San Francisco in 1930s ??
Friday, May 18, 2007
Sunday, May 13, 2007
The most troubling part for the US trip: Immigration @ India (Hyderabad)
Yes, you read it right. Problems at immigration at US stands no where close to the problems at immigrating back to your own country.
For the presence of some electronic items in my cabin baggage, they marked the baggage and I had to "verify" at the Red Channel.
The person (No, I can't call him officer) at the Red Channel won't agree to the fact that my belongings were within the limit of 25,000 + 1 laptop. He wouldn't care for that. The fact that I had some electronic items and laptop suggests to him that I should pay him some money (not using the right word here but its obvious).
There were other ppl who were stopped there and everyone seemed to end up giving some money else this person would start arguing uselessly for e.g I heard him saying to a person that all you clothes and etc also count in that limit of 25000, Our Indian economy is affected when u bring this item to India (so pay me some money to let u in).
Calling the higher officer didn't help. He would say in low voice, "you are violating the law by bringing two laptop doesn't matter if one is you company's owned". Basically saying I can't say anything you have to pay him money.
The form for immigration clearly leaves the terms to be read and interpreted and abused by these buggers as they want. It says "One laptop is allowed". Doesn't talk about the allowed laptop to be the one that was bought in US. The laptop you carried from India can be counted in that too. He would want to detain my personal laptop and also frighten me of putting some complaints about my not helping me in his tasks or "mis-declaring". Would pretend that I lost my customs slip (when he had it with him).
I am sure many ppl go through this pain (atleast 5-10 went thru in front of me). When the whole office is working together how can you escape ?
For the presence of some electronic items in my cabin baggage, they marked the baggage and I had to "verify" at the Red Channel.
The person (No, I can't call him officer) at the Red Channel won't agree to the fact that my belongings were within the limit of 25,000 + 1 laptop. He wouldn't care for that. The fact that I had some electronic items and laptop suggests to him that I should pay him some money (not using the right word here but its obvious).
There were other ppl who were stopped there and everyone seemed to end up giving some money else this person would start arguing uselessly for e.g I heard him saying to a person that all you clothes and etc also count in that limit of 25000, Our Indian economy is affected when u bring this item to India (so pay me some money to let u in).
Calling the higher officer didn't help. He would say in low voice, "you are violating the law by bringing two laptop doesn't matter if one is you company's owned". Basically saying I can't say anything you have to pay him money.
The form for immigration clearly leaves the terms to be read and interpreted and abused by these buggers as they want. It says "One laptop is allowed". Doesn't talk about the allowed laptop to be the one that was bought in US. The laptop you carried from India can be counted in that too. He would want to detain my personal laptop and also frighten me of putting some complaints about my not helping me in his tasks or "mis-declaring". Would pretend that I lost my customs slip (when he had it with him).
I am sure many ppl go through this pain (atleast 5-10 went thru in front of me). When the whole office is working together how can you escape ?
Monday, April 16, 2007
Stanford Campus Visit
It was just a random decision to go to StanFord's campus when we wanted to have some way to spend the Sunday afternoon, after a great lunch at Mayuri Restuarant in Santa Clara along with Sumanth and Priyam (my friends from UCSC).
It turned out of be great luck as it was the Community Day in campus (which we were told happens once in 2 years). The only regret was that we made it little late. We got a chance to visit and the famous Hoover tower which on its 14th floor gives a very nice view of the whole campus.
The campus is certainly a very cool place to see, I could see many ppl cycling all around in cycles of different types some ppl skating, many ppl were jogging around. Then there were various grounds which were again occupied by ppl playing variety of games including Basket ball and soccer (or shall I say football).
Wandering around we landed up in front of a library, having heard a lot about the size of these libraries I decided to go inside and check how much ever we could see as visitors. To a pleasant surprise, we just had a small registration process and we were right in to the library. It turned out to be one of Social sciences (very frankly I don't even know what all it covers). The number of news paper and journals in the library were just beyond any imagination. I could see newspaper from almost all countries I have heard the name of (and many more ). The approximate number of journals would be around 12000 (yeah !). This was enough of social sciences for us and we decided to get out of the library.
As we were coming out we came to know there were like 12 or so more libraries. We decided to go to Computer Science and Mathematics library. The library was certainly not as big as the Social science one. It looked very reasonably sized one. Again the journals section was very big here.
Unfortunately the trip was to end as we were already very late. If you are just visiting the campus it would be a good idea to start pretty early, the campus is too large to roam around. Having a host in the campus would be great but otherwise you can take up campus maps from some information centers and also do explore the option of student guided tours (we didn't get time to try that).
[Mostly used my friends' camera so will have to wait before I can post some photos]
It turned out of be great luck as it was the Community Day in campus (which we were told happens once in 2 years). The only regret was that we made it little late. We got a chance to visit and the famous Hoover tower which on its 14th floor gives a very nice view of the whole campus.
The campus is certainly a very cool place to see, I could see many ppl cycling all around in cycles of different types some ppl skating, many ppl were jogging around. Then there were various grounds which were again occupied by ppl playing variety of games including Basket ball and soccer (or shall I say football).
Wandering around we landed up in front of a library, having heard a lot about the size of these libraries I decided to go inside and check how much ever we could see as visitors. To a pleasant surprise, we just had a small registration process and we were right in to the library. It turned out to be one of Social sciences (very frankly I don't even know what all it covers). The number of news paper and journals in the library were just beyond any imagination. I could see newspaper from almost all countries I have heard the name of (and many more ). The approximate number of journals would be around 12000 (yeah !). This was enough of social sciences for us and we decided to get out of the library.
As we were coming out we came to know there were like 12 or so more libraries. We decided to go to Computer Science and Mathematics library. The library was certainly not as big as the Social science one. It looked very reasonably sized one. Again the journals section was very big here.
Unfortunately the trip was to end as we were already very late. If you are just visiting the campus it would be a good idea to start pretty early, the campus is too large to roam around. Having a host in the campus would be great but otherwise you can take up campus maps from some information centers and also do explore the option of student guided tours (we didn't get time to try that).
[Mostly used my friends' camera so will have to wait before I can post some photos]
Friday, April 13, 2007
Wondering about being tagged by someone ?
Recently I have been seeing a flood of mails saying you have been tagged, blah, blah. I sent mail back to a friend from whom I received such a mail to know he didn't intentionally "tag" me.
Looks like this site http://www.tag__ged.com is another http://gaz__zag.com (__ to avoid giving them unnecessary incoming links advantage) like site which takes users login name for Gmail and Yahoo and invite all their contact book addresses by sending a mail which claims to be a invitation from the real user.
I am not sure about this part by someone also informed me that sometimes they just try to use the password you choose for these website to access you gmail or yahoo accounts(without informing you) and are quite successful in that as many ppl do use common password for many websites. Can some real victim just confirm this ?
This post is meant to create some awareness about such junk sites and TRY getting such spam mails reduced in numbers for everyone. Please be careful when you do try some social networking websites if someone just asks for your Yahoo or Gmail password they might be doing something fishy.
Looks like this site http://www.tag__ged.com is another http://gaz__zag.com (__ to avoid giving them unnecessary incoming links advantage) like site which takes users login name for Gmail and Yahoo and invite all their contact book addresses by sending a mail which claims to be a invitation from the real user.
I am not sure about this part by someone also informed me that sometimes they just try to use the password you choose for these website to access you gmail or yahoo accounts(without informing you) and are quite successful in that as many ppl do use common password for many websites. Can some real victim just confirm this ?
This post is meant to create some awareness about such junk sites and TRY getting such spam mails reduced in numbers for everyone. Please be careful when you do try some social networking websites if someone just asks for your Yahoo or Gmail password they might be doing something fishy.
Monday, March 05, 2007
San Francisco and Santa Cruz visit
Another well spent weekend. Saturday we guys (Mukesh, Nirnimesh, Suruchi and myself (Vardhman)) went to San Francisco city for visiting some of the tourist spots. We targetted going to Fisherman's Wharf, Pier 33, Ghirardelli square and Crookedest street.
The trip goes through CA-101 which is now quite familiar to us and CA-80(the one we would always wan't to avoid, Mukesh, Nir ? :)) and later goes on to merge to Embarcadero street which goes parallel to the Pacific ocean shore. The piers appear on the right hand side while driving North.
Pier 39 is the Famous pier named Fisherman's Wharf. The place had a lot more things to offer than we knew of and took a lot of time. Two major attractions are "Aquarium of the Bay" and the Sea Lions' Cafe. Besides that are some good shops to shop around. Many ppl prefer renting a cycle and visiting around this places, some ppl do skating too, we didn't want to try them there.
Following this we moved on to Lombard Street, known as the Crookedest street in the world and believe me it was so. Its like the one shown in Fast And Furious 2, Tokyo drift but much larger drifting. We attempted reaching North beach but missed it somewhere and finally decided to trace back to Mountain View. Dinner was at Chaat Paradise, which is a good place for eating North Indian food here.
Sunday morning(? :)) we left for Santa Cruz. A reading of WikiTravel.org helped us in planning out visiting the famous Santa Cruz Beach Broadwalk ammusement park, which we didn't know existed at all, the good thing about the park is the options of payment, you can pay for full day or pay by rides. We opted the second and felt the decision was good. The rides to enjoy here are Fireball, Typhoon, Giant Dipper and to a small extent Cyclone (its indeed a cyclonic experience). After this we went to the beaches nearby (unknowingly followed a 30-40 minutes drive to land back at almost same parking slot as earlier and walking all the way back to very near to the beach broadwalk). There was a place where ppl danced Salsa and I cudn't stop but joined them. It was fun. Walk on the beach was also good including the experience of a chilling pacific ocean water and followed by a small Beach volleyball game with some Mexican folks.
(Photos quick link http://picasaweb.google.com/nirnimesh.1/SanFrancisco, http://picasaweb.google.com/nirnimesh.1/SantaCruz) detailed inlining later.
The trip goes through CA-101 which is now quite familiar to us and CA-80(the one we would always wan't to avoid, Mukesh, Nir ? :)) and later goes on to merge to Embarcadero street which goes parallel to the Pacific ocean shore. The piers appear on the right hand side while driving North.
Pier 39 is the Famous pier named Fisherman's Wharf. The place had a lot more things to offer than we knew of and took a lot of time. Two major attractions are "Aquarium of the Bay" and the Sea Lions' Cafe. Besides that are some good shops to shop around. Many ppl prefer renting a cycle and visiting around this places, some ppl do skating too, we didn't want to try them there.
Following this we moved on to Lombard Street, known as the Crookedest street in the world and believe me it was so. Its like the one shown in Fast And Furious 2, Tokyo drift but much larger drifting. We attempted reaching North beach but missed it somewhere and finally decided to trace back to Mountain View. Dinner was at Chaat Paradise, which is a good place for eating North Indian food here.
Sunday morning(? :)) we left for Santa Cruz. A reading of WikiTravel.org helped us in planning out visiting the famous Santa Cruz Beach Broadwalk ammusement park, which we didn't know existed at all, the good thing about the park is the options of payment, you can pay for full day or pay by rides. We opted the second and felt the decision was good. The rides to enjoy here are Fireball, Typhoon, Giant Dipper and to a small extent Cyclone (its indeed a cyclonic experience). After this we went to the beaches nearby (unknowingly followed a 30-40 minutes drive to land back at almost same parking slot as earlier and walking all the way back to very near to the beach broadwalk). There was a place where ppl danced Salsa and I cudn't stop but joined them. It was fun. Walk on the beach was also good including the experience of a chilling pacific ocean water and followed by a small Beach volleyball game with some Mexican folks.
(Photos quick link http://picasaweb.google.com/nirnimesh.1/SanFrancisco, http://picasaweb.google.com/nirnimesh.1/SantaCruz) detailed inlining later.
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