Samsung E-Lounge : Hong Kong

I'm in transit to Singapore... two hour lay over in Hong Kong. They have free internet available at the samsung elounge! I'll take a picture and post later.

Online Dating, Part 4: The Friendster Chronicles

I have a friend that actually sometimes responds to those weird, random messages she gets from guys on Friendster. Her defense for this is "Well Cutie, they may actually be decent guys and their picture is ok." Alright... fine then, respond!

So, she spent quite a bit of time talking to this one fellow via Friendster messages. Eventually, the messages progressed to phone calls. This guy happened to live out on an army base on the east coast, and she lived here in San Francisco. About a month into their phone conversations, she finds out that he is leaving for Iraq in a few weeks. She has never met this guy, but felt like it would be wrong to let him go to Iraq without ever meeting her.

They struck up an agreement, and she flew out to Podunk, USA to visit him, and he would pay for her hotel while she was there for four days.

The trip was a total flop. He was so busy with training, he couldn't even see her most days. On top of that, he wasn't anywhere as attractive as his friendster picture had implied, so my friend was basically SOL in the chemistry/ attraction department. She finally told him she wanted to leave a day early, to which he consented. She also made him pay her for half of her airfare back to California.

Needless to say, she's not flying anywhere anymore for guys she meets on Friendster.

Best Laid Plans

The best laid plans often go astray... I was planning on writing every day since I had this entire week off (I don't leave for vacation until Sunday night), but between running errands, hanging out with siblings, and late night conversations with old friends, it just didn't happen. I did, however, discover the fun of www.picturetrail.com, which I highly recommend other internet junkies to check out! It's a great way to create interactive photographs.

Other than that, I've discovered that the technology department at Michigan lets us create our own homepages! So I've been crazy busy trying to create mine. It's not ready yet. But, between that and Picture Trail, my friends can expect to see some really cool, new displays of my travel photos.

Trek for a Visa

My application to participate in the OCI scheme has not yet been approved and I leave for India in a week! To make sure that I can still go, even if the OCI passport doesn't come through by then, I made a trip out to the Consulate General of India in San Francisco. The process of getting a six month visa was fairly painless.

I took my brother and sister with me into San Francisco. The best way to get to the consulate from the east bay is to head over the Dumbarton (during carpool toll free time, of course), take the 101 North, up towards San Francisco. Then, take 380 West to 280 North. Get onto CA - 1, which becomes Junipero Serra Blvd. Turn right onto 19th street, follow all the way past Stonestown mall, Judah, Irving. 19th eventually becomes Park Presidio. Make a right onto Fulton, and then make a left onto Arguello. The Consulate will come on your right. It's a typical San Francisco home with a huge Indian flag flying out on the veranda. You will immediately smell Indian cooking as you approach.

Inside, there were a bunch of queues. I got into the first one. Once I got to the fron of it (only a 5 minute wait) I submitted paperwork that I had filled out and printed from the website. The registrar looked over my information and then sent me to the cashier. She collected my passport and paperwork, and then I paid her $60. She said to come back at 4 and she gave me a receipt.

We had about 6 hours to kill, so we wandered around the Stonestown Mall and then went to go watch a movie. "The Inconvenient Truth". The Al Gore movie... I thought it was interesting, although, I really thought it was more of a "this is what's going on" and "this is how the current administration sucks when it comes to dealing with it", more than a "what can you do" type of movie. I could have waited for that on DVD.

At 3:30pm, I returned to the embassy. They started handing out visas at 3:45pm. After waiting in line for about 10 minutes, I had my visa and was on my way back home by 3:55pm. All in all, not too painful a process.

Homecoming

I made it. I'm really free... free from work, free from NJ... free from living in odd places. I'm back in my own home, lazing away on a Monday afternoon without a thing to do... other than write in my blog!

I left work on Friday afternoon (for the last time!) and took off, driving, to Richmond, VA. It took 8 hours. A trip that should only take 5 hours took a whole 8 hours. It was a beautiful day, so everyone took to the road, to get to the Jersey Shore or Virginia Beach. I flew home on Saturday afternoon.

Saturday, I went to a party at the house of a friend of mine from High School. It was a great party! He really managed to bring out quite a crowd. He was up for the weekend from Los Angeles, where he works for.. MY SPACE! I was so jetlagged, my friend and I didn't stay too long.

This week is wrapped up in preparations for India. I'm heading over to the Indian Consulate to get my visa, I need to do some last minute packing and shopping. My surgery was cancelled.. possibly, indefinitely! I may not need it at all in the end, but if I have it, I will most likely have it at Michigan. That's right! All my section mates will have the joy of watching me recover. Or, I may have to take a PICC line (which I would actually prefer.. it's the less of all the evils... OK, so I'll be a dork for a month or two, but at least I'll be a dork that still alive!).

Now that I'm back, with little to do, I will most likely get back into the swing of writing in my blog more often. So there are more fun, exciting stories to come from the keyboard of this MBA Cutie. At least until I get to India, and hopefully even then, there will still be stories!

Photographs

My spirits are lifted! It's the last week of work! And soon enough, I will be home, back in the sweet comfort of beautiful California.

I spent much of this afternoon printing reports for record keeping at work. While I was waiting for the reports to run, I decided to scan some pictures I had taken back in the day, before I had a digital camera (I know, life without a digital camera is nearly unfathomable!). Scanning the pictures reminded me of a funny story.

During my senior year of high school, my mom bought me my first sari and had a blouse stitched for me. It was a beautiful hot pink, black, and cream sari, with a pretty, cream colored blouse. I wore it to the portrait studio, where we had a variety of photographs taken and printed. Six months later, my mom decided to use the photographs as something to put into our family holiday cards, so she stuffed the envelopes and sent out a whole bunch. She sent some to relatives and friends in Bangalore, one of whom informed us that they never received the photograph or card. My mom chalked it up to being lost in the mail and we forgot about it. About two months later, we get a phone call from the family that didn't receive their holiday card. It turns out; the postal service mistakenly delivered it to their next door neighbor's house. Their nosy neighbor, curious as to why someone else on the block was getting mail from the U.S., decided to open the card and they found the photo. Deciding that the girl in the photo was pretty, they put it up on their mantel piece. Two months later, when our friends had gone over to this neighbor's house for dinner, they discovered the picture of me on the mantel. They asked their neighbors how they knew me, and the embarrassed neighbors had to admit that they did not know me, but that they got my picture from a holiday card that was not addressed to them. Needless to say, our family friends took the photograph back.

Last Week of WORK!

My brother's concert went off without a hitch. Actually, he was totally incredible. I want to post pics here... but I can't. If you want to see pictures, email me.

My mom freaked out after the concert. She is pretty superstitious, and she did a special puja this morning for the three kids in my family (me, my sister, and my brother) to ward off evil eyes. Although, considering my recent experiences with bad luck, I can't say that I don't need the extra blessings.

I'm not looking forward to the red eye back to Newark. Coach is so crowded and I can barely stretch and sleep. Plus, my neck totally hurts when I have to sleep standing up. I saw CARS with my brother and sister today. You know, I thought it would be really trite (which it was), but I actually enjoyed it... a lot! I would see it again. It was cute, a little different, but totally predictable.

I've been in the process of trying to find as many Ross related blogs as I can. I want to know more about what life was like as a first year for other students, as well as what classes to take.

Back Home!

My brother's carnatic music concert is this weekend in the bay! I'm going home tomorrow morning!!!!

Hotel life has been great. I swim every evening, then relax in the jaccuzzi. The bed is so soft and comfortable. It feels so lonely here now that I'm so close to getting out. I can't wait to come back to California. I'm looking forward to having a roomate again. It's so easy to become anti-social when you live by yourself.

Farecast

I'm going to be busy with the half year close at my company over the course of the next three days... but I wanted to let everyone know that the beta version of FARECAST has launched! Now there is a way to predict airfares like the stock market. Too bad we can't actually trade them. :)

She's MARRIED!

The first one of us took the plunge. One of my friends from high school got married this weekend to a guy from our very own high school class. Her wedding was so, so beautiful. She is an absolute vision of beauty to begin with, and then to dress her up in all of the outfits needed for a four day wedding... it just magnified everything. It's so hard to believe she's really married. All of the girlfriends grouped together and said that the actual reality of her departure hasn't really sunk into any of us.

It's an amazing thing to see two people so really, truly in love. I've been part of and come across many, many couples in my lifetime, but I can't say that I know any other couple that is quite as love as these two are. They had an amazing video made about them and their hopes for their life together by www.jadeproductions.com. I've never seen something like that before at a wedding, so it was extremely unique. When you are done watching it, you know that those two are really meant for each other. I'd love to post wedding pics here but that would violate a lot of people's privacy.

The fire is offically lit... the pressure will be immense for the next few years from family and friends to get married now that one of the girls in our group has done it. I know I'm no where near ready for it yet. Maybe after b-school. I have to go back to New Jersey tomorrow, where I'll be living in a hotel for the next two weeks.

A weekend at home!

In spite of all the craziness, I've come home to Fremont for the weekend. I am so relieved to be out of that awful room and to never have to go back. I don't know exactly how to go about getting my security deposit back. She wants to charge me $100 for every time she cleaned the bathroom. What crap. Oh well. I guess I've learned a very expensive lesson... if you need to live some where for a very short period of time, you need to do a lot of research and it may be better to spend a little more and go for corporate housing.

The flight home sucked! our flight didn't take off until 11pm (it was supposed to take off at 8:20pm). I got home to Fremont around 3am. I couldn't fall asleep until about 6am... I went to my girlfriend's sangeet last night. This weekend is her wedding weekend. She looks really happy and I'm so happy for her. It will definitely be a fun weekend. The wedding is tomorrow and the reception on Monday.

I'm really not looking foreward to going back to work next week. It's going to be an intense three days... lots of late nights and nose-to-the-grindstone type of work. But once we have closed the half year, I can relax, pack up, and know I only have to put in 5 days more (at most).