South-West Airlines, LAX-PHX flight…
Everything was same & even few of the airhostesses in the flight were looking familiar!! It was nice to be back in Phoenix.How do my office folks know that I love travelling places?
First four days of training was spent, most of the time working in class and rest of the time as usual searching & testing new restaurants in Phoenix. And some part of my hotel stay was spent calling up customer care of hotel asking to rectify the internet connection in my room!
On Friday evening, a long ride of 30 minutes brought me to Deer Valley apartments. Last time I was here in Phoenix, I had met Archana. This time it was to meet one more good friend from Lucent-background and who was part of our picnics & treks in Bangalore. It was almost 8 months since I had seen him. After a little while I heard that familiar voice and there he was sitting on a bicycle…Supreeth Hedge!
Suppi took me to his house & I met Giri, his roommate whom I had met in our Kumara parvatha trek. Chatted with Suppi for a long time and didn’t forget to pull his legs about why he hasn’t shaved for weeks?
Next was visit to Archana for dinner. When she was about to start cooking, she realized that there was no rice & once again we were out on ‘Bhavathi Bhikshan Deyi’ campaign!!!
Archana took me to her colleague Sachin & Mubin’s house & it so happened that we ended up cooking there & eating dinner with them! Mubin is an interesting guy to talk with.As I mentioned any project name to him, he used to come up with few gals names from that project and would ask how they were doing! Had dinner and chatted with them till 11:30 before Suppi called. So these guys dropped me back at Suppi’s place.
One more drive with Suppi this time to ‘Blockbuster’ to get some movies. We were literally ‘Gone in 60 seconds’ seeing the movie of the same name!
Saturday, Oct 1:
Phoenix appeared little cooler now then it was during my previous visit.
After lots of hiccups & last minute changes, finally Suppi was the rescuer and took us to Arizona mills.This is one of the big malls in Phoenix and as expected did lots of window shopping before we went to movie ‘Flight Plan’.
A little girl goes missing in the aircraft and there won’t be any proof left that the kid had boarded the flight. Nobody believes mom that her kid came with her. So mom herself gets into action of searching the kid in that aircraft, of which she knows each & every bit of it!! How she knows the aircraft? Because she will be the one who would have designed that aircraft !! Interesting movie and I heard rumors that the movie may get banned! That may be because the movie has many scenes showing minute details about aircraft and how to goof it up.
After movie, did some small shopping in the Arizona mills. I added one more t-shirt, to my latest hobby of collecting T-shirts bearing city names I visited.
Next stop was ‘Mills Avenue’, which we called ‘Brigade road of Phoenix’. Looks like Brigade road had deep rooted influence on all of us hailing from Bangalore. First thing we do here is compare any dazzling-happening street to Brigades and then we add ‘May be this is little bigger’!
Mills Avenue is across Arizona University and I think the large chunk of that crowd was from there.One interesting thing about Mills Avenue was the huge guitars erected on the footpaths.There were so many of them and each in different color & design. There was a guitar which was shining red, which got its color by the 1 cent coins pasted all over it
The evening was just getting lit up and there were young crowds all set to enjoy the Saturday night. Most of the time here again we spent in window shopping and also followed Achhu to whichever apparel shop she went.Looked like all the shops in that Avenue was meant only for Ladies!
After a quick dinner of Spinach pasta, went to ‘Four rabbits fountain’ and sat there chatting for a very long time. Invariably the topic of treks and finally Sakleshpur trek came and how dearly we remembered that trek.
Anand, who is Acchu’s colleague, was in great form too. Best part about Anand is he speaks so good Kannada. It is significant & heartening considering the point that he is a Bihari !
I know that sometimes I just get pissed off due to silly & stupid reasons. Achhu will definitely be nodding her head to this & saying “I know”!
We left Mills around 11.The crowd was getting bigger and bigger. Came back and slept at 2 not beforing watching ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’.
Sunday, Oct 2:
We got up pretty early for lunch at 11:30. Me and Suppi were in quite a flash back mood after seeing our Kumaraparvatha trek fotos and Lucent picnic fotos.Don’t know how long we sat chatting about that KP trip, about Sandeep who was the 'star' of that trek, about Sudheep's capability of carrying friend's luggage,about Sumanth,Hakim,Mohammed,Ayush,Bhat….
Picked Achhu on the way and went to Anthem malls. It seems the whole idea of that session was to show me huge cactuses and desert landscaping in Phoneix.Indeed there were cactuses on either side of road and there were few cactus nurseries also.On the way back from mall, Suppi, Achhu & I sung some Kannada songs non-stop. Especially that song “Heghe idhey namm desha..Heghe idhey namm bhashey..Heghe idharey namma jana?” was sounding so meaningful!!
Anthem mall is one more shopping mall in Phoenix.If you had noticed, Phoenix has nothing but huge malls and looked like those are the entertainment spots here. Phoenix doesn’t boost huge things as in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
But things small or big, looks good only when you are with good company.
Suppi & Achhu gave such a nice company throughout my stay there.
Achhu & Suppi, I know you will definitely do still better planning next time I come there!!!
Everything was same & even few of the airhostesses in the flight were looking familiar!! It was nice to be back in Phoenix.How do my office folks know that I love travelling places?
First four days of training was spent, most of the time working in class and rest of the time as usual searching & testing new restaurants in Phoenix. And some part of my hotel stay was spent calling up customer care of hotel asking to rectify the internet connection in my room!
On Friday evening, a long ride of 30 minutes brought me to Deer Valley apartments. Last time I was here in Phoenix, I had met Archana. This time it was to meet one more good friend from Lucent-background and who was part of our picnics & treks in Bangalore. It was almost 8 months since I had seen him. After a little while I heard that familiar voice and there he was sitting on a bicycle…Supreeth Hedge!
Suppi took me to his house & I met Giri, his roommate whom I had met in our Kumara parvatha trek. Chatted with Suppi for a long time and didn’t forget to pull his legs about why he hasn’t shaved for weeks?
Next was visit to Archana for dinner. When she was about to start cooking, she realized that there was no rice & once again we were out on ‘Bhavathi Bhikshan Deyi’ campaign!!!
Archana took me to her colleague Sachin & Mubin’s house & it so happened that we ended up cooking there & eating dinner with them! Mubin is an interesting guy to talk with.As I mentioned any project name to him, he used to come up with few gals names from that project and would ask how they were doing! Had dinner and chatted with them till 11:30 before Suppi called. So these guys dropped me back at Suppi’s place.
One more drive with Suppi this time to ‘Blockbuster’ to get some movies. We were literally ‘Gone in 60 seconds’ seeing the movie of the same name!
Saturday, Oct 1:
Phoenix appeared little cooler now then it was during my previous visit.
After lots of hiccups & last minute changes, finally Suppi was the rescuer and took us to Arizona mills.This is one of the big malls in Phoenix and as expected did lots of window shopping before we went to movie ‘Flight Plan’.
A little girl goes missing in the aircraft and there won’t be any proof left that the kid had boarded the flight. Nobody believes mom that her kid came with her. So mom herself gets into action of searching the kid in that aircraft, of which she knows each & every bit of it!! How she knows the aircraft? Because she will be the one who would have designed that aircraft !! Interesting movie and I heard rumors that the movie may get banned! That may be because the movie has many scenes showing minute details about aircraft and how to goof it up.
After movie, did some small shopping in the Arizona mills. I added one more t-shirt, to my latest hobby of collecting T-shirts bearing city names I visited.
Next stop was ‘Mills Avenue’, which we called ‘Brigade road of Phoenix’. Looks like Brigade road had deep rooted influence on all of us hailing from Bangalore. First thing we do here is compare any dazzling-happening street to Brigades and then we add ‘May be this is little bigger’!
Mills Avenue is across Arizona University and I think the large chunk of that crowd was from there.One interesting thing about Mills Avenue was the huge guitars erected on the footpaths.There were so many of them and each in different color & design. There was a guitar which was shining red, which got its color by the 1 cent coins pasted all over it
The evening was just getting lit up and there were young crowds all set to enjoy the Saturday night. Most of the time here again we spent in window shopping and also followed Achhu to whichever apparel shop she went.Looked like all the shops in that Avenue was meant only for Ladies!
After a quick dinner of Spinach pasta, went to ‘Four rabbits fountain’ and sat there chatting for a very long time. Invariably the topic of treks and finally Sakleshpur trek came and how dearly we remembered that trek.
Anand, who is Acchu’s colleague, was in great form too. Best part about Anand is he speaks so good Kannada. It is significant & heartening considering the point that he is a Bihari !
I know that sometimes I just get pissed off due to silly & stupid reasons. Achhu will definitely be nodding her head to this & saying “I know”!
We left Mills around 11.The crowd was getting bigger and bigger. Came back and slept at 2 not beforing watching ‘Gone in 60 Seconds’.
Sunday, Oct 2:
We got up pretty early for lunch at 11:30. Me and Suppi were in quite a flash back mood after seeing our Kumaraparvatha trek fotos and Lucent picnic fotos.Don’t know how long we sat chatting about that KP trip, about Sandeep who was the 'star' of that trek, about Sudheep's capability of carrying friend's luggage,about Sumanth,Hakim,Mohammed,Ayush,Bhat….
Picked Achhu on the way and went to Anthem malls. It seems the whole idea of that session was to show me huge cactuses and desert landscaping in Phoneix.Indeed there were cactuses on either side of road and there were few cactus nurseries also.On the way back from mall, Suppi, Achhu & I sung some Kannada songs non-stop. Especially that song “Heghe idhey namm desha..Heghe idhey namm bhashey..Heghe idharey namma jana?” was sounding so meaningful!!
Anthem mall is one more shopping mall in Phoenix.If you had noticed, Phoenix has nothing but huge malls and looked like those are the entertainment spots here. Phoenix doesn’t boost huge things as in Los Angeles or San Francisco.
But things small or big, looks good only when you are with good company.
Suppi & Achhu gave such a nice company throughout my stay there.
Achhu & Suppi, I know you will definitely do still better planning next time I come there!!!
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