Random Thoughts

Society is an interesting concept. I guess at a very broad level, it is a bunch of creatures that spend time together, do things together, help each other and so on. In the world of the Internet, there have been many different social networks. There was friendster. There was hi5. There is linkedin. There's orkut. And now there is the mother of it all, facebook. Why do we flock to these social networking sites? Well, I am no psychologist or anything, so don't look to me for a serious answer. I think people go to these sites because they allow you to keep in touch with real people. You know, those people you went to school with, those people you played softball with... those people. We go there to renew acquaintances, catch up on gossip, as a creativity outlet to read, write and heck, even draw. I think this will be one of the big changes to the web. It has gone on for a while now, this web 2.0 business... people are having an easier time creating content and publishing it eas...

I have seen 3 movies in the last month or so. And a lot more previews. I like the previews a lot. They give you just enough information to make you want to go and get your hopes dashed. I watched Spiderman 3. That was terrible. There was singing and dancing. If I had wanted that, I would have watched a musical or an Indian film... I saw the latest pirates of the caribbean without watching the prior ones. I got to say, I liked the way that Depp fellow acted. He was refreshingly funny. I watched Knocked Up on Saturday. By far, the funniest one I have watched in a while. It didn't have too much drama, it was funny along the way and there was something refreshing about the cast. And all that Canadiana. I miss home. But then again, what is home? There was a fellow at the theatre (some places in the US spell it theatre... I find that strange because they forgot to mis-spell it or perhaps they are reforming their ways and spelling correctly) who kept farting and burping throughout the mov...

I am now a member of facebook. Except, I didn't really want to join. So my name says Full Name... and I can't figure out how to change it. Oh well. Why is everyone and their dog on facebook? Is it any better than things like orkut? I've been on orkut for a while... and I got to say, its fine. Facebook looks pretty neat, it is quite picture centric, I guess that's what it was meant to be. I don't entirely get the point of it though, I mean, there are plenty of these sorts of sites, but lately, it looks like everyone is up with facebook. I got old co-workers asking about me, I got friends messaging me about it, heck, I even have one of my not so technical friends on facebook and enjoying it. I guess he has finally found something he can use effectively, kudos to them. I say this often enough at work... we need to write instructions so my mother can do the task at hand... I think facebook has created an interface easy enough for my friend to use, and that should be wh...

Its memorial day today. The day the United States remembers its war dead... and there are plenty of wars they've been in and plenty of dead to remember. Now, its not like I have seen a memorial type mindset here, like Remembrance Day back home and frankly, it surprises and saddens me. Back home, we used to wear poppies at least for our war dead. I mean, even if you didn't really think about what sort of sacrifices they made in the name of King and Country, you wore a red poppy as a sign of respect. Here, I see lots of sales of things, mattresses at Matrress Warehouse, Nissan cars in some place in Gaithersburg or some (sounds like alligator country)... It is also allegedly the beginning of summer here and the weather sure is a testament to that. Anyway, I could rant about war dead for eternity, so I will leave that one alone for now. So, what did I do for the long-weekend? Let's see. I left work early (it was after 5 but not that much after) and went with a bunch of Canadian...

Its almost 6 months since I left home! That scares me. I still have boxes that I shipped from home staring at me in my living room. Lazy. I have been through fall, winter, spring and what is hopefully summer in DC already. I'd hate to have it get any warmer here. I've been working pretty much the whole time. I did take a week off in March to go home and visit the family and the new dog. Other than that, I have not done much else. Like going to go see all the monuments, museums etc that dot the landscape in the District. I have learned a few things in the last 6 months: IT is expensive to live in the district - despite all the things the folks from here said before I moved here. Eating out is scandalously expensive. You get twice as much... but it costs a LOT. Rent is scary expensive. I spend almost twice what I do in Vancouver. Except, I had a three bedroom house there. I don't have that here. Getting pants hemmed costs an arm and then some... 2 pants = a cool 36 dollars....

I have been in the US& A almost 4 months now. I live by myself in the District of Columbia and work in the district as well. I have a content life. But then I went home to Vancouver. Ever since then, I have been stuck. In a dilemma. Why? Well, because I want to go back to Vancouver. Why? The week I spent in Vancouver gave me perspective on what mattered in life to me. I got to say maybe it was fear, maybe it was the lack of rain in DC but I want to return to Vancouver. Things that matter to me are in Vancouver. My family lives there, my dog lives there, my friends live there. Its more than that though; I love the city, I love the people, I love the food there. I had sushi in DC and was blown away by how crappy it was. DC does have better weather; far more hours of sunshine than Vancouver. I do miss the rain though. I miss my garden, I miss my plants, I miss the trees and lakes, the bars and drunks, the girls in the short clothes. I flipped through pictures from the past and saw so ...

I must admit that I have never ever been a fan of cleaning up. Growing up, I had people to clean up after me: my family, the maids. But having grown up and left home for a while, I have become painfully aware of how important cleaning up a place is. While I am no clean-freak, I detest a mess terribly. I came home to Vancouver and nearly got the start of my life... my room was filthy! Guess what? I had made that mess during my several years there and it was exacerbated by my preparations for a hasty departure to DC. My loving family never bothered to clean up the place and I am glad they did not. I have been devoting my free time here, NOT skiing, but cleaning up the mess I had left behind. There are tonnes of things that I no longer use that take up space here and I think that by the end of the week, I will be able to say I did a decent job (albeit 4 months too late) of cleaning it all up. I think half this room is junk. There are papers and layer up layer of dust here. I don't thi...

Many of you no doubt will wonder about the title of this post. Maybe it should have had the word shopping too. Oh well. So, why do I love shopping in America? Well, firstly, they have online shopping. That is amazing in itself... Next, they have outlet malls. That and all the shopping I can think of. Giant malls, insane deals. So, online shopping: I have bought SO many things online. I bought my laptop, monitors, keyboard, dishes, measuring tape, memory card etc etc online. I mean, you can buy almost anything online here. I bought a kettle online. I got it shipped for 97 ¢ from Wal-Mart. Friends have bought tonnes of stuff so far, including a TV. A 50" plasma TV! Outlet mall: there's lots of stuff to buy there. Leesburg is a hike and a bit but it is worth the trip. There are clothes and kitchen things and shoes and electronics! There is so much to buy and so little time.

So, the Persians have a habit of jumping fires. Just before their new year. I wanted to go see. So I did. I went to Ambleside beach in West Vancouver to see the spectacle. It was quite the remarkable one. Hundreds of people of various ages were there in the muddy field. They were dancing. They were eating. They were lining up. To jump over fire. To dispel bad luck from last year allegedly. I was brave. But not too brave. I watched from the side-lines. I had mentioned the fire jumping to my friend. He mentioned that his people do the same thing back home. To an amateur perhaps, it is surprising that such behaviour is similar across thousands of kilometres. But then again, I have seen these sorts of things too many times to be taken in by the the awe of it all. I have been here before. The music is similar. The people are the same happy people I have seen elsewhere. The last time I was in a crowd this big, I was thinking fights would break out. None did. It was the same this time around...

I arrived on Friday night and I had dimsum reservations with my current and former co-workers at Sun Sui Wah for Saturday. We sat around for probably a few hours and ate and talked for such a long time. I found out about a funeral, a divorce, an engagement, a baby on the way, new jobs and that I love Vancouver. This seems to be the perfect way to sit down and catch up with the people that matter. We probably ate a tonne of food (some of us shouldn't be allowed to order :) ) and with breaks, chicken feet and tripe, we finished up our lavish lunch with ease. By the end of it, we were all caught up and realised how precious life was; or at least I felt that way. I moved to DC for a work, but I must say that a good chunk of me wants to come back to Vancouver. You don't realise how important the place you live is until you leave it. There are lots of places on earth to make a home and if you're lucky enough to call this rain-forest of a place home, for god sakes, tell yourself ...

Someone once said there is no place like home. I could not agree more. However, I have been wondering what home really is. I have made my home on 3 different continents through my life so far and I must say that there is something about going home, especially when you've been away from it for extended periods of time. This is probably the longest I have stayed away from 'home'. I live on my own now with 2 rather inquisitive dogs and my computers. I have no televison, I have no family for miles, I have few people I know etc. Home is indeed an interesting concept. I grew up in India and never ever felt that I could live without it. I moved over 10 years ago and while I do miss that first home of mine, I am content to carry on. I do make journeys back every so often and every day I realise I am more Indian that I was. That's what home does to you. While you are there, you tend to take it for granted; once you leave, you realise how much you miss it. I miss India. It gav...

My berry did me in. I have a black pearl from T-mobile and the earpiece of the phone seems to have broken. I can no longer hear through it when someone calls, though they assure me they can.

I am not usually one to write gripes about a specific company. I gripe plenty, but I at least keep the names off the record. Forget that with Verizon. I have been SO annoyed by them that they deserve special mention. I moved to DC. I need Internet. I can't get Comcast. So you know what I have as an option? Verizon. That's right. DSL, not FIOS. I order DSL. It takes a fucking week and a half for the "Service Ready Date". That's when they turn on my Internet access. Wow. Okay, so I wait. In the mean-time, I get the damn modem shipped to me. I get that delivered. They already charge me a bunch of shit as they said they would. Fine. You have to pay for these things. To be expected. I finally get to my service ready day. February 15. Today is February 27. I start the installation. I do as the silly animation from the CD shows. Along the way, it gets stuck. So, I call DSL Support. They do a line test. They ask a bunch of basic troubleshooting questions. No luck. He tra...

I've been in Washington DC for over a month now and am slowly getting used to life here. I have found an apartment and have started looking for furniture etc to furnish my apartment. So far, I have bought towels, sheets for the bed, an air bed (for people visiting), pots and pans for cooking (stainless steel ones with glass domes for lids), German knives and little things like a water filter, a rice cooker etc. I move into my apartment on the 15 th and thanks to the grace period I have at my temporary housing, I can slowly setup the place. I even found a couple of Target stores around here. As I was wandering back from the Target store last night, I happened to see a sign that still makes no sense to me. So, I took out my trusty Blackberry Pearl and took a picture of it in the fading light. If you know what the sign means, leave a comment. More on this wonderful saga later. For now, I have to get back to work.

I just changed the timezone my blog is on... and it changed all my posts. Now, that makes sense in some world, but not mine. I used to live in a GMT - 8 (or 7 depending on the time of year) time zone... and have now moved to a GMT - 5 time zone. I wish it would at least give me the option of keeping my time zone as is and continue on with the rest of the blogs. Or give me the option to display the time zone as well. Now that I think about it, google would have thought of that. Let me go check.

For those of you still following me via the blog, I must let you know that I am alive and busy in DC. I think I have finally found a place I like for a reasonable rent and so on. I have been learning to cook (toast is cooking in my books); I even cleaned my apartment the other day in stages. I have figured it is easier to do laundry when you are right out of clothes... and so on. Anyway, its almost 2am here, laundry is in the dryer in the basement, trying to cook food for tomorrow, life is interesting etc etc. Work has been good to me. I meant to write reams but I am far too tired for that. I am alive, I will get better at this and soon, you will have more to read from me. So long for now.

Since I am leaving for Washington DC, my dear friends got together with me, had a meal and wished me the very best for my future. They also asked me when I will be back next, seeing as I have family here, I don't think it will be too long before I come back again. I had intended to have the event at Joey's in Coquitlam. There were about a dozen or so of us, so I thought it best to make reservations and I called Joey's. They told me that they operate on a first-come basis. We decided to meet there around 7... and that place was packed. We took a while to figure out where to go and finally ended up going to the Earls on Lougheed Highway near Boundary. That place was packed too. We begged, pleaded, smiled etc to get a table for 13... and after much waiting and complaining... we got it. We had the fine plush chairs. Then they went hunting for a server. Allegedly, servers are hard things to find. Oh well. We found one. No one else believes me, but I am certain she has a moustach...

Well, what a week it has been. I can honestly say I miss DC. Not because I have some great love for the American capital... but because of the weather there. When I left DC last week, it was about 23 degrees Celsius, I wore a T-shirt, sat by the canal and had lobster. I came to Vancouver... and the damn rain hasn't stopped. We had so much rain that the water supply in this fair city has become clouded and 2 million of us have been told to boil our water before consuming it! Now... 2 million may not be such a big number in most places, but that is 1 / 15 th of all of Canada! The wind was so bad that trees fell down all over the place, people are STILL without power (4 days after the fact)! We were lucky. We did not lose power. We did lose the ability to use tap water. I am afraid to drink the tap water, brush my teeth etc. I cannot believe that in a country so advanced, 2 million people are forced to use bottled water due to a rain and wind storm. Its not raining right now, thankf...

I watched Borat on Friday. I haven't laughed so much in recent memory.

What have you been upto for the past little while? I have been in Washington DC for the past 2 weeks. As I type this, I am somewhere over the mid-west... but wait, I can pinpoint where, thanks to the tv screen in front of me with real-time flight information. I am just a little South and West of Angora, it is -27 Fahrenheit (-33 Celsius) outside, I have travelled 2800km so far and am about to cross the Denver-Utah border. My destination? Well on this Delta Airlines flight, it is to the capital of Utah, Salt Lake City... the spiritual home of the folks of that famous Church and the place that held the 2002 Winter Olympics. Too bad I won't be able to take in the city, and since it is dark (7:34pm MT right now), I am unlikely to see much on my way into the airport. So what have been upto in the past 2 weeks? I have been working hard like a dog over the past 2 weeks. I worked in the office till about midnight every day that I was there (including Saturday and Sunday) and got some work ...