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...)

MY EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA : Chapter 9

NOTE: Sorry for posting this later than promised. Was just a little busy settling down in Davis... And also waiting for comments on my prev post from a couple of ppl, though it never came :(

SPOILER ALERT: If you ever plan to visit Disneyland 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 9- DISNEYLAND PART 2

Other than this, we went for some other memorable rides as well. The Splash Mountain was a really cool roller-coaster ride through an "artificial" mountain. I put artificial in quotes because it felt so realistic. There was this rather innovative concept of installing cameras at a couple of the most exciting points of the ride, which would photograph your expression as you went past it without inhibitions. The pictures would be displayed on monitors as you exit the ride and you can go up to the counter and buy the photograph for 10 $. Being the unembarrassed uninhibited innovative Indians that we were, we went up to the monitors with our digicams and clicked a photo of the photo. That earned us a few looks, some of amusement and some of disgust, but hey we didn’t give a damn as long as it saved us many a buck. We did this at every ride. :D .

Then, we went to the "Pirates of the Caribbean" ride, which was a boat ride, though some pirate villages with realistic characters like Jack Sparrow appearing every now and then.

We then went through the horror house, which was a lot of dark passages of "scary" ghosts and creatures, which was pretty lame. We found it quite kiddish and tried to scare a couple of the ghosts away. :D . The people around us, both young and old, surprisingly seemed pretty scared and excited though.

We then went for the jungle adventure ride, which was a boat ride through a jungle which had animals on the shores. JB met his match on that ride- a girl called Ashley who was the instructor of the ride whose PJs exasperated even JB, the Master of Mokkai (MoM). Then we went to a castle, which was built such that it was shaped like all the wonders of the world. It was a brilliant sight.

But the most majestic sight was the Disney castle, which was draped with decorations of hanging blue and red lights. It was quite a sight to take in.

We then had dinner there and went to the banks of the artificial lake, where a spectacle was awaiting us. That was "FANTASIMIC". Literally. The show is held on the nights of every weekend and that day being a Saturday, we got to witness the spectacle. It is a show where Mickey, as the protagonist, uses his imagination to conjure up objects that he desires. Laser light is beamed on shape changing fountains in the water to give is a feel of the objects. It was so realistic and so majestic. The show lasted a whole twenty minutes. It seems they spend close to 30k $ for that 20 minutes of entertainment each evening. Sheesh…. that’s more than what we would spend in an entire year of graduate study in the US. The wonderful calming music added to the brilliance of the show. To think it was just lights and water being adapted to form such realistic images was mind-blowing. We were so awed by it that it took us a minute to realize we had to tape this on our cams and start clicking. At the end of the show, we swore to come back again for it the next night and witness the spectacle again.

Disneyland is in a way like drug addiction (or how people say it is at least. I’ve no first-hand experience ppl). You want to come back to it every day. Ok bad comparison but hey it is addictive and never leaves you satisfied for sure. It was about 10 pm by the time the show ended.

We had walked at least 5 miles inside the place in those 4 hours and it was only then that we noted the tiredness felt by our legs. We trudged back reluctantly to board the train which would take us back to the car as the exhibits were closing behind us. But we were satisfied by how it had gone till then and couldn’t wait for the next day when we would be coming back to the place.

We drove back to the hotel and went back to our rooms, which is when we noticed that the suite we booked was the kids suite (That was the cheapest deal that we got). Everything, from the beds to the furniture was kid-sized. We felt like a giant dwelling in Liliputian land but then we had been transformed into kids after that night at Disneyland, so we were happy to be treated as kids by the hotel room too. We dived into our beds and didn’t know anything until 8 am the next morning when we woke up, looking ahead to the day.

We woke up and got dressed and stepped out of the house within an hour, which is an amazing achievement by five generally-nocturnal 20 year olds. Such was our enthusiasm to go back to Disneyland. We parked our car there and went into the California adventure park as per our plan. This is an annexure to Disneyland, but meant more for adults as it contained some amazing rides. We went inside and were greeted by the sight of big roller-coasters. We went for a couple of water rides initially, which felt nice in the warm southern Californian sun.

Then went into the Hollywood part of the adventure park, where there was a replica of the intersection of Sunset Blvd and Hollywood Blvd.

Then we went into Monsters 3D, which was a ride which took us through some caves, where Monsters Inc characters kept popping up. The hall of moving doors in that ride was pretty amazing.

Then we went into Muppetvision 4D, which was a show where we were given 3D glasses and we could view Sesame street characters a screen on stage in 3D, thanks to our glasses and say, whenever the characters sprayed water, real water would spray on us too from somewhere, thereby adding the 4th dimension to the show, making it totally realistic. It was the first such 4D show I had gone to in my life, and so I found it really exciting.

Then we went to Hollywood hotel. It was a massively tall building, which gave everyone the creeps. We were taken to an elevator and strapped to chairs there and we could guess what was coming up, but that didn’t prepare us for what lay ahead. The elevator climbed all the way to the top of the 100 odd metre tall building and suddenly stopped there. The door opened for us to see how high up we were. Suddenly, it plummeted down in freefall with every one of us screaming on top of our voice. Then the elevator was caught as it came down and it went up again all the way to the top and plummeted down again. This went on for the next couple of minutes in irregular patterns, which made it an exciting ride.

We climbed out of that gingerly and had some lunch. We noticed a restaurant "Ariel's grotto", which was supposed to be an underwater restaurant, where tables were in the middle of glass-enclosed water chambers from all directions where mermaids keep floating. We didn’t go there as it looked too expensive a place.

After food and some cotton candy (LOL...we were quite a sight with our hands and face all pink in its aftermath), we went to the most adrenaline-pumping rollercoaster ride.

It was a 3 minute rollercoaster, which contained a lot of freefalling, vertical climbing, extreme twists and curves, a couple of 360s and that too back to back. In all it was a really exciting ride as it was a very high speed one too. We were screaming on top of our voices the whole time. We were quite exhausted when we came out. But then, we didn’t feel queasy at all like we would after a ride at Kishkinta or MGM theme parks in India. And it was less of a thrill, because we had faith in its makers that they would’ve done everything possible to ensure it’s a safe ride. Unlike a ride in MGM where you may be wondering if you’re going to fly off the cart due to a loose seat belt or if the track itself would break making the cart crash headlong into the ground. Only after this ride, I realized what a rollercoaster ride was. Exciting, adrenaline-pumping but at the same time does not cause you unease physically and mentally.

We then went out of the California adventure park back into Disneyland. We first went into bug-land, where everything was made to make us feel we were as small as bugs. We looked up to see massive trees and on closer inspection, we found they were actually small plants, with the difference that it looked as huge to us as it would to a bug. It was a really nice concept.

Then we went into the Toy story ride, where while waiting in the queue JB gave up his claim of being the best mokkai (loosely translated in English as PJ cracker) in the world after watching Mr. Potato Head (an artificial character standing outside the ride entertaining people standing in the queue with his PJs) crack a few "jokes". Believe me, they were just of another level. An example- "Say D.... (pause) Say D...(pause) Say D... (pause) Now what do we have here? (pause) 3D. ". This was one of the many PJs he cracked which had people frantically hit their heads with their hands and pray that the queue moved on quicker so that they don’t have to stand this weirdo anymore. It was too much for poor JB to learn that there were two people we encountered in the last couple of days, who were better than him in cracking such jokes, Ashley and Potato head, and he was truly dejected after that :( .

Finally it was dark by the time we were done with all this. We learned that a special Pixar parade was going to take place in sometime where all Pixar characters, would parade on the corridors. We were really excited by this as it contained many of our favorite movie cartoon characters. We sat on the corridor, and witnessed an exciting parade, where characters from Finding Nemo, Toy story, Monsters inc and many more evergreen Pixar films came by and waved at us.

We also witnessed the Disney parade, where Disney characters like Mickey, Goofy, Donald etc walked the ramps.

Then we went to witness the "Fantasmic" show again, as we had planned the previous day. We were again awed by it. I guess one would be awed by it even if one watches it every day, such was the atmosphere. Then we went again to the "Indiana Jones" show, as we thought it was worth another visit.

With our hearts filled with contentment, we went back to the car park and went back to the hotel. On the way back, we stopped at an Indian restaurant that we saw and had food there. Though it was a touch expensive, we felt we deserved it and had good Indian food after months. We hit the hay as soon as we went back to our rooms, as we had another big day ahead of us the next day.

TO BE CONTINUED...

MY EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA : Chapter 8

NOTE: For continuity, read chapters 1-7 before starting on this.

SPOILER ALERT: If you ever plan to visit Disneyland 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 8- THE DRIVE AND DISNEYLAND PART 1

The day exams ended, we packed and wanted to sleep early so that we could get up early the next morning and start at 4 am as planned. But we were not confident if we would get up at 4 am if we went to sleep and so we decided to have an all-nighter. We fine-tuned our plans and ironed out the flaws and took more printouts and made more notes and got ready for the trip. It was terribly tiring just planning for the trip, as it was a daring one as we were in a totally alien land and we were going to take a car for rent and travel 1000 odd miles, without any experience of driving in the US and knowing only theoretically how to get there, through the internet and so we had to have all our plans perfect. In hindsight, I am sometimes amazed at how quickly and confidently we decided to embark on the trip but at that time, all that fuelled us was our enthusiasm to see the real California.

And so we set out on our journey at 4 am sharp as planned. MS took the wheel and I got to say he drove pretty smoothly. Kudos to you man! One of us acted as the cartographer, sitting beside him, with the various printouts and maps that we had printed out and giving him instructions on which turn to take, when one came. The GPS that we had borrowed also came in very handy, as it kept telling us where to go (in a lady’s voice who we addressed as “akka”) but it wasn’t that accurate, and so we had to double check with our maps each time it predicted a route.

LA was about 500 miles from Davis and it was a straight highway, so the drive was pretty smooth. The car was pretty comfortable and spacious (it was a luxury car after all) and we all enjoyed the drive, as every sight that our eyes drank in was new to us. We passed through the bay area and caught up with the coast there and drove further and further south. We stopped for breakfast at a McDonalds on the way and also stopped by for lunch at someplace. We didn’t feel the strain of our long journey as we kept chattering in the car (its amazing how we always find something to talk about) and entertaining each other. MS also was totally at ease driving the car, and really started enjoying it too. We were on “cruise” for an hour in the middle at 80 mph. We also experienced showers in the middle of the journey as we were passing some hilly areas and that was pretty exciting too. I guess everything was exciting at that time as it was all new to us.

After a long journey, we finally reached Los Angeles at about 3 pm. From here, things started to get a bit slow, because of the notorious LA traffic.

We had to pass through LA to get to Anaheim, where our hotel was located. We also had to pay universal studios a visit to collect our tickets, which we had ordered online, at the counter. It was exciting going into those Hollywood parts and seeing quite a few really loooong limos passing by us. Who know who was in there? We might’ve been a few metres away from a Brangelina or a Scarlett Johanasson or a Will Smith. Damn those tinted windows that those cars had, else we could’ve looked in. :x

We collected the tickets and then drove away rather ruefully, as we had to wait a couple of days to come back here according to our plans. We then drove for another good hour to get past LA in its heavy evening traffic and went past quite a few interesting buildings such as the one in this pic ;) . (We even toyed with the idea of going in to see if they let us see them in aah...action...But alas we were short of time)

We finally reached Anaheim at about 5 pm. We found our hotel quickly, thanks to our maps and checked in and took an hour’s rest. Then it was time to go to....Disneyland, which was just a mile away from the hotel.

We arrived at Disneyland at about 7 pm, and after putting the car in the car park, we had to take a toy train to go into the place. It was a good 10 minute ride, with each passing minute increasing our excitement of what lay ahead.

That was when I contemplated where I was. I was in the US, in California, in DISNEYLAND, at a place where I had not even dreamt of visiting in the near future, at a place which has delighted millions with its colorful entertainment, at the place which acts as a living memory to the many fictitious characters who have made many a kid's and quite a few adults’ life more cheerful with their amazing entertainment- Mickey, Donald, Goofy...and the list goes on... I got goose bumps thinking about all this and a glance in the others directions told me they were also getting a similar feeling.

Once we got down the train and entered this wonderful world, we were babbling out of excitement. With huge expectations, we entered the gates to be beheld by a sight which took us aback even after all this anticipation. We were stunned by the amazingly cheerfully lit streets and cartoonish buildings and the characters standing at every corner of the streets and the huge crowd of cheerful equally-amazed people basking the streets was a sight which could not be described. The fervor of the night added to this experience. Also, as Christmas was round the corner, the whole place was doubly decorated with Christmas trees and the like. Nothing could’ve prepared us for this majestic sight. Now, I never for my life have imagined I would state the sentence I am going to in my next line, but then I guess this is the only way to describe it. "The majestic sight I faced was similar to the image of Lord Venkateshwara in Tirupathi". (for more on this refer to my older blog post "FROM AN AGNOSTIC TO A HAPPILY CONFUSED PERSON"). You have to be there to see it. Anyways... back to the subject... We stood in wonderment, taking in the whole scene with awe. For a minute or two, we couldn’t say anything; neither did we know what to do or where to go. All that mattered was that present moment and we wanted it to prolong it forever. Finally, we broke the ice and someone uttered "It’s beautiful", stating the obvious but getting us out of that reverie.

We then walked aimlessly the first few minutes along the streets, just along the way people flowed. Each street were filled with as many people as there would be on Ranganathan street in Chennai or on Commercial street in Bangalore or in Palika bazaar in Delhi, but this was one place we wanted to be with the crowd. There were lots and lots of excited kids and looking at them made us feel like one again and that increased our excitement level by another notch, if that was ever possible. I felt my pulse and I was positive I would count over 200 a minute just due to the excitement. There were an equal number of adults too, all as excited as the kids. I could not see one glum soul in that place. I guess, if ever someone could sulk in that place for more than a few seconds, he/she would have to be one of the most cold-hearted people.

After sometime, we recovered and looked at a map of the place and decided what rides to do in the night and what during the next day. We chose a few rides which would be a good experience in the dark and went ahead. There were just so many rides that we would have to spend a whole 3 days covering every one of them. So we had to choose wisely about which ones to take and which to give a miss. Our choices were pretty good, I guess, as most of the rides we went on were pretty exciting ones. Though we went on at least 10 equally exciting rides in those couple of hours that night, there were a couple which still give me the goose bumps out of excitement.

The best ride in the whole place was the "Indiana Jones" one. It was pretty popular, I guess, as we had to stand in a queue for half an hour to get on the ride. As we passed along the queue, we went through artificially made caves, whose every aspect looked so realistic. We finally got on the wooden cart on rails, which seated about 10 people and the ride started. It was a rollercoaster kind of ride, which took us through the massive caves, with stalactites and stalagmites whizzing past us, with cave-dwelling creatures like rats on the floor, gaps on the floor of the caves, propelling us downwards every now and then. All this was really exciting and we thought the ride over and was worth every bit of the wait. But only then, we got to know the best part was yet to come. Our cart stopped in a dark cave for about ten seconds and Indiana Jones himself came in front of us and screamed "A boulder is gonna fall on you. Duck!". I looked up to see a HUGE boulder of at least a 5 metre radius falling freely right towards our cart. It kept getting closer and closer and it was only a few feet above us, when I realized how realistic it is and I in fact felt it WAS real. Had I lifted my hand, I swear I could’ve touched it. It was that close. I thought there was some technical flaw as the boulder should’ve never come this close and it was going to fall right on our head. I looked at the others and everyone seemed equally panicked. Suddenly, the track our cart was perched on gave way, and we underwent freefall for a couple of seconds as another track caught us down below and we looked up to see the boulder stuck in the hole we had fallen through. We sighed with relief for a moment and only then it dawned upon us that we were actually in a safe ride in Disneyland and not really adventuring in caves a la Indiana Jones. That’s how realistic it was. We came out stunned and swearing to come back to this ride again the next day.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

P.S: I had such a wonderful time just recollecting my memories of LA and Disneyland that I want to go on describing the whole thing, but I guess I'll have to cut off here because of the sheer length of the post may turn people away from reading it. So..

TO BE CONTINUED... NEXT POST MONDAY, 6th SEP (Following the Pacific Standard Time from now, as I ll be in California while posting the next one)

MY EXPERIENCES IN CALIFORNIA : Chapter 7

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]