Chicago, you better be glad I'm here :D

The apartment hunt. Good God. I love the city but hate this apartment searching ritual. Who doesnt? You like the place, its too expensive. If its cheap, no parking. If u got parking, no laundry in the building. If you got it all, no train/bus stops nearby. If all of this works, its taken before we get to it. Darn! Here's how random it was. We saw a house that had a bachelor's party the previous night, to start with. Porn magazines everywhere, place was totally trashed, a mirror on the wall with the word "poo" written on it (it did look brown, yuck!) and a god awful smell. We walk out of the house and our agent locks his key in his car. We wait for his spare key and head out to another place where get locked inside the house because we could open it from outside but the lock inside of the door was damaged and we couldnt get out. We wait for rescue and somebody dropped by and let us out. Total mess. We did find a brilliant house close to the lake, came back with the agent to sign, only to find out that it had been "just" taken. As in, within the past 15 odd minutes. Darn!!

Finally, it looks like River West is our destination. I'm still waiting to sign the lease, our neighborhood is crappy, the place isnt all that great (its good though) but here's the juicy part:-

NBC Tower (my office): [[ 2.8 miles ]]
Sears Tower (roomie's office): [[ 2.3 miles ]]
Rush & Division (Leg Room, Mothers, Shannanigans et al): [[ 3 miles ]]
Weed district (Crobar, Zentra et al): [[ 2 miles ]]
Lincoln/fullerton area (apartment et al): [[ 3 miles ]]
Halsted area (funky buddha, blues, kingston mines, Tonic Room et al): [[ 1 mile ]]
Loop (Sound bar, Coyote Ugly, Buzz, Spy Bar et al): [[ 2 miles ]]
Milwaukee party district: [[ 1.1 miles ]]
Sayat nova: [[ 1.4 miles ]]
Nearby neighborhoods: [[ Wicker Park, River North, Gold Coast ]]

And this was my first picture blog. Hmm.

How to name it?

Seriously, I don't know how to name this one :P I'm planning to write about my new job and a music show. Just couldn't think of a cool title. "Job, band and everything else" sounds kinda lame; "Heaven's doorstep" (to refer to Chicago, as opposed to "Hell's kitchen" in NY) is too general and far-fetched by anybody's standards. So, here I am, still wondering how to name it :P

Anyway, the job. For those who don't know me (or read any of my previous blogs), I used to work for a small startup company in Chicago suburbs until three weeks ago; Last week, I started working for a company downtown as a software devel (duh?) and the change is just overwhelming! It's definitely for the better but take a load of this: My previous company had 4 developers and 10 employees overall (yes, pretty darn small, thank you :)) and my new company has 2000 employees and it occupies three full floors in one of the city's sky scrapers a block away from the Magnificient Mile! Everything's different, everyone's different. I feel like my freedom has been stripped, my wings ripped; No sexual harrassment, no trash talking, no asian porn, no video games; I mean, people, wassup?? ;) hehehehe. Jokes apart, I just love Chicago and it doesn't get better than this for me. Hustle, hustle, hustle. That's the name of the game. Business people working up their numbers on the train, women cramming in last minute make up on the buses, sales professionals running around in the heat wilting to the weight of their laptops, old people who give you that "oh you money minded materialistic bastards" look, loads and loads of taxis painting the city yellow and of course, the tourists with their cameras. The ultimate treat for any socio-analyst, I'd think. Going back to work, I'm lovin' it, so far. There's challenges everyday, deadlines every week and we're a brand new team just about to shift our entire software infrastructure into a newer, more efficient technology. Juicy :)

The band. Sunday, July 16 (yesterday). 2 hours. 20 songs. 200 people. 5 singers. 5 songs each. what a blast! No names here, but I sang for a different band (disclaimer: I run around telling people that i have my own band but the truth is its slowly spiraling into oblivion) which I totally gel with and we kicked some serious ass! When we finished the last song, the audience was still sitting in their chairs, refusing to leave and we actually didn't have any more songs to perform! People danced like hell, kids went berserk and we singers took turns in joining the audience for a little dance now and then while others filled in our parts. Of course, we fumbled here and there; Some of us lost the beat, some of us lost the pitch of the song at some instances and some even forgot the words...but none of that mattered, we sounded good, kept our cool and had the audience on their feet non-stop for almost the last forty minutes. Exhilarating stuff. I should warn you though that I'm not a real singer by any means. I pick my songs carefully and I make up my blemishes with dancing and talking to the audience :P A bit of distraction, if you will :D As long as people like what we do, I don't care :))

Aiight, me tired. Thanks for readin'.

// Adios //

New York New York!

June 30, 2006 ~ July 4, 2006

Trips Ahoy!! Yet another opportunity to bolster my incessant bond with the North East and I devoured it :) A trip to NY-DC-NJ which can be described in two words: "fun unlimited". I love to travel and if my count is right, I've visited around 25 states in the U.S. of A so far. I had seen all three states already but I couldn't resist an opportunity to meet with family and friends in one voyage; So here I am, reminiscing good memories :). Err, I just got back yday and "reminiscing" might be too much but hey, what the heck? I'll use it anyway :P

Cutting to the chase, the plan was two-fold. Meet with my family, friends and family friends. Confusing? Let me explain. :) Family -> Anand & Vidya; They can safely dubbed as "anna-manni". Friends -> Madan, Charu, Ramanujam; I know them from way back, love these guys :); Family friends -> Aarthi, her mom, Dheepa and Vasundhara; basically, Vidya's friends. So, the plan was to spend several days with vidya, gp, aarthi, her mom, dheepa, vasu and the rest of the time with my friends from childhood. And it worked :) If I were to encapsulate the entire trip here, I'd have to write forever ;) and so, I'll stick to the highlights, in the order of occurence.

Day 1. I had a flight at 6p.m., got to the airport early and lucky me, I found a seat in an earlier flight. Well, not so soon. While the flight which left at 6p.m. landed on time, the 5p.m. flight which I boarded got delayed by 2 hours. The plane was cordoned off to Philly where we waited for several hours until we got landing space at Newark, NJ. Genius move, eh? Here's the weird part. Before boarding the flight, a fellow desi, wearing shorts, came upto me randomly and said "I won't be allowed to board if i wear shorts, do you have any spare trousers that I can borrow?". It was a very weird favor to ask and I felt even weirder to refuse, as I was carrying two hand luggages and it was obvious that i had more than several trousers. So, I gave my much loved grey gap jeans to this middle aged guy and it actually fit him; It was a funny sight, though. I had the foot of my jeans ripped out at the back as a weak display of my sense of fashion and there he was, like a centaur. All conservative up top and razzled up in the bottom :P but I did get my jeans back, which is good :)

Day 2. Met with Aarthi, her mom and Dheepa for the first time. Aarthi first. For some weird reason, for the first couple of days, I really couldn't make eye contact with her when i was talking to her. I can usually talk to anybody without an iota of hesitation and lead the conversation but I was shying away from her and felt slightly panicky. I don't know why and I'm too lazy to figure it out :D. Onto Dheepa a.k.a Madurai :). She's a firecracker, arattai kottu. Had good fun messing with her. I call her "madurai" because she has that accent, the nakkal and that audacity :) The day she landed, her flight got delayed and me and Anand hit the airport at 3a.m. to pick her up. I wasn't wearing my contacts which means "half blind" and I couldn't see jack! :P We hung around for almost an hour before we found her and took her to the hotel. Nobody's fault, just miscommunication :).

More of Day 2. Vasundhara. I and Dheepa picked her up from the airport and she had had the toughest time getting to D.C. Her flight was originally for Newark; She spent six hours at the airport only to have her flight cancelled and go back home. She came back next morning for a 7a.m. flight but had a flat tire and couldn't make it. She finally got onto a flight to D.C. and landed at around 5p.m. Sheer horror, simply because her manager already refused her absence on July 3; She went through all that hassle just for a day. So, she had a bad start and I felt sorry for her but we didn't get along well, at all. Not sure why. I drove back to D.C. downtown from the airport and I usually don't keep much distance between myself and the car ahead of me. Too much of bumper-to-bumper driving in Chicago. She plainly said "you're such a bad driver, why are u driving so close? you're gonna kill us". Just flat out rude, I thought. (She did apologize later). Our first stop in D.C., she gave me her camera and said "you're our official photographer, just take our pictures" and I didn't like the way she said it. I didn't complain; Took several pictures and then ran off on my own inside the National Museum of History, leaving the rest behind. I hoped she'd take the hint but the next day, I asked her camera to take a picture of the NY skyline and she said "don't do it, I don't think u have a good photographic sense, let it go". Grrrr. I figured there was no point getting riled up and so I let go. Patience is a virtue, ain't it? As much as she has the right to judge me and express her opinion, I had the right to rebuke but I just didn't wanna spoil the rendezvous. I hope she knows that she's burned out the liberties that she took with me and that's all that matters. Anyway, it was a non issue. I was having toooo much fun to let anything* bother me :))

Day 3. Myself, Madan, Charu and Rama. We got piss drunk at a Manhattan bar called....er....I don't remember.. :) and they kept the bar open an extra hour for us =))) We had a great time catching up and at some point, we had the bar staff drinking with us, including the DJ and the bartender. I remember announcing that I was "luke skywalker" and the bar owner had this smirk on his face and said "may the force be with you" :P RETARDED. Madan and Rama had way too many drinks and threw up all over the car. Charu, Madan's wife, was super pissed because for one, it was her car and second, she didn't like seeing Madan getting that drunk. Well, she knows these are rare moments and hopefully Madan got away with it :). I remember asking Rama for his zip code to confirm the hotel reservation and he said "033332" or so which obviously is the most scrupulous zip code on the face of earth =)). He was so proud that he managed to utter such gibberish and reassured himself that he must have been really hammered :) hehehehehe. I know.

Day 4. Back to NY with familia. We headed out to Tonic bar and Dheepa had her virgin drink, a pineapple malibu. We had a couple of drinks, hit the china club only to bump into a line of around 40 people at around 2a.m., went to Crobar only to realize the entry was 30$ and drove back home to crash. It was still a decent outing. I had my fancy chicago tie which I didn't really tie cos I don't know how to tie a tie :P and I couldnt find anybody who could tie it for me either. We got back and I spent half hour trying to explain the game of poker to Aarthi and Dheepa; They listened and then chose to sleep :))) I don't blame them, its too much information to catch up and too less time to learn and play!

Day 5. Sent off Dheepa and Aarthi on their flights, waved goodbyes to anand and vidya and found that that my flight was delayed by 2 hours. Hit the bar to unsober myself and met two awesome people, Matt and Anuk. Matt's an englishman, researching on global warming. He was truly disappointed that England failed to advance in the soccer world cup and he was drinking it up as if there was no tomorrow. Anuk was a belgian born girl with parents from french and algerian descent living in the US for the past 15 years. What a mix of cultures, eh? We got along well, had our beers and conversed about anything and everything. I and Anuk were on the same flight and we exchanged our iPods. I truly enjoyed listening to her music; While i was listening to her spanish gipsy king remixes, she was listening to my tamil Rahman songs :) Fabulous, ain't it?

Overall, it was a great trip. Some final special mentions. Aarthi's mom was a true stud. At 65 years or old or so, she showed so much enthusiasm and energy that bowled us over. It was so much fun just chatting away with her, getting that funny and wise perspective on anything and everything. Vidya and GP are celebrating their wedding anniversary today. I wish the best for them I felt an amazing transition in them. Compared to the last time I saw them, they had both beautifully adjusted to each other and were so accomodating to each other. A living example which shows that marriages don't just work, you have to make it work. Aarthi and Dheepa are both great friends that I made; I find it hard to believe that I know them for just a couple of days. We got along really well as if I had known them for ages and I truly enjoyed their company.

So, now I'm back in Chicago. I had my first day at my new workplace and I can't wait to write about it. Come back tomorrow, same time and I'd have scribbled by then :)

// Adios //