So the cross-country road trip is long over.

And if there have been no updates since, it’s because life been a long series of habitual nothingness.

In the time since the road trip, mid-Nov through mid-Jan, P and I were in India… chilling our butts off, if there is such an expression.

It was sort of sad leaving the States, leaving the life we had established for ourselves – a life that was just the two of us. It had nothing to do with leaving ‘the States’, which to most Indians at least, is like committing monetary suicide.

It was about leaving the home we had pieced together with curtains and cushions and vases and Ikea goodies. It was about the $60 bed we loved so much and were so proud of. It was about the $4k car that we pinched pennies to pay off. It was about the experience of driving away for weekends, driving to SF after a boring two weeks in San Jose, it was craving Indian kebab and heading to Zafran every few days. It was about having Smithwicks on tap at O’Flaherty and requesting pecans in every salad. It was about dropping Pratik to work and meeting him for lunch and then picking him up in the evening. Well, it was a weeny bit of a heartbreak leaving our lives and knowing that we will probably not return to it.

And, there were the butterflies, Vietnamese butterflies, in my tummy. We realized when we moved to the States that moving to a new country was not as easy as it sounds. There’s a ton of stuff that one must unlearn and a ton more to relearn.

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No Comments | In: India, Mimetic Musings | | #

We leave for our cross country road trip tomorrow. It’s pretty much the Great American road trip, going through almost 15 states. Why are we not doing the usual Route 66, driving across the middle of the country, because it’s so cold right now. It’s barely November, and a lot of places in the North have seen snow already. The winterphobic I am, I put my foot down from the very start. Heading to Florida, I am, siree. I’ve been dreaming of the gorgeous waters of Key West for a month now.

Ever since I saw this picture of the Overseas Highway, I haven’t been able to shake off the feeling that my life depends on driving this route. Those magical blue waters have been calling out my name for heaven-knows-how-long. And I can’t wait to be there.

I know the pleasure of a road trip is in the journey itself. But for once, I just want to get t omy destination. Can’t wait to go snorkeling and maybe even diving. I’m not sure whether my back is up to it yet, but heck, I’m quite enthused to give it a shot.

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No Comments | In: Mimetic Musings | | #

I will name him Jinx. Isn’t that a really pretty name for a doggie? One day, when I have a home, I will have a doggie. Something sweet looking.. maybe like this..

1 Comment | In: Mimetic Musings | | #

After reading this super-scary post on a blog about robbery in Ho Chi Minh, I advised Pratik to leave his $500 Android in India when we go to Vietnam. Remember the $500 Android he bought because he was so excited about creating applications! (Well, he never did that)

Here’s some excerpts from the post. Sqcary…

So I was standing on the street corner checking my email with my iPod touch because I still don’t have the internet at my new house…someone must have circled around and seen me standing there. So he was waiting behind me and drove by me on the sidewalk, grabbed it out of my hand and I ran after him to try and catch up, but he managed to speed away with it in his hand. I was screaming at the top of my lungs down my street. Gone.

…after 3 months in this country I’ve already fallen victim to robbery from my hand, a taxi driver who tried to rip off my lap top (and charge me extra for the ride), and someone stealing my wallet at a market.

No Comments | In: Mimetic Musings | | #

It’s no secret formula to great writing. In fact, it’s been around for exactly 2009 years. Which means, back in 1 B.C., someone came up with this wonderful simple rule. And how do I know of it? Why, Wikipedia of course!

This quintessential simple rule to rocking writing has been drilled into every journalist living or dead, me included. It’s what makes for great news stories, shocking yellow journalism, and even the racy Shobhaa De columns. But, why would this rule so journalistic be applicable in the ESL world?

Because it works! Every friggin’ time.. Try it teaching letter writing, or paragraph writing, or essay writing, or note writing, or email writing (for all those fancy, big-buck business ESL teachers).

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1 Comment | In: Mimetic Musings | tags: 5 Ws and 1 H, essay writing, good writing, letter writing, note writing, paragraph writing, writing tip, writing well. | #

Lake Tahoe was a pool of blue at 4580 feet (abv sea level). The Sierra Nevadas appeared brown in the distance but with binoculars, I could see the fir and pine trees shooting up the sides of mountains. We spent a leisurely Labor Day weekend lazing around in a nice hotel on Manzanita Avenue.

Tucked away in a back alley full of seedy inns and lodges, this one was refreshing. It’s just two blocks from the bustling main street of South Lake Tahoe, where all the restaurants, shopping, music, and casinos are. The bright green, brand new signage – which first drew us to this hotel – stands out on a street full of yellowed ones. The place looked quite new. Our room was nice, had a TV, coffee pot, wine stems and a chilling bucket (no ice though, no wine either) and the bed was comfy.. so comfy that we spent a lot of time in it

For once, we made sure we had an early start from home (or hotel, as we’re now staying at the Homestead in Sunnyvale). I was super-worried about traffic all along, it being the beginning of a long weekend, and don’t we all know what happens on the route from Bay Area to Tahoe on all weekends! We were on the freeway by 7.30ish.. super early for us, since we’re weekday 10 o’clock wake-uppers. That helped, and we cut the usual 4 hour drive time by an hour and arrived in Tahoe, cruising at 75 mph all the way, around 10.30ish.

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No Comments | In: America, Mimetic Musings | tags: hitchhiker, labor day weekend, lake tahoe, south lake tahoe, tahoe, tahoe holiday, tahoe hotel. | #

I read this on the TIME magazine’s website today.. Utah has a wonderful report card to show for its awesome four day workweek system that it adopted about a year ago. Delightful, isn’t it, to think that there may be a time when we could all have four day workweeks, and take the time off Friday through Sunday to travel around the country, or at least explore the countryside where we live!

Wonderfully, the amazing concept (which has been around in Europe for far too long) is not only wonderful for the employees, who can spend more time with their families and friends and indulge in themselves, but also for the environment, which takes a severe beating every morning when the first employee walks into the office.

From 8.30 in the morning, when the earliest employee non-chalantly switches on all the lights in the office, in anticipation of another (mostly dull) day, till about 8 in the evening, when the janitors finally leave after cleaning every dust-worthy surface, the power meter keeps ticking furiously. Read More…

No Comments | In: Mimetic Musings | | #

My kid brother is a rockstar. He’s all over the newspapers in UK!! The little dude has trumped the GCSE with 16 A*. And yet the shining Star of the family is wary of all the fuss everyone is making of him. ‘The media’s really taking it too far,’ he says. Well, that’s the media’s job. Here’s the story on him published in the Telegraph:

GCSE results: Unnat Krishna ‘utterly amazed’ at 16 A*s

Unnat, 16, from Stourbridge, beamed as he opened his results at King Edward VI Five Ways School in Bartley Green, Birmingham.

He will now take his A-levels and hopes to study medicine at university.

“I cannot quite describe how I feel,” he said. “I am really shocked and surprised. I thought I would get about 10 or 11 A*s but I never expected 16. Read More…

1 Comment | In: Mimetic Musings | tags: GCSE, unnat krishna. | #

It’s still difficult to talk about the loss but this song helped me cheer up. There’s a YouTube video at the bottom of this post. Hope you enjoy it. I could not find an HD version of this video which had good sound quality too, so I guess we’ll just have to make do with this version.. the quality’s not too bad though. The song is fantastic. Shot in Xavier’s College, Mumbai, there is a wondrous twist at the end. One would think it’s a typical song where a friend/lover is trying to make his sweetheart smile after they’ve had a tiff. The ending has just the right comical punch. The mystery  is revealed when Aditi’s friends organize a mourning. I won’t give away the details but it’s a really cute and comic ending. For all those who don’t understand Hindi, there’s an English translation of the song at the bottom of this post.

Kabhi kabhi Aditi zindagi mein yuhi koi apna lagta hai.
Kabhi kabhi Aditi wo bichhar jaaye to ek sapna lagta hai.
Aise mei koi kaise apne aansu o ko behne se roke?
Aur kaise koi sochle everything’s gonna be ok? Read More…

No Comments | In: Mimetic Musings | tags: hindi song, kabhi kabhi aditi zindagi, lyrics, mourning. | #

For some strange reason, my blog is being visited by more and more people looking for “feminist wallpapers”. This, when I’ve never posted any wallpapers on my blog, ever! And I only have a couple of posts on feminism.. nothing that would bring my blog in the top search results for “feminist wallpapers”. Lol.. Google’s dumb, and it’s making us dumber. Gosh, we need intelligent search engines, and soon.

I tried googling “feminist wallpapers” myself and came up with negligible relevant results. Surprising, isn’t that? Is that because there are no feminists left or no one cares about feminist wallpapers? But then, how does it explain at least 25 hits on my blog everyday just looking for feminist wallpapers?

Among the top 5 Google results for “feminist wallpapers” were the following really ridiculous images:

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No Comments | In: Feminism | tags: Feminism, feminist wallpaper, woman empowerment. | #