Thailand Tour, 2018

Representative Temperature
for our Tour Duration: Dec 14-20.

Phuket, Bangkok & Pattaya 

ravel 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.

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

irthdays 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.

Silicon Valley, 2.0.

fter spending about 2.5 years in the Seattle area, I'm back in Silicon Valley, in Northern California. Seattle region is a good place to be; some people even have called it the next Silicon Valley. The lush greeneries everywhere throughout the year have even provided a tag line for Washington State: The Evergreen State.

Why this turnaround?

From a Future Owner of a Tesla Model 3.

veryone has a reason to buy, or acquire, what they wish for.

Most of the things we buy routinely are the ones that we need in our daily lives: groceries, clothes, ...

And, then, we have the big-ticket items such as homes, cars, ... Note that some of these big-ticket items, we don't have to buy; we can rent. Cars are more of a necessity in some parts of the world although, if the Ubers and Lyfts and have their way, even those can be rented as the need arises. (There are taxis, of course).

Why this long preface?

Down the Memory Lane at Airlines Hotel, Bangalore.

You listen to an inspiring convocation speech by Nani Palkhivala for your engineering graduation. Commencement, they call it, in America. You move on to go for a celebration dinner. To Airlines Hotel. Masala Dosa, ice cream and the whole bit. The prime mover, and sponsor, for this kind of graduation celebration, was my uncle, himself an engineer.

That was January 1972.