A note to Self

A note to self, because as always unless documented the lessons will be forgotten with time.

Last weekend I was part of a team of people volunteering at the Art of Living US ashram. We were helping with the transportation of people and luggage for the navaratri course. Our team lead had made bookings for the vans/cars and all we had to do was pick passengers up and drop them off at the Ashram.

There are certain things I felt that we could have handled better or lessons learned.

• We need more support from local people of Texas (Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston)
• People are more comfortable driving mini vans than 15 seat vans, and from my experience minivans can hold more luggage for their size
  When there are N people coming from out of town, be prepared to provide transportation to all the N people and their 2 luggage (1 check in and 1 carry on)
• Even if we need to book an extra van/car, to be picked up the same day please use websites like orbitz instead of calling individual rental agencies
• Ask people to assemble at 1 spot for ex: Terminal 1 Baggage claim number 2. (SA airport has a link between the 2 terminals)
  People who are driving the vans, instead of circling terminals, park the vans/cars in short term parking and take the N number of people you think you can transport with you.
• One more note for people driving, make sure you submit the tax exempt form before picking the van/car
• Co-ordinate with people who will be driving by themselves to the course and see if you can arrange rides for the people who need ride
  It is always a good idea for the coordinator to be at the airport
• Email people who need rides and ask them for their cell phone numbers (not their office and not their land line numbers)

VW

Long time ago when I was looking to buy a new car, I was looking at VW Passat (my present car), Honda Accord and Nissan Maxima. In the end I bought VW in spite all the bad comments most of my friends (Indian) gave. 7 and half years later, no regrets, it is for sure one of the most wonderful cars I have driven. It is very reliable and drives really well; in short I love my blue Passat.

Most of my Indian friends were opposing my choice because they were stuck in the concept that VW’s are not reliable and the maintenance is very expensive, when I pushed for specifics all I got was “7 or 8 years later you need t o change timing belt and that it is expensive”.

The reason for this blog is to quote my experience of the VW and counter some of the concepts my friends had (or still have).

After 7 and half years of owning the car, I can say it is very reliable. I won’t think twice before making a long drive in the VW. It has a more rigorous maintenance schedule and the service cost is usually 20 to 30% higher than Japanese makes. The biggest problem I have faced are the CV boots which keeps ripping off every couple of years and cost $300 to replace each time. The car needs a bit higher end tires, which reduces road noise and gives good road grip but doesn’t last longer than 3-4 years. The expense of maintenance is not the timing belt replacement but fixing the leaks and replacing the gaskets (rubber parts). The other ware and tare are the brakes which are made of a softer material and they give the comfort but again don’t last too long. One big problem of either VW or BMW or Audi is the limited number of dealers in Austin. Even sad is that the in town VW dealer is so pathetic that I drive 25-30miles to a dealer out of town. I am sure I wouldn’t have had this problem if I had gone with Honda, Toyota or Nissan.

To conclude cost of maintaining a VW is 20 to 30% more expensive than a Camry or Accord and at least in my case it is as reliable as either of them

In the end I love my car and would keep it for a while to come.

Srishti-The creation

Austin was entertained by the group Srishti-The creation on Sunday afternoon. It was a combination of classical and contemporary dance program organized by our own Asha of Austin. The dance was performed by six artists, each of them performed so well it was impossible to pick your favorite. Their facial expressions, the music, the colorful dress they wore, the dance and the co-ordination between the artists when all of them were on the stage was a true treat to all the senses. For a $15 ticket they entertained us way more than my wildest imagination. The second half of the show where they performed the Krishna-Bhaktimala, I can't put words to do justice to their performance. We all were (most of us) entertained for over 2 hours. It was truly a delightful, vibrant and great performance.

The dance was great but the attendance to the show was dismal, for over 250 odd tickets sold there were less than 50 people including kids, for the vibrant Indian community we boast of in Austin, it was truly a shame on Austin. We Austinites claim to be living in live music capital of the world and we can't make 2hrs of time to visit on a Sunday afternoon to attend a live dance show.

 

First of all don't we have faith in the US consulate that they would give visa to deserving artists and only great ones can tour the country?. For sake of argument, let’s say we don't believe, next in line are our friends in Asha, don't we have faith in them. Haven't we witnessed their earlier programs and enjoyed them.

 

Coming to the people who would say we bought tickets for charity, you donate money for charity and you buy tickets because you want to attend the event, you want to honor the artist. Yesterday the artists gave beyond their 100% and we in the audience should have done at the least 50% effort and showed up to the event. If it were on a weekday or the traffic in the city sucked then it would have been acceptable, but folks we live in Austin and on a Sunday afternoon around 3:30PM possibility of a traffic problem is highly unlikely.

Last but the craziest excuse will be, "it was first week of NFL", folks the DVR’s and TiVo's aren't just for soaps they can record these also.

The icing on the cake was when some one supposedly mentioned "you could have gotten better artists", again I am lost for words to reply to that person.

In the end, it was a memorable evening spent and truly a shame on Austin Indian community for not showing up in numbers to encourage the artists. If Rajima were there she would have said "this is true poverty".

SLR Buy update

After 6 to 7 months of waiting and deciding and all such, I finally bought Canon Rebel Xsi from Amazon.com. It arrived on saturday evening and there was no time this week end to play with it. I have managed to check that it works, will post some images soon.

10 things I loved about Rajima

I mentioned about Rajima in my previous blog entry but realized one blog entry is not sufficient for a great person like her. So, here is another one dedicated to her.

• She was always on time, even for the satsang she was on time. Senior/traveling teachers coming to satsang on time is pretty much unheard of. Also, she spent the whole time from beginning to end in the satsang and participated every moment.
• She was very graceful; she was literally oozing with grace
• She paid attention to the whole class, even the last benchers
• She was strict with her rules and showed no mercy and no excuses. Even the assisting Austin teachers were not spared
• She followed the rules she put in place for the course. When she asked us to cook and bring food the course, she herself had done the same
• Her simplicity
• She was natural and in "SELF" all the time. Her energy levels were always high
• She spent a lot of time talking about prevention of animal cruelty, all other part-1 courses I have attended there used to be restriction on non vegetarian food only during the course but Rajima spent lot of time on why we should avoid animal products (not only for food).
• She never in the course mentioned about her guru but referred only to her master. On the last day of the course she mentioned presence that of a "satguru" is one of the essential things for higher "prana" or life force in life
• She is the first Art of Living teacher (atleast from what I have seen) who expressed concern about environemt and is doing a lot of efforts to save the same. I remember the email going around talking about making the course eco-friendly, I was skeptical, but she proved me wrong.
  

The 10 things aren’t in any order, just a list.
In the end it was wonderful spending time with her.

Eco Friendly Art of Living Part-1 course

Yesterday in Austin we concluded the most eco-friendly Art of Living course in my remembrance. The course was a fairly big one with 70 odd people. For those who do not know, the course spans over 6 days and on the weekends lunch will be provided. If it were any other time we would have bought Styrofoam plates, cups and plastic spoons and forks and served food with that. But this time around it was different, thanks to the wonderful teacher Rajalakshmi Ratan aka Rajima, the participants were forced to bring their own re-usable plates, spoons and forks. When she announced this in the class, I thought the idea was ridiculous and it is not going to work. There will be long queues to the restroom to wash plates and all sorts of logistics were running in my head. But much to my surprise it worked like a charm and it was wonderful to see that we didn't have trash bags filled with styrofoam plates and plastic spoons. We repeated this act for both days of the weekend. All in all, in my estimate we prevented couple of hundred plates and spoons from entering the landfill. I agree that she is the most wonderful and eco-friendly Art of Living teacher I have met in my life.

The teacher quoted that whenever she is invited to a party or to somebody's house, she refuses to eat in the disposable plates and insist on being served in reusable plates. If the host refuses to comply with the request she would refuse to eat.

Hats off to you Rajima, you were wonderful and we all eagerly await your come back to Austin.

HillCroft Avenue, Houston

The place in Houston where almost anything and everything Indian can be found is HillCroft Avenue. It is a collection of four to five big strip malls filled with Indian stores. There were plenty of grocery stores, Jewelry stores, clothes stores, restaurants, electronic stores and we managed to spot one bakery too. Here are some of my impressions of the place

• The stores are organized in strip malls and hence no parking problems.
• The grocery stores were pretty much identical to each other and there wasn't anything unique about them
• The Bakery seemed well organized, they had some good pastries. But unlike India they were selling both vegetarian and non vegetarian
• We visited a couple of Indian Electronic stores and it was amazing to see how in one of the Indian store the guy was pushing the product he was selling on us and not listening to what we wanted. We visited another store, I have to say this store owner was a decent guy and didn't try too much to push things down our throats.
• We encountered a clear example of some things never change when we visited a grocery store asking for leads on Indian electric stores. The grocery store owner said with a straight face that the brand “PREETHI” is not available in Houston at all and the only brands available are the ones he was selling.
• The clothe stores were doing business half Indian style and half western style. Western style because they had lot of the clothes displayed and ready to be picked up. Indian style because they had the expensive dresses folded up neatly and a sales girl was displaying those one by one to the prospective customers.
• The jewelry stores looked completely Indian, once inside it was tough to make out whether we were in Houston or India.
• There was only one south Indian restaurant and most rest were all Indian buffet
• We found a place to get Indian Mixers/Wet Grinders repaired.

All in all an interesting place, will probably go some time in the future to try out some of the restaurants there, one in particular I am interested is the India-Chinese restaurant which had a buffet for lunch.