I Wander

the world as I see it…

Posts Tagged seattle

Asha Concert

Apr 6

Posted by kosh in usual

Every year, the Asha foundation in Seattle puts together a live performance by a band called Geetanjali. I still have find memories of the concert from 3 years ago. The songs were awesome, the singers were even better and it definitely ranks as one of the best live performances I’ve seen. See video below -

And then, this weekend happened. This was the worst live performance that I have ever been to, right from the organizers to the singers and the song selection. The experience also made me realize a lot of things -

# Organizing an event

Fresh out of organizing the biggest Bhangra competition in the Pacific Northwest, I was terribly annoyed and disappointed with how chaotic and unorganized the event was. The show started an hour late and the seat allocation was terrible (or in other words) the seat numbers were written down in pen on the tickets and a lot of the seats ended up being allocated twice.

# Tamizh Music (the latest ones)

Looks like I am completely out of touch with things (movies, etc) back home. I hardly recognized any of the songs and most of them sounded terrible. My knowledge and taste for the music is somewhat static from the year 2005, when I left the country. It didn’t help that most of the singers sucked as well.

# My Tamizh speaking abilities

This was probably the saddest realization of the night. We got assigned the worst seats of the night, behind a huge speaker and sub-woofer which was about 10 feet away. I had to go argue with the organizers and drive some sense into them and get our seats reassigned. It was during this ordeal, while talking to the organizers, that I realized that I have lost my ability to hold a complete conversation in Tamizh (or at least when I’m annoyed). I do speak in Tamizh with my brother but it’s just sad that my thought process is slowly switching over to English. While this does mean that I don’t have to translate the Tamizh in my head to English before I speak, I am a little sad that I don’t think in Tamizh anymore.

I’m done griping.

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O Canadah!

Mar 26

Posted by kosh in usual

I had my visa interviews at the Canadian consulate in Seattle. The consulate turned out to be much busier than I expected, thanks to a group of about 30 Indonesian students who decided to crash the consulate and later head down for a spring break roadtrip to Vancouver. I got to the consulate at about 8:45AM and was in the waiting area for about an hour until my number was called. The girl who had the number before me failed to respond to the calls made by the interviewer and I was called in next and just when I was about to go in, she sneaks past me and gets into the conference room.

I waited outside for less then a minute when I heard an announcement by a very ‘ticked-off’ French-Canadian asking people to respond to their waiting numbers (being called) ASAP. My number is called next and she points as at the incomplete form I submitted (I failed to notice the back side).  I sit down and fill out the remainder of the form as she scans through all the documents (while I tell her that I don’t have a valid US visa and my intention of going to Canada). She made a small note on a post-it as I filled out the form and then asks me to pay my processing fee outside. The interview last about 30 seconds and it probably took that long only because I had to fill out that form.

Some 30 minutes later, my number is called again, I pay the fee and am told that I have been selected for a second round based on my situation and that I should wait for my number to be called again. I wasn’t really a surprise since I would literally be stuck in Canada if my US visa falls through. I wait for about an hour and a half before my number is called and instead of another interview, they hand me back my passport with a Canadian visa and wish me luck for the US visa! Canadian immigration is awesome! :)

I head for Vancouver next Wednesday and can only wish that my US visa goes as smooth as my Canadian.. Anyone wanna marry me before that? :)

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Back to the grind

Jan 4

Posted by kosh in usual

I spent the last 2 days in a ski resort in Pennsylvania and I finally went down a black diamond and survived. The east coast slopes aren’t the hardest I’ve seen but the artificial snow here make the slopes much harder to navigate.

Tomorrow, I head back to Seattle and back to school. This winter quarter will probably be one of the hardest quarters I have taken at te UW, with respect to the amount of work I would have to do every week.

I am not looking forward to this quarter :(

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Snow & Travel

Dec 25

Posted by kosh in usual

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.

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Yosemite

Dec 21

Posted by kosh in usual

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.

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OOH (out of home)

Dec 19

Posted by kosh in usual

I started out on a journey from Seattle to San Francisco yesterday. I am amazed as to how easily Seattle just stops functioning when it starts snowing. I left home about 3.5 hours before my flight to catch a bus and it took me 2 hours to get to the airport. The buses were running full and the taxi service was booked out until 4 in the evening.

Anyways, I’m here in San Francisco and I must say that the city seemed pretty active last night. I should be heading out to see more of downtown today…. but it’s hard to feel ‘touristy’ when you are in the middle of a city!

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California..again

Dec 18

Posted by kosh in usual

I leave for San Francisco in about 6 hours. The only problem is that its been snowing like crazy in Seattle since this morning. Everyone around here is pretty much snowed in and there are no cars on the road. I plan on taking the bus to the airport.

snow

This was taken from our apartment and the picture below shows the traffic conditions in the area(courtesy Live maps).

trafficThe exclamation points indicate accident/road closure. As you can see, every road connecting me to the airport looks closed at the moment. I should be leaving for the airport pretty soon. Worst case, I walk  :)

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Cold

Dec 15

Posted by kosh in usual

It’s been snowing and really cold these past couple of days. This was probably the first that I had to brush off the snow from my car(which took 20 minutes) and I realized that I really needed gloves. Almost lost a couple of fingers trying to be smart…

I’m back home now. Its 8:30 AM, 21F outside with an expected high of 33F for the day. I’d take snow over rain, any day!

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I hate spending money..

Sep 7

Posted by kosh in usual

..especially after working hard the whole summer to earn it. I did my finances yesterday and it looks like I will have about $600 left after paying my first quarter tuition and insurance. That means that I have about 600 dollars to survive 9 months and I would still have to pay insurance and tuition for 2 more quarters after that(about $16500). I really didn’t want to work this senior year but doesn’t look like I have much of a choice :( Of course, my brother will be bailing me out of this financial hole(yet again)  but this just sucks.

And it doesn’t help that living has become really expensive these days either. I went out this evening to get some contact lens solution, fill gas in my car and buy some groceries and it ended up costing me about $70. WTF(*&((*&(*(*^*&^ mate~~~~!!!!

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Unemployed

Sep 6

Posted by kosh in usual

I spent the first few hours of my unemployment cleaning the house and making my room ‘habitable’ again. Here’s proof -

I followed this up with some indian food with my brother and bar hopping until 4 in the morning. Drunk people are fun to watch, but babysitting them, not so much.

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