Snapshot from the Stockholm-Helsinki cruise

A really pretty sight like that can either : 

1. Summon the finest poetry / photography from within your soul 

                                                      or 

2. Really piss you off about having an awfully shallow soul which is no good at either.

I distinctly remember cribbing about how the beer was "too cold", that evening.

Chewing gum - 5th April, 2012.

"I guess when you're a little kid, you're a little bit of everything - Scientist, Astronaut, Artist... Sometimes it seems like growing up is a process of giving all those things up... one by one..."

- The Wonder Years.

Vegas conference, 2011.

Not too many people believe this, but it is actually possible to love your workplace for reasons other than :

1. The office has a foosball table.

2. The pantry stocks beer on fridays.

One such reason is when your workplace holds its annual conference in Vegas.

Q.E.D.    

* Big, yellow, blissful Smiley *

Conference apart, I caught up with some of my buddies from engineering school in Vegas and NY for 2 weekends of pure gold.

Now most folks regard Vegas as the motherland of mindless debauchery but I thought of my trip as quite a learning experience. I remember jotting down some of these learnings on a damp tissue paper at this respectable bar on the strip, at a respectable hour in the night:-

1. Nevada isn’t actually shut from 11 am to 11 pm.

2. Petrol is cheaper than diesel in US and on a PPP basis, about 1/3rd as cheap as India - So I don't get why all those folks were fussing about the futility of the Iraq war.

3. A black LWB Escalade is the most pimping set of wheels you can ride on. Its massive, obscene and you'd reckon the best mileage it could manage is 2 - That's 2 litres per km.

4. ‘The spectacular melting smores sundae’ definitely beats the ‘Chocolate chunk pizza’ at Max Brenner.

I'm still not sure if any of these learnings belong to the classical "Bird in hand is worth two in the bush" school of maxims in terms of usefulness in life. But if you had to take away any one of them, I'd recommend number 4.

I'd also recommend that you NOT cheap-ass your way out of tipping a New York cabbie, but thats for another day.

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

I’m not too much into poems. My poetic achievements pretty much peaked with my critically acclaimed versions of "Stop that", back in the day (famous song from this Govinda movie - Largely credited as the uniting anthem of Gujarat in the pre-Devang Patel era).

I’ve only ever posted one other poem in my blog - If by Rudyard Kipling. And I can’t think of too many others that appeal to me as much as this one does.

The Road Not Taken – Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.