Dec 31
I thought I should change the appearance of my blog for the new year (and I was also tired of the old theme). I think this theme is a little darker than I would like it to be but it suits my ‘I Wander’ tagline a little better than most other themes. I”ve tested this to work on IE8 beta, Firefox3.x and Chrome. Be sure to let me know if this appears broken in any other browser.
I’m pretty glad to be done with 2008..well, almost.
Dec 30
or to be more specific, I love their cars. To be even more specific, I like BMWs.
Yesterday, I drove my uncle’s turbo-charged BMW 335Ci to meet a friend in Virginia. I didn’t get to test the car much on the capital beltway or the Dulles toll road, but I eventually got to drive on Route 7 which is dotted with traffic lights every few miles and a speed limit of 55mph. My favorite part was going from 0-55 mph the moment the lights turned green and feel the adrenaline rush inside.
This was one of the few times that I didn’t miss a stick shift while driving a car 
I’m pretty sure I still have some adrenaline left from last night. I (heart) BMW
Dec 29
I spent most of today overhauling the existing bhangra bash website – http://www.bhangrabash.com
It looks like this now – http://students.washington.edu/uwisa/bash
I haven’t really looked at cms platforms yet but I starting to really like wordpress as a content publishing platform. I think could be a commercial webmaster now…
Edit : The old website is history now. Apparently, replacing websites in a diffrent location isn’t as easy as I thought it to bo…since wordpress like to hard code a lot of stuff…meh. The only version you will find is at http://www.bhangrabash.com
Dec 28
My typical day here starts at 12:30 in the afternoon (I’m still in pacific time). I end up walking around up until 2PM when I have my lunch. More browsing, web designing, until 6 or 7 in the evening followed by a swim with my uncle at the aquatic center. I come back, have dinner at 9PM, play a game of Age of Empires with family here, a Tron marathon followed by a few games of Quake 3 Arena. We end up playing CLUE and/or cards after that, until 2AM.
I then come up to my room, more web designing, chatting with friends back in Seattle and finally fall asleep some time around 5AM. If you are curious what I am working on, its the community website at UW. http://students.washington.edu/uwisa
I’m determined to break the cycle and get accustomed to eastern time soon, but it feels great to be on a vacation, just eating, sleeping and having a good time.
Dec 26
If you have wondered why Seattle sucks at clearing snow and ice from the road -
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2008551284_snowcleanup23m.html
And some more information from the SDOT website -
Equipment on Site(City of Seattle)
Dec 25
Snow and travel never go well together. I came back to Seattle from San Francisco yesterday, and it took me about two and a half hours to get from the SeaTac airport to my house which was some 15 miles away. I rode the bus all the way and there were some scary times when the bus would start going sideways, sliding on an uphill or downhill.
I got home at 10 in the night, had dinner, did my laundry, packed for my trip to DC, went to bed at 2:30AM, woke up at 4:45AM to get ready for the trip. The taxi (SUV) picked us up at 5:30, dropped us off at the airport at 6:30AM, we checked in, boarded the flight at 7:20AM and waited for the plane to be de-iced and readied for take-off.
Well, we waited for about 4 hours(!!) at the gate, sitting in a tiny seat in the plane waiting for it to leave Seattle. The truck which was de-icing the flight malfunctioned and it took them(the airline) about 4 hours to find a replacement truck to de-ice us and get us off the ground. I am still in denial that I was made to sit for 4 hours in a stationary aircraft, which was later followed by a 5 hours flight to Newark.
So my brother and I land in Newark, pretty sure that we would have missed our connection to Baltimore since it was only a 4o minute lay over initially. Well, as it turns out, our connecting (40 minute) flight was also delayed by about 4+ hours and we waited another hour for that plane to be ready to fly us to Baltimore. Almost every flight out of Newark was delayed by about 4-6 hours today due to adverse weather conditions throughout the country.
I eventually boarded one of the tiniest flights I’ve ever flown in and reached Baltimore at 9:54PM EST. My uncle picked us up from the airport, and we made it home to some good home-made food. This ended our 14 hour trip from Seattle to DC. I am tired. I should be sleeping.
Happy (whatever you believe in) Holidays.
Dec 25
Yosemite is a must do in the winter season if you like snow. A few of us made reservations for 2 nights at curry village in the park and were very unprepared for what we were about to encounter.
First off, when we stopped at a tourist information center, we realized that we absolutely needed chains to get anywhere close to the park. A short detour to Mariposa followed and we bought some chains for the Sonata. Driving on chains is a great experience by itself. Actually, it is more of a realization as to how much chains actually help you, while driving on icy roads.
We stayed in a heated tent for 2 nights and I went out on foot in the middle of a snowstorm on a closed road, into the forest with a friend (Arvind .aka. VG). I would definitely like to go back and spend a week in the icy wilderness when I get a chance again.
We started heading back to SF on Tuesday morning and realized that we had lost one of our chains on the way up on Sunday. The progress was a little slower than expected(thanks to a missing chain, traffic in SF) but I made it back to SF airport just in time to catch my flight out to Seattle.
I’ve never been to Yosemite during the summer but I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes snow in winter.
Dec 24
The cali trip was fun this time around. I met up with a couple of friends from high school and re-discovered San Francisco. We stayed in a tiny room near Union Square but I guess we really didn’t a bigger room considering the fact the the room forced us to get out to see the city.
The city looked pretty safe considering that we were walking around the piers at 1 in the night and were pretty much the only people around, except for the sea lions.
I discovered the concept of a duelling piano bar and watched people get drunk and sing drinking songs all night. We just sort of wandered in and it turned out to be a lot of fun. I would highly recommend it to anyone who is visiting San Francisco.
I think I can’t get lost in SF anymore. I covered a lot of miles on foot and am pretty thorough with Union Square, Market and all the streets around Golden Gate. Hit me up if you need a guide
Dec 21
Tomorrow, my friends and I leave for Yosemite valley for a couple of days and get back on Tuesday and head back to Seattle right after. I hear its still snowing back in Seattle ..yikes.. Makes me wonder if I should just sleep in the airport and wait for my brother to come over the next morning and fly out to DC.
We’ve rented out a Hyundai Sonata and I don’t think I like this car as much as I did, the first time, a couple of months ago. Something about it just doesn’t feel quite right… not that I expected much from a Hyundai anyways.
Dec 21
Q. What is worse that going shopping with your girlfriend?
Ans. Going window shopping with your guy friends …
Don’t ask.. 