barcelona -here we come -the gaping indians.

had a wonderful time barring a few upsets.
1. day one of the conference. there i was outfitted in true ganjam style-- new sandals, new jeans, new shirt, new makeup[sorry old face], old hairdo.--went to have breakfast before leaving. was joined by doctor from nagpur ,who after we finished breakfast, said 'well dr kalpana, why dont u hurry up and get ready ,lets leave soon " !!!!!!!!!! of course i dint speak to him again .
of course my silk shirt needed a bit of ironing after the trip but i felt it was too much to forgive and forget !!!!

and thats how my trip started.

2. here dress code is easy, shortest of shorts, torn jeans, old st shirts,with one sleeve off the shoulder all the time, hair loose, with no sign that it was ever combed, and to top it all u had to wear stilletoes . i couldnt differentiate who were gong to work and who were on a holiday. no difference at all.
3. nobody horns. all very polite and even stop at all the innumerable traffic lights even with no traffic around. it needs a few auto rickshaws and motorists from nama chennai to shake them up.

sanjay and me had a fab time, got a metro map and daily planned our sightseeing jaunts on the map adn made a few mistakes, caught the wrong trian , etc but had a great time.

food -- oh god- thay eat nly dry bread all the time , the pasta and pizza too were spice less. finaly ate at mc donald, night dinner was always at an indian restaurant -naan ,chicken gravy and basmati rice. i would kill  for rasam sadam and potatoe poriyal by the end of the stay !!!!!!!!!!
roads and gardens fantastically clean .where are all the slums i asked . nobody knew.

just putting in a few snaps.

Seattle/Vancouver trip

The view of Mt Ranier from University of Washington, Seattle. The fountain in the gardens of the Uni is in the foreground. It is a huge campus of 700 acres. Have to buy a cycle for Anya.
Sign of the times where we meet family in airport lounges. Met Kesavan chitappa and Pappa chitti at Seattle airport lounge.
Karthi's birthday celebrations.
We had an interesting but pretty scary hour in Vancouver. Karthi had lent her phone to Anya and me as we were exploring the city the day after we arrived. Anya lost the mobile in the tour bus. Anya's own  phone had a flat battery. We were in a new city,  We did not know Karthi's address or Vishy's work place name or address. We could contact by email or facebook from a internet centre but did not know if Karthi would check that. The name of the road which is we could remember close to their home was 15km long. Karthi was expecting a call from us. The waiter in the restaurant, learning our plight lent his phone to us. Was racking my brains on how to sort the problem out.
Suddenly out of the blue I remembered Karthi's phone number, thank god she had an easy number to remember. Rang the number, somebody had returned the phone to the tour bus office. Collected it from them and rang Karthi, pretended nothing had happened. Karthi picked me with Uthra shortly after, they knew all that had happened, they let us carry on for a while before they confronted us :)

a day in vancouver

Hi, just thought I would share my experience of a day in Vancouver with the above pics, was told I would get a day's wages, was expecting a doctor's earnings in a day, secretly hoping for something similar to Nambi. All that I got was a lamb curry and rice, the beer was good though. Any visitor to Vancouver be warned.