On my way to La Paz from Puno, my bus stopped in Copacabana for a couple of hours and I am not sure if it's every Sunday, but they had a kind of mini street party with many people in their traditional dresses and carnival costume parading and dancing along the streets of Copacabana. Maybe I just got lucky or maybe it's a custom they have every Sunday. Also, another interesting thing is that everybody had decorated their cars and vans with flowers and parading around with their family, very proud of their car and decorations.

Yet another Bohemian Carnival that I went to. This time though, as I have been to many of the previous ones maybe, I had kind of seen most of the acts and it was not as novel and as much fun as the first times and furthermore, the crowd was very different - a lot more of a marina-esque and drunk people that any other bohemian carnival I went to, but as usual they did a good entertaining show.

 

We celebrated the year of the Tiger at Wayne and Hiren's place with a potluck and great company and great food. I cooked pancit noodles with purple cabbage, carrots and shrimps. It came out a bit salty as I cooked too much noodles in a small pot and could not evaluate correctly amount of salt to put in and could not turn well. So, I called my new dish - Salty noodles :)

Attached a collage of all the pics from the party. I just discovered this feature in Picassa.. pretty neat feature !

After the Mauritian dinner in Sunnyvale, I went to another party in Sunnyvale too. I was getting my good dose of Sunnyvale. I had not been to Sunnyvale in months and Sunnyvale used to be my home when I first moved to the Bay Area. Good Memories ! Serene and Topher were celebrating being pregnant, and it was the same time, the occasion for Mitch's and Joel's Birthday. Was great to catch up with all the friends and have some good times. Check out the last 3 pictures.. it's from the automatic 3 shots picture :) I have no idea how i got from sitting down to being up in the air !!

As usual Caroline organized a dinner to celebrate the New Year for the Mauritian Community in the bay area. We had all voted for Indian Food in the South Bay and we picked Turmeric in Sunnyvale. It was a buffet and had great food. I loved their Goat Curry with bones, Malabar Fish Curry and all the other delicacies. They had so much food, that I did not even try it all out. We had a good turnout - about 30 Mauritians - this time though lots of kids ! It was great catching up with all the Mauritian folks !

So many parties happening for New Year's Eve in San Francisco. It was a hard choice to pick which party to go to. My pick was the Bohemian Carnival by the Vau de Vire Society at CellSpace. I had been to many other Bohemian Carnivals and each of them was awesome and this one was awesome too, with great acts, great bands, great crowd and great fun ! Here are some pics from the event.

They repainted all the murals in clarion alley in the mission today.

Having a great time carving pumpkin, eating, drinking and getting face
painted at Deepti and judith's place.

Fire performances Video

Last week I went to the burning man decompression party. It was held in the portrero district and it was the awesomest street party i've been to in SF.  It was like a mini burning man exept there was no playa dust and we had to actually buy our drinks and food vs getting everything for free at the real burning man. Here are some pics from it.