MY SUMMER TOUR - VEGAS AND GRAND CANYON

One Evening, Naveen and I were having our usual useless talk... and there was a mention about a tour to Las Vegas and Grand Canyon. But at that moment, not much thought was given to it. However the next day, both of us started getting ambitious to make this plan work out. We spoke to our room-mate Satyajit, and he at once agreed to join us. Now, we are three of us ready for the trip... but it was very hard for us to find a fourth guy. No one was ready to spend some bucks on a jolly trip to Vegas. After lot of pains, Naveen atlast got hold of Pulkit, convinced him, and we all started off for the yatra on May 7th, 2005. This day is very special to Naveen, as he had his Graduation Ceremony on this day. Naveen is no more a student from now onwards :-)

We rented out a mid-sized car (Dodge Stratus) for 6 days. The car is very spacious for 4 guys, with enough leg-room for the back-seaters. Though the road-trip to Vegas takes nearly 19 hours from Dallas, we were feeling comfortable in the car at any given point of time. We crossed Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and reached Las Vegas located in Nevada. The drive across New Mexico and Arizona was uninteresting due to their barren lands and deserted roads, and not much of living force exists.

May 8, 2005

We reached Vegas at around 10:00 am local time, and had a drive through "Las Vegas Blvd". I was peeping out of the window, gazing at the architecture of the buildings and replication of various monuments. We then drove straight to the hotel where we had our room reserved, moved in our luggage, and got refreshed. At around 3:00 pm, we left the hotel, and started exploring every casino located at "Las Vegas Blvd". At the end of the day, we had covered half of them in Vegas. Some of the casinos visited on this day include... Bellagio, Caesars Palace, Treasure Island, Wynn, Tropicana, Paris, etc.

May 9, 2005

Rrrrrnnnngggg... The cell phone alarm rang early in the morning. We got ready to visit the Hover Dam, which is just 1/2 hr drive from Vegas. It is one of the most beautiful dams in United States. The Dam is built between the walls of the Canyon in 1932. It was built within the budget constraints during the years of depression, and was completed well before its due date. This dam is well know for its architecture and the technologies that were used to build it.

Here are some statistics...
726.4 feet high (221m)
1,244 feet wide (379 m)
660 feet (203 m) thick at the base
45 feet (13 m) thick at the top
$165 million dollars to build
4.5 years to build
4.4 million yards of concrete used for construction
March 1931 building began
Lake Mead serves as its Reservoir
September 30, 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt dedicated the completed dam

In the afternoon, we went ahead exploring the remaining Casinos in Vegas. They include... Excaliber, MGM Grand, Mirage, Mandalay Bay, Stratosphere, New York, Luxor, Aladdin, and many others.

May 10, 2005

We had our breakfast in the morning, and vacated the city at 10:00 am. A four-hour drive took us to Williams (a small village located near Grand Canyon). We had our room reserved in one of the hotels here. In the evening, we visited Grand Canyon to see the sunset. At my first sight, I was surprised by the vastness and depth of the canyon, and the splendid colors reflected by the layered walls. This canyon was formed by the erosion created by the Colorado river for millions years.

We had a 3-mile walk in the chill weather, admiring at the canyon. After gazing at the canyon for more than 1/2 hr, I was reminded of the fact that nothing is permanent on earth. Its all pure materialism that we go after... instead we should also go insearch of Divinity. The materialistic pleasures should go hand in hand with our search for the TRUTH.

We waited patiently in the cold weather to view the sunset over the canyon. Lot of pics were taken in my digi-cam ofcourse. At around 7:30 pm, we had a chance to see the IMAX film on Grand Canyon that was on our way back to the hotel.

May 11, 2005

We explored the country side stuff at Williams... tasted freshly made sandwiches, spoke to hand-full of people who were living there, watched the "Wild West Show" and the Steam Engine, and visited the museum. For the first time, I've been to the country-side life at US. One thing that surprised me is the tidyness of the village. The roads are very clean and people care very much for their place. The people here are very friendly, and are willing to spend time talking to strangers. This is unlikely the case in urban cities of USA. Anyways, we left the village at 12:00 noon local time. We fortunately visited a Meteor Crator on our way to Dallas.

We reached home at 6:40 am on May 12, 2005. It is indeed a very memorable trip !

GREAT SALE ON BOOKS

Hey... my collegue told me about the store that had 75% sale on books located at US 75 in Dallas. That weekend, I went along with Vijay and his room-mates to the store. I found a message being displayed at the store that said "There is no book that costs more than $5". There were many books piled-up and classified. We spent nearly 45 min in browsing the books, and finding the good ones of the lot. Its a nice deal as each of us purchased nearly 5-7 books~

STARTED OUR WAY BACK TO DALLAS

We started leaving South Padre in the late-morn, stopping by Subway for brunch. As South Padre is located at the border of Mexico and US, the security personnels checked our passports on our way back to Dallas. Driving is always a pleasure on the higways... and it was a nice weekend road trip we had !

ROAD TRIP TO SOUTH-PADRE

Started on an instantly planned week-end road-trip to South Padre, which is located at the border of US-Mexico. I was accompanied by Vijay and Sushil, and 2 friends of Sushil. We rented a Honda Civic (almost a new one with just 3000 miles driven so far). We all left home in the midnight at around 1:15 am.

WHAT MORE CAN ROBOTS DO ?

I got hold of an interesting article on the web "Body of steel, heart of gold" that gives a short note on the works of Kim Jong-Hwan, director of ITRC (Intelligent Robot Research Centre). This gentleman is working on developing artificial chromosomes to create the feeling of lust in robots. I was wondering ... what exactly do we want robots to do? Whatz the purpose of giving them the ability to feel, reason and desire. Where in the society do they fit into?

Its good to imagine robots doing all the cleaning work at home and taking care of children. But imagine the situation like the one in "I-ROBOT" movie. Well... anything is possible, but not in other 25 years. Lets wait to see the robots being our slaves. Hope not the vice-versa.

ATLAST GOT IT ... JUST WHEN I THOUGHT ITS GONE ~

I purchased "Clipart & More 2.5 Million" CD pack that was on a sale for FREE on the Thanksgiving' 2003. However, the full mail-in rebate of $25 got into my hands only after a very long wait of nearly 1 year. It was just a month back that I concluded it to be a wrong buy. But now... I am happy for having got my rebate which I thought its gone ~

NEW GUEST AT HOME...

A new guest has come home & will stay with me for the next many months. He will accompany me everywhere I go... stay with me when I am alone... and will also get me out of boredom. The guest is none other than my new mobile phone (Motorola A630). I got the parcel from Amazon y'day, when I was at work in Viewlocity. The first thing I did soon after I reached home was to unpack the parcel and take this tiny fellow out of the box. Its packed with several features such as BlueTooth, Internet, digi-cam, PDA utitilities, etc... I just loved it on the very first sight. I still feel excited about this new fellow...

FIRST DAY OF INTERN

Hey... Today - my first day at Viewlocity was cool~ Not much of coding or designing to be done; Ofcourse, NOBODY does it on the very first day at job. I am among the 3 newly recruited intern workers for the company. We three of us were asked to work in a big common cabin for the time being. The cabin had 1 PC for each of us to work with.

There was a meeting at the start of the day (8:30 am) followed by some paper work and setting up each PC at our cabin. Then, we were asked to go through the coding conventions of the company. There were also 3 seminars delivered by 3 different people about various aspects of the company and the projects. I and my collegues will be assigned work tommorow ... I guess~

GREAT... GOT AN INTERNSHIP

God blessed me... Atlast, I got an internship at Viewlocity Inc. at Richardson after a long wait. The interview was cool... Thanks to the interviewer! I am greatly excited about this internship position.

MEMORABLE TRIP TO INDIA

I had a splendid trip to India in 7th Dec 2004 to 17 Jan 2005. My 40 days of stay in my homeland seemed to have vanished like a period of 40 minutes. I had many memorable moments with my family during my stay. I visited several temples, had a trip to Tirupathi and Nellore, bought new clothes, etc... I had such emotional attachments with my parents, sis and relatives that I never felt like returning back to USA. However... I had to realize my goals !