Whatever I like in this space, it's my profile.
Yosemite National Park Panorama Picture
Went to Yosemite National Park for some camping this weekend. Spent a great time enjoying the maginificent scenery of Yosemite, Waterfalls, Giant Trees and the great outdoors ! Enjoy some pictures from the trip..
A few weeks ago, I got a free trip to Vegas - ticket and hotel for one week - courtesy of a bug on the expedia website. I happened to be online when the bug was posted and was pretty surprised that it actually worked and I was among the lucky ones to have gotten the free deal. I decided to go there to work for that week rather than work from SF. While I stayed in my hotel room and worked most of the days I was there, I did go to a few shows at night. I watched a hypnotist show which was awesome, watched the Blue Man Group show in which I fell asleep and the best show was 'Le Reve' at the Wynn. That show was spectacular. Lots of water acrobatics, divings, great special effects and costumes.. Really loved that show ! I had gotten the ticket at one of the many Vegas Half price ticket booths and was seated in the splash zone in the front seat and of course as the name says, I did get splashed every now and then :) Anyways, enjoy some pics that I took while there.
Jai and Aruna had a timeshare in Tahoe that they could only use for the weekend. Being the friend that does not work at an office, they graciously offered me to work from there if I wanted for the week. It was nice for a change from San Francisco to work walking distance from the Heavenly ski lift. Everyday I'd ski a couple of hours and work for the rest of the day accessing the internet tethering through my iphone to do my work. Was a perfect winter getaway and we even had a big storm one of the days - about 6 inches of snow and blizzards up in the mountain. I did go up and there was like no visibility few feet in front of you and unseen obstacles all over the course. Different skiing experience skiing in a blizzard :)
They have a very big Caribbean community in the South Florida region. For lunch, I had Trinidadian food and it is the closest to Mauritian food I've ever had in the US (Dal Puri (exactly same as in Mauritius) & Curry) and the people eating there looked so much like Mauritians (difficult to explain.. but when I see Indians, I know they're not mauritians, but I'll know Mauritian Indians by their faces.. I had that same recognitive feeling for the indian-trinidadian that were also eating there - same goes for people from Fiji, Guyana or Suriname), like lost cousins whose ancestors took the other boats rather than the boats to Mauritius :) Actually the book by Amitava Ghosh - A sea of poppies talks a little bit about how the people went off from India to these different countries.
Right place at the right time is crucial for great pictures. I happened to be walking just by Charles River for sunset and got these nice sunset shots over the Charles River.
While I was in Oxford,MS, I drove around town and went to check out the house where I used to live. It's still there and still the same and with some other students living there. Had some great times and memories in that house. The house was a great deal - the rent was $300 a month for 2 bedroom, large living room, kitchen, backyard. It was $150 each for me and Kaveh. We had many parties and many good times in there, as we were among the few international students that lived in a house and off campus. The parties at that house were the awesomest in town ! Always good to go back down memory lane...
I visited Ole Miss (University of Mississippi), my Alma Matter, while travelling south and enjoyed visiting the beautiful campus and remembering the good times I have had there.
Memphis is the city where I had my first job in America. After finishing graduate school at Ole Miss, I had gotten my first job at the St Jude Children Research Hospital, in the BioInformatics group. Lived 3 years in Memphis (in Midtown), before moving to California to come work for Yahoo!.
Before actually starting my long travel adventure to South America, I am doing a little mini-retrospective tour within the US and Memphis is one of the stops. Memphis had not changed much and Beale street was as good an attraction as it used to be before and the Mississippi river awesome and majestic as ever. I met up with some friends and had some good fun checking out the same good old sights in the place where I once upon a time called home.
Nowhere else in my travels have I encountered deep fried and breaded sliced pickles !! Mississippi have them and it's not as bad as it sounds like..
