Fun fact for the day - M.I.A's (of Paper Planes/Slumdog Millionaire fame) real name is Mathangi Arulpragasam^[1]. Rolls off one's tongue like poetry or dark chocolate syrup or some such goodness appropriate in this simile. M.I.A in comparison sounds like steamed cabbage.

Talk about the choices people make to fit in.

[1] Wikipedia

Invasion of a sovereign country?
iz mah xclusiv rite

Continued from Part 1

Day 2 - Sunday - 1130 hrs
----------------------------

We are now careful people and reach Dulles airport 4.5 hrs before our slated take off time. The Lufthansa checkin desk which is a mess and definitely NOT an example of Immaculate German Efficiency tells us that we are on standby since we are lowly United passengers palmed off to Lufthansa. They take our bags though. We run to the United counter and wait for 45 mins to talk to the lady there and explain how it's unacceptable to be on standby after all that we've been through. She pecks at her keyboard and tells me that Real Nice United Agent from Pittsburgh went beyond what was necessary by rebooking us on a new route and we should be eternally grateful to United. I don't want to antagonise her and proclaim that United was indeed greater than Kanye West who is in turn bigger than Jesus. The United Lady then gets us boarding passes for a United flight from Dulles to Pittsburgh. I am however told to go back to Lufthansa and tell them to retag the bags and send it to United. I trudge back to the Lufthansa line and am near my wits end having spent close to 2.5 hrs in queues since morning. Lufthansa woman believes all United personnel are incompetent Americans and tells me that it isn't their job to retag bags. I tell her all I want is a decent chance of having my bags reach Bangalore. After a few more trips to both the United and Lufthansa counters I finally talk to a Lufthansa supervisor who is sweet and tells us that she'll send the bags along on Lufthansa. We're bushed and nod our heads in a state that can only be described as whateverdom.

After a horrid United flight we finally reach Frankfurt with a significant chance that we were breaking immigration rules by not possessing boarding passes to travel out of Frankfurt.
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Day 1 - Saturday

floopilot and I are all set to start on our long scenic route to Bangalore from Pittsburgh. The highly cost optimized itinerary booked for us by a shadowy travel agent supposedly based in Virginia involves 3 layovers and 2 airlines.

Pittsburgh - Washington DC on United
Hang around at Dulles for 1 hour

Washington DC - London on United
Hang around at Heathrow for 2.5 hrs

London - Mumbai on Jet
Battle immigration and customs for 4 hours

Mumbai - Bangalore on Jet
Phew!

We try to check in to our flights a day earlier only to learn that Jet airways does not have online checkin for international flights. We fail to realise it is an indicator of what's to come. We reach the airport with a comfortable 2.5 hrs left before take off (Thanks Dan!). After a scintillating 25 mins in the dismally long United line, we reach the head of the queue to learn our flight to Washington has been delayed by 25 mins. A sinking realisation tells us that the newly-reduced-to-35 mins layover in Dulles puts our bags in serious jeopardy of not making it to the flight across the Atlantic. The harried agent listens to me politely request her to check us in all the way to Bangalore and tells us that she can't help us today because she is busy. Busy being unhelpful to everyone?. floopilot is seriously annoyed and proceeds to give Harried United Agent a piece of her mind. United Agent wisely decides not to irk her further and checks our bags all the way to Bangalore but informs us that the System can't print out boarding passes for the Jet legs. We shrug it off and decide to deal with Jet at London. We go through the usual jigmarole of convincing TSA that we don't have any exploding Gatorade and that our shoes don't infact explode and make our way to the gate. The departure board now informs us that the flight is now further delayed by another 1 hour. Making it to the London flight is no longer mathematically possible. The ordeal has begun.

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For the most part I believed in you. Yeah, sure I didn't understand you sometimes, but people much smarter than me told me you were infallible and I trusted them and I trusted you. I did hear rumours that you broke down when it came down to quantum physics and strings and witch-craft like that, but hey, what does a simple minded computer science guy like me know about stuff like that.

But yesterday, my belief in you came crashing down. The weather channels were incessantly droning on about how it was the coldest day of the year. -12C, they told me it was. So, with the enthusiasm of a five year old, I filled up a glass with water and ran out (in shorts and flip flops mind you, thus ensuring a complete loss of sensation in my toes) and placed it outside my apartment building hoping it would freeze instantly, with a clink hopefully that you often hear in Tom and Jerry cartoons. When that didn't happen, a tiny bulb went off in my head and I remembered the agonizing wait that I often endured in my childhood while I egged on the Rasna in the ice tray to freeze quickly and turn into delicious ice candy. So, it wasn't always instantaneous, this freezing thing. Fine, I decided to wait it out for an hour and finally, it was judgement time. I went back out again into the unholy tundra like coldness and there it was, the red plastic cup looking forlorn and still filled with something that looked suspiciously liquid aka not ice. What the hell was up with that? You lied to me physics and now I have to question everything that I've been told. Thanks.

Shiver me timbers! My journal isn't quite dead yet.
I have been an unabashed LJ stalker for a long time and I guess now is as good a time as any to correct that imbalance.

When I lived in California, many of my friends frequently poked fun at my dislike for sunny weather and what do you know, the only school that wanted me when I wanted to go back to school was in Pittsburgh. The first few months however seemed like a cruel joke with blistering humidity and temperatures in the 80's and 90's (And no, this doesn't mean I'm losing my Centigrade roots :) ). However, things have started to go back to normal during the past few weeks and that meant that I was finally living in a place that had snowfall. It started off as a bout of flurries one day which I might have missed had I not strained hard not to blink, and then on Thanksgiving day, when in true Yankee tradition, we went shopping at midnight, it really poured (no, that's the word for rain isn't it), wafted(?) down. Being the snow-virgin that I was, I had to beg a stranger in the parking lot for a ice scraper to get rid of the ice off of my windshield.

Pittsburgh in addition to being bone chillingly cold, has a strong sport culture. It probably has to do with the fact that their NFL and NHL teams are pretty good. Every third person on the street has some sort of Steelers' (dominates the fan base the most) or Penguins' (not so much, but still popular) gear on. So when I could lay my grubby hands on discounted tickets (a continuation in a series of tiny perks that college life provides, which knocks a little bit of the edge off of my new found poverty) to go see the Penguins in action, I gleefully grabbed them. Ice hockey, or hockey as it is annoyingly called here (Just hockey should only refer to the kind Dhanraj Pillay played), being the fast paced game that it is makes for a great spectator sport. Then there's the frequent fighting which floopilot claims is the main reason why I wanted to see a hockey game, which only makes things more fun :). The NHL's much more saner policy about physical aggression is a refreshing contrast to the NBA with it's incessant foul calling for almost imaginary body contact, but that's a gripe for another day. Coming back to the game, the Penguins beat the Dallas Stars 4-1. For a moment I contemplated getting a Sidney Crosby jersey. But I guess I'll hold off on that idea for a while. I see a slippery slope that'll lead to swilling more of the foul tasting abomination that has the gall to call itself beer, Coors light, packing on a hundred pounds and yelling at my non existent TV.

The jury's back. I'm only semi-lame.
Barack Obama's flickr page (note the id)

All you people who may have sniggered at my Yahoo id in the past (shamefully/schizophrenically, I'm on that list); If Barack Obama thinks a 'dotcom' suffix in an userid isn't lame, it really isn't and should be accepted as such. After all, Presidents and wannabe-Presidents never lie and deserve everyone's unflinching support.

I'll pretend that I haven't been absconding for the last six months. Not that my three loyal readers would really care. They likely are masochistic anyway. Ok, so I was flattering myself. Make that one and a half loyal readers. No, stop it already. I really do have one and a half loyal readers. I count, don't I? So what if it's strange that I am my number one fan. It doesn't mean I'm self obsessed. No, Narcissus I don't worship. That would make me a heathen and God knows I don't like hot places. Unless hell freezes over, I want to end up in a cool place (preferably with temperature ranging from 8 to 14 C and partially cloudy conditions) when I go postal, speaking of which all 1.5 of you would do well to invest in Kevlar vests.
In all seriousness, the past few months have been a bit of a rush. I faintly remember exams and courses and memorizing meaningless big words none of which I can remember now to make this post look grand. What I remember most are forms and assignments. I don't remember forms as much as they *haunt* me. Every night I don't wake with a nightmare with an image of a text box with "Permanent address" before it stamped all over my brain, is another step towards normalcy. And everyone knows I'm not given to exaggeration. Then there were assignments that were impossibly hard for me yet child's play for them pesky annoying overachievers at class. (Also, be warned that telling your friends that you can't go out with them because there's homework to be done is supremely embarrassing when you're twenty five). Officially into Q2 of my life, I console myself knowing that retirement is a scant 40 or 50 years away.
In other rather more cheery news from the past few months, I saw the coolest dog and the coolest cat I've ever seen in my now extensive life. The dog in question looked like an Alaskan huskie, stood proudly as tall as a goat, and was happily trotting down Haight Street in San Francisco towards the Haight-Ashbury intersection. Probably a hippie dog, it was missing a psychedelic tee shirt. The cat on the other hand was a tabby cat in dingy Stanley market in Hong Kong. She had the most brilliant arrogant-and-bored look. I've spent considerable time trying to replicate that look on my face, with no success of course.
I'll come back another time and talk about my trip to China but for now I have to play with the coolest set of wheels I got in Shanghai. These wheels are the kind you can strap on to your shoes and roll, or attempt to roll and fall down hard.

As a followup to my previous post, here's an addition to the list of disorders that cracks me up - Seasonal Affective Disorder

Road rage - a disorder?
You must be freaking kidding me! Like we didn't have our collective senses pummeled with enough bogus disorders already. "Intermittent Explosive Disorder" is what they're calling this.
What I have a major problem is with the flipping of cause and result. The people behind the study contend that the lack of serotonin is the cause behind road rage. I'm not entirely convinced that the lack of serotonin isn't the result of poor judgement and inadequate impulse control. Relieving people from taking responsibility for their behavioral shortcomings and palming it off onto fancy sounding disorders seems to have become awfully popular. I shouldn't be too surprised in a society where "temporary insanity" is a valid legal defense strategy for murder.
The next time I flip you off on the freeway, don't blame me, it's my "disorder". Shame on you for angering a diseased person.

There are very few things that annoy me as much as small talk. And it's not like I disapprove of it on lofty principles such as it being a waste of time. The truth is I suck at it. Real bad. Naturally, being a bury-head-in-sand ostrich-type person, I elect to hate it rather than make attempts at fixing the problem. Why such an unwise choice, one might wonder. The answer lies in the rather cute squirrel that once told me that making conscious efforts to improve social functioning makes one teter on the edge of the slippery slope that ends in Dr. Phil and SelfHelpBooksVille. I might be lying about the squirrel, FYI.

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I've never been super impressed with technology in the past. I appreciate its usefulness and am ocassionally amazed at the ease with which we can do certain things with its help. But, it has never had the "wow" effect on me, like a Sehwag slash sixer or a Mark Philipoussis ace might have on one for instance. This probably explains why I never understood the maniacal gadget fascination obsession that some of my friends possess. The kind that urges one to get the latest greatest phone that also doubles and triples up as a camera, Geiget counter and bunsen burner. You know that sort of thing comes in very handy if you want to cook radioactive material while on-the-go.
However, I half take the scepticism and general feeling of disbelief back today. What prompted the change, you wonder. I'm posting this entry while on a flight and this totally blows me away. That one can connect to the net and listen to streaming to music at that, while flying over the Bering Sea at 30,000 feet is truly spectacular. Siddy and Deep, you have my semi sincere apologies for the endless barrage of gadget addiction jokes.
Ofcourse, the cynic in me wonders about the reduction in the sense of adventure in travel. With GPS devices and now this, one is very rarely off the radar and that is sad in a way.

Nothing made much sense anymore. Up was down, down was up. Strawberries were funny. He dreamed a scorpion crawled up his right nostril, bloodied his sinus and took a sharp left turn towards the right brain lobe. Lobster in scrambled eggs were a delicacy, he remembered reading somewhere. And he remembered thinking it was ironic that lobsters were scrambling his brain. Scorpions, lobsters, who the hell cared.
It was funny how he remembered odd snippets of trivia at the unlikeliest times. Not just funny, it was immensely hilarious. His left lobe told him to shut the heck up. These observations weren't smart. "Go back and eat your cheeseballs till your fingers are orange and you want to kill yourself for being an idiot", it screamed. Blah, blah, blah. He heard another voice "Stick your head in the microwave. Help the scorpions. Or was it lobsters? "Cook the cook, scramble the scrambler. Who's the tormentor now?"
Nuclear holocaust, that he looked forward to. The mushroom cloud would make his scrambled brain gourmet. Could the cloud be portabello? Teheran, he should definitely visit, but then again, portabello wasn't likely to be found there. Tokyo was an option too. Irradiated shiitake would be a perfectly acceptable alternative. The steaming Colombian coffee wakened him. He'd make his travel plans later

Increasingly it's been tough to dismiss astrology as a scam as I used to in the past. Is it inconceivable that our lives can be modeled? Arriving at the parameters and the exact form of the model might be a challenge but nevertheless, with robust testing of candidate models possible using the unconditioned probability of the past as a measure of interest, we shouldn't and needn't be wary of proposing near approximations. For the longest time, traditional astrologers have maintained that the movement and position of the stars and the planets control our lives. While I have trouble believing that, it is possible that the position of the stars and planets and our lives have a strong correlation allowing it's use as an indirect indicator. At this point, I even question why it's inconceivable to me that the stars rule our lives. While there isn't direct evidence which proves it, I haven't been show evidence otherwise neither. In such a situation, my rational side should've told me to undecided and not rabidly disbelieving. But such a stance being quite unpopular ...

Any debate on this often times degenerates into presentation of anecdotal evidence for both sides of the argument. All it does is point out flaws in
a) the correlation between the variables or
b) the approximation of the model to the perfect model or
c) application of the model
if one allows for the existence of said model.

All this is one more reason why I have stopped believing that each and every one's life is controlled independently of each other. That would be too simplistic a model, and if life were that simple, the model would have been cracked by now.

More for later.

I know, it's been a long while. But a lot has happened in the interim. For starters, I'm now an excessively proud member of the wheeled population. That means that I now have the ability to buy grocery from places other than the 7-11 next block where the cops regularly harass the Paki manager to clean up gang graffiti from the walls. That I still choose to go back there is moderately puzzling. For a wuss who passionately hates video games, this I guess is as close as I can get to pretending that I don't live in generic suburbia.

My ride was born a few years ago in Bavaria where she was christened BMW 325Ci. This is a pic of her younger sister.


I have a lot to thank this sweet ride for. For one, I'm no longer run the risk of turning into a Mormon and living in Utah. Before you convince yourselves that my brain has finally melted with the excessive intake of ranch dressing, let me explain. The other day I was cycling back from work and had stopped at a traffic light waiting for the light to turn green, which by the way never happens because unless you're the size of a Ford Suburban that takes up more space than Nicaragua, the sensors don't detect anything and I wait for roughly the time needed for a new constellation to be born before the traffic light gods take pity. During this staggeringly boring wait, two kids rode up to me and proceeded to totally hassle me about considering joining the Mormon faith. Since I happen to be a reasonable person, I gave it some thought and finally politely told them to run along and tempt someone else into moving to the freaking desert and enjoying a polygamous lifestyle. No more shall I be subjected to such drivel. Instead I'll contribute to punching bigger holes in the ozone layer.

So it's been 7 weeks since I left home and decided to explore a new life in a new continent. Alright, calling moving to Silicon Valley, "a new life in a new continent" might be a little rich. There are more Indians here than all the little kids in Neverland and all the Catholic churches in the Midwest put together, but one day, when I'm writing my biography, this *will* be an exciting adventure, so screw you guys. Heck, I think I'll throw in a few trolls and midgets in there too to spicen things up. And nuclear fission accidents. Ok, I'll stop now before I pass out with giddy anticipation. "Poetic licence", they call it. Sounds like "Outright Lying" to me, but whatever.

The upside of having so many Indians here is that vegetarianism is no longer a weird thing that only tree hugging hippies indulge in. There was a party of sorts the other day at work and the hot dog stand was serving up, hold on to your seats here, tofu freaking dogs! And tasty as hell it was too which wasn't surprising because generally the food at work has been pretty good. With stuff like quiche (which by the way, rocks beyond belief, and you all know I'm not given to hyperbole), gnocchi and falafels for lunch, I truly can't understand the people who whine about bad food in the cafeteria. Coming back to the vegetarian friendliness, it is almost too much to take. If I were a regular meat loving American, I'd be mighty pissed. It's like Bangalore deciding to go kosher suddenly to please the dozen odd Jewish people there. I know I'd turn raving mad if my favorite darshini started serving kosher dosas with no yeast in the batter during Passover. But I'm not complaining or anything. Just sayin'.

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“How do you like your quasi futuristic suit, Mr Powers” - Dr Evil

I haven’t updated my blog for quite some time now and while it can partially be attributed to laziness and sloth like behavior, for once I do have a series of semi-legitimate reasons. For starters, after spending my entire life in Bangalore, I was preparing the groundwork to uproot my lazy ass from there and move to the other side of the planet.
In one of those moments of sheer stupidity (or hilarity, for them mean folks) which I’ve christened “The cleansing of the Passport”, I had dropped my passport into the washing machine where it dutifully underwent 15 mins of a Regular Cotton cycle before my blood turned ice cold and I fished it out. While the damage wasn’t enough to arouse more than a few “WTF have you been doing with your passport?” looks from airport authorities at San Francisco, Houston, Newark and Bangalore, I didn’t particularly want to test the boundaries of my new found luck and decided to get a dupe issued instead. This involved positively fun activities like getting affidavits notarized, trudging back and forth from the passport office and a visit to the local police station. A swift 6 weeks and 3 visits to the post office later, I scored a smart new passport with a dorky pic.
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Date:	2005-05-23 00:43
Subject:	I’m finally “normal”
Security:	Public
Mood:	chipper
Music:	Benny Benassi - Satisfaction

No one has accused me of being "normal" in my life . Ever.
The CDC did just that last week when my BMI finally dropped below the 25 mark.
The challenge now is to stay normal. If ever there were words I never thought I'd say...

Strap me to a hog and roll me in the mud, I’m buzzed!
My pair of Reeboks which has been faithfully serving as my gym/running shoes for close to 2 years now, had its swansong today.
Its been more than 12 hours since it carried me across the finish line after running the half marathon in the Lipton Bangalore Marathon and I can’t still believe it. For the statistically inclined, it took me all of 2 hours and 25 mins to do the 21.07 kms.
Pushing my body to its limit and beyond has taken its toll. I’m sore all over and my feet has more blisters than J Lo has husbands, but I;m certainly not complaining. Even while training for the run in the past 6-7 weeks, I was never completely confident that I’d last the distance and to actually go ahead and do it is as much a relief as it is exhilirating.
The day started off quite cloudy and that made for some beautiful running weather. Running through the heart of Bangalore with no traffic on the roads was quite surreal. It really did provide an unique opportunity to appreciate how beautiful our city really is. It’s a pity that the powers that be seem hell bent on destroying it.
Getting back to the marathon, watching the Ethiopians blow past us was like watching the Ferraris and the Renaults lap the Minardis. You know they’re operating on a plane that’s light years away when they finish the full marathon in lesser time that it takes you to do the half. Scary stuff. Even imagining sustaining 20 km/h for over 2 hours makes me dizzy.

My sights are now set on completing a full marathon. Lets see how that goes …

Date:	2005-05-05 12:27
Subject:	american idol
Security:	Public
Mood:	chipper
Music:	God Bless the Broken Road - Rascal Flatts

Ashamed as I am to admit I watch the show, I can't help but admire the ability of some of the remaining few.
Bo Bice's cover of the Los (correction: Lobos) Lonely Boys (duh!) song was outstanding and Carrie's "God Blessed the Broken Road" was better than Rascal Flatt's even IMO. I only wish they'd stop the drivel about Bo being a rocker. Yeah, I get the point. I don't need that pummeled into my head every 3 secs.