CHAPTER 20- THINGS I OVERLOOKED (GUEST WRITER WANTED)

CHAPTER 20- THINGS I OVERLOOKED (GUEST WRITER WANTED)

Initially, I planned to write in this post, all the stuff that I had missed writing about in my previous 19 posts and were pointed out to be by comments from people or stuff I remembered later. But, seeing how big the previous posts have been, it would be an onerous task for me to go through all the posts again and all its comments and write a huge post. And so I am chucking this post...
UNLESS.....
........
ONE OF THE GUYS WHO WERE WITH ME AND WENT THROUGH WHAT I WENT THROUGH (JB, MS, AZ 'n JD) WANT TO WRITE THIS POST.
So guys, if any of you are jobless enough to fill up this space, you re totally welcome. It would be good to have a guest writer in the final post in the series too.

SIGNING OFF,
AJAY

CHAPTER 19- SOME GOOD NEWS, NOSTALGIA AT BERKELEY AND THE END OF THE TRIP

CHAPTER 19- SOME GOOD NEWS, NOSTALGIA AT BERKELEY AND THE END OF THE TRIP

It was in the middle of the quarter that I got an amazing piece of news- my first admit for grad school- at UC Davis. I had got a rejects from a couple of big guns I had applied to, Princeton, UC San Diego and so I was quite anxious about whether I would get any admits. And I had ambitiously put in my application for a Phd at UC Davis, which is generally more selective than a masters.

One evening, when I was shopping, Varun called me and told me that he had got a mail from UC Davis for the Phd that he had also applied to. I was happy for him, but was sure mine wouldn’t have come as his profile was way better than mine and it is only fair that he gets his admit before mine. I went home and checked my mail to find nothing new, and as rejects always come a few days after the admits, I thought my aspirations at UCD was over.

Then after an hour of brooding, I suddenly got a hunch that I should check my spam, and voila, there was a message from the UCD CS dept. I opened the mail and realized this was an admit letter. I was stunned. I didn’t really believe it until JB read it for me and confirmed that it was indeed an admit to the Phd. I was relieved more than anything else. I knew that I, at least,, had a choice to decide what I wanted to do for my career when it is time. I spent a couple of hours on the phone letting people close to me know about it and then went to bed and got up a different man, with no pressure on me.

I enjoyed the rest of the quarter without too many qualms even if some minor glitches came in the way as I knew I had the big fish. And so, now that I had that choice between working in India and pursuing my Phd in UC Davis and pursuing my masters in either UC Irvine or Oregon state university, I decided in favor of UC Davis and so am back here and quite happy.

I also squeezed in a trip to Berkeley towards the end of the quarter, for a day mainly to meet my cousin who studies at UC Berkeley and collect some stuff my mom had given for me through him, as he had come from India only a couple of weeks ago. Varun accompanied me for that, and we took a shuttle which runs between UCD and UCB early in the morning. In an hour, we entered Berkeley and saw it was a wonderful scenic place.

We got down and decided to explore the town first. We went into a bookstore, which had the largest collection of old books I have ever seen or imagined. I doubt if a museum would have such a collection. There were many rare and coveted ones, some quite controversial and therefore unpredictable. We spoke to the owner, an old man of 90 years and he told us that he had spent all his life collecting these and he even knew what books he had and which shelves it was on. Remarkable, considering that there were at least a 100000 books there. We went around the shelves and some were so old that in a few years from now the paper may start disintegrating. The whole smell of the place and the history associated with it really impressed avid book enthusiasts like me and Varun.

We then walked further in the town to get to a street, which was like mini- India. There were at least 20 restaurants, 5 saree and Indian clothing shops, lots of Indian supermarkets etc. We felt so much at home. So nostalgic.

It had been months since we had proper Indian food, and so with no worry about the prices, we ate thrice that day. The chole bature in the morning, the biriyani in the afternoon and the chaat in the evening may well be my happiest meals in my life considering how much I had missed such food and I got an opportunity to have it unexpectedly. I licked my plate clean each time, not even leaving any work for the dishwashers.

Then we walked further and further and explored the whole town. We must have walked about 10 miles there and went to parts of the town to which my cousin later disclosed he hasn’t been to in his 6 months of dwelling there. We also did some shopping at a place to fulfil the second of the two places I had aimed to visit while coming to the US (I had visited the first with JD and D-dub in Sacramento). After all this and many a buck spent, I met my cousin and took the evening shuttle back to Davis.

Soon, it was the end of the quarter and we were done with our exams. I was rather disappointed at how the course on visualization I had taken, turned out for me, but I was at a stage where I was starting to get homesick and the fact that I was going back home in a few days cheered me up loads and kept me going. Soon it was time to pack and we had to vacate our apartment a couple of days before our flight because the GSP people insisted and so the five of us spent about 15 hours each over a course of two days to clean the whole apartment, including the carpets and walls and shelves and toilets and get it ready for presentation. Though we did a commendable job, it wasn’t good enough for a certain suddenly hostile GSP staff.

So slightly upset, we said goodbye to #116, our wonderful home for the past 7 months which has given us many memories to cherish and went with our luggage to Dwarak’s place, where we were going to be put up till we left for our flight. We had a lot of fun there, especially playing FIFA 09 on his Xbox. Thanks for being a great host, D-dub.

Cherishing those memories, we left for the San Francisco airport on the morning of the 26^rd of March, bidding farewell to Dwarak and boarded our flight.

At the Hong Kong airport, on the transit, we had to wait in queue for boarding the next flight and we realized that people were pushing past us to get to the door first while we were socially giving way like a person in Davis would. We realized we were back in the big bad world of again and we needed to get back to our selfish selves to survive in this competitive Asian world. And so with no further delay, we blended into the crowd pushing other out of our way. It was a good feeling to feel right doing that in some ways. It took us some time, after a couple of embarrassing situations to realize we shouldn’t be commenting about our co-passengers in tamil as it is quite probable that they may understand the language. It was going to take some time getting used to some things in India again. But I was looking forward to it.

We arrived at the Chennai airport with no glitches and after checking out my luggage, bid farewell to the others for now and was delighted to see my parents after a very long time. We had a lot to talk about. And a lot to not talk about too :D . Only then I realized how much I had been missing them. All this time while I had been in Davis, I had I never felt homesick which I guess is due to my good fortune that I had such good friends there. I thank you all, who have influenced my life, in any way, as I like how it has turned out till now.

Epilogue:

It was a great feeling to be back in India but not so great a feeling to be back in SRM as far as academics were concerned. It sucked to be back in the system where you cannot question anything and take things at face value and memorize stuff instead of understanding it conceptually to get marks in “exams”. I had to unlearn the system of learning I experienced in Davis and get back to the degradatory folds of the SRM education system. Worse, I had to put up with the politics and all the other crap that was dished out to us. But now that I have come past all that, and passed out successfully after graduation, I can say I have no regrets and I can look forward to what’s coming.

P.S: this started as a blog post which I thought I could complete in a couple of thousand words and publish at once, but as it went on I realized I had so much to say. So I decided to type it all as I remember it, omitting no non-sensitive important detail, with no worries about the size. I am quite shocked to see that THIS is the 31645^th word that I am typing and the 19^th blog post that I am posting . And I shall end it here!!!

THE END!!!

THAT'S ALL FOLKS!!!

MY EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA : Chapter 12

Sorry about the delay in posting.... Getting too busy here to even spend sometime posting this... I ll try to do it every Saturday from now...

CHAPTER 12- SEAWORLD AND THE JOURNEY BACK TO DAVIS

The next morning, we woke up well on time with no antics on our part and got ready half an hour before the planned 9 am start. We were to go to Sea-world, and we were transformed into those adventure seeking active tourists again after a couple of nights of relaxation in San Diego. We went for a couple of water rides first and then checked out the underground aquarium and the penguin display where there were so many amazing cute looking penguins.

We then went for the main attraction of the place. The Shamu show! Shamu was a killer whale, who would perform stunts for the audience. We went to the huge stadium, which semicircular, with a water-pool in the middle and about 200 rows of seats. It could house a thousand people easily. We went to sit in the around the fortieth row, when someone told us we should consider going a little further back if we didn’t want to get wet. Our eyes twinkled and we did get up and leave those seats to go to the second row to sit on the least-coveted seats with our grins reading “Bring it on!”. It was surprising that there were not more than a handful of adventurous people in the first few rows , so we got to sit comfortably. The gallery filled up and the trainers came out and announced that the people in the first few rows should be really prepared to get wetter that they might have ever been in their lives. That turned us on more and we stay put. People around us were buying raincoats and ponchos to protect them from the torrents, but we stay put braving anything that was to come our way.

Then Shamu came out. He was huuuuuge but looked so adorable. About 30 humans could fit inside his mouth comfortably and to see him close up from our seats was awesome. He came near us and waved to the audience. Imagine a killer whale waving to you. And one which looked so adorable, with his black color with white patches and what I could have sworn was a grin on his face. Even the most cold hearted soul would be moved by its awesome sight. The trainers hugged him and I felt I could give anything to be in their position. Getting a hug from a killer whale. Fancy that.

Then one of the trainers got on his back and he went around the pool, with such amazing speed that left us gaping. It looked so majestic to see a whale swim up close. He jumped in the middle of the pool to such a height that the people at the hundredth row might have seen him in their horizontal line of sight. It looked so awesome to watch him do that. Each time, he landed, due to a certain Archimedes principle, water splashed on us and we were soon dripping wet. It was pretty cold that day and so we had no way of knowing whether the goose pimples we got were attributed to the cold or that splendorous show we were witnessing.

And then the trainers announced on the mike that it was time for us all to get wet. We looked at each other, thinking if the mess we were in currently was not wet then what would be. We soon found the answer to that. Shamu came near us and put his fin into the water and threw what would have been a thousand litres of water, with such an amazing force that when it hit us square in the face when we were least expecting it, it stung us and threw us backwards into our seats. We looked back to notice water pouring into people sitting as long as a hundred rows back. You would have to be on the last row and equipped with a poncho to stay dry. I have experienced drizzles, showers, downpours and even torrents of water but this was something way beyond all that. It felt like a pump from a fire engine was hosing us, albeit in short spurts. We negotiated the spurts which followed better, by getting into a shell as the water splashed, as we didn’t underestimate its force anymore. At the end of the show, we had learned what the definition of getting wet was, the hard way. It is not poetically that I am describing that we got wetter that one could while taking a bath; believe me I experienced it.

We were drenched to the skin and shivering in the cold breeze the rest of the afternoon, but we didn’t complain because the spectacle we had witnessed was worth a little discomfort. We then went for the dolphin show, which was also really grand. We sat further back this time though, not wanting to get any wetter than we already were. There were about 10 dolphins in the pool and we watched with awe as they jumped through hoops and touched flags placed as high as 50 metres in the air. To think these little things, not more than 6 feet in length could jump to 20 times their height was stunning. And they looked really cute too.

At the end of the show, we went to the dolphin feeding centre where each of us were allowed to go up to the pool and a dolphin would come to us and greet us by shaking our hand with its amazingly soft fin and then jump for us a few times and even get on its back and wave at us. It was soo soo adorable to watch them do all that. I was transfixed when I noticed it was opening its mouth wide and I threw the, rather disgustingly stinking, fish in my hand into its mouth on the instructions of a representative. It jumped up and caught the fish and feasted upon it and jumped up a couple of times as if thanking me for the food and swam away backwards while waving its fin at me as if bidding farewell. I was so moved by its adorable actions that I could have cried right there. I added a dolphin to the now fast-growing wish-list of the animals I wished to have as pets. Let me see- a polar bear, a panda, a killer whale and now a dolphin among many others.

We then went to watch the sea lion and walrus show, which was a themed comical skit with the animals running around a stage ship with people and balancing balls etc. The show was quite hilarious and we enjoyed every minute of it.

By the time the show ended it was dark already and after getting a couple more souvenirs, we drove back to the hotel and had dinner and went to bed thoroughly satisfied with the day and our trip in whole, which was just about over.

We got up the next morning and break-fasted and realized we were really far from home. About 600 miles. We had one long drive back and we started at about 10 am. We went to the San diego beaches on the way and spent some time playing soccer and I got a chance to ride a jet ski there. It was really amazing. To go at 40 mph in water, and wherever you look around you see no land, it is quite scary. Each time the ski hit the surface of the water while going at 30+ mph, there was an amazing jerk. It was an awesome experience.

We had an uneventful journey back, thanks to MS’s safe driving but we were really slowed down by the trademark traffic out of LA, which went all the way to San Francisco. Guess southerners were going north for Christmas. It seemed like being back in India, with cars in all directions. For about 4 hours we were inching (by US freeway terms it is inching) on at 40 mph.Also near the bay area, there was a great amount of fog and we the visibility was not more than a few metres. It is a scary feeling to know that you are travelling more than 20 metres each second and you cannot see more than the next ten metres. You just had to pray there wasn’t some stranded vehicle or a broken road just ahead of us, as there would be no reaction time to do anything even as soon as we see it. We stopped in resting places, off the freeway, 3-4 times so that we wouldn’t tire. We some some frosted ice and snow too at one of the resting places- the onset of winter was quite clear.

I have to mention the organization of US roadways is really brilliant. The Interstate freeway connects states and the roads are 8 lane. Whenever some city comes up along the way, or there is a bunch of shops off the road, an exit comes up which takes all the traffic away from the freeway and then branches off to different points so that the freeway cruisers are not affected by cars turning left or right from the freeway itself to go to their destinations. Admiring the effectiveness of the system, we travelled for close to 16 hours on the road and reached Davis at about 1 am. We took turns to sleep in the car and the person who was awake would be MS’s cartographer and companion. It was a brave effort by the equally tired MS to keep his concentration and drive safely.

Once we reached home, we hit the bed right away and it was the worst feeling to get up as early as 8 am next morning to return the rented car, but if we didn’t do it, we would have to pay another day’s rent and I volunteered to accompany MS to Enterprise to do that. Once we came back, I went to bed again and the best part of the next 3 days was spent sleeping, resting our physically and mentally exhausted selves. AZ left for Seattle to visit his sis and it was the four of us again for some time.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

MY EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA : Chapter 10

SPOILER ALERT: If you ever plan to visit Universal studios in the near future, you would be advised to skip reading this post because I have described a few of its rides. It would spoil the suspense if you knew about the rides before you embarked on them.

CHAPTER 10: UNIVERSAL STUDIOS

We were really tired after the last two grueling days, where we would’ve walked at least 15 miles in total, but then we were really excited to go to the parts of LA that everyone knows about- Hollywood. We breakfasted in the hotel and drove into LA in its heavy morning rush hour traffic, further compounded by the rain pouring down.

We got to Universal studios in an hour and entered inside. The weather was pretty gloomy and that cheerfulness of Disneyland wasn’t quite there in Universal studious but there was plenty to look forward to.

We first went to the horror house, which we realized we would find silly if we don’t act scared and get into it, which is the mistake we did in Disneyland and so found it lame. Sometimes, when you convince your mind something is going to be a particular way, then however it actually is, your mind would look at it from angles to make it appear the way you convinced yourself it would look. And this strategy worked, and we enjoyed it a lot as we found quite a few things scary. Mummies, and ghouls, and ghosts, and banshees, and Frankensteins and so many other creatures tried to scare us all and the way the five of us ran from them and pushed and jumped into each other, reminded me of Scooby doo and his pals.

Then we went to the Jurassic park ride. It was a rollercoaster through Jurassic with many dinosaurs popping up at the sides. They were quite realistic and their roars were quite scary. But nothing could have prepared us for the final part where the cart went to a height and we were going to plummet into water and as we were going down with full speed, a tyrannosaurus appeared out of the water and opened its mouth wide and we just went scraping the dinosaur. That was pretty thrilling.

Then we went to the Mummy ride, which was a 4D ride in some ways. It was again a rollercoaster ride, where we travelled through many a dark cave and seeing mummies and sphinxes popping up. Finally the cart stopped abruptly at one point and when our eyes got adjusted to the darkness, we saw that we were confronted by a cave wall in front. Then suddenly the wall opened and we could see a lot of rats scram out (a la Mummy movie). Just at the point where they should’ve been under our carts, we could suddenly get a ticklish feeling on our feet as if rats were really going past us. It was an eerie feeling, and being the reptile-phobic person that I am, I almost squealed and tried to force their legs upwards. Then suddenly the wall closed and our cart went backwards full speed, retracing the path it had taken to get there. That was really unique, as it was the first rollercoaster that I had been on which went backwards. After a lot of screaming, we got out of the cart dizzy.

Then we went to the ride, which when I think about still gives me the goose bumps. Those 5 minutes on that ride would undoubtedly be the best 5 minutes in my life. That was the Simpsons ride! I wasn’t looking to the ride as much because I was not exactly the biggest Simpsons fan around. That would be JB. He was a huge Simpsons freak, who has been following the series for over 10 years (I guess he started watching it when he was about 10 before which he used to watch only BAYWATCH as a kid… what an innocent kid!!!). He was as thrilled at seeing the ride as I would be if I were at Old Trafford watching Manchester United play. So we went in and sat on a small cart, which accommodated 8 people in two rows. Suddenly everything around us became dark and what happened after that cannot be described by words. You have to be there to know the feeling. I’ll try to put it into words though. Suddenly the world around us transformed into Krustyland. We could see tracks on which our cart stood and there were so many Simpsons characters around us in 3D. I was sure if I jumped out of the cart I could touch them but when I peeped out of the cart, I could see that the tracks our cart was on was high above the ground. I sat back into my seat securely, not knowing how long I would be plummeting if I fell. Suddenly the cart started moving, and it took us through Krustyland, where many characters like Bart, Homer, Apu interacted with us at different junctures. Suddenly Krusty came to the track ahead of us and blew up a part of it and our cart plummeted to the ground for a few seconds before another track caught us and we continued. It was so realistic that I really felt like a character in Krustyland. Our cart stopped and it became dark again and only when the lights were switched on, I realized we were actually on a ride in Universal studios.

I studied the surroundings and the cart and realization dawned upon us that we had actually been sitting on a stable cart which could just rotate 360 degrees. The walls, floor, ceiling were actually massive screens on which images of Krustyland would be projected. Tracks would be projected to the floor to make it appear to us as if our cart was on the track and the whole picture was moving backward to make it appear as if we are moving forward. When we plummeted down, our cart would have rotated 90 degrees towards the floor. The whole thing was so well coordinated that we totally fell for it. I knew about tears of joy and tears of sorrow but at that moment what tears of disbelief meant when it formed in my eyes. I was goose-pimpled from head to toe. It was such cutting-edge virtual reality that the name virtual reality is demeaning to describe it- it was REAL.

It took us a few minutes to recover from the shock of having experienced such a wonderful ride. We then went outside and posed for pictures with the whole Simpsons family. JB was almost in tears at the end of all this. I was quite overwhelmed too, not being a big follower of the show, so I don’t blame him.

Then we grabbed some lunch and went to the terminator 4D show. It was a reenactment of terminator scenes, with an Arnold-lookalike riding a huge bike and carrying guns and blowing up the bad guys et al. It was rather disappointing. Then we went to the Shrek 4D show, which was really cool. We were given 3D glasses and we followed the 3D Shrek and his comrades on their adventures on screen, only that when it rained on the screen, water fell on us etc. That’s why it was called 4D.

We also went for a guided tour of Universal studios where we were taken through lots of sets used in real Hollywood films. We were shown a real film simulation of car explosions, of artificial floods etc. It was a great experience.

Sets from the movie "Psycho"

A car used in the movie "Animal House" "Psycho" moving with his dagger

SETS FROM "THE FAST AND FURIOUS"

SIMULATION OF AN EXPLOSION IN THE MOVIE

SETS FROM "JAWS"

SIMULATION OF A RAIN AND A FLOOD

A BOEING CRASH SET

After that, JD and I got our caricatures made by a couple of artists there. It came out pretty well, though it wasn’t as exaggerated as a caricature should be. It was more of a portrait, but then I am not complaining as it was something to remember the place by. At about 4 o clock, we left Universal studios thoroughly satisfied. We had more places to visit that night.

We then drove along the streets of the part of LA that the whole world knows about- Beverly Hills and Hollywood. We drove to Sunset blvd, the LA traffic nicely negotiated by MS who had was driving with as much ease as a guy who would have been driving there for years and parked our car in the car park of a big shopping mall. We had to note down every detail of where we had parked it, lest we can’t locate where we put it amidst the thousands of cars parked there. We walked out of the mall, which was easily the largest I had been to, and it was one of the average sized malls there apparently. We walked onto the streets and it was drizzling.

We walked on the street for sometime before reaching sunset blvd, where we walked on the famous starred path, where the name of a celebrity was engraved on each star-shaped stone on the pavement. We saw the names of most of the famous Hollywood actors, actresses, producers, directors, and any other famous person in their tinsel town.

LMAO!!!!!!!!!! Of all the celebs!!!

There was also another thing we realized- how different and unrepresentative Davis was to the US cities. In Davis, pedestrians are given first priority and even if a car is speeding at 80 mph, if they see a pedestrian standing on a crossroad, they’ll brake to a halt and ask the pedestrian to cross. Only when the pedestrian is safely across the road, will the car take off. I guess the people who are in minority are often considered maybe even respected in any society and that was the case here as a guy in a car wouldn’t see and thereby have to stop for more than a few pedestrians every day, most of who would be Indian students like us, with a negative income (L), who couldn’t afford a car. It wasn’t like in India where most of the people are pedestrians and if cars stopped to let them cross, there would be no moving traffic at all at any crossroad. Having been this “elite” class of pedestrians the past 4 months in Davis, we were used to the respect and expecting that in LA too, we just tried to cross a road even when a car was speeding towards us in the distance expecting him to give us the respect and apply his brakes. But alas… he might have accelerated harder even but he never slowed down, and so we jumped back to the safety of the pavement as he sped past us at 60 mph, adding insult to injury by honking, thereby getting us dirty looks from our fellow pedestrians. We realized not to take things for granted from then on, as this was alien territory for us.

We then found the famous Hollywood wax museum and went in. There were many amazing wax statues of so many of our favorite Hollywood stars. After lots of pictures, including one with Marilyn Monroe in her most famous pose, revealing the mystery as to where the wind which blew her skirts came from (J), one with Hugh Hefner paying tribute to him for what he was, and many more with our favorites, we came out of there.

PROPOSING TO ANGELINA JEDI KARTHIK

It was already about 9 pm and we realized we had hardly had any food the whole day and being really far from our hotel, not knowing if we could find our way back through the complicated streets of LA, we started from there after getting some souvenirs, giving other places like Ripley’s believe it or not and Guinness records studios a skip. We found our car and made a couple of wrong turns on the streets and found ourselves lost a couple of times. It is not like India where you could stop our car on the main road and get down and ask some pedestrians how to go. There are basically 3 problems with that. One: you cannot simply pull over on the side of the main road as cars would be using all the lanes and if we pull over, someone is bound to ram into us at 60 mph, especially considering how rash LA drivers were. Two: even if you manage to pull over and get down and go to the pavement, you cannot ask pedestrians for the simple reason that there won’t be any. All the people who venture out have cars. You could drive for hours and you wouldn’t come across more than a handful of pedestrians if you were lucky. After all cars are dirt cheap there, why wouldn’t everyone have a car. A second hand good-condition Toyota corolla could be bought for about 5k $. Add to that the cheap gasoline rates. And the US transport system encourages you to have a car, because without one you simply can’t get anywhere as there aren’t too many buses or trains connecting places. Well…anyway… Third: even if you do miraculously manage to find a pedestrian, he would in all probability be an Indian tourist and he would be as lost as you. Even if it were someone who had lived in the city for long, he would run at the sight of a car pulling up by his side or he may even take a gun out of his jacket and gun you down, fearing attack as such sights are quite common in some parts of a rough city like LA. So logic told us not to pull up even if meant we had to drive for hours finding our way. Fortunately, thanks to the GPS we had, and the maps we had printed out and our cartography skills, we found our way after sometime and got back to the hotel and had dinner there and went to bed thoroughly satisfied with our trip of LA, knowing we would have to go the next day to San Diego. We were tired, really tired after 4 days of 6 hrs sleep a night and continuous touring. We decided to make the second leg of the trip a relaxed one.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)