Night in the city

Gotta confess, I love the look of San Francisco at night. However tired or sleepy I may be, driving down to San Francisco, is always a different experience for me.

I always have the same set routine. Drive down to Pier 39, walk to the breezy wharf. Then drive up north over the Golden Gate bridge to the Lonely Sailor Vista Point and view the city in all its glory. From here, you can see the Alcatraz, Angel Islands, Bay Bridge, Golden Gate bridge, the Palace of Fine Arts, Coit Tower and of course the breath taking San Francisco skyline at night. The cold breeze blowing over the bay adds to the chill and the enigma of the entire moment. Since I always go late at night, there are very few people (read tourists) to spoil the mood. The Golden Gate looks magnificent like always. There is something about the bridge that attracts me, no matter how many times I see or drive over it. May be because its the most known landmark of the United States after the Statue of Liberty or may be just because I always feel how the prisoners must have felt when they got a glimpse of the Golden Gate from Alcatraz every night. Imagine how the guys in there must be feeling. Less than a geographical mile to freedom, yet soo impossible to achieve!

After that stop I drive down south and always go over the Crooked street. Not only the street, but the portions of Lombard St approaching it are amongst the most adrenaline pumping drives I have ever had :) !! Its enough to get you back to your senses even if you are a wee-bit sleepy. I love driving over it at night, cause (like you guessed right!) the 5 minute drive takes around an hour and a half (thanks to the tourist-traffic) during the day! Also the steep drops look a lot more scary at night....

Finally, the last stop somehow always is the Coit Tower, before I head back home. The Coit tower gives me a view of the Piers which I love a lot. You can actually see all the piers on the Embarcadero from there. Also I can see the Crooked street from there and admire the road that I just drove over!!

That was my idea of a romantic evening with my car. Of course on my way back, a coffee break somewhere, adds to the charm :) !!

Fat Friends?

This article that I read on the Internet recently has got me all thinking. The gist of the article is "Having fat friends makes you fat". Obesity is like a virus which spreads!! Hua.. can't believe? Read the article here.

Well its funny, but statistically two of my best friends in India gained a lot of weight since they became my friends. I was born fat, so I can't really blame anyone for making me one.

This means, I have a new business plan to make money. I am gonna advertise to all those underweight malnourished people out there (Paris Hilton, Naomi Richie included..) to be friends with me and see the results (in 6 weeks?) Hehe, I could make television commercials featuring my real life friends starring "before" and "after" :) !! Maan sometimes making money is soo easy :) !! I wonder, if I had not spent my time writing silly code and making boring spreadsheets I would have been a millionaire by now, using my ideas :P !!

I initially got the link to this article on Slashdot. I like the name of that site. If I have to ask someone to go to that site on the phone this is how it sounds like: "http..colon..colon..slash..slash..slashdot..dot..org". Its one of those uber geek sites. And before you jump to any conclusion, I ain't a geek (yet), I am just amongst those millions of wannabes. Geekdom is far away for me.

And finally, since my blog is rated PG-13 by me, I won't get into the details of this article, but I strongly suggest you all to give it a read :) !!

First Anniversary?

Hey, did you realize I just completed more than a year of scribbling my thoughts online? Whoa!! Thats an achievement, pat pat pat :) !! Not that I have been regular, but believe it or not, I have written 50 articles :), gained 8 pounds, slept more than 2900 hours, shaved more than 300 times and have made 4 dedicated readers in the 365 days!!

Caped crusader

Three spills in a week. Would have been worst.

On Sunday, I vacuum my car and wash it to my heart's content. Then I pull into a Taco Bell to buy a couple of Chalupas and a Pepsi. Everything good till now. Then ... as the friendly lady hands over my Pepsi, I drop it in my car. The lid opens and in no time, I am drowning, gasping for breath in a car full of Pepsi.

On Tuesday, I come home after a very tiring workday and see utensils floating around in my apartment. Worst still, I realize that the mucky water that is hoisting them up so valiantly actually contains what my neighbours cooked for lunch. Before you get going in the wrong direction ... Well it happens to be the water that came from the sink of people who live above me. How you ask? Well, the kitchen water drainage pipe that is shared by our units is choked and the water comes back from the pipe, outta my kitchen sink and into my house :( !!

And if these two incidents were not enough...

On Friday, I decide to write them in a blog (the one that you are reading right now!). I make myself some chai, set the cup on my computer table and start writing. Two minutes later, I fumble with my cup and drop the hot chai on my keyboard. Kaput! Keyboard stops working.

Ok, now I understand that all you guys feel very sorry about me, and for a moment even sympathize with me. But then you sit back and actually ask, why the title "Caped Crusader"? Yeah, there comes the ego part.

Spill what may, I clean it up. I am "Spill-man". Dressed in green shorts, black t-shirt, yellow gloves and a face mask made out of my not-so-white-anymore handkerchief, I go from car-to-door cleaning messes up. My tools are Clorox Bleach, 409, Scrubbing bubbles etc. etc. You name a cleaning solution, and I bet I have it.

The sad part of being spill-man is, neither do I get to save a damsel in distress from a towering monster (hope you have noticed that all the super heroes always get to save good looking gals) nor do I get to do some suave stunts like flying or hanging on buildings and get an applause from people passing me by. My super heroism deals with cleaning up yucky and mucky things. And as a kid, I had always thought being a caped crusader was kinda cool :) !!

I am back

I guess I needed that someone to come and kick my butt to get me started writing again. Thanks "anonymous" for the comment...

Well, I was supposed to be back more than a week before out of my hibernation. But you know that technology called "snooze" in our alarm clocks nowadays? Well, thats the culprit why I got soo late in getting up. I think the guy who invented the first alarm clock with the snooze functionality is completely responsible for millions of people coming in late to office everyday and also for lost productivity and for bears like me for getting up late out of hibernation and delaying writing blogs :) . I live up to my moniker -- The God of Procrastination.

That reminds me, I just recently came across two clocks that take snoozing to the next level. The first one is an amazing piece of invention which actually flies off the moment it starts ringing. To stop the alarm, you actually have to fetch the piece that flew away and put it back in the base. Check this link out ..

Hmm, nothing has been happening in my life lately. Just have been eating out a LOT. Have completely stopped cooking, and have been chasing the clock most of the times. Sometimes you want to escape your routine only to find later that it is difficult to get back on track again.

By the way, this hibernation thing has really got me thinking. Have you humans ever wondered how peaceful this world really would have been had the human race hibernated 3-6 months each year? There would be no wars (you cant expect to pick up a war from the same place, 6 months after all the soldiers have woken up out of their sleep!! I can't even remember where I left my wallet after I get up from sleep :) !!), also we would have found a permanent solution to a billion other things starting with global warming, oil prices, and finally population explosion (I bet you wouldn't want me to get into explaining that :P !!). Guys like me would have grown a beard soo long in 6 whole months that I could sell ropes to make ship anchors for the rest of the year. Man, people would swear by my keratin rich ropes, and all ships would prefer the "Girish" brand of ropes!! Enuf said.

Before I sign off for today, wanted you guys to know that I was watching "Shall we dance" *ing Richard Gere and Jennifer Lopez. Nice movie, got me all in the mood to dance. Which incidentally will happen to be the topic for my next blog.

Zzz...zzz...zzz...zzz...zzZ

Long time no see .. 1 month to be precise :) !!

Yeah, I came to tell you guys that I am hibernating. Its winter over here on the North Pole and all of us (I mean the Polar bears) have gone into hibernation. I can hear my next door neighbor snoring peacefully. I just got up to have a glass of water, so I thought I say hi to my readers.

This by no way means that I have stopped blogging. I shall write again when I am more wide awake and can make my gray cells blurt something out for me. My blog shall remain inactive for another 2 weeks. So hold on till 8th of July.

Thanks for your patience!! And here is something fun for you..

If you like action movies: http://www.joepixel.com/common/images_blog/cool.html

If you fall for cute photos: http://flickr.com/photos/sepultura/666133293/

If you are a controversy theorist: http://www.enterprisemission.com//NukingJupiter.html

Goodnight sweet dreams!!

Treat and eat

Have you guys ever wondered that the only way that we please someone, other than giving them gifts is by taking them out for a lunch or a dinner? This is what we term as a treat. The literal definition of "treat" on Wiktionary is "To entertain with food or drink"!!

Isn't it weird? If a person is already over weight and diet conscious how in the world are you going to entertain him/her by stuffing with loads of fat rich food? Or for that matter, if the host is fat and overweight how do you expect him to be happy treating you out to food and eating along with you? Its my honest opinion that depending on the physical wellbeing of the host or the person that you want to "entertain" you should call that person out for a healthy workout in the gym, or better still take him/her out for a walk. This way you will end up spending quality time with that person and at the same time, "entertain".

This blog post came out of my upset tummy which has been fed outside almost everyday for the entire last week, to "treat" other people :)!! Next time onwards I have decided to treat people by talking them out for a walk on the Iron Horse Trail

On a related note, the cuisines that are grumbling in my stomach right now are:
Indian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Italian and Mediterranean. Unity in diversity in my stomach. Reminds me of this song...

How to spot an Indian?

Hello readers!! Sorry for the barrage of emotionally charged blogs that I wrote for a couple of weeks. I am back again to being stupid like always :) !! Hmm, I bet many of you heaved a sigh of relief.

Well, well, 'nuff said. Lets get back to work. I have been studying fellow Indians in malls and gyms and else where, and here I have listed a few of my observations. Note that even I follow all of these things religiously :) !!

1. Drives around in a Honda or a Toyota. (That's not true, we also drive a Hyundai or a Nissan :))
2. Does not buy any electronics unless s/he finds them in a deal.
3. Stands outside Circuit City or Fry's at 3:00AM for the day after Thanksgiving Sale.
4. Talks with a heavy nasal accent which sounds as if s/he is down with a cold.
5. S/he puts more sugar and milk in the coffee, than the coffee itself!
6. Gives you a blank stare if you are an Indian, gives a cheek-to-cheek smile otherwise!
7. If an Indian approaches and smiles at another unknown Indian, then he is for sure in a Multi-level Marketing Scheme. Runnnn....
8. Pays off all the credit card bills on time and keeps zero credit exposure.
9. Refers to Wikipedia for anything s/he doesn't understand. It's our no nonsense survival guide in the US of A.

War and Peace

I couldn't stop myself from posting this particular blog.

I couldn't sleep over the last spate of comments that I got on my blog titled Worthless. Somebody actually proved to me that I am worthless, that I use a lot of smileys in my blog, make a lot of grammatical and spelling mistakes and generally I ain't good for anything.

But I guess, I know that already, and I don't think I am gonna change. So I decided to continue writing with a vengeance :) !! Also I am not gonna stop using smileys cause those cute little creatures make me happy. I know my writing is not gonna change the world, but this is the only hobby that I have.

So I wish myself, all the very best and move on. I guess my blog is facing some midlife crises.

And before I end , I have taken Siddharth's comment to heart which said " hey..write what u want to...not what people want to listen!! there r enough places in the world where u can't do ur own thing..let this be an exception!"

Thank you! For me, I am still the center of MY universe :) !!

Worthless

Had a pretty interesting week as far as my blog goes. I got two very constructive feedbacks, and I have taken them to heart :) !!

The first one requires a bit of a background, so read on. There is a particular Java API which calculates the worth of your blog using Trackbacks, links and your blogs ranking on Technorati.

Incidentally my blog is worth zero dollars :) !! Well, its predictable. To start with, mine is an absolutely ego centric blog and when I started off I had no illusions of grandeur whatsoever. I didn't even succumb to the temptation of making some quick bucks by using Google Adsense. All said and done you can check the worth of your blog over here.

The second criticism that I received was of the fact is that I try to write funny and with the poor frequency at which I write, it doesn't really make my blog worth reading :) !!

Hehe, I understand. So here is my mid year blog resolution.

1. I shall write more regularly and shall not wait for brain waves to come.
   
2. I will write what I feel like and not try to be funny.
3. I shall continue writing till I have at least 1 subscriber other than myself :) !!

I love to write, and when my emails to e-groups started falling on deaf ears, I started my own blog. So thanks to all of you for being with me till now :)

And finally ... comments are highly appreciated.