(Due to the holiday, this is a repost from previous years, edited and updated.)

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US. For an immigrant like me, the Thanksgiving holiday took a long time to warm up to. It seems to be like baseball or cricket or peanut butter, belonging to that class of things that one has to get accustomed to at an early age in order to really enjoy. For people who were born and grew up here, Thanksgiving is one of those holidays whose special significance one gets to appreciate as a child as part of learning the traditions and history and culture of this country. As someone who came to the US as an adult and did not have all the fond memories associated with the childhood experience of visiting my grandparents’ homes for a big family reunion on this occasion, this holiday initially left me unmoved. [Read more…]

There is something bizarre about watching a car going around in reverse circles on a city street, its open door crashing repeatedly with a post, with police and spectators looking on and doing nothing.

After awhile it gets monotonous but you can skip to the 6:45 mark to see how it ends.

When I first saw this I wondered: Is this for a film? A bet? The description says that this happened accidentally when the car started moving after the driver and passenger got out to switch positions.

How do people even think of doing such things, let alone develop the skills to carry them out? [Read more…]

A lion cub fell part way down a ravine and was clinging on for dear life to the sides of the chasm. Its mother undertook an extremely perilous effort in order to save it. [Read more…]

As someone who is hopeless at learning languages, I have a deep admiration for those pick up new ones with seeming ease. I am even more impressed by those who provide simultaneous translations, able to achieve the incredible feat of listening to a stream of words entering their heads in one language, translating it in their brains, and then sending the message out in a different language, all the while having a fresh stream of words entering. [Read more…]

Even those people who treat speed limits as merely suggestions and stop signs as saying ‘slow down and look before you go’ tend to take stopped school buses with flashing lights seriously. You simply know that there’ll be hell to pay if you don’t stop and if some school child gets hit as a result. [Read more…]

I hate talking on the phone. For a long time, I resisted getting a cell phone until I was persuaded about its value in an emergency, so I got a cheap one that does not have a contract plan and for which I can pre-pay and that I rarely use. [Read more…]

A little Shih-Tzu dog found itself somehow stranded on a remote small land bank about to be engulfed by the rising tide. Fortunately, an endurance rower who was training for an event spotted the dog and even though he was already exhausted was able to row over to the bank and rescue the frightened dog and take it ashore. [Read more…]

I will be traveling for the next few days to attend a college reunion in Washington DC and so blogging may be light since my access to the internet may be spotty as well as me being busy meeting up with old friends whom I have not seen for decades. Unfortunately due to Hurricane Sandy, some of them have had their flights cancelled and so cannot attend.

Blogging should be back to normal by Monday.

I woke up this morning to see that a huge pine tree that was right next to our house in the backyard had toppled over. Fortunately it missed our house and the garage and the power line. It did knock out our telephone line so now I have no landline phone and hence no internet access at home, since I use DSL. [Read more…]