Smokey Mountain Trip..

I was completely busy in this month travelling to few places and Smokey Mountain trip was one of the best and I have lot’s reason to remember this trip for long time. First of all I was meeting our "US DONZ" guys and its always good feeling to be with them whatever you do or wherever you do. And that too when you are in a mountain it brought me back the Ooty memories that we had in our college days. We have planned this trip few months back and we had to do little bit change in our implementation.

The plan was to get together in Charlotte, NC on Friday night and start towards Smokey Mountain and do the camping till Monday. Unfortunately one of us couldn’t make it on Friday night and he reached there only by Saturday morning. So we had to take a room in Charlotte which was in Holiday inn, near to Airport and we could see the flight landings very closely. The guy who supposed to come in the morning reached on time and we started towards the mountain and went for river-rafting which we booked for 3’O clock and we did on time too. The experience was great not because of just rafting for the first time, it’s because of the fun and few new things that we tried which was very well supported by the crew person and he was enjoyed well as well. At one point of time he asked us to jump out of the boat and swim and all the sudden all of us jumped and within a minute the crew person also jumped and he said this is the first time in this season he is jumping out of the boat and it’s all because how we enjoyed ourselves.  

 

I forgot to mention the other change in the plan, its change in camping ground and go for some cabin (Similar to Resort) because of the weather. Thank god last minute my friend has booked the cabin, if at all if we decided to go for camping then the whole plan could have been screwed since it was raining on those three days. We never expected that the cabin will have all the facilities that we never expected and it’s at the top of the hill with a super mountain view from the Balcony though. Wow it's really nice place and I wish I would go once again. We made some Bar-B-Q and had lots of fun on that night. Next day morning we went to the Clingman’s Dome which is the highest point in Smokey and unfortunately we couldn’t see anything except a fog, we should have seen 4 states from that place though. Mm Bad luck, but on the way back we had some nice view and we went to 3 mile Rainbow falls hiking. It was really nice trail and i had took ton’s of photo’s. After the trail everybody was very tired and decided to head back to cabin. On the way back we went to a ride which was "Sky Scrapper" and the ride was for 3 minutes. We got the video recorded from that ride since we had the high-tech car which has two displays we played that video in car and laughing like hell after seeing our reaction from that ride. It was really really fun though.

May be I should continue this tomorrow.. I don’t want this post to get bigger and bigger… :)

Today’s NEWS, Is it 100% correct?

We are living in a world where the NEWS passes to people instantly whether it’s true or false. Everybody has their own views about anything and everyone has access to pass the information to anybody, as I am currently typing this post from an airport while I am waiting for my boarding. Today the way in which the NEWS passes to people is very broad unlike 50 years back where the newspapers were the only major source of communication. Today if you ask somebody what are the sources of your information/news, I couldn’t imagine how many answers that you will get. Because of the number of ways it’s passes, I am thinking that the real news is getting altered or passed wrongly. Who know's, may be most of the time the real news won't be communicated to the people correctly.  At this type of situation it’s really difficult to find two persons who are 100% equal in their views about anything and I am sure many will have different opinion about this post too :).

I am writing this post just after reading comments from somebody’s blog and reading different stories about the same issues from two different news channels. 

Who win’s at the end?

Thirty years of war for killing over 200 thousand people and at the end of it no one has won except by killing lots of innocent peoples and many of them were children and women’s. According to me this is going to be one of the worst moments in the 19^th and the 20^th century histories. What if the issues were sorted by negotiation, many of those innocent lives could have been saved and the world would have got few of the best talent that the world has ever produced. The environment could have saved if the war was not happened at all and we could have assured to the future that the earth will still stand even after thousands of years. I am hoping and wishing that there won’t be any more innocent get killed and everybody should get equal rights, if it's not going to happen then what will happen to those innocent souls who just gave up their lives? I am praying that there should not be even single innocent get killed because of few people who wears Coat shoot with Tie and sitting in AC room and just by signing some paper. Please before you take any decision just think for a moment that if you are going to be the person who’s going to stand in front of heavy armed forces with just a gun in your hand. That’s what your soldiers are doing by simply obeying your order and giving their live that their parents have saved for so many years and many of children are loosing their parents and their life becomes big question mark. 

A fine weekend in Boston Part 2

This is the continution of the previous post of my trip memories, Though I didn’t have any dream I got up at 7:15 itself. We had planned to visit New Hampshire but when I looked into some of the state park which is about 80 miles and the park my friend has suggested was 2 ½ hour drive. Just keeping the long journey to my place in mind we decided to just go for a park which was near to our place and visiting the Harvard and MIT and have lunch some where outside and heading back to our home town.

We were ready by 9 and her husband was feeling better than day before and said he will also join in another 15 minutes. In the mean time my friend has started preparing the breakfast which is a north Indian dish Poga (Made up with avul and all). Wow it was awesome and it was one of the best breakfast that I had in the recent times and that too with excellent Bru coffee at the end. As we planned we were starting towards Minuteman State Park which is famous for its history. The place where the first battle of freedom has started against British army. There were huge history behind that and as usual there were peoples who were explaining the story and as usual there was a show too. When I went to auditorium I was thinking why is very old and after the show I understood why. To explain what happened in 1975 April they have built it similar to that with diagrams and wooden maps and villages which depicts those old days. They have told us that in 5 miles there is small wooden bridge where the battle has started and there is a statue to remember that. We went there and took some snaps in the historical bridge and in front of that statue. 

Next we went to the great Harvard University and just roamed inside the campus, and I prayed in front of Harvard statue to give me a MBA a seat in that university. Then we went to MIT main entrance and saw the classrooms and some of the professor rooms it was really a good feeling indeed. It’s quarter after 1 and we decided to leave for lunch and it's in Hot Breads. I had Mutton Biriyani and it was not good and I was little bit hungry since I had good breakfast. Whenever I had good breakfast I used to eat more during lunch but the Biriyani was not satisfactory. Even my friend told me that only Chicken Biriyani will be good here and I thought just order mutton and see how it is. Now I agree to her and don’t eat Mutton Biriyani in HB. One more thing to notice in Boston is that, the number of Churches that you can see from a normal street. OMG, They are having Chruches everywhere like having the Pilayar Kovil in each street of chennai. After the lunch we went back to home and copied the snaps to her laptop and quickly run thru it once and prepared to leave. 

It’s 3’O clock and the two days has passed very fast and everybody was thinking that we will meet again soon and said bye to each and we left her place. I decided to go little bit fast so that i can reach home sooner but the traffic in the George Washington bridge has eaten up all the time that I had saved during my 3 hours drive and had stuck up in that bridge for more than hour and finally reached home at 9’O clock which was not bad. I felt death warm over and decided to hit the bed after I took bath. Since I had the dinner in Burger King on the way back home I have saved little bit of time and slept at 10’O clock.

Two days has gone so fast and thanks to my friend and her husband. I am expecting the next weekend sooner and the overall the trip was one of the memorable which I had in US. 

A fine weekend in Boston..

Boston is a popular city which is know by many people in the world because of it’s uniqueness in many things compare to other cities in US. For an instance Boston is the one of the very few cities which I knew before I come to US. It’s the place which was in top of my list that I wanted to visit after Miami (When I was preparing this list I didn’t know how to pronounce Miami). But it took almost 15 months to just visit Boston, and I have visited all the places which I had in my list before I go to Boston. Though I was keeping in mind that I have to visit Boston, it happened all the sudden. Yes, one of my colleague/Friend who came from India and was just asking about going to Boston and immediately I said yes. The reason for that is we are going to see our friend who we never met after her marriage and it’s been almost 3 years now. Though we didn’t go the next day we were able make it for the week after day we planned. One more person who was supposed to join us from the middle of our journey couldn’t make it because of his high priority work. If he could made it then the long drive could have been with some more extra fun, may be next time.

We started here around Friday 6’O clock in the evening as we planned and we had to make two stops to fuel our car and also to fuel ourselves with some coffee and burgers. With the help of Google maps we were able to reach there by just before 12.30 as we expected because I didn’t screw up much in the roads since the roads are pretty straight forward. As I already said it’s been 3 years since we met her and we got a warm welcome from our friend almost from the car door, what else you want from friend whom you are seeing after such long time. There were plenty of things to talk and in the mean time we had to taste the Vegi Pulao which is prepared by our friend with the help of her husband.

Now you can imagine who could have prepared that, I should be thankful to them that I had a good home made food. Don’t think that it’s just pulao, when you are away from home for more than 15 months and you didn’t even have a chance to eat a food from any family, when there’s no relative around you its sounds lot to me. Though we have travelled 6 hours we didn’t feel the tiredness and we were chatting and planning for few places to visit for the next and finally decided we will plan on the next day morning. Its 2 now, I just lied down and went into my dream world and one of it woke me up at 6.45 in the morning. After that I didn’t feel like sleeping though we have planned to start by 9 am. I have decided to take bath and its 7.30, like my own room I made my own coffee after searching for the sugar and coffee powder for few minutes. Its quarter after 9 and we decided to leave with a chit which has the list of places to visit in the Boston Downtown by leaving our friend’s husband in home since he is not well.

Parking is always a big problem when you planning to roam places inside the city and we planned to catch a T (sub way). The city is similar to Newyork with the subways all around and we started catching the T from Alewife station to go to the Downtown station. After we got down we visited our friends office State Street bank which is located in 1, Lincoln Street not in the State Street. This is 15^th tallest building in Boston Down Town. After that we took a coffee from all our favorite DD ( Dunkin Donuts). Then We were heading towards the Mass State House and it’s so special for it’s Doom. Because the doom is completely covered with 23 k Gold and you might have seen this in the Departed movie. Then we just spent some time in the park and walked across the streets and seen some of the historical buildings but couldn’t remember their names. Then we went to the Quincy Market, one of the very crowded places in Boston and as usual there are few peoples who were running some shows in front of it. We just stopped there and we couldn’t leave the show until it ends, it was quite nice though. Next we went to the Aquarium entrance and just enquired about Whale Watching though we didn’t have plan to go and it was just one trip day and it was already over for the day. Decided to have lunch in some Indian restaurant and finally ended up getting some Paneer Roll from Mumbai (mall or something) fast food in Quincy market and had it outside market. It’s nice but I couldn’t eat more than one roll. After that we went to Aquarium to watch the I-MAX 3D show and luckily it was available for the show (Under the Sea) that we wanted to see. Since one of us didn’t visit the Aquarium we planned to go there after the show is over. Before I was entering into the theater I was planning to sleep for an hour since I have seen similar couple of weeks back. But I couldn’t even blink my eyes since the show awesome and it had completely steels my sleep. I would say it’s a must watch show.

After the show was over we were heading inside the Aquarium and we were rushing and we have completed in 30 to 40 minutes since its very small. I would not suggest going to this Aquarium, if you are really interested in fishes then plan for some other aquariums. It’s 4.30 and we were heading towards The Prudential Mall by catching the Orange T. Yes in Boston unlike Newyork the trains are called by their colors and they are also having letters and numbers if they have more than one train in the same route. Nice idea to remember the routes and it seems like they are having four color’s Red, Blue, Green and Orange.

 It’s not too often you will get a chance to view the city from 50^th floor or higher than that. Yes the Prudential tower is 750ft tall with 52 floors in it and the visitors are allowed only till 50^th floor. This is the second time that I am going into the high raised building after the Empire State Building. The elevator was very fast off course you had to have it when it’s more than 50 floors. This is second tallest building in Boston and we got a superb aerial view to see the whole city. 

That too when it was not crowded and when you have prerecorded audios in a player which will help you to explore what are the famous building like MIT , Harvard and the places that you are currently seeing. You will get to know lot’s of information and if you there at night with some high resolution SLR camera you can get very nice photo’s of Boston city.

We have seen the MIT from the prudential tower which is residing in the other part of the Charles river and we decided to go to MIT next. We took the Green and Red T to go the Longfellow bridge and walking over Charless river while going to visit the MIT. It was really nice experience to walk over that bridge which was constructed around 200 years ago. It’s around 7.30 and it’s getting darker still we have two places to visit which are MIT and Harvard univ. After enquiring few people we have found one entrance of the MIT and we took some snaps in front of it and decided to head back to home. We had to catch the Red T in Kendall Square to go back to the starting point of our trip which Alewife station. The train was crowded and my friend has told me that it’s because of the people who are coming back after watching the Base ball match of their home team Red Sox.

 I forgot to mention the nice view which we watched from the prudential tower. We had a chance to see the view of Fenway Park (Base Ball ground) when it was fully packed and we were lucky to see that.

Once we get down from the Red T in Alewife station it’s started raining and it’s little heavy though. We drove back home safely by following some car in front of us. And its 9:30 and we (they) were tired to prepare food and a suggestion came from our friend’s husband who was supposed to take rest which he did only after watching the CSK’s IPL match. The suggestion is to have a Pizza from Domino’s and all are agreed to that, he went and picked up the order since the door delivery was about to get delayed because of the rain. Had Pizza and chatting and watching TV while flipping thru the channel my friend was very keen to watch a movie from one of the On Demand Channel. The movie was Ransom casted by Mel Gibson and it seems like he has nominated for the best actor award in Golden Globes. It was very  nice movie and it got over quarter after 12. Since we were tired after walking for so long we decided to hit the bed and I was expecting not to have any dreams.

When I started writing this post thought of writing the whole trip in a single post itself but now when I am looking back it’s seems like bigger one so I am going to continue the next day in tomorrow’s post.

                               

How far can you dream?

Sunday I was sleeping in the afternoon and as usual I had a dream(s). This is how it starts, I and my friend is returning from a movie and found our car in the car parking lot. We opened the door and within a minute we have surrounded by three cops. Do you know why? It’s because we have opened somebody else’s car, thank god ours was just couple of cars away and cops just gave a small advice and left. One funny thing was my friend car is black and the car which we opened was pure white. (It was amavasai Irutu) Now it’s intermission since somebody has called me and woke me up in the middle of my dream. I have answered the call in few words and went back to sleep. Would you believe it, the second part has started, in this dream I am explaining the same dream which I had in the first part and that too with the friend who was involved in that dream. There the twist starts, he is replying that he also had a similar dream. What a pity …. I was asking him how come two persons are dreaming about the same thing and that too at the same time. I was telling him that there is some relation between the dreams and I am going to study about it. And the talk goes like this. Now again one more call to stop this argument and also to end the dream. OMG I didn’t sleep after that or else I would have explained my second dream in the third dream or I might have done some research on that.

I know it’s quite confusing and that’s how I felt when I woke up. I am hopping that I am writing this post in my real world.

கம்பன் என் காதலன்!

I have grown up by watching the Ramayanam serial in Doodarshan channel. Still I remember that I used to ask too many questions to my dad while watching that serial, like who is this guy, that guy, When Raman will win the war? Will seethai be saved? When will hanuman come? OMG, My father could have had lots of patience to answer those questions. The serial was running for a year and during that time my mom could have been the saddest person. It’s all because of the high volume we used to keep while watching the serial, and during the ads it used increase automatically. We were only having the B/W TV and that too with no remote and we never reduced the volume since we were lazy to getup and reduce. The only ad which I couldn’t tolerate at that time was Vico Turmeric and still I hate that. Enough about watching the serial and this post is supposed to be about Ramayanam by Sivakumar.

Month ago I was watching some video where actor Sivarkumar was addressing in some college about the Ramayanam and heard that it will be available in DVD. Last week I got the DVD with the help of one of my colleague who came from India and till yesterday I didn’t have time to watch it. I started watching yesterday midnight around 12:30 and thought of watching the half and the remaining by today. Though I knew the story of Ramayanam I couldn’t stop at the middle and didn’t want to leave the remaining for the next day and I have watched the whole video in night itself. It’s all because of the way Sivakumar has explanined the story and that too with 100 songs from the Ramayanam without even having a bit of paper for about 2 hours and 10 minutes. I also heard that this the first time that one has narrated Ramayanam in 2 hours and normally people used to take many days to explain it. Hat’s of to him and I don’t know is there any other person who could have explained Ramayanam like him. Since I have watched the serial during my child hoods I was able to bring all the scenes in front of me while he was explaining the story. It was quite nice experience to refresh the Ramayanam story and I would recommend everybody to watch it even if you don’t know about the Ramayanam. He was telling about 100 songs and I thought of writing one song from that and I had to watch the video for 10 times before I write it in a paper. There may be a mistake in this and forgive me if I there is any and I let me know I will change it.

This song is to explain how the Raman’s Black/Blue body has observed the heat in forest while he was walking with his brother Laxman and his wife seetai.

வெய்யோன் ஒளிதன் மேனியின் விரிசோதியின் மறைய

பொய்யோ எனும் இடையாளோடும் இணையளடுனும் போனான் 

மையோ மரகதமோ மரிகடலோ மலை முகிலோ 

அய்யோ இவன் வடிவென்பதோர் அழியா அழகுடையான்!

While I was studying in school we had few songs from Ramayanam in our Tamil poetry section and I always had a difficult time to memorize those songs and I used to skip that section for all my exams :).