New York transit

I told you about the surprising incident at Tom's restaurant. Here's another one about New York - but this is a good one.
Soon as we landed in New York, we took a subway from the airport to Jamaica. We purchased one metro card for $ 20 -which was the lowest denomination we could purchase at the vending machine as we did not have bills handy.
We did not realize then that you could swipe a card only once in half an hour. We kept swiping it again and again but the gate would just not let me out. Finally, a couple of security guards came to our help and managed to fool the machine and let us out. That was nice of them :)
But - our card with $15 balance wouldn't work any more. We thought we had lost the money and continued our trip but just before coming back, we found out that they might refund us with another card if we sent ours to New York transit. We did that for the heck of it - a couple of weeks back and 2 days back we got a cheque and a letter from them :)
I guess they sent us a cheque because we live in Minnesota and a metro card would be of no use to us. Isn't that cool!



Even though this is how things are supposed to be, I am still surprised because I still remember the times when me and my sister used to travel by PTC buses from school and the conductor would never give us back 5 paise change.

getting back in shape

I used to have winter as my biggest excuse for such a low fitness level, but now the sun is shining in all its glory and I cannot escape anymore. So for the past ten days I have been clocking one hour of "brisk" walk everyday. I did some googling about how many calories I would burn and what is the best way to go about this exercise business when I remembered about the 10,000 steps a day program that one of my friends had spoken about as a doctor-suggested cure for his back-aches. I found a lot of good material about this program on the net.
to give you some statistics:
The physical activity of adults can be classified into

Under 5000 steps/day ---- "sedentary lifestyle index"
5,000-7,499 steps/day (daily activity excluding sports/exercise)--- "low active."
7,500-9,999 (likely includes some exercise or walking and/or a job that requires more walking) ----"somewhat active."
10,000 steps/day indicates the point that should be used to classify individuals as "active"
More than 12,500 steps/day ---highly active

And so I ordered myself a pedometer and today was the first day I used it.
I so love all the statistics!!
so far: 9683 steps ( I am hoping to touch 10500 by EOD)
8901 aerobic steps for a 76 minute walk :)
479 calories (boy!! )
and 5.5 miles
So that is today's achievement. Hopefully I don't fall out of love with my pedometer and I keep this up and get back in shape in a month's time. Let's see.

happy being vegetarian

Am so happy to be a vegetarian and I am happy that I was born one and just had to hang on there with conscious choice of being one always. I did not have to give up much.
I would have been happier if I was born a vegan but then I wouldn't be able to eat even my favorite breakfast cereal. It is something I am going to start working on- so from today, I plan to atleast reduce the consumption of milk.

The simple act of denying animal products for ethical/ compassionate reasons puts us (me and hubby) in a corner whenever we step out of my house. We cannot go to any and every restaurant and grab a bite- we end up asking a hundred questions to the poor guy who serves us about the content of the food. We cannot go camping and set a grill or go fishing or have a bbq at home. We see each and every food label to check if it contains animal products and yet we do consume bleached sugar and cannot let go of pastries. I don't know how many times my screening has slipped and we have ended up eating gelatin filled curd or used a body lotion with animal fat.

We watched Fast Food Nation yesterday - many of the scenes nearly made me throw up and I kept wondering how people still eat the food they do and especially Fast food . You know that they are adding all sorts of chemicals to get the smell and flavor , then there is a good portion of animal faeces that conveniently gets mixed up in your food and it all comess with such low nutritional value. Why do you want to consume it?
If I make a side dish, keep it frozen for a week and take it out - it tastes like mud -but if you buy frozen entrees and microwave them, they taste just as good as newly made. Why is that and How's that? Why do Mc D's fries taste so good? The answer is so simple and is in fromnt of you-the "Flavor industry" and the Flavorists . We are not ignorant, we all have some information about it or are atleast know that something is wrong here and yet we keep doing the same things over and over again. We know about obesity and under-paid, exploited employees and all about the innocent animals getting chopped in the most inhuman way. Then Why?
well,that's my two pennies worth.

Off the record...on tuesday

Watched L.A Confidential ('97) yesterday. We thought we would watch it for about half an hour and then hit the sack but we ended up watching till the end without pausing the video for a moment. "Awesome" is not good enough a word to describe this movie. Wonder how Titanic was given Oscar instead of this. It is definitely on my top ten list.
Don't miss it, that's all I've gotta say!

memorial day weekend

And we spent two more glorious days in New York but it has been too long since then to write about that trip and so am going to tell you about our okie-dokie Memorial day weekend.

The initial plan was to drive to Niagara falls along with another couple- it is around 16 hours drive from here and I didn't find the idea too practical -so- convinced hubby to drop the plan. He did so half-heartedly and we instead took a route well known to us- we drove to Chica-gooooo! This change of plan happened at around 6 pm on Friday evening (crazy us!) and then we did our hotel reservations, packed our stuff hurriedly and started the journey.
The thing about staying in EP is that...it is all so beautiful, serene, blah and more blah but when it comes to travel, we have to add a good 30 minutes to the trip. This is not so bad when we travel out but...boy, does it get monotonous when we are returning back home. So we have nicknamed downtown Minneapolis as "the point zero". The number line for any journey starts and ends there for us.

For Friday night stay, we had made reservations at Janesville ( about 30 miles south of Madison). We planned to do some sightseeing around that area, but when morning came, it was raining badly and we could only head down south to Chicago.
We arrived at the Magnificient mile - walked by each and every fascinating shop and sipped a latte every hour. We were then off to Devon Ave - the South Asian shopping haven, for a "quiet" dinner. We only then realized that "quiet" canNOT be a word associated with Devon.
It competes straight-up with T Nagar Ranganathan street without losing any of the zing - whether it be the crowd or the noise or the merchandise. You can see hordes of women shopping gold like they do in Thanga maligai as if there is no tomorrow and the queue standing outside Saravana Bhavan is only more than what it is in T nagar. On this particular Saturday when we went, Patel was running special discounts like 4 maggies for 1 dollar and such- need I say anything about the rush now :)
We were totally beaten. We entered into one of the less crowded restaurants knowing that food was going to be bad (and yes, it was bad) but the items were priced less than half of what they are in Minneapolis and we didn't feel too bad about wasting.

The whole of second day we spent at Ohio street beach and Navy pier enjoying the sun.



We went around Chicago downtown and Millenium park a few times to check out the views and we were off to Palatine (where we stayed). The best part of our Chicago stay was having Caramel creme espresso at Oberweis . I did not know that having coffee made with organic milk was this heavenly.

Monday noon after having breakfast at Panera ( and coffee at Oberweis again :)) we left Chicago and reached Madison at around 3 pm.
It is a very small town famous for being the capital of the Dairyland state and of course for University of Wisconsin. We walked down the State street lined with restaurants,espresso bars and shops that reminded me of Dilli Haat and enjoyed the evening sun sitting by the shores of Lake Monona. We then headed back home and were in EP at 9:30 pm. This trip was tiring enough, I dont think we could have ever managed a 16 hr- 3day trip to Niagara. Now-back in sweet home!

it is just drizzling outside..

It is drizzling outside and you can feel the chill in your bones- it is not yet raining hard.
This moment, I feel like I am in a hill resort...this early spring, when the grass is lush green, the trees are just beginning to bloom and the sky is the color it always ought to be-time has stopped for me-everything seems alright and I feel so at peace.
I hold a book in my hand , sit in the patio and sip a hot cup of tea...

A blue sky holiday to New York- Day 1

And finally we saw New York - the most happening city in the United States. It has been two days now since we came back and I can still see the images of the tall buildings sharply cutting into the steel blue sky. I feel like I am constantly on the move either walking or am in a subway on my way to some place.
Whew! What a breathtaking city! It is worth a much longer visit...maybe a month would be sufficient ? Maybe...

We started on Friday evening from Minneapolis and reached at around 12 midnight in New York. We then took the lite-train to Jamaica and with the help of one nice Mr. Mazumdar, we found our way to the hotel. It was so scary and dirty and with so many odd people and noisy bars that we thought we made a mistake reserving a hotel in such a place. But of course, it later turned out that every place in New York is equally scary and dirty and you are not in New York if you don't hear a cop car siren or a NYPD helicopter buzzing above your head.

It was almost 2 by the time we hit the bed-after a small argument and changing the room allocated to us as it was way too noisy even to catch a wink of sleep.
We had too many places to see and did not dare to catch upon the lost sleep lest we lose time to see some place. We stepped out at 9:30 in the morning after a quick b.f. of cereal and juice and rushed to the closest subway to reach Manhattan.

At the Jamaica subway-line E

Our first stop was Times Square. Ther are no words to describe this place- it simpley leaves you STUNNED!


It is so intensely urban -there's people and cars wherever you look and multitude of buildings above you are gleaming at you all the time. It is so crowded that you just need to step on to the pavement and the city will take you around. Everyone of them is so well dressed (and yet there is filth everywhere) and each of the buildings has atleast ten neon lighted advertisements - fighting to grab your attention. There are flea markets and designer botiques, street performers around broadway theatres...
Whatever this place is - it is a landmark no one should miss.

Times Square


Street Performer in Time Square

So, after walking through this human maze we reached the garment district- the center of fashion filled with coture houses and showrooms. And it was time to see another place-The World Trade Center site- it was a humbling experience to see all the pictures of the collosal amount of debris, and removal workers fighting their way into the pile- you can be having it all good all of a sudden your life is snatched away from you. well...

World Trade Center

By now we were exhausted, but we still wanted more of the city- so we came to the financial district- saw New York Stock exchange, walked on Wall Street and Broad Street,stood with Washington (statue) in Federal Hall National Memorial for a photograph and of course the tamed the charging bull.
We walked down from Wall street to the South Street Seaport laced with lovely shops and food courts. There are, again many street performers here and you get a nice view of the brooklyn bridge.



We took a bus ride through Chinatown and Little Italy to reach Lexington and 28th for a delicious dinner at Saravana Bhavan. We somehow managed to get back to our hotel room to take some rest after which we would begin another day of hectic sight seeing.

Blue skies fade to gray

And I need a blue sky holiday! oh phluzzee...
I don't think I get that for another 4 months
So...
What have I been doing all this while when I didn't blog one sentence!
I could have blogged when I watched Pursuit of Happyness, or about our new year celebrations or about the lack of snow in minnesota due to global warming...there are a thousand things to write about and yet I didn't and the reason is that i am LAZY. I wonder how many people can boldly say that. haha!
I am totally de-addicted to orkut now and I am very happy about it. But I am also totally addicted to youtube - so help me! Take a quiz in this website to see how net addicted you are. I wonder if they have some sort of cure for such partial addictions though.
So why am I talking about addiction? Well,I made a couple of videos of my sis singing in Jaya TV for Ragamalika and now I am totally into windows movie maker to make a movie of my own. So do check out my sis's video and also watch out that space for more creative spurts from me.

Sevikku Unavu

One of my mom's favorite Thirukkural is " sevikku uNavu illaadha pOzhthu siRithu vayitRukkum eeyappadum" literally meaning "when there is no food available for the ears, it will be served for the stomach".This weekend was one such when we had such a treat for our ears that we didn't feel the need for food.

My husband (who also happens to be a pro in carnatic music) regularly did sadagams (riaz/practice) and gave a performance atleast once in two months back in India. That way, even though he didn't want a full time profession in music, he would atleast be in touch with what he likes to do best. And so, we were totally lost after coming here what with new place-syndrome,pressures of work, no guru who would expect excellence from you and push you in the right direction and ofcourse the big question of "where do you actually start of for this?".

Even though we haven't yet found an answer, I am happy that we are going to do so, someday soon. Atleast, the ball has been set rolling...it started soon after my husband and his friend gave a small performance in the Minnesota Thyagaraja Aradhana. After listening to him, the ghatam artist and the mridangist volunteered that they can come over to our place for music practice and be "kutcheri-ready" even though we have no concert lined up. So,this sunday, Balaji and Sriram came over to our place for an extended practice session with their Ghatam and Mridangam respectively and boy was it a treat to listen to all of them together!
After 3 long hours, the music session sadly came to an end and the artists were treated with my wonderful tanjavoor samayal ( I can always claim till you call my bluff :)
I am waitng for the next weekend to come soon when they will get together and practice again.

Caravan of silk and jade

Not being in India, we miss our loved ones...we also miss the honking cars, the morning rush, yummy cusines and the crowded streets.But in December, we miss the chennai-music season the most.
So when we heard about the World beat concert organised by The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, we jumped with joy.
Inspired by the legendary Silk route, it is(was) a presentation of Ouds from Iraq and Iran blended with ragas and thillanas from our very own South India. We were not let down ( oh no, not totally :)...
The program started with a soulful " oud and string quartet" presentation by Rahim Al Haj followed by a not so musical "Blue as the Turquoise Night of Neyshabur". The lowest point in the whole concert was after the intermission when Palukavademira in devamanohari and Mokshamu in saramati were mercilessly murdered. It was totally played out of tune and in an effort to westernise Indian music, they had completely diluted the compositions which only left an insipid taste in the listener's ears and charmed no one.It took us gargantuan effort to stay there even after such a poor display of skills but it paid to be patient. Nirmala Rajasekar, well known veena player here with her accompanying artists Shriniasan Venkatakrishnan on mridangam and Pavan Allalaghatta on tabla lifted our spirits and gave Carnatic music the honor it rightly desreves on a world stage. Her rendition of Rasikapriya and Mandu were the undoubtedly the best pieces of the day.
I can only add one thing here...Carnatic music-You either love it or leave it. Please do not adultrate it.
Oh yes, I do love the way carnatic music is adapted into many tamil film songs, esp. by Illayaraja and there are hundreds of his song that I could give as examples but one of my favorites would be "idazhil kadhai" from Unnal mudiyum thambi" in raaga lalitha...but I guess that takes talent :)
The end was pretty dramatic with a piece from "Mother India" performed by all artists. On the whole it was a good experience. Will I go once again? Maybe not.

One weekend to socialize

We had two invitations for lunch and dinner on Saturday and Sunday plus a faulty car condition that tied us back home over this weekend. We decided that since this was the case, we should at least go to a new shop to purchase our weekly stuff. On Friday evening, we were driving around trying to find a good mechanic to fix our car and we saw a road that would take us to Silver Lake village in city of St. Anthony- a sister city of Salo, Finland.
The concept of Sister Cities is much prevalent here in US where towns or cities from geographically and politically distinct areas are paired, with the goal of fostering human contact and cultural links. Check out this link to find out about other such sister cities. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_twin_towns_and_sister_cities
I have not seen Salo and so cannot comment on the similarities but St.Anthony is a very beautifully laid out city, almost like a small village.We walked down the street admiring the pretty shopping complex and fountains there and watched the sunset before heading back home.
After a filling lunch at a friend’s place on Sunday, we were off in search of a mechanic to get our car repaired.
Soon after we came back from Chicago, we found that our car had developed 4 unrelated problems- dome light was not working, wiper not working in intermittent speed, car radio antenna not going up and cigarette lighter not working!! We were just amused that 4 such unrelated things could go off the same day like that.
First we went to Bob and Steve’s where it was anywhere between $50-100 to just open the car and check. Then we went to a smaller mechanic who said he had to check up all the wires and connections and it can be fixed in an hour or it can take weeks to figure out the problem, all at $100 an hour.
After getting these two bombshell quotes, we were at our wits end and on Sunday evening we went to Tires Plus to just try one more time before we actually spent the money. Now, here there was a mechanic/electrician, who immediately came out, checked the car for us and within a minute it was confirmed that one of the fuses that had blown and we just had to replace that one piece which cost us less than a dollar and all our 4 problems solved. Shame on the other guys!
It was late Sunday evening when we drove along the Mississippi river stopping every once in a while to look at the changing leaf colors. The temperature has also come down drastically and the maximum it gets is 13 C. We are still enjoying the summer or what is left of it now before winter sets it and we are all wrapped up in layers of sweaters.