Anish's Blogs

June 5 In June 2013, we went on a 7-day, 6-night Paris tour from London, and yes on Eurostar (to and fro).  It was a different experience. The train is under water for about 20 minutes or so when it covers the 50km Euro tunnel. While all small tunnels in London created air pressure issues in our eardrums, never during the 50km stretch of Euro tunnel we faced any air pressure problems. London is a safe city, but only when we reached Paris, we acknowledged how safe London seems! Gare du Nord (The North Station), where Eurostar terminates is surrounded by scary looking folks. This area is also home for the largest number of South Indian restaurants in Paris and is called “Little Pondichery”. We picked up to-go stuff from Saravana Bhavan; didn’t dare to avail their dine-in facility as it was getting late in the evening. To get comfortable with public transport, we had gone on metro to take a London tour the day before. However, getting around Paris was a challenge by itsel...

When we were searching for a house a few years back, I used to refer to a lot of online tools around this topic. These tools typically ask you what is the house value, mortgage amount, rate of interest, your tax bracket & current rent you are paying. I realized that all these tools gave me skewed results towards buying the house then. Today, after the housing debacle, I referred to a couple of them and they now tell me to rent instead of buy! Well things have really changed. Being a little skeptical then (and a lot now), I thought of listing all the factors that make or break this decision. The most important factor is of course “emotional”. If you have decided one way or the other firmly, you don’t need to read this article, however, if you are a little undecided emotionally, do consider the following factors. Tax Deduction This is the most advertised reason for buying a house. Of course, you can avail deduction on your mortgage interest, mortgage insurance (PMI), ...

We spent one week this summer in the Canadian Rockies, visiting Banff and Jasper National Parks. The 7-day, 6-night trip including 2 days of travel to and from Calgary was one of the most memorable trips I had ever had. No, we did not travel by train, we flew from San Francisco. These parks are filled with abundant natural beauty with soaring mountains and lush green valleys. Do you remember having drawn a “scene” during childhood with triangular mountains and Sun rising from between one of the pairs of mountains? I did that several times before my Art teacher told me that mountains seldom have triangular tops and then I started painting the “scene” with rounded mountain tops. Mountains in these parks tell how wrong my Art teacher was. Most if not all the mountains, and I mean, plenty of them, have triangular tops with streaks of snow on them. The white snow on the grey to dark grey background of the mountains creates stunning contrast and beauty. Now I know, I can draw dark grey...