Thought I would add some information about my home in the blog, since I have time and nothing really to do. Well lets start with the fact that most homes in India are built with bricks and concrete. There is no wooden roofs and hardwood flooring and none of that stuff really (you do see it some places but very rarely). Houses also have a lot of things like Marble and Granite and Tiles and wierd stuff like that.

 

My house was built by my late grandfather, and he was actually one of the founding members of the colony in which we live. It is about 45 years now, and about 9 years ago when we moved back from Indonesia, my father decided to renovate the 2nd floor of our house and add on a 3rd floor (it is very common and most houses have a basement too). So we live on the 2nd floor currently and currently have both the 1st and 3rd floor free (My parents are looking for new tenants for the 3rd floor to rent).

 

Anyways so as you can see from the pictures it is not entirely huge but pretty self sufficient. Houses built in India have a couple general rules. First all rooms must have a bathroom attached to it (not sure who made that one up). So in our house we have 3 bathrooms to go along with the 3 rooms. I don't know if there are other rules, but I know that has got to be at least one of them hehe. Otherwise its got everything a house usually has. In India it is too expensive to have Centrail Air Conditioners and things like that, so we have an AC in every room that we turn on and throughout the day we get by with coolers (they are huge fans that run air through the house after the air passes through streams of water too cool down a bit). We also have hired help, who are part of the family at least for us. They help us out tremendously and help with things like the cooking and cleaning and washing and basically everything else.

 

So yeah, not sure what else to say about the house, other than it is home. Not quite like the apartment but it is nice. One of the things I always grew up with is that my mom has always had a eye for things and manages to decorate the house well. She has picked up a lot of stuff from all the places that we have been too and some of the stuff in the house is a couple hundred years old, so I like some of this junk stuff (though if I call it junk in front of my mom, she gets angry).

 

Anyways thats it from me for now at least, hope you enjoy the pictures.

Now that I am home I get a chance to spend time with my pets. Unfortunately in Charlotte, I don't have any, I may get one soon, but nothing as of yet. So I love the fact that I can play with my dog and cat when I am at home. I love pets.

 

Oscar is my big dumb dog. Okay he is not really dumb, but he is big. He is a golden lab that my parents got as a puppy a couple years back. In 6 months he was full size because they fed him too much, but he is not fat and pretty energetic. My mom still calls him her baby though and although he is 2 and a half he acts like a puppy. He is completely spoiled though. He wakes up at 6 in the morning and when he is up he wants everyone else to get up to. Though my mom has trained him to get up closer to 6:30, he makes everyone run around him. He eats breakfast with my dad every morning, where as he eats my dads breakfast. My dad will have fruit and a sandwhich or something and it'll get served to him with 2 forks and my dad will basically keep giving Oscar fruit on a fork and he keeps eating it and then has most of the sandwhich. Throughout the day a load of snacks and lunch makes its way to him as well as whenever someone is eating scraps go to him. At dinner time he sits around the table knowing that my dad will  feed him at the table and basically in one word he is too spoiled. We had 3 trainers for him and all of them gave up on him. He does know the common things like sit and stand and lie down and shake, but if you are feeding him he gets confused sometimes. Ill tell him to lie down and he will put up his paw. hehe.

 

As for Tamarin the cat. I love him. He is from Indonesia and our neighbors had found him and raised him for a couple years. Then they were going to put him to sleep as they were moving to Canada and didn't want to take him with them because he would have been put into quarantine for 6 months just to make sure that no diseases and such were brought in with the pet. So my mom didn't want to see that happen and took him in. From there the cat moved with us twice in Indonesia and then traveled with our old dog (Pugsy) to India. I love Tamarin. Though I am slightly allergic to the hair, I still love Tamarin. Some people call him garfield, because when he sits in a corner he will prop himself up and just sit there with his belly hanging out. But he is getting old. Now he meows everytime he wants food, because it is on a counter so that the dog doesn't eat it, so we have to pick her up and put her on the counter so that he can eat. But he is smart. He used to be able to open doors (would jump and grab hold of the door knob and do whatever it took to open it), as well as when he was younger I would play so much with it and roll him into a ball and slide him along the floor and watch as he got up and came back for more. One of the things is that his previous owners had him declawed (it is cruel and shouldn't be done) and although Tamarin doesn't have claws, he will come up to you if he is angry and will slap you on the face. He does that often with the dog while the dog is running around and sniffing her while she is asleep.

 

Well I thought I would put up a bit about the pets. My site is not devoted to them, but I wanted to share some stuff about them, because I love them. Hope everyone likes the pictures. Missing Charlotte.

Hey Everyone. I made it to India, so this blog is coming live from India, well not really live, but you know what I mean. It is great coming home, and a lot has changed in a year and half since I was here last. So it is interesting catching up on everything that is going on.

 

Lets see, the entire trip process was great. The scariest part of it, was the car ride to the aiport  , but everything else was fine. The first flight out of Charlotte, we were on the runway and getting ready to take off, when the engines shut down and the captain came on the speaker saying that we are heading back to the terminal as we need to take on more fuel as our course has been changed. This was kind of freaky as all of us were trying to figure out why something like this would happen. We were also told in the announcement that the orders came from washington and were taking a slight detour of 100 miles. Well, anyways we did that and took off and landed in Chicago, and then I had a good 2 hours before my next flight.

 

Chicago has a really cool airport. I liked Charlotte's a lot better, just the way it is setup and having the round concourse, but Chicago's is split up and has a lot of little sections. The coolest thing I saw was something called Accenture and it was a touch screen TV that was located on one of the walls. You could walk up to it and start tapping away on the screen (which was like 15 feet tall by 30 feet) and then select news articles and things like that. It also had speakers directly above your head, so that you could hear what was being said and not really anybody else (Might not sound like anything, but it was just cool tapping away at everything on the screen and watching my news clips fly around, very geeky I know). Otherwise just walked around a bit and got ready for the next flight and then got the boarding call.

 

So we all get on the plane and then the doors close and everything is going well and then they start to back the plane out of the terminal. Then finally they stop after a minute and the Captain comes on the speakers saying that they need to do some work of the technical nature and we need to pull back into the terminal. We kept getting updates over the next 2 hours as we sat on the plane on the runway, just waiting. Apparently one of the valves was not closing properly and it took an hour to fix and another hour to get the paperwork done (Who knows). Oh well at least the flight was smooth, and got a chance to listen to music that I had on my IPod as well as got to watch a few movies. The best was RV. If you haven't seen it is great. I was laughing so hard, which was kind of sad, because everyone was sleeping as it was around 1 in the morning and I was wide awake. Anyways, the rest of the flight went well and finally landed an hour and half later than expected (we made up time in the air).

 

Well arrived and my family was at the airport. It was great to see them all and then we went home. Like I said a lot changed because I was having trouble remembering the roads and such. But it was a nice change. Got home and saw the Dog and Cat. Both of them still remembered me, so thats good. Otherwise it was a lot of fun, and it is great that I am here now. Sort of missing Charlotte and everyone there, but I will be back soon. Well more for later, when I actually get a chance to take some pictures of the place. Hope everyone is having fun with whatever else is going on there and see you all really soon  .

 

Sorry I have to do this guys, but I just found this too interesting not to talk about it. What is a Planet? What constitutes a Planet?

 

Planet as we have learnt from school is an object in space that is supposed to be larger than an asteroid or comet and be illuminated by a star (the sun) as it revolves around it. And we also have learnt that there are 9 planets in our Solar System. They are Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus (hahahaha), Neptune and Pluto.

 

Well that is all well and good but a year ago, another object was noticed in space (currently being called Xena) and is located much further than pluto. Now this is all good, but there has been much ooh and ahh about this new Celestial Body that there has been talk about making this the 10th planet.

 

Now that is huge. I mean we are talking about millions of books around the world which would need to be re-edited and published, articles, and a lot of other stuff which all say that there are 9 planets, and only 9. Scientists / Astronomers are currently meeting in Prague, which is the capital of the Czech Republic to decide on this issue.

 

One of the things they also plan to do is that they hope to come up with a better definition of a planet, in terms of how large a celestial body should be to be considered a planet. This issue has arisen up because Pluto is smaller than this new object Xena. So technically Xena should have a place in our books and be considered a planet. However, one of the things could be is to just forget about Pluto as it is smaller and get rid of it from all our books and make Xena the last planet after Neptune. This also brings up another issue as to now with newer technologies, we are able to gaze further into the stars, and other celestial bodies have been noticed, that could constitute as a planet. Some believe our numbers could grow to within the 20's.

 

Really interesting and in 12 days we should find out after the conference is over, what the final decision is. Is it 9 or 10 planets or even more, and is Pluto still going to be around.

 

Okay I guess this was pretty boring, but I thought it was pretty cool.

So I thought I would update the blog with something useless. Lets see this Work-Aholic is bored. I hate not working. Ever since college where I started my first job, I would always look forward to work than anything else. I skipped classes for work (I know it wasn't smart) but I really enjoyed working. Now while I am on vacation I am so bored that I just cannot get used to the idea of not working.

 

Oh well, at least it gives me a chance to catch up on a lot of random stuff. Started watching a lot of TV and catching up on a whole lot of Series. HBO on Demand is great and been watching reruns of The Sopranos (I love this show) and Deadwood. Plus getting a chance to watch all the movies I missed when they came out in the Cinema's. One of my favorites I have to admit is V for Vendetta.

 

What an amazing movie! I loved it because the story was awesome but also because of Hugo Weaving who stared as V. Now most people know him as Agent Smith from Matrix and Elrond from Lord of the Rings, and he was awesome in both movies but was really good in V for Vendetta. That movie had some of the best lines ever and I guess the way he says them is really interesting as well as the tone of his voice. If you haven't seen the movie I highly suggest you do, and if you loved The Matrix you will like this movie.

 

Otherwise besides movies I spend most of my time reading and just surfing the net reading and catching up on news of what is going on around the world. Other times I visit sites like http://www.pentrix.com/pentix/tricks/index.html which is a site that teaches a useless skill about how to spin a pen around your thumb. Now I know that is lame and I admit that, but I remember in high school and college there would always be one person in class who would be sitting there spinning their pen and I would think to myself that it can't be that hard, until of course I did it in class and it went flying and hit someone. So anyways its a useless skill but I got a lot of time on my hands.

 

Anyways not much else going on in terms of things to do. I leave for home in about 17 days. Should be interesting to go home. Last time I went was in December of 2004, so it has been a while.

 

Ill be back later to update the blog. Just was bored so I thought I would put a little bit up.