First Tango, Then Paris!

Paris. The city of dreams, and of love, and of dreaming of love. an agglomeration of artists, architecture and arrondissements. The French maybe out to get us, I believe, with their baguettes, bistros, boardwalks and bisous bisous. The well known Bordeaux brigade. where every road is a runway, and every glass is a Chardonnay. Who cares if they didn't invent the French Toast, or the French fry. because in the end, Slap me, I would rather be French. :O

lone lampost, in a lone city square.I wasn't alone though.

light, wall and sky.

In Paris, do what the Parisians do.

ah. macarons.

The Moulin Rouge, and the famous windmill.

everything looks better in Black and white; The Sacre Couer.

living the poster life.

I read signs. this tells me that you need to exercise to stay in a good shape till you are 30.

catacombs, call out to me. I hesitate, and walk in. they are a farce, and I am a fake.

The Louvre. it was crowded, but I tried and I tried till I got a picture without any people in it. twenty wasteful minutes, and an irate cousin later, this was it.

some people hang their clothes out to dry. and some people do this.

books, glorious books. In France, read like the French. but alas, In french.

Gargoyles everywhere, all dead, all stone.

serenity, at its fullest and best.

The Eiffel tower. Need I say anything more?

Breaks the conventional point of the stereotype, this one.

The Pompidou centre, the service side.

Shoe inside a cage. Probably one of Cinderella's evil stepmother's ideas. :O

A part of a flea market in the Bastille area.

some bread, and some is sometimes all what you need. and then some ice cream helps too. when things look good enough to eat, they usually are.

and then, the end of the glorious food, and a glorious trip. Porquoi? Precisely.

Prague Diaries: road to revival.

Prague. a city- in-a- snow-globe by day. mythical and mystical. every reveller's dream come true by night. maniacal and magical. this one's for the Dark Knight City.

The blue fades into the back, behind the web of hips, dormers, and pitched roofs.

outside the Helveticka Metro Station, they turn a standalone wall into a piece of art.

they love their Rubik's cube, these people.

The astronomical clock at the town square. the Harry Potter fanatic in me nearly peed in his pants. though I didnt.

ah. toys. sometimes I am 2, sometimes I am 22.

If they had taught us something about elevational treatments, I wouldn't have used the standard stone facing that I always use.

The Jewish Quarter.( a.k.a The synagogue that was way too expensive to get into)

Black, White and a bundle of history.

it peeped at us from behind the curtain, and called out to us. It's no surprise that we spent most of the night at the Tavern below.

it peeped at us from behind the curtain, and called out to us. It's no surprise that we spent most of the night at the Tavern below.

The Hradsk castle, Hogwarts like.

the remnants of a lost weekend, and a terribly cool youth hostel. Sir Toby's,I salute thee and the hot receptionist. Sigh. I wish I could go travelling again.

I heart New York.

I miss it. I miss it all.
I miss the MUNI, the metro, the Bart.
I miss the one dollar egg rolls, the hot dog cart.
I miss the lovely doughnuts that I swore I would hate, I miss getting up late.
I miss Hulu, I miss Pandora. I even miss Taylor Swift and all the Black Eyed Peas hype.
I miss the wine tasting, the barbeque, and acting like a pretentious snob while we sipped the reds.
I miss Las Vegas, Circus Circus, the fake Eiffel tower and the fifty dollars that we bet.
I miss meetings friends, those that I haven’t thought about.
I miss the crummy diners and the wrap place which lied about selling the world’s best wraps.
I miss Gap, banana republic, old navy; I even miss those super expensive shops that we were too embarrassed to enter.
I miss Bridgette, who couldn’t add up 21 and 24 mentally and was 23 years old.
I miss the fact that Hard Rock café is just a glorified fast food joint and not all the bling-bling that it is over here.
I miss the 25 cent coins, and the nickels and dimes. The bills, the greens.
I miss the cheesecake factory with its beepers, and Gossip-Girl named waiters.
I miss their large portions which we could never finish but were still greedy enough to order our own entrees.
I miss San Francisco, I miss New York.
I miss God of small things, kitchen confidential, and the Shashi Tharoor book whose name I don’t remember.
I miss all the last minute shopping and the fact that I was selfish.
I miss the gorgeous people. The beautiful women and the handsome men.
I miss the lights of Times Square, the sights of Central Park. I miss the Upper East side and all the Upper East Siders.
I miss watching gossip girl with ads.
I miss, Little Italy and China town, and all the grit in and around it.
I miss the Meat packing district, its artsy galleries and kitschy people.
I miss the Chelsea east youth hostel, ten bunk beds in a room. I miss it being a multi ethnic soup kitchen. A culture curry.
I miss Harvard, with all its smart people and even smarter architecture. I miss the coop, and Charlie’s Bar. I miss Aiwen Lu.
I miss the crappy flights, with all the jet-lag.
I miss the Broadway, the cirque de soleil, and their ridiculously expensive tickets.
I miss the steak, the hamburger, and all things beef.
I miss the margarita, the mojito and the terminator topped with beer. I miss that I had to show my I.D every time I wanted one of these.
I miss the standard, its psychedelic elevator and all. I miss watching sitcom reruns in the morning while I had nothing else to do.
I love the yellow taxis, with all its stereotypical clichéd south Asian drivers.
I miss the office, Jim and Pam, and Chris Brown’s Forever.
I miss the fact that I did not miss Farmville, Face book, Friends and Family, though not necessarily in that order.
I miss the theatre where I saw half of Wake up Sid and slept through the other.
I miss the annoying "wateva" radio woman,and the ten odd songs that played all day.
I miss the Japanese place and the New York people.
I miss the city, with Manhattan. I even Miss Brooklyn.
I miss the joy, I miss the thrill.
I miss the sudden rush you get when you are on vacation.
But most of all, I miss you. :(

The Morning After.

It is that time of the year again.
the sheets have been rolled, papers stacked in piles, distinguished from each other by the crease lines and coffee stains and the stationery all arranged, stacked away in order in bulging boxes.The pencils are in the pencil cases while the models have been neatly packed , old fading newspapers depicting the latest in the bollywood circles.
And that is when you wake up.
Picture this.It's the first day of your vacations, and you wake up when the sun's already halfway up, hungover because of the bliss and sheer pleasure of not having to do anything , and I repeat anything for the whole day. but who says happiness lasts long anyway ( well,it does in fairy tales and classic-how-we-met-each-other-stories where everything ends with a "happily ever after")
There you are,having hopped,skipped and jumped across your room, not as a celebratory jig, but because of the sheer lack of space to move about.layers of sheets flood your room,a tsunami of subjects crawling all over you. pieces of paper flutter by, carrying remnants of old conversations and made up games.You see a pencil here and a broken set square there,and as you sift through the almost fossilized layers of junk, you unearth chocolate wrappers and crisp packets that helped you through those exam nights while you crammed in an years worth of notes in an hour.
you flash back to the present,wishing that the junk would have had mysteriously disappeared, having had fantastical visions including a self cleaning mop and a robot which eats rubbish.
But it doesn't.
A vacation,indeed.