~~Link I liked~~

funny

~~Missing forward mails~~

I remember the days when I used to clear up the mail box once in the morning and again in the evening when I was working. Most of them would be forwards which would have been travelling from one IT companies server to another back and forth. Those mails were real fun and were part and parcel of the corporate life.

But after coming here number of forwards have considerably reduced almost to zero. I think my friends have decided not to disturb me thinking I m studying always!Now have to get contented reading old forwards which I had saved over the years.

EDIT :

Wow its great to see my mail box fill again, got from my former colleague :)

~~Pics I liked~~

Over this week I came across different pictures some were funny, some mind blowing and some were realistic.

1)Europe from different countries perspective

2)Fathers , Mothers and Brothers (From Reddit)

3) Fall in the air (from Boston Big picture)

~~Rain in the city~~

Today morning when I got up I could see it was raining outside and when I was ready to leave home I was happy that this was the first time I am going to use an umbrella after carrying it uselessly for the past few months. As soon as I went on to the street I opened the umbrella to protect myself from the rain.All was well for a while then wind started blowing and turned my umbrella upside down and I had to protect the umbrella from the wind. It took lots of effort to position it against the wind and walk to the college .When I finally reached college I was half drenched but my umbrella was safe !

~~Nash Equilibrium~~

Last week in the class we were introduced to the concept of game theory. In that there is something called as Nash equilibrium which was discovered John Forbes Nash. The movie A beautiful mind is loosely based upon his life. A concept which tells that there is nothing to gain if you choose your decision unilaterally.

Below is the clip which explains it in a better way from the movie!

~~Meeting Indians in college~~

My room mate told me about the Indian association in our college and invited me for the function its conducting on Saturday. I wasnt keen on going there first because the 90% percent of the crowd will be doing there MS in computer and engineering and rest of the 10% doing MS in other engineering subjects. Then he said there will be Indian girls attending the function and then I realised I haven't talked to any Indian girls in my college.Also it was our cook who was serving the delicious dinner and I didnt want to miss it.

By evening I attended the party and as I expected most of the people were doing their MS and luckily I found one guy who has taken up a course in my department and talked with him.The function started with a icebreaker, few songs and I was waiting for the best part the snacks time.Our cook had prepared delicious pav bhaji,samosa and gulab jamon for the evening and it tasted really awesome. I ate those and came home happily!

Talking to Indian girls ? Its not something I really miss :)

~~Checked(3)~~

I have to start once again ,there are few basic things people in US didn't inform me earlier and I had to be learn only after experience. Since I didnt have anytime to get gift for Ganesh only thing I could manage was to make his purse lighter by $100. A small flashback when I reached US ,Diana got an addon connection for me ,using her corporate scheme,from then on what so ever I talk using the mobile Ganesh paid the bill.

When Ganesh got the bill this month he found that the bill was charged $100 dollars extra and saw there were the special services subscribed from my number. They were

1)Predicto

2)Aladin Horescope subscription

3)Speedy Trivia Mobile Quiz Club

4)Mind Quiz Mobile quiz club.

When Ganesh asked me what were these I told I never knew I had subscribed for these.Then I began to think what silly thing I did which would have led to this subscription.Few months back there was a online survey which asked few questions and then mobile number.Then it gave me the link to take on an IQ quiz,survey would have found my interest.So I clicked on the link,it said there will be key sent your mobile number note it and enter it in tab and then take the quiz,I got the message entered the number in the website and went ahead to take the quiz and finished it successfully. This is the small stuff I did which caused the dent in Ganesh purse. So what had happened is the number when I got to take the quiz is the number which is required to activate the message service or rather charge the mobile company for the services and the sad part was I never got any messages for the month.

Finally Ganesh called the operators and unsubscribed from the messaging services

~~CWG and Controveries~~

One thing I really hate about Indian media is how it projects the country in the negative night , this is the cost we are paying for being democratic.I agree there were delays, there were dead line slippages but how media projects is that 'We Indians are not capable enough to conduct a big event'. All this before the start of the game. No one talks about the world class airport which was completed before schedule nor the metro which connects various parts of the city which has reduced the traffic a lot over the last few years. In my personal opinion I did see a lot of changes in the city when I visited in 2009 than what I saw in 2004.These are the improvements which will benefit the citizens in the long run and not just for 10 days of CWG.

I just want to compare the role of media in Beijing Olympics, foreign jounalist faced various types of restrictions at all the venues and if at all they tried to do a string operation they would have packed off back to the home countries.What would have happened if a reporter tried to report something which is against the spirit of the country, I don't he would have the guts to do that. I agree that Chinese did give world class performance in 2008 but we need to wait until India finish hers.

~~I ate mooncakes~~

Today is Chinese mid autumn festival . A day they celebrate harvest festival similar to pongal. It seems that the full moon during this month of the year will be the largest when viewed from the earth. So its also called moon festival and they make moon cakes for the occasion.

I told one my classmates that I really liked to try moon cakes. To my surprise she got a whole box of it to the class. It tasted really delicious!

~~Checked(2)~~

I got advices my Sathi, Sivaram and Sheila to plead my ignorance so that I can have a waiver for the overdraft fee charged. I left today morning to meet my banker who is a friendly guy.Since the bank is on my way to the college I usually wave at him if I see him on the other side of the window and he responds back.

Today when I went in he stood up to welcome me and after few formalities he asked how can he help me,I just gave the letter which had the OD fee. He first logged on to the screen and cancelled the OD fee as a goodwill transaction and then went on to explain how the system works.I thanked and said "This $34 means a lot to me ".

For few people they needn't to request nor plead their face value gets the work done :)

~~chequed~~

There are few basic things people in US didn't inform me earlier and had to be learnt only after experience. When I got my bank statement today I was surprised to see that I was charged with a $34 dollar over draft fine. I remembered I wrote a cheque last week for my friend and I had enough money in the account to cover the same.

I came to know that cheque debit the money from the current account and not the savings account.In my case I had all my money in the savings account and when they tried to debit money from current account they found there was nothing in there and charged me a penalty.Generally in India its with the savings account we make transaction and current account will rarely be used.

But in US with interest rate in few pennies I don't find any reason to store why they need some thing called a savings account.

~~Hyper Inflation~~

Today in the class we were discussing about hyper inflations where the countries cannot control their inflation rate. History tells there are few countries which have experienced this phenomenon and have come out of it successfully.Right now Zimbawae is one which is experiencing the hyper inflation such that the cost of living in the country gets doubled everyday.

Its the country of trillionares!

~~Photo session in Brooklyn bridge~~

Yesterday Diana called and said lets go for a walk in Brooklyn bridge for which I readily said yes. Around evening I left to catch my train and found that metro train 1 was cancelled for the day but for an alternate we were giving free bus rides to the to another station from which we can catch other train.I met Diana and Ganesh at Fulton street and from there we went to water taxi beach street.We took time to watch a street performer going inside a small box. Then chatted for sometime sitting in the banks of East River.

When it was about to get dark we stopped for a coffee before starting our mission to walk on the Brooklyn bridge. With the moon just over the bridge it was wonderful sight to watch .It didn't take much time as Diana started taking out her tripod and camera started taking pictures in a professional fashion. She took pictures of the bridge,moon,river,New york skyline and at times included me or Ganesh along with the backdrop.The photo session continued for more than an hour after which we decided to walk on the bridge.While reaching the middle of the bridge the coffee started showing its effects on Ganesh, so we had to abort our mission in middle and return back.

Then we took the subway to grand central and walked all the way to 52nd street to have dinner at an Indian restaurant Bombay palace.This was the first time I ate a naan stuffed with carrot which made it little sweet.After that we walked all the way to Rockefeller's center then to times square and finally to Penn station. I finally said bye to both just after getting pocket money from Ganesh :)

PS: these pictures were taken in my camera ,waiting for the professional ones!

~~Preparing Resume~~

Resume writing is one of the challenging jobs I have to do now. Its something which I have to write about myself making sure whatever each and every sentence is true as well making a positive impact.Being a modest person(!) I always get struck while writing one.

Good thing about US resumes is we need to fill whatever we want just in a single sheet,making my task little easier. Today morning I started preparing one in US format and by late noon I completed more than 5 sentences and was scratching my head by then Diana called said lets meet up today evening. I put everything aside and went to downtown :)

~~Millennium Development Goals~~

Millennium Development Goals(MDG) will be the topic of discussion when all the world leader gather at UN headquaters at NYC next week for the annual summit. One thing I like about the UN is it the place filled with scholars across the world who know all the problems which the world is currently facing and also know the solutions for the same but its pity that the organization has no power to make countries across the world to account themselves on what they do. Most of the countries economic policy is aimed at acheiving short run goals but what UN targets is sustainable development in the world.

MDG's are set of goals set by member countries when they met for the millennium summit in the year 2000.They are

• Goal 1: Eradicate extreme poverty and hunger
• Goal 2: Achieve universal primary education
• Goal 3: Promote gender equality and empower women
• Goal 4: Reduce Child Mortality Rate
• Goal 5: Improve maternal health
• Goal 6: Combat HIV/AIDS, malaria, and other diseases
• Goal 7: Ensure environmental sustainability
• Goal 8: Develop a global partnership for development

The ambitious part of it is that they have targeted it acheive these goals by the end of year 2015.

We had a session yesterday from the people of UN giving us the status updates on how far they were able to meet the goals.One major factor mentioned in the topic was how India and China were able to lift lives of 400 million people from poverty over the last 10 years.So the major reason is the economic growth witnessed by these countries during that period contributed to that fact.So UN is think tank is trying apply the similar models for sub Saharan African countries few central Asian countries and Latin American countries.

Its simple that we know the way to eradicate these problems but we need the will from the countries to do the same.

~~Storm in NYC~~

Today morning when I checked my usual weather forcast it was predicted that there will be light rain in today.So I took out my umbrella when I left my room as usual it was clear sky. After getting MMR vacination from a cute nurse I left for my classes. When classes got over in the evening we had a session from people from UNO giving a talk about Milleinum development goals(will try to write about this later). When there were signs it had rained but no use for the umbrella.

I was walking back to my home my friend called and asked me how was the storm in NYC and I was wondering what he was talking about. I went back to my room and checked NY Times there were lots pictures about the strom and the effects in the city.

As usual my weather bug in my laptop is not giving accurate results as it predicted a slight showers when there was a thunder strom rocking the city.

~~Getting Immunized~~

When I came here I was asked give proof for MMR vaccination, after some efforts my dad got those certificate from BHEL hospital.Today I got a mail from the college saying Both of your MMR vaccinations were given too soon (before you turned one year of age). To become compliant you will need to have two (2) doses of the MMR vaccine.

To get these stuff completed as soon as possible I booked an appointment tomorrow morning. Its been a long time i have taken an injection,hope it doesn't pain :)

~~Pic for the day~~

Sunset over Manhattan Skyline

Took this from the top of Arthur Ashe Stadium

~~US Open:Men's Semi finals(2)~~

The gang with which we watched US open was split into two groups one who were die hard fans of Federer with Federer t shirt & cap and other the anti Federer camp who wanted to see him badly loose. I just took few pictures during the final moments with few reactions from my gang.

~~Visit to MoMA~~

MoMA is Metropolitian museum of Arts which is one of the popular museum in NYC. It has three floor and different sections ranging from greek,roman arts to the latest modern arts.The whole museum cant be covered in a single as there are lots to visit.Once inside the museum we decided to split into groups of two and decided to see what we to liked to see.

Going to museum will be worth only if we can appriciate the art and the history behind it and it will be even better if somebody. I was lucky to have company of Vairam who is my friend's college mate. We decided to check on South Asian arts after seeing few European painting and few modern arts. Vairam has a detailed knowledge about the Chola arts,Sangam literature(read his blog).We were interested in looking specifically at the Chola bronze statues.We spent more than hour in South Indian arts room appriciating the precision,scale and accuracy with which Cholas have designed the sculpture from the finger nails to toes.

Below is the picture of Hanuman's right hand with each fingers placed differently and gives a picture of an animal when we the shadow of it.

We just covered 10% of museum, should go there sometime later to see the other exhibits.

~~US Open:Men's Semi finals~~

When I about to leave from India I told few of my friends about my higher studies in NYC, that time Vaishnavi said she will book ticket for US open semifinals for me, though she cant make it for the match tonight I was lucky enough to watch one of the thrilling matches of this year's US open.

The first match was really a disappointment with Nadal thrashing his opponent with his brutal serve and control. The next match was the one we were waiting for,seeing Roger Federer-Djokovic in action. What a match, these are the matches fans get their money worth,a match fought for almost four hours going with lots of twists and turns. I went all the way top to the stadium when Federer had two match points but things turned dramtically as I had to wait for 20 more minutes before Djokovic won a match he will never forget.

Seeing the match in stadium was a wonderful experience and the atmosphere was electrifying makes a lot of difference than watching from home.

~~Broadway show: The Phantom of the Opera~~

My school mates from Cornell,Purdue and Arlington came down to NYC for this weekend. One of their main itinerary in the trip was to watch a famous Broadway show in New york city.Though I was not keen on not going to the show because of the high cost involved in that,in the end they forced me and took there.

After few discussion we decided to watch "The Phantom of the Opera" a romantic musical thriller which is one the oldest Broadway shows which is one of the longest running Broadway shows. Its really good to see people giving importance to theater artists here and encourage them by coming to their shows which are priced higher than the movie tickets.

I liked the settings of the show adapting to the latest technology,the way they presented it,precision of the dance movements and acting skills.Being a musical show one thing I had to get used to it was the women singing in a high decibel sound. I have attached a performance of the same show taken in 1988.

~~Quote I liked~~

‎"Few moments on your Lips, Forever on your Hips!! - Tells about Pizza, Pasta, Burger, French Fries :)

waiting for my cook to deliver rotis !

~~Happy Anniversary~~

The reason I'm enjoying life in NYC is because of an event happened long back. Yea its my parents wedding anniversery as they begin their 30th year of their married life.

Wishing you both a wonderful anniversary and I m really lucky that you people met 30 years back!

~~Visit to Light house at tc~~

Old mission point was given as one of the tourist destination in traverse city, its a narrow stretch of land extending 22 miles with water on both sides.There was a light house in the bay and we decided to have look at it. When we reached there it started raining but myself and Sivaram were determined to see the light house.As usual Suji and Riya decided to stay back in car. We walked few meters inside and we could only see a house then on reading a name plate came to know that house is the light house just because there was light at the top.

I think we can also construct a house with a put a bulb on top and call it a light house :)

~~My new pillow cover~~

When I went to bed yesterday night I saw that my pillow cover needs to be washed,so I took it off and put it in the laundry bag.Then I realised I don't have a spare pillow cover and I didnt want to pick up the pillow cover back from the laundry bag. So I came up with this idea!

Turns out to be my favourite pillow cover :))

~~Experience in the sand dunes at TC~~

Today Sivaram woke me at midnight 4 30 and asked me to get ready for the airport, I wrote this in the airport two hours before my flight schedule.

Sleepig bear dunes is one of the major tourist attractions in the Traverse city. There are steep sand dunes near the beach and inorder to get to the beach one had to run down 450 feet of steep dune. The day we went was with a crazy weather with wind blowing at 45 miles/hour. Given the sandy beach conditions we were literally sand blasted.Within few seconds we had sand all over the body. Riya and Suji ran back to the car but Sivaram and me decided to climb down dune to the beach.Walking down the dune is always easy and fun,being steeper made our jobs easy.After climbing few hundred feet getting bored I told Sivaram I m going to take a run down. The first few steps down was really exciting after that I found myself accelerating within minutes I was running at a speed giving competition to all 100m dashers.Soon I felt flying and couldn't control myself and fell face down rolling another 10 feet down.When I saw Sivaram I could sense that I had travelled down more than 100 feet within 10 seconds. Sivaram decided not to take any risk futher asked me to come up,now I started the climing up,giving the texture of the sand its steepness journey up was a herculean task.When I reached where Sivaram was sitting I was gasping for breath.Then we started our journey up,the higher we went more the impact of wind which was beating us down at every step we take up.We stopped three more times to catch our breath before we reached the top.

It was a wonderful adventure running down the steep dunes and then walking up back.

~~Back from the trip~~

It was a wonderfu trip to traverse city which incuded long drives, crazy weather and extreme adventures. Have added picture of places we visited. Will try to write about it when I have time.

~~Packing bags~~

Itslong weekend and its time to pack stuffs and go out of town! My bro is taking me to Michigan ,will be out of blogging for three days!

~~Last weekend ~~

Sometimes spending time with best buddies will give you more satisfaction than visiting tourist spots. Last weekend when Haran picked me up he said lets drive to Madison the next day. To go to Madison we had to get up early but since we went to bed late, Haran changed the plan and said lets goto lake Geneva which is some two hours drive.

Next morning when I woke up Haran said you cook today! one thing staying with best friends is that they know our well kept secrets, I have never boasted about my cooking expertise to anyone. And after coming to US the maximum cooking I have did was heating the milk or food in microwave for one minute.Since I had no other options here I prepared my trademark tomato rice ,something which I inherited from my mum .Once we were done eating we left for little shopping and by the time we were done with it we found its too late to goto lake Geneva and settled to visit highland park nearby. After chating there for a while Haran took a drive through peaceful sub-urb which was filled with million dollar houses on either side.After that we took a walk in the beautiful pathway in near his house.

Next day we planned we should goto downtown by noon after having lunch at Vaishnavi's place.Vaishnavi is my school friend who is currently doing her Phd.Her mum was in the city which gave us the added incentive to go to her house.We reached around 11 30 ,had a delicious lunch prepared by her mum and then started talking.The conversation was interesting and time flew away.When we were done talking we found time was past 6pm and we had to drop the downtown plan. After some shopping he dropped me back at Sivaram's house.

When I was chating with Haran today I was saying that we didnt take any pictures over the weekend expect for two solo snaps in highland park. He asked me to do some photoshop and make it more interesting. What I did here was I picked a two solo pictures of both of us taken 6 years back in the train and combined with the pics taken last weekend.

Though I cant find any difference in my picture apart from the missing moushtache US has made Haran look smarter compared to the innocent looking college lad six years before.

~~Schooling and learning~~

One thing I find with the Asian kids here they love going to school ,the main reason being most of the pressure to learn comes from the parents rather from the teachers at school. School is the place they go there have fun and come back happily.In short its a cakewalk for them learning this curriculum.

If I ask Riya what she did at school she says she did some painting, danced to the rhymes and ate some snacks. When was in Scott's(my Hyung's name) home his son Alex was working on his maths homework with ease and he finished it within few minutes. He was in 3rd grade but what he was working on was 5th grade mathematics.I could imagine the level what a third grade would be studying .The same case was with his daughter Ellie who is just 5 was reading lines from her storybook and I m sure in her preschool she wouldn't have come across these things.

These are things which are not learnt in schools but from the parents who make sure that their kids learn stuffs more than what is taught in the school,Riya does her everyday reading after coming from school. So do Ellie and Alex. Apart from the normal learning and writing these children take up extra curricular classes like learning musical instruments or swimming. So the learning curve they have it in the home is much higher than what they catch up from the school.

So education begins at home!

~~Vivekanda's famous speech in Chicago~~

Chicago is the place where Vivekanda gave his famous speech in the parliament of world's religion in the year 1893. From here he went on to give lot of sermons around US for next two years.

I got the audio link of the famous speech, we can hear the applause from the audience as soon as he begins with the note "Brothers and Sisters of America", and he goes on to add why he is proud of his religion. I read that he got 3 minutes of standing ovation once he completed the speech.

Even after 117 years all his words makes sense!