Hawa-i-i & Thanksgiving! - Phase 1 - The landing, the sighting and aha, that setting!

This phase is my favorite. (no wait, I think Phase 2 was. no, I dont know. ok, I give up. I loved all of them :| )

Day #1 - Thursday
We also had a lot of those "aha" moments on our trip. Aha#1: We couldn't reserve seats ahead, but because we were on the same reservation, they put us together and upgraded us to a Premium Economy seats (:D) with a window. We were flying even before we started flying. :\

The actual moment set in as soon as we boarded the Hawaiian Airlines flight and the hostess greeted us with an "Aloha" - yes, that was basically where it all started - the Hawaiian saga of our lives.

The magazine teasing us with what lies ahead

The screens playing Hawaiian music

Kokua = help (sorta, read this for deets)

Bye-Bye SFO, Aloha ocean?!! We'll come back soon, hopefully!

And then, until we were 10 minutes away from the destination, our view looked pretty much like:

At T-10, it changed - our first sighting!

And we landed.

You get the Hawaiian vibe the moment you land - the airport looks super rustic, kinda like a bus station in remote India, IYKWIM.

We went to pick up our car next. And looked for some upgrades. We found all compacts/intermediates/full size vehicles - no real upgrade worthy vehicles (I'd craved for a convertible when we were originally reserving the car, but had to compromise for economic reasons).
We picked a car and just when we were driving out, we sighted a Mustang convertible drive into the lot and our hearts started beating 10x faster. We spoke to the guy and we got it!!! (Aha#2)

look at that beauteeeh! (we did better photography later)

We were hungry by then. Went ahead and looked at yelp places. "Thai Me Up!" was a popular food truck, we wanted to try but given it's thanksgiving, nothing we wanted was open. 

We drove around Kahului looking for places one after the other on Yelp and were disappointed. 

Finally, found a whole foods store and got in there to grab some food - 30$ for 2 small salads. -_- That was unnecessarily pricey. 

Tip#1: "Do NOT go to wholefoods when in Hawaii"

30$ for that - seriously wholefoods??

Destination#1: Iao Valley state park and Waihee Ridge trail

We wanted to spend the rest of the day on the central/western side, thus paying respects to the customary "needle" of Maui and head to Lahaina by the night

The Needle, Iao Valley State Park

Struck by the Maui Greens

We met some interesting acquaintances on the way.

Hi Mr.Pea & family

Aloha Horsie

And there was Mr.Moo, Birdies and etc. We bade them all a farewell and headed to our home for the night at Hyatt, Lahaina. 

We also found a juice truck on the way!! (Olowalu Juice Stand) and had fresh pineapple and sugarcane juices. YUM. but we realized later that this was a bait for tourists - so overpriced, OMG. 

There are so many other options, serving the same stuff for a much better price. Don't get fooled like us if you are there next. 

Until the next phase, 

Mahalo!

Shamp

Hawa-i-i & Thanksgiving! - Phase 0 - The Planning

Time for a life status update - I've graduated to an Mrs now. (micdrop, ha!)

Husband & I realized we never got to go on a "honeymoon", so it was time to make plans for one. Also factoring that we didn't plan a vacation in ages, we decided to get on it for the Thanksgiving holiday this year and call it it.

There's a ton of places to consider - and given our contrasting opinions - it took a while to freeze on one. After a lot of debates, googling, weather lookups, one or two fights - we finalized Maui, HI. The flights were expensive, but not exorbitant. Although November wasn't considered a great month to visit cuz the rains, Maui(or Hawaii in general) is so well-structured geographically that, there's always a sunny side on the island. Mind blowing, eh? Same here, until I actually saw that with my eyes from the flight the day we landed.

Maui's geography is a stunner - it has mountains consisting of the Haleakala crater, clear, warm beaches, thick tropical forests, vegetation, grasslands - oh, you name it, you have it.

Our Maui trip went through certain phases and I'll summarize each in a post.

• Phase 0: The Planning
• Phase 1: The landing, the sighting and aha, that setting! 
• Phase 2:  WAAAAAATTTT-ERRR
• Phase 3: Do we have to go back?

Phase 0: The Planning

In a gist: there were lists, lists of lists and then, there were none.
This is literally how our planning phase progressed.

I had a "Maui: To Book", 2 "Maui: Potential things to do", 2 "Maui", 1 "Maui: Itinerary" which had multiple sublists and an email that listed out these itineraries to the Husband. We pondered over what to do, when to do what, and how to fit all of it in - lots of research, asking around (I literally asked everyone in my office if they went and what they did if they did go - ofcourse, my office everyone is about 10 people, so.) Anyway, I really wanted to see all of it and make the maximum of going there.

We had about 4.5 days in Maui to be precise.

Our original itinerary looked somewhat like this:

Thursday: 

Iao Valley State Park, Waihee Ridge Trail, explore Kahului.

Halt in Kahului for the night

Friday:

Early morning head to Haleakala Summit

Head to Lahaina

Saturday:

Start to Hana
Pua'a Ka'a State Wayside

Waianapanapa State Park

Go around Kipahulu, Pipiwai Bamboo Trail

Any other trails

Halt around Keokea or Kula

Sunday/Monday:

Chill

Halt at Lahanai/Kapalua

And then realized we missed the biggest part of going to Hawaii - Water stuff.
Our itinerary then looked like this:

Thursday: 

Iao Valley State Park, Waihee Ridge Trail, explore Kahului.

Halt in Kahului for the night

Friday:

Start to Hana
Pua'a Ka'a State Wayside

Waianapanapa State Park

Go around Kipahulu, Pipiwai Bamboo Trail

Any other trails

Halt around Keokea or Kula

Saturday:

Early morning head to Haleakala Summit for Sunrise

Stay in an AirBnB in Wailea 

Sunday:

Molokini Snorkeling

Head back to Lahaina
See a Luau

Monday:

Breakfast 

Head out to Airport

Looking at this in the map, we realized our total driving time was about 5-6 hours per day.
And that we didn't have the time to sit on the beach and read our books or chill in a fancy resort - and that this was important for our vacation.

So here is what we did after that thought.
Booked Hyatt in Lahaina for all the days and rented a car. Period.

If you ask me, this is what everyone should do when planning for Hawaii. Book a place for all the days and do what you feel like on the day. You can always do what you didn't do the next time, coz trust me, there will almost always be a next time.

But I should say, doing the research helped - helped figure out what was in store and what were the options. It's better to know your options atleast :) We listed those out in one final list that looked now like this:
Papaya
Pineapple - Dole plantation
Coconut water
Eat fresh from a farm
Kahului village
Molokini Snorkeling
Massages
Hotel day - swim in the resort pool
Tour of the stars
Luau
Cruise
Iao Valley sunset - maybe on thursday?
Star gazing on the beach
nutcharis thai cuisine
banana bread aunty anne's ?


These were things we wanted to do and we'd decide when to do what after we reach.
We also did book our snorkeling trips in advance on Friday and Saturday - one was a groupon that we came across and another was the Molokini Snorkeling that had to be booked, else given its a long weekend it could get filled up. Didn't really think much about when, just picked a day and booked it.

Now, our planning took a different turn, where we were checking out what to do at the hotel, and finding activities we were interested in. Realized there was a Luau the hotel offers for Saturday night. So we booked that as well in advance, just to be sure.

But that's about it. We didn't plan anything else - no crazy drives, no breezy hikes, no bueno.

And that was the best thing we did, we figured later on. We didn't really need to do the advance booking on the ones we did either, there are so many "special offers" or other promotions that you can avail onsite and that you can only do when you reach. So I'll give you the best tip for planning any Hawaiian vacay:
Tip#0: "do NOT plan, pen some options down and relax" :)  

This will make more sense once I complete my story.
Mahalo for reading!
Stay tuned for the rest,
Shamp 

Shanghai 日记 (diaries) - Part 2 - The one with memories & mala

Been a while, huh? This probably will be the penultimate part, or maybe even the last one.

Tomorrow will be the last working day for us (me & two colleagues - let's call them R & K) in China. After that, we pack bags to go back to the States. (does it feel like going back home? R, who's also from India - & I were discussing the other day about how time changes the way you feel about a place.)

Going back two weeks to after we landed, as part of our work here, we went to visit SJTU the day after - Shanghai Jiao Tang University - apparently one of the best universities in the country - it did look like that - huge campus, nice buildings spread apart in the lush greens in the suburbs of the city. Felt a bit nostalgic looking at the university atmosphere - damn, will be 10 years since I started college - time doesn't fly, it probably takes Musk's hyperloop.

Lunch that day was McD - can't go wrong, no? Well, I got fries. Can't go wrong.
R & K got chicken burgers.
We got our food. and guess what: the bun was BLACK! What?!
Yeah, apparently they add squid ink to the bun to colorize it. (Why would you do that? Why?) Look at this for any further deets.

Anyway, I was still super hungry after dowing a medium fries. (ugh - apparently those suckers count to 700 cals already - ugh) A colleague took me out to hunt some food and we found this:


Its kinda like a sweet grapefruit - very very staple in China.

After such an erratic lunch, we finished up our work, said our byebyes to SJTU and headed out to the countryside outside the university.

It felt very India like - bikes on the roads, chaos everywhere. The only major differences being that most bikes are electric, I think I haven't seen any gas/petrol based bike here. Also, the honking is minimal - need based - unlike in my country where honk represents your presence on the road, quite literally.

Now we get to the best part of the day - probably the whole trip infact. MALA. Damn.
Mala is a type of Chinese sauce used in hotpots/dry pots to grease veggies, meats, etc. It's legendary. Please go try some mala if its available where you are right NOW. You are welcome.

And this is the genius that served us our mala dry pots.

A very tiny but yum place.

We headed over to do the touristy things after. Went to the "Bund" to see the famous Shanghai tower - the second tallest building in the world, next to the Burj.

On one side is the Shangri-la (left), on the other is the Shanghai tower (right). Couldn't entirely guage their enormity because of the bright/distracting lights. We thought we'd go over again during the day and see if we can get a better view.

Did some shopping around for a bit on Nanjing Road - a very chinese international shopping street - not that intriguing.

Well, I knew I was fighting a lost battle when I started writing this post and it turns out I was right. The VPN is getting back at me real hard.
I'll leave it here for now and get back with another post about adventures in Suzhou, tianzefang, and others.

Ni Hao? [This is a Chinese greeting in person - an equivalent of Hello. It literally translates to "you good?" Also, the greeting on phone is different - its "Wei" - do not ask me why]

Xi Xie, Wan Shang Hao! (first post's signature was atrocious, lol - getting better at it yo!) Means "Thank you, Good evening!"

K Bye,
Shamp

Shanghai 日记 (diaries) - Part 1

Thanks to my new job, I've been traveling. First to the east coast, which I'm not sure why I didn't blog about - was a very interesting 5 week trip - for being in the east for the first time.

Now, across Pacific in Shanghai.

Even before I talk about Shanghai, the most intriguing part is the prep before travel. Lot of people talking lots of things - some know it, some heard it, some assume - but anyway, I was warned, especially as a vegetarian. So the most important part of my packing was:

And the other was VPN. Damn, nothing works in China - google, Facebook, or ANY thing else. We had to go around and do some hacks to figure something out - download WeChat, setup family on that, etc.

Coming back to Oct 22nd 4:20 PM, we set out on our big journey and after a dueling 13 hour United flight, finally landed in one of the biggest cities in the world.

Got a taxi from the airport. One striking thing is how the drivers have a thick plastic and transparent shield around them. It probably does make sense if you think about it.

So we reached pretty late, around 12:30 AM and thought we were too tired to let jet lag get to us. 

I woke up to find out that I slept for an hour. Drag. And slept again.

The hotel we were put up at is a pretty international friendly one. We got good breakfast, worked out a bit in the fitness center, and headed out for a first day in Shanghai office.

It was our team lunch day! So my teammates being so nice as they are took us to The Buddha Tree, a vegetarian restaurant! (WTH, yes, these exist in CN)

GREAT food - all the myths busted. 

I loved the fried chicken equivalent. YUM.

The other interesting part of lunch were the drinks - 

I loved the one on the left - its called 'red bayberry' juice. the right is the passion fruit + something else - meh. But the left one was amazing. A teammate told me its an anyday solution to stomach/bowel problems. :D

Went back to work, fighting sleep. Oh, and got boba on the way! Well basically got lemon green tea with coconut and grass jelly. The tea had a pretty strong and intense taste here - goood.

In the evening, we were back out to feed our stomachs. We went to this place called 'cabin in the woods'.

The last photo is about the Chinese baijiu (literally meaning White (clear) alcohol). Its a 52% - YEAH. These guys are pretty strong and can stomach it pretty well.

The 3 sips I had were enough to get me go LA LA.

Oh, and the other interesting thing I saw one of my teammates use is a massage hammer. Damn that thing is sooo gooood for your back. (one souvenir down and I know for who too. ;) )

                                  

Here's the link incase: http://www.alibaba.com/product-detail/custom-wooden-massager-natural-wood-massager_60608000970.html

That's probably enough for day1.

Stay tuned for more!

Si Sie, Wine Shang Haoooooo

Shamp

Loss

Your love.
Your strong, secure hug.
Your assurance.
Your love.

My chance to have held you
My chance to have you see me grow
My chance to have you around
My chance to make you proud
My best friend
My soulmate
My strength
My faith
My world

And

You, Dad.
Forever.

Loss can not be described. Its too much to even be felt all at once. It's felt in stages, in moments.

#(I dont care anymore) The entropy and the reality

Sometimes, I feel that both of them are actually very synonymous. If anything is going to be real, its going to be so full of entropy.

Anyway, that discussion aside, this semester is heating up pretty fast, I think it already has. I have a Machine Learning assignment due on the 24th, gave a quiz day before, turned in an assignment today, graded two different classes (oh, I need a separate post to rant about that ) and along with these, the part-time venture which I totally relish, and a job search (sigh, are you panting too? )

Being busy is good, its something I like, and my mind is happier that way. Now, what's mind and how its different from brain is for some other day to talk about. So, life is ok, if not for that element of entropy I need to deal with - the future prospect. This is getting onto my nerves, I wouldn't have minded 10 more courses but the uncertainty is killing! Only because its not just me involved in the whole process, there are so many more minds and hearts that went into me being able to be here and doing what I am doing, believing in all of what I believed in. And that induced responsibility needs to meet a certainty whose existence I'm not really very certain of right now. I want to be, although I personally adore this world for its randomness. But personally comes always later.

That was as obtuse as I could get, huh.

Leaving that as is, there was a Google tech talk here @USC and they showed off some of their GoogleX projects and blah. The showstopper of the whole event was the number of students that turned up. The room was overflowing by 5:30 with the event starting at 6, (I think about 500 could fit in) and there were about 150 of them waiting outside. And it wasn't even a recruiting fair! What's with the craze!
I dont know what it's like or how it is to be there, but if there is such competition for whatever that is, then it brings a lot of questions to my mind. It takes me to Page & Brin. They are like the superstars of this web-tech cinema that we are envisaging.
Well, it had to be done eventually, if not by them, by someone else.
But what's commendable is them keeping that bar raised so high even after almost two decades, and driving the monopoly. Well, what can I say. I'm an avid googler and I enjoy every minute of it. So, am just thankful I've witnessed something like this. A story to tell the generations, eh? But somewhere inside, there is someone who whispers, 'Thats not urs, make one for urself.' And that's when thoughts break bonds and bounds.

They say its about following your dreams. I do have mine, and I want to see where they take me. We'll see.

Meanwhile, on another side of the universe, the moon's caught white and gay (sadly by a low-res camera), with the USC globe searing high and high.

#15 (?) A break, a change, a need

I've always tried to write my blog posts such that they be well-written, well-versed and well-behaved. But I think I've had enough of that. I'm going to start using my blog more as a blog from today on. Lets see how that goes, no promises yet.

So recently, I've seen the movie, 'Rajneeti' and it made me see 'The Dynasty: Nehru-Gandhi Story' and 'Operation blue star' back to back with the film. What amazes me is how we are so young in terms of the amount of freedom, we've got. We, referring to Indians. Its been half a decade, and so much has changed. Ofcourse, there are still parts that showcase the novelty but yet, it kept me wondering about how India was transformed  through the years, to the good and to the bad.

Mr.Nehru, or Chacha Nehru, when I read about him, seems like a hero - one who led the new-born country on a road that later took so many turns but still managed to mark its presence in the global traffic. Anyway, he as a person, and in my opinion, was certainly a hero, and he is going to stay in my thoughts for a real long time, irrespective of anything.

I read that he loved these of Frost's lines a lot:

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep

This is the complete poem written by Robert Frost, they were taken from:

Whose woods these are I think I know.   

His house is in the village though;   

He will not see me stopping here   

To watch his woods fill up with snow.   

My little horse must think it queer   

To stop without a farmhouse near   

Between the woods and frozen lake   

The darkest evening of the year.   

He gives his harness bells a shake   

To ask if there is some mistake.   

The only other sound’s the sweep   

Of easy wind and downy flake.   

The woods are lovely, dark and deep,   

But I have promises to keep,   

And miles to go before I sleep,   

And miles to go before I sleep.

I've known another of Frost's poems that was taught in one of my English classes, about the Road Less Traveled by, which probably is more popular. I'm gonna look out for more of his works.

Its thrilling when you look back and see that these people like Nehru were just a generation away, and they've truly lived over. I'm still trying to figure out my road, as the woods seem lovely, dark and deep. Will I ever find a way out? I'm not sure but somehow there is a small ray of hope that keeps me going, and I'm hopeful.

Miles to go.