CHAPTER 14- NEW YEAR AT SACRAMENTO AND IM SOCCER

CHAPTER 14- NEW YEAR AT SACRAMENTO AND IM SOCCER

New Year was round the corner and we decided we shouldn’t stay put in Davis for that; else it would be as lame as Christmas was. After some discussion, we scrapped plans of going to San Francisco because we had to cut our expenditure as much as possible because of the stupendous amount we had spent in the last few days. So we decided to go to Sacramento instead. After all, it’s the capital of the state of California; there’s got to be some celebration. After some looking up on the net, we found out that there were celebrations with fireworks in Old Sacramento near the bridge.

AZ was also back from Seattle, so the 6 of us (Varun, MS, Jaggy, JB, Dwarak and I) sent off to Sacramento on the Yolobus in the evening of the 31^st. There were a lot of people there, and there were lots of things to see. The whole area had a festive atmosphere about it. Many stalls had been put up, and there were performances by flame throwers, belly-dancers, musicians who were playing everything from blues to rock and it kept us busy for hours. It was soon close to midnight and there were fireworks at 11 pm, which were really grand. It lasted for about ten minutes and it reminded us of diwali, only without the noise associated with it. The sky was lit by the merry fireworks.

We learned that there was a ball drop at midnight in downtown Sac, a mile or so from here and so we set out to watch that. The streets were crowded. Really crowded. It reminded me of Ranganathan street in Chennai. It was a mixture of all types of people, of all color and all sections of the society. People were shoving the person next to them without any botheration. There were also a lot of racist taunts being thrown freely. I guess it’s the crowd syndrome. When you are in a crowd, you are not conscious of your actions because you know a whole bunch of people are going to be held responsible for your individual actions too. So you can be a lot freer since the attention is not on the individual. The same bunch of people who were there that night, taunting and shoving people, might be dignified business magnates or goody-two-shoes students in the day, but that night they were each just a nobody but as a group a part of a crowd. And so they let themselves loose. We witnessed a girl being molested by a gang of people in the crowd, without anyone being able to do anything about it and quite a few scuffles between gangs of people. We wondered what we had gotten ourselves into and worried if we would get to see the New Year at all.

Thankfully we got through pretty safe and managed to squeeze into a place where we could see the ball drop a few metres away. 10..9....5...3..2..1.. and there were choruses of happy new year all around us. We were wished by numerous people thrice as big and strong as us and shook our hands, and we nervously shook them and greeted them back. We managed to ease out of the crowd and get to a free street and thanked our stars for coming out in one piece. We called a cab as it was too late for the yolobus to ply to Davis and we waited for an hour nervously on the now-deserted street, eyeing suspiciously every shady looking guy walking in our direction. The cab came at last and we got home at about 2 am.

The next morning, we got to know from the news update that about 5 people had been killed in independent incidents by drunk or lunatic people, in the mood to do something a bit too exciting in the New Year. We were relieved we weren’t one of those five poor souls at the wrong place at the wrong time.

[From this point, my style of blogging is going to change. I am not necessarily going in chronological order. When I bring up a subject, I am going to breeze through the winter quarter with everything related to that subject. I had to do this to make it crisp and end this ever-continuing story… We have come to the 14th part and just half of the trip is over. I promised to end it in 20, and so I will]

The winter quarter was about to start in a couple of days, and we decided it was time we had more fun this time as this may be the last one in Davis. We decided to use the Activities and Recreation Centre (ARC) more often to play one of the loads of sports it has facilities for. The ARC is one of the highlights of UCD, housing an indoor soccer stadium, about 20 badminton courts, about 10 squash courts, a basketball stadium, a rock climbing zone, a few tennis courts, some baseball pitches, a running track among others. I was quite surprised why we hadn’t used it much last quarter and I realized we were too busy chatting or lounging around at home that we didn’t have the time to come here. For the first half of the quarter, I was a regular there, playing soccer with the whole gang or badminton most often with Varun and sometimes one of the girls, and squash a few times. We played soccer at the Hutchinson stadium in the evening and made some friends with some other UCD soccer enthusiasts.

We also decided it would be a lot of fun if we signed up for the intramural soccer tournament, where we would compete against other teams professionally in the soccer stadium. We were pretty upbeat, as we felt Americans can’t even play football (yeah they can play soccer but hey that’s a different name) and so we may have a good chance of going all the way. Little did we know what we were in for. So we registered our team “Blue flamez”, with AZ as our captain, me, JB, JD, MS, Varun, Dwarak, Deepak, Hyun (our Korean roomie) and a couple of his friends Yun San and Leister.

In the trials, we discovered Deepak’s talent as a goalie and amazing willingness and enthusiasm to work hard to improve as a keeper, which is the most important for a player and so he became our star goalie, though Dwarak seemed as good if not better than him at it. At the end of the day, it’s the passion for the game and how much each one enjoys it that counts. Mahesh was a semi-pro as he had played a lot of competitive soccer at the school level in Kerala. With these soccer training sessions, Mahi and Goalie (Deepak) started hang out with us more often.

So that left our team of 12, with just three professional players- AZ, who had been playing all his life and was a great overall player; Mahi, who had played at competitive levels and was very good with the ball; Leister, who had played the IMs before and was a consistent player with great tackling abilities with great energy levels and the rest, amateurs- Yun San, who was quite talented with the ball but quite raw; Hyun, who didn’t have much skill with the ball but had amazing strength and stamina thanks to the 3 years he spent in the Korean army; me, whose mind was as good as a pro’s due to the amount of football I watch and quickness on my feet coupled with good anticipation but with not much on-field experience and also with atrociously poor stamina levels which renders all good qualities of a footballer useless by not letting him play much; JB, with great footballing knowledge and great judgment and anticipation but again no experience on the field; Dwarak, with great power in his legs which were capable of unleashing ferocious shots but had chicken legs and he got injured as often as Owen Hargreaves does after his move to Man Utd; JD, who had amazing pace and will-power but lacked composure and tried a trick too many when he had the ball; MS who was strong and graceful but lacked the speed and acceleration needed in football due to his rather…er…footballish shape (:D); Varun, who wasnt the swiftest and most nimble-footed at soccer but was a fierce competitor nonetheless and Deepak, who hadn’t watched or played much football and wasn’t even aware of some of its intricate rules but his amazing enthusiasm to learn and improve neutralized his shortcomings. That wasn’t a title winning team by any stretch of the imagination, but we felt we could improve if we all peak at the right time and practiced often and hope the Americans are as bad at soccer as we thought they were.

JB, AZ and I spent a lot of time during the quarter, discussing about the formations we should employ and who should play where and what kind of game we should play. We took it pretty seriously right through the quarter and the enthusiasm didn’t dwindle amidst our heavy academic workloads. We let out all our frustrations in other aspects of UCD life on the soccer. But the results of the matches weren’t really as rosy as we expected.

We found that lots of Asians, Africans, Europeans and worst of all, many South Americans including Brazilians and Argentines, played for each team in the league. Many of these players could play for any professional Indian club; that’s how good they were. Even the Americans who played were really good in some aspect or the other. Teams which didn’t have passing or understanding had strong guys who played physical games (Russians were the most notorious) and could unleash powerful shots from far. Teams which had nimble players with quick feet and skill (mostly Brazilians) passed and wriggled their way into the goal with the ball.

We went with the frame of mind that we’ll do well as the opponents will be Americans who can’t play much and we were punished for that by a royal thrashing from the first team we encountered, whose passing blinded us and we all were in the same end of the pitch at a particular time. We had no coordination going and we couldn’t really get one strategy working for us and we were humiliated that match.

But then we regrouped after that and never underestimated our opponents from then on and we played much better and even enjoyed successes in the way but most importantly had a lot of fun. We would look forward to Wednesday’s game and for Friday’s training sessions all week and also the dinner at Sam’s with a free drink the girl who ran the place gave us for visiting every week, after the session. I also invested in a lot of gear including knee braces, shin pads, ankle guards, tube socks, bandages for the one too many injuries I had but the fun we had was worth the money and blood spent.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

CHAPTER 13- SIX FLAGS AND AN ADDITION TO OUR GANG

Well... sorry for taking forever to publish. Got too busy, thanks to the rigorousness of the UC Davis quarter. :( I am going to post the remaining parts of the blog within the next week, so that I can start chronicling and posting my experiences this time, in a new series of posts...

CHAPTER 13- SIX FLAGS AND AN ADDITION TO OUR GANG

Physically and mentally charged, we spent the rest of the holidays mostly in Davis. Christmas was rather quiet, taking into account what we expected, but then there were hardly any people in Davis as UCD was not functioning and Davis minus UCD seemed to leave only a few like us here. As the holidays were coming to an end, we decided we should go somewhere else and we decided we should pay Six Flags a visit.

Six flags is a theme park, with some of the most high-thrill roller-coasters in the world. Dwarak (hence referred to by his popular nickname D-dub) was also interested in coming and we rented a muscular SUV this time and the five of us, D-dub, MS, JD, JB and I started in the morning. We reached in an hour and there was no problem finding the place as we could see its really tall roller-coasters from miles away. We had done our homework and learned there were 4 high thrill rides and we decided we should do all the 4 first before going on the medium thrill ones. We realized how much of a flop our plan would be only after going there.

We went on the Medusa first, the longest rollercoaster there lasting close to 4 minutes and one of the longest in the world too. And it was really fast too, with so many twists and turns and 360s and inversions that at the end of it, I didn’t realize when I was travelling straight and when I was upside-down. At the end of the ride, I was as physically exhausted as a runner would be at the end of a marathon. And that was just one ride. We had three more equally if not more exhilarating rides according to our plan before we took a break. We knew it would not be possible.

We walked dazedly to the next ride. This was the Kong. It was a short-ride and its course was not half as scary as the Medusa. But it was easily the scariest rollercoaster I have ever been on. Purely because of psychological reasons. There was no cart and no track on this one, customary on all roller-coasters. There were individual chairs hanging out from a platform suspended in the air, with a thin wire. We were strapped onto these seats, which looked like wooden armchairs. Then the ride started and the platform on which our seats and consequently our lives were suspended, started moving. As it picked up speed and height, I realized how scary this was going to be the moment I looked down. I could see my legs dangling in mid-air a hundred metres above the ground, with nothing to break the fall if I were to slip out of my seat. On a normal ride, you wouldn’t get such a view of your dangling legs as there would be a floor to the cart you are sitting in. Also there would be plenty of people sitting by you, and if you were to crash and die, it might be a little comforting that you will have some company when you find your way to heaven/hell (personally I do not believe in the concept of heaven/hell, but it’s a useful concept to use in figure of speech…anyway that the topic for another blog post). It got scarier by the moment when my loosely hanging chair started twisting all 360 degrees at an enormous velocity and a great height above the ground. I closed my eyes shut and was actually thankful when the ride came to an end. I wouldn’t want to get on this again, if I can help it.

We were totally exhausted after this ride. We climbed down and couldn’t get ourselves to speak to each other for the next 5 minutes. Once we recovered, we decided that’s all we could do at a stretch and to give it a break and come back later for the other high thrill rides. We had some food and did a lot of the medium thrill rides which seemed totally lame to us after having gone on the Medusa and the Kong. So we never even gave the low thrill rides a second glance.

There were also penguins in the water section of the park. It was really nice to see hundreds of penguins all around us as we walked in the underground passage, where the penguins were housed in large glass enclosures around us. They looked really adorable and I added them to my long list of potential pets.

We then visited the underground aquarium where they had some ferocious sharks.

We then took some pics with Looney toons characters and then played around in the artificial snowland.

We then went to the animals section of the park and took some pics.

Finally when we had recovered enough, we went on the other high thrill ride, Vertical Velocity V2. This was supposed to be among the fastest rollercoasters in the world. It goes from 0-70 mph in 3 seconds, which is one hell of an acceleration when you start a ride. We found it really thrilling but not scary after having been on the Kong but disembarked from this one, totally exhausted. We knew we couldn’t do any more, even if there were any. Fortunately we had been on all the high thrill rides Six flags had to offer so we were satisfied, and so we wound up the day. We drove back and only then realized how much of a beating our bodies had taken. We were on the bed for the whole of the next day.

The end of the break was nearing and this was when there was one more addition to our gang. That was Varun. I had been in touch with this chap, for the last 6 months as he had been getting my opinion on various things once he had decided to come to UC Davis on the Global study program from SRM. He came from a mythical SRM campus at Ramapuram, whose existence most people aren’t aware of. (I still have my doubts, so Varun if you are reading this… is there an SRM University campus in Ramapuram or are you talking abt Easwari … expecting your comments :P). This chap had one scary profile attached to him (a 9.5+ GPA, a 1540+ GRE score etc and consequently admits at a couple of colleges by the time most of us hadn’t even started to apply to universities). His reputation preceded him and most of the others knew his heavy reputation before they knew him. He was also supposed to be one really good guitar player, making him a bit of an all-rounder. I had got to know him pretty well without having met up even once and he was one helluva computer graphics freak like I was, with the only difference that he had already learned most of the stuff I was learning.

I went over to meet him when he arrived in Davis and helped him check into his apartment. To show him around Davis, we took a walk from the apartment and which turned into a marathon as we walked at least 10 miles around Davis, braving the drizzling rain. I discovered that he was one amazing character, who always very instinctive and wouldn’t hesitate to call a spade a spade (As his new roommate and coincidentally our former roommate who moved out due to differences with us, found out). It was good to have such a person around.

He was a totally ironic person, who might act often unconfident, but is one of the most self-confident guys I have ever come across; act confident and that too with confidence even when not confident about something; act indifferent about something that may be very important to him on the inside; act sadistic to something though he may like it dearly; act unconcerned about a person he is very concerned about. He was one of the most complex people I have come across, but nonetheless a great friend who would unconditionally help out the people he cares for. (Note to Varun: The deviation in the last few sentences were just cos u asked me to blog about what I think of you, especially the criticism J). So he gelled in well with all of us. We also found out that he was also one amazing player of the guitar, when he played complex stuff like Hotel California, Sweet child of mine etc with amazing ease.

(TO BE CONTINUED...)

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 11

CHAPTER 11- SAN DIEGO BEACH ADVENTURE AND ZOO

We slept for 12 hrs that night and got up the next morning and had a late breakfast and headed to San Diego on the car. It was only a couple of hours drive but it was one helluva drive, as it was totally along the coast. We could smell the sea and feel the moisture when we opened our windows and could almost hear the thumping of the waves on the rocks and the beach amidst the quiet roar (a quiet roar is oxymoronic while describing anything except good cars, which is a complement to them) of our Chrysler 300 engine.

We found our hotel, Holiday Inn and checked in and it was awsome hotel, right by the harbor. We could see the sea right from our room window and it was one hell of a sight. We felt relaxed mentally. We decided the best way to sight see San Diego was to laze around, as it was a city meant for that. We had some places on our list to go to and we would go with the plan but at a relaxed pace, unlike LA.

We lounged around for a couple of hrs in the afternoon and then started for the nearest beach at about 6 pm. It was getting dark by the time we got to that area. As we drove towards the beach, the lights from the shops seemed dimmer and dimmer, and the roads got narrower and narrower, and the people seemed shadier and shadier. We hesitated a bit to go further but then we thought… what the hell…lets see what this side of the US is all about. We parked the car at what seemed to be a car park, only that it seemed more like all the cars there seemed out of some dump yard. We headed towards the beach, noticing that all the shops were shady salons and bars where almost everyone seemed to have a ruffled look and sneer on their faces and the sneer seemed pronounced when they took in the sight of 5 nervous Indian tourists walking their streets. We could see a few shabbily dressed whores on the street winking at passers-by. We could see some people, just lounging on the road, who looked to be drug sellers, talking in low voices to people.

We went past all these people to get a sight of the beach. It was dark at that time but we could make out enough to see that it was quite deserted. Or was it? There was a gang of about 10 well-built people we could see, who would fit the definition of the gangsta typically described in Hollywood movies. And they had with them…..on a leash….a dog. We were first perplexed by this. Anyone, who just saw 10 of the scariest looking men, taking a dog on a stroll by the beach would be perplexed. After sometime we realized, they were waiting for someone. We put two and two together and concluded there was going to be a ferocious dog fight here between two gangs that night. The gang whose dog kills the other dog is granted some favor by the other gang.

Some of us were (including me) excited by this and thought it would be a good spectacle to watch, especially considering there was a good chance someone may take a gun out of his jacket and just shoot us dead for nothing. But then sense prevailed and we decided to scram from there. We just turned around and walked towards the car, when a giant of a guy stopped us. We thought the game was up and he was gonna set his gang upon us or rob us or worse, but then he asked us if we wanted some weed. We refused his offer and walked away, as he mouthed some expletives at us. We breathed a sigh of relief to find our car intact and just drove out of that area as quickly as we could. We could relax only after we went to the more secure parts of the city.

Disappointed at not having been able to set foot on the beach but more than content with our adventure that night, we had dinner and went to our rooms. This side of the US is not seen unless you go to the right places and we were really happy to have experienced that. Now AZ’s birthday was also that night and so to give him a “surprise”, JD ‘n I kept him out of the room trying to distract him by playing soccer with the ball we had brought, in the lawns of the hotel and forcing a couple of toilet breaks, just to ensure he wouldn’t go to the room where MS and JB would smuggle a b’day cake after buying it and hide it so that we could surprise him at midnight. It looked really retarded for JD and me to play our parts, dragging AZ along with us to satisfy our sudden “desire” to play football in the night outside. He would’ve guessed something was up for sure, nonetheless we did our part. We “surprised” him at midnight, though we all knew he was wide awake and knew what was going on. Still… we were all sports. So we had a nice little celebration, feasting on a delicious cake and some b’day bumps. We had some badushah (curse you JB :x for having disclosed the meaning of the codeword on your blog) too for the sweetness ;) . So we all went to sleep quite late.

The next morning, we got up very late (at about 9 am), considering what we had planned for the day. Well, we actually woke up early but then our laziness didn’t make us get up. My alarm rang at 7 am and I woke up and silenced it. I turned towards JB, who was sleeping next to me and I could see him shut his eyes quickly as I looked at him. I then closed my eyes thinking a couple more minutes of sleep won’t make a difference. I lay awake for the next 5 minutes and though it was high time we all woke up, but didn’t want to take the initiative. I opened my eyes and lay on the bed when I sensed JB also open his and look towards me. I quickly closed my eyes and pretended to be sleeping. Had two of us seen each other awake, we would be weighted by logic and would take the initiative to get up, which means I couldn’t lounge longer on the bed. So I didn’t want to be among the first ones to take the initiative to get up and wake the others. I later discovered that was exactly on JB’s mind too. And AZ’s too. And probably the other two too. So we basically had been all awake on the bed, pretending to the others to be asleep so that we could laze around on the bed longer. A couple of hours passed like this and finally at about 9 am, JB, AZ and I (un)fortunately opened our eyes at the same time and there was no excuse this time. So we got up in a jiffy and woke the other two.

We knew we were running really late, as we had planned to step out of the hotel at 8 am max. After all, we needed one whole day to visit the largest zoo in the world and the national park and take its numerous safaris. As we had just one bathroom, it took us about 11 am to step out of the hotel and so we had to modify our plans as the national park was 20 miles from the zoo in the other direction. So we had to choose between them. That was a tricky choice but we finally choose to see the zoo because it was really famous and had some animals no other zoo in the world would have and it was closer by about 15 miles to the hotel and we knew the way.

In the now pouring rain, we reached the zoo in half an hour and decided there was no point in waiting for the rain to stop and so walked into the zoo in the rain. It was pretty deserted because of the weather. We looked at the map of the zoo, and it was huuuge. We decided to take the motorized tour of the zoo and it took an hour for the van to go all around the zoo, that’s how massive it was. By the time we got down from the van, we had an idea of the layout of the zoo. So, with zoo maps in hand, braving the rain, we went to visit the animals we had picked out. We must have walked about 10 miles in the zoo in the next 3-4 hours, during which we covered about 50 percent of the zoo.

The stand-out animals, which might not be seen anywhere else were the panda and the polar bear. Yeah that’s right. A real polar bear. The name polar bear itself suggests that it lives only in the poles. But hey… this zoo had one. It was housed in a huge 1 acre glass enclosure, in which the polar habitat had been simulated with caves ad polar vegetation and optimum temperatures. It was really exciting to see an animal, which only the explorers who explored the poles would generally see, right in front of us. It looked so majestic- so large and ferocious but it looked friendly too. I guess it was the white color of its fur that gave a friendly harmless look. Our mind always associates mild colors like white to be non-violent and peaceful unlike brown or black which are associated with violence. It seemed to me that if there were no glass enclosure, it would run to me and hug me. A bear-hug it would be too. Good thing I couldn’t try it… cos it might have had other ideas….

We then went to the part of the zoo when another attraction was housed. That was the panda. It was sooo cute. Cute is a term often overused and misused by most girls, but this is one time I would totally agree with any girl who might have called this cute. It was black with white patches in its body. There has never been a time after that where I felt it would be amazing to have one as a pet. Alas… they are protected animals and I was lucky to have had the opportunity to see one at least.

Due to the lousy weather, it grew dark as early as 5 pm and the zoo was closing down. We did some souvenir shopping, where I got a stuffed panda, which was so soft and fluffy that I even toyed with the idea of hugging it in bed(:D), much to the disgust of AZ, who was barbarous to the poor thing all the time (:x).

We went back to the hotel and made some rice, with the rice cooker we had brought from Davis (lol…look how planned we were), because we realized we had spending a lot and we could save up on this at least and so we had some curd rice. I then hit the hay, with regret on my mind for the first time in that trip, because after having come this far, we couldn’t get to see the wildlife sanctuary, due to purely our laziness and stubbornness in not getting up that morning. That is the only thing which I would want to change if given the opportunity in the otherwise perfect trip. But I guess that was one of those times our physical fatigue won over our mental willingness to make the maximum of the trip.

(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...)