~~Fact I read~~

~~Movies I watched~~

Over this week I watched few movies

1)Its a Wonderful Life(1946):
           Its classic movie about a young man who sacrifices his dreams to pursue a career his little home town, due to unavoidable circumstances the bank he owns is about to face bankruptcy and he plans to commit suicide. At this point a fairy is given the job of saving his life. Then what happens next shows importance ones life. A lovely movie do watch if you get a chance.

2)From the Ashes(2011):
          Its the 30th anniversary of England winning the Ashes series against Australia. Shows how Ian Botham single handedly took home the trophy. Narration was good with apt match clippings and wonderful background music.

3)Harry Potter 7:
       Finally series comes to end ,not good as the book but can watch for time pass.

4)Delhi Belly:
         just started watched this movie becuase it was Amir Khan production but couldn't stand it for more than 30 minutes,

~~bubbles~~

There were those buddle making solutions in the science museum, it was beautiful to see large bubbles coming out of the rings but alas there were those little kids not giving me a chance to let me try.

After waiting for quite sometime the little boy was taken away by his parents and finally there I am making a big bubble from the ring!

~~Science Museum~~

 Saturday to avoid the heat outside we decided to go to science museum situated in the Corona park. There are lots of activities to do with science principles built behind it. There were experiments with lights mirrors which were quite interesting. Below is the one is like a passage way but its just two mirrors 

Then there were those funny mirrors room showing us in different sizes and shapes sizes which I have seen before but the one below shows as if we are in air.

 There were lots of interesting stuffs in the museum and as usual we didnt have time to check each and everything there.

~~Testing my strength~~

~~Exclusive trip to METS~~

   My classmate told she wanted to visit Alexander Mcqueen collection in the METS museum. I asked her who is that artist. She gave me shocked look and asked you don't Alexander Mcqueen he was the king of the fashion industry. "Oh I see ok I will give it a try". She told "Do get ready early and we should be there in the museum at least by 10.

  Sunday getting up early and going to a fashion exhibit didn't excite me much and when I got ready and finally reached the museum it was 11. Once we entered the METS we saw a huge queue to see his collection and my classmate was giving me I told you so looks.

  The queue in the above video is not even half of it and we had to wait for two more hours to finally get to see his collections. His fashion styles were way above normal sometimes weird and colorful with heels being almost a feet long and dresses made out of feathers shells etc. I liked the way the presented the exhibit with pleasant sound in the background,wonderful lights to show the beauty of the dresses and well placed reflecting mirrors. Since photography was not allowed I couldn't take any pictures but here is the google image link for few of his collections.
  Our legs were literally broke once we finished seeing his collection ,we headed straight to cafetaria had our lunch and headed back home.

~~Summer time~~

  Last days few days are blazing hot with tempeatures hitting 40C, taking humidity into the picture it feels like 44C and even the short walk to the bus stop makes the body exhausted. One of classmates came to city from DC for the weekend,she told me to plan the weekend ,given the fact outdoor activities are not possible I planned to goto a museum which is in the Corona park in queens.

First we stopped near in the Corana park fountain ,we could see the water directly evaporating from it. It was awesome place to be before we walked our way to the museum.

~~My first pay check~~

 Today I got my first pay check for the research I m doing this summer. In fact this is the first time in my life I was given a pay check as in the previous job, salary would be credited to the account. Its always a wonderful feeling to have that small sheet of paper in hand which gives the satisfaction for the month long work we did.
  You feel different to spend the money you earned and spend the money you got from others.As soon as I got back to the city I deposited the check in the nearest bank and started thinking of ways to spend it effectively.
 Now its time to enjoy the weekend :)

~~Ocean maps~~

 Today after lunch I was feeling sleepy as usual, my supervisor inheriting the same feeling from me told lets go for a walk around the campus. He was telling me the place has a historic importance of the place. During the early 50s they used a ship named RV(Research Vessel) VEMA which sailed a million miles while transecting the world's oceans for research under the flag of Columbia University.

It discovered important spots in ocean like Vema Seamount  and Vema channel. It also collected the samples under the oceans which is used for research all over the world. He show us the place all over the world were the ship partnering with respective countries.Though the vessel has been sold after 80s and replaced with a another vessel with equipped latest technology, the eagle emblem in front of the ship is kept as a memory in the institute.

~~Jones Beach~~

 Last weekend I went my school mate Prabu's house, after having wonderful lunch at his house we decided to out. Our first stop was at the 100 acre planting field and had a look at the 65 room mansion. There was barn ,two old summer houses ,well maintained lawn and garden.

From there we went to Jones beach which is located in the long island. It was quite sometime I been to real beach and good to violent waves smashing the shores. Walked few miles from one end to other enjoying the beauties of nature.

~~DC Metro fare~~

   NYC metro has a simple one fare system where ever you go and when ever you board the train its the same price. In DC it was not like that each destinations had different prices and there was peak peak hours, normal and off peak times. So when you stand in front of the below machine it will take time for somebody to get used to the system.

First we need to check where we are going then find the price then alter the + and - button in the select fare value ,making sure you find the right time right schedule. Finally take out the card. 

~~Manhattanhenge~~

 When I was walking past penn station last week people where clicking pictures standing in middle of road and I remember is was Manhattanhenge day. I had camera with me I clicked one quick picture as I had luggage and had to move quickly from the middle of the road before signal turns green.

~~65 room mansion~~

  This is a 65 room mansion built during 1918 situated in Oyster bay, generations after the kin of the family gave this to government who turned into an educational center later into a tourist spot.

~~I was at~~

~~Welcome party~~

  Its just like few days before I attended the welcome party of my batch and I job felt the time has passed so quickly when I saw the invite for attending the welcome party for the new batch of our course. So after my job I left to the restaurant where the party was being held. It was good to see my director few of my professors and classmates. The interesting part of meeting with the new students from different parts of the country. I met girls from Lebanon(very beautiful), Spain(taught me Salsa), Bulgaria, Peru, Mexico etc. There were guys from Brazil, Ivory coast and many other countries.Its always fun to share my experience in course and tell them how easy they will feel once they are done.

~~Diff Research on effects of hurricane~~

   In my institute one of the scientist is studying the after effects of the hurricane Katrina , he was studying the number of deaths occurred during the three day hurricane and found some interesting analysis. He found that most of the deaths where in the elder group of population. In that he found the deaths of elderly white were more than that of the black. What could be the reason?
.
.
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   Most of the elderly blacks stayed with their family, so most of them where evacuated by their family before the disaster struck but elderly white people where staying alone weren't lucky enough to be evacuated soon.

~~My Pic~~

  My friend wanted to take a picture of me when I am not smiling , he had to wait a while for the right moment!

Its getting Dehydrated in DC

~~Art Museums in DC~~

 It was burning hot in DC when I visited there last weekend, so we took shelters into the free museums in the capital area. I went to the art museum which had pretty decent collections. There were lots of sculptures and paintings. 

Also when I look at the paintings I always search for author's signature in that, so the first below had the sign in the lamp post and second one in the door which couldn't be seen properly in the picture.

Both were painted around late 1630s

~~Seeing his Holy Highness~~

   When I went to DC I also planned to go to Dalai Lama's speech on World peace organized by kalacharka. The speech was at 10 am but the time we reached there there were more than 20000 people in the lawn so we managed to sneek at the end of the end rows.

 The speech was what I expected and know he told the way to attain world peace begins from you and find the inner peace first then slowly we can attain world peace.

It was a hot hot day by the time speech got over most of my friends started looking like Uakari! If you want to know what is Uakari search in google!

~~Weekend Time~~

After four days of working hard, going to DC to spend time with my friends for the weekend :)

~~OC Cruise~~

Today there was a networking event in the Hudson river, since evening cruise down the liberty statue would be awesome I didnt want to miss it. I also told few of my class mates to join me. So by evening we reached the place and went in the boat.  Once the boat started I never had the mood to talk with people I came to the deck and started enjoying the view of the awesome city. It was marvellous to see the sun setting behind the statue of liberty and skyline glowing in night from the river. There a girl from Britain who was new to the city and I was explaining all the famous land marks in and around the city. Time went so fast that I forgot to go below the deck to have the dinner.
Anyways it was an awesome evening and I should remind myself to take my camera for these trips.

~~Scientist Doubt~~

   Since I work in the observatory I have chance to meet few scientists who work there and learn about the stuff they do. Today morning when I went to office my supervisor told one of the scientist needs a clarification with the research he is doing and asked me whether I could help him out. Once I said sure, he fixed an appointment with him for lunch.
  Since we used to bring lunch ,we met in the nearby park and sat in one of the picnic benches. He is working  on the project using  night time lights for which they use the services of the satellites. These satellites instead of taking weird pictures of stones in space takes pictures of different places of earth in the night. Using the intensity of a light at a place they predict the economic activity and carbon emissions at the location. They have data over the period last 15 years for all the countries. So the normal conclusion they derived was the light intensity has increased over the last decade.
  So while studying the data for India he found the erratic trend there has been light intensity increases in some regions but there were few areas where the intensity has gone down over the decade. He was asking whether some mass migrations have happened from rural to urban areas. It was easy for me to see the problem from an Indian perspective and I told him the reason. He told me my hypothesis is more meaningful than what others had told him and told the 30 minute lunch break was the time well spent.
 So guys can you guess what have caused this erratic trend?

~~Cool bus driver~~

  I am a big fan of public transport and New York city is one of the places well connected by public transport system. I have taken buses to Philly,DC,Charlotte ,Pittsburgh etc using different different bus services. My favourite is the megabus the double Decker bus with wifi connection. Though their schedules might be erratic sometimes its economical to go in that.
  Yesterday I was returning from Pittsburgh to New york, all these buses have intercom using which drivers communicate to the passengers. Mostly they will give normal instructions what to do, how long will the bus stop for a break etc. Our driver moved didn't give these announcement like a robot but gave instructions in his own way. Like "Drinking is not allowed in the bus if you really want to drink wait till we reach New York I would suggest you a wonderful bar" , "The bus will stop in this service station for 15 minutes ,make sure you are right back on time else your luggage will reach New York before you do and I will pick you up from the station same time tomorrow" and when the bus was in the city he started honking and told "I am honking not to clear traffic but just to let you know we reached NYC"
  Apart from that he drove so well that he reached the city 20 minutes ahead of schedule!

~~New mobile~~

  Last week I was charging my mobile phone and when one of my friend called, when I picked up the phone it became blank.I was able to talk with him but the display system was totally gone. I was able to receive calls but couldn't see who called , I was able to receive message but couldn't read the messages. I had similar issues with my mobile phones in India as most of them will some kind of issue in an year, it has become a vicious circle. So I took the mobile to the service center and as usual they did try do some gimmicks to make it work but after few tries they finally gave and told they will give me a new replacement.
 
 I was using the blank phone for few days until the replacement came, since I wasn't in home to collect it I went to the fedex office to get the same. Then I went to the service center again to activate the new cell copied all the contact details into the new phone. Fortunately I was able to get the information of people who called me whom I missed to call back.

I never bothered to personalize the phone and have used with its default settings. So when I took it Pittsburgh for the vacation Swetha asked me how can you have a phone even without a proper wall paper.So I gave it her to make it a better looking phone. She put a banner,changed to stylish font,created useful short cuts and finally put a pic which we took in NYC as wall paper.

So I m all set to use the new(replacement) phone! 

~~Trip to Erie~~

 We went to lake Erie today had a picnic lunch at the beach side park and then relaxed sometime in the beach.

My t shrit says it all :)

~~Birthday Celebrations~~

      Yet another eventful year has passed and as I look back there are lots of memories happened over the past one year. Coming to my birthday I went to Pittsburgh to celebrate my birthday with my cousins. I had given instructions to Swetha Siona Shreya and Rishi on how I expect the celebrations to be and  I gave few suggestions. They got up early in the morning around 6:30 which is unusual in the middle of their summer holiday just to prepare for the grand party. I saw them filling lots of water balloons and was told all these is for me. So I was thinking twice how my day was going to be.

At 2 o clock they started the party outdoor. First games was obstacle course where I had to hit a bulls eye with a ball,zip up a tent,go on a mini hiking, playing little bit of basketball,soccer,lacoste, hopping,skipping ,ball tapping and finally running to deadline. Then all the people did the same course. After that we had a mini battle playing with water balloons with me getting the maximum hit and everybody getting completely drenched. After that we had the three legged race as I paired with Sheila came second. 

  

Then we had the cake cutting ceremony .The bottom half was a cookie and the top was a chocolate cake. On the top of the cake there were marshmallows, baked  drizzled with chocolate syrup ,caramel and M&M as toppings. There were more candles in the cake as they aligned to make my name out of the candles.With all difficulty I blew all the candles and finally had the awesome cake.

In the evening we went to downtown , visited a fair and then went on to have dinner at a restaurant named Mexico city to have a good dinner. Then we went to the view point to have a good view of the Pittsburgh downtown. We later went to aerobic show happening in the city ,we stayed there for some time and came back home. 

Its been an awesome birthday and all credits goes to Swetha Siona Shreya and Rishi who made my day a memorable one!

PS: All pictures taken with new camera which I got as a birthday gift from Sheila :)