A trip to CA... (Jul 4th, 2010)

Again trying to dig into a few old and sweet memories before letting them escape. So, jotting down in April 2012.

This is by far the most enjoyable trip. After learning my lessons from the 'Trip to Orlando', I understood that more than the place, the people make the trip memorable and have decided to choose my travelers carefully.

This time I was invited by one of my very few best friends. Praveen to visit CA since it was about 2 years since we last met.

To give you a brief intro about Praveen, he was my school mate where I knew him as an acquaintance and was one among many friends. But, our friendship grew as we lived in the same neighborhood and both of us joined CBIT in different departments. He slowly became my friend, philosopher and guide. Soon, we spent almost all our free times together, traveled together to college (almost 4 hrs a day), prepared for competitive exams CAT, GRE, TOEFL together, used to play cricket and soccer in the corridors, ping-pong on dining tables, infact we played chess together and defeated the computer for the first time, which built so much confidence in me that I ended up playing for the college team in a few months. I knew him inside out and so did he.

Now, getting an invite from him to visit CA was irresistible and I knew that we belong to the same psychological frequencies and so would not face any issues I faced in my last trip to Orlando. I happily accepted the trip to CA.

Luckily, for the first time, my flight was on time and I reached Los Angeles. Praveen along with three of his friends drove all the way from Tempe, AZ to Los Angeles and picked me up from the airport. We all then drove to Six Flags Magic Mountain Park. Bought our tickets using some student discounts and employee discounts and then the adventure begins......Rides and Roller Coasters all along....

We covered all the MAX thrill rides which meant the scariest ones. However, the most precarious one was Goliath. It takes us about 300 feet high and drops us a speed of 85 mph into a tunnel 120 ft below ground level. Its ferocity multiplies as the harness is only at the abdomen and not for the torso.

After finishing the day with rides, the special attraction of the Magic Mountain awaited us, 'X2'. We had to stand in the queue for almost 2 hours but the anxiousness coupled with few kissing couples and other mundane surroundings passed the time. Its strange that South Indians have to make an analogy with Tirumala whenever a queue of such magnitude is visible :)

The ride lived up to its expectations which states, "State-of-the-art visual, audio, and sensory effects move X from the 4th dimension to the 5th as it transforms into X2!".


We drove to Long Beach after the adventurous day. Closing the eyes in the car meant sitting back on a roller coaster again. We had a quick dinner and stopped at Long Beach. My junior from CBIT provided us accommodation and we troubled them late in the night as it was close to midnight by the time we reached their place. We slept over and then started for the new day of adventure.

We started for the Malibu temple located in the Santa Monica mountains. The temple was beautiful and the scenery was mind blowing.

We then visited the Santa Monica Beach and drove all the way to San Diego and retired for the day.

The new day started with Sea World and all that I missed in Orlando's Sea World was covered here. The  Killer Whale Shamu as always stole the show and the act by Dolphins was no less.

After Sea world, we decided to have more fun as there was some time left for sunset. So, we decided to try out jet-skiing and here starts the adventure.

I and Praveen rented out a jet-ski and started out in the middle of the Pacific ocean. There were lot of weeds in the ocean and we were told that we might need to get into the water and remove the weed from under the ski if it gets in. Praveen started riding it and I was with him in the pillion seat. After few minutes, the weed got in and I was too scared to get into the water with my bare minimum swimming skills. With no choice left, Praveen himself got into the water and removed the weeds and got back. After a few minutes, he was riding close to 40 mph and sitting back with the waves of the Pacific ocean, I had no choice but to hold him. Suddenly, his hands slipped from the handle and both of us flew into the ocean with me having no idea about what was happening. Before, I could sense anything I was atleast 2 meters under water and for a split second was wondering if I would float and live or drown and die. The life vest was good enough to help me float and I swam to the jet ski and got onto it. I did not get a hang of the jet ski as I was going in circles and creating a whirlpool around us (However, I mastered it back in Austin and now ride at speeds no less than the max. possible speed a jet ski can withstand - 55 to 60 mph).

After the adventurous day, the next day was meant for Universal Studios. We reached early and visited most of the rides before the crowd started building up. The main attractions were the hollywood sets and an act made by TV actors (snaps below). The act looked so realistic and with no 2nd takes. It was a fitting finale.

I bid my adios to the beautiful city and my friends and left for the mundane week ahead.

The best part of the trip was that we were five people and still punctual enough to leave the hotel rooms between 6 to 8 AM. This was by far the best vacation I had ever spent.

A memorial day trip to Orlando (2010)

Yes, I visited Orlando in 2010 but jotting it down in April of 2012. A test to my memory but better do it now before it vanishes completely into thin air...

After struggling through my Masters and not having stepped out of Texas, I was eager to visit some darn place and was just waiting for an invitation from someone to tag along. During these moments, Sharath, my friend from CBIT, asked me to join him for a trip to Orlando during the memorial day weekend. I was excited but all the excitement was shortlived looking at the ticket fares. It was just two days before memorial day and the price of the air fare was more than half the fare to India. It took him some convincing from my friend and finally I chose happiness over $$$.

The plan was laid out and the places to visit were discussed. I must say, Sharath did a good job digging out  craigslist to find entry tickets to theme parks for half the price and with zero risk as we had the option of paying the vendor after the entry into the themepark.

Now its time to go!!! Yay!!! But......

Nothing unusual, god always tests my patience, the flight was delayed by close to five hours which means one day out of the 2.5 days trip is already lost :-(

Accepting the fate, I took the flight and reached at about 6:30 PM in Orlando. Sharath along with his room mate drove from Jacksonville in Florida. They picked me up at Orlando and we all drove to the Sea World. The first place, they took me was to a roller coaster known as "Manta". If you speak Telugu then you know what it means :D. The closest I've been to a roller coaster till date was the 'Merry Columbus' ship in India. It sways up and down along its center to emulate riding on huge waves. Anyway, back to 'Manta', this one is in a completely different league. It overturns the chairs into a 90 degree angle such that your face faces the floor and then rides along the loopy, curvy and topsy-turvy path. After successfully finishing the ride, we moved along to a Shamu show. The killer whale is a show stealer. Calling it a day, we moved to a restaurant and had a sumptuous meal and there is the first surprise in store for me.

As I haven't traveled much, its imperative that I am a bad planner. I just learnt that we did not have a place to stay. So, after some inquiries in the restaurant, we were given an address which supposedly would be our place to stay. However, the GPS asks us to take an exit left of the freeway where there isn't one and we tried and tried to fish the address resulting in going through the same path for six times before giving up and then moved to a different place and parked our car and started doing Market Research at 1 AM in the night to find the cheapest and decent place which can accommodate three of us.
We found one and our hero Sharath started driving on the left side of a road with a huge median. Luckily, since it was mid-night we escaped unscathed. He just drove into the nearest driveway when I mentioned it to him coolly that he was driving on the left side of the road.

We slept, got up a little late and then had to go to Walmart and buy few things and then had a quick breakfast. It was already 12 noon and my impatience was rising by the minute as the money paid at the theme park was not being optimized/utilized to the maximum. It started raining and we also realized that we did not have print outs of the entry tickets but have them in the email. After trying and trying, and the nearest fedex being few miles away, we decided to try it with the barcode numbers.

We parked our car and went in with the barcode numbers and they were accepted. Finally, it was 2PM by the time we entered the "Island of Adeventure", a theme park of universal. It was a day of exotic rides. We pretty much tried every single scary ride after buying the gold pass we could skip most of the lines. After having fun, we returned to our parking space thinking about the plans for the night. We then realized the 2nd surprise in store for us.

We forgot the place where we parked our car in the confusion and anxiousness of working the tickets with barcode numbers instead of the print outs. After trying to fish around for more than 30 minutes, we asked a parking attendant and he was kind enough to help us by asking the time when we entered the park and then directing us to the lot where we have parked the car.

We then watched a movie and returned to our base after another sumptuous dinner. Now at about 11 PM, Sharath wanted to go to a Beach which is about 80 miles away from Orlando. His room-mate nicely scrapped the idea and returned to bed. However, the typical me who wants to extract the maximum out of anything nodded but then was skeptical looking at the secondary plans he had. However, looking at his reaction, I agreed and after driving for about 40 miles, we realized it would be stupid to try this out and our plans next day would be ruined on executing this impromptu. Hence, we decided to turn back.

As usual, we woke up late and Sharath always makes sure he would be last to wake up such that he can get the maximum amount of sleep. I knew him from the college days, he was my roomie during our North India tour.

It was about 12:30 PM by the time we entered 'EPCOT', a theme park in Disney. I was really furious by this time as I have a flight to catch at 4:30 PM and the entry ticket is close to $100, which means I just had close to three hours. This invigorated a petty argument between me and Sharath and it was kind of him to ask me what he needs to do now even amidst the argument. Not knowing what to ask, I asked him to reduce the time on photography and try to cover the utmost possible. He agreed and we tried out our best to cover the majority of the theme park but definitely not the entire park.

He then dropped me at the airport and I flew back to Austin with some good memories and an unforgivable argument being the scar of the tour.

The lesson learnt is that we were people of two different attitudes, one carefree and the other always  looking for 'bang for the buck'. It takes just a moment of uncontrollable emotion to scar a beautiful and memorable trip.

After a 21 month exile...

After reading a blog on the web, there was an urge in me to read certain posts in my blog due to the similarity of thoughts in both the blogs. After reading mu blog, I must admit that I felt an air of immaturity surrounding my writings eventhough I know that the thoughts were mature enough, they were just not emulated well into words.

The eyes of optimism anyway tell me that there is a remarkable improvement in my thought pattern and writing abilities  as I feel I can express better :P.

So let me take a stab at it and here goes my first post after a 21 month exile....

What did I do in these 21 months and what changes have been brought to fore ?

This would be an awfully big post and would not be appropriate to answer in a single post, so will split it up into a few posts but to give a snapshot,

Got into HSBC, moved to Chicago, visited Miami, Keywest, Yellowstone and made some new friends, drove all the way to Niagara Falls from Chicago during the night and drove back to Chicago via Pittsburgh Venkatachalam temple with four other friends.

So, to summarize there was an all round improvement in career, personality and enjoyment.

A monk or a monarch!!!

A monk or a monarch - who is happier??

This is the million dollar question that I went through during different phases of my life.

The middle class family status in India is probably the worst as they try to induce themselves into the life style of someone who they aren't. Being born and brought up in such a middle-class family, I always had a burning desire to breakthrough into the riches and affluence. I even had some crazy ideas of becoming the richest man in the world reflecting on the hindi proverb - Khayalon mein khami kyun- What's the need to show misery in dreams?

So, where is the end of this story? - A richer man wants to get more and more richer and a king might want to occupy more lands and expand his kingdom and fame. As an example, entire India was under Ashoka's rule except for a small kingdom named Kalinga. But, Ashoka did not want to spare even that. So, if we assume that the riches would make a person happy then the happiness is very intermittent and would always replace itself with a new desire.

On the other extremity, a saint who renounces all the worldly pleasures and is just happy to spend all his life for the search of god, the eternal bliss or the ultimate aura has nothing to accomplish, nothing to prove to the world. Is this guy really happy? We have seen the likes of Ashoka and Siddhartha (Buddha) who turned into saints from royal origins but I cannot recollect a saint turning into a kings. So, did these great people realize something to renounce everything they had? Did they actually evolve? or is it just that they could not accomplish to become a monarch? I guess we would never know.

I personally feel that the monk is more happier and his life is more fuller than that of a monarch. However, its one such question which might not have an answer.

Eat, Pray, and Love

A good read especially when I am on my own spiritual search. The author after being devastated by her divorce searches for her inner-self and her identity by trying to connect herself with a bit of fun and a bit of spirituality in Italy, India, and Indonesia. Time and change of place heals all wounds.

Some good quotes from this book were:

"The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We get seduced by our own mantras(I’m a failure . . . I’m lonely . . . I’m a failure . . . I’m lonely . . .) and we become monuments to them."

I went through this phase when I used to call myself lonely as well as failure, may be to motivate my ownself  towards success, but the idea definitely back fired causing me pain and sadness. However, I transformed just by adjusting my thinking to 'I'm lucky and I'm happy'. Just by doing this small adjustment, I am able to find happiness in loneliness and now regard loneliness as an opportunity to learn and do things without wasting the time away.

Obviously, there are infinite things to learn and do and I now see loneliness as an opportunity to learn and live all my childhood fantasies.

 

 

 ‎"It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else’s life with perfection."

In life, we often compare ourselves with others and get ready to trade our life with others who are doing better than us. But, if we are seeking someone's life then we always look at the brighter side of their life and often ignore the flip side denoting the sacrifices the person has to make. Its needless to say that we loose our own identity in doing so and every person has his/her own identity in their own way. 

But without comparison one cannot assess if he is progressing or regressing in his career. Therefore, comparison is essential. So there needs to be a change in the elements that are being compared. So, rather than comparing  with others, comparing ourselves on a time line would help in assessing the path on which one is traveling. 

Comparing one with another is analogous to comparing horses with mules and it only makes the mule sad that it cannot be a horse or it makes the horse proud that its not a mule. A mule would apparently love to trade life with a horse but would just torture itself performing the role of a horse.

Also, comparing a stick with a bigger one would dishearten it whereas comparing a stick with a smaller one would induce pride. Both of them are equally preposterous.