Saturday, July 25, 2009

Daycation to WashingtonDC


Going to DC all by myself, walking around especially on a weekday topped my TODO list ever since I quit my job a few months ago. However my only destination in mind, the Botanical gardens, didn't seem reason enough. Sometime last week while sitting in the Chiropractor's office,reading the washingtonanian magazine, a photo of Hill's Kitchen, a gourmet shop for your culinary needs finally helped me take the plunge.

I started my trip to DC at about 1.00PM. Reached Hill's kitchen around 2 and drooled over their lively selection for a while. Then wandered aimlessly around for a bit and realized that there were some really quaint and beautiful houses with well decorated pathways and creeper hugging walls in that neighborhood. I came across a house which had a huge apple tree in its tiny lawn. The house didnt look occupied for the moment but the apple tree hadn't let that get in the way, it was full of apples with umpteen of them strewn all around it. Though skeptical, I tread the fine line between being a bum, or just plain crazy and picked up a couple of apples that were close to the railing (Vinay and I enjoyed them that evening). I even earned a glare or two.
By this time my stomach was growling with hunger. I had packed myself a nice meal of cooked rice, egg kurma and potato fry. I sat beneath a tree in a public garden and had my lunch :). Always wanted to do that.

Next I walked to the eastern market which is a place to buy meat and other food stuff, like in the halcyon days, before the super markets took over.
This market had been closed for a while after a fire had gutted the place down but it was always a part of the DC culture and it was finally resurrected and reopened recently.

After my visit to the market I decided to have coffee in one of the local coffee shops, unlike the urban starbucks, this shop serves coffee in actual porcelain cups instead of paper cups with plastic lids. You could actually stir the coffee with steel spoons, aah how nice. The next 1 hour was spent happily reading "The Yacoubian Building" and enjoying coffee.

The trip concluded with me visiting the Botanical garden, a nice 1 1/2 hour at the American-Indian museum and then getting stuck in the notorious DC jam on the way home. Although I have lived near washington DC for about 5 years it was my first real date with it ever and I finally got to experience its true culture!

Thursday, July 23, 2009

Cut Copy Paste










Since I quit my job almost 3 months ago I have been experimenting with various things to see if anything is better than coding 8 hours a day :)
Being a big fan of Calvin and Hobbes I have been drawing some of my favorite strips.

My friend said you can draw! The software programmer in me responded, 'I may not draw but I can definitely Cut Copy Paste!'

Tuesday, July 07, 2009

Testing my patience



For the first time I am seeing any concrete results of my gardening effort and I am waiting to get my hands on them.
Its been almost 3 weeks and they refuse to turn red!

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Another Calvin and Hobbes drawing

 
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