Ustad Zakhir Hussain and Pundit ShivKumar Sharma – live in concert

It was a normal friday, 27th of march (just about a week ago). I had just come back home from my class, at about 4 and was getting ready to go play some raquet ball. One of my roommates abhilash, suddenly says “today is the zakhir hussain concert, do you want to go?” We did discuss about it a couple of days before, and no one came to any decision and we just forgot about the concert … well until  then. SO there was a brief discussion (about 30 seconds) and we all decided to go ( my 3 roomates and I). Suddenly all four of us frantically start making calls –  to friends who might be interested and the car rental place which would close in a couple of hours. In the end about 11 of us were ready to leave. So we finally decide to go check out this car rental place dountown (no names), because that was closest. We walk in to the place at 505pm. We tell the wonderful lady at the counter that we would like to rent a medium sizer car. She says she is expecting a return any time, so she asks us to wait. But all of a sudden we hit upon the idea to reant an SUV if it does not cost us a lot more, So we go back and forth for about 15 miutes (still at the counter and a queue of people building up behind us) trying to decide between a SUV or a car. We finally decide on the car, not we start to go back and forth on how many days we should rent it for, then how many dirvers we should add and so on.. as the time closes in on 530 we finally make all the decisions and i get my card out and we rent a car for 3 days.

Oh an by the way the concert was to begin at 7.30 pm at a place called the University of the south, Sewanee. This place is about an hours drive from our place (about 70 miles). So we decide that as soon as we get the car we would leave, latest by 630 pm. We did not want to go late to the concert.

Now once all the signing and formalities are done, we start to wait on the car (abhilash and i). It is about 5.45 now, still no sign of the car, so abhilash says he will leave and on the way pick up another of my roomates (harkeerat) who was waiting downtown at the bank. Abhilash says its better if they go home and get ready in the meantime i can pick up the car and go home and get ready, as this will save time. A valid point, so thats what we did. While i was at the rental place, the rest of them were home getting ready.

It is now 6.10 and still no car, and the rental place closes at 6. The lady comes up to me and says they ran out of cars and are having one brought in from another branch (oh how smart.. rent out a car they dont have).. well finally at 620 i get the car, the lady tells me there is very little gas. YAY i am late and now a stop for gas as well.. best trip ever.

well i get home get ready and we finally leave by 645. We stop for gas, and get in our way. All of a sudden Sreesh, one more friend, travelling in another car to the same place calls up and says that the time on his phone just changed, and went back an hour, all of a sudden we realize that the place we are hedding to is in the central time zone one hour behind ours (EST), so we were actually early to the concert.

We reached there at about 6.45 (7.45 our time) with plenty of time to spare. we got seats in the third row.

The concert was really awesome, The place was breath taking as the pictures below show. We had an awesome concert, trip and had a really enjoyable time. The concert went on for about 2 hours and the we headed back on our way. The concert was enjoyable, it was the journey as well that made it that much more exciting…

A few pictures of the concert and the are below.

My current home..

I am right now living in a place called Chattanooga, Which is in Tennessee, in the southern part of the United States. It is a beautiful little place with a lot of natural beauty surrounding it. I will continually upload pictures and possible videos as often as possible, showing the sights and sounds of Chattanooga.

Though it is a small (actually it is the 4th largest city in Tennessee)  place and not many people have heard of the place, this city had has a lot of historical significance:

• it was the center stage for the civil war
• After the war ended, the city became a major railroad hub and industrial and manufacturing center.
• This raise to success inspired the song “Chattanooga Choo Choo”, by Glenn Miller
• the world’s first Coca-Cola bottling plant was set up here
• As birthplace of the tow truck, Chattanooga is now home to the International Towing and Recovery Hall of Fame and Museum
• another transportation icon  the Tennessee Valley Railroad Museum, the largest operating historic railroad in the south also has its home in Chattanooga

The famous moon pie finds its home right here in Chattanooga (Chattanooga Bakery)

there are a lot of tourist attractions in and around Chattanooga as well

• Tennessee Aquarium
• Ruby falls- an under ground water falls
• rock gardens
• Creative Discovery Museum, a hands-on children’s museum dedicated to science, art, and music;
• an IMAX 3D Theatre
• The Lookout Mountain Incline Railway
• historic Walnut Street Bridge, which is now the world’s longest pedestrian bridge

Chattanooga is the corporate headquarters and home of

• Olan Mills
• Blue Cross & Blue Shield of TN
• Rock Creek Outfitters
• Krystal
• Chattem
• Unum
• The Chattanooga Bakery (home of the Moon pie)
• and Miller Industries, the largest tow truck manufacturer in the world( Chattanooga is the birthplace of the tow truck.)
• Chattanooga is also home to the Tennessee Valley Authority, a self-funding government agency which operates numerous power plants in the South.

• Many businesses in the banking and insurance industries set up operations in Chattanooga. The city is home to large branch offices of Cigna, AT&T and UBS.

• Within the last ten years the city has won 3 national awards for outstanding “livability”, and 9 Gunther Blue Ribbon Awards for excellence in housing and consolidated planning.

Most importantly this city is home to The University of Tennessee at  Chattanooga (now ranked 13 in the south for masters) , for more details click here.

Changing to a completely unrelated topic a few months ago i bought a DSLR (canon eos rebel xsi), although i am still on the kit lens and my arsenal of lenses has not gone up i think i have been able to make quiet good use of the kit lens so far. Do comment on the pictures so i can get better at taking the :)….

I will be posting a few pictures of Chattanooga, hope you enjoy the sights and sounds that surround my life …

wrote this today

when times are hard and things seem to slip away,
know that, that is when you need to stand strong
many a storms come,
but it is the brave at heart, and the strong at will
who walk away with the treasure
have you know you are not alone
many a friends stand by you as your pillar of strength
seek and you shall find, ask and you shall receive
all the strength you need
to see this storm pass by….

seem to be back

it looks like i follow a yearly posting pattern. this is my post for this year, i think and i hope there are will be many more posts this year.

the journey begins…..

It was the 5^th of July 2007, around 8 o’clock. I was all ready to leave to the airport. My flight was at 1 am 6^th July. But   I wanted to get there nice and early. So I went  to my neighbors place said my good bye’s and was all set waiting for the cab to come. We had asked him to come pick me up at 830pm. Well it was now 9 o’clock and no cab. I said to myself “hmmm a half hour late that’s not bad, good I asked him to come early”. I got a message form Donald one of my closest friends, that he wont be able to make it to the airport as he was not well. So I called him up and he told me the same thing that he is not well and it is cold outside and so he dint want to get worse. So, I said fine and he said wished me good bye and told me sab (sabarish) another really close friend, would come by the airport. So I disconnected the call and was all set to go. It was about 920pm now. I was getting a little panicky. So, to get my mind off all of that, I went and rechecked my bags, my documents, etc.  The clock was inching towards 945 now and I was really losing it now. I tried calling the taxi guy- no answer, the cab company office- no answer. At about 955pm, the cab slowly pulled into my drive way. When I asked the driver why he was late he told me that he actually thought it was 830am the next day, but he just glanced at his paper work at 840 and figured out that it was today and he was already late. (Just need to thank my lucky stars that he “glanced” or in his words “hogbekadre kanu time mele bithu”)

I said bye to my brother (which was the hardest part harder than saying bye to my parents), and tried to stuff the bags into the car but all my bags wouldn’t just fit because… well.. they sent me a small car….how lovely. Well I sat in the front with a huge bag in my lap, my parents had my check in bag and my laptop, and were in the back seat. In the car I almost blabbered meaninglessly the entire drive to the airport. (may be that was because I was really scared).  I finally got on my way at 1010pm.

While driving to the airport don sends me this sms saying he is at the airport waiting for me. So I just told him I am on my way . I reached the airport at 1055pm (amazing time considering the traffic) and I saw don standing at the international terminal.

As it takes a while to check in for an international flight I wanted to go in and get checked in at least an hour and half before the flight. (would have been 2.5 hrs, if not for the awesome cab driver). So I called sab and told him I was checking in. He responded (in a typical sab way) dude 10 minutes I am at the Leela signal (the Leela palace hotel). We all know sab’s famous 10 minutes I am there dude line right. Ya so about 18 long minutes go by (yeah I counted the minutes) and I call sab again, he say’s “ dude I am in the airport I will be there in two minutes” and soon enough I see is car coming down the drop off area. And he just pulled up right at the end of the drop off area and walked down to say bye and I cant remember his exact lines but it was something like dude I just had a drink and I think I am a little drunk, you cant smell it right or something to that effect.  He later told me he got late because he thought my flight was at 2 am as another of his friends  was leaving at the 2am flight.

So I said my good bye’s.  I got my parents blessings gave my dad and mom a hug, and got in to the check in line.

When I got to the counter the (“pleasant”) lady there said I cant have a back pack and a laptop case and a check in bag. So I got out all the stuff from my back pack and put it into my carryon bags. Later she told me that both my bags were overweight (I thought only one of them was). She suggested that instead of paying a overweight fee for both I could transfer some stuff from one of them to the other and just pay for one overweight bag. I thought “ok this is easy – just pull and shove” but they had already checked my bags and sealed the zippers so if I opened it I needed to get it checked again.  So I tore the seal off and right in the middle of the airport had my bags open and was pulling my clothes out.  Finally I get back to the counter only to find out I am short of money to pay for the extra weight. So I walk out and get some cash from my dad (cos apparently they don’t accept card in an “international” airport).

I come back through the security check and all the stuff and finally get up to the immigration table and I notice in all the confusion I forgot to fill the form up. So the man at the desk (again “pleasantly”) tells me to fill it up. Finally I go into the lobby and make it with just about 20 mins to spare. So I run down to the boarding line only to see that my flight has been delayed cos the previous flight passengers have not boarded and they were waiting for a “VIP”. My flight was delayed by 2 hours.

Finally as I got into the flight and sat at my “window” seat, I was joined by a software engineer going onsite for a while ( oh so cool a software guy going on site!!!! WOW  what a surprise 😀 ). 

But as the flight slowly began to pull away, and head towards the take off, I could not stop myself from wondering how my life will turn out to be and how badly I would miss home parents and friends (this was the first time I was leaving home).

But much to my disappointment there was no hugging and crying and huge good byes.. no lover running up to the plane and saying “sashi main thume dil aur jaan se pyar krathi hoon.. I will be waiting for you at this very airport when you get back. (dam movies lie a lot…).

But as the plane took off I did feel a little scared and overwhelmed emotionally, not sure if it was because I was not sure of what to expect going into an unfamiliar place alone or if it was the feeling of finally jumping into life head on……or if it was just simply that I had already started missing family and friends and a familiar place I loved and which had become a part of my soul …. A place called Home.   

 

the journey ….

Well I am back after almost a year .

I am back from a long vacation called work and life …

From the time I wrote the little traveler thingy lots of things have happened.  New friends, new place, a totally new working environment. I have been to the United States before, But that was just for a vacation. Boy are things different when you come to live here and try to get integrated with the lifestyle and the system here.

In my next few posts I will try to give a write about the apparent changes that I saw from my last visit, the things that hit me hard and the things that I liked and enjoyed.

Lets see how this comes about…..

 

the traveler

As my travel came to an end

My thoughts wandered

Wandered towards the journey that brought me here,

Wondering where it would take me.

I travel new lands in search of my dreams,

My dreams, my goals, where they are i just dont know

So i travel, seeking  my goal, my destiny

I constantly ask myself, why , i have no knowledge of self, Why life seems a blur

As i begin to question it all,

I begin to realize, the dreams that i seek, the goals that i run after,

Are they where i began my journey?

Have i in search of self , left myself behind

Behind where my heart longs to be

I wonder as i wander along life 

 

dan brown’s new book – the secret of the k-word

i saw this description about the book somewhere on the net. it was also published in the times of india on the 1st of april 2005 (i think) (or so it said on the site where i found it). so i dont know how authentic the article really is. but i found it really comical in nature.. and if this was a joke for the 1st of april, then all i can say is “hats off to the times of india”, and if it is not then i cant wait for the book to come out.

Kashmir, the bone of contention between India and Pakistan for over 50 years, belongs to the United States, claims Dan Brown in his soon to be released book ‘The Secret of the K-word’. Brown, the author of international bestseller ‘The Da Vinci Code’, said that by using spectroscopic analysis he discovered the original document over which the Instrument of Accession, signed by Kashmir’s Maharaja Hari Singh and preserved in the National Archives New Delhi, was superimposed. The secret document reveals that Hari Singh was apprehensive of joining both India and Pakistan and covertly ceded Kashmir to the US. According to Brown, when the map of Kashmir is reversed it becomes similar with the US southern state of Kentucky. Talking to The Times of India by telephone, Brown said that he had employed an ancient Kabbalistic form of numerological interpretation to discover, “amazing co-relatives between Kashmir and Kentucky which could not be coincidence.” For instance, when the longitude of Frankfort (Kentucky’s capital) was divided by the latitude of Srinagar (Kashmir’s capital) the prime number obtained had the same numeric valency as Article 370 of the Indian Constitution, which accords a special status to Kashmir. Brown described it as “one of the best hidden secrets in the modern world” and acknowledged that his book would “create a global furore” and “open many cans of worms”.

books books books…

well it has been years (about 5 years to be more specific)since i have read so many books in such a short period of time (i finished about 11 books in about four and a half or five months). it was all an effort to make a statement to myself, that, once my passion which became a dying habit in a very short time, is now back and I couldn’t be happier. I just bought another book called “MERGER” by Sanjay Sanghoee. Its basically a story about the things that go on behind the scenes in the corporate world, all the corruption and the politics that exist. I have just finished about 30 pages, and so far its good (not excellent, just good).

Well it will be at least 2 more days before I can get into it again because I am right now reading another book called a beautiful mind, by sylvia nasar, the biography of John Nash. (yes the same book based on which the movie was made). It is a brilliant book, about a real great man. I have another 100 pages to go will take me a couple of days I guess (cos I read only in the night before I go to sleep).

 

I am also waiting to ask my friend for his copy of bourne supremacy which he has been reading for a couple of months (as far as my knowledge goes at least). I will write about “a beautiful mind” soon, also will write about “merger” in a few days. Keeping my fingers crossed about “merger” cos the previous two books that I read based on a similar backdrop turned out to be a disappointment. Let’s see how it turns out.

movies and movies : the story of my weekend

 

ike I said earlier I was a little busy until a couple of days back. And once I had some time to spare well, I did what any one would do-watched movies. Well in the last two and a half days or so I have seen 5 movies. Well the list is as follows:

Day 1(sat I think):

X men 3 and a little of superman returns

 

Day 2 (sun):

Superman continued, and the da vinci code, and corporate (or bits and pieces of it from start to end, that’s cos I mostly saw it in the fast forward mode)

 

Day 3 (or rather evening 3- Monday)

Cars (well if you have no idea which movie this is go to Google and say “movie + cars”), wanted to watch “krissh” (but then decided not to, may be i’ll watch it today).

 

Well I guess you know the first 4 movies quiet well, cars is a Walt Disney Pictures and Pixar Animation Studios presentation. I must say pixar have outdone themselves again (when you think their animation can’t get any more real, they come up with something amazing). The animation in some scenes is amazingly realistic (that probably doesn’t make any sense now, but once you see the movie you will figure out what I an trying to say).

Coming to the movie itself, it is nice it has a sweet storyline; there is a lesson about life that is put in simple terms. (I am sure most have you have checked the reviews out but still …). The movie is about the flashy rooky race car all set to make it big attempting to win a prestigious championship and make big sponsorship deals. But on his course he gets lost and comes across the lost “Route 66” which was once a famous highway, and which leads him to a town called “Radiator springs”. The story goes on to show how his (the cars) experiences in the town changed him, and how in the process he changed the lives of the cars in radiator springs. It is a fun filled story with small twists and turns that makes it a treat to watch. It is not a very fast paced movie (like most of pixars previous ventures) but it does have its share of action. It is a must see for all kids, and the others will enjoy it equally too. So do catch this movie, and I am sure you will have a smile once you are done watching it.