Skip to main content

17 Mile Drive

This weekend we went some sight seeing. Our destination of interest was one of many 17 mile drives alon the Pacific coast. Highway 1 in California runs in North South direction all along the coastal line from San Frnsisco to San Diego and then on into Mexico, across the border. The drive is majestic with hills on one side and the Pacific water on the other side. We set out in the afternoon after having run many errands that seem to deter us from our adventures all the time. It is around 81 miles from Santa Clara and took us around an hour and 42 minutes to get there. I did get a chance to dip into the Pacific waters on the nearby beach. Something that I always look forward to whenever I visit the intense masses of water. It is another thing that the water is so cold that after about 20 seconds of exposure the feet stop sending signals of protest and go numb. It is only after you sit and rewarm yourself that you realize different body parts do actually exist. I am still amazed at the surfers who were surfing in those waters.
There is a lot of scenic beauty in US. The forests are untouched and have a majestic look to them. Trees rise high and spread afar. Green dictates the colouring scheme in winters here. This is unlike most other parts where winters bring bare naked trees and falling leaves.
For the first time really I got to see gora saab in goraland. My inhabitation being in the silicon valley prevents me from coming in contact with real gora saab. No wonder I could not understand a word of English that people speak here. But now I have realized that if I am not able to understand the language the fault lies not with my comprehension but with the accent with which it is splattered out of the mouth here. Spanish and Chinese re pathetically bad at it and make a mince meat of words and vocabulary. Just today I was entering a store and the Santa outside the store said something while pointing at the door. What I understood was,"exit the dorr the use outside". Or something of that sort. It was only when my sister came to the rescue telling me he means to say use the exit door instead as the entrance door is out of order!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Learning Arduino 1

This holiday season I decided to gift myself some basic electrical components in the form of a Arduino UNO set from Elegoo. I have always had a desire to tinker with electronics and in gifting myself this basic set I am now starting on a journey to quench my inner electrical workman's thirst. I hope to develop this hobby as I move forward and will, from time to time, post about it here on the blog. As the journey moves forward I am sure to run into trouble and issues. But as they say you can not master anything without first being a fool at it, so I have decided to remain a fool at it until I am a little good at it. To start with, I do possess some elementary knowledge in electronics and electronic circuits. I intend to further my knowledge using the world wide web and following some very useful video channels on youtube. I will first start with some very basic projects to familiarize myself with Arduino and basic electronic circuits and techniques such as soldering. Then graduall...

Tax skirting by hospital systems?

The issue of avoiding federal taxes is in the news these days with Apple being in the spotlight.  Most of the times big companies avoid paying US taxes by skirting their profits to tax havens.  Healthcare giants can do the same theoretically.  Imagine if there were a health care giant that opens up shop in tax haven islands and then uses the same technique that commercial entities use to skirt their profits out of the country, thereby avoiding taxes.  This is very much possible.  The of shore clinics can be potentially used to complicate the tax return filing system here in US.  I could never understand why a completely US hospital system would like to open up a clinic in Bahamas.  These clinics are portrayed as the global reach of the entity but who do they actually serve.  We never hear about them in press or public.  These clinics are apparently manned by some doctors we never hear about.  How does this system work?  I really do...

Xbox ONE

I have recently purchased the newest version of Microsoft's gaming consoles, the Xbox One . This is a shift from my prior gaming system which was Sony's PS3 . I loved PS3 and preferred it over Xbox 360 for many reasons. It was smarter looking, faster, could play Blu rays, good games and all my friends had PS3s. However the most like able thing about it was the free online game play that Microsoft does not allow. Things I did not appreciate in Sony were its user interface. The move bundle was a waste of money for all intent and purposes as I used it once in the past two years. So this time around I decided to go with Microsoft's game console. The decision was not easy. Obviously PS4 has some good press out there and it is a step forward in technology. However now Xbox can play blu rays too. Also now both consoles require a subscription service for online game play. This sort of made me feel like Sony didn't care for us anymore. I guess paying money might mean better e...