Kirukkalkal

Like we did for the last couple of years, we were so excited to visit Adirondacks to see the fall colors during the Oct 2nd weekend - the weekend when normally the Octoberfest happens in the Whiteface mountain. Couple days before the weekend, the northeast got hammered with rain and wind. I had just spent almost a day travelling from Detroit back to Albany from a business visit, because of the weather delays. You see a connection between the windy weather and fall colors? We didn't quite see that well!! I had invited my friend and his family from NJ. With another friend from around Albany, we all drove together to Lake Placid / Whiteface Mountain area.. Normally, this time would have been a gorgeous drive.. But it was a total bummer with almost barren trees or trees with leaves yet to turn colors... We felt really bad for our friends from NJ as they drove all the way for almost nothing.. Well, the gondola ride at the Whiteface atleast wasn't a bad one. The view was quite pic

Suddenly we decided before the long weekend to go away for the weekend... Well, we looked at where we can drive within 3-4 hrs and Rhode Island/ Block Island clicked correctly.. One of my colleagues had shown pictures of Block Is and he is from Block Is. We wanted to go to this place for a while and finally it worked out.. Lucky to get a reservation at the Hampton Inn using our reward points with only two days left. We started on saturday, May 29, around noon and we reached our hotel by 4.30 p.m. We dropped our bags and immediately took off to the Cliff Walk in Newport. We started from the Narrangasett Ave point and walked south before checking out the 40 steps down the cliff to a beautiful view. In about 30-40 min, drizzling started and we had to head back in the rain.. It was a bummer.. We decided to have early dinner and retire.. We checked out this restaurant Sambar on Thames St. They hardly had any vegetarian entree. We tried an eggplant dish which was good. But, this place

I was reading this weekly Paul Krugman's column in NYTimes and it just occurred that how freely one can express his opinions about one's boss in a popular media. Rather than just pointing fingers, there is a good bit of substantiation to his point of view about Bernanke. I can't think of a similar open, candid and transparent sharing of opinion in India about one's ex or current boss. Of course if you are from an opposing party or from which you would gain a personal advantage, things can become very candid and moreover can be misleading with sufficient substantiations too! Though there are usual delay tactics and vested interest activities happen in this 'richest' democracy, at least some amount of transparency shows up at least in the media!