View from the top of Empire State Building overlooking Jersey and uptown Manhattan 

Here is a view from the top of Empire State Building. You can see the Chrysler building, Metlife building and Manhattan Bridge. 

New York City, New York

New York mean different things to different people. Actually New York is the name of the state in which the City of New York or New York City is located. For some reason I never got bored of looking @ New York City[NYC] at all. Every time I see the sky line of NYC I cherish like a little kid looking at a fair ground. Yes, thats what it is. There is something interesting for everyone in this city like a fair. And this city is always lit like a fair and never sleeps.

I think the people in either side of Manhattan are more lucky than the people who live in the city. Coz' they can keep seeing the skyline whenever they want. I like the views while I am driving on Brooklyn Queen Expressway [BQE], Liberty State Park[NJ], approaching Lincoln Tunnel, approaching Manhattan through any bridge [Brooklyn Bridge, Manhattan Bridge etc.] etc. I heard people say a picture can speak more than 1000 words. So here are some pictures I took with my ordinary digital camera.







I have many pictures taken from the Top of the world . Oops, I meant to say top fo the world trade center. I have to dig those pictures. But here are few taken from the top of Empire State Building which is now the tallest building in NYC. The main differences between seeing the city from the top of these building are:

• From Empire State building you are not exactly at the terrese you have still have few floor on top of the observatory where as WTC observatory was the actual terrese.
• You can see night view from Empire State building which is lot better than seeing from WTC

Higher Studies

It was always been a dream for me while I was in college to persue some higher studies. But all that dreams were busted when I was halfway through my Under Graduation in Engineering. I felt how hard it is to even get through my semester subjects. How am I going to study more and more and more.... if studying a subject is this hard! But sometimes we feel that our lectures are responsible for our subjecto-mania. Those are the times when we sit and study for our final exams, we called that era as Study Holidays. The complex subjects will be tamed by our buddies and will be preached to us as a gist rather than hours and hours of boring lecture. After we went through such a cycle of boring lectures - fear of semester exams - productive study holidays - daunting exam days - enjoyable holidays - Ok results, we decided not to worry too much during the term and enjoy as much as we could. So that the secret of our enjoyable college days.

Our terms are 6 months (we call'em as semester) and we will be forced to take some (6) theory courses and some (2) practical courses. The system I studied gave 2 electives during the final year of our college but that too we all in the class have to agree upon some electives and more than anything there should be some lectures who can teach that courses. So it was technically electives but not though. So having gone through such a forced learning system for 4 years I was daunted to go through them again.

Being a moderate student my dreams about higher studies were deteriorating when I reached the finaly semester of my college studies. Also my sharp classmates (paruppus) scared me with the corridor talks about GATE, MBA etc. So I finally made up my mind not to pledge for "No Higher Studies". So I compromised for postponement - I will start working for a while after my graduation and will think about presuing some higher studies (I was not sure what I wanted to do then) after a while.

Many friends, philosophers and guides volunteered a set of advice to me - "Once you start earning you will never think about persuing any higher studies", "If you see some money in your hands you always want more, it will be hard to leave your job for anything" etc.
But it all said the same moral to me - "Do it now or never". I tuned myself to be deaf enough to avoid what everyone said.

To support my decision I was recruited by a firm during the campus interview. Campus interviews are ritual in Indian colleges. You college is considered good, bad or better depending on the number and standard of companies that visit to recruit outgoing students. We always envy other colleges around us as we are not used the campus interview rituals. But we were told that our super super super seniors had such rituals. But our batch tried their ass off to bring some companies to our college for recruiting and there were sucessful too. So long story short I took my campus job with mechanical engineering firm and put my dreams about my higher studies in a pigeonhole.

After I took my job and started to earn some money(good for my bread and butter) we started to discuss how we can achieve this higher studies without all the pain that was daunting us. Some friends were generous enough to give some advice about persuing the higher studies in foreign country especially USA. They said that the education system in USA is so flexible that you can pick you subjects and you can even pick you own professors. I was so excited about the fact that I can pick my own lecturers/professors. So I further postponed my dream of higher studies. I decided that I will reach USA and will start my higher studies.

I can keep continuing what happend after then and now. But I want to do that on another post. So here I am 8 years after completing my under graduation living in USA still haven't persued my dream. I am living in USA for almost 7 years. But things changed a lot in the course that I forced myself to be away from my dream for a while. But I sure will persue my dream at some point of time. Also little bit of personal information about me if you are wondering where this guy is from and where did he go to school. I was born and brought up in India and I went to Mookambigai College of Engineering, Keeranur, Tamil Nadu, India for my Under Graduation in Engineering. :-)

Google's Satellite Maps

I donno whether this is a coincidence or not but lately I am visiting lots of maps and related sites. But this once is going top them all. Google recently came up with satellite map in their map website http://maps.google.com. You can type any address in USA and they will give the detailed map of that location. On the top right corner there will be hyperlink called "satellite". If you click that after you get the detailed map for an address, POP! you will get the satellite picture for that address.

What is great is that you can click and drag the map so that you see the areas next to that detailed address also. This will give a pretty good oppurtunity for people to see what it will when we watch from a birds eye perspective. So you dont have to fly on a airplane over New York city to see how New York will look from an top view. Try google satellite map now !!!

Especially if you live in USA you will amazed to see you neighbourhood from a zoomed satellite view. Personally I like the drag feature where you can drag and see your next city etc.

Maps in India

I got an email from a friend of mine and it is pretty interesting. I am very much used to the map pages like http://maps.yahoo.com or http://www.mapquest.com as US is a big country and you wont know every single city you go and especially when you driver you will get lost if you dont know the driving directions to the place you are going. Interestingly that email my friend sent me had a link to this site http://www.mapmyindia.com/index.php where you can find maps for different Indian cities. Even though we are not used to drive with a map in India, I think soon with amount of cars being sold increasing and new highways being build we might need this kinda websites. This website offers tour guide, driving directions and also business directory for a location etc.

There may be other sites which may offer similar features, but this seem to be sleek. So use this and enjoy !!!

Why did I create this Blog ?

Hi all ! I know this is not a greatest way to start my blog, but what to do? this is what I think I should do. So here I am typing what made me do this blog.

I am hearing about blog lately a lot. First time I heard about blog was before couple of years from my manager. She was asking me whether I know anything about blog or do I even have one. My answer then was a big NO. But that started off my curiosity train to travel around the world (obviously web) and find out what it is. Fortunately it ended in my very first and favorite station - Google.

Then for a while after finding what a blog is my very first intension is not to create one. I sustained without creating a blog for 2 years. I know its a very long time! But my work kept me busy without me having to think about all this. But I did read many blogs technical and personal.

Now a relative of my wife and so is mine created a blog which made me and my wife create one. He works in an IT company in India and now being posted in Taiwan, he created his blog. Again my first take is that he is having too much time to create one which I don't have. Then slowly something made me change my mind to create this blog. And here you are reading this.

What a splendid way to start a blog! Huh !

Time to stop my first blabbering, see y'all in a while with interesting thoughts from the bottom of my mind and interesting information.