Saturday, December 29, 2018

Thailand Tour, 2018

Representative Temperature
for our Tour Duration: Dec 14-20.
Phuket, Bangkok & Pattaya 
Travel is generally a pleasant thing to undertake, and this winter's tour of Thailand is no exception.

My wife and I toured 3 cities, Phuket, Pattaya, and Bangkok, in that order, as can be seen in the Google Maps snippet on the right. Except for Pattaya City, which we reached by road from Bangkok airport, the other two places were reached by air.

Thanks to my wife who communicated for several weeks in finalizing the tour itinerary with the travel agency, which shall remain unidentified.

In general, we were surprised to observe that the cities were not particularly cleaner than those in India: It'd seem that most Asian cities share this property, save for those in Japan. (Disclaimer: I have only toured a handful of countries in Asia).

The temperature, it can be said, was generally hot and there was no need for me to have packed jeans at all! Shorts and T-shirts would suffice for all of these places, as can be seen from the screenshot of the watch face on my Apple Watch above.

Sunday, July 1, 2018

A First-Hand Impression of Driving the Tesla Model 3.

Birthdays are always nice.

As a kid belonging to a lower-middle-class family in India, I experienced birthdays always with a certain thriftiness: some new outfits, and a special sweet dish my mother would make to suit the birthday child's interests — usually my favorite ಕಡಲೇ ಬೇಳೆ ಪಾಯಸ for my birthdays — for the occasion. No cakes, no 'Happy Birthday ...' singing, etc., that is very much a modern cultural landscape in most households. Thus, imagine my excitement when very close to, and just days before my birthday in 2018, I got hold of my Tesla Model 3, delivered to our home. I was one of those who stood in line patiently for several hours on March 31, 2016, to register for a Model 3, based solely on a test drive of a Tesla Model S a few years earlier.