One order of sacrilege please

I accidently ate beef last night. Call me a stupid "cow-eater" but when I read the words "Chile Colorado" on the menu, I didn't think that it would contain beef. Rajas remembers having French Fries at McDonalds after landing in Chicago for the first time. His version was "So in 30 mins of landing in the US, I had already consumed beef."

So why do I want to avoid beef and consider all other lifeforms expendable? Well I think it's one of the only things I do differently as a Hindu. Followers of Islam are fairly rigid about not consuming pork but frequently non-vegeterian Hindus have no qualms about eating beef. I remember this Muslim friend at GE who couldnt stand the sight of pork but mockingly asked me how long had I been in the US when I refused beef. When he heard the response "2 years", he retorts "Oh all my Hindu friends eat beef... give yourself another year!" I was so agitated by that remark. Why the heck would I disobey my religion more easily than you would yours?!

In the last few months I have met a very wide spectrum of Indians in the US, with different eating habits/taboos. The most extreme was Nupur who is lactose-intolerant and is Gujju. So in effect she's vegan and I can't imagine how hard it must be for her to meet her daily protein requirements. Then there is Devang, my roommate. Earlier he ate all mammals one encounters on American menus but suddenly turned vegeterian. Non-vegeterian Indians like me who avoid beef in deference to the respect for cows that Hinduism propounds, are yet another species.

There are two questions that I ask: First, why do vegeterians consider plant life any less valuable than animal life? When you eat a plant aren't you killing something? May be biological science might soon discover about the feelings of plants somewhere. So as there is no way to survive without hurting another lifeform, might as well go all the way and devour all animals.

Second question: Why are cows more sacred than chicken? May be killing one large animal is better than killing many small ones.

My new Acura RSX

I love babying my new car. I forgot to mention that I did end up buying that Acura RSX I was talking about some posts ago. I shower a lot of attention on her... Park her in the closed garage everyday, fill the most expensive high-octane fuel, drive carefully not speeding too much (referring to it as a female). It is a real pleasure to drive that babe, I have to say ;). That's the one thing I look forward to every morning and evening.

Work doesnt change much. Its pretty much the same old same old. Food is starting to get to me like some of my friends had predicted. Well although the names for all the dishes are rather fancy, more often than not it is all rather bland. Moroccan chicken was a prime example of this. So I go down expecting a real treat... but turns out its just some grilled chicken with a yellow fluid sitting on top of it. It wasnt bad mind you, but an Indian palate sets a very high standard for spice. Indian food Thursdays are so worth the wait. Samosa, Naan, Pulao, chicken, garbanzos...yumm!!

I've started playing games again. Last night I played the Call of Duty demo again. It's great fun!! I don't have a mouse on my keyboard so it makes it a lot harder to play a First person shooter, but I like the challenge. It feels realistic, although I have no idea what the World War II must have been like, but if I had a guess this would be it.

Last weekend I went to Santa Cruz to the mystery spot. So I shall write a post about that soon enough. That was followed by my first ever visit to San Francisco.

P I E Pie? Why? Cos its PI(=3.1415) Day

Is life to be lived only on weekends? Work days are a part of life too and thankfully I havent let the Monday blues get to me in the past three weeks at work. At GE I was perpetually bored being unchallenged for quite some time. It was only in the latter half of the co-op assignment that I got assigned some interesting work to do. Before that I was just testing the electronics on dishwashers and refrigerators for most parts and trust me it wasn't a pretty occupation.

The one bright spot this week was on Monday 3/14, the PI day treat at Nvidia. The caterers from Aramark can't be expected to be that geeky... ofcouse I never thought of it myself either... makes me think I am a nerdy jock. But 3.14(pi) and 3/14(March 14th ) and Einstein's birthday occuring on the same day are like a nerd's dream come true. At Nvidia they come aplenty, precisely the reason why I don't feel out of place here. And one of the kind souls here decided to celebrate PI day and kept 4 pies in each floor of every building here. I had a slice from the banana cream pie and one from the apple pie.... nice excuse to forget about that diet you were on... Pie Day YAYY!!!

I started wondering if I could invent an "e" day, but unfortunately the Romans didn't think of coming up with a 71-day month. I could have fed the whole company some eclairs.... okay bad joke...nothing can really be as poetic as PI now, can it?

Weekends in the Bay Area have been a lot of fun. One thing that both my roommate and I are enthusiatic about, is exercise. So we go swimming, jogging and gymming frequently. Then there are some nice movies to watch... ofcourse some crappy one's have to squeeze in as well. Eternal Sunshine was an example of the earlier and The Aviator of the latter. There is good food to enjoy. Mexican and South Indian last weekend and Chinese and Thai this weekend. It is a rather full life and the pleasures are incredibly guilt-free, given the efforts one has put at work during the week. Indulging in sloth, pride, gluttony....followed by the virtues of industry, humility, austerity and what have you.

Email Address Changes

My wisc.edu Email IDs have been disabled. So if anyone wants to reach me please email me at saket AT uwalumni DOT com or saketj AT yahoo DOT com
Replace DOT with "." and AT with "@" when youre trying to email me.

If there are spiders which can extract email addresses from that too, I am doomed. My yahoo account couldn't be spammed any more than it already is.

Also my CAE homepage is defunct now. So no more fancy pictures online or exhibitions even.

First week at work!

I joined work this Monday and it has been an interesting week so far. Everything is new so there is a lot of excitement in the new discoveries I make. I have been staying almost 12 hours at work for the past 3 days and surprisingly it isn't as tiring as I would have expected. The campus is the prettiest that I have seen with futuristic buildings shaped like space-ships abutting landscapes vaguely modelling the company logo.

The cafeteria called the "Nth street cafe" is heavily subsidized (50c per meal at the most) and I find myself there at noon and 7 pm trying something new each time. The food isn't as tasty as I would have liked but everything is clean, efficient and abundant healthy food choices available.

People at work have been really nice and I've had meetings with the VP, Director and my manager, everyone welcoming me into their fold. I won't say anything about what I am working on but it is a really interesting project and should keep me busy for some time.

The deal is though that once I am back home there isn't much time to do anything else. Watch TV for an hour, go to the gym for an hour and then its time to sleep-or-I-wont-wake-up. Looking forward to the weekend. Might go to Sarvana Bhavan, presumably the best Indian restaurant in the Bay Area!