Ice Skating....

After years (at least four) of being "determined" about learning how to skate on ice, I have finally signed up for ice-skating lessons. Evidently, growing up in the tropical belt of our Earth in India, the only time I saw any "ice" was in my refrigerator. Hence it goes without saying that after arriving in the United States, when I saw people ice skating and enjoying it, I figured I should give it a try. Heck, it seems quite a bit of fun and as I later discovered, there's a lot of fun in enjoying a nice winter evening ice skating, followed by a hot cup of hot chocolate.

Now, I tried skating on ice on a few occasions. I must say I didn't do all that well, but I didn't suck either. On my first try, I was able to balance, stand, "navigate", and stand-back-up after falling. The craziest experience was in Moscow, where I went with my friends to the "Moscow Skating Rink", where people's skill ranged from a hardened hockey player to a pro-level figure skater. I was the only newbie, not to mention the only non Russian there. People were generally OK, but it was crazy to see a 4-year old whizz by, skating past me. I also skated here in Washington a few times, each time improving my walking abilities on skates and ice.

After much postponing, I decided to sign up for the ice skating lessons. There is a skating rink nearby, but their lesson schedules are out of whack, and they offer lessons only once a week. I found another rink that's about a 30-minute drive from my home; better still, they were offering lessons on a very convenient schedule!

I'm looking forward to making some progress in being able to skate on ice. Anything more than just walking on the ice would be just wonderful! Oh, if I could glide, slide, and actually skate, that would be pure bliss!

Fifteen minutes of Power-cut in the USA.

Sounds like a mystery novel title, doesn't it? Well, even though very rare, sometimes we lose power here in the USA (Yes!). Most of the times it is weather related. Like, for example, we had power loss for about 15 minutes and pandemonium ensued. While this had happened a few times, the yesterday's power cut gave me a chance to think about our collective dependency on electricity; we as a human race - well, most of the human race anyway - has become so "power"-dependent that it is superbly impossible to carry on the most minor tasks without electricity. Here were my experiences from yesterday:

The power went off at office. I looked around and before I knew every single UPS in the entire building started beeping. Annoying is a very simple word here. I shut down the computer and made my way out of my office, thanks to the emergency lighting that pointed me to the exit.

While walking out, I heard that people were stuck in the elevators and they were frantically dialing the emergency numbers. In the meantime, outside on the street, there were emergency vehicles - ambulances, fire trucks, etc - were running every which way with their noisy squeaky sirens on. As I started walking home (I live within a 5 min walking distance), I saw all the traffic lights not working. Usually in these situations, the intersection is considered an all-way stop and the first person reaching the intersection has the right-of-way. But then again, this is DC. Nobody bothered to slow down on the main streets, let alone allow peds to cross. I even saw cop cruisers just whizzing past (without lights or sirens). I finally was able to cross the street and took a look back...it was chaos! Sirens, emergency vehicles, people honking for not stopping, jeeez....it is just amazing to see how much our lives are inter-linked with electricity.

Photos from Orlando and Kennedy Space Center

Enjoy the photos from Orlando and Kennedy Space Center from my recent trip to Florida...

Orlando (Click here)




Kennedy Space Center (Click here)