Anish's Blogs

“What did you expect about America that wasn’t true?” It was a loaded question; Brian wanted to ask me about the lifestyle, culture and the behavior of the people I met in my first 3-4 weeks of my stay in the USA. Brian was an employee of the client company that TCS deputed me to in Florida. I could not answer the question directly, but gave a political answer, “I expected skyscrapers in the USA, but here in Melbourne, I don't see structures taller than 2-3 stories”. Brian went on to become a good friend of mine. In fact, when my parents visited Niagara Falls, his father, a retired Buffalo city cop showed them around in his big Impala. Brian used to discuss how American history is bloody and how steak is the staple diet for all Americans during dinnertime. He had a couple of complaints about me, one that I can't truly pronounce a “w” and a “v” separately and that my English was more formal than his colloquial language. The day I landed in Melbourne was a cool winter day; yes ev...

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...

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...