booked a cruise

After almost an year of contemplation and a failed effort to go cruising, we finally did it ! No no, I am not talking about actually doing a cruise but rather booking it... One can say that the last time also we booked it but never managed to finish it, but this time there is an extra incentive for us to go, we are not the only ones going :-)

To summarize the saga of our cruise, we booked a Caribbean cruise last October.... so far so good... but then I decided to be a bit lazy about my visa and finally applied for a British visa about 2 weeks before the cruise started. Thanks to the December holiday seasons, the damn Brits decided to be lazy and instead of processing the application within a day or 2 just like the last time when I applied for a transit visa, they decided to take it easy.... but wait, that's not the worst part... the worst part was that I did not need a visa since Grand Cayman doesn't need a visa for cruise passengers !!! Dejected, we decided to go to Miami anyways and explore the southernmost corner of continental US. I would say that I was definitely dejected but pretty excited to see Miami/Key West.

Thanks to Carnival, we even managed to salvage most of our cruise money which we ended up putting in this Canada/New England cruise which is supposed to start in about 9 days !! Yipppeee !!!

More details to come later.......

theory of relativity....

When I was a kid, I remember the days would go by way too slowly.  I always felt like the next holiday was too far away and that New Year's celebrations were light years apart.  As I've gotten older, the years seem to just pass me by.  This last year has sped by quickly, that I feel like I barely experienced it.  We got married, went to India for Gigs' (Divya's) wedding, started law school, and am almost finished with my first year.  Varun changed jobs last May and now the company he's at filed for bankruptcy, so he'll probably change again.  Phew!

These days life is busy with writing thank you cards (please forgive us for the delay!), studying for exams, and both of us making sure we eat something yummy every day!

Tina

Miami trip

Mourning over the failure of not getting my passport over on time and not being able to take our cruise, we decided to go to Florida anyways.... and looking back, I think that the trip was worth it.... every penny of it....

We got to Reagan on Friday, Jan 2nd, more than an hour early anticipating rush hour Friday traffic. When we got there, we came to know that the Miami AA flight one hour before ours had not left yet- thanks to T's on the foot thinking, we immediately went to the gate and asked the dude if there were any seats left in the flight. The flight was not full and we got a seat. We reached Miami an hour earlier as anticipated. We decided to take a cab from the airport to South Beach. The ride was supposedly about 20-25 min long. We mistakingly thought that the cab fare should be around $22, but it came out to be a flat rate of around $32.... We started a nice chat with the cab driver who happily told us about things to do in the area, showed us the downtown as we were passing by, the arts center, the AA arena etc... we asked him where to eat and we were told of a nice Mexican place in South Beach, Lime.

We arrived at our hotel, the Albion (wasn't too sure how good or bad it will turn out to be). Seemed like a pretty decent hotel for the price we paid. The location was the key, we were in the middle of the South Beach hotspot of food and night clubs- Lincoln Road area. Unable to decide where to eat, we ended up with the only choice we had - Lime, and we don't regret it. It was one of the best Mexican food we have had and that too very cheap yet healthy. We spent the rest of the night just wandering around in the area, getting familiar and to be honest just enjoying the weather !

On Saturday, our first task was to call Carnival and try to figure out a way to get a refund from them or book a future cruise, both of which failed. We had to contend with advice from Carnival people to just write them a letter and hope that they will take pity on us.... It's amazing how rigid systems are that sometimes you have no control over them.... Anyways, finally we ate breakfast (I think at Einstein's) and proceeded to our next hotel (since we didn't book 2 nights at the Albion) Dorcester which was just a few blocks away from the Albion. This was another "ok" hotel, a bit more pricey than the Albion, same "Art Decco" style... We decided to take it easy that day too, just relaxing, recovering from the shock of not going for the Cruise... At night, we thought of going to the Aventura mall.. that didn't prove very well as it proved to be a very long ride and in the end we decided to cut it short, took the bus and got back....

Come Sunday, we woke up bright and early, went checked out of hotel and went for breakfast at a nearby cafe, Dolce Vita. We ate waffles and omelette (the lady wasn't very intelligent, gave us bacon in omelette, we had to get it changed). Following that, we went to Enterprise car rental to pick up our rental cars. We ended up waiting for almost an hour and a half since they had run out of cars... Anyways, we picked up our Accord and soon we were on our way to Jungle Island. We had fun over there, especially with the "ligers" and the animal show with the little tiger cubs and monkeys... Just as we were done, it was close to 3:30 and even though we wanted to go to Villa Vizcaya we couldn't as it closes at 4 PM. We decided to start looking for hotels for the night and expecting to see the Everglades the next day, we thought of finding hotels near the Everglades. After a couple of hours of search, other than the Mikosukee hotel, we couldn't find anything and ended up in a La Quinta in Hialeh. We ate yummy burritos (from the grovery store) late at night, watched TV and went to sleep.

Monday, we ate breakfast at the hotel, and started our long drive towards the Everglades. We got there and decided to take the trolley tour as we were not too enthusiastic of meeting our dear friends, Alligators, all too much :-) The tour ended up being one of the very good things we had done on the trip, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. We definitely wouldn't have covered so much by ourselves in such a short period. A must see for everyone I think !

We started our drive towards, Key Largo and reached at our hotel, Ramada around 8 PM. It was a nice hotel and the Jacuzzi (which we didn't ask for) just made our day ! We ate dinner at a (crappy) restaurant/bar (Coconut Grill, I think) , came back, watched TV and went to bed...

Tuesday- we started driving towards Key West. As expected it was a reallllllllly pretty drive with vast open skies, colorful waters and the long pleasant drive..... We stopped on the way once to take photos on one of the small Keys. We reached Key West in the afternoon (around 3'ish) and checked in our B&B (Avalon). This was one of the modestly priced B&B's in the overpriced Key West.... definitely not the best B&B you will ever find, but pretty decent. The innkeeper was a nice lady with a British accent and quite helpful.... She told us about the Sunset cruise and advised us to buy the Adventure Day pass (which comes with a free Sunset cruise). We bought it thinking that it would be a good test and will help us figure out if T would be able to make it to the long trip for the day adventure on the boat. We also bought Dramamine and boarded the boat. The trip went ok and we reasonably enjoyed it. T had taken Dramamine half and hour before the cruise, and we came back happily from the cruise and went to a nice almost vegetarian restaurant (). Food was ok, but service was not good. We headed out, with T feeling a bit dizzy.... almost fainting... thanks to a nice couple walking by who bought some ice from the pizza place closeby.... Not sure what was the cause, may be the Dramamine, may be the food...

Wednesday, was the fun day.... hmm.... may be too much fun... having canceled the day adventure, we decided to Jet Ski... we bought tickets for the 4 PM tour of the islands, ate lunch and went to our room to relax a bit before the show began.... around 3:30 we reached the resort from where the cruise began... we had to wait for about 40 min as the tour which left before us were a bit late.... anyways, finally the tour guide came, gave us a brief introduction (hmmm... remember the thing about grass getting stuck in the jet ski!) we boarded our skiis and out we were ! after getting into the sea for about 7 miles, suddenly my ski wouldn't move... and as I was beginning to realize that the worst had come true.... we couldn't believe our eyes... the skies were turning dark.... with clouds.. and here comes the rain.... a heavy downpour... and us waiting for the tour guide to come save us... for miles we couldn't see anything but water and dark clouds.... with no sense of direction whatsoever, it was perhaps one of the more scary parts of the trip :-)

By the time the tour was complete, we were scared shitless and just glad to be back....

We packed up next afternoon and soon were on our way back to Miami... we had booked a room at the airport La Quinta.... and I can definitely say that I won't ever book another hotel near an airport.... it was pretty bad with no fridge, ok service and a location which litererally makes you completely inaccessible..... On friday, just before returning the car, we managed to eat breakfast and go on a whirlwind tour of Key Biscayne.....

We relaxed that evening.... had a six pack, ate chips, watched TV and went to bed...

The trip will always remain in our memory, not just because it was a cruise gone bad... but because we actually enjoyed it.... our style....

international travelling fun ? huh, depends on nationality....

From starting our journey together in 2006 to changing 2 apartments in DC, to getting married, and of course law school... life has changed a lot for both of us.. We decided to take a break and get away........ from the busy life, the tiredness, the work, the school (and the family :-)  the lazy bums that both of us are, we ended up booking cruise tickets from Carnival for a 5 day cruise to Grand Cayman Islands and Jamaica starting from Miami.... No problems till this point.... Guess where the problem begins- yeah u got it, Visa issues... travelling internationally is fun to the point you don't have to get a visa.... if u are in the loop of getting a visa, get ready to face some really fun times... if u r a citizen of the "not-so-rich" countries, get ready to sell urself and ur pride in the open visa market.... u will be treated like a criminal.... fingerprinted a thousand times, asked a million questions from ur family and friends to the most personal details anyone can get.... and if that's not the end of the humiliation, u should pay a couple houndred dollars and in return mail your entire original passport ! mail ur passports ? are you kidding me ? are these people completely insane ? who sends their passports to an unknown location by mail ? who is responsible to loss of identity if the passport somehow gets stolen on the way or gets damaged ? these self-righteous countries (a.k.a UK)  should be just ashamed of the terrible visa application process they have which is nothing more than a complete nonsense and a sham.... Forget about giving some respect to the people whose money is paying for the salaries of the consulate staffers ! They say that they are making sure that bad people don't enter their country.... does anyone in their righteous mind believes that this world is any safer now than it was say 40 years ago ?

Gone are the days, when travel was all that fun.... Then also u needed a visa, but the process was not so humiliating... I feel like half the fun of travel is gone right here, right away....

indian film festival in DC

Just as I was sitting watching MHZ networks showing the chit-chats of Bollywood, I was wondering about the weeekend which is already on the doorsteps. I thought about the previous weekend and the fun we had as a friend of mine came from New York city, Mitesh, to enjoy the Indian Film Festival in Washington DC.

Last friday was a day of lot of fun. We had a get together organized by SALSA (South Asian Law Student Association) in downtown DC (Farragut Square) in an Indian restaurant called "Indian". We had our usual cocktails, some appetizers and then followed by a hour of waiting and chit chatting, we had the dinner. We were only half-way thru the dinner when we started hearing the beats and the loud Punjabi music.... not surprisingly, it was dance time.... with a wonderful mix of brown, black and white students we had a total blast dancing.... a good exercise for normally busy people.... I feel like corporate America should start a tradition of dancing for their over-worked employees ! Everyday for an hour, as you get out of your offices where you have spent the entire day sitting on an office chair staring at your desktops and laptops, here is some good news for you, corporate america- we are gonna dance ! that should be so much fun in some utopian world..

Saturday and sunday were days of both relaxing, eating and enjoying the film festival. On saturday, we watched a movie- "a wednesday". None of us were very sure of what we were getting into, but we are glad we watched it.... it was a nice movie starring Naseeruddin Shah about the life of a "stupid common man" who was so fed up of the terrorist attacks inMumbai, that he decided to take the law into his hands and through some clever manouevering, forced the Mumbai police to shoot some of the bad guys locked in terrorist cells but will be ultimately released for lack of evidence....  upto the last 15-20 minutes of the movie you will not realize the twist and the fact that you are actually watching a "Shah" movie and not just any ordinary hindi movie.... Shah has again proved his calibre and his choice of movies of substance.....

Sunday was a documentary day.... we watched "Shorts" which was composed of 3 documentary style movies... one was about the life of Indian-Americans and the difficulties faced by them right from their childhood.... the other one was about gay Indians..... it's good to see India finally rising up to the issue of gay people through movies... I would also like to see the mainstream recently released movie "Dostana" or "Friendship", again made about gay people.... The last movie was a documentary on the life of an Indian American women who is struggling to keep the "India" connection alive following the death of her father....

Our film watching bonanza ended with a great lunch at "Woodlands" one of the very good Indian restaurants in a Washington DC subarb, Takoma Park. We reached there just about 15 minutes before their buffet was closing, and am glad we got there... they had a very extensive buffet menu, with south Indian dosa, idli, coconut chutney to north Indian pani-puri, paneer jalfrezi, gulab-jamuns and what not..... If you want to go to this restaurant please do eat their gulab jamun- it is just heavenly.... it literally just melts in your mouth, has just the right amount of sugar, in other words, just perfect......

We had a fun weekend... and I look forward to such a weekend again....

salute to America

Barack Obama, the name which people really love repeating these days.... For the past 8 years it feels like America was under the spell of Satan... everything which could go wrong, went wrong... the attacks of 9/11. followed by the so called "war against terrorism" which I doubt did anything better to make this world safer, attack on Iraq, a country, which came towards the end in the long list of countries which had corrupt autocratic governments, the curbs on individual freedom and the rights of the government to snoop on it's citizens and of course not to mention the total seizure of power by the executive with virtually no checks and balances..... Just to make things worse that they already were, the nation faced the worst economic crisis since the great depression....

After all that the American public has gone through for these horrific 8 years, finally they have someone who seems like a person who truly believes in uniting the people, a person who believes in bringing a change. On some levels it feels like a dream, it's as if something completely unbelievable has come true... America has finally risen above the color of the skin and chosen the right path.... It has given hopes to not only millions of Americans but also billions of people living in those corners of the world were "hope" is the last thing you want.... Obama knew what this elections means for the black people, but hardly ever has he fought for it on the basis of the color of his skin... and then we have those parts of the world (aka "India") were virtually nothing goes beyond the talk of caste and reservations for the backward classes....... "backward classes" they call themselves and then demand for reservations... isn't that a complete denigration of oneself and an inherent acceptance of the caste system? Aren't Indians just adding to the problems of the system instead of just solving them?

I hope that this world learns it's lessons from this American presidential election... the virtues of confidence, patience, openness, respect for everyone and rising above the politics of blame games and short sightedness which divide a nation... My salutes to democracy and the people of America who have lived to see this day and make history...

P.S. The photo above is an artist's (Sudarshan Pattnaik) rendition of Barack Obama, a sand sculpture on the beach of Puri, India

diwali aartis/chalisas.... part 2

Laxmi Aarti

 

ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता मैया जय लक्ष्मी माता

तुमको निस दिन सेवत माय्याजी को निस दिन सेवत

हर विष्णु विधाता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

उमा रमा ब्रह्मणि तुम ही जग माता ओ मय्या तुम ही जग माता

सूर्य चंद्रमा ध्यावत नारद ऋषि गाता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

दुर्गा रूप निरंजनी सुख सम्पति दाता ओ मय्या सुख सम्पति दाता

जो कोई तुमको ध्यावत, रिद्धि सिद्धि धन पाता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

तुम पाताल निवासिनी तुम ही शुभ दाता ओ मैया तुम ही शुभ दाता

कर्म प्रभाव प्रकाशिनी भवनिधि की दाता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

जिस घर में तुम रहती तहां सब सद्गुण आता ओ मैया सब सद्गुण आता

सब सम्भव हो जाता मन नही घबराता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

तुम बिन यज्ञ न होते वस्त्र न कोई पता ओ मय्या वस्त्र न कोई पाता

खान पान का वैभव सब तुमसे आता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

शुभ गुण मन्दिर सुंदर क्षीरोदधि जाता ओ मय्या क्षीरोदधि जाता

रत्ना चतुर्दश तुम बिन कोई नहीं पाता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

महालक्ष्मी जी आरती जो कोई जन गाता ओ मय्या जो कोई जन गाता

उर आनंद समाते पाप उतर जाता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

स्थिर चार जगत बचावे कर्म प्रेम लियाता ओ मय्या जो कोई जन गाता

राम प्रताप माया की सुभ दृष्टि चाहता ॐ जय लक्ष्मी माता

 

Om Jay Laxmi Maata, Maiya Jay Laxmi Maata,

Tumko Nisdin Sewat, Mayaji ko nisdin sewat.

Har-Vishhu-vidhaata. Om Jay Laxmi Maata.
Uma, Rama, Bramhaani Tum hi Jag-Maata, O maya tum hi jag maata

Surya-Chandrama, Dhyaavat, Narada Rishi gaata. Om jay laxmi maata.
Durgaroop Niranjani Sukh-SampatiDaata, o maya sukh sampati daata.

Jo Kai Tumko Dhyaawat, Riddhi-siddhi-Dhan Paata. Om jay laxmi maata.
Tum Pataal Niwaasini Tum hi Shubhdaata, o maya tum hi shubhdaata.

Karm-Prabhav-Prakaashini, Bhavnidhi ki Daata. Om jay laxmi maata.
Jis Ghar Tum Rehati, Tahan Sab Sadgun Aata, o maya sab sadgun aata.

Sab Sambhav ho Jaata, Man Nahin Ghabraata. Om jay laxmi maata.
Tum bin Yagya na hote, Vastra na koi paata.  O maya vastra na koi paata.

Khan-Paan ka vaibhav sab tumse aata. Om jay laxmi maata.
Shubh-Gun-Mandir Sundar, Ksheerododhi Jaata, o maya ksheerododhi jaata.

Ratna Charturdash tum Bin Koi Nahin Paata. Om jay laxmi maata.
Mahalaxmi ji ki Aarti Jo koi Jan Gaata, O maya jo koi jan gaata.

Ur Aanand Samaate, Paap utar Jaata. Om jay laxmi maata.

Sthir char jagat bachave, karm prem liyata. O maya jo koi jan gaata.

Ram pratap maya ki subh dristhi chahta.  Om jay laxmi maata.