Good bye Ms eM!

Ms eM is leaving Houston this week for good and we had to have a special get together for that, after all she is one of the best amongst us,the co ordinator, navigator and the most reasonable one.I could go on and on because i think i have to give it to her this time.
She is my first point of contact whom i can call and talk for hours together with no agenda even in the dead of the night,in case i get an insomnia attack and she has had to hear quite a bit of bragging.

As usual Ms eM and Ms S reached more than two hours late at our place on BF and as usual the disagreements on where to dine started off and then decided on nothing as usual again.

Once on the roads we forgot that we had gone out for dinner and we had so much fun with the music that we made the most romantic and melodious song into a head banging hip hopping art form.
Ms K then pointed out to Chuy's and we flocked in to the semi deserted restaurant.
After ordering food over loads of conversation, leg pulling and meanness(i am guilty here) we signed for Ms eM's souvenir collection on a beautiful image( you are never gonna know what that is ;) )

After dinner and a few clicks we headed back on the wrong way.No one could hear a thing because of the volume, no one cared because these were the best days.

After coming home we requested Ms eM to shed a few good bye tears and damn the woman did'nt oblige. It was fun all the way.

I just wanted to tell her that i love the P and am gonna use it for the most noble reasons and for the general good as intended.

Now for the official good bye speech, in case i dont get to create a scene at the airport.
You will always remain as part of some of the best memories i ever had. Thanks for being you and wish you all the very best!And you absolutely rock!
Adieus till we meet again!

Dedicating this song to you ...

Lady Antebellum Lyrics

Picture perfect memories scattered all around the floor
Reachin for the phone cause I can't fight it anymore
And I wonder if I ever cross your mind
For me it happens all the time

It's a quarter after one, I'm all alone and I need you now
Said I wouldn't call but I lost all control and I need you now
And I don't know how I can do without
I just need you now

Another shot of whiskey can't stop looking at the door
Wishing you'd come sweeping in the way you did before
And I wonder if I ever cross your mind
For me it happens all the time

It's a quarter after one, I'm a little drunk and I need you now
Said I wouldn't call but I lost all control and I need you now
And I don't know how I can do without
I just need you now

Guess I'd rather hurt than feel nothin at all
It's a quarter after one I'm all alone and I need you now
And I said I wouldn't call but I'm a little drunk and I need you now
And I don't know how I can do without
I just need you now
I just need you now
Ooo, baby, I need you now

To the college and back

Sunday,
March 29,2010

Ms eM called me early morning telling that she is going to College Station to meet an old friend of ours. The weather being good i was in for the trip, before she even invited.
So Ms eM, S and me set out for another adventure in our Houston chapter.

The drive from Houston to college station is around eighty miles and a good one and three quarter hour drive.

The drive was absolutely beautiful with the spring melody in the air. Flowers were beginning to bloom in blue, violet and orange along the roads and it is one of the most beautiful seasons.The sky in azure speckled with a few white clouds like the beard of an old man danced above.

The lush green landscape with bejewelled flowers beckoned us in a way that we could not resist our selves from pulling over in front of ranches.
We engaged in our narcissistic indulgences clicking away pictures in abandon, not caring for the cars that honked at us,who were amused by our odd fixation. We got some picture perfect models in the form of stallions and mares who posed for our clicks as if they were professionals, and that is all that mattered to us.

I could'nt contain a chuckle seeing the behavioural pattern between the stallions and the mares seperated by a fence, well the pattern is universal and it is a hilarious watch.
It reminded me that we are so damn different, yet so same.

After a few more clicks we sped to our destination and reached our destination by evening. Well i must appreciate the fact that even though we promised Mr. M, our friend that we would reach by lunch we were able to make it by evening. Usually when we plan if we aim to reach our destination by breakfast, the odds are more that we would make it by dinner time. Well who cares about the destination as some one remarked, the journey is all that is important and we thoroughly enjoy our impromptu getaways and detours.

Mr M is one of our good friends and is super cool as a person. After a brief chit chat and armed with Starbucks coffees we were on a for a guided tour of Texas A and M University.
We were informed that the university was the second largest in the US in terms of the campus and it housed around forty five thousand students.

The campus was super cool and we enjoyed the evening stroll across the campus. We went to the library which was so well equipped and had such a charm,i am sure that even a person who is not interested to study would be motivated to take a book and read in this environment.
The labs looked very well equiped and the recreation center was buzzing with energy with every imaginable game being played.
It was unfortunate that we could'nt get into the stadium which was huge and was hosting some event.
However, we did manage to get a few clicks under a tree where there was an interesting folklore. A new bride was posing for pictures under this tree too,probably as part of the folklore.

Mr M and S managed to get a group of uniformed students to pose for a picture with them and it did turn out well.Ms eM and myself gave a miss on this one and chose to rest on a bench.

As we walked across the campus we found different groups of students engaged in various interesting activities. I was particularly impressed with the group of kids playing frisbee with music behind them, they had set up speakers in the open ground and the music was pure amazing.

We then met up with Mr A, a colleague of ours and then went for dinner at Rosie's PHO.We ordered different dishes Japanese,Vietnamese et al. but when it arrived it all looked and tasted almost the same.

After dinner and a souvenir picture, we bid adieu and headed back to Houston. This visit has taken a few years off my age :)

It is half past one midnight, and i better crash now. I wonder what tomorrow has in store.

Another manic monday!

Mixed day!

Today was a beautiful day with fine weather and beautiful country music floating across.Thanks to Pandora and thanks to D.

TGIF

A trip to the Williams water wall marked the opening to our evening.We were just in time before the lights went out and it was a pretty sight with the water reflecting the light.
It took on a different hue when the lights went out.

We went to Pappadeux on Friday. The sea food platter was quite good!

There were no movies that we wanted to watch, so a good drive back.

Yao and a movie...

It was a routine dull wednesday and it was drizzling.

I felt sick and wanted to go crash as early as possible, until K forwarded me the links to some restaurents. My illusions of bein unwell vanished as soon as i saw the menu.

I keep missing my breakfasts these days on account of my schedule which gives me time only to wake up,shower and scramble to office.
Lunch today,was also not great ,so by evening i was starved.

The restaurent that we went to was called Yao,it was a twenty five minute drive and i liked the place.K had promoted saying that it is the best chinese in Houston.It was a calm,sparsely crowded place and with K's penchant for ambience we ended up sitting at the bar.
Well with red as the theme K seemed pretty impressed with the place.

I must say that i was tempted to immerse in wine, but then the repercussions at home and my head were not pleasant images,so instead i perused the menu to select beef.

The food was fine and i am told that the wine was fine too.

It was then that i realised that K and me were extreme opposites in terms of restaurents.
She goes in for the ambience, i go in for the food.
She likes the more crowded restaurents and i like the relaxed less noisy ones.
[I remember that some time back we went to a nice Italian restaurent called Fornos of Italy where the food was great, the ambience was not bad and i loved it, but K missed the crowds.]

After dinner, we headed for 'She is out of my league'. Well i had'nt planned on seeing the movie in the theater but then, a movie was the best thing to wrap the evening.
We were surprised that the auditorium had a few people in it. Usually when we go to the movies,there would hardly be any people in the theater.

We assumed that the movie would be a chick flick but then some scenes were more than what we bargained for,anyways it was a good laugh,nothing more nothing less.

The evening dimmed to a foggy display of lights and 'some one' went into their land of dreams.

Last year this time...

We had gone on a trip to Big Bend National Park and this is an article that i wrote for an internal newsletter...so here goes...

Around the World…...to Big Bend National Park

It is not very often that we decide to book an RV and prepare to spend the vacation in a semi desert. The idea was proposed by our manager and the entire team jumped at the opportunity of spending three days in the wilderness. It is almost a year
since we went for this trip but the memories are fresh in all our minds. It was a great team and a marvelous place to visit.

I remember everything vividly.

Everything was planned. The logistics were taken care of by different people in the team. The RV was booked and the rations bought. The enthusiasm was infectious. For one, none of us had traveled in an RV before. And two, the idea of going to one of
the largest parks with canyons and amazing trails was more than exciting. They say, the journey of a 1000 miles begins with a single step………in our case the beginning was the turning of 2 keys in those massive RV.s. There were fifteen people including
three kids and two RVs. We started the journey armed with maps and loads of food. We filled all the cabinets in the RV with food including rice and daal and water. For the uninitiated, RV is like a mini house on wheels. It is complete with living room,
kitchen facility, bath room and bed room.


The drive was around twelve hours from Houston. We had a gala time dancing and cooking on a moving vehicle was a challenge in itself .The boys had to drive a long way so they were forgiven and well fed. We made couple of makeshift beds and
slept through the night after a round of antakshri. We drove all night and finally when the girls got up it was morning, and the terrain had changed to magnificent mountains and sand dunes flooded in sunshine.

The desert sunrise is one of the most beautiful rises that I had ever seen. (Now don't ask me how many sun rises I have seen in total). There were beautiful sand mountains everywhere and there was not a living soul in sight. Our first stop was in the middle of nowhere, an RV park. There were moun-tains all around and the climate was pleasantly warm. After freshening up there, we had a healthy breakfast on the picnic benches. We did not pay any particular heed to the crawling beings. All I can
say is that there were all around in a lot of different sizes and shapes.


We planned to see the river Rio Grande which was supposed to border Texas and Mexico or so I was told. It was a good experience as we walked along the course of the deserted river bank on the floor of the canyon. The entire team clicked away pic-
tures in various poses. I am only hoping that those pictures don't go public. As we walked deep into the canyon, we saw nature in a different light. We could almost hear the sound of silence, that is until our over enthusiastic friends started to test their voice quality and the acoustics of the canyon. Walking on the canyon floors there is serenity and tranquility pervading. We picked up several different short trails at random and thoroughly enjoyed our exploits of treading the paths less traveled.


Next halt was the Mule Ear Trail, this trail begins at the Mule Ears overlook which are two huge rocks that looks like the ears of a mule. The land here is low and the hike a little difficult with small stony hills and sand. We started down this trail and after a few slips we finally managed to reach the end of the trail. We clicked away few pics and hurried back up the trail as we were losing sunlight and had to
return back to the campsite. As the night sky descended on the dessert terrain, we stretched out tired bodies and curled up in the RV for a long peaceful sleep.

Our second morning in Big bend national park started with journey to Santa Elena Canyon. The trail begins at the end of the Santa Elena Canyon Road; we had to cross a small creek to get across the canyon road. The water in the creek was pretty low. Once across the creek, we had to climb many concrete steps and cross boulders but the sight that awaited us the end of this path was worth the effort. It was one of the most beautiful places that I have seen. It was nature in its purest elements. There was a walk-way to the top of the canyon and the view was more than spectacular. The river flowing in the middle of the canyon was gently dancing to the rhythm of the zephyr. We met a few people on the trails and exchanged polite hellos. They encouraged us to venture further into the trail. We were not disappointed by
what we saw. It is only in a few places that we find unalloyed peace and this
definitely was one.

We went to the acclaimed hot springs. That was a damp squib as it was the size of a
water tub and there were already people in them enjoying their bath with cases of beer. That did not seem to disappoint the kids and there were soon frolicking in the water. The entire gang then ventured in and had a great time.

The desert moon ever so beautiful, smiled on…….

Big Bend National Park is definitely a place to be visited especially in summer. They offer many activities like river rafting, horse back riding; hiking etc.The booking has to be done at least one week in advance. There are many sites like
http://www.nps.gov/bibe/index.htm which will give you information on the park and its various activities. These sites also provide you with hotline numbers which can be used for advance booking.



Pravitha Philip

Act I Scene I

Time : 4:15 PM
Date: 3/20/2010

Act I Scene I

Laid back saturday...It rained and it is beautiful to be indoors.

Catching up on Lounge. Loved that show always ...

Resisted the temptation to go shopping ...three invites for shopping and people blame me,huh???

An idea to start another blog just struck me, maybe i l start working on it tonight.

Now gotta rush to office...

Friday movie and dinner...

Thanks to a release at the office, i got half a day off on Friday. Now for the time being i am going to forget that i have to go for work on Saturday evening,not that launching rockets is part of my profile.

After a good nap, completely rejuvenated we went for The Bounty Hunter and then afterwards for a dinner at Picos, a place where authentic mexican cuisine is available.

The ambience was kinda ok and the food was good.

Now after seeing Gerard Butler for a good one and half hours in the movie, the Mexican chef with the Italian name did'nt seem too bad either.
K engaged in some cool conversation for my benefit i presume, and was laughing her eyes off seeing me fumble with the silver ware, dropping water and then the typical scene lifted off a movie when my salsa just dripped down whenever he was nearby.
The food was enjoyable and so i have no complaints.

The only spoilers were when K insisted on loitering in the empty parking lot in the dead of night. Risk is fun,being foolish is not.
But then it went well after i screamed my lungs off and peace was restored with music.

The Bounty hunter

Gerard Butler is steaming hot and it is precisely for him that we decided to see the bounty hunter on the day that the movie got released.And boy, it was worth it!
The Ugly truth had set our expectations high on GB and the bounty hunter did not disappoint us. [Well i must admit that most of the chick flicks are like M & B's. It is the same story anyways!]

The plot revolves around the now divorced couple Milo(GB)and Nicole(Jennifer Aniston).They were once the perfect made for each other couple, now trying to cope without their better halves.
Nicole is a strong independant woman who works as a reporter and places her career first.She is working on a suicide-murder story that gets her into trouble.

Milo who works as the bounty hunter is overjoyed to find that he has to track his ex wife and take her to prison, since she jumped bail.He has emotional and financial problems of his own since the split with his wife.

The movie revolves around their journey where he takes her to prison and inadvertently re-kindle what they once had.
There are the goons chasing each of them all over the place.

The movie makes for good time pass and it is worth a one time watch.

Ok agreed, i dont mind watching it twice over for GB.And no we did not drool over him in the theatre if that is what you are thinking!

I would give the movie a 3.8 on 5.

Green Zone 2010

Matt Damon is the highlight. The movie is engrossing to the extent that i bit my nails to a bad shape and i dont have that habit.

The movie based in Baghdad like the hurt locker is very interesting and intriguing. The fact that it draws parallel to the real life scenario is what it makes it interesting.

Inspired from 'Imperial Life in the Emerald City' by journalist Rajiv Chandrasekaran, this war thriller is worth every minute.

Ironically speaking when a war is mentioned Iraq is depicted and when poverty is shown India is shown.
The plot revolves around Captain Miller(Matt Damon) working with the US Army trying to locate weapons of mass destruction in Baghdad and understands that the intelligence has been incorrect. He embarks on a journey to find the truth.

Well in some parts of the world movies form the only medium to understand a catastrophe like this. We do read the newspapers and watch countless news channels and websites, but at that time it is just news for us.
People dying are just numbers and bomb explosions usual.And as far as we are not hit directly we just dont care. But what we fail to realise is that it could me or you anyday.
Taking life and any one's dignity is no one's right and cannot be justified at any cost.
I hate to be a part of the system where vested interests manipulate man kind.
The point is clear, war is bad.

And the movie has made its point.I would rate the movie a 4.1 on 5.

Sunday movie time : The Hurt Locker

Date:March 15,2010
Time:1.31AM

After yesterday's adventure,I got up at 2 in the afternoon and felt that i was up for an other adventure but then thought of the repercussions at office on Monday morning and decided to head out for a movie instead.

The Hurt Locker had garnered my attention through the Oscars and it was my best bet.The fact that it had a female director interested me to a good extent.

The Hurt Locker is a war movie with scenes from war torn and strife hit Baghdad seen through the eyes of a bomb disposal team. The movie describes the emotional highs and lows of war.It also emphasises on the addiction of adrenaline pumping moments where life hangs by a fine thread.

The movie has some good sequences and it certainly has you at the edge of your seat and there is no dull moment.

Although,I would not have seen the movie had it not been for the Oscars.It re instates my faith in the futility of war if the movie promotes it or not.

All in all it is a good movie,i would rate it a 4.2 on a 5 scale.

After dinner at K's favourite joint we headed back home. It is almost two in the morning.I better crash now.

Cheers to a weekend well spent!

Austin - A lot of things can happen for coffee

It was another boring Friday because i had a rather dull day at office. So when the uneventful release was over at midnight K and I decided to hit the roads for coffee at a Cafe in Austin. Well having to drive a hundred and fifty miles for coffee seem to be the last thing to be worried about.
In fact as the journey turned out we found that we had not worried for anything.

Day:March 12,2010
Time: 9.30 PM
Venue: HPL,Houston
Decision makers : K and I
Destination: Cafe Mozart
Distance:150 miles
Decision: Hit the road


Day:March 13,2010
Time: 12.08AM
Venue: Marquis
We hit the roads on full gear. There was music, and the roads at night were at their alluring best.

Time: 2.30AM
Venue: 30 miles to Austin

K woke me up in the middle of the drive to show me the lights of the city below. And man was'nt that a pretty sight.

These days we have developed a strong penchant for driving at night. Be it roaming around the streets of Houston in the dead of the night or driving around the 6 th Street in Austin for the nth time. Now, before you get any ideas let me make it clear that this trip was meant only to get coffee.
K does the driving and i for my part enjoy the sights,scenes and lights, occasionally describing them.

So when K jostled me up from my sleep i woke up to find her giggling away and telling me that we have reached but the cafe was not in sight, and we were safely parked in some parking lot.
When i looked around in that sleep induced stupor i almost felt that i was back in some residential colony in Kerala.
After all most of the places do seem to look alike at 3.30 AM in the morning.

We drove around for two more minutes and saw water and there were closed restaurants in the vicinity.
Finally to our shock and surprise we found Cafe Mozart closed.

Now blame the two know-it-alls who assumed to be open 24*7.

It was then that we realised that we had not checked the timings of the Cafe and ended up parking in front of the Cafe at 4.00AM
It was pitch dark and we almost thought that we should panic when we remembered that even though we had no food or water on us were were well stocked in terms of maps,mobile charge, K's new iphone and of course the naughty GPS.

We decided that we would go to a 24 hour open Starbucks,to our surprise there was none in the vicinity.

After trying unsuccessful attempts to wake up a few sleeping beauties we decided to hit it out on our own.
We drove around the deserted streets of Austin,paused to view the State Capitol in all elegance.

We headed out it to a Denny's and had an early breakfast.

After chit chatting and warding off a few un interesting advances we decided to take rest in the car, and as K dozed off in front of Denny's with a view of the Capitol dressed in beautiful hazes of white and golden orange ...i did what i did best...surfed the internet.

And the next time she opened her eyes, it was a bright beautiful day with warmth and sunshine in place of the cool starry night.

The Capitol looked different in the day time,probably more stoic.

Thanks to google, we figured out a few places of interest.

And yes now we were all set to go to our destination to get that coveted shot of coffee.

We reached the Cafe Mozart and man wasnt it worth the drive!

It was situated on Lake Austin,almost in the water on the banks.It had a serenity which hung over the place with the morning sunshine streaking in complementing the coolness of the river below.

There were wooden benches alluding old world charm.

People were trickling in and by the time finished our coffees the place was getting crowded.

K fell totally in love with the place, and vowed to come back again the same day.


We then headed to Lake Travis, and ended up at Bob wentz park which offered scenic views of the Lake.
The lake was clear and blue.

We lazed around all morning, sitting on the river bank and dangling our feet in the water.We dozed off on the boat docks soaking up the sun. It is a different matter that we emerged tanned three levels more.
We also walked the shore lines.

It was then that i realised that i lost my spectacles on the way, we walked another mile to retrieve it.And to my immense relief i found it where i left it and i thankfully remembered where i had kept it.
Now to our dismay K discovered that she lost her pendant. We walked back another mile to retrieve it from the boat deck.
Lucky us that we got what we had lost, not that we were worried that a black cat had crossed our path when we started the journey.


It was late afternoon when we thought of heading back when we realised we were completely dehydrated and starved.
Thanks to our planning skills we had no real food, but when we ransacked the car we found some vadas S had left for us, some snack from office, melted chocolates and some water.

On the way back there was another park which we visited. The terrain was beautiful and the shoreline was rugged and natural, but wait i think everything about the place was very natural ;).

We were super hungry and planned to get lunch at a nice restaurant. Unforunately the wait times were a minimum of an hour and we had to go a long while before we re fueled our selves.

We then head back to Cafe Mozart.The atmosphere was very contrasting now, from what we had seen in the morning.In the morning it was laid back, in the evening it was teeming with life.It was a different hue altogether.There was a boat sales going on next door and the place was swarmed.
I had my signature black tea with lemon and K insisted on having some dessert.

Once lunch was done we were recharged and decided to head back.

On the way as usual i dozed off when K woke me up and told me that we were running out of fuel.We took the exit and filled the tank.
Too tired from lack of sleep and exhaustion, we decided to take some rest.
It was at this precise moment that i appreciated K's super car. The seats were comfortably stretched and we slept off in the petrol bunk in front of a Texas gift shop as if we had no worries in the world.

An hour later K nudged me awake to tell that we need to get away from there before we became the local spectacle.
In our sleepy stupor we got off onto some road and realised it too late that we might have lost our way.

We were stuck at a feeder road.
It was pitch dark.
The lane that the GPS suggested looked run down.
The black cat that had crossed the road came back to haunt us both. But luckily for us, we did not open our mouths to mention it.

Gathering our wits we went forward and were on the right track soon.

By around 12 the next day we reached home. A total of twenty four hours on the road, all in the name of coffee!