~~Long day~~

Its been quite sometime had a long day like today got up early, got ready and went  on to catch my bus to go to work. After working for sometime we took a hike for three hours during our lunch break. Hike mean literal climbing down the hill to hudson river and climbing up.
Then in the evening Kannan and his family came to the city , good they listened to my suggestion as we got cart food and then went on to Bryant park to have that delicious dinner. Then walked to Times square did so me sight seeing and then went to Penn station to send them of on dot for the train to Jersey.

~~Chit Chats~~

  There are some awesome places to sit and talk in the college campus but most of our academic year we never had the time to do that. So today after having dinner with my Korean and Japanese friend we decided to sit in the college main campus. There was the summer class for the high school kids going on the campus and they were playing some team games like catching the flag ,since I look so young, some kids started chasing me.
 

  We decided to sit on a 15 feet high wall so that we wont be chased again. The place turned out to be really good with an awesome view. We talked about lots of  stuffs happened during this year ,we called few friends who were working in DC and rubbed salt by describing how great the college was during the summer which led to few people disconnecting the call. When we looked at the watch we saw were there for more than three hours and without heart we left the place.

~~1 year~~

  Its been one year I landed at the Newark airport, I wouldn't have remembered it had I not filled in the arrival date in the SSN form and then when I picked FEDEX door tag receipt I saw it was 28th today :)
  Last one year was one of the most enjoyable years of my life and I hope coming years will be the same where I meet new people , explore new places and  learn new things.

~~My summer job~~

   Today morning I got up early in the morning thinking of  stuffs to get done for the day, since getting there sooner the better I got ready quickly.I went my administration office to get a form then to student office to get an attestation then I took metro to Social Security office,waited almost two hours in the queue and finally submitted my application for getting my Social Security Number. So what brought me here...
   Last week I had telephonic conversation with a research scientist who was asking whether I could assist him for the summer.Since I have never worked under a scientist nor worked in a research institute I accepted that offer. The research institute is situated about 15 miles north of the city in a scenic location and there is a college shuttle which picks and drops from our college campus to that place. To take up this summer job I need to apply for the SSN which took my today's morning!
  So life is back to a full circle getting up early in the morning, catching the bus to go to the institute ,waiting in the traffic, talking with buddies all the way and also doing little bit of work :)

~~Afternoon lunch and pride parade~~

 My Japanese classmate is leaving home next week and this is his last weekend in the city. He invited me and Chinese girl for lunch in spicemarket an Asian fusion restaurant located in a nice location is Chelsea. They had Chinese Japanese and Indian food. They gave papadams for appitizers and I had fried rice for lunch. After good lunch we decided to have walk.

  The city was crowded and for more colorful for the weekend. I realized it was the pride weekend in the city and since the New York state has passed same sex marriage law two days before people were celebrating crazily. One of the person looked at me and my Japanese friend and said "Congratulations you can get married soon" , we then made sure to put our Chinese friend in between us. We got lots of goodies all the way like my Chinese friend collected 2 to 3 beads from the people. We had coffee at local coffee shop then came back home.

~~Another Indian Restaurant~~

  My mobile's display is not displaying anything so I took to the service center to replace it ,the mobile shop was located around 82th street and there was a new Saravana Bhavan (the second branch in the city) started in 80th street. So I thought I will give it a try. Went to the mobile store first booked for the replacement and then walked from that place to HSB.
 There were those typical south Indian foods and I had mysore masala dosai. Being a Friday night I met few of my Indian friends having dinner there , chatted with them for sometime and just now coming home.

~~Sometimes things repeat~~

   Getting up early in the morning to catch a bus , waiting endlessly in traffic to reach the destination ,having a nice buddy to chat with all the way, all  in order to reach a place in middle of no where. This was my day to day life last year. Sometimes things tend to repeat.
(to be cont..)

~~Meeting people~~

      I went to a conference on world economic outlook with one of my Chinese classmate. There were people from different countries. I met a women who said she is from Ireland, I asked her whether she is from Northern Ireland, quickly realizing where I am coming at she replied back we consider Rory Mcllroy as Irish. Indeed they must be proud of their countryman who broke number of records last weekend.
   Then I met a person from Sweden we talked about the wonderful companies that Sweden has given to the world and talked about how efficient they perform. My Chinese classmate found a person from her small home town in northern China , she was very happy to see and told me it was the first time she met a person from her home town . Yea world is a small place and much smaller when you are in New York city.
     

~~Movies I saw~~

 Last weekend I had time to catch up with two movies

1)Happy Thankyou More Please:
    The movie is about the life of six people in New york city over a week's period. A small boy gets lost in the subway and the hero who is jobless brings him to home.There is another track about a girl who doesn't want to leave New York and another about a girl who is having difficulties with her self image. Movie was little bit slow and predictable.

2)War of currents:
   This a documentary based of fight between Edison and Tesla during the end of 19th century whether to use DC or AC to transmit power. The movie shows how Tesla won the war but failed to capitalize on the profits which he could have been made. 

~~Happy Father's day~~

BE PROUD OF YOUR CREATION!

Happy Father's Day!!!

~~Trip to Coney Island~~

  With the weather being sunny it was the right time to go to beach. Coney Island is about an hour away from my place by metro. There was mermaid parade happening in that place which is a colorful event. Since I didn't have nothing much to do I decided to go.  Train journey was really good the nearer the destination approached colorful the compartment became.

I was just on time for the parade and there were thousands of people present of either side of the road waiting for the parade to begin. So I walk around to the right place to get a proper view ,to my luck two people from the front line where leaving to meet their friend at another place and I got the perfect view. The parade had lots of people in dancing to their tunes ,lots of girls wearing colorful dresses with themes from movies or incidents. The whole event went for more than two hours and never realized how soon the time went, after that there was a parade of vintage cars but it didn't interest me much so I walked to the beach. Coney Island beach is not like the deserted TP beach where you will find to time to look into rocks, wild vegetation or people catching fishes :), it was littered with thousands of people and most of the time can be spent walking in the board walk. Finally when my legs got tired I decided to come home.

PS: Sorry guys I would have loved to take pictures but alas my camera is not working. I have attached a picture of Ariel the mermaid, many girls dressed like this today  :)

~~Book signed by author~~

  I attended a workshop today in Athletic club of New York. There were series of speeches are trainings from people from various field, a retired navy seal officer, social media ,sport personalities etc. Apart from that there was speech Lisa Brinbach who was the author of the New york best seller Preppy Handbook. She has written a sequel True Prep. Few of us got that book signed by her with a personalised message.
  For me she wrote "Never Stop Smiling"!

~~What is this?~~~

I found this in modern art section in METS!

~~A walk down museum mile~~

   Since I couldn't be in the house for more than four hours Yesterday I decided to visit one of the museums. Yesterday it was the museum mile day as all the museums in the 5th Avenue were open to public ,the whole street was blocked for traffic and there were lots of street artists performing in the street. It was fun to look those stuffs . First I decided to goto Solomon R Guggenheim museum which had few Von Gogh painting, since much of the museum was under renovation I quickly finished the rest of the exhibits.

 So to kill the rest of the time I went to METS, it is so huge that one can spend days there when I went there last time I saw the Asian section and Roman sculptures. This time I decided to see the Renaissance painting, American modern arts and Mesopotamian artifacts. It was a good time pass I was there till 9. Then I went to the local taxi dabba to have cheap and delicious Indian food and then took a long walk back home.

PS:Picture taken last time when I went there!

~~small bug major issue~~

  Its not funny when you are chased out of your own house, that too when you are asked to pack all the stuffs which you own in a matter of few days. This is what happened to us as we were asked to pack all our stuffs in the apartment as they had to do some work.
  It all started last week when our room mate found a small bug in his room, we raised a complaint to the  maintenance to spray the insecticide, our supervisor came and checked and told our apartment is affected bed bugs. He said we need to do extermination as soon as possible , so told us to pack all our stuffs ,put it in a big bag and keep outside of the room. So I started cleaning up my room after a long long time disposed most of stuffs and packed other stuffs into the bags.  Uuff I was thinking if it was in India we would have just killed the bug with our nails we wouldn't have done this packers and movers kind of thing.
  Today afternoon the exterminator guy came he told us to get out of the house and warned us not to get back inside for at least four hours.It was raining outside and I was roaming around in the streets like a homeless guy for the next four hours. Just came back into the house and have to unpack all the stuffs when I find time.

~~Trip to UN~~

  Though I am in NYC for more than a year I never visited UN, most of the time we have speakers from UN coming to our college. When I found there was an event in UN I decided to go there. UN is located in the east river which directly opposite to where I stay so it around 45 minutes to go there.
  Getting in UN is more like getting into the center of the world where you see people from different parts of the world. I found few of my college mates there so it was more like home. The topic was on how legitimate the organization and speaker talked about various policies taken by the organization and the reforms needed to make the organization better.

~~Memories: kochi days~~

While we were in Kerala we were planning where to go for weekend ,one friend came up with an idea and said lets go to Sabarimalai.  This was during the off season time ,so we were in for the game. We told to few other people in the office and quickly we got a big gang. It was decided we all put proper maalais and get necessary items needed for the trip as we wanted to be like the proper devotees. So we went for shopping in the evening got our black attire bags etc.

We got up early in the morning went to the local temple and priest was really impressed to see the young and religious crowd. So one by one he performed main pooja and gave the erumudi to each one of us. We booked a 15 seater van for the weekend and we began our journey with devotional songs in the back ground. We visited few temples on the way. Our first stop our Eruveli since for most of us it was our first trips we were called as கண்ணி swamis and we were given some color powders to play with. We visited a nearby temple and mosque at that place and took bath in the nearby river. From there we travelled for an hour and  reached the pamba, being off season and just after monsoon the river was clean and flowing to the brim. We spent almost an hour in the river and then started our main task of climbing up the hill.

It was past six when we started the climb and it was getting dark. Being bare legged walking in that path was really tricky. Though more than 80% of the path is paved with concrete there were those 20% which was filled with gravels. I felt sorry for many people who were struggling to go up, there were many who need first aid it and many had to use dolaks to go up. Government could build a winch like in Palani at least old people can make use of it.There shops around the path which were ridiculously priced charging 2 or 3times the normal amount.I hate it when I see business centers around religious place. It took solid 4 hours to reach the top though we were exhausted we headed directly to the temple.

 Though it was off season there would have been more than thousand people in the temple, climbing the 18 steps was our next step and we had to wait sometime as only few people can go in that steps at a time. I climbed the step one by one and finally had a good darshan. Once everybody was done we headed to a nearby restaurant and had a good dinner. We had a good sleep in night and next day woke up had bath and went to have darshan again. Then we got the kovil prasadham,some souvenirs and  started our walk down. Walking down was more difficult as our legs have become tired but we eventually made it down.  The legs were literally broken and it took a day full of rest to get back to normal.

~~party at river basin~~

   Today I attended my friend's birthday party at river basin. This is a beautiful river side restaurant located on the banks of river Hudson.  My friend even messaged stay hydrated till the evening as today was the hottest day in the year so far in the year in NYC. But by evening there was little rain which cooled down the temperature.

 I was thinking of gift to get for my friend then I finally packed the Snoopy I had, since she likes dogs. It proved to be a great idea she liked the gift very much and I got a big hug and two kisses for that gift :)

~~Wisdom in the face~~

  Today went to attend  an investors conference  on Chile where Chile's mining minister gave a speech inviting the investors to make use of the resources in the country. I like the ministers from Chile, most of them have masters degrees from famous universities. Its always good to see a minister taking the initiative and marketing his country. The Q&A session was interesting as one person asked the question Chile has reached 0% percent population growth so why would investors go there as the cost of human capital would be high.
  I took my Japanese friend for this event he ended meeting his boss who had come for the event.The boss asked him to ask a question about the investment by their firm. After the conference my friend introduced to his boss who asked me which class I take mistaking me for a professor, I asked am I looking so old he replied back saying your wisdom in your face made me to ask that question :)

~~Long walk home~~

  I went to conference in mid town today and while coming back why not I walk back to my home, I have walked 30 or 40 blocks but not 75 blocks which is around 4 miles. I accepted the challenge and started walking, I knew in my mind the last half mile would be the most difficult part as the body would be tired and at the same time its not worth taking the subway for it. So anyways I started walking though the streets , I stopped once in the middle at the Gray's payapa shop and grabbed glass of fresh papaya juice. The last mile I called my friend and started chating with him which kept me occupied and within minutes I reached home.

4 miles in 90 minutes a milestone reached :)

~~~Goodies I got~~

Went to conference today apart from the interesting people I met and speeches I heard, I got few goodies from the organizers. Below is one of the goodies I got!

~~Kumbhabhishekam at NYC temple~~

  New York Mahavallabha Ganapathy temple was renovated and the grand kumbhabhishekam was held today. The renovation was going on for sometime and the temple looks complete now. I joined Diana and Ganesh who started their journey early morning from Philly and me from my room. From flushing station we walked to the temple. The weather was perfect for a Sunday outing.

 At 11 am the kumbhabhishekam ceremony was performed and we were allowed to go in. There were more than 1000 people who had come from different places for this occasion and it was difficult to find a space to stand. We entered in the slow moving queue offered our prayers, then we moved to see the temple elephant and had good lunch prepared in the temple. We spent an hour more in the temple to get the final aarathi, Diana got me some snacks from the temple canteen and we walked our way back to the station.

PS:Sheila,since I dont have a camera I m using Di and G's picture :)

~~Trip to prospect park~~

  The weather today was really good mild winds,slightly cloudy and pleasantly sunny. Few of my friends who went to Washington DC last week came running back to the NYC as they found that they couldn't afford to waste the weekend there.

  My Egyptian friend invited us the BBQ at prospect park in Brooklyn, it was an hour by metro from my place. Though there wasn't much choice for me in the lunch menu the few veggies I ate were really yummy. Then we took a long walk around the park. The whole walk my friend was bitching about the life in DC like how shops close early,how there was no sign of life in night and even for a grocery shop they have to walk 30 minutes to reach there. Only way I consoled her was she should be happy that NYC is just 4 hours from DC.

~~Soul food restaurant~~

  When I ask most of the friends in America (not in NYC) what is their favorite cafe most of them would reply Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks and when asked for restaurants they would say a famous chain like Olive gardens or Chipotle. I normally avoid those chains and try the local pop and mum restaurants which I even don't know the name , I just used to remember the street.

Today I had dinner with my Japan and Korean friend who were still in NYC. We decided to go to Harlem which have many small restaurants. We finally settled to eat in Sylvia's soul food restaurant which consists of foods traditional in the cuisine of African Americans. We were given corn bread for starters and had french fries made out of sweet potatoes for appetizers. Then I had rice with curry like thing made of okra and tomato along with black eyed peas. Waiter sensing that I m not finding the food spicy brought sauces and pepper to make it spicy and finally told me I can bring my own spices next time when I m in the restaurant. I had sweet potato pie for dessert which was really sweet.

The restaurant was near the 2 train station, I remembered my first time experience walking down to my room from that place. I have come long way from that ,Harlem 125th street is my favorite place to hang out with lots of cheap restaurants and shops it has become a part of my life in NYC.

~~Sunset in Manhattan~~

   The streets of Manhattan are built straight and runs along East to West. So twice in the year the sun rises and sets precisely in the aligned street grid. We call this event as Manhattanhenge. This event happened early this week.

~~Book I read~~

      When Sheila asked me a book to read I told her to read Shantaram, a book I really enjoyed reading long time back. This is a novel partially based on the real life incidents of Gregory Roberts, a criminal who escaped from Australian prison comes to India on a false passport and went on to live there for more than a decade.

  I have  a British whom I met in the subway reading this book and he was asking me questions about India and verifying the stuffs he read about India in the book. It tells the story about Indians from a foreign perspective. There are funny incidents like the bear hugs and driver Prabhakar's experiences, touching stuffs on how mismanaged the Indian slums are and how the people manage their day to day life. It also deals with the Mumbai mafia and lets us know how things work there.