Just for fun!

Six and oh, baby!

So the first time since 1996, our football team has started the season with six consecutive wins and no losses. How big is that? We don't know yet. But if history is offers any pointer, the last time, ten years back, we won the national championship. It can be that big.

They are saying it was as loud here as they have seen it ever in the swamp on last Saturday. I was a part of that ninety thousand plus impossibly intense crowd, which surely played a part in softening up a very good LSU football team. It was a a scrappy game at best, but we would any day take an ugly win in this conference. And that's what I like about the this team, they are finding a way to win even when things are not exactly going their way. We missed that in last few years with a string of demoralising last minute losses. Florida football is back, and this time its for real.

Somehow the four game deadly stretch, which everyone felt would be impossible for us to get out alive from, is not looking that lethal. Auburn with its one dimensional running game would be perfect for out defense and Tennessee clearly showed Georgia has no defence. The road to Tempe,AZ ( for the national championship game)would have to pass through Atlanta (for the SEC championship game) though.

Go Gators!

Murphy's Law of Telephone Calls

When you are absolutely bored, none is going to call you and whoever you call wont pick up the phone.

When you are busy or trying to sleep, you will receive calls in equally spaced intervals enough to ruin your concentration or sleep (or both).

The 2006 Pujo for Me

So it is that time of the year again, when every alternate email or scrapbook entry in Orkut I get asks me about my Pujo plans. And if that is not bad enough, once I reply that Pujo does not really mean anything here, they start making funny noises like how a Bengali can live without a Pujo holiday.

Now I am not exactly right about Pujo here. The Benagli Associations in most big cities do organize Pujo's, albeit often just for a day on a convenient weekend. Our Gainesville is just a small college town, but we do get to go to the Pujo's in Orlando or Tampa and those are just a couple of hours drive. I must appreciate the tremendous effort put in my the organizers at all these places, after all it is no trivial thing to put together the events. However, its just not possible under the given constraints to make it feel like the Pujo's back home and none even pretends that they are.

These are more like a social get together to most people here, where they meet up, discuss about their kid's achievement and show off their latest acquired saree or jewellery, while letting their kids recite Bengali poems with a hugely American Bengali accent. Nothing wrong with that per se, except that I don't really enjoy it as a Pujo. Rather it is kind of like a day out for me with semi-authentic Bengali food and long drives with saree clad Bengali girls! (Too bad, rarely any of them to "look at" in the Pujo venue, that robs half the charm of Pujo!)

Anyway here is some moments of the Pujo at Tampa yesterday.
http://picasaweb.google.com/deepak.kar/DurgaPujo2006TampaFL

However, all said and done, I do miss Pujo back home. But I do take issues with people suggesting that I should leave everything I am doing and rush back to Kolkata during Pujo to reinforce my Bengali credentials. Apart from Kolkata, nowhere in the world Pujo is a holiday and for those of us outside Kolkata, there is realistically a very little chance of landing up there during these days. And when when you are actually away from Pujo-land, you do not miss Pujo unless you are reminded everyday!

Not the nicest post!

A few weeks back, among those inane forwards, I received this heart wrenching story.


ONE BEDROOM FLAT... AN INDIAN SOFTWARE ENGINEER'S LIFE...- A Bitter Reality

As the dream of most parents I had acquired a degree in Software Engineerand joined a company based in USA, the land of braves and opportunity. When I arrived in the USA, it was as if a dream had come true.
Here at last I was in the place where I want to be. I decided I would bestaying in this country for about Five years in which time I would haveearned enough money to settle down in India.
My father was a government employee and after his retirement, the onlyasset he could acquire was a decent one bedroom flat.
I wanted to do some thing more than him. I started feeling homesick andlonely as the time passed. I used to call home and speak to my parents every week using cheap international phone cards. Two years passed, twoyears of Burgers at McDonald's and pizzas and discos and 2 years watchingthe foreign exchange rate getting happy whenever the Rupee value went down.
Finally I decided to get married. Told my parents that I have only 10 daysof holidays and everything must be done within these 10 days. I got myticket booked in the cheapest flight. Was jubilant and was actually enjoying hopping for gifts for all my friends back home. If I miss anyonethen there will be talks. After reaching home I spent home one week goingthrough all the photographs of girls and as the time was getting shorter I was forced to select one candidate.
In-laws told me, to my surprise, that I would have to get married in 2-3days, as I will not get anymore holidays. After the marriage, it was timeto return to USA, after giving some money to my parents and telling the neighbors to look after them, we returned to USA.
My wife enjoyed this country for about two months and then she startedfeeling lonely. The frequency of calling India increased to twice in a weeksometimes 3 times a week. Our savings started diminishing. After two more years we started to have kids. Two lovely kids, a boy and a girl, weregifted to us by the almighty. Every time I spoke to my parents, they askedme to come to India so that they can see their grand-children.
Every year I decide to go to India. But part work part monetary conditionsprevented it. Years went by and visiting India was a distant dream. Thensuddenly one day I got a message that my parents were seriously sick. I tried but I couldn't get any holidays and thus could not go to India. Thenext message I got was my parents had passed away and as there was no oneto do the last rights the society members had done whatever they could. I was depressed. My parents had passed away without seeing their grandchildren.
After couple more years passed away, much to my children's dislike and mywife's joy we returned to India to settle down. I started to look for a suitable property, but to my dismay my savings were short and the propertyprices had gone up during all these years. I had to return to the USA.
My wife refused to come back with me and my children refused to stay in India. My 2 children and I returned to USA after promising my wifeI would be back for good after two years.
Time passed by, my daughter decided to get married to an American and myson was happy living in USA. I decided that had enough and wound-up every thing and returned to India. I had just enough money to buy a decent 2bedroom flat in a well-developed locality.
Now I am 60 years old and the only time I go out of the flat is for theroutine visit to the nearby temple. My faithful wife has also left me and gone to the holy abode.
Sometimes I wondered was it worth all this? My father, even after stayingin India, had a house to his name and I too have the same nothing more.
I lost my parents and children for just ONE EXTRA BEDROOM.
Looking out from the window I see a lot of children dancing. This damnedcable TV has spoiled our new generation and these children are losing theirvalues and culture because of it. I get occasional cards from my children asking I am alright. Well at least they remember me.
Now perhaps after I die it will be the neighbors again who will beperforming my last rights, God Bless them. But the question still remains'was all this worth it?'
I am still searching for an answer................!!!!

One is not supposed to reply to these emails, these are for forwarding and trying to make people feel guilty for no reason.

But as someone in "US of A", I could not help but make some observations.

When you are coming to an alien land to live, you have to have a life. Sharing an apartment with 5 other deshis, having no social life other than occasional deshi parties at home (which are no different from the gatherings one used to have back "home") might save you a bunch of money - but that's hardly a life. Unless you get to know the country and enjoy the American way of life, which includes but not limited to having a drink on Friday,watching football on Saturday, eating turkey on Thanksgiving and traveling on long weekends, you are not "living" in here.
That is the basic problem these software people have.They come here physically, but mentally they are still in India. They detest everything American, except the color green. They would send truckloads of those green stuff back home, to invest in property or to tuck away in a bank,robbing themselves pleasures of life. And then would marry a girl their parents would choose and would ship her here to do the cooking and cleaning. And then their kids would go to school here and contrary to "our" portrayal of them as "ABCD", wont at all be confused. They would be Americans in all sense of the term and their heart wont exactly be where the "home" is.

And then the protagonist would think if it was worth it! Buddy, you brought it onto yourself.

P.S - Birthday wishes for Saswati (8th September) and Debashree (20th September).

What's going on since summer?

Nothing really. Immensely predictable life of a graduate student. Only silver lining is I'll get to eat Kolkata food for a month in winter. After two years, got myself an India ticket. And a pretty good deal too on Al Italia. That's the good news, The bad new is I have to do a hell lot of work before I take off.

Summer in Fermilab was really up and down.it was a tough learning experience to start off with, but in the later stages as we started taking real data, thing became somewhat exciting. Then spent a drove up to Detroit, flew to Baltimore, ate great seafood, caught up with old friends in Philadelphia, Delaware and NYC. The drive back to Florida was through St.Louis, Memphis and Alabama. All the pictures are in here - http://picasaweb.google.com/deepak.kar/SummerTravel

I must have been missing Florida beaches, so after coming back travelled around a bit. The photos are in http://picasaweb.google.com/deepak.kar/StAugustine and in http://picasaweb.google.com/deepak.kar/Florida

Next post coming soon!

"Happy Birthday" to My Blog

It was this time of last year when I was feeling pretty depressed for a lot of reasons. The work was not going so well, summer in Gainesville was extremely boring and a few of my good friends were leaving Gainesville for different reasons, not all very pleasant. I did have a blogger account before and wrote a couple of meaningless posts months back, but was too lazy to update it on a regular basis and felt it lacked focus. I was content with reading other people's blogs and admiring their writings and wondering how they have became so popular! Anyway, to cut a long story short, I revived my blog exactly a year back in the present form, partly to let the steam out initially, and so far managed to update it reasonably often, with all the the work pressure and travelling around. I would have loved to talk about more serious issues and my often radical perspectives on them but with the people kind enough to read my blog mostly showing an extreme reluctance to comment, I think it would be kind of meaningless. So it has drifted more towards a travel/photo blog with occasional personal posts and might stay that way in near future.

Along the Mississippi and Beyond

Getting absolutely bored of Batavia, I decided to do some travelling around. If I was in Florida, it is not a problem - you can always grab some people and land up in a nearby beach, I remember doing that in the middle of the night too. However it is a completely different story here - miles and miles of cornfields with nothing remotely exciting to do. I like Chicago as a city - but after a while you run of ideas to do things in downtown. So I started the trip by driving north-eastward to Indiana border. In the blinding rain I crossed over to Indiana and soon I was near the Indiana Dunes. However looking for the largest dune there, Mt.Baldy I ended up going too far east and crossed over to Michigan border (one more state for me!I would be in Detroit in a couple of weeks though). After retracing my way back, finally found the way to it and climbed up the hundred something feet up to get a majestic view of the lake Michigan.

Photos: Looking up Mt.Baldy on an rainy day and view from the other side.

It was an overcast day - but could not resist the temptation of driving by the lake for a nice little stretch, making little stops on the way trying to take photos - eventually all of them came up almost similar.

Photos: Driving towards and by the lake!

It was down to West Lafayette from there - meeting an old friend and making a few new ones at Purdue. Stayed there for a couple of days - generally being lazy and trying out restaurants. By now I am sure all the campus towns look unfailingly similar - mostly red brick buildings, a tall tower commemorating something and a small downtown with coffee shops and pubs.

Photos: River Wabash beside Purdue and the tower and the fountain in the campus.

On the way to Urbana-Champaign, I passed through Indianapolis, did not feel a huge urge to head to downtown, rather went to the Indianapolis Speedway. Its funny how rest of the world
follows Formula One while that is relegated to the background here. Nascar and Indy 500 grab all the headlines and that was pretty evident in the Hall of Fame Museum. I did a track tour in the bus and was told that the Formula One race race actually goes in the opposite direction with respect to all other. But going down the empty race track in a slow bus is not really fun ...

Photo: The Speedway and the track.

Next morning we started out on our grand Mississippi road trip. We did not plan much, rather wanted to explore the small town USA a bit. Almost running out of gas, heading westward to Iowa border, we stopped at a small town called Knoxville. Without any expectation whatsoever, ordered friedrice in a little roadside restaurant claiming to serve American-Chinese Food. And ended up probably having the best friedrice in USA. It was just like our own Chinese food, where fried rices are tasty enough to be eaten by itself. So after the unexpectedly satisfying lunch, we crossed over to Iowa and found ourselves in a little town called Burlington just by the Mississippi. It claimed to have the world's crookedest street, but to find that we realized this can almost be called poor man's San Francisco! The streets go up and down pretty steeply without any warning and then that little stretch of alley connecting two bigger streets is really winding.

Photo: The little streetside restaurant and the crookedest street.

Just outside Burlington, travelling up north we passed by Toolseboro Indian Mounds. Sounds kind of historical, may be they are, but they look just like, well - just mounds!

Photo: Indian Mounds.

We were trying to follow the "Great River Road", which is an official scenic byway after that point - and we had to wade through a stretch of unpaved road leaving a trail of white dust behind. It was a while we could actually see the river, but the view was indeed gorgeous at some points.

Photo: Grand view of Mississippi.

We stopped at at place called Davenport, which seemed to be popular for casinos on the river and then at a much smaller but cuter city named LeClaire, which apparently was the hometown of "Buffalo Bill". While all these small towns are critically dependent upon the river for everything and have the streets lined up with antique shops, they are not too touristy. The coffee shops still don't accept credit cards and the people around would still be pleasantly surprised to see people from India.

Then we passed through another of those towns named Clinton and which literally stank. And then we were immensely surprised to find that Iowa (unlike the neighboring Illinois) is not just flat land. To reach Dubuque, which was supposed to be our final stop for the night, we had to drive by narrow winding roads through jungles on either side, going up and down the hills. Finally we reached Dubuque, which is apparently the number one tourist destination in Iowa! It looked confusing and appeared a big city at first, but getting hopelessly lost and coming back to the same major intersection every time without any help made us realize its just not that big, just the roads are uselessly confusing and complicated. The major attraction was the Fenelon place elevator, which is basically a cable car going up a hill. It looks very primitive, and unstable. Long back it was actually used by people for their daily commute, now its more of a tourist attraction. After riding that next morning, we went to the National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium. It was fun seeing all the turtles and fishes and the giant size lazy alligator. Upstairs they had a special "Catfish Planet",which has led me to believe that any fish, no matter how it looks can be eventually classified as a catfish! Looking for places to eat, some local people hanging out in the streets directed us to the "Brickyard". It was a restaurant cum a brewery and we were tempted enough to taste their beer sampler. I am a generally strong beer hater - but even I loved the way how they served it in miniature mugs and actually liked some of them. A variety called the "Laughing Ass" was pretty good and my friends ended up getting half a gallon for their home. And did I mention the food was good too?

Photo: The elevator!

We planned to travel straight up to Mcgregor after that, but ended up crossing over to Wisconsin and losing our way. Finally found the scenic route on that side, but instead of the river, it passed through green valleys and more small towns. Stopping for gas in one of those nondescript towns, we learned we can cross the Mississippi with with our car in a ferry. We were so excited about the novel experience we can have, but sadly realized that we are short of cash. So kept driving, till we passed this in Mcgregor.

Photo: The pink elephant!

The last attraction we wanted to visit was the Spook Cave there. It is an underground half an hour boat ride in this cave. The formations are nothing spectacular compared to the other caves I have seen, but the ride is a lot of fun. At some points you have to duck really hard to avoid getting hit in the head by low ceiling or push the boat off from hitting narrow walls in the dark cave.

Photo: Inside the dark cave.

And then it was time to get back. Before getting on to the highways, we passed through local Wisconsin highway, stopping to buy some fresh local cheese at one time and to pass slow moving horse drawn carriages carrying weirdly dressed Amish county people a few other times. And once we hit the freeway in Illinois border - it was just one long drive back home in late night.

A great trip through small towns and local attractions - a refreshing change from the big cities which we visit all too often. My next trip would be just like that.

P.S - This is the first time I am trying to post some photos inside the travelogue, rather than linking it to webshots. I am not sure if I like the idea though, primarily because I can only upload a small number of them.

Birthday wishes for Saswati (17th July), Sayantani (19th July) and of course for my mother (2nd July).

An Untimely Obituary

He was not my classmate at any stage. Not at school. Not at undergraduate days. He was merely a student from across the campus in the same year. We did not travel together anywhere, if I disregard the coincidental bumping into each other in Las Vegas last winter. There were no reason for me to know Subhankar Nag. And then he would have remained the faceless software engineer who died suddenly in his sleep of a cardiac arrest in an alien land.

However, I did know him reasonably well. In that dingy room over the A.C.Canteen in J.U Campus, every week we used to meet for informal quizzing sessions, which laid the foundation for the revival of JU Quiz club (later named Enquiry) and the now established yearly JU-Open quiz. And I can almost certainly say - without his effort and enthusiasm - the quiz club would not have seen the light of the day. Right from fighting for a room to coaxing juniors to come - he was everywhere. And he was an integral part of the J.U team which left its mark on college and open quizzes for over a year.

Unfortunately we all graduated from JU - but I hear even after that - he was active to make sure the quizzing tradition of J.U continued. After he came here in Columbus,Ohio working for TCS - he kept in touch, even though a lot of times I was too lazy to call back. Any other people would be offended, but not Subho. He would call at regular intervals, often to tell me that his cellphone number has changed and often without any apparent reason. We would talk about the places we have been to (he was especially proud about being at the Indianapolis GP last year - he deserved to see this years full race) and he would suggest I come to Columbus one of these weekends. I asked him once what his plans about settling down (read: marriage) and in his typical voice he said, "arey boss tara kiser, ei toh masti korar somoy". (roughly translated, whats the hurry - this is the time to enjoy life). I guess thats the last time I spoke to him. Irony? You bet.

This was no way to die.

P.S - A humble suggestion - can we name the J.U.Open quiz in his name?

Here are two old dusty pictures - the first reminding me of those fun evenings and the second one is the Science Sanskriti quiz which Arpita and me conducted.

Long delayed post on World Cup

So we are well into the stage where pretenders are getting separated from the contenders, and like many I too believe that real world cup would only begin from the knock out stage. My usual favourite is Holland - and so far I have not found them too impressive - but at least they are getting the job done so far. Brazil looks far from promising in spite of all these big names, Argentina and Spain are brilliant in flashes, Italy and England look suspect, Germany is steady but dull. May be this can turn out be the most open cup ever.

However that does not matter to my fellow Calcuttans. Most of them are intense Brazil supporters - which I actually find a little amusing. ( I remember reading this in orkut - a Brazilian guy randomly landed in a Calcutta community and quite innocently asked, is there any Brazilian around in here? This was a month or so before the world cup, and a Bengali gentleman came out and replied in crisp Bengali, roughly translated which would mean, there are none right now - but you would find them popping out of everywhere once the world cup begins!). That's what I don't exactly find amusing - the pride associated with supporting a different country. Lets get this clear folks - "our" football team failed to qualify for the world cup. And "we" are not exactly Brazilians (or Argentines) for that matter. I feel ashamed when someone asks me where is India in the football map. Its disgraceful that we are simply not there. If Countries like Ivory Coast or Serbia-Montenegro, torn by civil wars or a country like Trinidad and Tobago, just a dot on the atlas can make it there, just to cite a few examples - our perennial excuse of lack of infrastructure and all sound plain hollow.

I also hear comments about Americans not understanding soccer- they not having the passion like "us" and all that. Screw the passion - the Americans have a team playing in the world cup - so they are actually cheering for their team - not empty supporters like you and me. "We" don't even understand how ridiculous this is - claiming ourselves to be the biggest supporters of another country!

P.S - A long list of birthday wishes - Somraj (31st May), Shalini (4th june), Nabanita (5th June), Munmun (10th June), Nabamita (10th June), Nabanita (13th June), Debipriya (21st June).
And Father's Day and my fathers birthday was on the the same day this year (June 18th), and in case you forgot - I had my birthday on June 13th.

Two shades of loneliness

Random disgruntled notes

For past few years I have been hearing about a "scientist" president, apparently whom we all should try to emulate. Never mind that he is only a technocrat, however he did at least look qualified, a bit different from the run of the mill politicians. However his passive support of the government means he loses my respect. He is just another guy interested in power and all the perks associated with it. Please stop putting him on a high pedestal, would you?

I also hear about how wonderful work ASHA and all these NGO's are doing - express even slightest doubt about them and you are labeled a heartless creature with only your own interests in mind. Now I have a question, why would we even donate a penny for imparting basic education to kids in some remote villages over there, when our government is so concerned about them getting almost automatic higher education? Did these folks even speak up against it?


I am not just being sarcastic. I know in our system president has minimum say - but so far we have not heard anything from him. I would have expected something more from a president, whose claim to fame was not dirty politics. To put it bluntly - he has failed us. About NGO's in general and ASHA in particular (since I am most aware of its activities), I never doubt the commitments of the individuals - but as a whole they are doing too little, too late. I don't want to sound too critical but doing something which should basically be government's job and hoping to do that by asking us, the poor graduate students to spend their resources hardly sounds logical to me.

Arjun speak and some thoughts!

Here is a much publicized interview of Arjun Singh by Karan Thapar.

http://www.ibnlive.com/news/devils-advocate-arjun-singh/11063-4-single.html

It makes for interesting reading and makes the minister appear(?) stupid. He mostly has no coherent answers to any of the questions put forward by Karan, and worse he ends up doubting cold numbers, often coming from credible sources, when he cant defend his or the government's stand. That's expected though - considering our politicians are hardly the most qualified people - but even then, some of the comments actually are pretty hilarious.

He starts off with -
Arjun Singh: I wouldn't like to say much more on this because these are decisions that are taken not by individuals alone. And in this case, the entire Parliament of this country - almost with rare anonymity - has decided to take this decision.
A quick check verifies, anonymity : n- the state of being anonymous.
So we have to believe, as implied by the senior minister that the Parliament secretly decided to implement this? Who were they hiding from? And why they needed to be surreptitious? I always thought you needed to be anonymous when you are afraid to come out with your name, like those offensive postings on the discussion forums!

Defends his actions with -
Arjun Singh: Because as I said, that was the 'will and desire of the Parliament'.
Now only if that meant the wish of the majority of the people!

And finally admits -
Karan Thapar: I want very much to talk about that formula, but before we come to talk about how you are going to address concerns, let me point one other corollary - Reservations also gives preference and favour to caste over merit. Is that acceptable in a modern society?
Arjun Singh: I don't think the perceptions of modern society fit India entirely.
Now that he acknowledges it, and I read somewhere that his grandson studies in Harvard, it all makes sense. Does not it?

And as someone pointed it out to me , the idea of increasing the percentage of quota and then compensating the general students by increasing total number of seats is almost a mathematical impossibilty. Lets think of an oversimplified example, where the total number of seats is 100 and the prevelant SC/ST etc quota adds upto 30%. So we had 70 seats for us - now if the total quota in increased to 50% - that means we lose 20 seats. If now the idea is to increase 20 seats for us - that pushes back the quota to 50/120 or 41%. So the only way to give back 70 seats to us is make the number of total seats 140, which is almost and one and half fold increase - and effectively adding new 40 seats to quota, while our seats stay the same. I wonder how many institutes have the infrastructure to absorb that many new students without letting the quality of education drop - and at the end we would be the victims again!

Gearing Up!

(From CNN)

"Celebrate" June 2nd!

So I just figured out that June 2nd is the national "Breakup Day" . An excellent concept from Budweiser, countering all those feel good type occasions promoted by Archie's and Hallmark. So after you befriend her on the Friendship Day (or was that an entire week you had?), and celebrate your love on Valentine's Day - there has to be a way to get rid of her sweetly, and then what is the best way to drown your sorrows than plunging into Budweiser? Marketed efficiently - you can soon end up with breakup cards and breakup gifts.

I remember in my school and college days some of my male friends became invisible on Rakhi days - fearing some girl would try to tie them into brotherhood. This can produce a similar effect - the people having a troubled relationship would probably try to stay away from each other - although in this Internet age - that becomes almost impossible. Budweiser even suggests some nice (or not so nice, depending on your perspective) breakup lines, in case one is too shy to find their own and still want to "celebrate"!

And in case you did not know - there is a "Singles Awareness Day" too.

An Insane Question

When popping open my can of lemonade this morning - suddenly a weird thought came into my mind. A lemonade is a lemonade because it has lemon flavour - even if its not natural lemon. Now consider a scenario where by some accident we never had lemon in nature. Then we would not have known how a lemon tastes. Would we still have lemonade then - I mean the flavour - by some other name?

Searching for flavors not directly inspired by natural ingredients - the most common example I came across is cola - be it Coke or Pepsi. I don't not know if "sweetness" is a flavour - but if its not - then the whole gamut of Sprite to 7 Up to Mountain Dew wont count. All the others I see are inspired by natural ones. So the question boils down to whether we would have discovered the "lemon taste". Chemically that's citric acid - so would we have tasted citric acid from some other non edible natural source? Or accidentally synthesized it and ended up tasting it?

Ponder over that over a glass of lemonade!

The states I have been to ...

Florida: Major cities - Gainesville, Orlando, Daytona, Tampa, Sarasota, Clearwater, Miami, Key West,Jacksonville etc.
Georgia: Major Cities - Atlanta, Athens.
North Carolina: Smokey Mountain National Park.
Tennessee: Smoky Mountain National Park.Major cities - Nashville, Knoxville, Maryville, Gatlinburg, Chattanooga.
Kentucky: Drive through
Illinois: Major cities - Chicago, Urbana-Champaign, Places around Fermilab in southwest suburb ( Naperville, Aurora, Batavia)
Indiana: Drive through
Ohio: Cuyahoga National Park.Major cities - Columbus, Cleaveland, Akron.
Wisconsin: Drive through
Minnesota: Major cities - Minneapolis, St.Paul, Mankato
California: Major cities - Los Angeles, Riverside, Monetery, San Francisco. (Drive through Pacific Coast Highway)
Arizona: Grand Canyon National Park.
Nevada: Major cities - Las Vegas.
Massachusetts: Major cities - Boston, Amherst.
New Hampshire: Kankamagus Byway. Major cities - North Conway
Vermont: Major cities - St.Johnsbury, Bennington, Brattleboro.
Delaware: Major cities - Wilmington.
New York: Major cities - New York, Buffalo/Niagara Falls.
New Jersey: Drive through.
Washington D.C
Virginia: Drive through.
Maryland: Was born! Drive though.
Pennsylvania: Major cities - Pittsburgh.
West Virgina: Drive through

Makes it 24/48 mainland states until now, with a defintely a few more coming up before the end of the summer.

My mostly Minneapolis travelogue

Since I spent a significant amount of time in this sleepy college town an hour or so away from twin cities, I wont say I completely "did" twin cities. However - a couple of days were enough to give me a good overall feel of the windy streets, warm skyways and diverse cuisines.

They say Minnesota is the land of 10,000 lakes. I have to read more on that later, but you do notice waterbodies every so often once you drive away from downtown. And you cant miss the Mississippi river separating east and west sides of Minneapolis and also Saint.Paul. The unique feature is the skyways - never seen them in such an extensive scale before. Effectively the whole downtown Minneapolis, be it shopping malls, business offices or big hotels, is connected by elevated and glass-enclosed walkways - a way to keep the city moving in winters I guess. However for a casual traveller like me, it gave me an opportunity to literally walk through ultra swank lobbies of poshest downtown hotels! The real downtown part is pretty dense - even smaller compared to compact Chicago downtown.

For me the most interesting thing was the diverse cuisines the twin cities offered - and I have not seen such a concentration of different African speciality restaurants anywhere. For breakfast I had momo after such a long time at an authentic Nepali place - and forget the Chinese dumplings, this was the real stuff. For lunch I found a tempting Afghan cafe closed - but landed up in a Ghanaian place in the midst of a strange locality in Saint Paul. The goat stew I ordered with plain rice looked almost like our deshi vareity, albeit a little sweeter. Dinner was heavenly at this Somalian restaurant at the south end of Nicolette mall, I would rate "Safari" among the best places I had food in last few years and worth going back to Minneapolis again. The "goat cutlet" was succulent goat meat with gravy cooked with just enough spices to make it so perfect. And they had a creamy soup as a starter - and my waiter said that as well as two huge glasses of mango juice are all on the house! He must have made mistake somewhere - its just impossible to have such an amazing dinner at single digit price. And I absolutely do not regret passing "New Delhi - Food and Drinks" while entering Safari.

The drive along the Mississippi is scenic but nothing spectacular. We visited the beautiful Cathedral at Saint Paul and I always like the absolute quietness inside the churches. The mall of America is apparently the biggest tourist attraction - but we found it rather uninteresting - just another mall with all the big brand names lined up.

The downtown came alive on Friday night - with people on the streets and crowded bars. The IDS tower glowed with what seemed like an halo right at the top - my photos do not quite do the justice to that. In fact photography wise this was a let down trip - since urban photography demands a lot of time and patience and an overcast day robed me of that scope.

Here is the link for the photos still - http://community.webshots.com/album/550344400sWIlhh

And since I don't like much of them - here are my top three!

This looked heavenly with the halo at the top -

View from far - notice the "skyway" -

Me with Minneapolis skyline behind across the river Mississippi -

Another "Red-wash" for CPI(M) in WB

*sigh*

Five steps to become a "computer expert" over the phone

1. Listen to the problem in a dead serious face and make comments like "windows suck" or "seems like a Trojan".
2. Ask them to restart it.Normally solves half of the problems.
3. If it has something to do with Internet explorer - ask them to clear the cache and cookies. Works like wonders.
4. Go through the steps of running a virus checker and a spyware detector.
5. If none of them works - politely suggest contacting the tech support.