What's in a name?

It has been a while since I updated this blog. My promise of writing about my Antarctica and Argentina trip never materialized. A lot has happened since then; I have been busy; procrastinate is my middle name; all excuses, but those posts are coming - some day. However, something happened to me a couple of days ago that has forced my hand. At least right now, when it is fresh in my mind, I think it is too good a story to let pass. So let’s leave Antarctica for later and focus on a name confusion that almost left me stranded 50 miles from my destination, middle of the night, with the phone battery dead  and lugging two bags and a suitcase.

Destination: A hostel in downtown San Francisco. I am here for a materials science conference but that hardly matters to this story.
Date: The night before Easter.
Relevant names: First - Arun, Kiran; Last - Sasikumar

So, what’s in a name? Nothing much; just a means to waste everybody’s time or if you hate doing that, a means to get stranded in the middle of nowhere. I had booked a shuttle from the SFO airport to my hostel when I booked my flight tickets. It was an Orbitz voucher that I could have redeemed at the airport, provided I had a printout of the receipt. But well, being a footnote in a long confirmation email, that was one point I missed till it was too late.

I landed a little before 9 pm and about half an hour later found the SuperShuttle stop outside the airport. I approached the friendly looking SuperShuttle employee near the stop and mentioned that I had forgotten the printout of my confirmation. That was fine, he said. All he needed was my name. I gave him my last name. He found it in his system without much delay. Just to confirm he read out my first name. It sounded about right. Something was off, but this was not the first time some one had totally killed the pronunciation. It ended with “run” and that was good enough for me. Next, he asked me for my destination. I started with the address, but as soon as I was done with the street name he cut me off. I suppose he was satisfied that I was the right customer.

A few minutes later, a shuttle shows up. The employee points me towards it and along with 5 other passengers, I head out. The driver reads out everyone’s names. Once again, he kills my first name. Ends with “run”, same last name, no issues. And, off we go.

Fortunately, I wasn’t tired and was paying attention to the road signs. My first indication that something was wrong was when I see signs for San Jose and San Francisco side by side and we followed the road south from the airport. All right, maybe we are taking a short detour to drop another passenger off, I thought. Fair enough! I waited for 5 more minutes and I realized that we were still heading south. Road signs for Half Moon Bay were becoming more and more prominent. Thankfully, I had been here twice before to know that Half Moon Bay was definitely south of SFO. Just to clarify, I asked the girl sitting next to me where we were heading. Away from SFO - definitely. I spent half a minute evaluating my options and then I informed the driver. I was apparently being taken to Sunnyvale, as another Mr. Sasikumar had made this reservation. Fortunately, everyone on the shuttle was patient enough to let the driver take me back to the airport.

I later realized that being an Orbitz voucher and not a direct reservation on the SuperShuttle website, I was not even in their system. So yeah, all this was partly my fault. In my defense, though, if not for the namesake I would have known that my reservation was not valid before I was even on board the wrong shuttle. I would have asked if anything could be done without the printed voucher and they would have said no, I would have chastised myself for being an idiot and wasting 20 bucks, made a new reservation and just reached the hostel without any drama. No story there!

Funny thing is, my last name is not really that common in India. At the least it is not a generic caste/community based name that a million people share. Still, if this happened in India I could have understood. I would think that the odds of this happening in the US is real slim. However, sometimes random coincidences can put you in a real pickle. As a side note, to put the randomness into perspective, the other passenger has my brother’s name. In any case, one thing is for sure now. I am never again going to assume people are mispronouncing my name.

So, what’s in name? Just a means to waste everyone’s time in this case, but, for all you know, there could be a contract out on someone that shares your name, and for the sake of argument let us assume that the assassin is a racist who cannot distinguish between Indian faces. I suppose, you will be left wondering, for a split second, when you feel that bullet go right through your head.

The Antarctica Chronicle

Hello everybody. Back here after a long while. Research has finally shown some positive signs and I am hoping to graduate soon. But I am not here to talk about research. Right now I am sitting in the den of Cruz del Sur, a nice homely hostel with a dog named Kren, in the town of Ushuaia in the Tierra del Fuego province of Argentina. In three days time I will be catching the expedition ship ‘Ushuaia’, crossing the Drake Passage, exploring the Weddell Sea and docking at various points on the Antarctic peninsula and the South Shetland islands.

Yes, Antarctica!!! I hear you ask the inevitable question, one I have heard several times over the last one year, when my friends and I started planning for the trip - why Antarctica? Honesty, I don’t know what else to say, other than, why not; and then point you to Ernest Shackleton and the ill-fated loss of Endurance followed by the daring  rescue, Amundsen and Scott’s expedition to the South Pole; and, if the pleasure of travel and sense of wonder seeing new places doesn’t do it for you, then I’ll show you this photo. Actually, forget the rest. The photo alone should do.

Courtesy: http://antarcticjourney.wordpress.com/

Make no mistake, it is an expensive, most likely once-in-a-lifetime trip; and, a proper chronicle or diary is a must when it comes to these once-in-a-lifetime affairs. So with multiple follow-up posts that’s what I’ll do. Right now, I’ll sign off with the following photographs from the very windy Ushuaia.

One day, maybe I’ll climb some of these

It must be wonderful living in such a cradle

Looking at the southern most tip of the Andes

Ushuaia

The road less travelled

Well, this week I am cheating; sort of at least. The post this time is about a place I haven’t been to yet. It’s more like a build up to, hopefully, my thanksgiving weekend upload. Oh boy, am I taking this road in a couple of weeks?

Connecting Newfoundland and West Milford in New Jersey runs the 10-mile stretch of Clinton Road. What’s special about the road? Watch this.

The video is a segment from a Travel Channel series on the “Most Terrifying Places in America”.

The road has been associated with paranormal activities for over a century. Stories of the phantom truck, weird animals, satanic rituals and frozen dead bodies have had plenty of people scared. Some of the above stories are true, like the serial killer “Iceman” using the roadside for dumping his victims. Reports of KKK activity also have some substance. Everything else is so unbelievable and severely exaggerated that the trip could end up to be damp squib.

In any case, the general endorsement is that it is a scary, creepy, isolated road. The road essentially winds through a desolate woodland in the middle of nowhere. There are no connecting roads or homes along the road. So what do you expect, especially at night? It is said that you essentially have a spine-tingly feeling while driving down this road raising the hair along the nape of your neck. This one, I have to check out.

Does this ring a bell?

I can afford to procrastinate no more. The deadline is fast approaching. Earlier, each time stared at the blank screen of my would-be thesis, I would end up working on a new blog post. Not this time. This weekend, I finally managed to finish a major chunk of my candidacy report. On the flip side, though, I haven’t got time to work on this week’s post. So it’s a short one this time, just one photograph in fact.

Does this photograph ring a bell? It’s an easy one. Think LA. Think Movies. Shoot away in the comments box. I’ll update the post with the answer on Thursday.

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Apologies for the delay. Today was one of the rare day’s when I felt good about my research and wanted to fully utilize it. Now, the photograph; the answer is already down there among the comments.

It is the aqueduct immortalized by Terminator 2. Watch it again here. One final thing, remember the place where the truck jumps into the canal. The above pic was shot from roughly the same location.

New Orleans Slideshow

New Orleans, Louisiana

Dec 31st 2010 - Jan 3rd 2011

It’s been close to ten months now since the NOLA trip. A lot has transpired over that period - a few ski trips, hikes and a leap of faith. Yet, those three days in New Orleans are still fresh in my mind. No doubt this post is long overdue. The trip was decided on a whim, and with minimal planning I set off from the dull university town of Troy in the wee mornings of 31st December 2010.

New Orleans was catastrophically impacted by Hurricane Katrina which has been described as “the worst engineering disaster in the world since Chernobyl”. Though many of the residents had evacuated by the time the hurricane approached at the end of August 2005, and flood walls and levees had been constructed by the US Army Engineer Corps, the flood protection system failed catastrophically resulting in countless deaths. Many are still unaccounted for.

The damage to the city can still be seen. But as society is known to do, the city recovered and is still very much a party town. The city ‘takes almost any occasion for an excuse for a parade, a party, and live music, and in New Orleans most events often have a touch of Mardi Gras year round’. Like they say, “New Orleanians are either planning a party, enjoying one or recovering from one” [Source]. That makes NOLA a great place to welcome the New Year.

New Orleans is a vibrant city, colorful and a true melting pot. Here’s a slideshow of some of the pictures I took. The background score was made while fiddling around with Apple’s Garage Band. If it sounds, in part, to anything you have heard before, blame Apple :)

This was my first attempt at something like this. It took longer than my usual posts but working on it helped me perk up after a rough week. Do let me know what you think and if it’s a good idea or not to make travelogues in this form.

Cheers and have a wonderful week.

Those pesky tourists!!!

Big city residents have always had a love-hate relationship with tourists, the affair skewed more towards the latter with the former being nothing more than a fleeting endearment. The sheer number of tourists adds to the popular appeal of the city and who doesn’t love it that their home is famous even in obscure parts of the world. Yet, with noisy tourists stopping and pulling their cameras out every step of the way disrupting the hectic life of the big city residents, it is no wonder that pesky tourists are a thorn in the sides of the denizens who call the city their home.

Here’s an Improv Everywhere prank that essentially taps into the resident-tourist relationship. “New york city resident? No. Please go in the tourist lane so you can click pictures, go slow, go to sleep, whatever tourists do”, says an agent. “As a New Yorker I appreciate this”, a passer-by responds.

All of us would have had some experience in this regard, either as the pesky tourist or as the heckled resident. Here’s one of mine.

Location: the Golden Gate bridge, west side lane. It was windy and cold. However, the view was so beautiful that we had decided to brave the windchill and walk across the bridge. Once at the middle we set our camps and were enjoying the sunset; a group of five. Oblivious to the lack of other tourists on the bridge we spent our time looking west, mostly in silence. I was engrossed with my Canon capturing the orange sky, experimenting with different exposures.

Someone shouted, “watch out!’. I took a step back just as a cyclist shot past through the same spot I was standing on a split second earlier. I looked up and left towards the cyclist only to catch him glaring at me. If looks could kill! He was kind enough to not say anything but his eyes betrayed his thoughts. ‘Damn you tourists. One day you’ll kill somebody.’

Apparently there were signs that said  ‘Cyclists: West-side. Pedestrians: East-side’. Confused tourists that we were we had missed these signs and strayed into the cyclist lane. Undoubtedly it is people like us that grant legitimacy to the Improv Everywhere prank. As Mayor Bloomberg commented at a press conference later, “When I saw it I said, ‘Oh! That’s a nice thing to do.’ I thought it was very cute.”

Now as I was saying, all of us might have some story or the other to share in this regard. The comments box is open. In the meantime, listening to Shpongle and working on my doctoral thesis, I’ll be waiting for your reply.

Cheers.

Conquering America's First President

3rd September 2011

The forecast was for rain. With Mount Washington known for its erratic weather and super-strong winds, this is one piece of information never to be taken lightly. Yet, five hours into the drive from Troy, the night gradually turning into day, we were greeted by beautiful views with just intermittent spots of rain clouds. There was some occasional meek lightning trying to scare us, but more or less we were increasingly feeling confident that the weather wasn’t going to deteriorate on us so much that we would have to call-off the hike.

There were ten of us in three cars. Roughly half past six, as soon as we turned into the parking lot at Pinkham Notch visitors center it started to pour. It was coming down strong. Distant rumbles could be heard as well. It was a rancid welcome, no doubt. We were at roughly 2000 feet elevation. If it was bad down here then the summit (6288 feet) could be deadly, the ascent tricky and dangerous. We had a decision to make.

Interstate Dictionary

Courtesy Google Images

Gawker Delay (noun) /ɡɑːkə(r) dɪˈleɪ/

Traffic backed up for miles because people are slowing down to look at an accident scene. The subsequent delay may be an hour or longer depending on the traffic.

The congestion,if in the lane running opposite to the accident and on a summertime Friday afternoon, is unnecessary and thus unbearable. "People are people," shrugs Fred Feldman, a New York traffic engineer. "Even when a guy knows that rubbernecking made him sit for half an hour in traffic, when he gets up to the scene he'll be damned if he's not going to take a look himself." (NY Times Archive [1993])

Alternate names: rubber necking, gaper block

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Came across this word courtesy Hari Acharya. An accident on I-495 South on 12th August significantly slowed the northbound traffic, something we could have done without in our drive to Mt. Katahdin, Maine.

As a side note with irrelevant information, the second car in our group was a Toyota Sienna.

The Terminal

It was a beautiful Sunday evening. I had made it. For a while, stuck in traffic, it almost seemed like I would miss the check-in. I had a presentation the next day; at the MRS Spring Meeting in San Francisco; and, I was rushing to catch the last flight of the day. But, the jam on Interstate 405 cleared just in time and now there I was, staring at the screen wondering what my next response should be.

The machine had tentatively allotted me an exit seat and had popped the question, “Would you like to confirm the seat?”. I have travelled on exit seats before. You get  extra legroom as a compensation for the rare possibility that you may have to assist the stewardess in case of an emergency landing. Considering that you have a greater chance to have a road mishap than one in the air, it’s a good deal, I would say.

However, on a whim I clicked the button that showed ‘No’. The machine took a while searching for other available seats and with each passing second a pang of regret grew inside me. After a few moments of deliberation the machine responded, “Owing to a high booking on this flight today, we regretfully inform you that you have been placed in the waiting list.”

I proceeded to Gate 54A. As per the schedule, there still was half an hour before the gate opened for boarding. I could still obtain a boarding pass provided there were a few cancellations. I found a seat near the gate and engrossed myself with the presentation, adding a few finishing touches. I couldn’t help taking frequent glances at the screen in front. My name appeared towards the end of the waiting list...

... Ten minutes till take-off. Most of the seats around are vacant. I look up at the screen. Many illustrious names are off the list but I am still on it. The queue of passengers waiting to board is short now. Soon, I shall know.

Fingers crossed, I dive back into my laptop. Thoughts of a missed presentation and an upset boss start swirling in my mind, when I hear a sweet voice. “Hello mum. I am boarding now. I just called to let you know I love you, in case I die.” What is she doing; scaring her mother like that? Maybe they are that close.

Wait a minute. Probably she knows something other passengers don’t. The trailer of Final Destination 5 flashes in my mind as I think, “Bloody hell! I’ll catch the first flight tomorrow morning.” In times like these you never know.