Hi All,

Belated happy I'day.

Hope all of u enjoyed this looooong weekend. Its interesting to read ur travel logs for this weekend. To add to that here is mine.

The gang : myself, Visak & Praveen (New Hampshire Univ.), Chander ( Clemsen univ.), Aravind(RPA Inst.,Troy), Harish & Vaidhi(Univ. at Buffalo - yes, its a city here) and Rajasekear (Intel, calif.), we were supposed to be patrolled by the tamil gals at these univ's and they were not made at time( Thamizhachigallukku 'nathai' patri solliyaa tharanum!!! - I'm not pin pointing any of u in shyami & co.!!!, its a general remark -- too bad ignorance isn't painfull). atleast be prepare for the next pittsburgh trip??

Niagara Falls is 10 hr drive from Boston (900 km), we started here on sunday noon and reached there at 10'O clock, on the way we picked up the folks from New Hampshire, Troy, Albany and Buffalo. Hope u heard about 'battle of Troy' in ur history classes, the Hudson river is the only place to visit there and Albany is the capital of New York state. New hampshire is a tiny state with no rules and NO TAX (H-1's note it down), the number plates in the cars in this state says " Live Free or Die" (In Massachussets it is "The spirit of America"). Buffalo is a city near to Niagara, like Coimbatore and Ooty.

We really enjoyed the falls in lights and in day too. unfortunately we don't have a canadian visa to go to the other side. We never felt like visiting Niagara, its like visiting Lalbagh. 90% of the crowd are deshi's, it seems americans are visiting an Indian tourist spot. Wherever u go, u can hear either telugu or hindi or tamil. Its really a cultural shock for us, who expected americans instead of Indians.

There are two falls there, one is called American falls and the other is called as Horseshoe falls (which is mostly viewable from canada and this is better than american), after 20 yrs or so, we can combinely call it as 'Indian falls'. We were surprised to see a Vinayagar poster in HardRock Cafe there and he is called as 'Niagara Vinayagar'. We were astonished by a sardar-ji, who stopped his car in the middle of the signal and having a chat with another deshi on the opposite side of the road (yes, the cop is standing near to the signal without knowing what to do with this guy).

Niagara, can i say the queen of falls has its own enchanting and roaring sound which made the trip joyfull. Niagara unnecessarily brought two things into my mind, one is Vairamuthu's "Oh! Niagara" and the other is "Cauvery Tribunal" between TN and Karnataka :-( We came back on tuesday noon.

What so special about this trip is, except me all are vegetarians and this is my FIRST ever trip without a drop of alcohol :-(:-(

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For the folks, who are constantly asking me about the Boston chicks. here u go :
Tuesday night we went to cambridge, a downtown area of Boston, which is on the Banks of Charles River. Independence Day celebrations were right there at 10 pm in the river, with Fireworks and Boston philharmonic. Around 1 lakh crowd was there and we felt odd-men out there, b'cos we dressed in shorts and Tees!!!! all others were dressed very very simple!!!!!!!!!!!!! Here i 'm not able to see deshi's (even 1%).

I'm not able to differentiate between my village 'thiruvizha' and this celebrations except the high-tech stuffs. For thiruvizha, we used to come in bullock cart, watch 'theru koothu' and 'vaana vedikkai'. Here they came in car, watch/hear the live pop concert and Fireworks. The fireworks itself was continously for 34 min's, fully computer controlled, i'm sure it might cost atleast a couple of millions.

I think this fireworks celebrations are happening in all the major cities, if u r near to any of the city, don't miss it next time, its really very nice.

Thats all folks, so How about Florida & Miami???

anbudan,
Mukund..
P.S. : Hope i'll send the photo's soon.

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