26 April 2023

The cardinal brought back memories from my old house

I am no golfer. One life has been enough for me to strive for the green and end up in a hole without having to have golf double it up 🙂 That said, as my friends went out on their carts to get the whack-a-white-ball therapy, I strolled around in the beautifully manicured greens. There were lots of beautiful flowers and interesting birds.

This bird brought back memories from the previous house where I would sit in the porch with my DSLR and wait for the cardinals to come in pairs and try to take a good picture before they would spot me moving.

This was taken with my iPhone 11 from about 15 yards away (and then magnified).

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25 April 2023

Delta embarrassed me a bit

As I rambled on from the Skyclub to my gate, I thought I heard my name come up on the PA. Sure enough, the lady at the gate was looking for me. I could not possibly think of one good reason that might have led to the summons. I had not checked in any luggage, I had no connection flight, the aircraft equipment was already there and I could not be upgraded.

When I walked up to the lady, a bit nonplussed, something caught my eye. And then I realized what was happening. To remove any shred of doubt, the Delta lady said – “We are going to embarrass you a little”.

And embarrass me she did.

Turns out I became a 2 Million Mile Flyer with Delta today. I had received the notification this morning from them.

The Delta agents made a public show of giving me the certificate and a Delta backpack. They announced the whole thing on the PA system, made all the waiting passengers clap (twice – since the first one was not good enough for the Delta folks) and took pictures on their phones and mine.

Then they announced my name to board the flight first!!

That was a turn of events I was not prepared for.

Interestingly enough, I made Delta 360 a couple of months back and yet for all the flying miles on Delta, I just reached the half way mark to my American Airlines miles. That is over 4 million miles – most all of it from international flights from Dallas. With Delta, almost all my flights are domestic.

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10 April 2023

Travel quiz

While flying from San Diego to Atlanta today, we flew over 5 large cities. Though there were cloud covers, I was able to take a shot of each of the cities. Together with their airports. Each of the cities have a river running thru them and I have captured the rivers in the pictures too.

Here are the river names. You have to guess the cities:

1. The Salt River
2. Rio Grande
3. North Canadian River
4. Mississippi River
5. Cahaba River

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9 April 2023

Final tryst of the day

Driving back from Irvine, CA, we stopped by another old friend of ours. About six years back when they were heading back from India via Atlanta, I had met up with Rajesh, Sumana and Trisha. You can read about that meeting here. Among other things, I was given a book Trisha had published.

Today we had a similar meeting with the whole family. Except now there is another member – Sunshine!! Also, this time, Sharmila got her own copy of the book. The author has grown up so much and has become very tall in these six years!!

Nice evening with one of the nicest families we know.

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9 April 2023

The Dasguptas of Irvine

Sharmila and I decided to take a chance and see if the Dasguptas were home. We were in luck. They were! In fact, Monalisa had just returned from Austin. Sharmila and I headed from Carlsbad to Irvine. A fifty minute drive took us an hour and thirty minutes.

But finally we got to meet them. Tathagata and I went to school together for a few years and then lived in the same area in Texas much later and even worked in the same company for some time. His sister and Sharmila went to school together for quite a few years!

It was great catching up on old stuff and some new ones like ChatGPT !!!

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9 April 2023

The Flower Fields of Carlsbad

Many years back – certainly more than 25 years, since Natasha was not with us, Sharmila and I were sitting in our hotel in San Diego and going thru the pamphlets from the concierge desk. We learnt about The Flower Fields about 30 minutes drive away. We drove up there and was stunned by the sight of bright flowers along one entire side of a hill.

This time, we were wondering if we might be able to see it. We remembered that the show started in April. As luck would have it, they opened it this year just a couple of days back.

After our dorm get together got over, we headed over there. It is as stunning as we remembered but now it has become a much larger show. There were at least ten times the number of people we had seen last time.

55 acres of ranunculus flowers. Of every bright hue and color you can think of! How I wish I had my drone with me to get a full aerial view…

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