Low voting percentages in Urban areas

With the general elections in India crossing the half way mark and with 2 more phases to go, it has been yet another election when the voting percentages across the urban areas in the country going down constantly. The percentage of voting in major cities like Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and Hyderabad has gone down considerably in 2009 when compared to the figures in 2004. It is very sad to learn that despite Mumbai being the business capital of the country, the voting percentage to somewhere around 45%.

Is this a result of the educated, affluent class of people losing faith in the democratic process itself ? Or is this because the salaried class feels that there has been no change in their day to day problems irrespective of their elected representatives ? Whatever might be the reason for this reduction in voting percentages, the reality is that the elected representatives would be crowned as MPs on the basis of a simple arthimetical calculation, but they are not necessarily the true representative....

There is a danger of the voting percentages go down even further in the years to come. I believe the next Govt should take some steps to identify the reasons for people not coming out to vote and take measures to improve the same.

PS - I did cast my vote along with my spouse.

2 thrilling matches on 01-May-2009

a. Mumbai Vs Kolkata at East London

This match was billed as the clash of the legends of Indian Cricket, Sachin Vs Sourav. Mumbai batted first to put up a fighting total of 148 runs thanks to the brilliance of one of the costliest recruits in IPL, JP Duminy who scored an unbeaten 52 runs and a quick-fire 34 runs from the master blaster himself.

Kolkata started their run chase miserably losing "DADA" Ganguly for a first ball duck wherein he was clean bowled by Zaheer Khan. Soon after Zaheer removed Gayle in the same fashion. Hodge later consolidated the run chase and got them so near but yet they were not able to overhaul the Mumbai score. It was also the miserly bowling by the talented Malinga which put an end to Kolkata's hopes resulting in their 5th consecutive loss. Mumbai won the match by 9 runs in the end.

b. Bangalore vs Punjab at Durban

Bangalore had a new captain in "Jumbo" Kumble after KP left for England for the Windies tour. Batting first they struggled to put up a total of 145 runs. The new recruit for Punjab, Abdulla was on song yet again taking 4 wkts and reaching the top of the bowlers table to fetch the coveted PINK cap. This was after Yuvraj getting a hat-trick at his favourite ground (the same ground where he hit Stuart Broad for 6 sixes in the 2007 T20 world cup).

Yuvraj came in as an opener for Punjab and continued the good form to score 50 runs in just 34 balls before falling to Kumble. Bangalore soon picked some more wkts to increase the pressure on the Punjab team. Sangakkara and Jayawardene joined together to take them towards the victory. As the required run rate starting climbing up, Jaya and Sanga, both of them got out in quick succession leaving 17 runs to get in the last 2 overs. Kumble displayed all his experience in bowling a tight 19th over giving away just 4 runs. The young Praveen Kumar proved his mettle by picking up 2 wkts as well as bowling a tight line thereby denying a victory for Punjab.

This victory helped Bangalore to stay alive in the tournament and moved up to the 5th spot in the points table.

Retirement age in politics ???

I had always wondered as to why there is no retirement age in politics. If we take a simple mathematical average of the members of parliament, I am sure that the average age would be well past 60. The situation wont be different across the state assemblies. The most worrying factor is that more than 50% of the Chief Ministers are also well above 65 years. Its not only the old age that is a cause of concern. But the amount of time a CM/MP/MLA is able to spend for the people who had elected them is definitely much lesser as the age takes the toll on their health and many of the elected representatives spend a substantial amount of time in hospitals and taking rest at home thereby depriving the citizens of quality time.

In fact one of the oldest CMs of the country who has been in politics for more than 60 years is unable walk and is moving around in a wheel chair apart from spending most of his time in hospital. Though I completely respect the fact such a senior person's experience is very much needed for the country's progress, I would appreciate if the person becomes a consultant to run the Government rather than run the Govt himself. I hope the day when young people run the country is not far away !!!!

Voting day in Bangalore

Today, being the 23rd of April 2009, its the day of voting in the city of Bangalore (also called as Bengaluru). I was one amongst the first few voters to cast my vote at the nearby polling station which is part of the Bommanahalli assembly constituency. I cast my vote to elect the next representative for the Bangalore South parliamentary constituency. Its an exciting feeling as this is the first time that I have cast my vote in Bangalore. In the past I had cast my vote in Chennai almost every election ever since I became an eligible voter of this country.

I sincerely hope and wish that more number of people cast their votes and hence ensure that the elected representative is indeed a true representative who has been preferred by a vast majority of the voters of the respective constituency.

IPL Season 2

After all the confusions and arguments surrounding the conduct of IPL Season 2 in India, the tournament got off to a grand start on the 18th of April 2009 in Captetown, South Africa. The credit for turning things around in a matter of 3 weeks goes to the IPL Commissioner, Lalit Modi who has yet again proved that he is not only a smart businessman, but also an equally shrewd administrator and organizer. With the Mumbai team getting off to a rousing start in the first match thanks to yet another masterly innings from the batting maestro, Sachin Tendulkar the IPL season 2 promises to offer exciting entertainment for the next 45 days to all cricketing fans around the globe.

Hats off to Chiru

It was a real brave and honest gesture by the superstar actor-turned politician of AP, Chiranjeevi to have declared assets worth Rs. 88 crores while filing his nomination papers for the assembly elections in AP. While its mandatory for all candidates to declare the complete details of all movable/immovable assets they hold as well the liquid cash on hand, shared, bonds, etc while filing the nomination for assembly/parliamentary elections, most of the candidates declare fictious figures....The general conception is that the EC doesnt have the power as well as the machinery to verify the details even for the elected candidates. In such a scenario, Chiru has lead by example. Kudos to him for this move. Though the results would only tell if he and his party would be able to get to power in AP, nevertheless he has done an act by which the voters can feel that he would make a difference if voted to power. All the very best to Chiru and his party.

Indian Elections 2009

Its time for the greatest festival of the largest democracy in the world. Yes, its the time for the elections to the country's democratic body, the Lok Sabha. Its the summer heat that adds up to the soaring political temperatures in the country. This time the elections seemto be fought more on personality clashes with the BJP's PM candidate, Mr. L.K.Advani, taking the present PM and the UPA candidate, Dr.Manmohan Singh heads on.

There have been already breakages of past alliances and creation of new alliances. Shifting of loyalties of political parties across the length and breadth of the country depending on various factors. So the festival is truly well and on...

The elections which are going to be held across 5 phases concludes on 13th May 2009 and a week after that the results would be out when the next "tournament" of government formation would begin.

Let me stop here for now and would continue to reflect my thoughts of course in the most apolitical manner at regular intervals.

A different movie indeed.....

I watched this movie called, "Santosh Subramaniam" last week. A very interesting and different movide indeed. The story is about a wealthy father, who, in the pursuit of providing the best to his son, fails to understand whether his son really needs those things or not. The father decides almost everything what his should do right from his dresses to eduction, food, etc etc. The movie kicks up speed when the father decides the bride as well for his son whilst the son wants to select his dream girl. The story takes interesting twists and turns towards the climax when the son makes the father understand the mistake he has committed. And its a happy ending with the son joining hands with his dream girl whom he chooses on his own.

The hero of the story has been played by 'Jeyam' Ravi and the father's role by 'Chellam' Prakashraj. I feel this is one very good movie directed by Raja who is also the elder brother of Ravi. Ravi's performance is just exemplary. He has improved a lot as an actor and has portrayed his potential to a great extent. There is nothing to say specially about Prakashraj who has established himself as the best multi-talented actor of the Tamil film industry in the recent years and this is yet another master-piece acted by him.

I was able to relate some scenes in the movie to my own personal life as I became nostalgic about the past...........All in all, a good movie to watch.

Down the memory lane...Sep 2007

I love to be nostalgic almost everyday that I keep recollecting events that happened many years back. As I was browsing through my favourite site, cricinfo, I remembered about the emphatic triumph of India at the ICC T20 tournament on this very same day in the year 2007.

Let me get into the details straightaway.
It was 24-Sep-2007, a monday and start of a new week. But the day began with buzz about the grand finale of the first ICC T20 world cup between the traditional rivals India and Pakistan. As time was ticking away towards the match's starting time which was around 6 pm IST, people across the country were heading towards their homes to stay onto the TV sets. There were even special arrangements made at many office (including mine) to telecast the match onto a giant screen.

The match proved to a real cliffhanger with twists and turns till the very last over when India prevailed over Pakistan to lift the cup. There were instant celebrations across the country and in fact across the globe. It was like an "early diwali".

Of course when I think of this particular day, I should also recall 2 more unforgettable matches that happened some days before this one.

19-Sep-2007 :: India beat one of the pre-tournament favourites England by 18 runs. This was the match when the Indian T20 sensation, Yuvraj Singh blasted 6 SIXES in the 19th over of the match. He blasted ball after ball bowled by Stuart Broad to all corners of the park.

22-Sep-2007 :: The semifinal when the unheralded young Indian team trounced the all powerful Aussies by 15 runs to setup the final clash with Pak. Any Indian cricket fan would recall the sensational bowling display by Sreesanth to remove the aussie removers Gilchrist and Hayden.,

I will come back to my series of nostalgic writings with another interesting one very soon.........

One of the most unexpected events in my life...

It was a warm morning in Sep 2005 when I was summoned to meet the client manager of the project in which I was working on. It was just 3 months since I had entered the project team and was really nervous as to why is this meeting call. I was all questions within myself to guess if it would end up as a bad morning with criticism from the manager or a sessions loaded with advises, etc etc.
My heart was beating up extremely fast when I reached the office and entered the room of the manager. There came the surprising, unexpected anti-climax. Yes indeed, I was taken aback by the sweet shock given by the manager that he is awarding me a cash award for the work put in by me in a short time after having joined the team just 3 months back. He appreciated me verbally as well and wished me good luck for a great time in the team going forward.
This is one of the most unexpected moments in my life which will remain in my memories forever.

Remembering 21st May

The same day 17 years ago, in 1991, the former PM of India, Mr. Rajiv Gandhi was killed in a suicide bomb blast at Sriperumbudur near Chennai. This would be remembered as one of the most gruesome terrorist attacks. I still remember this day as the country was preparing for the general elections, the scenes of the terrorist attack flashed through the country the next day morning sending shock waves across. Rajiv was one of the leaders who was able to win over the hearts of millions of countrymen thanks to an ever smiling face. But the bomb blast shattered his face that country was not able to have a last look at his face while paying the last
respects. A sad day indeed to think about for many more years to come.....

Two thrilling matches @ IPL - 21 May 2008
1. Punjab vs Mumbai -

An aggressive batting performance by the Punjab team to put up 189 runs on the board thanks to the spirited show by the aussies Stuart Marsh and Pomersbach. The captaincy and choice of bowlers used by the Mumbai captain, Sachin Tendulkar is also questionable as he didnt bowl the wily veteran spinner, Sanath Jayasuriya.

Mumbai began the runchase aggressively with Sanath and Sachin, they lost a whopping 7 wkts for just 44 runs to end up losing by 1 run in the last ball of the match. The swinging fortunes provided umpteen amount of entertainment to the fans but the "choking" by Mumbai team would classify this match as one of the memorable thrillers.

2. Bangalore vs Chennai -

Yet another lacklustre batting performance from the B'lore team with the captain, Rahul Dravid, fondly called as "THE WALL" across the globe top scoring with 47 runs and the team ended at 126 runs in the 20 overs.

Chennai team, one of the top performers in the tournament and favourites to win this match, were coasting along at 85 for 2 wkts at the end of 13 overs requiring just another 42 runs in the remaining 7 overs with the former NZ captain, Stephen Fleming and Suresh Raina. Anybody would have fancied Chennai to complete the proceedings comfortably, but what followed was amazing to watch !!

India's top spinner, Kumble, took 3 crucial wkts in his quota of 4 overs by giving away just 14 runs and then the SouthAfrican bowler, Dale Steyn added to the misery of Chennai team by claiming 2 crucial wkts. The match entered the last over with Chennai requiring 16 runs off the last over with Suresh Raina and Mtini at the crease, but they were able to get just a single off that over to lose by 14 runs.

A consolation victory for the much-hyped Bangalore team.

This is the poem that I created in honour of my mom on the occasion of International Womens Day on 08th March 2001.

Dear Amma,

March 8th, being the Women's Day, i felt this is the apt time to tell You how much you mean to me.

I have learnt how to show our affection and love for our dear ones from the way you took care of me when i was in bed after a gruesome injuiry.

I have learnt how to share others' happiness from the way you Expressed your happiness whenever i got the first rank while i was studying and also when i got my first job in life.

I have learnt how to accept and take up challenges in life from the narrations of various hardships that you had come across in your life.

I have learnt the nuances of dedication and sincerity from the way you do things.....

I have learnt how to execute tasks in an organized manner. " ... Observe sharply, learn quickly and do it right the first time ... "
Amma, i will never forget this advice in my lifetime.

You had always been a constant source of inspiration to me. But for Your love and affection, I wouldn't have been what I am today....

To end with I just want to say Amma, you mean a world to me...

Loving son
Vijay

Trip to Niagara Falls -- Sep 2000

Barely 2 days since I had landed into US, had I got the message that our colleagues are arranging for a trip to Niagara Falls. I got excited and immediately agreed to join the party. When the dates for the trip were announced, my anxiety started increasing as we were approaching Sept 22nd, 2000. Yes, the date we were scheduled to depart towards Niagara Falls. Come Sept 22nd, I was astonished to see that there was big group of 28 people in the party. We got ourselves into 4 SUVs and started the trip at 7 pm on Friday. I had 4 of my colleagues and 2 of our friends in the van along with me. Slowly and steadily we merged into the interstate highways and the van started zooming away.

It was a great experience to travel on the highways with tall trees on both sides of the road. I was astonished by seeing the huge width of the road, when compared to our great Indian roads.

We took our first break at around 10 pm at a service station on the highway. These service stations have a fuel filling station as well as hotels to refresh and relax. I felt as if I will be frozen as soon as I got down from the van. It was so cold. Then I took my jacket and went inside MacD to have dinner. After finishing off the dinner we started our next leg of journey at around 10.45 pm. Excepting the guy who was driving the van and one more guy who was sitting beside him, all of us started sleeping. At around 2.30 am we reached our staying place. It was on a highway and inside Buffalo district. We got our rooms and went to bed.

The next morning we were shocked to see that it was raining heavily. We got worried as to how r we going to go to Niagara. Luckily by 9 am, the rain got stopped and we started off. We reached Niagara at around 11 am. The first ride we entered was the "Maid of the mist". --the cruise which took us near the falls. We came down to the cruise boarding point from a height of nearly 200 feet in an elevator. That was a thrilling experience. Then as we started off on the journey in the cruise we started feeling the chillness.

We were given a special rain coat to protect us from the water. Gradually the boat was taking was towards the Canadian falls, which is the "Horse-shoe falls"(the one which most of us would have seen in photos.). I got stunned by seeing the falls from the river.

It was like a huge chunk of water being drained into the river at awesome speed. I got drenched completely, but it was great fun to see such a falls. It was dreams come true.

Then, we moved onto the next ride, "Cave of the winds". This ride took us down to the tip of the American falls in an elevator. Earlier we were given thicker rain coats and a special pair of shoes. Once we wore them everyone was looking like Eskimo or Mickey Mouse. Once we were out of the elevator we started walking in the wooden steps that lead us towards the falls. As we were nearing the falls we were able to feel the chill water splashing on us. So it was next round of drenching. This was like standing under Courtallam falls (in TN), but the American falls was finer. This was more thrilling than the earlier one. Once we were out of this we started roaming around the park and visited some more places and giving tight work to our cameras. Then, we started waiting for the lightshow.

They started the show at 8.15 pm only. It was literally freezing. But once the lights were up, we were able to feel the worthiness of our patient wait. It was ultimate. Sorry that I don’t have enough words to explain that experience. It was good to see the falls under lights. Gradually the colors of the lights were also changed. It was like seeing brindavan of Mysore, but the specialty in this was that they had lighted a natural falls. After 30 mins we started moving towards our hotel with all heart full of memories of the falls. I felt myself to be really lucky enough to have gone to Niagara within 10 days of my stay into US.

The next day we went to Watkins Glenn Park, which is a nature created one. It was a good trekking experience. We took photos there also. We started off on our journey back home by 3 pm from that park and reached home at around 10 pm.

The whole trip was really fantastic, though we had rain and chillness.

Thanks for patiently going thru my travel experience. I will keep sharing such wonderful experiences.

Vijay

This weekend (May 17-18, 2008) at IPL

1. Rajasthan Vs Bangalore –
Yet another match for the Bangalore team where nothing went right for them. Great start by the Rajasthan team with Smith and Swapnil (who is fondly called as “Goa Cannon” by Warnie) which was carried on by one of the best allrounders in this IPL, Watson. The only hope with the BRC was to have a good start to the innings which didn’t happen almost as expected and it was the WALL again to get some runs on the board. The batting by RD was amazing with sixes flying around, but it was rather too late and the end was almost written on the wall !!!

2. Delhi Vs Punjab –
Well the true winner of this match was one of the most famous formulae in the world today, the D&L method. Viru made full use of the explosive start he made to get a huge score on the board, but he probably himself undid that by choosing to bowl an over at a crucial point of time in the match thereby letting the advantage slip towards a victory for Punjab. When there were other options available, its baffling as to why did he choose to bowl an over to concede a whopping 22 runs. For the Punjab team, it was Mahela who came to the party atlast !!!. I had always wondered why is this talented and experienced campaigner not amongst the runs for so many matches, but he rose to the occasion in style by hitting the DD bowlers all over the park.

3. Kolkata Vs Chennai –
Yet again it was D&L who was the winner !!! Kolkata did manage to put up a fighting total on the board, but the weather GODs had a different game plan. The good start from Fleming & Parthiv was a vital factor in Chennai sealing the match in their favour when the storm and rains stopped the match. Probably KKR would rue the dropped catch in the penultimate over and of course the last ball of the 8th over which Fleming smashed for a boundary. Rather unfortunate end to a promising match, but that z the this great game of cricked is played.

4. Deccan Vs Mumbai –
Another explosive start by the old warhorse, Jayasuriya. Add to it the knocks from Abhishek Nayar, Bravo, Sachin were able to build a healthy total for Mumbai. Though Mumbai started badly by dropping the dangerous Gilly in the very first over, they bounced back very soon to quickly remove Gilly, Afridi and Rohit Sharma. The resistance from Venu and Ravi Teja was very good but too little yet too far in the end with the ever mounting asking rate. On the whole it was a team effort from the Mumbai Indians. As rightly stated by Gilly that they have to look at next year with their exit from the tournament almost certain. But for Mumbai the return of Bravo would definitely have its impact as they lose a high quality allrounder from the team.

Thought....
Its interesting and confusing to note that Blore missed to add a good performer like Robin Uthappa from their team while Mumbai missed out one of the high scorers of the tournament, Rohit Sharma from their team. Probably the loss of Uthappa for Blore is felt more due to their poor performance. Hopefully next year both these teams might want to add their home grown good players back in their ranks.

Trip to NewYork in Oct, 2000

I am back once again to share my travel experiences with you. This time it is about the trip that i made to the prestigious city of Newyork.This time the crowd was only 6 and that too we finalized about the mode of transport and the exact number only on friday(Oct 6th, 2000). We had to juggle around our options to get our van booked.

But our work made us postpone our start to Sat morning. It was raining heavily also on Friday night. So we started off in a Ford Windstar on 7th morning on a bright sat
morning.

The journey was as usual cool and interesting. It was nice to go thru the great US highways once again. We had our food after 2 hours of drive and continued to drive. As we had to go to Newjersey for our stay, we had to cross Newyork. We were following the directions given by Yahoo maps, but to out utter dismay they mislead us and we
took a wrong route towards George Washington Bridge. There was a loooong traffic jam and we got stuck up in that. We lost nearly 2 hrs in crossing the bridge and coming back once again to trace back the route that we lost.... Though we lost 2 hrs, it was real fun to travel thru that bridge, it was an excellent construction marvel indeed. We had to pay $7.00 to travel on the bridge, but it was a great experience..

Atlast after losing some more time on the traffic atlast we reached our destination, a place called Orange (doesn’t that sound crazy !!). We got settled up and decided not to go out anywhere after having dinner (as usual !!!). The next day we started off late, thanks to the delay caused by some of our tour mates.. We started the journey by train from a station called Newark. It was real fun to travel in that train. Everything was automatic and that too for a person like me who had been travelling in train right from my childhood days it was great to travel in a fully automatic train. After some time the train went into a tunnel under the river. Then it never came up !!.
Atlast, we got down at World Trade Center(WTC) station and then came up into the road.

Gradually we went near the twin towers of the great WTC.. Wow, what a structure it was. 2 towers, each consisting of 108 floors.. It was spectacular. We decided to go up on the tower later and proceeded on towards the Newyork stock exchange. After walking for some time, we were on the famous Wall Street. The stock exchange was closed as it was a sunday. We took snaps from outside of the building and then once again went into the subway to catch the next train. It was interesting to note that the subway train has been there for a long number of years and even ticketing is automatic.. Sounds great yaar...

Then we proceeded on towards catching the ferry to Staten Island. The ferry took us away from the city and we were able to see the beautiful city of Newyork loaded with all sky scrapers. That was awesome.. We started tooking photos madly. We were just not able to resist ourselves from catching the superb views we got from the ferry. The breeze was ice cold, but the journey was good. We returned back in the same ferry due to lack of time. After coming back we went to catch the ferry to the World's wonder Liberty Statue. This time we had to pay 7 bucks to go to the statue. It was the last ferry for the day and we were able to grab a place for ourselves in the ferry. The breeze became all the more colder, but that was also interesting.. We landed up on the island and joined the queue to go onto the pedestal of the statue. I was just taken away by the astonishing height of the statue. It was amazing... The Queue was so long which took me back to the memory about the Tirupathi "Q", in which i had stood for hours together for many years.

Slowly and steadily we got near to the elevator and zoom..... we went up till a point and were made to climb up to the pedestal. We were unlucky that the entry to the crown of the the statue was closed. It was a nice view from the pedestal, but were not able to take photographs from that point. We were able to see many Desis(all India S/W profs) trying to take photographs.. We cant change them !!!!!

Gradually as the sun went down we started our journey back towards the other shore. We were able to see the beauty of the Liberty statue during the sunset. I am sure that this scenic beauty will remain in our hearts for a long time to come. Once we were our out on the other shore, we catched yet another subway train and reached the famous Times Square. Wow !!! that was I said as i went into the street from the subway.. It was fully loaded with jazzy lights and hoardings. Only then i felt that i am in Newyork. We also saw the NBC studios that was on the main street. I just have to say that we were taken away by the way the whole area was lightened up.. After walking up for some distance we were also able to see The Empire State Building (of JEANS fame) lightened up in 3 different colours.

With all these pleasant memories, we went into a huge railway terminal called the Grand Central Terminal to go to one of our friend's place. I was not able to believe that it was a railway station. It was like a 5-star hotel full of sculptures and breath-taking paintings on the large dome of the station. It was not only large, but beautiful and neatly organized. Later we got the information that its an historic place. I was able to compare this with the famous VT station in Mumbai (not in size but atleast in their historical background). We purchase the tickets and entered the train(we were still in the subway !!). After sometime the journey started and atlast we felt happy to see the train come out of the subway. I sat beside the famous window seat(for which i have had many fights in my childhood days..) and was able to scenic beauty of NY during night. Once we (me and one of my colleagues) reached the destination, we were greeted by the freezing air..

We met our friend and reached his place, a suburb near Dobb's ferry(the rly station where we got down). The person is a Professor in the Cardiology Dept of Columbia University. I had an intellectual talk about the American and Indian educational system (as usual !!!!) with him after having a fantastic Indian Dinner. We started off on our journey once again the 3rd day of the trip(9th Oct), once again by train. That morning we had good old Indian Masala dosas and Idlis neatly prepared by my colleagues cousin sister. Once again the same train journey, but this time it was by an express train, so we reached the Grand Central terminal pretty fast.

Once we landed up there, we proceeded towards the Empire State Building. We bought the tickets and stood near the elevator in the long Q... We entered the elevator once we got our turn and the elevator started off. It was going up the floors one by one till the 10th one, then it started zooming off 20, 30, 40... till the 80th one. Then we went till the 86th floor by another elevator. We came out onto the open balcony.. Wow... that was yet another breath taking sight to be on top of the such a huge building's 86th floor. The cold breeze was literally dashing against us, but we dared to bear the cold and took snaps of the city's various vantage points from such a height. As we saw the roads, it was like seeing toy cars standing in a game.. We came down the elevator once again and went towards the 3-D virtual reality show. This show was simply superb !!. I just dont have words to explain that experience. We were made to sit in a hall and seat belts were put up as if it was like a space craft. The film shown to us took us onto various parts of NY and Manhattan. The 10 mins show was terrifying experience. I would advise anyone who is going to go to NY should never miss this show.

Once we were out of this show, we took another train towards the WTC. We were once again in front of the twin towers. There was yet another long "Tirupathi" Q at WTC also. The ticket was bit costly here. But anyhow we bought it and stood in front of the elevator. After nearly 15 mins we got into the same and it went up slow and steadily. It took 65 seconds to reach the 107th floor !!!!.. We came out of the elevator onto the closed lobby and had a awesome look of NY from the tallest building in Newyork. Once again, it was photos and toy cars. .... But we spent more time here as we were able to see the Hudson river, the bridges and of course the Atlantic sea from a long distance. We came down the elevator once again and started off ina train towards the Oranges to join our other tour mates..

Atlast we started off our journey back to Boston by 4.30 pm and reached safely by 10 pm. To end with, me and my colleague Saravanan (incidentally he is also my college junior), we both had immense fun as were speaking only American english during the trip. The most used phrase was "Its cool man... " and one more was "we got it ... "
and of course the famous Yup.... So we are there !!!!!

It was a fantastic trip once again. Thanks once again for going thru the mail.. bye

Vijay

This is the first content that I am posting on to my own blog.