NOTE: Please read chapters 1-6 before starting on this.
CHAPTER 7- AN INDUCTION INTO THE BLUE FLAMEZ AND THE END OF THE QUARTER
It was also somewhere in the middle of the quarter when a new member was incorporated into the Blue Flamez. This was a bloke called Dwarak. Dwarak had been JD's classmate in 11th and 12th grade in school and JD had mentioned to me that there was this guy who had been in his schoolmate, who he had learned was doing his undergrad in UC Davis. Before going I had often pestered JD to get back in touch with this guy, so that we could learn something about Davis which would help us settle in better, but JD was too hesitant to do that as he had no contact with him all these years and didn't know what kind of a guy he would be. (Dwarak- JD didnt tell u this did he?... if u re reading this... u ll find this interesting).
Only after we were well-settled in Davis, Dwarak got to know through someone that JD was here and he initiated contact and he came down to our place one evening (in fact JD was initially actually apprehensive about this..LOL). He was a cool chap, and we all gelled well instantly. It was evident that he was quite bored of living there without too much Indian company. It is true that you can befriend most Americans easily 'n stuff but for an Indian, such inter-cultural friendships are never the same as two Indians bonding, because of the inherent difference in wavelengths. Our idea of having fun (mostly pulling each other’s legs and teasing each other), the amount of privacy we give each other (practically none as we constantly poke our noses into our friends affairs whether they like it or not) etc are different from the way Americans gel with each other. So when he saw five Indians similar to him, I was not surprised about how delighted he was.
Now, though we gelled well instantly perhaps unsurprisingly, it is a little odd that we (JD, Dwarak 'n I) hung out at the place we did (that was one of the two places I planned to go in the US before I had to come back to India) on our second day of acquaintance. Lol… funny thinking about it in hindsight. (sorry folks....cant expand on it further due to sensitivity issues...).
We also went to the Imax in Sacramento to watch Dark Knight and I can undoubtedly say that it was my best experience in a theatre. I had never been to an Imax in my life and what better to watch there than “The Dark night”. The screen was MAAAASSSSIVE. The sound effects were mind-blowing. Literally. In the scene where Batman is on top of a skyscraper in Hong Kong and looks down into the night, I got goose bumps on seeing the realism. The 3D effect was so realistic that I actually felt like I was a hundred storeys above the ground. The scenes are made especially for imax audiences by shooting the same scene from different cameras at different angles and putting them together to form a 3D effect. It was phenomenally done. The scene where Batman chases the Joker on his bat-mobile and later his bike gave me the shivers. It was like really being on the streets watching it. JD and I had our eyes glued to the screen with disbelief and we actually jumped out of our seats in one scene where the Joker breaks a window pane by throwing something, we looked at each other agreeing on how amazingly realistic and spine-chilling it was and then we turn to Dwarak and there he is slouching on his comfortable seat, asleep, almost snoring. We didn’t know how to react. We were just watching the most inspiring thing on screen and here was a guy not bothered about what was going on. Shaking our head in disbelief, we focused back on the movie. It may be true that he had watched movies on the imax before unlike us, but hey who can sleep through a movie like The dark Knight and that too in an imax theare. Bah. Anyway… Soon, Dwarak alias Val (lol...my hand itches to narrate an incident that was to happen in mid February involving JD 'n our dear Val but again sensitivity issues, so just a reference) hung out with us five most of the time after that.
It was almost the end of the quarter and exams were fast approaching. I was looking forward to these exams as they were open-book, which was a concept I loved and thought I would revel in. My main problem through my whole life has been remembering stuff, necessary to answer questions in exams. I have always felt unmotivated to remember stuff which can be looked up in books and thus got a mental block to memorize such stuff, but exams in India test just that- your ability to remember stuff. Even in places where you have to use your brain to figure out stuff, there is some basic fundamentals that you should memorize and not just understand. My problem was that though I was really good at understanding stuff and applying them, I wouldn’t remember the basic stuff needed to apply in exams. But here, exams being open-book, I could take my books and notes and so I wouldn’t have to bother memorizing and I just had to know what’s where to refer them and apply them to answer questions. And as expected, I loved giving those exams and did well in them, thereby raising my subject grades.
The last couple of weeks of the quarter at home were spent in planning where we'd be travelling in the 20 day winter break. All five of us were enthusiastic travelers and didn’t want to go back to India without seeing the main attractions of California after having been there for 7 months. And no trip to California would be complete without visiting Southern Cal which is where all the fun- the beaches, the glamour etc- is. So we took a resolution to go south for a few days. After a lot of research (each of us must’ve spent at least 10 hrs each the last two weeks of the quarter I guess), we laid out a draft and discussed among ourselves and made a plan. We decided to rent a car for a few days and drive down. MS volunteered to drive and we had confidence in his driving as he has driven lots in India and driving in the US was a piece of cake when compared to India. There were no slow-moving vehicles to look out for; there were not many pedestrians who would dive across to cross the road; there was no need to change gears in the car as it was all automatic; there were no bumpy roads. To sum up, it was very predictable, which makes driving very convenient. Though I had an Indian license, I wasn’t confident enough to drive as I hadn’t driven as much as MS had in India, and so he bore the responsibility of chauffeuring us.
Once we were confident we had the means to get there, the rest of the pieces fell in place. We listed out the places we should visit- and three cities came into the reckoning- Los Angeles, San Diego and Las Vegas. LA was a place we were going to go to for sure, as it was the entertainment capital of the world and when someone thinks of California, LA is the first thing that comes into mind, with Hollywood, Universal studios, Disneyland all in LA. So with LA fixed, we had a tossup between SD and LV, as they were in different directions- we had to head east from LA to get to LV and head south to SD. After a lot of deliberation, we decided to go to SD, as LV wouldn’t be a great place to visit for 3 of us (JD, JB and me) as we were under 21 yrs old and so entry would be restricted into casinos and other aah....attractions of LV. So we took a decision to go to SD, as it was a wonderful place of nature, with its amazing beaches, huge wildlife park, SeaWorld etc.
We checked the prices of tickets online at each of these places and finally got a California adventure pass online, with which we could visit most of the places on our list at the cheapest deal. Then, we checked out how to get to each of those places, using Google maps, took loads of printouts, wrote down loads of directions and addresses and planned our whole itinerary. We made reservations at hotels where we could get the best deal- Best Western in Anaheim (near LA, right beside Disneyland where we decided to stay to visit LA) and Holiday Inn at San Diego. We booked a luxury car (Chrysler 300) at Enterprise in Davis. Car rental was so cheap and fuel prices were dirt cheap too. It all worked out quite affordable for all of us as we were 5 and all the bills got split by 5 thereby making it cheap. We even took some rice and our cooker so that we could have free food once or twice during out 8 day trip. :D That’s how well-planned we were.
(TO BE CONTINUED... NEXT POST THURSDAY, 3rd SEP) [I am totally looking forward to writing the next few posts as it is about the best 6-7 days of my life]
