Motorcycle diary of Joy Dutta

The epic wait is finally over. Almost 3 years of marriage and 12 years of knowing each other and never having the feeling of living together “forever”.

Priti is here now, and first time in her life on a one-way ticket.

A lot of catching up, tons of things to do to make up the lost time together. Taking it one day at a time and trying hard not to get overwhelmed.

Photographs are the best way to remember these euphoric days. My flickr sets of her will continue to grow in the coming weeks.

Felt a 5.6 quake just a while back. Could not believe it when I was in the shower. Quickly came out of the house and found one of my roomies with a folder of vital documents with him. Smart guy. Even I have such a folder ready at my room for emergency situations. Got to start training my reflexes better.

It is really scary to find out we are living pretty much over some major faults, like the Calaveras and San Andreas faults. According to a news article, these are the faults along which some of the most destructive earthquakes in California have struck — including one in 1906 which, together with a subsequent fire, destroyed much of San Francisco !

Wildfires a while back down south, and now quakes. California sure has some power packed punches for us.

Nothing hurts more than the tax-man’s extra bite in April every year. But if you are not going to a tax professional, it is likely that you will miss an opportunity to file a return that favors you the most.

Thanks to my friend Chetan, I learnt one of the most valuable lessons of living in the USA - “Leave the taxes to the professionals.”

While I was pulling my hair out with confusions regarding filing status and other doodads, I checked out how much refund I get using taxact.com which I used for last year. It was a depressing $-3000 staring at me in bold red font, and I was looking at my anemic bank balance by mid April.

Chetan’s tax advisor firm Jackson-Hewitt (5837 Jarvis Ave, Newark, CA) did a great job with my situation. When the final refund amount of more than a grand showed up, I wondered how much money I have lost last year by not visiting a professional. Lesson learnt, and early enough.

I would recommend my working friends to visit a professional, unless they are financial experts. The tax softwares in the market are suddenly looking a little less attractive to me.

The long awaited d-day passed over like a storm. My second India trip for a paltry 2 weeks got over before I could even cherish the feeling of being “home”. But a big task of life is over, parents are done with all their duties, and am back with megabytes of happy memories waiting to be categorized, processed and uploaded.

Life is peaceful now, except for the painful absense of Priti here with me for another year. Just one more year, and our 10 long years of living far from each other should be over. forever.

A few pictures here and there from my collection (more will be added shortly):

Pics: Marriage - Jan 07

My wife Priti recently had a month long trip to the USA, her first. A month yes, but seems like she was here for a couple days. One reason could be because she had to cut short her stay by 2 weeks to avoid a potentially catastrophic disaster for us. Her I-94 was stamped as B1 with one month duration and we only noticed it with one week at hand to take action. I am so glad we noticed it. Even happier that her travel agent preponed the ticket before deadline without a fuss. Reason we never bothered about I-94 is her 10 year B1/B2 visa. But she had a conference to attend and mere mention of it earned her a B1 at entry. Big lesson to remember.

Other than this, we had a pretty eventful and busy month, full of travelling/shopping/cooking. Days just flew.

I miss my wife a lot now. It was our longest stay together in 8 years !

Pics: Priti @ USA - Aug 06

Last few weeks went awfully fast. In preparation of Priti’s first visit to the states, I determined to get my car license well ahead of time.

Incredibly enough, just 4 hours of driving lessons by a DMV certified instructor prepared me so well for the road test I passed in first chance. It was my first car rental as well, and my Indian license helped me out there.

I still did not plan to buy a car anytime soon, and was counting on rentals for occasional needs.

This saturday I wanted to just casually check out dealer certified cars. Target Stevens creek honda and toyota dealers. Nothing within my initial budget of $5k. A few civics, accords, and corollas, but nothing special. A 2003 Camry 2.4L with 68k miles for $14k was good but expensive and also with a soft brake. Then suddenly we found this 2001 Camry LE V6 looking clean and scratchless. First thing I checked was the brake. Crisp and responsive. Niloy did a test drive and was all praise about it. He was pretty much excited to be driving a V6 3.0L 194HP coming from his 1.8L 4-cyl VW. Power-everything like a great modern car and with premium sound system, this was difficult deal to go by. Bargained the $11.3k price tag down to $10.2k. And still could not believe I shopped a car just like shirt or a pair of shoes. Went window-shopping, liked it, bought it. Wow.

My friends all agreed this was a good deal. I am happy right now knowing I can pick a friend up from airport or give someone a ride if need be. Driving is quite fun when hauling friends like I did to dine out with my apartment mates. But not as much fun when driving alone.

I can almost hear my bike weeping but it will still be my primary vehicle.