Annual dance recital at Georgia World Congress Center…

Swung by the Big Apple to check on Natasha who just turned 21 the previous day. She was deeply disappointed that she did not get carded at the bar when she ordered her drink. It was only a couple of hours but I had a great time with her and her friends – Avery and Cynthia.

The big debate of the evening was whether I will show up for her wedding. While she insisted that I have to show up, I would concede only if it is a destination wedding where I can show up in shorts and a beach shirt. Twenty one years and I do not think she has quite understood how my presence is felt and absence celebrated 🙂

Also, there was that bit about me and the CIA. I will let her elaborate 🙂

This one is not very high on my list… there was no free wine 🙂 Kind of held me back from truly appreciating all the art 🙂

In the 26 years that I have been in this country, I have owned two cars. The first one – the car I really loved – was my trusted Honda Civic. It lasted me nearly 11 years. I used it a lot. And abused it a lot more. In the end, most of the electronics had quit on me, the driver side window could not be lowered and in an incline, after coming to a full stop, it would inexplicably start rolling. I would have to furiously pump the brake pedal a few times to get it to stop and then it would start rolling off again. Which was not an issue in Dallas with all the flat lands. But in Atlanta, that was a serious problem.

The new company that I had joined in Atlanta spend more money moving it to Atlanta than the car itself was worth. The best part during the move was looking at the pockmarked diagram the mover had drawn (it had so many hail damages that I never bothered to fix and he was not in a hurry to take any blame) – it was worse than a kid’s face afflicted with chicken pox! Well, Sharmila forced me to give up on that car due to safety reasons. It was a few miles before 160,000 miles and I never got to reach it.

Now, my second car has successfully reached that milestone. This one is 12 years old now and is getting long in the tooth too. The company stopped making this model a few years back. To give you an idea how old it is … it has a CD drive and no USB ports! Which, along with a lot of the on-board electronics, quit working some time back. The tire pressure gives false readings all the time – especially when it gets cold. But the most infuriating part is that the cigarette lighter does not work. In case you were wondering… it is my ability to charge my phone that has gone up in smoke!

All the same, it has done the job of taking me from Point A to Point B for twelve years. Sometimes with panache and sometimes reluctantly. But the driver side window still works and it reached this morning that coveted 160,000 mile mark!!

[No comments on me taking pictures while driving at 20 mph, please 🙂 🙂 ]

Amitesh, feels familiar?
(Btw, I enjoyed this as much as I enjoy teaching math to her!! )

Nice day to lunch outside…

Parabola… Hyperbola… “Kya jaane aur kya kya bola”…

Three years back Sharmila and I looked at the option of moving to the NorthWest. Portland and Seattle areas are what we evaluated. We concluded that it was too cloudy, foggy and rainy for us.

Boy, did we dodge a bullet!

If we had moved, we would have missed these three years of cloudier, foggier and rainier weather in Atlanta!

(BTW, as a matter of fact, Atlanta gets nearly twice the amount of rain as Seattle)