SV Temple Pittsburgh - Kumbabhisekham

Sunday, August 30, 2009.

I had gone to the Pittsburgh Tirupathi temple for the kumbabhisekham celebrations and what a grand event it was!



The temple authorities had arranged for transportation for university students from the university and back. It is about a 1 hour journey and we reached the temple at about 11 AM.



The puja for the last day of the celebrations was going on and we were among the audience who it seems have traveled across the US to come today to what is popularly called the Tirupathi of the west!



It was a wave of indians that greeted us at the temple and we witnessed pujari's being lifted by a crane to the gopuram's to perform puja with the kalasam. It was indeed a first time experience for many including me to see these things. Believe it or not, after the puja, a helicopter came in and showered flowers on the temple top. It was an amazing sight to watch! :)





Soon after, we queued up to have lunch (free prasadam) at the temple kitchen and had a plateful of sambhar rice, curd rice and kesari! The kind of plate where there are 3 partitions ....

Some folks bought more of the same to take home, and some more lucky ones who happened to eat last, got to take free food in boxes!

I, sated with a stomachful of hot food, went about clicking snaps for posterity and then snoozed in the bus on the journey back :)



I'll leave you with some snaps that i particularly liked :)



There are more pics at http://picasaweb.google.com/abhishek.ramani/SV?feat=directlink

Independence day celebrations at Carnegie Mellon University

I had heard a lot about the famed CMU fence and even more about the indian independence day celebrations. Little did i know what it would really feel like at the moment :)

Here is a pic of the carnegie mellon fence.


Painting the fence is a tradition at CMU and it symbolizes an event or is representative of the ethnic diversity behind its faculty and student fraternity. Every year, on the night of 14th August, the indian fraternity in Pittsburgh ( not just at CMU ) gathers at the fence to start painting it in the indian tricolor. This year, we had a gala event where all new indian students were introduced to each other and we had some light indian music playing out in the open. We started painting the fence in our tricolor at about 10 PM with folks taking turns with the colors and available brushes, trying their best to get paint on the fence and not on each others clothes :)

Here are some pics of the event.




The next photo is with my buddy Karthik, who is also my soon-to-be-neighbor ( I have an amazing story to tell about how we 10 indians went about our house search :) but thats for another post)


Finally, after a lot of brushes changing hands, and a lot of paint dripping over hands :) we finished painting the entire fence. Then one of the senior girls took over and painted the chakra over the pole painted white. The end result looked like this.


It was a nice experience and i got to meet a lot of new people. It is surprising how a simple exercise like painting a fence for 10 seconds can be such a great team building activity!

Once the fence was painted, it was time to sing the national anthem. Candles were passed around and were lit in quick succession. The moment had arrived. Each one of us had a lit candle in our hands, and we started singing the national anthem in unison. It really was a humbling experience. This was the first time in my life i had done any thing remotely like this.

Come to think of it, the candle light was quite representative of our experiences when we arrived in the US. The initial lighting of the candle was like the gathering of funds from all sources to make it possible to get to CMU. The flame, thought determined to burn bright and strong, was buffeted by a mild breeze which threatened to de-stabilize it - It needed the protective covering of our hands until it found its bearings. The exact same way, we were lost when we first landed here in the US with just our bags.

I have lost count of the number of people who have helped us stabilize ourselves since the time we got here.

Be it the kind PhD student at CMU who provided us with food and accommodation for a short period as soon as we arrived here ....

or the Indian Graduate Student Association who arranged for temporary accommodation for many incoming indian students ....

or the kind land lady with whom we signed a lease for our new house from tomorrow ....

or the african american cab driver who asked us students for only 11$ even thought the meter showed 11.55$ and we were asking him how much he expected as a tip ....

or the complete stranger in the Venkateswara temple who gave 4 weary students a ride back to the CMU campus free of cost in his car ....

or the brazilian lady who sold me her chair for 20$ and gave me a ride back home in her car ....

or the Israeli gentleman who sold me his book shelf for 15$ and lent me his trolley to transport it back home ....


or last but not least, our friend, who put us up at their place when our temporary accommodation expired and we still had 10 days to go until our new lease started.

All in all, it been a pleasant experience and i hope to share more such accounts with you in the future.

-Abhishek

Panasonic RP HC 500 - Available at jzool.com!

I have always dreamt of getting my hands on one of these. The very first time i came across the technology of noise cancellation was at the Bose store in Bangalore, and i was completely blown away by its capability to put you literally in a planet of your own!

From what i see on the internet and after reading reviews by users of the Panasonic RP-HC 500, it appears that Panasonic has come out with a product that is as effective in noise cancellation as the bose headphones at a fraction of the cost!

I cant wait to get my hands on the product and hope to place my order at jzool soon! Jzool is a Japanese company that specializes in online sales of electronics and the best part about this store is that, with any purchase above 100$, your order ships free! Click here to access the site and see for yourself!

Hopefully, i'll recieve the product soon, and will be able to share a more detailed review with you!

-Abhishek.

surprises in life !!!

Have u ever felt that sinful pleasure accompanied by a chill passing down your spine when you saw your favorite childhood comic / catoon printed in the paper cone that the Peanut-seller or the roadside Bhel-puri seller gave you? Well, something similar happened to me recently, and i thought i'll share this one with you.

It was sometime in 2002 when my mom spotted this ad and told me to have a look.
It was an intersting offer for an internet phone and i dutifully cut out the snippet and stored it for posterity. Years later, many years later (6 years to be precise), as i was cleaning out the shelf in which i had placed this newspaper snippet, i happened to turn it over, and what i saw pretty much blew me away.

Take a look at it and i'm sure it'll take your breath away ! (obviously not literally ;)).
Sorry about the poor quality of the scan, the age of the paper clipping shows only too obviously ... For those interested in reading the original clipping, i have it with me :)

Stanford - A truly memorable journey.

It was a sunny afternoon as the three of us (Abhiman, Santhana and myself) set out to drive down to the city of Palo Alto, CA, and to visit the Stanford Campus.

It was a pleasant drive on the broad freeway US 101 and we covered something like 20 Kilo metres in 4 minutes and 30 seconds !!! The freeway funda is simply awesome here in the US ... you have the concepts of exits and approach ramps as a result of which traffic on the freeway never stops !!! but for accidents, of course ;)

People reach upto 90 miles per hour on these freeways ( thats about 150 kmph !!! ) and its an awesome experience to drive on them ... no chance we can travel at such speeds in india !!! :)

Once we entered the city of Palo Alto, we took university avenue to reach the Stanford Campus and slowly drove past several posh houses which i'm told are worth millions. It seems there are several Stanford professors who're millionaires themselves and live in some of these houses !!!

The approach road to Stanford University is a lovely straight road with an avenue of Palm trees on both sides. It has such a serene look to it and on the warm sunny sunday afternoon the approach to Stanford was truly surreal.



The snap you see above is the first thing a visitor to Stanford sets her eyes upon. Its called the oval ( for obvious reasons) and the lush green grass surface is truly a sight for sore eyes. The entire Stanford campus is WiFi enabled so i believe its not uncommon for students and researchers to stroll onto the oval with their laptops and make the next ground breaking discovery while enjoying the sun sitting on the grass !!! :)


The snap you see above has one of the Lecture halls in the background and the Hoover tower further in the background. The part that i liked most about Stanford is its layout and how much free open space exists !!! Out of the 8000 acres the University owns, more than 2/3rds is open !!! Can you believe that ?


This is a snap of the Hoover Tower, named after the Us President Herbert Hoover who happens to be an alumnus of the university. At over 250 feet, the Hoover tower happens to be the only structure in entire Stanford which can be seen from any point in the university campus !!! The view from atop this tower is truly magnificent and was well worth the 2$ entry fee.

The best part about this was that i got to meet one my college seniors after like 2 years !!! Imagine meeting someone atop a tall tower after ages !!! What are the odds !!! :D


The entire campus is filled with greenery and its very common to see both students and faculty commuting to classes on bicycles !!! Even though it was a Sunday afternoon there were a fair number of cycle commuters !!!


This is a view of the Visitor Information Services center which is a dedicated center to provide help to visitors desiring to tour the university. They provide free maps and even a guided tour ( which is completely free !!! :) ) where a Stanford student takes you on a walk around the campus and describes the culture and history behind the amazing place that it is.

A video taken from the Hoover Tower can be found here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MfaMCPYo_2A



The main building of the campus is called "The Main Quad" and has huge passageways around it. We even saw a class being held right in the middle of the courtyard !!! The main quad also houses the Stanford Chapel which has a mural on its walls supposedly painted using over 22000 shades of colors !!!


We saw that a guided tour was scheduled for 3 15 in the afternoon so decided to have a quick lunch and double back to the university for the tour. After a quick burger at burger King we were back near the Hoover Tower's fountain and ready for the walk.

Our guide was an under-graduate student named "Gus" who was remarkably adept at walking backwards for the entire duration of the tour and managed to hold our attention with his riveting narration as we passed along the campus !!!

The entire culture at Stanford is a real eye opener and you really have to BE there to feel it. No where else in the world have i seen the following activities taking place simultaneously under one campus

1. An impromptu dance class where anyone can join in and someone'll teach u a few steps !!!
2. Proper classes outside in the courtyard with some students lying down in the grass and taking notes !!!
3. A high school debating competition which had drawn a major crowd of high schoolers
4. An apparel sale where Stanford apparel was sold at 50 % the listed price.
5. A musical choir performing for no one in particular !!!
   
6. Plenty of students whizzing past in bicycles
7. Small kids on roller skates completely enjoying
8. I think i've made my point ;) so i'll stop now.

A few more pics to follow

This is our tour guide - Gus

This is a snap of the choir - performing for all the enthralled visitors!!!

Wonder where i'll get to go next weekend !!!

Bye for now,

Abhishek.

PS :: feel free to hit the comment button and post your thoughts on this article !!!

I'm lovin it !!! :)

It has been a week in the US and i'm lovin' it !!! :D

Being a capitalist country all u need here is money. I am told, if an indian and american went to a BMW showroom in the US, the indian will be waited upon first !!! Because they assume he is the one who'd going to make a costly purchase.

Sunnyvale is a town in the state of California and houses the headquarters of Juniper Networks and i am told, also Yahoo. I did see a major Yahoo establishment here but i'm not certain its the HQ. I am really amazed at the amount of thought that must have gone into planning infrastructure of this magnitude and this is one of the smaller towns in California !!! You gotta see the super wide roads, the freeway entrances and exits where traffic merges without any hiccups !!!

Check out the amount of space between 2 buildings !!! i believe this is mandatory as per US law. I cant imagine this kind of space between 2 building ( that too with a lush green PUBLIC lawn) back in india. I'm so sure a mini shopping mall would've come up in this area back home !!!

There were some truly scenic moments that i managed to capture on camera for posterity :)

This is where i work.

On a Sunday we decided to go to San Francisco and oh man what an unforgettable experience it was !!! We took the double decker train :) from sunnyvale to SFO and that itself was a super experience ... You gotta see the vending machines to believe it ... Completely automatic and super hi fi ... I sure hope the Bangalore Metro comes close to this kind of efficiency !!! and beauty !!!

The plan was to visit this place called Fisherman's Wharf and try to do some shopping after that. There are organised tours too in SFO but since it was already afternoon we thought its better if we go by ourselves !!!


The photo above was taken at Embercarado Street which is something like Mumbai's Marine Drive. It stretches for a huge distance along the bay and offers some of the most awesome sights and scenes :) Thankfully, this part of San Francisco wasnt too commercialized and also, it was the Superbowl Sunday so we could walk around freely !!! Superbowl is american football finals - our rugby :)

oh wait a minute ... let me show u a couple of snaps of my private limo and speed jet ;)





































The piers in the Sanfrancisco Bay are arranged in two consecutive rows - ordered by numbers ... even numbers first followed by odd ones. We needed to get to pier 39 and we were at peir 40 when we alighted from the train. We dint know this kind of arrangement so were feeling really happy that we needn't walk a lot !!! little did we know that we had to walk almost 5 miles to reach Fisherman's Wharf .... a colossal walk of over an hour !!!

but it was completely worth it and the beauty of walking is that u can stop as and when you please to click photographs. And San Francisco is a city where u feel like taking a photo of Everything !!! I caught a few glimpses of the Sky Scraper studded downtown of SFO and some shots of mighty buildings on the seafront.



My favorite however, is this one .... a shot of the SFO Bay Bridge connecting Oakland to San Francisco ... it was built just a few years after the golden gate brigde but is much much less famous as compared to its illustrious relative !!!


Along the way, we stopped at this roadside shop to check out some warm woolen clothing .... it was freezing and i was the only one among the three of us who was pretty much covered head to toe ( and I was freezing !!! ) The owner of the shop was Luiz and we started chatting .... i picked up a bag and asked him for the price ...

Luiz - " twenty dollah "

Me - " no way .... back in india i give only 2 dollar for this .... i give u 5 ? "

Luiz ( grinning ) - " first time to US eh ? ok 15 dollah "

Me - ( sheepish grin ) " ok 10 dollars? "

Luiz - " sure"

lol .... he was a damn nice chap and managed to bundle off a couple of hats, shawls and some other nick nacks onto us and before we knew it we were parting with almost a hundred dollars !!!

I think we have financed Luiz's next trip to Equador ... lol ... he must be praying for us to come back next time !!!

Oh and yes ... we did take a snap with Luiz ( yeah he's a small guy ... lol )




Can u see my friends all packed up after a stop at Luiz's ? Man he was a godsend that day .... all three of us will vouch for that ... we couldnt've survived the cold if not for those clothes we bought from Luiz.

My friends Abhiman and Santhana convinced me to go on "The Bay Cruise". This is a one hour cruise on a ferry starting from Pier 39 and it takes you under and around the Golden Gate Bridge, around the island where Alcatraz Stands and back to Pier 39 taking a winding path where u get to take in the breathtaking beauty of the San Francisco coastline.

This was a truly unforgettable experience and all for just 21 dollars !!! or as luiz would have it - 21 dollahs !!! lol

There are 3 decks on the ferry and the first two are nicely covered and centrally heated i suppose cuz it was quite comfy there ... my friends had warned me that the top most deck which was open to the elements was meant only for the very brave :) and when i got there i really got a hang of what the phrase "the chill gets to your bones" actually means !!!

The wind was whipping around me and all i could do was just to hold on for dear life with one hand and manage my digicam with the other - furiously clicking away at the glorious SFO landscape.

There were some birds following the ferry and it was simply amazing the way they glided in the wake of the ferry's airdraft .... I got a real up close and personal look at the golden gate bridge .... i got all nostalgic for a moment when i remembered the re-runs of Full House that we've watched back at home and each and every episode starts with a shot of the Golden gate bridge !!!

Truly , a most memorable experience .... it was about 5 30 when i got back on terra firma and i was pretty much chilled ;) The first thing i did was to pull my land loving friends to a coffee shop and order the largest coffee !!! cost me a whopping 7.99 $ but it was totally worth it !!! :)

americans take their coffee black !!! thats like our decoction !!! i find this quite amazing !!!

So instead of looking through the menu and making a choice, i just went up to the clerk and asked him to get me the largest coffee which has milk in it !!! the guy must've had a quiet laugh at me !!!

After coffee, my experienced friends guided me to some shops where we bought a few clothes and accessories :) and there the trip ended with a cab ride back to the caltrain station and finally back to the hotel in sunnyvale !!!

oh yeah, a truly memorable outing :)

The final countdown ....

Earth!

Fire!

Wind!

Water!

Heart!

GO PLANET!

With your powers combined I am Captain Planet!

Captain Planet, he's our hero,
Gonna take pollution down to zero,
He's our powers magnified,
And he's fighting on the planet side

Captain Planet, he's our hero,
Gonna take pollution down to zero,
Gonna help him put us under,
Bad guys who like to loot and plunder

"You'll pay for this Captain Planet!"



Haven't we all seen this cartoon at some point of time or other? Were we not inspired to the hilt by the way our hero saved the planet each time from peril? The latest Simpson's movie too attempts to drive in the very same idea of us needing to take care of our atmosphere but are we willing to listen? I suspect we prefer to laugh at blundering Homer's antics and choose to turn a blind eye to the larger issue at hand. Well, thats what i did anyway !!!

The reason i am writing this blog is essentially as a follow up to my friend's blog. It really impressed upon me the vitality of the issue and motivated me to think deeply about a practical solution. You might want to check it out at http://hellsown.wordpress.com/2007/08/25/rain-beauty-of-the-nature-or-its-grief/

What we all are only too aware of nowadays is the fact that our planet is under severe stress caused by mankind's incessant efforts to better himself and which goes under the presumably acceptable guise of "developing the infrastructure". More importantly, What we DONT know is how we could contribute to turning the situation around !!!

I will not waste time raving and ranting about global warming and the global issues at large. Go check out the Green Peace website for that. What i intend to concentrate on is trying to restore some of the beauty which has of late been stripped off a city which has housed me for over the past decade.

Look at the following snaps of developement works in bangalore which have been taken up over the past few years under the pretense of modernizing the IT hub of our nation.

The Hebbal Flyover

The Bangalore International Airport

The Airport Road Flyover

Anand Rao Circle Flyover

One common thing about all these projects is the fact that innumerable trees have been uprooted to make space for the large cement columns and reinforced concrete bridges. What chance do these gentle trees stand against the might of the machine when it is powered by man !!!

This is just ONE picture of the sacrifices made in order to speed ourselves on to reaching the pinnacle of developement.


Before i digress, let me address the main issue i set out to talk about.

Our city is losing its greenery. Be it flyovers, or the burgeoning business parks, all infrastructure projects invariably end up cutting into the green belts. What are we going to do about it?

It doesnt take long to cry out against government apathy and demand remedial action , possibly even strict stipulations against corporate giants. However this will not reach the right ears until we prove that we not only have a case in point but also have taken some initiative to do something about it.

The need of the hour, as i see it, is simply to help our city get back its greenery. Forget banishing cars off the roads or other solutions like car pooling or advocating public transport. We'll do ALL that later. First lets try and do something about helping the greenery part.

I dont want to sound like a propagandist so i shall refrain from preaching. This might be a really abrupt end to the blog but its for a reason. The reason is to make u wonder what might be the possible ways of contributing to the solution and how the average person could help.

Any comments ?

Think deeply about what i have said. I am sure u will have some ideas.

Regards,
Abhishek.

Ps :: i have not shared any of my ideas as of now as i felt that might stifle the creativity of the suggestions flowing in. I shall surely follow up this post with my suggestions at a later point of time.