Monday, May 29, 2006

Down to San Diego and hallo to Shamu

We celebrated the Memorial Day long weekend by going to San Diego on Saturday. Started the day by making Pasta ( food being the most important of all things) for lunch- from a Betty Crocker cookbook too- and it came out so well! As good as anything you'd get in a restaurant!

Then we took the bus down to Bundy- then the freeway bus to Union Station. The station which is in Downtown LA is really pretty. And right next to it is a little market in a tiny street with quaint old buildings - unfortunately there was no time to stop and shop - ah well, perhaps another day. But we wanted to take the Greyhound bus to San Diego, but turned out that was waaaay down the road, and no direct bus there. So we took a bus that went to 7th street, which is about 5 blocks from the Greyhound station. We passed the interesting part of downtown- little shops ans lots of tourists... then as we walked down 7th street things rapidly started getting shady- lots of homeless people - people shouting, leering... we just walked as fast as we could and never took our eyes off the road. That was probably the scariest experience I've had so far!

We were too late to catch the bus that we wanted to take- it left in 10 minutes and they had stopped selling tickets for it. So, not wanting to walk back the way we came we took a taxi back to Union station, and were we glad to get back to a halfway respetable area!

We gobbled up lunch while we waited for the Amtrak train to arrive- we'd made Pasta and brought it with us in the morning, and yummy Pasta it was too! Then we were on our way

The train took a wonderfully scenic route, and at long last we exprerience some of the summery weather that California is so renowned for. People sunning themselves on the beaches, playing beach volleyball, surfing, swimming, water-skiing, paragliding... all the world was a playground around us.

sigh... I'm never going to finish this blog, but I'm going to publish it anyway... suffice to say it was a great day and one I still rememer

Monday, May 15, 2006

Past, Present and Future

Right now I'm feeling terribly pleased with myself. I've been blogging for just over a year now and have averaged about a blog a week. Alas, output these last couple of months has gone down. Hopefully, now, with exams out of the way(project thankfully just don't create the same kind of stress- except Adaptive filters- but that's another story), I can start blogging regularly agian.

To update you on my latest movements- Appa and I went to Hollywood on Saturday- Appa was here on a business trip and stopped over with goodies as he made his way back to the Other Side of the World. And we went to Hollywood. No, Spielberg did not stop me on the street and ask me to act in his next movie and no I did not get asked out by Tom Cruise, but yes I did have an interesting encounter with a masked supervillain outside the Chinese Theatre.

There were superheroes as well, not that even one offered to save me- not Batman , not Spiderman nor Superman *sigh* it just isn't the same anymore for damsels in distress. Anyway I have a nice pic to show- with me with a plastic knife at my throat, artistically throwing my head back....

Ate at a MacDonalds. Was outraged to find that theyve removed Veggie burgers off the menu altogether! I mean Hallo? This is the 21st century! Vegetarianism, health foodism etc is in! What kind of idiot takes Veggie Burgers off the menu at a time like this( and me starving too!).

Though I haven't had time to blog recently, I have found time over the past 3 weeks or so to play the Da Vinci Quest every morning- 10 am Pacific Standard time. Pleased to say that I completed the first stage of the quest, now hoping to be one of the 100000 finalists that get an honest-to -goodness cryptex with which they do the second part.... and one winner gets all- trips to Paris, London, New York... a TV ,a Digicam.... well... that's like aimning for the moon, I'll be fairly content just going to the movie come Friday night.