Amreeka Diary : The End

My 46 day trip has finally come to an end. Though this was probably a bad time for me to come on such a long holiday with placements , gre around the corner and the CAT drawing nearer by the day  ,  I have no regrets with coming here.

By freak chance all the family members I met here , I had already met in the last year. My two aunts had come just last June , my cousins had come for another cousins wedding and a few cousins had just randomly showed up in India with the odd one staying back for six months. So for me , it wasn’t really a big deal to meet my family  . What was big deal was to spend time with them in their comfort zone. It felt nice to undergo the role reversal of me being the person adjusting to the roads , food , water , people  etc etc and them being the ones totally at ease.

Other than the huge disapointment of the cancelled RUSH concert , I don’t think I have any complaints about my trip . While I’m quite sure I’d never want to settle down in the US , I’d love to come back for a visit to see more places and have some more fun.

 

Would you believe ..

..that it’s the third quarter final of Euro and this is my first post about the tournament. I have to admit part of it was lazyness but mostly the blame lies with the horrible coverage football gets here in America. Watching today’s awesome match was  a pain . Two idiotic commentators who don’t know shit about the game , insist on mispronouncing names , and jabber on about forthcoming TV shows on the channel (abc for todays match. I mean … van Nistelrooy almost scored and these guys were giving deatils about  ”I survived a Japanese game show”) while the match is going on. Also there was no halftime show. There was just 20 minutes of commercials. The commercials flashing on screen while the match was going on  thus blocking my view of the action on the field was extremely irritating. 

These network people are so used to the excessive commercialism that small, insignificant sports like baseball , basketball and American football need to stay afloat that they  thrust the same crap onto football not realising that the beautiful game is far bigger than anything else in the world of sports. 

On the bright side , I’ll be in India for the semis and the Final . Back to John Dykes and co. Back to some real coverage.

 

 

Amreeka Diary 10

My one day in Atlanta before we left for Orlando was spent in telling everyone about my awesome California trip and packing for the Orlando trip.

I’ll cut through all the boring bits and get straight to my time in Orlando. We were there for three days.

On the first day , we went to the Epcot centre. There we went on quite a few simulation rides . Most of them them were quite good. I particularly enjoyed the Automobile testing ride and the Space launch simulation. They have these World pavilions at the Epcot , and we went through most of the countries. It was very realistic and very well designed.  My favourite part of the epcot centre was the Fireworks at the end . They were simply mindblowing. I have never seen such an amazing fireworks display.

Since we were all dead tired , we decided to do something light-weight the next day. We went to the Kennedy Space Centre  (which is about 1/50th the size of Epcot and involves less walking)  and took the bus tour. Sadly we missed the Discovery landing. The day was spent indulging in primarily geeky pursuits and eating salted pretzels.

We aad saved the best for the last day and went to see Universal Studious and Islands of Adventure on our last day. we first went to Islands of adventure. I went on a rollercoaster ride called The Hulk . It wasn’t scary at all. I felt looking at the ride was more scary than actually going on it. Also I was really pissed with having to wait 40 minutes for the ride when the actual ride lasted just about 3 minutes.  We also went on a simulated ride about Spiderman , a water ride about Popeye . Then we had lunch and went to Universal studios. There I missed two concerts due to the rain . D’oh! But then we went for a ‘disaster movie’ themed ride . It was really funny.  The highlight of the day was the newly opened Simpsons Ride . It was awesome. It was very well done and funny at the same time.

 

Amreeka Diary 9

There are a lot of ‘for the first time’ s in this post .

The next day I had greek food for the first time. It was really good. That night i tried my first martini. The next day we left for denver to see Rush in concert at Red Rocks. But it apparently rained very heavily the night before due to which the gig was canceled. I spent most of the day sulking. What sucked the most was the fact that it was a beautiful night …ideal for a concert. We had a flight going back to san Francisco the next afternoon , so the morning was spent in driving through the rockies. It was very beautiful . I also saw snow for the first time. That was kinda cool (Pun not intended).

We spent friday in San Francisco and had dinner in an Italian restaturant. The next morning we went to Fisherman’s wharf (IIRC) and had a great breakfast. Then we drove back to LA. Spent the night in LA and left the enxt day for San Diego. Spent Sunday in San Diego and left from there on Monday morning to come back to Atlanta.

So in the past 20 days I saw San Diego , Escondido , LA , Malibu , Sacramento , Oakland , Berkeley , San Francisco , Sunnyvale , Marin , Sausalito , Denver and the Rockies. I saw in 20 days what most americans living here their entire lives haven’t seen. It was , to say the least , a memorable trip.

I feel so lucky to have such awesome sisters , aunt and uncle who made this trip possible. I don’t think anyone else could have shown me a better time in California.

 

Amreeka diary 8

On monday we went ..(people who know me well should probably brace themselves at this point )…hiking . We went to the Redwood Forests to mainly see the Sequioa trees which are the tallest living creatures in the world. They had all these trails to offer. We chose the ‘Ocean View’ trail. It took us all the way upto the highway. The view of the ocean as well of the entire forest was breathtaking. We then came down and went on another hillside trail . It was quite interesting.

Then we had lunch …uh.. actually breakfast at 4pm on a roadside diner literally next to the water. Then we went up the hills in Marin to get a good view of the Golden Gate bridge. It is really awesome. We could see Alcatraz in the background which was kinda cool. Two world famous monuments in the same frame.

Since we exerted so much on monday , we just slept in today. I got up at quarter to one o’clock in the afternoon. We then saw ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall’ which I thought was a good , funny film. There were only 8 people in the theater (including us)! How the hell do these films make money ?

We had some really good mexican food for dinner and now we’re at home. So for now :  That’s all , folks!  

 

Amreeka Diary 7

It’s been a long time. This one may be little longer than normal.

So after the Getty , we went to the Reagan Presidential Library . It was quite cool. Especially seeing Air Force One (the one used by Reagan ) from the inside.

The next day we went to the Griffith Observatory. It was really cool. I finally saw how Foucoult’s pendulum works. They had some really cool images and videos of the sun . The planetarium was also good. Some really cool visual effects. The view of LA from Griffith is awesome. It was a really clear day and we could see everything all the way to the ocean.

Then we left and came to Oakland on Wednesday. On Thursday we saw a baseball game (the Oakland A’s v/s the Toronto Blue jays). It was very very boring. It’s hard to think something that lasts just 3 hours could be that boring. People here just don’t understand the beauty of test match cricket.

We visited Berkeley on Friday and saw the University. It seems like a realy cool place to study. Saturday was spent  visiting other cousins . I got Indian food . That was nice for a bit of a change.

Today we went to chinatown to eat dimsum . They were delicious. Dinner was at a pub. They played football matches on the TV . So i got to see england’s goals against T&T and Holland’s goals against Wales. We were there for long enough for me to watch an entire match . Riverplate v/s Colon . River won 2-1.

 

 

Amreeka Diary 6

So my stay in  San Diego was awesome. Had loads of fun . Saw the zoo and the wild animal park , had my first cup of tea-that-does-not-suck in amerika (though it was , like all american hot bevarages,  served cold ) , played the guitar after ages , learnt 3 chords on the mandolin (Ami , G and F ….so basically now I can play ‘all along the watchtower ‘ on the mandolin! whohoo!) Man Utd won. Hung out with my sister’s friends (they’re all crazy , so it was a blast …very entertaining) It wasn’t very weird for me since I do have friends of their age but the guys I know  are very mature people like these two . So it was a different experience.  

Now we’re in LA. I got real tea . NOT the bagged , cold  crap you get here. Proper boil-water-and-put-in-tea-leaves tea. I feel so good now.

On the drive ,  I saw ‘the world famous San Fernando valley!’ .

 Yesterday we went to the Getty museum . It was way more fun than going to the museum in San Diego which had all Indian paintings .

The Getty collection is awesome. Van Gogh’s Irises was probably the most expensive painting I saw. The highlight for me was seeing three paintings by Claude Monet: Bridge over the Water Lillies , Sunrise(which started the Impressionist movement) and another one whose name I’ve forgotten. They were awesome. Impressionism looks way better in real life than on wikipedia. 

I really loved  the paintings byVernet .The detail in them is amazing.  I also learnt that Cuyp , Hobbema and Pissarro are all super brilliant and I would love to buy some of their stuff sometime (I guess I won’t be able to afford Monet unless I invent a perpetual motion machine or something )

Oh , actually another highlight was seeing paintings by Rembrandt . They were awesome. The detail in them is crazy. It’s even more than Vernet.

Today we went to Malibu beach. It was really beautiful . Kinda deserted (which apparently is weird out here considering Memorial Day Weekend is sorta a big deal here) . We did some hardcore tourist-giri and took pics on the lifeguard tower and all. The lifeguard was , well , very bored , and was more than willing to let us do it. The rest of the day was spent in socialising (something I , to put it very nicely , totally suck at).

We’ll probably visit the Griffith Observatory tomorrow. Off for now. 

 

Amreeka Diary 5

Now in San Diego with my sister . The weather is way better than in Atlanta. Also the houses all look diffrent .

Nothing much happened here in the last day or so (or I didn’t reaslise what all happened …I’ve been very sleepy.) The flight was quite fun though.

I kinda pissed off an air hostess by laughing at her. Ths guy (an african american) asked her  IN ENGLISH if he could exchnge his seat and sit with his wife (who was sitting 5 rows away) and her response was ” Sir , do  you speak and Understand english ?”. Can you blame me for laughing?   

Its a good thing there were other air hostesses  there.

Also the flight was fun since they had a  inflight trivia game . It was okay. The questions sucked but they were questions! And it’s always fun when your winning

 

All hail Chuck Norris

It is possibly  the most cliched topic for a blog post but since  it has made me laugh a lot over the last few days I feel compelled to give a link to the Chuck Norris facts site. 

And always remember : If you are feeling  low , Chuck Norris can get you out of it.

 

Amreeka Diary 4

Experienced probably the best thing I’ve seen in the US so far : Pizza buffet! It was awesome . Basically you just go with your plate and pick up slices from a choice of about 15 pizzas. I (think) I had pepperoni , cheese , garlic , spinach , chicken , beef , pepperoni and chicken and some more permutations of the same stuff. The one I liked the most was the idea f the desert pizzas . They had Strawberry , Apple crisp , Marsh mellow and cinnamon walnut pizzas. I tried them all obviously . And they were awesome!