My long trip

Well, after my Petrified forest trip was petrified by rain, I could not go anywhere after that. This Good friday weekend was coming. It is good that Good Friday comes always on Friday, so it is always a long weekend. From two weeks I was thinking where to go and what to do. All other family guys are had already planned to goto Page and Zion.

I don't think there was any place left around Phoenix that I have not seen. Well I had enough GAS in my car. So I thought of going on a loo..ong drive. I wanted MS Streets and Trips, 'coz it is a very good trip planner. I was planning on a solo drive to 4 corners. It is the place where 4 states(Arizona, Utah, Colorado and New Mexico) meet. I thought of using MSN maps instead, it also gives enought detailed information and it is free!! I was all set to go.
Monday night when I was just browsing, I got a mail, from my uncle, saying that my mother was not feeling well and she had been admitted to hospital. Tuesday I asked my managers for permission to go back to India. My tickets for Friday were confirmed on wednesday. So I was on my way back to India on Friday.

I wanted to drive like mad during the weekend, and in fact I was flying like mad. After a very long journey, now I am in Bangalore. My mother felt good, since I came back. She will undergo surgery on this wednesday. Hope everything goes well.

A Green Patch, This is all greenery I see around Phoenix 

Calcite Formation

One more Silver Lining 

A Yellow Flower 

Blue Flower 

Silver Lining 

Weekend Trip

It was high time that I had to go out somewhere this weekend. I had spent 7 weekends sitting at home doing nothing. So we(Dinesh and I) decided to goto Petrified Forest and Paited desert. It is about 4-5 hours of drive from our place. As the name indicates, it is a national park with a natural collection of millions of years old fossil and petrified wood. Friday was the day I was waiting for and at last, it was Friday. I made a word document of all the places to see and what to do there(Sri and I had done such a word document before we went to Kerala trip). I took printouts of all driving directions. Went home at 5PM(little early for me). We had decided the menu. I was supposed to cook bisi bele bath(I am supposed to be very good at it).

Friday evening when we went to play volley ball(we play every evening), it was too windy, so we came back soon. I checked weather and to our bad luck, there was 50% chances of rain in whole of Arizona. It was 8:30PM and I called Dinesh to enquire. He too was concerned and only place where we could still go in rain was Tucson. Which has a Bio Sphere 2, Pima air and space museum and huge caves. We decided to leave at around 8:30 in the morning. It was just about 2 hours drive from our home.

Saturday, I got a phone call at 7:15AM which broke my dream. Till now I don't remember what was I dreaming. I guess it was pleasant. So I woke up, and it was Deepa(Dinesh's wife). She had called to invite me for breakfast. She asked me if bisi bele bath was over. For a moment I thought, said vegetables and rice+dal are cooked I have to mix them. It was a plain lie. Got up quickly, did daily routines and started cooking bisi bele bath. To my bad luck I didn't even have pressed clothes. So all in all, I was ready by 9:00AM.

We finished breakfast and set off at 9:30. According to microsoft Streets and Trips, we were supposed to finish our trip at 4:30PM. We were 30 min. behind schedule. There was no confusion in roads, thanks to MS Streets and Trips. The route which we took was better than I-10. We reached Bio Sphere 2 at around 12:30PM. It is called BioSphere 2, because the place we live on, earth, is Bio Sphere 1!! It was created to experiment artifical habitats. The plan was to create a similar living environment on moon. Later it was scraped, bla bla bla.
Entry fee was $19.99. Oh my god, for a stupid 1 hour tour, it was more than my half of my per diem. We had already watched artificial habitats in movies. It had rain forests, desert, marine life and so on.

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We decided to go to our next destination, Kartchner Caverns national park, which has world famous caves. I drove and drove in the busy town of Tucson. There was no sign of freeway for half an hour. Already all of us were feeling hungry. We did not get any place to stop and eat. Finally we got freeway(I-10). Our next destination was about 30 miles furhter east. We did not get any roadside bench, where we could have lunch. Dinesh was suggesting Colosal Caves, which was on the way, thanks to MS Streets and Trips. We decided to take some exit, park somewhere and eat our lunch. I took the next exit, and to our luck it was the exit to Colosal caves. There was a picnic area where we finished our lunch, food was excellent. Went to see Colosal Cave. It was about 1 hour guided tour. Took some nice pictures. By this time it was 3:45PM.

Then we started towards our original destination, Kartchner Caverns. Reached wihtout confusion. The guard near the gate came out and asked "What can I do for you?". I was speechless for a moment. Then I fumbled, "we want to see the cave." Then we were informed that last tour was over at 4:15 and there were no more tours that day. So we took a U turn. We decided to head straight to home, since the museum would also be closed by the time we reach there. Dinesh took over stearing from me. I took out me camera and started shooting. Took some nice pictures. It rained heavily on the way back. It was hard to see lane markings. Reached home safe at around 7:30.

All in all, we did not see anything that we had planned for. But still it was a good refreshing weekend trip!!

Object Oriented....

Everyday, during lunch we(Dinesh, Paraddi, Vivek and I) discuss anything and everything. Yesterdays main topic was "Everything is object oriented".

God created a skeleton class and made all interfaces, virtual functions. So all human beings are objects of same base class. When a child is born, god creates a derived class and defines some of the functions and leaves some to be defined. When we grow we define all our virtual functions, such as our attitude, likes, dislikes and so on.

Some people are so dumb decause, I think god was feeling sleepy when he wrote their learning, common sense and functions like that. It would have been good if those functions were pure virtual, so that he/she is forced to define it. Since it is already defined by god, such people think, they are gifted and they know everything in the world.

Love at First Sight!!!

People go crazy in February. There are 2 reasons for this, I think of. One is my birthday and other, Valentines day.
I don't understand why such a hype is given for Valentines day in India. I did not see anybody talking about Valentines day in US(at least in Phoenix!!). Well, whatever it is, Valentines Day was the theme of our magazine, Xpressions. Many people were asked what they think of
"Love at First sight"

In my opinion, there is nothing like love at first sight. Or at least there is a different meaning for this. Whenever I see somebody attractive(of course of opposite sex), something happens to me. I guess it is infatuation. After that moment(sometimes "moment" may be longer), I forget it. It has happened to me a hundreds of time. I am sure, I will have the same feeling when I really meet my true love. Then where is "Love" and when was the "First sight". I bet it is the case with everyone.
It may be true that, ones love, for his/her true lover, sprouts at first sight, but not the other way.

So, in my view, it is just a statement made to convince/console ourself.

Case of Mondays!!!

Hmm,

It is monday, the most boring day of the week. Some how I feel it is longest of the days. I am already feeling sleepy in office.
There was a big discussion on future, life, career bla bla bla with my room mate yesterday night. Though I wasn't interested, somehow I was pulled in. I have been through such brainstorming sessions alone, enough times. I know the outcome of such things is a big zero OR more confusion. So I always say, "Life is simple, Live it."
It's a different story that some bugger called at 1'o clock in the night and did not answer. I hardly slept for 5 hours yesterday and it is Monday today. I hate mondays....