entering a bar

Okay how many of you knew that we need to have an ID to enter a bar ? Well there was a get together of msn srch dev bugs in the lincoln square - upscale bar and pool table in bellevue downtown (http://www.lincoln-square.com/entertainment_one.php?cidx=14) and I went there with Michael -( he is a racer and well lots of peopel wished me good luck because he was driving me there and he later claimed that since I just sqealed once I did a good job :).
It is funny his car has a cop detector so that he can reduce his speed when cops are around :). )
So coming back to the point, I went to the bar with my MS id and and credit card and the guy won't let me in! "I need to see your id ma'm" "I need to see your id ma'm" - that's all he kept repeating. So we had to call up Ed who was coming in late to pick up my bag from office that had my driver's license. Meanwhile I had to wait and I almost bought an expensive queen size bed from thomasville - a furniture shop downstairs :).
Once I entered it was fun - I played pool (i am stil learning) with dave, ankur and the 4th guy whose name I didnt know. Dave did show me a lot of cues. And then I stuck to my orange juice - which incidentally looked like beer from outside. Ate the appetizers and some guy in office would explain me every time what they were and esp their contents. Was there for a couple of hours and came back.
Met rahul bhagat - he came in the apartment last night and chatted with him for long. He is in LA contemplating a PhD. It was good. The way he talks, the content of his talks, they were all so American - but well his PJs and laughs still remained the same characteristic Nagpurian one :).

code and munich the movie

nothing can be more frustrating than a huge program's successful run hinging on a piece of code that should ideally work but is not working ... what is the issue permissions - no, typos - no, bad luck probably yes. i just needed a break from it so thought of updating the blog...

anyways met someone over the lunch today - a guy originally from mumbai - who is around same age as mine and is being nominated for Godell prize next year - he works in game theory in MS joined 8-10 months ago. something like the youngest nominee ever..interesting personality with lots of philosophical books and serious movies and does real sketching of people (told me that he funded half of his europe trip by sketching for people).. he lives virtually inside pike place market in downtown seattle and is a movie reviewer as well so gets invited to free movie shows 1 month before movie's release and get to authoratively brag about it :). he was pitying me coz i live in east side .. I dont mind switching to west side if I get the free movie shows. anyways i personally like the bellevue downtown more than the seattle downtown..even my redmond area is not bad ..its very peaceful..and may be in my heart i am still a country girl... its funny i almost feel i am living in India coz there are indians above me and besides me..i don't know who is below me...before i came in my apartment, it was occupied by indian couple - dushiant and ruchi - i stil lget thier letters - i dont like the name dushiant though isnt it a villian's name?

anways this guy recommended me a movie called munich and the more i hear about it the more i want to see it. the movie is about israili soldiers who were sent to secretly kill people in retaliation for attack in 1972 olympics..its about their pysche how would you feel if you are in a diff country for 2 years away from friends family just getting a list of people and killing them...
more on http://www.empiremovies.com/movies.php?id=3551&munich.htm
anyways time to get back to work :)

sometimes i feel

having a public blog is not a good idea ..i need my privacy man!...but well who cares ....

who makes the best aloo gobhi mutter in the world ...

arati :)

suffering quotient

Something i joke about a lot is that people have their suffering quotient constant ... you compare probs of two people - you mightfeel one is happier but in steady-state you will see that people always have a set of problems to bother them and though their magnitude be different but they will end up bothering them in the same way..what is problem after all a perception...
was watching tv in the gym- watching a tyra banks show and saw how a normal average american lady who in my opinion was not too fat felt that she was all fat and her self confidence had shaken ... i just went back and was thinking about some of the amazing women i have met and thier problems - my maid in pune who had to lie to her parents that she is not a maid servant as she hails from a "respectable" family or roopa in iitk who was probably one of the most intelligent women but was a maid servant.. i dont know what made me find them amazing - their ability to sacrifice or thier ability to face the problems on thier own .. i think both .. sometimes i feel i am myself a sucker for sadness- i feel "happier" or probably stable if i have a problem to bother me - i mean not the problems like flat tyre or a broken mobile (these problems actually give me a heart attack - just hate them) but problems that deal with non-materialistic issues... the problems that have no solution except probably accepting them ...i find these problems as food for my thought.. (road less travelled) opens with a line - "life is a problem".. and if we acknowledge this fact we could be happier...
i have heard so many people whose problems seen from one perspective are very stupid and seen from other perspective very understandable and very real...something worldly-wise people will not understand ... and i treasure the bonds with such people, we share a problem which just the two of us understand, we don't judge we don't solve them but we just identify them and learn to live with them..somehow i find these relationships so real...and i find myself being more real in these moments rather than hundreds of hi how are you and how you doing moments that i have with rest of the people (i have a image of party girl here :) and i am anything but a group person -its so damn fake!!)

sometimes i feel that most of the problems that we have is probably because we "think"..
i wonder if i was a bird may be i would be dumb enough to not let anything bother me so much and then may be i will be not sensitive enough to feel any pain.. not having any ability to think and just the ability to sweep the sky ..be in the moment ..........
just wondering how many times we feel hurt because we think about the past and the future ..if we just live in the moment will it not be so much peaceful....just decotexualize the moment from the rest of the life and do it for every moment ..just let go off every fear every pain every desire...can i reach this state ?

chaiyya chaiyya and much more

was talking to a desi guy here who left india a few years ago and he told me that the latest hindi songs he listens to is still chaiyya chaiyya! The first thing I did was came back and mailed cherry to tell me about some latest hindi movie songs from iitk. so right now i am listening to some strange song called "roobaroo" from "rang de basanti". it has some nice guitar but it starts with "aie saala" (reminds me of niraj :)).
yest my motorola mobile conked off :( so i went and bought a charger for the nokia phone that i had got from india..dad had given it to me and said that it is triband it will work in us. so now i am back to my fav brick nokia phones...motorola, sony ericcson, samsung - all good mobiles but nokia rocks..

car hunt

well after apartment hunt it is the series of car hunt...and well the decision to buy a used car instead of a new car (bcoz of 0 credit and high insurance and interest rates) has added to so much thrill in my life...
it all started with me contacting pple of micronews and there is this guy called ankur who did too and it so happend that we both were contacting all the same pple and well when he actually called one of them someone asked him "Are you Arati"
well at this point of time we knew we had to do it together so that we cud help eachother. ofc we foresaw a situation when two of us would fight for the best deal and it did happen on a spanking shining 2003 toyota corolla for just 11000 bucks. man i would remember that argument - he saying mein chota hun and i saying mein bichaari akeli ladki hun :). apparently chota bachcha got his way and well i also realised that cars are like girls- if one goes another comes. So I waited for mine and there came a nice sweet silver honda civic for me :).
anyways have been driving around...went to the gym and just got too ashamed to try to figure out the instruments on my own and will go for an equipment orientation...
yest.. ankur tod me about some mithun chakravarthy movie called "gunda" and about some character called "bulla" ...just listening to it had me in splits i dont know what will happen when i actually see the movie :)

some photos

of vids and kamra's visit to seattle during thanksgiving-
photos.yahoo.com/aratikadavphotos

looking for a car in US

Need inputs- used/ new, honda/jetta/beetle :), private party/dealer .....