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.

Divine Intervention, or Dumb Luck? At the Movies, Whistle.

Prologue

When I arranged my travel plans for Bangalore this summer, I had a vague discomfort that my return departure date was a Friday, July 12, and early in the morning. In spite of the fact that Bangalore visits are always enjoyable, and that you have to return to your Silicon Valley home some time anyway, I figured 23 days was good enough of a break from Silicon Valley. However, there was some nagging, indescribable, dissatisfaction.

Why?

A Reminiscing Visit to Cricket's Mecca, The Lord's.

A View of the J P Morgan Media Centre from mid-wicket¹.

There is always a tremendous excitement when you visit an important place with any worldly significance, and particularly if it has some personal significance. If you grew up with Cricket, as most kids do and as I did in India, you cannot but feel the excitement of any visit to the Lord's, the Home of Cricket.

The Pavilion End as seen from the Grand Stand.

The 21 Lord's pitches, as seen from
the J P Morgan Media Centre, the Nursery End².

An Open Suggestion to BBMP - On Parking & Living.

Every time I visit Bangalore, I feel an inner need to reflect on what particular work can improve life in Bangalore.

On this visit, one Bangalore fact that sticks out in my mind is its parking problem. Most roads in residential neighborhoods in Bangalore, are created by the Bangalore Developmental Authority, and have a 30' width, not including the space needed for drainage. So, if you leave about 5' on either side for pedestrians, you really only have about 20', or about 10' for traffic in one direction. (A frequently found sedan on Bangalore roads these days, such as the Maruti Suzuki SX4 Model, is 69", or nearly 6', wide).

But, the problem is that cars are frequently parked during the day on either side of the street, thus using up to 15' for the 30' width. Pedestrians thus are forced to walk on the asphalt, and this reduces the available asphalted portion for automobiles even further, to barely accommodate a moving car in a single direction.

What is the solution?

3 UVCE Alumni Friends at Mt. Madonna

When you meet friends from college days or from years past, the dimensions in which you can converse increase substantially. In the video shown here, which was taken when three of us — M. S. Chandrasekhar, K. Ramesh Babu & K. H. Sathyanarayana Rao, all UVCE graduates in Electronics & Communications Engineering (1971) — visited Mt. Madonna near San Jose, CA, you get a glimpse of that variety.

A Brief Visit to Madison, Wisconsin

Madison, WI, is a nice place to visit during early September. We went there to see some relatives as the primary purpose, and this blog post is to recount what we did during this sojourn.

Friday, 3 September 2010

1. General sightseeing in the town of Madison.


2. Taking in a concert by the group Nay Palm Bones at the School of Music in the University.