US Trip November 2006

US Trip Oct 29^th – Nov 8^th 2006

Sunday Oct 29^th

5AM - I landed at Chicago airport and had about 3 hours after making it through customs and immigration and my flight to Seattle. I saw a Wolfgang Puck restaurant that was open and had a nice goat cheese and veggie omelet with coffee and white bread. It cost $15. It was alright.

Queen Sheeba – Ethiopian lunch with Vijay and Vidya

Discussed how Vijay and Vidya wanted to name their daughter Anya but remembered that I’ve already named my daughter Anya. The cold injaras on this cold, dark and rainy Sunday in Seattle were quite average. The chicken was good but the injaras were not.

We then went looking for baby stuff and furniture for the new baby. I bought some refrigerator door latches so that Anya and Anay would not be able to open the door at will. We spoke about all things. It was good to see them.

Mama’s Mexican Kitchen – Mexican Dinner with Vijay

I always eat at this place when I go to Seattle. I like their generous helping of Guacamole and sour cream on their Veggie Nolasco burritos. We had a couple of beers and had an interesting conversation about Vijay returning back and the quality of work at MSFT India and compared that with the work being done at Adobe India

Vijay dropped me to the hotel at 9:30PM. I went to bed as I had a long day ahead of me tomorrow.

Monday Oct 30^th

Had a $15 breakfast at the Alexis Hotel. I had a mushroom and pesto omlette, which was too heavy and really bad. I must remind myself to not eat at the Alexis in the morning. It spoils my mood for the rest of the day. The roasted potatoes were ok and the cappuccino was too dry and the worst I’ve ever had. I left all of it at the table.

I met Susan and her husband. They were in the process of moving back to Boston. We had a nice cappuccino at Adobe’s café at the Seattle office. The award winning barista was really good. She knew how to do a cappuccino.

Jai Thai – Had a good lunch combo at Jai Thai in Fremont, as always. The food was good. The red curry chicken, rice and pad thai were all very tasty. I’d go back their again. The lunch conversation with Mike, Susan, Meredith and I was extremely enjoyable and hilarious at times. We discussed the Round Box strategy project (RBS Project or Our B. S. project) and discussed this loud QE in core tech.

I had a simple dinner at some Italian restaurant. The food was good and expensive.$35 for my glass of wine, ravioli and dessert.

Tuesday Oct 31^st.

I left the hotel at 4:45AM to catch the 6:15AM flight from Seattle to San Jose. I’ll never do this again. This flight left too early in the day and made the night before stressful. In fact, I was so tired when I reached San Jose that I actually went back to the hotel to sleep during the lunch hour.

Adobe Café – Had lunch with Wendy at the Adobe café. I had the stuffed Portobello mushroom with rice. It was interesting but left me unsatisfied. I was too tired to enjoy the meal anyway, so, I went back to the hotel and slept for 1 hour minutes.

Limon – I drove to San Francisco so that I could have dinner with Vlad and then enjoy the late night Halloween revelry at the Castro. The dinner was great. We ate at Limon. (http://www.limon-sf.com/). This was a tapas place on 16^th and Valencia. The mushrooms, chicken, Sangria and the wine were all excellent. I’d love to go back there again. In all it cost us $70 for dinner and drinks and desert.

We then walked up to 16^th and castro. The costumes were not as interesting as they had been earlier. The funniest thing we saw was the two guys dressed in Spiderman costumes hanging on trees and sitting on the roof of the bus stop. They looked uncannily real. We left the castro at 10PM. Nine people were shot there at 10:30PM that night. It was really crowded, as always. It was a good think we left early.

Wednesday Nov 1^st

I had an excellent breakfast at Chloe’s (http://sanfrancisco.citysearch.com/profile/899040/) . Their consistency amazes me. They really know how to do scrambled eggs and red potato homefries. Most excellent as always.

For lunch, Bruce Bowman and I went to La Taqueria in San Jose (http://www.jatbar.com/detail.asp?num=692) and had two humongous tacos each. These are probably the best tacos I’ve had in a while. They chicken was succulent and the guacamole really fresh. The two on table salsas were yummy. I’ll try to eat there before I leave for India on Wednesday

For dinner, I went to Naresh Mausaji’s place. It was good to see him recovered from cancer. Even though he had his kidney removed, he was in high spirits and we had a really nice cabernet. We spoke about all the kids leaving for school and how they wanted Neil to move back to California. It is strange how quickly life changes. Mausaji went from buying a $3M house in Saratoga to waiting at the same house for the next 3 years to completely rule out the possibility of cancer.

We ate at a new york pizza place in Sunnyvale. I don’t remember the name, it wasn’t worth remembering anyway.

Thursday Nov 2^nd

Creative Solutions BU Program Managers summit.

Dinner- had really funny conversations with Erica, Rod, Ian, Justin, Jill and Beth about Holi, India and academic mother’s and fathers in the UK. We ate at the Paragon bar and restaurant in San Jose (http://siliconvalley.citysearch.com/profile/41606742) . The wine that Barry chose was fantastic. It was a cabernet from the Hess estate. (http://www.hesscollection.com/)

Friday Nov 3^rd.

I was off to Austin. I had a really lousy lunch at the California pizza kitchen at San Jose airport and then met Vikram, Mitesh and Suba in Austin 4 hours later. We had a DosXX beer at home and then went to Chuy’s, which is my favorite tex-mex place in the world.

http://www.chuys.com/

http://austin.citysearch.com/profile/10209969/

There was a 1 hour or 1:10 minutes wait at Chuy’s/ We waited patiently over two margaritas and baskets of tortilla chips with a jalapeno ranch dressing. After a long wait we ordered food. I decided to split of bowl of green chili stew, a Chuychanga and Chili rellenos with Mitesh. Mitesh did not like the food so I ate most of it. We came back home and slept.

Saturday Nov 4^th

We went out of breakfast to Café Mia on Bee cave’s road only to find out that it was closed. We ate a light breakfast at 10AM at a small place that I forget the name of. We thought that it was good that the food was not heavy, since it gave us an opportunity to eat lunch.

I met Luiz right outside the café. I got in his car and we drove to Barton creek mall so that we could walk around and talk. It was good to see him after such a long time. He now has two kids. David and I forget the name of his 4 week old boy. He has not gone back to Brazil in 6 years and was planning a vacation to Australia so that he could meet with his brother.

We said goodbye. I shopped a little bit and then met up with Billi, Vikram and Suba. We then drove back to Vikram’s nice new house. We watched NCAA football throughout the afternoon. Mitesh was busy trying to set up his office mail so that he could access it over his new phone. Finally, I was able to get Vikram to break away from his TV so that we could go to a driving range. Suba slept with Poppy while Billi, Vikram and I went to the driving range. 80 balls for $9 seemed cheap. We took two clubs each and tried our hand at driving. It was fun. Vikram was doing really well before he broke his 8 iron club. We were concerned that it would cost us a lot of money to replace it. But, the driving range guy let us go and had a laugh with us. We went back home, had a beer and then left for dinner.

We went to dona Amelias for dinner. This Brazilian place is Vikram and Subba’s favorite. I had a stuffed chicken breast with goat cheese and chorizo. It was ok. I was not impressed with the place. However, Mitesh and everyone else was. So, I kept quiet. We had a caipirinha each.

We decided that we really wanted to have a Mexican martini at Trudy’s. At least I did. Vikram did not want to miss the Texas A&M game so he dropped Billi and I off at Trudy’s south star. It seemed too early after diinner to eat, so we walked over the toys R’us so that I could get some toys for the kids. Billi and I bought a bunch of stuff and then came back to Trudy’s for a drink. It was packed but we got a table and the bar and wisely decided to split their Mexican martini. It was too much.

Mitesh got pissed off when I asked him to share a fried avocado stuffed with cheese and chicken. He could not believe that we were eating this much. Anyhow, we drank and then Vikram came and picked us up.

Sunday Nov 5^th

The next morning Vikram, Billi and I want to pick up Suba after she had finished the race for cure downtown. We decided to have breakfast at Trudy’s south star, which turned out to be a good idea. Suba and I ordered the Chilaquiles. They were yummy. We finished brunch at 12PM. We then went to Vikram’s home.

We left to drop Mitesh at the airport. I also checked in my bags because I was not sure how much time I would have to come back to the airport after having dinner at Joe’s new place. He now own’s a mansion. It is fantastic new house off of 183N and Anderson mill road. Jennifer was nice enough to make some fajitas for us. We enjoyed the meal and spoke at length about old time and new. Bert could not join us.

Joe’s kids are amazingly well behaved. Joe decided to drop me back to the airport. It was really nice of him. He has always been good to me.

Imagine my surprise when I get to the airport at 6. I was through customs by 6:15 and saw a Mangia pizza outlet at the airport. I could resist myself and had a slice of their spinach stuffed crust pizza. It was excellent. Just as good as I remember. I am stuffed full, while I am tying this. I still have a green chili burrito in bag. I got it to go from Chuys this afternoon on the way to Joe’s place. I don’t think I will be able to eat it tonight. I should not. But, then again, will I be able to control myself….? Only time will tell.

Monday Nov 6^th

I had the burrito for breakfast. It was pure bliss. I ate all of it. Now my room smells of deluxe tomatilla and green chili sauce. Fantastic, Fantastic. I had enough time to drop my bag at Adobe and go to Valley fair mall so that I could shop for Ketaki and kids. I bought a lot of books from borders and clothes for Ketaki from Gap. I did not really find anything for me. I then drove back to Adobe because I was out of time and had to meet with John and Lori for lunch.

I had lunch with John and Lori from Dolby. They were nice enough to come down to San Jose for lunch. We ate at McCormick and Schmicks. I had the grilled veggie sandwich. The break was really dry but the fries were excellent. I was truly full from the burrito in the morning but ate anyway. It was fun to chat about Dolby stuff and John’s incomplete MBA. Lori was engaging and funny as ever. Mike and I had dinner in downtown San Jose. We decided to go to place Mike likes. They had decent enchiladas but had lost their liquor license so we had a beer at the pub across the street and then walked over for dinner. I then drove to valley fair mall again to buy some books I could not get earlier.

After buying the books, I went to the safeway to buy sour cream and goat cheese and wine. I am glad I did not postpone this for tomorrow. My rental car was full of stuff. I thought that I would not be able to fit it all into my suitcase and bags. Somehow, I did.

Tuesday Nov 7^th

I got a call from Ketaki at 7AM. We talked and then I started preparing for my 8AM meeting with Jim. I was about to leave when I got a call from Ketaki telling me that there was no way that I could return home in time for Anay’s 1^st birthday as I was only planning to leave the US on Wedensday morning and somehow thought that I would get to Delhi by 9:30PM on Wednesday! How stupid. I almost panicked. I hurriedly said good bye to Ketaki and called American airlines. They were able to book me on the flight out to Delhi Tuesday evening from Chicago. I had a flight to catch in 3.5 hours from San Jose airport.

I cancelled all my meetings and checked out of the hotel. I dropped of the rental car, paid the change fee for the ticket and checked in to my flight from SJC-> ORD. I was well in time for my ORD-DEL direct flight but decided to have a chicken burger at McDonalds because I was hungry and thought I had time. I could not find a Wolfgang puck express, I really like these restaurants at the airports. Anyhow, I ate the burger and fries and walked over to my gate to board the flight. To my horror, the flight had boarded and the gate had been closed. My luggage had been removed from the plane. I was completely grief struck. I could only blame by gluttony as I saw the plane backing out and the boarding ramp retracting.

The agent at the gate told me to rebook my ticket using one of the red phones located at gate 10A. While running to the gate I saw a flight boarding to London. I waited in line at this gate (10) to see if they could rebook me at the gate. I waited for 10 minutes as there were people ahead of me. I was really jumpy at that time. A couple in front of me told me to calm down. I did.

The agent at this gate told me that there was nothing she could do. I would have to rebook using one of the red phones at gate 10A. I ran over to 10A and picked up the wrong red phone. Nothing seemed to be working. I when I tried to dial AA from this phone the call would not go through. I then asked someone if they knew where the red phones were. A nice gentleman pointed me to the row of phones right at gate 10A. I picked up one of these phones and spoke to an agent over the phone.

She was nice. She told me that I was already rebooked to a flight to LHR and then LHR->Delhi. The ORD-LHR flight would leave at 11:30PM and get into LHR at 1PM. The LHR-Delhi flight would leave at 3PM from LHR and get me to Delhi at 5AM on Thursday the 9^th of November, in time for Anay’s birthday.

It was only now that I could relax. AA has saved me.

I think I hate LHR. There are no moving walkways. You have to walk forever to connect to your flight. At least I did. I landed at terminal D and I had to go to terminal A to board my flight. I took a shuttle between the terminals. Once at the terminal, I walked for atleast 20 minutes before I could get to my flight.