SHAMU- The happening weekend part3

Well, i don't think i can do proper justice to the story! There is Shamu and there is rest of the trip!
SHAMU first!
Shamu is a killer whale. Rather it is a group of liller whales with white n black body, twisted fin and is used in sea world San Antonio, Orlando n San diego. Shamu was used in the movie Free willy! For more info on Shamu, see http://www.shamu.com/
Everythihg about Shamu was good, the moment i entered the shamu "believe" theatre, i felt the shamu pulse! And whooosh!!!!!!!!!! here it comes! The shiny black and white body carrying the trainer! for a monet i forgit i was 23 and felt as if i was a kid! They were showing footages from the film too! The show went on for some 25 minutes and i felt every pie is worth it! The ticket was 40$ for the full sea world but i felt just shamu is worth the money and may be even more! But as usual, few agree with me. See the pictures uploaded to get a feel!
A note for vikram: When i come to San Diego, A shamu show is a must!


Now continuing with rest of the sea world story! After Shamu, we went to a ride! It turned u full ulta! 1 was ok, but soon it turned upside down again. and then 3, 4.... by the time i reached 5, i was like if it is not the last one, i will throw up! But thank god, it ended there!!! Everybody was happy but ya everybod was glad to get out of it too! Do i really hate such artificial thrills! I gues i do! I know i can manage most of the rides. I have survived all so far. But i really don't enjoy them! I find nothing good in them except telling others that it was so thrilling! It's so artificial thrill! U can have the same thrill in your dream also! And for one who gets thrills with Jane Austen novels, these look really artificial!

Whatever, coming back to the day events, next we went to one water ride! It wa stoo much rush so we had a 45 minute wait for the ride! There was a small boat which carried 6 people and carried them along a topsy turvy artificial river which had waterfalls and all! During the wait, pranay was pulling my leg a lot and i told him, "dekh le beta, tu hi bheegega sabse zyada". and it was true! click on the heading to see what happened to him! This ride was fun, load sof fun, but ofcourse no thrill!

Next we went for a dolphin show which was also too good but it was made "feeka" due to the shamu effect! Next we went for food and then saw penguins and went for another ride called steel eel. This didn't have any turn ulta so there was no "chakkar" involved but there was a 70 degree all! It was real thrill this time! As it falls, you are off the chair and u r held with just the metal belt which u hold. But the scenery was fantastic!

After that, we went to the sea lion show! This also, u have to see it to believe it! The sea lions and the walrus did a full skit about how to find an old uncle who has gone into hiding! The stage was 2 storeys and the lions did go toeach level and jumped and did all activities! The high time was when the uncle was found, it was a big creamy walrus and it was too fat! The instructor asked, what r u doing to reduce weight? and it actually started doing abs!!!

After yet another ride, it was time's up! It was 9 pm, but i had no mood of coming back! I wanted more of Shamu!
On the way back, it was fun! U just have to ask Harsha how is Dr. Enjeti (her advisor) and u can sit back for hours and listen her talk :) (Just kidding)

Reached back at 2 am and called home! After all i was missing mom a lot! She loves astronomy , and she loves sea! So it would have been actually an ideal trip for her. Missing u maa!

The Saturday- Day 2 of happening weekend

Click on the heading to see the photos! Uploading phots here was a real pain! But don't see it now! Do it when i tell u to!
But well, let me start off!
We started off in 2 cars! Rather both were large ones!
The members:
1) Me
2) Nikhil: my roomie
3)Mahesh: my roomie
4) Sachin
5) Champa
6)Parag
7)Harsha
8)Mukta
9)Amey And
10) Sunil

Me, my roomies n Patil were in one car. Mahesh was the navigator! It took almost 2 hours and after getting lost once and landing up near a river, we finally made it to NASA at around 1 pm!

It was just awesome! The inside museum was pretty tame though ( u have better ones in Science City Kolkata but the NASA tour was too good! One lady updated us about the latest plans of NASA! What foods do astronatuts have seemed to be a favourite question! This is in the pictures. Look out for it! See the pics NOW!!!!!!!!!
By the time we finished everything it was 5:15ish! we still didn't eat even a single bite! Hungry like Hungry Buddha, we head of towards gujrati restaurant thali!
Ummmmmmm, the food was so good and unlimited, though that is one thing which really doesn;'t help me much as i eat limited! But that day i overdid myself! And by the time I had my second helping of Puran Puri and shrikhand, i had become a balloon and couldn't walk a single step! Litellay carring the stomach in my hand, i headed off to Bollywood Cinema6 theater!
The movie Fanaa was ok! If u like Kajol/ aamir/Shero shayari, u will like the movie and there are very few left who like neither! I am one of them! Started hating aamir the day he broke off with Juhi (Post Ishq)!
Another good part was the people in the theater! There were quite a few good looking Paki girls in the theatre and for once Mahesh did agree that Muslim girls look better!

Came back home at 1:30 and slept off gering up for the next day! The best one!

Have u gone thru the photos yet, if not, DO IT NOW!

The story of a Happening Weekend!

It was a hapening weekend for me after infinite boring ones! Well let me start here with friday!
There will be 2 other posts on saturday and sunday!
Friday started of with nothing special. But suddenly Sunil Patil ( A friend, stays in Casa Del Sol apt) calls up and asks if i want to go to mall! And now that was a dumb question to ask as i am always ready for these kinds of things!
As soon as he kept the call, a thought came to mind, can we walk form the mall to the cinemark multiplex? And the answer came through google maps! Yes, it's just 0.3 miles and there is walkway available!
But now the next question, bus will leave us to mall, what about coming back if we go for a movie! The answer: Impossible, the last bus is at 6:30, the first show we can catch up is 4:45, unless we walk back 3.7 miles!
Another question, will Patil agree to walk back? No answers as yet! With slight doubt i start towards the bus stop, meet Patil on the way and ask him!!! he says he was waiting for somebody wierd like me who will dare to do such a thing!
So everything set. We go to the mall. I buy a floaters! Then we go to Cinemark theatre for Da Vinci Code. The movie was not bad, not good, helped me refresh the book!
Walking back was fun! After having an icecream break at Cold Stone icecream parlour, we head back to home! On the way, we cross a golf course and suddenly we see golf balls all around us! I was just thnking whether i should pick one n go, i see a ball comes flying towards us!! it was the place where the first shot usually falls!!! Just missing me the ball hits ground and i run away!

That was all i did on friday! The cold stone banana spilt with fresh strawberry was just awesome!

Austin Trip

Again a change from usuals. It's no more musing.
Let's begin. It was last friday,19th may. we were supposed to present our projects to NI!
We set off at 7:30 am approx! Me, Bharath (My Controls grp collegue/friend), Waqar (Dr swaroop and Dr. B's student), Indrajeet (a sitarist and a friend of Dr. B) and Dr. B himself .
On the way we had loads of coffee and a new thing called Kolache . It was okay dokay! I din't like it much!

Indrajeet was supposed to go for some radio function, we left him at someplace and went ahead to NI! The most funny thing as u enter NI is the flags, they have US flag , texas flag and an NI flag!

Well, the company was good! And we were greeted downstairs by their controls head Jeannie.
Well, not exactly the head but she was some boss! A PhD from MIT and one of the very few women in control system! The lesser the said about her the better! Hi-Fi fundoo and always excited to work.
Then came Ram, our one point contact! It seems NI is a good place for PhD's to work for!
Then our sessions started! It was almost 10:30! Dr. B started speaking about his paper and somehow the people got so interested in it that it continued till 12:15! Then we had a lunch break! People hate these lunches but i really like them! It was brown bread cheese and turkey sandwich, cookie , coke n chips! I neither had the coke nor the chips but still it was quite filling!
Then our turn came! Bharat spoke first! Then it was me! But i had nothing new to speak, as the slides i had prepared were already covered by Dr. B, it was justa repeatation! So i skipped lall that and moved into my software! There were the usual, oh, that's good and all such things but it was all hidden under the beauty of the theory lecture that Dr. B had given!
Then Ram gae some ideas of hi own as to hwo they are going to productize this and then the meting ended!
Now the usual discussions about world cup football started! And as the group assembled there had 2 argentine, 1 brazilian, one Venezuela guy and 3-4 indians, the argentine and the brazillian kept talking for minutes on all that! These american care only for American football!

Me and bharat were pretty pissed off with our efforts being wasted but as soon as we came out, Dr. B seemed to be very happy! He said it was the best resposnse they had ever given and they really seemed serious about all that unlike anytime before!

We then went to pick indrajeet in an Indian Restaurant swad! It was a gujju run restaurant! we ordered chaat and bhelpuri's!!! I somehow felt it was too spicy. That created a laugh amongst thers as to how can one change so quickly! But one thing i really liked there was a certain action by Dr. B! We were all eating from all the plates! And once i was eating bhel puri which Dr. B wanted. while handling him the plate i forgot to take out my spoon out! And he ate from that!
It wouldn't hve been very surprising if i had been in Surathkal! There, asking for seperate spoon is considered to be a disgrace! I felt old habits die hard! after all, he was alos in IIT for 4 years!!!
On the way back, we were dicussing some hifi control system stuff and i was really enjoying!
But suddenly we all heard bharat snoring!!! He was deep asleep! Coming back was fun, we were elated and Dr. B was cracking nice jokes all the way!
Overall, it was a good trip! But ofcourse, a ONE MAN SHOW

State Elections 2006

Am again back to current affairs which i am no good at! Last one i did was on how Chappel is bad for india, and I had to delete it for the outrageous comments!
Well, let's hope this one is not that controversial.
First my own state: WB. By the way, is it my state? I have voted only once and that too from Karnataka. And if i ever come back to India, I still wanna stay in karnataka! Whatever, let's say my parent's state! There were no surprises. People have been asking me , why they even bother to have elections! Well frankly even i don't know! Earlier people used to blame the CPM for rigging in the polls but this time that was not the case! I guess the reason was such a weak opposition. Mamta Bannerjee was no comparison to charismatic Buddha! I read somewhere today that when asked Buddhadeb Bhattacharyya told, the reason for Bengal's sad state in the past decades is because of insufficient allocation of Central funds! I somehow agree with it! After all, only Congress n BJP have been in power last few decades and the top leaders of both parties are so anti-Bengal. Rajiv Gandhi had termed Kolkata as a dead city and Advani had openly admitted that he hates Kolkata. Are the people of Kolkata supposed to listen to this and start voting for BJP n congress? Anyway, I guess now the developement of any state or country is beyond politics, so it doesn't matter!

Now lets go to Tamilnadu. Don't know it was a surprise or not because history says it had to change! But Jayalalitha had done so much good work! Especially Tsunami was so well handled by her and so was the water shortage problem by water harvesting!
But again as in many cases, i had my own special reasons why i would have voted for her!
1)She looks better than Karunanidhi.
2) I hate people who hide their eyes (Eyes speak of personality). And karunanidhi wears gogs even in the night. I ahte people who wear gogs in night n caps in shade!
3) She is NDA supporter!

Moving to Assam n Pondicherry, No idea and no interest in the politics there!
Coming to kerala, well I don't know how does election matter in GOD'S OWN COUNTRY! I would still like to believe that Kerala is ruled by Lord Mahabali who comes every year to meet his fellow countrymen during "ONAM".