It has been more than a year since I last posted on my blog (wondering if people still use blogs). The rate at which technology is changing, it doesn’t take long for something to new to become obsolete within a few years (in some case even a few weeks/ months). Considering how our lives have intertwined with technology in the last few years, and the amount of data that we are sharing, an incident like Cambridge Analytica was bound to happen. Even before the incident, I was thinking how much information about oneself    should even be on social media. I had linked my Facebook account with other websites, would constantly post pictures on Facebook and had even linked my website to Facebook. The Cambridge Analytica incident was the last straw for me in my relationship with Facebook. At the same time, personally, Facebook was becoming addiction for me. The first thing I would check after waking up in the morning would be Facebook, keep checking it frequently during day time and the cycle would continue during evenings, well into the night.

Once I heard about the incident, I actually decided to delete my Facebook account once and for all. It was just like that. I downloaded all my messages, posts, pictures and any other data which I had posted on Facebook over the years and simply deleted the account. Initially, I did crave for those notifications/ updates and it feel like something was missing. However, I am glad to see that phase didn’t really last long for me. It has been more than a year since I have deleted my account from Facebook and to be honest, it has been one of the better decisions that I have made. Does it mean I am not on social media? No – I still have my LinkedIn account, my instagram account and my rarely used twitter account. But the time spent on those websites is limited compared to the time I was spending on Facebook.

As anyone would know, any information shared on social media is going to remain on the Internet forever (which is why more and more employers are conducting social media checks during their pre-hiring process). Social media is here to stay and is also essential for many businesses. My $0.02 – post only necessary information and beware that anything that you post on the web, can be found, and used by anyone for/ against you.

We finally saw the movie Padman over the weekend and to be honest, it is one of the best Indian movies I have seen to date. This movie is inspired from the life of Arunachalam Muruganantham. Not a lot of directors would make a movie about this subject. However, it really shows that Indian cinema is evolving. Everything about the movie is just right – Akshay Kumar’s acting, direction of R Balki, the punchlines in the movie, the intro and the title song and the best part of the movie is the speech that Akshay Kumar gives before the United Nations. The speech is inspired by the Ted Talk which was given by Mr. Arunachalam and which I have viewed a couple of times before the movie came out, thanks to my wife. One day she just asked me about this guy and told me to listen to his talk on TedX. I was like why would I want to listen to a guy talk about sanitary pads. But once I listened to his speech, I was completely blown away. I am including the speech in this link for anyone who wants to listen.

Before marriage, I kind of knew about the “5 day” test match (term coined in the movie) that a woman goes through. But being raised in a society where such discussions don’t really happen – I wasn’t really aware of what a lot of women in our country go through. I used to observe that my mom wouldn’t open the temple doors when she was in those days and always used to wonder what is so impure about this. I have even questioned her a couple of times about this and her response has always been ” that’s the way it is”. A lot of women will not enter the kitchen during those days and again I couldn’t and still don’t understand the reasons behind this.

A lot of stigma is still associated when a woman enters her “chums” and this movie does a great part in addressing the hygiene part of it. A lot of women still use rags or old cloth etc. instead of sanitary pads and thus invite disease for themselves. Hopefully after watching this movie, and identifying that there are low cost options available, some of these women would switch over to sanitary pads for better health reasons.

In the previous post, I had described my experience of taking the first road trip in America, which was awesome by the way. In this post, I am going to share my experience of driving a left hand drive car for the first time.

A couple of weeks after I got my driving license, I decided to call one of the driving schools (Amar Driving School) in Jersey City for one of their one hour lessons. The driver arrived promptly at the said time and then we started the lesson. The first time I opened the driver side door (on the left) is when it hit me that – no more entering from the right as in India. The second key thing was the gear was on the right and not left, and the lack of need to keep the hand on the gear as the car was automatic. In India, I am used to driving a stick shift (manual gear) car, but in the US automatic is way to go and something that I wasn’t used to. We then started going over the controls in the car, and everything was other way around. The windshield wiper controls are on the right side and signal controls, headlights, etc. are on the left side. In India, they are on the opposite side. Keeping this in mind, we started to take car out of the building complex.

The first thing I had to do was to signal that I am going to take a left and I accidentally turn on the wipers (old habits die hard). I had told the driver that I was used to driving in India and the controls were on the other side, so when we approached an intersection he asked me to take a left. While taking the left, he told me to be careful and not turn in the immediate lane of oncoming traffic. In the US, the left turn is always wider and the right turn is immediate. In India it is the other way around (left turn is near and right turn is wider).  This is very important to keep in mind when driving in the US or in country where left hand drive is prevalent. I completely forgot this while I was driving in Niagara late in the night and entered the lane of oncoming traffic. But since it was very late and there were absolutely no cars, we didn’t have an accident. Once we took the left turn, I was driving normally and started to get the feel of the road and driving conditions. Driving is like swimming or riding a bike, once you learn how to drive, you can easily adapt to different cars and system. While everything was good, the instructor observed that I had a tendency to slow down at the intersection even when the signal was green, so he asked me to not do that as I could be involved in the rear end accident. I told him old habits die hard. In India, anyone can come from anywhere even when it is your signal to go and hence I was slowing down. He laughed and said that this is America and chances of something like that happening here were extremely remote.

The last thing he made me go over was the 3 point turn (K turn) and parallel parking. Apparently, knowing how to parallel park is actually tested when they issue license over here. The instructor got really technical about the distance between the curb and car and how to go about exactly parking the car. It was a very interesting lesson to say the least. Overall it was a fun one hour driving through the city and enjoying my first left hand car drive.

A couple of weeks back, we (Geeta and me) undertook our first ever road trip in the United States. We have always enjoyed taking road trips in India and we were itching to start taking road trips here too. Initially, I was very nervous since I have hardly driven in the US. However, Geeta convinced me to drive and what a drive it was. Prior to this trip, I had taken one 60 minute lesson with the driving school instructor after getting my license and was able to drive without any major issues on the road. There were a few minor issues, primarily, with me working out the vehicle details. In India, I drive a right hand drive, the car indicator is on the right side of the steering wheel, the windshield wipers are on the left, the left turn is a near turn and right turn is a wide turn. In the US, everything is the other way round, so getting used to the car panels and turns was something that required getting used to.

We booked a car through Hertz. Even though we had booked Toyota Corolla or similar, we ended up getting a Toyota Versa, which did result in a slight baggage problem. After resolving the baggage problems, we were finally on our way to Niagara Falls.We wanted to drive to a couple of places while we were en-route to Niagara Falls, hoping to see some Fall colors. The plan was to drive for a few hours, stay overnight at a hotel and then drive to Niagara Falls the next morning. However, we started late and it took us forever to get out of the Jersey City due to evening rush hour traffic. Once we left the city, the driving was much easier on the highway. The best part about driving on the roads in America is that everything is so organized – people drive in lanes, give signals when they change lanes, minimal overtaking from the right etc. However, that can sometimes also be the most boring part as the road gets monotonous. After taking a few breaks, we finally reached our hotel around 12:30 am and settled in for the night. We decided to stay at Days Inn at Hammondsport. It is a small town approximately 30 mins away from Watkins Glen State Park.

The next morning, we realized that once we reach Niagara, the car would be in the parking lot along with all our luggage in it. We weren’t too comfortable with the idea of leaving our luggage in the parking lot and decided to dump our luggage at the hotel where we we scheduled to stay at Saturday night. The weather at Niagara Falls was cloudy and was expected to clear only after 3pm in the afternoon and we didn’t want to visit Niagara in cloudy weather. So we decided to take a detour and head to Park Lake Motel, near Letchworth State Park. The ride was scenic and Motel was in a charming small town. We had our lunch quickly and drove towards Niagara Falls. We reached Niagara Falls around 4pm and the weather was just perfect – sunny skies with a little bit of cool air. We parked in the parking lot, took our parking tickets and headed straight for the Maid of the Mist boat ride. If there is one thing that you need to do while you are at Niagara Falls, please please please ride the Maid of the Mist. The ride covers three falls – The American Falls, The Bridal Veil Falls and The Horseshoe Falls. The views are majestic to say the least. The force of the Horseshoe Falls was so much that our boat was literally swaying even though we were quite far away from the falls. After covering the Falls, we stayed back to watch the Falls in the night and once again we were blown away by the grandeur of the Falls and its appearance in the night. We also walked over to the Goat Island and viewed the Horseshoe Falls in the lights and were completely blown away by the view.

After enjoying the Falls, we headed back to Park Lake Motel about hour and half away. The drive in the night was very tiring and because the roads are so monotonous, it can put any driver to sleep. I somehow managed to drive safely to hotel and we crashed for the night. The next day we decided to head to Letchworth State Park to check out the Grand Canyon of the East. The valley was just mesmerizing and the best part was we got to see the Middle Falls. Obviously after you have viewed the Niagara Falls, no other falls come as close to them. We spent the afternoon in the park, having a picnic and then decided to leave for home. The drive back home was good, however, the roads here do get very monotonous and at least I had to keep eating gum or chatting to not bore myself to “death”.

Overall the trip was extremely enjoyable. I enjoyed driving on the US roads and will write another post just comparing my driving experience based in India and US.

Last month me and wifey decided to visit Summer Film Festival at Bryant Park to experience an open air movie. We had been thinking to see a movie at Bryant Park for a long time and finally ended up going to watch the last movie of the festival – Dirty Dancing. I do not think we could have chosen a better movie to go to. We reached around 7pm at the Park and it was full of people. Most of them were sitting with their blankets spread out and had got their picnic baskets with food and drinks. We were finally able to find some space where we could lay our blanket and sit and eagerly wait for the movie to start.

The movie experience is just like what you experience in a movie theater – with trailers being played before the star of the movie. Just before the start of the movie, a lot of folks got up and started to perform a routine – like some kind of tradition before the beginning of the movie. I had never been to an outdoor theater before and was expecting to not hear any dialogues due to crowd noise. However, to my surprise the sound system was excellent and loud and I was able to hear everything clearly. Since this a cult movie, a lot of folks had already seen this movie (many times, I believe), knew what was coming next and were hooting, whistling and shouting at many scenes. We had not seen this movie before and this is what made our experience even more enjoyable. The best part of the evening was during the end of the movie when the song “I had the time of my life” comes on and everyone started shouting. Some people got up and started dancing on the song, what followed was just magical. Pretty much everyone in front of us, behind us started to get up and started dancing to the song. This was like an unplanned flashmob and the most spontaneous bunch of people (more than 1000) dancing at the same time. Not to be left behind, we also started dancing along with them and enjoyed the evening. A couple of folks also told me that they had been coming to the Summer Film Festival for over 10 years and they hadn’t seen anything like this before and they don’t expect to see anything like this again. I am not sure if I would have experienced something like this in another city. This experience is going to stay with me for a very long time.