We caught up with some friends on Saturday, had lunch at Salaang Pass Restaurant on Fremont Blvd. and watched "Taare Zameen Par" later. I don't know which to write about first so will go with it chronologically. Salaang Pass turned out to be a gem of a restaurant, thanks to Prashee for introducing it to us. We used to watch movies regularly at the Park Theater right across the restaurant but never paid attention to it. The food turned out to be amazing and Subhash and I are sure to go there again. And again;)
Now to the movie. I was a little curious about what the movie would be like, being Aamir Khan's first directorial venture and went with no expectations or information about the movie whatsoever. And it turned out to be a real gem, I believe almost everyone in the hall cried at the climactic scenes, which I will not reveal here. Hats off to Aamir. I was never a great fan of his when he was the "chocolate-faced hero" type but now with every movie he seems to experiment more and improve with every one of them:) I am happy Bollywood is finally daring to experiment.
We spent the evening at Borders. For at least this past half year, we have found this a very nice thing to do on weekend evenings. Whenever we have the time and leisure for it, we visit the local Borders store and spend some 2-3 hours there browsing through books. I simply love going there with Subhash. We each pick out books, according to our own taste and browse through them, each at our own speed. Thanks to these Borders outings I have had glimpses of the JFK family portraits, spent a "Year with the Queen", admired the World Map countless times (;) ) read through the very many Jane Austenish books, caught a couple first chapters of very many Agatha Christies and so on and so forth. This weekend was a double bonus, we spent Saturday afternoon @ the Varsity Borders on Stanford's Campus in Palo Alto and Sunday evening at the one closer home. It was splendid!
Well, that was one weekend well spent :)
Monday, December 31, 2007
Thursday, December 20, 2007
Sigh!
We had to go to the friendly neighborhood USCIS office this afternoon for "having our biometrics taken". Which in other words means, we had to give our fingerprints (now we can't escape from a crime without being given away by our fingerprints;) )
We arrived, Subhash's appointment was @ 1PM and mine was @ 2. The guard tried to be a little nasty in asking me to wait one hour and saying he won't let me in @ 1 PM. Which was a little funny considering that the place was empty.
Well anyway, Subhash got done and it was my turn. After all the finger prints, it was the turn of the web camera. I had to get my picture taken. And the most unthinkable of things happened to me. The lady actually asked me to remove my "bottu" (which is another word for vermillion/tilak/bindi). I was infuriated. I asked her if I had to and she was like "yeah, you have to" with a type of I-cannot-help-it-I-am-so-sorry expression.
For a moment there, I had a good mind to walk right out of that place. But I didn't want to over-react. But maybe I wasn't? I have been here ~6.5 years and I have been stared at and asked funny questions (a lady at a Border's Store actually asked me if I was sick and why I was wearing the Tilak, I thought, what a stupid female, and I let it go at that) but I have never been asked to remove it. For me, (you can call me old-fashioned for this), it is an essential part of my attire. I will not lie and say I am the quintessential "Bharat Nari" or anything like that, but I have never gone out without wearing my bindi. If for nothing else, just the fact that I don't like the way I look without it. I have been wearing it for more than 2 decades now and I don't think I can get "un"-used to it at all.
That I had to do this today, infuriated me. Maybe I am over-reacting, but then maybe I am not. Whatever happened to freedom!
And the funniest part was, Subhash had one on his forehead too (a real tiny one) and she never asked him to remove that! Well, there seems to be no end to the weirdness in USCIS and its practices!
We arrived, Subhash's appointment was @ 1PM and mine was @ 2. The guard tried to be a little nasty in asking me to wait one hour and saying he won't let me in @ 1 PM. Which was a little funny considering that the place was empty.
Well anyway, Subhash got done and it was my turn. After all the finger prints, it was the turn of the web camera. I had to get my picture taken. And the most unthinkable of things happened to me. The lady actually asked me to remove my "bottu" (which is another word for vermillion/tilak/bindi). I was infuriated. I asked her if I had to and she was like "yeah, you have to" with a type of I-cannot-help-it-I-am-so-sorry expression.
For a moment there, I had a good mind to walk right out of that place. But I didn't want to over-react. But maybe I wasn't? I have been here ~6.5 years and I have been stared at and asked funny questions (a lady at a Border's Store actually asked me if I was sick and why I was wearing the Tilak, I thought, what a stupid female, and I let it go at that) but I have never been asked to remove it. For me, (you can call me old-fashioned for this), it is an essential part of my attire. I will not lie and say I am the quintessential "Bharat Nari" or anything like that, but I have never gone out without wearing my bindi. If for nothing else, just the fact that I don't like the way I look without it. I have been wearing it for more than 2 decades now and I don't think I can get "un"-used to it at all.
That I had to do this today, infuriated me. Maybe I am over-reacting, but then maybe I am not. Whatever happened to freedom!
And the funniest part was, Subhash had one on his forehead too (a real tiny one) and she never asked him to remove that! Well, there seems to be no end to the weirdness in USCIS and its practices!
Monday, December 17, 2007
A (small?) misunderstanding
I was driving back to work from McCarthy Ranch the other day. I saw this Acura zipping criss cross on the street, ahead of me. We stopped at a light and the sticker on the bumper grabbed my attention. It said something along the lines of "If everyone wanted an eye for an eye, the whole world would be blind" But what was more fascinating is that it had a picture of Gandhi on it and read M.K. Gandhi.
Going by how this guy/gal was driving, it didn't seem like he/she would be anywhere close to "Gandhian". Recklessly and aggressively and even rudely cutting ahead of everyone on a local road that maxed at 40MPH. I was amused. Then I thought, maybe he/she misunderstood what the bumper sticker meant;) Instead of realizing that it was meant to prevent reaction from your own self, maybe this person assumed that it told the world not to react to whatever he/she did? ;)
So instead of learning not to react/honk/respond when someone else was driving bad, it seemed the person was telling everyone around to be Gandhian and not react to his/her "taking an eye".
Well, well.
Going by how this guy/gal was driving, it didn't seem like he/she would be anywhere close to "Gandhian". Recklessly and aggressively and even rudely cutting ahead of everyone on a local road that maxed at 40MPH. I was amused. Then I thought, maybe he/she misunderstood what the bumper sticker meant;) Instead of realizing that it was meant to prevent reaction from your own self, maybe this person assumed that it told the world not to react to whatever he/she did? ;)
So instead of learning not to react/honk/respond when someone else was driving bad, it seemed the person was telling everyone around to be Gandhian and not react to his/her "taking an eye".
Well, well.
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