Views, News and Cheers!
In the last few days, got a lot of complaints from Windows/IE users about the rendering of my blog. Somehow managed to connect an old Windows XP system to the network and tested the blog page. Only part of the blog is seen and definitely the embedded pictures are missing. A good case to debug.
Meanwhile, upgrading to the newer version of MistyLook, just in case.
So my blog page appearance may be bad for a day or two.
Cashback is a rare concept in India. However, Indian Railways online reservations have a cashback policy for credit card purchases using SBI credit cards. I have been using this service for a while and am pleased to see a cashback of 177 rupees in my credit card statement this month. Thank you folks!
For two consecutive months, BSNL missed sending the bills by post. Normally, the bills would arrive by the end of first week and there used to be a 3 week time for paying them off. I had to rush to the BSNL office with a checkbook, so that I could pay the bills on time. The same is the case with few other BSNL subscribers I know of, including my brother and my father-in-law. Hope BSNL’s process improves in the coming months.
Reached home fine from the US Trip. Started reading False Impression during my transit in HongKong and completed it during transit in Singapore. Flight from Singapore to Hyderabad is more comfortable than the other legs of the journey, except that the non vegetarian choices of food are limited.
Immigration at Hyderabad is done very fast, but have to wait for about 45 minutes for my checked in baggage to arrive. Hired a taxi to get home, because it appears the cheapest way given the high parking rates at airport. It is past midnight by the time I arrived home. Spurthi is past asleep but Surya waited till I unpacked my luggage. My luggage arrived safe and fine. Looks like they opened one of the checked-in baggages in USA and the security department left a small note in the bag confirming that. There is no apparent loss of any items.
Checked a few urgent emails and attended a work related call before I crashed to get a few hours of sleep.
Checking my mails and cleaning up some of the junk mail piled up during the visit. Now time to manage the jet lag again, second time within two weeks.
I am hardly away from home on Ganesh Chaturdhi festival but this year the festival came in the middle of my US trip. However, it came on a weekend, so that I can spend that day with Ravi and Sunitha.
I started after lunch in Bay Area on Friday, the 14th and reached Sunitha’s place in LA by 9.10 in the night. Most of the travel was very smooth, but once we reached LA, traffic was like hell. Highway 5 clogged at Burbank avenue for almost an hour and Highway 60 clogged at a couple of places, the 2nd one being at the intersection of 60 and 71 due to an accident. Srihari, Purnima and Tanvi came along with me.
Both Nidhi and Nikhil fell asleep by the time I reached there. So I couldn’t open their gifts. We had dinner and I drowsed to sleep while having a chat with Ravi.
I woke up at about 4.30 am on Ganesh Chaturdhi day (Saturday) and helped Sunitha a bit in preparing the food specials for the day. Nidhi has a baseball practice scheduled at 10am, so we had to rush thru the pooja while Srihari is still getting ready.
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Once Ravi took Nidhi for the baseball game, I went to the Ontrario mall especially to buy some items for kids at Rainforest Cafe. By the time I returned home, it is almost 1pm. Unfortunately, Nidhi’s game postponed to the post lunch hours and they are back to game by the time I am home. I promised Nidhi that I will open the suitcase from India only after she is back from the game. So we opened the goodies (and started eating them 🙂 ) after she is back from the game.
Ravi, Srihari and myself spent the evening with a drive to the Indian store and a nearby dollar store. Nikhil joined us and started feeling better by the night. Once back, we had our dinner and watched a movie for a short while. That is the only chat time I could get with Ravi and Sunitha. Close to midnight, we retired for the day.
Sunday started with a grand breakfast (pesarattu and upma.) Then we had a short photo session, my regular activity during trips :-).
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We had a nice lunch with Prawns Biriyani. We left for Bay Area right after lunch. We reached Bay Area by 7.30pm. After a quick dinner, I headed to the Homewood Studio Suites.
Even though I am away from home for the Ganesh Chaturdhi, spending it with relatives made it a special occasion. Nidhi and Nikhil got more closer to me, now that I have been with them a couple of times within the last 6 months.
Here are some pics of the Bay Area Kids I visited during my first weend in US.
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In this US trip, I got a free upgrade (thanks to Avis) to a Chevy Impala LS. By the time I took the car out, it has just 7 miles on it. So got to feel the new car smell again, without actually buying it.
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Google does it very well. Whenever I open my gmail, it says I have 2,134 MB of space and counting. It changes these numbers dynamically, to give a sense of accuracy of data. Moreover, it is worth knowing what I am left with than what I have already consumed. Just like whenever I do a “df -h” on my system, I am more interested in the leftover space than consumed space.
We need to do the same for our computers.
Started early from work (on Wednesday, the 19th) and went to Perfumania to buy a perfume for my father-in-law. Met with Satish Chiluvuri after a long time and saw (actually sat in it for a few minutes) my first ever car, the black 1996 Toyota Camry V6 XLE. He is maintaining it very well.
Went to Srihari’s place for dinner and then headed to the airport early. The internet check-in couldn’t give me an aisle seat, but the person at the checkin counter could get me one. Now that I am checked in 3.5 hours ahead of my flight, started typing some blog entries. Will upload them once I get to an internet connection. Be prepared for a burst.
[ Now I am in HongKong airport for my transit and uploading some of the blogs and photos ]
It is always refreshing to talk to some people. John has been doing great work on how to open up ARC process for communities and how to tune it to the changing landscape of scale, participation and the audience. This morning, I had a 15 minute stop over at Katy’s office along with John. We talked about their caboose repainting and I got a print copy of Willow Glen Resident that covered the move of the Caboose. (I felt that John looked like the dad in The Incredibles in that picture.) BTW, thanks Katy for that T-Shirt.
[ Yet another delayed post from the logs ]
The best way to get rid of jet lag is to engage with some personal activities and keep yourself busy.
This trip, I planned my journey such that I have an extra weekend day in bay area before I head to work. I arrived on Sep 08th by the afternoon flight from Singapore. The flight is delayed a bit and the formalities (immigration, customs, rental car) took considerable time. I am out of the airport only at about 3.00pm.
I have my stay booked at Homewood Suites in Newark. Stopped by at work on my way to check any urgent mails and to see if there are any things to take care of over the weekend. Also, grabbed a tracfone and refill card so that I have a cell phone during the trip. I don’t have a lot of minutes on that, but it helps me stay in touch if there are any urgent calls while I move from office to office with no fixed work/hotel phone number.
Checkin at Homewood is smooth and I got a nice room in the non-smoking area. Dumped my luggage in the room and took a nice long shower. Then headed to Sunnyvale to meet with JRR and other folks. (Sorry, the names are too cryptic here and unless you know them before, you don’t get a good picture of what I am talking about. In India, most of us used to get referred by our initials or nicknames.) The evening is scheduled to be at VSR’s place. I could meet a bunch of people here over dinner, viz JRR, VSR, Srikanth, Sitaramudu, Jyothi (Suri is in San Diego) and their families.
The toughest part is to get used to the daylight. By the time I realized, it is almost 9.30pm. Then I called Srihari and headed to his place. Spent some time with their family and reahed my hotel a little after 11.00pm.
Sunday morning was a little lazy. Just stayed in bed till 8.00am and then called BNN. Had a heavy breakfast and headed to BNN’s place. Nithin and Nitya have grown up a lot. Amazed by the clarity in thoughts of Nitin when I saw his prizewinning short essay on war. For his age, he did an amazing job.
Went to Santa Clara from there and met with BRJ, Santhi and Rohan. Rohan is a little unwell for the last few days, but gave a good company. He used Max, his buddy toy dog, to reflect his wish list.
From there, I headed to Srihari’s place for lunch. Post-luch, we went to Costco and I could buy some groceries for the stay. Once back from there, I went to Varma’s place and met with Hari’s family, Ramkrishna’s family and Narayan over there. Its like some sort of festive day at their place, with several visitors within a short amount of time. Had an early dinner there and left for the hotel.
That took care of any potential jet lag and I am simply doing fine with the timezone change. Internet connectivity in hotel is just okay, so that I can check my mails etc. and get ready for the weekend.