Info About Poker Card Reader

My room is clean. I am sitting in it and I can see the floor. Joel is stealing my music. Mostly Battles, Beirut, Animal Collective stuff. We spent the day running around Capitol Hill from record store to vintage clothing shop. We both made one purchase and ate falafel after going with Megan to tea at the Bluebird Cafe. We practiced biking and played Magic and now we are waiting to go to the airport to pick up his roommates from their Thanksgiving break.

Also, I ran the Seattle Half Marathon this morning. My time was approximately 1 hour 52 minutes. I say approximately because I failed to pick up a registration packet and thus had not official time. I did, however, obtain a medal, the most important accessory. I ran the first half with a volunteer from my workplace, but he fell behind in the second half due to a knee injury. I was glad to have a partner for that long, though, as I needed the emotional support through the first half, and the freedom to go my own pace in the second half. It was a gorgeous run, along Lake Washington and through the Arboretum and all around downtown. I loved it. My feet have a million blisters. It was worth it.

Last Monday, I got groceries and Joel picked me up to make burritos. We watched TV with Erik and were in bed by 11. Tuesday, I was to meet with potential new roommates, but this fell through, so I sat at Katy’s coffee shop with the work laptop and went home at 7:30. We made pie crust and watched videos of drum core until late. Wednesday night we went to the Math house to hang out with the kids for a while but were promptly kicked out by Toby, leaving a sour taste in our mouths. Erik, Greg, (new) Erik, and I all went to Joel’s place to play games, watch Japanese television, finish baking pie, and deep fry leftover pie dough and filling (delicious).

Thursday morning, we met with Joel’s aunt, uncle, and cousin to serve Thanksgiving dinner to the homeless for a couple hours. The shelter where we served – Bread of Life Mission – was flooded with volunteers and we were rendered rather useless. We left shortly and went home to make beet salad for Thanksgiving dinner. We drove to Joel’s aunt’s home and had a lovely dinner with cousins and family friends. I was so thankful to spend Thanksgiving dinner with a wonderful family, even if it was not my own. I hope to see them again soon.

After a proper dinner, we delivered our three-day-recipe pie to the Math House and celebrated with our closest friends until four in the morning playing charades and eating glutinous amounts of deserts. Friday I did not get out of bed until noon. Tired, we dragged ourselves to the Math House and then, with Greg, Joel, and Erik, to get sandwiches at Paseo’s – another Seattle attraction which tourists must visit. Joel and I followed Erik to the barber shop and then to Rocky’s for Happy Hour. We met Alex there and played Eucre for a couple of hours before going to the Metro movie theater in Wallingford to see Mr. Fox. The film was adorable, though three of us had to sit on the floor of the crowded theater to watch. From there, we went barhopping on 74th Street, playing some watered-down version of poker – Alex, Erik, Joel, Greg, Ashley, and I. We headed to Alex’s place for a while to gossip and banter before dragging poor Greg back home.

Saturday I again slept until noon, but did nothing productive for most of the day. I cleaned my room until 10 pm and tried to sleep. I woke up several times during the night, and finally at 3 AM in panic mode due to lack of preparation for the half marathon. I did just fine as it turns out. I am rather proud of myself.

Note to self: Albums to buy -

• Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
• Miles Davis’s Birth of Cool and Kind of Blue
• Andrew Bird and Bowl of Fire’s Thrills
• Spoon’s Kill the Moonlight
• Mountain Goat’s Sunset Tree

For you tonight: Andrew Birds Eugene. I am excited to find new music

Love,

Pistol

So here I am…sitting in my friend’s apartment in Newyork city. It’s kind of late in the night/early in the morning and all my friends have gone to sleep. A good time to think and reflect. Unfortunately, I don’t get a lot of these moments now-a-days. I am almost at the end of my first and an awesome trip to the US.

I have previouly written an entry about what it felt like when I first landed here. I had to leave a good life back in Hyd and start everything from scratch again. All I had was a transfer letter and a suitcase full of clothes. The first few days were really painful. No friends in a 100 mile radius and an ass hole team member who is always behind my back. I was irritated and decided to get out of this place as soon as possible !!

Time moved on and after the first two months, I had a couple of acquaintances. Not friends though. I realised that making friends with people here is not easy. They don’t want any new friends and are happy in their own circles. I tried different tactics. Nothing worked. I knew that I had to hang on and that was all I did. It’s not like everything was totally sad in my life back then. I had kickass things happening too. I was doing well at my job, my managers and client people were really happy. I did some travelling too to Colorado. My first trip in the US. It was bloody kick ass. Probably one of the most beautiful places i’ve seen till date. I’m sure I’m going back there. This time with a different company ofcourse (:

Colorado had a feel to it. It was like a silent old man with lot of wisdom trying to tell you stories. Nature’s beauty at it’s best and the ideal place to go to if whether you want to get into adventure sports like skiing and rafting or if you want to just chill out and sit by a beautiful lake and do nothing. It was overwhelming.

I went back to India in June 2009 for 14 days (it was more like 10 days because of travel). When I came back to Houston, I was very irritated in life for some personal shit that happened in India. May be I was just being too sensitive. Doesn’t matter. I came back and everything moved on.

It was then that things started to brighten up in life. Things started going my way. I made two very good friends here. I started partying like crazy. It didn’t matter if it is monday or friday. I partied when I felt like it. I sure had a lot to booze, lots of variety. I used to stay late and play poker or pool. There still were weekends when I was all alone, nobody to talk to and nothing to do. I guess God gives us all one of those weekends to keep our feet on the ground.

Even with all these ups and downs happening in my personal life, my professional life was kicking ass. Even now, I am doing very well !! I am one of the rock stars on the team. Unfortunately, the other was my ass hole team mate who is not very thankful for all those times when I had to cover his ass and uses stupid shit to play politics and tries to prove that he is way smarter than me. No way uncle, it doesn’t matter if you are 10 yrs older than me or if you have five more years of work experience than me. I am the best. Period (:

I did a lot more travel. It started with New York. ahh…Newyork city !! This city is like a beautiful woman. No matter how much you try, you can’t take your eyes off her. It is easily the best city i’ve been in all my life. The city doesn’t sleep and has always a buzz to it. oh..and I love the crowd here. Anybody who goes to this city falls in love with it and I am no exception.
I like this city so much that I had to visit it twice in five months !!

Next up was chicago. Another american city with a good balance between the busy urban parts of the city and the calm parts of the city where one can enjoy nature. The sky line was huge and awesome. The museums and aquarium were experiences on their own. But I felt that the lake was beautiful probably gets the highest marks.

There were other cities I visited like Atlanta, San Antonio, Dallas, Pittsburgh etc. but those cities didn’t really make it to the top three but Atlanta sure gets a special mention thanks to S, J, all the booze and the Metallica concert I’ve attended there.

Also, I joined the ball room dance classes in RICE university thanks to Prof DS. Without him, my time in office would’ve been boring. D sir, here’s to all the technical and architectural discussions we had. Thanks a lot !! I’ve done a seperate post on my dance experiences in this blog here. I am done with the course and can now dance cha-cha, rumba, quick-step, waltz and some tango. In the process of learning how to dance, I met quite a few females but none of them were really interesting.

Shopping was one more activity that helped me burn my time during boring weekends. Houston is not really an expensive town and I could save some money and do shopping without the fear of breaking my wallet. It was fun and I now have a completely new wardrobe and a bunch of electronics which can only be described using superlative terms. Though there were times when I really didn’t want to spend money (like i didn’t buy a mattress for the 9 months I wa here for, I slept on the floor) After shopping, my next highest expenditure was food and drinks and I have no complaints there. I’ve tasted cuisines, meats and spirits I didn’t know existed before coming to the US. Full marks there again. By the end of 9 months (now), i am living life like I used to live in Hyd. Busy week days and super busy weekends. There’s always something that I have to finish.

It’s kind of difficult to write all about 9 months of my life here. I had a lot of highs and lows over the last 9 months. I truly appreciate the highs and sure, some of the lows were probably the biggest disappointments of my life. Anyways, I love staying in India and would never miss a chance to do so but I’ve a strong gut feel that I’m coming back to the US.

Like any good write up, to summarize

The Good
+ Kick ass life style and infrastructure
+ Good Food, great booze..need I say more?
+ Beautiful country with beautiful Women
+ $$$
+ Professional life kicked ass !!
+ Metallica

The Bad
- No good friends in Houston unless I travel and meet iit junta which is expensive
- I’m still single
- ASS HOLE TEAM MATE/HOTEL MATE/FLAT MATES
- Male flight attedants in the flight from US to India
- Personal life didn’t kick as much ass
- Jonas Brothers

The Ugly
– Far away from Home, family and friends
– The shitty experiences I had while I was here
– Flight from India to US and back, the Jet lag
– People don’t watch footer here ):
– Britney spears