SEA-huddle

"The last peanuts are the most remembered" - Dr. Kumaraswamy, former professor at HCE.

Its been an eventful trip to Seattle, but unfortunately, I will perhaps only remember the tail end of it, which was eventful but nonetheless not so good. Let us get back to the beginning before we reach the end though!

Subha drove out of the parking lot nervously on the Honda Civic in what was her first meaningful assignment with the car! Well... not so meaningful if it just means dropping me off :-) What made it tougher was driving back home without me. She did both of these just fine, even as I was nervously pacing down the aisles in Concourse B at DFW. I was much relieved to hear that they got back home safely.

So, I was on my way then, armed with "You're hired" by Bill Rancic, Apprentice -1. Almost 2/3rds of the 700 mile flight between DFW and DEN went in reading about half the interesting book. I learnt a lot from it and learnt to trust my instincts and take risks. I could identify a lot with Bill and the way he thought about several things at the same time. But before I could get into further identification, I dozed off at page 88 and continued on to page 125 in the airport.

The flight between Denver and Seattle was pretty much a sleep out across the entire row of seats. Upon arrival at Seattle, I promptly confirmed my arrival and then started looking for Ramu across the conveyer belts. I found him coming out of the Northwest airline terminal. It seemed to be pretty cold outside. Both of us were talking for sometime before Aruna and her husband landed up to pick us.

The trip officially began then. We took their Honda Civic to the Thrifty Rental center. I made the observation that it was really thrifty because the center was atleast 2 miles away. The airport area was referred to as SEA-TAC... I thought TAC-SEA was a better name.. but surely Seattle would not like to be second.

Ramu, the primary driver, took the reins of the Ford Taurus and followed the couple in their Civic. The slightest realization that someone is actually trying to follow them would have been nice... but can you blame them for being in their own world?? I remarked to Ramu that we should in future take directions rather than following :-)

We reached their apartment complex after picking up Deepa on the way from her friend's place. This seemed to be more of a Motel converted into an apartment complex. We climbed up the steps to the 3rd floor apartment #307. It was well heated up and I could hardly get a glimpse of it before we all decided it was time for lunch and hence I wore the shoes I had just gotten off a second prior. There were of course pleasantries exchanged with Sowmiya, Chinmaya and Rathish in the meantime.

By popular vote, we headed to Udupi Southy cuisine. The restaurant was obviously not comparable to those in Dallas or the Bay Area, which are prime desi locales, leave alone the fact that nothing even comes close to "home cooked/microwaved food". We had a mixed bag of stuff, eating out of everyone's plates even in the presence of a new guy. That was good to notice. As of now, my usual opinion forming nerves were already at work. I could gather even at this early stage that the guy was extremely simple, conventional, would not try much out of the ordinary... pretty much inside the box kind of character. This could be deciphered by the lunch he ordered. Hey wait.. its still too early to call!! I have to say that by the end of the trip, most of these initial impressions were confirmed :-)

Well... amidst all those analyses, lunch got over and it was time to decide where to go to next. There were a few suggestions thrown out, such as old Seattle and Space Needle. We went in for the latter as a signature to our visit to the city. We reached Downtown Seattle after another session of Car chasing :-) We weaved through Downtown and parked at a Garage which would be in the vicinity of the monorail that would take us to the Needle. But the monorail was out of service on this day. We roamed around the malls for a bit mainly in search of a restroom. Rathish cracked jokes at Barnes and Noble about his searching for a book, etc.

Then we headed back to the garage and on the way, we saw Robert Hoary, NBA all-star, currently playing for the Spurs, mainly known for his last minute 3-point field goals. That seemed to be the highlight of the trip thus far. No one approached him for an autograph since he was on the phone all the time and also though all of us were engineers, none of us had a pen! :-( We headed closer to the Needle... but not so close that it would pinch us....

From this distance, the mighty Seattle Space Needle was a minor disappointment. It was not all that big compared to other high rise towers we have seen. We still went up to catch a glimpse of the city and its surrounding nature. The view was breathtaking.. it was surrounded by Pacific backwaters and Lake Washington among which there were several islands. One of them is said to be the home of Bill Gates, among my most admired. Soon, it grew dark! It was barely 4pm and it was dark already!

Then we drove around for a "10 minute drive" to an island where we could catch a lovely view of the Seattle skyline. It turned out to be a 40 minute drive with several O-turns. The island was even better! It was a construction site... full of mud! The rental car still has stains of our shoes stepping on it :-) It was pretty frustrating for me all since I could not reach my 100% energy level for the day, having slept just 3 hours! So, I was very quiet throughout the day. We soon had to decide on where to have dinner and this time there seemed to be no consensus... we headed to an Indo-Mediterranean place some 20 miles away, where I was at the wheel following this time! I heard some trumpets of victory in the form of 2-3 cars honking at me as I was cutting lanes to stay closer to the Civic at the lead!

When we landed there, we were told that there would be a 20 minute wait. Sowmiya, Ramu, Rathish and I strayed away into a Walgreens and then a Safeway before we headed back. It was really hot and the reason was apparent pretty soon... it was the "Two Towers" blowing heat for the outside dining. We got our table soon and had a lot of North Indian food. In the morning it was Rathish's treat for his promotion as senior citizen and now it was Chinmaya for buying his new home in Denver. Must have been an expensive one. The Lebanese coffee that I tried was a disaster.. but other than that, it was good. "No man is wise on an empty stomach"?? Ramkumar was on an Amavasya diet that night and hence may have erred about Clinton's diet... I felt a bit odd with one person in the table unable to consume anything... had I known this before, I really might have had other "Palakaaram" suggestions so that the guy from Bellyvue would not go out with an empty belly :-)

Then we got back home and as we were wondering what to do, we started playing Dumb-C. After some argument between Rathish and me, we decided that Rathish and Aruna would pick the teams... it was the 3Rs and Chinmaya against Mr & Mrs Ramkumar, Sowmiya and Deepa. Seemed pretty even. In the end, we lost narrowly, mainly because of three reasons.. Ramu and I were a bit rusty and sleepy after a long day... Chinmaya got frustrated on two clues and none of us did a good job on the database. But it was only a game... I played a prank and said that the last clue would amount to 3 times the weightage.. if that were taken seriously... we'd have taken the game with ease! :-) After this, we all went to sleep.

The next day, I woke up at 12:30pm.. I was the penultimate since Ramu was still asleep. There was rapid channel surfing going on. I got kind of irritated by those rapid swings.. but this went on and on forever... between football, NBA, movies, etc. Sowmiya was picked up by Sundar to go to the ISKCON temple.. we all rejected the proposal to go to it. The latter was hosting some annadaanam and this annai was invited to help out... it is a noble cause and I approve of it.

What did we do next?? You guessed it.. went to lunch.. we elected to go to P F Chang's. This was the actual marriage treat... unfortunately minus Sowmiya and Deepa... we went through the malls during our 30min wait... looked into some cool tech stuff at Sharper Image and then headed to lunch. Had a pretty good lunch with usual favorites ranging from Dumplings-Wraps to Eggplant and Singapore Noodles!

After lunch.. there were two minor glitches. Ramu's camera got stuck. Just as he went to clean the lens with the sunglass cleaner cloth, he found his sun-glasses missing. Then we backtracked and found it on the waiting couch outside PFC. Then the camera began working... this is divine intervention! Then we headed back home to more football... Why can't we people subordinate ESPN to the team?

Then Sowmiya came and we dropped her off.. then dinner again at Udupi... Then we "toured" Microsoft.. looked at a couple of buildings and took Patel pics outside near the logo. Then headed back home to some UNO.

Then morning came, Rathish and I left earlier after bidding goodbye to Aruna and a sleepy Ramkumar. We dropped off the rental car and I just got to the flight in time! It was another thrilling experience getting to the flight!

Slept through the entire flight to Denver... then came the call I'll never forget!!!! It was from Sameer and also Subha at the same time... the big news was.... "Dallas DSL Software was shutdown!!!!!"... all members of the team from managers to clerks were out of their jobs!!!

I took this surprisingly well... I was still fresh from my confidence of having completed my WLAN CPE project successfully and also from reading some of the nightmares that Bill Rancic had gone through enroute to Trump Tower and the apprenticeship... I was calmed by a cool Subha, who took the news really well and into her stride as well.

Then I landed in Dallas, thinking about this all along...... it was just another project!! Time to win this battle too!