery store and to our surprise a desi couple came to us smiling and introduced themselves to us and after 10 mins of exchanging info and phone numbers we were happy that we got to meet some nice desis. We forgot the walmart and the theatre incident.
After 2 days we got a call from the desi couples ( the one from the grocery store). After 5 mins of exchanging good will words, the desi dude started talking about Amway ( its some kind of marketing thing). I showed my disinterest in it and cut short the conversation. After that day I never got a call from that dude.

This made me think, probably the desi from walmart might have faced the similar situation like me and he might have become skeptical about anybody approaching him with a smile.

Anyways, I believe in making friends and my smile will be ON. Take it or leave it :)

PS: Smiling, exercises around 200 facial muscles. So please Keep Smiling

Simple yet Effective

Finally, after so many days in San Diego, on saturday we visited Sea world. Dont worry, I will not bore you guys with the "yada yada...." of the sea world. That info can be found on the web.

As expected the parking lot was full, so we wasted a gallon of gas finding the parking spot and in the end an old gentleman directed us to the additional parking space. I was so relieved to find the parking space that I forgot to thank the old man and just drove pass him. After we had traveled for 50 ft, Viju ( My beautiful wife :) ) rolled down the window and shouted "thanks" to the old man. The old man waved and smiled at us. If it was a master card ad ..it would say " Sea World tickets 100$, parking ticket 12$, but acknowledging the one who helps you, PRICELESS". This resulted in a flashback ( as a typical movie would show ....wavy screen leading to the past).

As a 22 year old desi dudes, myself and my friends traveled to the land of green money. On the flight, one of my friends went back to the pantry and asked the air hostess for water. The air hostess with a nice smile said "whatz the magic word". My friend was about to say "abracadabra, a typical magician word" but just stood staring at her with a blank face. The air hostess smiled and said "its, PLEASE". A lesson well learnt. From that day onwards we never forgot that word. Especially when we wanted our work done, that was indeed the magic word.

When I was a kid, I used to see this Advertisement on the TV which would show a boyfriend "pataso-fy" ( this is how kenny, my good friend would say) his girlfriend by giving her an Archies card and bunch of roses. Seeing at that I would say, such a waste of money, he could have done better things with that money. But as the years have passed by, I have realized that 4$ card and 3$ box of Lindt chocs can bring a smile on the face of your loved ones, which is priceless ( Damm!! this master card Ad has gotten into my head). So the bottom line is, when we mess up it is better to apologies in the nicest and the simplest way possible.

So the moral of the story: The three magical words for sound sleep and good health " Please, Thank you and Sorry" :)

PS: Some of the facts have been digitally modified to suit the flow of the blog.

Orkut's Todays Fortune: Believe it or not

Its been strange but true, that the "today's fortune" on my orkut profile has been on spot until today. Today's fortune was that I will inherit large sum of money, which I still haven't as of 4pm today. So I thought let me see if this orkut fortune teller has ever been true for me. So I went back and started from the beginning of the week.

As I vaguely recollect one of the earlier fortune was that "I will have a change of luck" good to bad or bad to good, I really dont know. So in the morning, I logged on gmail and I found that I had lost some money ( How I lost it, is not important here). So I said "Jeez" the orkut fortune is really turning out to be true today. But it might be a coincidence, so I continued with my morning routine of Coffee, online news and chatting with friends. The coffee was good ( cant screw up that as there is no rocket science in making an instant coffee), the news was not that great as it was full of recent happenings in Bengaluru and Ahmadabad. So I said let me try my luck with chit chatting with friends. So I chatted with couple of my friends, it was good until I cracked a P.J with one of my friend which eventually led to misunderstanding and in matter of seconds the ball was out of the boundary line. I will not go over the post-mortem here. The bottom line was that repercussions were seen for the next two days which eventually led to loss of friendship and some strange "mis-understandings" with the near and dear ones. Anyways, I said "Dude, this orkut fortune is turning out to be true". But again like a rational thinker would think , "its coincidence".

But todays fortune on orkut (you will inherit a large sum of money) made me think, lets hope "this one is true" ( the greedy dog in me ). So from morning I started looking out for something which would make the fortune come true. Until lunch time I did not see a penny come by. So my hopes slowly started to fade. I decided to eat the lunch at my desk and watch Randy Pausch's time management video ( He died last week, may his soul rest in peace). I do not have enough adjectives to describe this guy. An inspirational speaker with a great sense of humor, which apparently many of us lack. I have become a fan ( like many others) of this prof. So anyways, he talks about simple time management things which will help us do our work efficiently and in more relaxed way. Watching him talk it makes us realize that, Here is a guy who knows that he is going to live for just another 6-9 months but not a sign of sadness or resignation. When I watched Rajesh Khanna's "Anand" movie, I thought this is not pragmatic. No person can be so cheerful and friendly when he knows that he is going to die in next 6-9 months. But Prof Randy proved me wrong. So anyways where am I going with this. I was talking about todays fortune and why did prof Randy come into picture. After watching the video I said "wait a second, did I just inherit a large sum of money. Isn't time=money. As far as I know I have time left in my life which I can manage properly and live healthily and happily". So another coincidence with the orkut's todays fortune. But I liked this coincidence.