My West Coast Travelogue

Day 1
We start from Gainesville in the afternoon - a lazy drive to Tampa International Airport. Arrive at Los Angeles after a four and half hour largely uneventful "Song" flight. This is the first time I was flying Song , and I loved there little seat back TV's. Los Angeles from above looks simply awesome - lights spread as far as one can see. The unbelievably cheap rental car turned out to be a brand new PT Cruiser - it was weird driving a vintage looking new car! We finally reached Riverside well past midnight.

Day 2
On our way to Los Angeles stopped briefly at Ontario Mall - and girls just loved the outlet stores - it was tough getting them back on the road! Anyway after a sumptuous lunch at a Thai place on Sunset Boulevard , drove along the road , passing the oh so famous Hollywood sign and Beverly hills. Its a nice little stretch - starting from glitzy Hollywood -thorough the city to almost into the Pacific. Unfortunately that's all we saw in LA.

Day 3
Started early from Riverside for Las Vegas. Its drive mostly through hilly deserts and occasional elevations. And just like that the whole city opens up - not to forget the tempting billboards popping up everywhere! We found an amazingly cheap deal in the "tallest" hotel in the city - in fact later I learned that "Stratosphere" is the tallest building in the west of Mississippi.The first look at the Casino was definitely intimidating - before we figured out its the same everywhere. Las Vegas is effectively one long road - called the "strip" , with imposing structures lining up on either side. Most of those hotels have impressive architecture,a huge casino and surprisingly affordable restaurants, not forgetting the "shows" which is an integral part of Las Vegas experience. We started our evening with the Fremont Street Experience - which is a dazzling display of light and sound. Then we had time to enjoy the stunning interiors of the Venetian , watch the explosion of fire at Mirage , climb up the half size replica of the Eiffel tower at Paris and see the wonderful musical fountains at Bellegaio before calling it a day.

Day 4
From Las Vegas , we started for Grand canyon. We did not really stop at Hoover Dam , drove pretty fast through the deserts to reach the national park just around sunset time. We checked in the rustic Maswik lodge and had dinner at Bright Angel restaurant.

Day 5
An early start to the day to watch sunrise at Hopi point. While not surreal - it was an experience nevertheless. Spent the rest of the day hopping from one vista point to another - culminating in clicking the sunset pictures again at Hopi. While everyone has a fair idea of what Grand canyon actually is - you have to be see it to appreciate the sheer depth and vastness of the structures formed by natural erosion and Colorado river. After having a nice dinner at Yavapai, drove up to Kingman in Arizona.

Day 6
Kingman is a little town on the historic route 66. It takes just over an hour to reach Las Vegas from there. That was our last night at Vegas - and what would be the better way than to watch a "show'? Searching for half price tickets , we managed to grab ones for "La Femme" in MGM - turned out to be pretty "entertaining". We also had time to enjoy the inside of magnificent Mandalay Bay and generally the lights all around us.

Day 7
Drove back to Riverside in which was otherwise a pretty uneventful day.

Day 8
Started late for San Francisco - a very boring drive through the freeway.

Day 9
Like LA before ,it was the only day we had in SFO. Started with the predictable Golden Gate Bridge (it looks pretty bland red in day time though!) - had a great seafood lunch at Fisherman's Wharf and spent the evening in Pier 39. San Francisco should be a drivers nightmare - most streets are one way with nasty slopes - sometimes going up or down almost vertically. I dont know how they parallel park on those places!

Day 10
Not surprisingly , this turned out to be our longest day! Started pretty early in the morning - hit the Pacific Coast Highway at Santa Cruz. Till Monterey nothing seemed to happen - but once we crossed the little town - the landscape started to change dramatically. It was wild Pacific on one side with steep hill on the other side - the road itself was full of sharp curves and hairpin bends. I always heard about this drive - but unlike "Road Rash" the margin for error is very less. Initially we stopped at every scenic vista point - appreciating the wild beauty - but had to hurry up a bit at the latter part. It continues like that till San Simeon - we barely had daylight that long - the sunset was magnificent too. Eventually reached LA at night - before taking the red eye to Tampa.

Link for the Photos -
I had a tough time selecting which pictures to upload from the thousands we have taken!
Los Angeles and Pacific Coast Highway
@ http://community.webshots.com/user/dipthought4
Las Vegas, Grand Canyon (yet uncaptioned) and San Francisco
@http://community.webshots.com/user/dipthought5
And if you would rather look at us with those wonderful places forming the background, those pictures are
@http://dipthought.myphotoalbum.com/view_album.php?set_albumName=album02

Back Again

Time for some pending wishes. As someone famously said - its just an arbitrary choice of initial phase - but people do fondly exchange new year greetings. So here I wish the invisible readers of my blog a very happy 2006 and beyond.
And Birthday wishes to Hiradi (23rd December) , Sanghamitra (28th December) , Vivekananda (31st December).

On Vacation

After travelling mostly in eastern seabed and midwest - this my my first west coast trip. Would be driving around a lot , have good food and hope to get nice pictures.

Happy holiday folks!

Honorable men, all of them

He is a career politician. Not someone who has a career and decided to be in politics - that does not happen in India. His career is politics. One day you are the chief minister - next day you are gone. Someday from the sugarcane fields of Maharashtra he thought he would be the prime minister. He tried it being in the congress , being against the congress and being with the congress. Nothing worked. That's what the name of the game for him. He is an honorable man.

And then he wanted the next best thing. He thought he could be in the power of the cash rich and oh so influential BCCI. He of course had noble intentions in mind - after all if politics is such an important part of everything around us ,why cricket would be left behind? So like a politician he planned his moves well and eventually landed the top spot. He is an honorable man.

Now did I mention he was a chief minister before? He was of course used to ruling with his own men. So immediately after being "sworn in", he had to let the men he did not like go. That's the first thing he did. They may have been good selectors. They might have probably harvested young talent in a big way. But they were not his men. That's all mattered to him. He is an honorable man.

In politics he always did that. People close to him got the plum posts.So its no wonder that he felt its time to give players from his state with immensely forgettable records another chance. And the only way to do it was removing someone he did not like. He had to take those decisions. Tough times call for tough decisions. After all Mr.Pawar is an honorable man.

And so is Mr. More. Opinions change with time don't they? Sometimes not disturbing an winning combination is the right thing. Sometimes it needs to be done. Fairness is just a dictionary word , is not it? I'm sure with a heavy heart he realized that allegiance rather than performance would have to be the criteria. Poor soul - he loves his job.

So lets play some politics too.Why don't our own CPI(M) threaten to withdraw support to the central government unless justice is done? If they can get so agitated over gas price hikes and issues to do with provident fund, this is much closer to heart to the people of Bengal. We had governments collapsing for much trivial reasons in the past! And a staunch opponent like me would probably vote for them next time around if they can do that!

P.S - This wont do anything - but just a way to vent your anger -
http://www.petitiononline.com/ganguly/

Arnab, as always has an excellent post on the episode where he says how its just "not cricket"!

Eight and counting !

Just randomly searching for Gainesville in weather.com , I came up with eight Gainesvilles in continental United States. In case you dont believe it, here is the screenshot -


But note - we are the only one having an airport. Although I would prefer not going into that in details!

Next : Try searching for Springfield!

A Scary Scenario

Let us just forget the details for a moment. We all knew that air security folks are panicky. But what happened yesterday signifies how scared these people are. Agreed the guy behaved abnormally - and air marshals could not risk lives of so themselves and so many other people not knowing what the he was actually up to. So forced to act within split seconds , they acted on the side of caution. You cant fault them for doing what they have been taught to. And I am sure they don't deserve to go through the trauma of knowing that they killed an innocent man.

But this much more than that. For the last couple of years - I have flown domestic around the country a lot of times. And I do fit the classical description of a terrorist , a brown skin , single guy in mid twenties, sometimes unshaven, mostly disheveled, flying in a busy route. But I have never been subjected to any additional screening. Yes , I repeat , my experience with TSA has been unexpectedly good. And all these while , I have seen elderly white ladies subjected extensive search. Does not that look weird? A simple sanity check would convince anyone that those people just cant be those elusive terrorists.

Racial profiling is bad. It would reflect badly on policymakers. But that's precisely what needs to be done. Its very improbable that a white man with his wife in tow would be a potential threat - he may be a crackpot , but he wont be a terrorist. But sadly- the system is unable to judge that now. And that is a dangerous situation - if they can shoot a white guy - they can shoot anyone they deem a threat. A lot of times people do behave unexpectedly in airports , even if they are not mentally sick , but just the general travel related stress does crazy things to normally sensible people. Now you know - those can turn deadly. Not a comforting thought.

Now I'm a proud owner of a new shining Panasonic Lumix DMC FZ5. Just have to figure out how to take pictures with this one.

And I still love my Kodak Easyshare CX6330.

P.S - Birthday wishes to Kathakali (5th December) , Rumi (9th December) , Shibani (10th December).

13 years after the day that changed everything ...

... or did it ? I remember as a schoolboy I was trying to follow the events of that evening - but those were the days of 9 pm (or was it 8:45?) Doordarshan news. No breaking news , no 24/7 online updates. So as the Kar sevaks strode into the structure that they used to call a mosque , there was a total information blackout. Nobody knew whats going on - every other news bulletin giving conflicting signals. This little kid was really tense , could not concentrate on study , eager to hear something. Finally the rumor became official. Our honorable prime minister came to address the nation and he had to confess - that structure is no more.

It meant different things to different people. But till date , that remains to me the most important event in independent India's history. I'm not against any community - but that was the first real protest against the priority treatment meted out to the minority community in a so called secular country. For a while that changed the entire political landscape. Ah those were the days!

BJP swept into power in UP. Won almost everything there in a Lok Sabha election that followed. And riding that high , ABV became the the prime minister , first for 13 days , then for more. And we stayed up till late to hear his mesmerizing speeches.

All good things must come to an end. And it did. BJP of today is so ideologically removed from the BJP of then - sometimes I cant even identify with them. Politics and power does strange things to ideology.

Misplaced Enthusiasm?

A few days back I met one of the enthusiastic volunteers of this society - who are doing good work for the underprivileged kids in India. They were hosting an event and wanted to put up a poster in our department. Fair enough - I directed her to one of the all purpose student post it boards. But that was probably not enough visibility for her - so she wanted to paste it in places mostly used for academic activity and hence more prominent. I objected - politely pointing out that this is exactly not something connected with the academic activity of the department. Then she came up with this amazing statement , " but its (substitute the name of the organization)". I should appreciate her devotion to the noble cause of trying to make a difference. While I may or may not feel that is indeed the right way of achieving some result , thats beside the point. But what I find simply audacious is the attitude of since-I-think-I-am doing-something-great-for-the-humanity-you-should-think-like-that-too.

This is by no means an isolated example. Whenever a natural calamity happened - we were pestered by "volunteers" , who came in all shapes and colors. While their effort to help out the distressed folks was laudable - but to force people by saying stuff like why they are drinking a Pepsi rather than donating was not. Does donation not imply a "voluntary contribution"?

Or think about the spam mails I receive oh so often asking me to donate for some terminally ill kid. While most of them are hoax mails , as a simple sanity check would tell anyone , should not people ever think before populating the forward to field with all his contacts? Did he donate? In all probability no. So why send it to a hundred other people who would not probably do anything about that except hitting the delete (or forward) button either? Is it a kind of self gratification to show people that "I care"?

Its great if you are doing something worthwhile. If you are sincere , and want to spread the word , do it in a way that respects other people's sentiments , not by trying to create a social pressure. Don't try to make people feel they are worthless if they are not getting as involved. People have different priorities , and unless you can appreciate that , I get a feel you are more concerned about satisfying your bloated ego rather than actually caring for humanity.

Dressed to Kill!

It true that I was thinking about writing something along this line for a while. But then its also true that Arnab's this post has woken me up from the slumber and provided the necessary impetus.

He talks about being politically correct in job interviews , among other things. I remember being asked at NTSE interview , what do I think of Gorkhaland. That was the time when Ghising and the CPI(M) leadership made friends with each other after mindless violence over the years. I did not call a spade exactly a spade - but did not hide my acute displeasure for Mr.Ghising - which the folks there evidently did not like.

Anyway thats beside the point. Fortunately or unfortunately I never faced any job interview - so I dont really have the "insiders" perspective. But which I always used to find very amusing in our campus is - in the sweltering heat and humidity of our good old Kolkata , the job aspirants dressed impeccably and sweating profusely waiting for the campus interviews. I always felt they wearing a white formal shirt with a tie and without a coat or a blazer makes one look like a salesman (and was not the most jobs were in marketing?). Not to offend anyone - but will anyone please tell me how that funny attire became so mandatory?

My Black Friday Experience

Last year a gang of us attacked Officemax for its eminently useless but free after rebate stuff - and after running around the store , pushing people away and grabbing most of the stuff returned home victorious. This year - could not find that many enthusiastic people . And at this time of the year - Gainesville is always a dead town - so I thought whoever remained would invade Bestbuy first and reached the local Circuit City just half an hour or so before the store opening hour. And whoa! I found myself behind a hundred or so people! It was sheer madness once I entered the store. Here my extensive "research" for the past couple of days came in handy (thanks to http://www.bf2005.com/ - it was so helpful). I knew what I wanted ( not those amazingly cheap crappy laptops - they were all apparently "out" by midnight!) - but still missed that free Samsonite camera bag or the computer screen cleaner. And to add insult to "injury" , I ended up in perhaps the slowest moving checkout line in the entire country.
That led me to change the "itinerary" a bit - instead of heading for another round of jostling , went to an unusually quiet Sams Club and grabbed the free breakfast ( as someone famously said - there is nothing like a free lunch, but I dont mind free food anyplace anytime!) they had. I was anyway too sleepy by then - staying up the whole night and waiting to place orders online at the right times was clearly taking its toll. But still could not resist the temptation to be at our only mall - did not really find anything too tempting then though. Its another story that I went back to the mall later in the evening after having a good sleep!

And I realize, I actually enjoy the early morning madness!

Bowled by Google!

A couple of days back I was in this talk by a Google executive. I could not resist asking him the question which I had in mind for a long time - how does Google show the "cached" pages. I could never think that Google actually stores all those webpages in their server - but that's what they do. Think about it - that is effectively backing up the entire web!

Black Friday !

Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving in the United States, is historically one of the busiest retail shopping days of the year. Many consider it the "official" beginning to the holiday season. The "black" in the name comes from the standard accounting practice of using red ink to denote negative values (i.e., losses) and black ink to denote positive values (profits). Black Friday is the day when retailers traditionally get back "in the black" after operating "in the red" for the previous months, often by cutting prices considerably. In addition, most retailers will open very early. [Wikipedia]

So we are there again. The day the consumers are supposedly the king - even if they have to wake up early and get into literal streetfight with complete strangers to grab the mostly useless but deeply discounted items. And one day when "black" something is not a politically incorrect phrase! Or is it?

( I found this somewhere in the web - could not resist putting it up here. No copyright violation is intended!)

Thought of the day

A popular advertisement line says -
There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Mastercard.
Let me tweak it a bit. And I come up with -
There are somethings you need money for. For everything else, there's Google.

"JRS" in Prison!

Now thats what you call a real stunning news.
http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/1-11072005-566629.html

He is one of the legends in the field. And he won the ultimate recognition way back. He was supposed to be spending his time in Florida now - enjoying sunshine and the beaches. Rather he does this.

A Classical Dilemma

This happens all to often. Especially for poor lonely creatures like us. We go online , meet some supposedly nice guy or girl and after using up a few hundred or so free night/weekend minutes feel like meeting them. But in most cases (s)he is possibly a thousand miles apart - and both of us being overworked and underpaid graduate students - we accept that its not going to work out. End of the story? Not quite , especially if one of the persons lives in a place worth a visit. So then you have the extra motivation for having a trip down there - and probably you will find some other souls to accompany you too. And honestly - vacation are more fun and less expensive in a group unless its a romantic one. And there comes the tricky part - what do you do with your virtual friend? Do you really want to tell your buddies about this person - and make yourself a target of ridicule if your virtual friend doesn't live up to his/her online image? And suppose (s)he does turn out to be a real nice company - then can you screw up the travel itinerary to spend more time with him/her - annoying all others in your group? Its no lesser a dilemma for the other person too. Knowing that your virtual friend is coming with a gang of real friends by itself is intimidating - making your way into a group is always oh so difficult. Then you are not sure of the expectation level is - whether you can ask him/her out for a coffee alone or join them while they are in a museum? Ideally you wanted him/her alone - and you are feeling disgusted to be forced to deal with a crowd - but you also know that this is the only chance you got to make an impression - (s)he is not going to visit your city again soon. I have been at the either side of the divide - forcing my friends to waste a few hours so that I can meet my chat friend and looking on while one of my friend's chat friend toiled hard unsuccessfully to impress her!

Neither was much fun for the anyone!

P.S - Birthday wishes for Sanchayeeta (15th November).

Done!

So after immensely bugging and persistantly boring everyone around (and that doesnt only include you "online" folks) I am finally done with my first Physics talk. It went so fast - both literally and figuratively - I went over my slides as if they are going to disappear in thin air in the next instant. The whole thing was over even before I looked at my entire audience once. But the feedback was not so bad and some people did ask some questions and encouraged me off the stage - that was so considerate of them! The next one would be much better - I promise!

And then this was a perfect excuse to continue my mission to explore all the restaurants in town. Went to this place called Bonefish grill and funnily enough - ordered a variation of Grilled Chicken with Smoked Salmon and Martini.

I love good food. And they taste better or Friday nights.

Using Drell Yan to probe the underlying event

Yeah - that is the title of my talk tomorrow. Or later today.

Practising to Talk!

A host of constructive suggestions. At least I would like to see them that way. The big day is less than 48 hours away!

Among other things , finally finalized my long-waited-oh-so-tempting-west-coast-road-trip-plan for December. Hopefully more details coming soon.

My take on a few important things happening here and there :

Ganguly getting "royally" ignored by the Indian selectors - I hope he wont turn into another Dhanaraj Pillay.

IIPM Saga - I have came across countless blogs / mails. Move on folks - IIPM people are here to make money - and as long as students think studying management is the only way to glory - they would be exploited.

Volker Report and all that crap - Should not we know it by now that we should not differentiate between politicians based on race, sex, nationality or sexual orientation ?

T.O saga - Garbage in, garbage out.

Cellphones Suck!

World would be a better place if people realize -

That just because I am carrying my cell does not mean that I am available and have to take every damn call.

A call is not necessarily more important than the person sitting in front of you.

A call waiting does not necessarily mean the waiting call is more important than the current one.

And if I dont take a call - it is generally not a deep rooted conspiracy to offend that person.

I do not ride buses to get updated on stranger's personal details - neither do I go to movies to hear all these ringtones.