Motorcycle diary of Joy Dutta

Now that my student (dorm) life is over, I have the freedom and means to settle down. And that means having my own room, own furnitures and a zillion choices to make on how to lead a life that is simple, frugal, and as much creative as possible.

While hunting for furnitures online at craigslist with Piyush, my apt mate, I just had this idea of doing my own woodwork. It might cost a little bit to setup, but the reward of being creative and learning in the process matters a lot to me, basically this creative motivation has been the driving force of my life. I can attribute most of this to my father who bought me a real carpentry set at the age of 6. The first attempt to work with that was using the saw and cutting my finger badly. I still vividly remember that day.

Home Depot being right behind my house is like living at the foothills of paradise. Regardless of how many times I visit a Home Depot I can’t really decide which aisle to spend my time at. Today at the tools section I had a hard time choosing a cordless drill/driver, a tool in my dreams for a long while. I chose a professional 18v kit of RYOBI. It has many other compliant tools like circular saw, reciprocating saw, sander, impact gun etc which take the same battery. Also picked up a 90-pc drill accessory set. An ubiquitious tape. Carpenter’s pencil. Sharpener.

When I went to check out the section for wood pieces it was another wave of confusion. I was looking for simple wooden pieces like those used to make small racks and shelves. Instead I found varieties of woods to choose them from - birch, poplar and even redwood ! Poplar being the cheapest is the one for me now. Need to measure up the house and design some basic stuff. And quick.

Tool time has finally arrived.

UPDATE (23-Jan): John pointed out that Home Depot offers a RYOBI 3-pc combo kit that includes the circular saw worth $60. I paid $100 for my 2-pc kit and this 3-pc kit cost $120. definitely worth the upgrade and I did that today. Can’t be happier. The saw cuts wood like a steel knife goes through butter. After I get done with the simple shelf I am making, I will go for more serious projects like a low custom dining table and a computer desk.

I must say that interactions with HR people are one of the most important impressions about a company from an employee perspective. I have been continually impressed by the efficiency of the HR people I met at my company, but today was an example of what I call a tombstone of efficiency, the best one can expect out of a professional, courteous person.

I had to make a phone call to USCIS to inform them of my address change. It was a must to do in addition to the already sent AR-11 form, and it seemed to be a big PITA to me with my hearing problem. I desperately needed someone to help.

When I asked Freida about it, she agreed right away. It took a whole 30 minutes to finish the damn thing, with the voice menu system doing its blah blah for an eternity before some human being finally attended the call. Freida answered her questions on my behalf with professional accuracy and it made me feel right at home. I could not thank her enough.

Note to myself: If you find HR people to be good, the company is worth sticking to. Amen.

I had quite a few plans for this long weekend. No, not a trip, but some errands to get done. On the way to Walmart, I stopped by the local Kawasaki stealer (synonym for motorcycle dealers). By sheer luck, I got the tool I was waiting for a long time - the crescent wrench for steering head tightness adjustment. After ogling at the shiny machines at the showroom and sitting on a Suzuki VStrom 650 I set out for walmart. Within that 5 mile trip I could feel that something was happening very fast, and which I am too familiar with yet hate the most. The all-familiar pre-fever shudders were all upon me when I hurried to finish my shopping. I needed listerine, bread, and a fishing string. Nothing to do with fishing, but those strings are super strong and will help me remove the bulging Kawasaki logos from the tank. I just have a feeling that my bike is better without them, and tanks bags will be happier.

The ride back home was only 7 miles, but seemed like 100. I was shivering all over and desperately wanting to hit the bed for a day-long rest. I slept till 4:30 till I was hungry like a lion, ate some bread with philadelphia cream cheese, and cooked a peas-potato curry for dinner.

Piyush, my apt mate came from Stony Brook around 8:30 and I could finally connect to the internet by sharing his wireless connection. I still need to get a comcast cable modem connection, and soon.

Time to sleep. Fever on a long weekend at a place like california, with a bike and endless twisties around, SUCKS !

I miss my wife so much now…

Moved in to a 2-bedroom 2-bathroom apt, to be shared with two friends. Got a whole bedroom to myself, my first time in life having my own private space. Shopped for home essentials like I was settling down. Starting from shower curtain, bought comforter, pillow, cooking utensils, dishes and groceries to jump-start a life very different from the out-of-suitcase grad student life I was tired of.

Uddhav and Piyush, the other guys will join me in a few weeks. Piyush will be working in my team at Yahoo. He graduated with me from Stony Brook. Uddhav will graduate from USF in May and will be working for SAP. He is one of the guys I stayed with during last summer.

The bike is serving just fine to haul stuff home. As long I am not bringing furnitures home I wont be needing a cage, errr a four-wheeled entrapment. I tied a floor lamp kit, 12-pk toilet rolls and even a 13-gal trash can to the bike and it was just fine to ride 6 miles back home, as long as I could ignore the gasps from the cage drivers all around.

It is just great to be here, only that the astronomical prices of real estate continue to frustrate me. I have been longing for a personal garage with a dedicated section for tools and equipments and if this was Texas or Arizona I could have bought a small house very soon and paid EMI similar to the rent I will be paying here for a long time.

I am overwhelmed just to think of the possibilities of riding destinations and roads. So much more choices than I had back in Long Island. It would take me some time to write up my epic trip and think calmly about the rides ahead.

I never planned a full day of halt anywhere in my cross country trip. But checking my mail yesterday revealed that I needed to work a bit on my masters project report, nothing very serious but still it could relieve me of some headache.

I did some work in the morning and also processed and uploaded my ride pictures from the last 3 days. It was really worth doing.

The interesting part came later in the day. We three went 20 mi to Clearwater beach to enjoy the sunset. The sun was half over the horizon when I could barely manage to click a few frames till it was fully gone. And then Kulkul came running from where they were supposed to park the car. “Joy come soon, air is leaking from a front tire.” Bodhayan could barely manage to park the car to one side of the road when the tire dislodged from the rim. Luckily it was the right side tire so at least we didn’t have to work in the middle of the road.

Now we faced some hard facts: the car had one spare tire of proper size and an extra spare of a smaller size. The proper sized one didnt have air. There were no tools, and the jack was without its lever. And no membership with AAA.

I walked the spare tire to the nearest gas station in the hope of inflating it and then borrow someone’s spanner and jack to replace it. Murphy’s laws are really everywhere. The air pump didnt seem to work but later we found the tire beads weren’t seated properly, with air escaping from small area on one side. It was frustrating and we thought we needed a stronger pump. Bodhayan called his friends and 3 of them came from 20 mi. With the help of Google maps in my mobile and using the GPS I could locate and find an AutoZone withing 4 mi and bought tire spanner and a 12v air pump.

Back to the broken car, no attempt with the pump was successful. So we gave up on the proper sized tire and looked at the smaller one. It looked like a rim instead of a tire. We put it in place using Bodhayan’s friend’s jack and was ready to go. Murphy again. Car wont start. It had a weak battery as he admitted of having a few cold start problems. His friend had AAA membership but they refused to help a non-member. 9pm and we needed a jumper cable now. What a pain. I went back to the gas station hoping for some help. They didnt have a jumper kit. We were both out of ideas. Only worst case could be going back on a cab and coming back with preparations next day. But then I saw a cab driver coming back to his cab with a coffee. I casually asked if he could help with jumpstarting and to my surprise he said yes !

Jumpstart was successful in the first try. We profusely thanked the guy. Before him I asked a few persons with nice cars and pickups and they only knew how to politely say sorry. It was so good to see helping hands to be found in the most unexpected of places.

We all came back in his friend’s car while Bodhayan drove alone at 35mph. Back to home, safe, and with a very important lesson. When he wanted to thank me, I told him to thank my advisor, without whole mail about my project report I would have been at a small inn somewhere in Alabama by now.

Launched my first own yahoo group: Santiniketan-Students! An attempt to be in touch with alumnis of my junior and high schools, Patha Bhavan and Uttar Siksha Sadan. A discussion with Somashree led to this idea and I owe her a bunch of thanks for rekindling my enthu to this level.

After ten long years since graduating from Patha Bhavan it is a pleasure to get in touch with batchmates and seniors who I knew from those days. Even more fun to spot a few of them near me in a foreign land. The best part is talking in bengali, just like those days. Ah, how I miss the bengali addas, dahi-vada and kulchas at Bhalo-Mondo, and the ice-cream from Gopal-da ! Not to mention waiting endless hours like a monkey in front of the girls’ hostels Srisadan and later Goenkalaya to meet Priti.

Those days are gone and greatly missed, but a group like this has a good potential to rekindle a part of the lost emotions.

UPDATE (21-Dec-05): The growth of the group amazed me to no end. Within 7 days I have the following statistics:
41 New Members - 125 New Messages - 1 New Database - 49 New Photos - 2 New Files
Need I say more ?

Americans ! The more I come in touch with them and get to know about their families, the more it puzzles me. And most of the time, I get to know those people through the common passion - motorcycles.

Take the case of one guy, barely 5 years older than me, has a family tree that takes at least a few minutes to visualize for an average Indian like me. His wife’s dad and mom divorced and remarried. The fun part now is the two families are like the best friends, they go camping and partying with each other and dines together. The guy’s real dad separated from his real mom and lives 100 miles away. Real mom and step dad lives 30 miles away and takes care of the guy’s niece whose mom doesn’t look after her kid. The kid’s gradparents are adopting her and eventually the guy and his wife will take care of her. The kid’s mom is step dad’s daughter from his previous marriage, and might get a divorce from her alcoholic husband in near future.

Back home we just can’t imagine a family mesh like this. But this is a foreign land with a different cultural setup and one can’t say “mo betta”, because every societal system and their rules have advantages and pitfalls.

An evening worth celebrating the fulltime offer from the big G to my apartment mate, Dhyanesh. He has done an outstanding job of bagging fulltime offers from two of the biggest IT giants of today - Yahoo and Google.

We both had a pleasant summer internship at Yahoo Finance and I presume it will be a tough call for him to make a decision. He has not one but two offers from Yahoo, with one obviously from the finance group and another from SDS which is supposed to have a bunch of challenging problems to solve. Yeah, some good food for a guy who thinks nothing other than TopCoder and ACM programming problems. Right, Dhyanesh ?

All the best to this young genious for a great and ambitious career ahead. Did I mention his dream about a topless beemer in not-so-distant future, cruising across california’s highway-1 with a… a… ahem… oh well…

The story finally came out on Indiapost and Indian Express. The former is a print only edition (the website www.indiapost.com doesnt work), while the online content of the latter is:
https://www.iexpressusa.com/new/articles/display_news.php?newsid=2104&from=news

Feeling a little better now.

Just a while back I had a chat with a friend of mine who works with an Airline company. I now have a clearer notion of what might have triggered the incident.

Normally many passengers book tickets in advance and in cheap. In peak season, some passengers pay a hefty sum for seats at the last moment. Many airlines overbook from the last moment passengers and to accomodate them, make an announcement for Voluntary Denied Boarding (VDB) before departure, asking for people to give up their seats, usually with perks like free round trip tickets.

What happened for me was Involuntary Denied Boarding, as I clearly remember when two of us were thrown out from the plane, two other guys were let inside. The airlines people just had to find an excuse, and my “sweating” might have been just made up.

Now thats interesting, isnt it ?