Friday, September 22, 2006
My City of Joy - Wake Up and Let the Candle Glow Brighter!
It feels like something's amiss in this land far far away as the Goddess of Power lands across the seas in my childhood "City of Joy"! There's this nostalgia, shimmering with thoughts of bygone days, when my family and I would wander, all decked up with pompous paraphernalia, to live up to the color and splendor of the festival. Yes! It's "Durga Puja" again, everything remains the same, the same enthusiasm, the same ardor, the same beatific beauty permeating the land, enchanted souls scurrying about the streets of Calcutta - but this time, I have those scenes playing wildly in my mind's eye. Aah! but then again, it's as if it's a blessing in disguise because now I can paint the colors of the festival with my exclusive graphiti strokes to finesse the nuances of the festive season - "nah! a little bit tangerine there, a little mellow yellow here, a little more of the azure tint in the sky, nope! don't rain - make it bright and warm" - making the people of my faraway land happier and brighter!
Well, there's more to this festival than the religious fervor of the people, it is a festival of triumph of good over evil, it is a festival of bliss, a festival of prosperity and peace! Think of all the dreams you dreamt, but couldn't quite transform to reality and in your innocent, earnest way ask Her to give you Her touch, and yes! She will - She will sprinkle over you a potion to cast aside that despondent drudgery of mundane life and replace it with sparkling success. How? Is it magic, no! it is that glimmer of hope that faith brings to people. Yes! you let that little prayer of hope slip by your soul, when all's going the way it was not meant to! Yes, you wrap that little parcel of unachieved dreams to heaven and seal it with cherubic hopes and dreams and let the charm work! It's with these little glittering inklings of faith and hope that we grow up; they come in different colors and flavors ... and when all's going awry - that's what you live for, the hope to let things shape up the way you want them to, the faith in what that little you within you is telling you - Move! March Forward! I am there with you!!
Let this world of ours share that faith and that passion to achieve, that passion to do good, that passion to live and let live, to love and let love!
Thursday, June 29, 2006
From Parisiis to Paris
Dated: Late June, 2006!
Caution: Don't get intimidated by the French phrases; blogging about the French capital well deserveth the French fantasies :)
Now don't take me to be a world class historian and swear by every piece of informative tidbit I provide, read it, savor it, and let it whet your appetite to read more. Yes, some of it is well influenced by the travel books we followed to make us seasoned travelers, which we definitely are! By the way, if you do get a lot out of your readings, come, share it with me over a steaming cup of café o lait!
So, here we go: The Paris conquered by the Romans in 55 BC was a small flood-prone fishing village on Ile de la Cité, inhabited then by a Parisii tribe. Today, Ile de la Cité and Ile St. Louis, are two islands on the Seine river and almost centrally located in Paris, where Parisians and wide-eyed tourists stroll arm in arm. As they stroll, they do unfurl noveau vistas along nooks and niches of this cute, historic town of about 2 million. Well! I would say touring Paris is a lot like walking down the tracks of history, at times you feel Parisians are so engrossed in their history that they've almost forgotten it's the 21st century, almost! For, when you "pace" across the city, as comfy as ever, getting on and off the RATP and RER trains, you do think again! The metro system is amazingly good, in fact I am tempted to say, it's the best laid out intercity train system I have ever seen. The RATP maps for one are amazingly easy to read, thanks to the Latin script, check out the "Metro map" and remember to note the "track number" and the "destination station", both; e.g., to go from Concorde to Bastille, you gotta take "line 1" toward "Château de Vincennes", and not toward "La Défense", unless you have an unlimited day pass and want to be going round and round the merry-go-round, with no time constraints; or else, you are bored of history and are on the look-out for modernity! Well then, La Défense, Paris' skyscraper district on the Seine, and 3 km west of the 17th arrondissement, is replete with modern architecture! Go for it!!
Getting back on our quest for historic panels and marvels, we started off our Paris itinerary, with an evening cruise along the Seine on Captaine Francaise, and had thirty second glimpses of the Louvre and Eiffel and the Statue of Liberty, yes, the Statue of Liberty! Few people know that a scaled down Statue of Liberty, stands on an isle in the west of Paris, along the Seine, and was donated to the city by the American community in Paris, in 1885. The next day, we started off roving across the historic town, self-guided, along inland roads and (metro) tracks of Paris, starting off with Bastille, specifically place de la Bastille.
Originally built as a medieval fortress, the Bastille eventually came to be used as a state prison. Political prisoners were often held there, as were citizens detained by the authorities for trial. Some prisoners were held on the direct order of the king, from which there was no appeal. Although by the late 18th century it was little used and was scheduled to be demolished, the Bastille had come to be associated in the minds of the people with the harsh rule of the Bourbon monarchy. During the unrest of 1789, on July 14, an enraged mob approached the Bastille to demand the arms and ammunition stored there, and, when the force guarding the structure resisted, the attackers captured the prison, releasing the seven prisoners held there.
The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, and it thus became a symbol of the end of the ancient régime. July 14, often called la fête nationale in France, became an official holiday in 1880. From the beginning, speeches, parades, and fireworks, along with public revelry, were part of the celebration. The slogan “Vive le 14 juillet!” (“Long live the 14th of July!”) has continued to be associated with the day. The square of the Bastille (Bastille Square) was created later, in 1803. Today, the only monument still gracing the square is the 52 meters tall, Colonne de Juillet (July Column), created by d'Alavoine. The top is adorned by a winged, gilded figurine representing the Spirit of Liberty called the "Génie de la Liberté".
With the 52 meters tall monument, serving as a mere traffic circle, it was quite a disappointing start of the day; but then, thinking again, there was indeed an eerie sensation associated with the place, reminiscent of the angry mob approaching the Bastille and fuming in rage, setting ablaze the spirit of the French Revolution!
From there, we moved on to place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris. There, we explored Maison de Victor Hugo (Victor Hugo's home), home of the workaholic French author from 1832-1848, at 6 Place des Vosges, without much success! Well, if you really want to get a lot out of the musée, I would urge you to mastermind French and then visit the museum, nope! they didn't have much of a documentary or even exhibit labels for English speakers. One thing really intriguing in the museum, though, was Hugo's tall desk where he stood to write, along with woodwork and Chinese-theme panels he created for his mistress!
At a roughly five minutes walk from the place, we joined the lines at the falafel windows of L'As du Falafel, with several competing joints sitting next to one another, but we followed what our travel books told us, and had promptly served Jewish cuisine in the lively falafel joint. We then retraced our steps, satiated and smiling, to Place des Vosges, and our eyes lay feast on some beautiful, "untouchable" painting, well! maybe not untouchable for Bill Gates, ah, well! those painters are blessed with hands of gold!
One block from the square is the Musée Carnavalet (free entrée), chronicling the history of the capital. It is a treasure-trove for lovers of Paris: paintings, prints, artifacts, displays and re-creations, all housed in two magnificent mansions. Re-creations of Proust's cork-lined writing room, the apartments of the famous letter-writer-Madame de Sévigné, or the art nouveau Fouquet jewelry boutique were splendid exhibits, indeed. Though, beware, these exhibits close down for an hour or two, while the French curators and guards, laze in a summer siesta; yeah! we did go back to the museum after the lunch hour(s) to see what the travel books urged us to, and well! we weren't too unhappy, well worth the trouble in fact!
Moving on to the isles of the city of musées, we saw the Notre Dame cathedral in Ile de la Cité, where Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame was based. Set behind the Ile de la Cité, is the romantic isle of Ile St-Louis, having harbored the rich and the famous, including Chopin, Chagall, and the Rothschild family. Walking through the tree-lined rues of this isle, we headed toward 19 quai de Bourbon, and felt the stinging pathos of Camille Claudel, sculptor from 1899 to 1913, having been betrayed by her lover, Auguste Rodin. We also saw the rather non-inspiring wrought-iron facade at the intersection of the quai and rue des Deux Ponts, where the mediocre café-Au Franc-Pinot sits; the wrought-iron facade being as old as the island itself! Well, the oft-felt realization that the journey is often more important than the destination itself, proves its mettle over and over again. We walked along and feasted our eyes on Sorbonne, a 13th century college of theology, one of the oldest universities in Europe and College De France with Claude Bernard's (Claude Bernard-1813-1878; France's most famous physiologist) statue heralding its facade.
With lot said and lot done, Paris looked like a city struggling between the past and the present; the challenge is to remember the past but to frisk free from the throes of the past to embrace the fascinating future, the faster you embrace it, the more fascinating you make it–but then again, is it worth the frenetic pursuit after all!
Caution: Don't get intimidated by the French phrases; blogging about the French capital well deserveth the French fantasies :)
Now don't take me to be a world class historian and swear by every piece of informative tidbit I provide, read it, savor it, and let it whet your appetite to read more. Yes, some of it is well influenced by the travel books we followed to make us seasoned travelers, which we definitely are! By the way, if you do get a lot out of your readings, come, share it with me over a steaming cup of café o lait!
So, here we go: The Paris conquered by the Romans in 55 BC was a small flood-prone fishing village on Ile de la Cité, inhabited then by a Parisii tribe. Today, Ile de la Cité and Ile St. Louis, are two islands on the Seine river and almost centrally located in Paris, where Parisians and wide-eyed tourists stroll arm in arm. As they stroll, they do unfurl noveau vistas along nooks and niches of this cute, historic town of about 2 million. Well! I would say touring Paris is a lot like walking down the tracks of history, at times you feel Parisians are so engrossed in their history that they've almost forgotten it's the 21st century, almost! For, when you "pace" across the city, as comfy as ever, getting on and off the RATP and RER trains, you do think again! The metro system is amazingly good, in fact I am tempted to say, it's the best laid out intercity train system I have ever seen. The RATP maps for one are amazingly easy to read, thanks to the Latin script, check out the "Metro map" and remember to note the "track number" and the "destination station", both; e.g., to go from Concorde to Bastille, you gotta take "line 1" toward "Château de Vincennes", and not toward "La Défense", unless you have an unlimited day pass and want to be going round and round the merry-go-round, with no time constraints; or else, you are bored of history and are on the look-out for modernity! Well then, La Défense, Paris' skyscraper district on the Seine, and 3 km west of the 17th arrondissement, is replete with modern architecture! Go for it!!
Getting back on our quest for historic panels and marvels, we started off our Paris itinerary, with an evening cruise along the Seine on Captaine Francaise, and had thirty second glimpses of the Louvre and Eiffel and the Statue of Liberty, yes, the Statue of Liberty! Few people know that a scaled down Statue of Liberty, stands on an isle in the west of Paris, along the Seine, and was donated to the city by the American community in Paris, in 1885. The next day, we started off roving across the historic town, self-guided, along inland roads and (metro) tracks of Paris, starting off with Bastille, specifically place de la Bastille.
Originally built as a medieval fortress, the Bastille eventually came to be used as a state prison. Political prisoners were often held there, as were citizens detained by the authorities for trial. Some prisoners were held on the direct order of the king, from which there was no appeal. Although by the late 18th century it was little used and was scheduled to be demolished, the Bastille had come to be associated in the minds of the people with the harsh rule of the Bourbon monarchy. During the unrest of 1789, on July 14, an enraged mob approached the Bastille to demand the arms and ammunition stored there, and, when the force guarding the structure resisted, the attackers captured the prison, releasing the seven prisoners held there.
The fall of the Bastille on July 14, 1789, signaled the beginning of the French Revolution, and it thus became a symbol of the end of the ancient régime. July 14, often called la fête nationale in France, became an official holiday in 1880. From the beginning, speeches, parades, and fireworks, along with public revelry, were part of the celebration. The slogan “Vive le 14 juillet!” (“Long live the 14th of July!”) has continued to be associated with the day. The square of the Bastille (Bastille Square) was created later, in 1803. Today, the only monument still gracing the square is the 52 meters tall, Colonne de Juillet (July Column), created by d'Alavoine. The top is adorned by a winged, gilded figurine representing the Spirit of Liberty called the "Génie de la Liberté".
With the 52 meters tall monument, serving as a mere traffic circle, it was quite a disappointing start of the day; but then, thinking again, there was indeed an eerie sensation associated with the place, reminiscent of the angry mob approaching the Bastille and fuming in rage, setting ablaze the spirit of the French Revolution!
From there, we moved on to place des Vosges, the oldest square in Paris. There, we explored Maison de Victor Hugo (Victor Hugo's home), home of the workaholic French author from 1832-1848, at 6 Place des Vosges, without much success! Well, if you really want to get a lot out of the musée, I would urge you to mastermind French and then visit the museum, nope! they didn't have much of a documentary or even exhibit labels for English speakers. One thing really intriguing in the museum, though, was Hugo's tall desk where he stood to write, along with woodwork and Chinese-theme panels he created for his mistress!
At a roughly five minutes walk from the place, we joined the lines at the falafel windows of L'As du Falafel, with several competing joints sitting next to one another, but we followed what our travel books told us, and had promptly served Jewish cuisine in the lively falafel joint. We then retraced our steps, satiated and smiling, to Place des Vosges, and our eyes lay feast on some beautiful, "untouchable" painting, well! maybe not untouchable for Bill Gates, ah, well! those painters are blessed with hands of gold!
One block from the square is the Musée Carnavalet (free entrée), chronicling the history of the capital. It is a treasure-trove for lovers of Paris: paintings, prints, artifacts, displays and re-creations, all housed in two magnificent mansions. Re-creations of Proust's cork-lined writing room, the apartments of the famous letter-writer-Madame de Sévigné, or the art nouveau Fouquet jewelry boutique were splendid exhibits, indeed. Though, beware, these exhibits close down for an hour or two, while the French curators and guards, laze in a summer siesta; yeah! we did go back to the museum after the lunch hour(s) to see what the travel books urged us to, and well! we weren't too unhappy, well worth the trouble in fact!
Moving on to the isles of the city of musées, we saw the Notre Dame cathedral in Ile de la Cité, where Victor Hugo's 1831 novel The Hunchback of Notre Dame was based. Set behind the Ile de la Cité, is the romantic isle of Ile St-Louis, having harbored the rich and the famous, including Chopin, Chagall, and the Rothschild family. Walking through the tree-lined rues of this isle, we headed toward 19 quai de Bourbon, and felt the stinging pathos of Camille Claudel, sculptor from 1899 to 1913, having been betrayed by her lover, Auguste Rodin. We also saw the rather non-inspiring wrought-iron facade at the intersection of the quai and rue des Deux Ponts, where the mediocre café-Au Franc-Pinot sits; the wrought-iron facade being as old as the island itself! Well, the oft-felt realization that the journey is often more important than the destination itself, proves its mettle over and over again. We walked along and feasted our eyes on Sorbonne, a 13th century college of theology, one of the oldest universities in Europe and College De France with Claude Bernard's (Claude Bernard-1813-1878; France's most famous physiologist) statue heralding its facade.
With lot said and lot done, Paris looked like a city struggling between the past and the present; the challenge is to remember the past but to frisk free from the throes of the past to embrace the fascinating future, the faster you embrace it, the more fascinating you make it–but then again, is it worth the frenetic pursuit after all!
Wednesday, May 31, 2006
Virgin Virginia Voyage - 24th to 27th May
Well! before the well-grounded sights and sounds of erstwhile aero-fantasies, flying high was perhaps just a metaphor to describe the super-achievers, but now flying high is literal - perhaps as literal as "Roving Mars" is today! Yes, you heard me right ... today Spirit and Opportunity are roving Mars - the fascinating feats of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, CA. "NASA's twin robot geologists, the Mars Exploration Rovers, launched toward Mars on June 10 and July 7, 2003, in search of answers about the history of water on Mars. They landed on Mars January 3 and January 24 PST. The Mars Exploration Rover mission is part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort of robotic exploration of the red planet. Primary among the mission's scientific goals is to search for and characterize a wide range of rocks and soils that hold clues to past water activity on Mars..." To know more about this fascinating story of Martian revelations - read on!
Well! the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum (6th & Independence Ave, Washington, DC) had a lot to offer ... including this awesome documentary featuring the Martian Rovers, replete with images shot by the "MERs" (Mars Exploration Rovers), in the Lockheed Martin IMAX theater. Though it was tempting to keeping venturing through the tiers of air and space achivements at the museum, I took visual snapshots of select ventures. Among them, the 1903 Wright Flyer, the world’s first successful powered airplane, made me smile and sigh! It had a very brief operational history alright, with its entire flying career being on a single chilly December morning in 1903 in North Carolina. Yet, it was indeed a golden morning that let man feel and steal away the aerospace flavors, across the apricot tinted horizons and beyond! Yes, the flying machine was born in the cradle of the earthian skies and was destined to span the global skies!
Savoring the pages of history, walking westward on Pennsylvania Ave (yes! toward 1600 Pennsylvania Ave), we zipped in and out of the DC museums packed with - all you can see - goodies ... yet! little did the marvels of science and nature in the Smithsonian museums serve to satiate our, by then, burgeoning appetites ... so we scurried to a colorful ristorante in downtown DC to do justice to our starved tummies ...
Recalling the adventures from the previous evening, evening of the 25th, we drove to Columbia, Maryland, midway between Baltimore and DC, to relish a wonderful evening with my cousin and her cute family - Lali (didi), Papu (dada), and little Ishaan, made a cute Columbian family, warm and welcoming - this was the first time I met Ishaan, a toddler of about two, and nah! didn't add on to his stock of "Baby Einstein" toys. Read and bought these charming little children's books - tales for toddlers in Ballston, Arlington's, B. Dalton Books. Well! who's to say beautifully written toddlers' tales can't fascinate fully hatched and matured chickens :) Talking about the Ballston Mall - comfortably placed next to our hotel in Arlington (separated by a couple skywalks and NSF) - it had a Panera Bread, one of my favorite sandwich places and yes! I did have a portabella-mozarella and Saurabh had a low fat soup to keep us steady, without grumbling tummies in our hour's drive to Columbia, MA. Yes! three states in a row, Virginia, Maryland, and well! a quasi-state DC ... hey man! who doesn't want to upgrade her state count ... mine stands at 12+1 ... what's yours? hey, btw, don't count states you just stopped by to fill gas in your gas-guzzling giants ;)
Postscript: Notice how I love using alliterations ... well! my next in line literary teeming tingles could well be oxymorons ... any thing for rookies?!
Well! the Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum (6th & Independence Ave, Washington, DC) had a lot to offer ... including this awesome documentary featuring the Martian Rovers, replete with images shot by the "MERs" (Mars Exploration Rovers), in the Lockheed Martin IMAX theater. Though it was tempting to keeping venturing through the tiers of air and space achivements at the museum, I took visual snapshots of select ventures. Among them, the 1903 Wright Flyer, the world’s first successful powered airplane, made me smile and sigh! It had a very brief operational history alright, with its entire flying career being on a single chilly December morning in 1903 in North Carolina. Yet, it was indeed a golden morning that let man feel and steal away the aerospace flavors, across the apricot tinted horizons and beyond! Yes, the flying machine was born in the cradle of the earthian skies and was destined to span the global skies!
Savoring the pages of history, walking westward on Pennsylvania Ave (yes! toward 1600 Pennsylvania Ave), we zipped in and out of the DC museums packed with - all you can see - goodies ... yet! little did the marvels of science and nature in the Smithsonian museums serve to satiate our, by then, burgeoning appetites ... so we scurried to a colorful ristorante in downtown DC to do justice to our starved tummies ...
Recalling the adventures from the previous evening, evening of the 25th, we drove to Columbia, Maryland, midway between Baltimore and DC, to relish a wonderful evening with my cousin and her cute family - Lali (didi), Papu (dada), and little Ishaan, made a cute Columbian family, warm and welcoming - this was the first time I met Ishaan, a toddler of about two, and nah! didn't add on to his stock of "Baby Einstein" toys. Read and bought these charming little children's books - tales for toddlers in Ballston, Arlington's, B. Dalton Books. Well! who's to say beautifully written toddlers' tales can't fascinate fully hatched and matured chickens :) Talking about the Ballston Mall - comfortably placed next to our hotel in Arlington (separated by a couple skywalks and NSF) - it had a Panera Bread, one of my favorite sandwich places and yes! I did have a portabella-mozarella and Saurabh had a low fat soup to keep us steady, without grumbling tummies in our hour's drive to Columbia, MA. Yes! three states in a row, Virginia, Maryland, and well! a quasi-state DC ... hey man! who doesn't want to upgrade her state count ... mine stands at 12+1 ... what's yours? hey, btw, don't count states you just stopped by to fill gas in your gas-guzzling giants ;)
Postscript: Notice how I love using alliterations ... well! my next in line literary teeming tingles could well be oxymorons ... any thing for rookies?!
Anniversary Add-Ventures
We had a beautiful anniversary on the 29th of May - biking through the bylanes of West Lafayette. But then just saying bylanes and camouflaging a new discovery will hardly be fair to my readers ... so here's our cute, new discovery - the West Lafayette trail system. The impressive trail system here includes "The Cattail Trail" and the "The Northwest Greenway Trail". The Cattail Trail goes from a starting point close to our home all the way to school, via Lindbergh Road (no he has no Purdue connection, though Amelia Earhart sure does), Cherry Lane, and then finally Stadium Road, before we enter the school campus (~5 miles). We then rush off into the soothing cool waters of the “engineered” fountain splat in the middle of the engineering campus and squish-squash across the aquamarine deluge. Well! if you haven't really savored the beauty of the trail system yet - dive into the awesome criss-cross of biking trails, setting off on your Schwinn bikes to capture the bounties of adventure! Hey, btw - don't you forget your helmets!!
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Field of Dreams
We are just back from a day's trip back and forth - Cedar Rapids, Iowa - started on the evening of the 18th of May and returned after midnight the next day (aka. 20th). Was about 6 hours of driving and Saurabh and I shared the drive, well! I drove more than 50% :) Our Toyota Prius was giving us an awesome mileage (~48), of course it could have gotten better with no AC but we refuse to be indulging in any kind of self-flagellation, nevermind it being as trivial as climatic discomfort!
Well, the Cedar Rapids trip turned out to be short and sweet!! We went to this Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, a couple miles away from the downtown area and there we found these friendly, smiling Czechs, enagaging in various activities. It was there, that we entered this beautifully decorated "Czech Cottage" with this very friendly woman (owner) - Jitka (read as Yitka) - relating her Czech anecdotes to us. She had entered the US around the time of Communist turbulence in Czechoslovakia ... and has been here since, married, and with this pretty business-engagement housed in this cottage of hers - abounding in garnet jewelry, crystals, and Czech folk arts - yes! we picked up a couple small trinkets and knick knacks as souvenirs of this sudden Czech discovery in a midwestern town. Also, there was this "National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library", we could only see from the outside lounge, early closing hours, but then at the entrance to the museum there was this huge chandelier - hanging from the celing, made and brought in from the Czech Republic, fixed ostentatiously at the entrance to the museum. This Czech village kinda looked like a niche fringe outside of the US with people laid back in time, smiling and greeting people, and seemingly not engaged in an ever-widening frenzy of chores! What Jitka told us was that this village had been there for a long time, before she even moved in here, and now slowly there's just an aging brood of people living here, holding on to the prized Czech relics, with the outflux of the youngsters far and away.
The only thriving business in this town of Cedar Rapids, seemed to be Rockwell Collins, a leader in the design, production, and support of aviation and communication electronics. Considering that the US is now fighting its never-ending battles in the Middle East with billions of dollars spent at the warfront, defense contracts are definitely on the rise, and so are these billion dollar companies. Well! talking of dollars well spent, I was just reading about Dwight Eisenhower's ambitious project with wide reaching repercussions, the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, where the federal government invested more that $33 billion to establish a network of highways across the country. Since Saurabh and I have traveled together, driving on these highways, so many times for the last close to three years, we appreciate this great contribution of Eisenhower through and through. In fact, he was a Republican president, the first one in about two decades then, and proved his mettle both in war and home affairs. Those were difficult times for America, recuperating from the Second World War's lesions, and recuperating fast with vigor and laudable leadership by heroes of the land.
Drifting away from the politics of the land, and talking about the climatics ... it's been fabulous weather for the last couple days and the sun and shine in the land of the mighty, made us buy mountain bikes to gallivant across the midwestern lands. So, marking my calendar, to note the start of my biking days ahead - 20th May, 2006. Btw, looks like buying bikes here, means buying a host of paraphernalia, and one on the list remains - biking helmets ... well! yes! we do want to guard the gray cells of wisdom to pass it on to our little ones across the windows of time.
Well, the Cedar Rapids trip turned out to be short and sweet!! We went to this Czech Village in Cedar Rapids, a couple miles away from the downtown area and there we found these friendly, smiling Czechs, enagaging in various activities. It was there, that we entered this beautifully decorated "Czech Cottage" with this very friendly woman (owner) - Jitka (read as Yitka) - relating her Czech anecdotes to us. She had entered the US around the time of Communist turbulence in Czechoslovakia ... and has been here since, married, and with this pretty business-engagement housed in this cottage of hers - abounding in garnet jewelry, crystals, and Czech folk arts - yes! we picked up a couple small trinkets and knick knacks as souvenirs of this sudden Czech discovery in a midwestern town. Also, there was this "National Czech and Slovak Museum and Library", we could only see from the outside lounge, early closing hours, but then at the entrance to the museum there was this huge chandelier - hanging from the celing, made and brought in from the Czech Republic, fixed ostentatiously at the entrance to the museum. This Czech village kinda looked like a niche fringe outside of the US with people laid back in time, smiling and greeting people, and seemingly not engaged in an ever-widening frenzy of chores! What Jitka told us was that this village had been there for a long time, before she even moved in here, and now slowly there's just an aging brood of people living here, holding on to the prized Czech relics, with the outflux of the youngsters far and away.
The only thriving business in this town of Cedar Rapids, seemed to be Rockwell Collins, a leader in the design, production, and support of aviation and communication electronics. Considering that the US is now fighting its never-ending battles in the Middle East with billions of dollars spent at the warfront, defense contracts are definitely on the rise, and so are these billion dollar companies. Well! talking of dollars well spent, I was just reading about Dwight Eisenhower's ambitious project with wide reaching repercussions, the 1956 Interstate Highway Act, where the federal government invested more that $33 billion to establish a network of highways across the country. Since Saurabh and I have traveled together, driving on these highways, so many times for the last close to three years, we appreciate this great contribution of Eisenhower through and through. In fact, he was a Republican president, the first one in about two decades then, and proved his mettle both in war and home affairs. Those were difficult times for America, recuperating from the Second World War's lesions, and recuperating fast with vigor and laudable leadership by heroes of the land.
Drifting away from the politics of the land, and talking about the climatics ... it's been fabulous weather for the last couple days and the sun and shine in the land of the mighty, made us buy mountain bikes to gallivant across the midwestern lands. So, marking my calendar, to note the start of my biking days ahead - 20th May, 2006. Btw, looks like buying bikes here, means buying a host of paraphernalia, and one on the list remains - biking helmets ... well! yes! we do want to guard the gray cells of wisdom to pass it on to our little ones across the windows of time.
Wednesday, May 17, 2006
A first time blogger ...
I finally decided to dive in and blog ... kinda in preparation for a summer long thread of exciting travel! I also have a fair amount of "to-dos" in place for summer ... but then name a graduate (PhD) student who aspires high and does not! It hasn't really been that exciting for the past couple days in my small town of West Lafayette, where I go to school at Purdue - with this namby-pamby rain getting me rather brooding and less than usual chirpy ... but then, I guess I have had my share of accolades with my impeccable GPA and a graduation gala for graduating with an MS from Chicago. Well! thinking of graduation I have had quite a few graduations over the last couple of years ... who says time's measured in hours and minutes ... graduating from the well-chaperoned warm parental niche on the other side of the globe to a wifey of a charming young man in the Occidental soils ... graduating from living by myself in a bachelor-like apartment in Chicago to a wonderful new home in this Purduette land ... from a big-city girlie to a small-town scholar ... and then of course - my latest love - a hybrid pristine, silver, Prius!! Well! with so many graduations over a space of two years, am almost giddy with graduations and therefore, Saurabh and I decided to have a break this summer ... and well! with France, Germany, and India traveling, coming up this summer, I guess I will have a lot to learn, a lot to share, and of course a lot to blog! Talking of travel, we love to travel ... given that we come from a town with close connections to Earhart, you can hardly blame us ... so, will get back to blogging from the bounties of Le Mont-Saint-Michel, France - yes! the tales of my French Rendezvous are coming up sometime soon ... till then - Blog and don't Slog!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
