Dishk meet LA 2017

Rameez is the one who set the ball rolling for the meet by not doing dollar rupee conversion calculations and just hopping on that plane from San Jose to Burbank,LA, arriving Friday evening 6:15 pm. As soon as we reached my home in Oak Park, Rameez wanted to eat sea food and just sit and talk by the sea. That is how we drove to Malibu and reached Duke's place sea food restaurant and to our pleasant surprise, the restaurant had a breath taking view of the beautiful full moon that had set in to welcome Rameez and the moonlight reflections were just as intangible as it was beautiful. As for me, since my wife and kids were in India and I was always at the threat of being painfully lonely, I had been looking forward to this trip for a few weeks now.

That is Rameez talking to his wife as we paused by the road on the drive through Pacific Coastal Highway after the dinner

While driving around and talking about Rameez's meesha, we came across this sign board and decided that it is worth a photo, selfie and otherwise.

Right, that is Deepak and Remit there and blocked by Rameez is Deepak's colleague. Deepak had taken the option of taking a bus from the bay area to Los Angeles and had arrived with his colleague early in the morning on Saturday at 6 AM. Remit picked up Deepak and his colleague Harish and served them the traditional puttu kerala breakfast and payasam. Rameez and me drove from Oak Park to Tustin arriving around 9:30 a.m. or so and then we had our puttu breakfast as well. So, of all the plentiful LA travel options, we chose to visit the San Andreas fault in the Indian Canyon reserve at Palm Springs. It is where  two plates of the earth crust edge and in that sense I felt that is is more of a real border than the artificial country borders.While I had taken a gamble, knowing Rameez and Deepak pretty well, the decision worked right and both of them did mention this as their favorite spot from the trip. 

After the one mile loop trail, gathering around for the pointless precious chatter and Jikku is dialed in as well.

Deepak and Rameez are apparently standing on two separate plates at this point, one on the pacific plate and the other on the california plate. It is desert all around and no vegetation anywhere around. Since the plates push along the fault line, the ground water gets pushed up and this is what leads to this vegetation and the fan palms that are extinct except for the ones in this belt

After the andreas trail in Indian Canyons, we went to another section called the Palm trees trail. While Deepak did want to do the trail, Rameez was not very keen. So we just hung around and took some photos around here and at the split rock which is a rock that was on the fault line and split when the plates moved along the line.

From Palm Springs, we went back to Remit's home and took my car and stopped by at Hollywood along the way to my home. We also went in and saw the Madam Tussauds wax museum. The video is not working on blogger and that is the chinese theatre which is the oldest theatre in US and on the theatre is projected the advertisement for the next VIP tour of the theatre.

After hollywood, we reached home at midnight exact. We were mostly on philosophical and reflective conversations around the differences in various ideologies. No real answers as such but real conversations that made for a pleasant drive. Speaking of drives, I had an adventure leaving the parking lot at Hollywood as the Nissan altima would keep sliding down. Well that is not done but it was and I was reminded of my initial driving days in India where you are expected to control your break and accelerator but here it is the car's fault.Deepak and me continued our conversations on to 1:30 am on Saturday night and we had very ambitious coverage plans for Sunday as well.

Getty Villa was the closest attraction to my home and it was also ranked pretty high in the list of things to see in LA. However, the experience was insufficient. Next up, we went to Santa Monica beach which sort of showed up as we were driving to Santa Monica beach. We were not done admiring Malibu beaches that were lining up our drive and we actually parked at the beach. We did the famous Santa Monica peer walk and Remit was on the way with his family to join us as well. This place has a charm. Really does. I think this one actually beats every other place we visited. There is a richness and beauty to the atmosphere that you feel like you are indeed fortunate to be able to hang around here so easily.

One thing that we could not do the previous night was to see the Hollywood Sign as when our thoughts got to seeing the Hollywood sign, this portion of the earth had spinned away from the sun. So after Santa Monica and Venice beaches, we were driving to the Griffith center to see the Hollywood sign up close. I was feeling nervous as Rameez's flight was at 6:15 pm and I did not want him to miss the flight. The responsibility that I felt was a bit unnatural but when such thoughts come in, I usually heed. So, on the way, as we saw the sign, I stopped the car and that is Rameez checking his photograph of the Hollywood sign. 

From Malibu full moon to the Hollywood sign, Rameez had seen it all. And we left Rameez at the Burbank airport and headed to hang around in the Griffith observatory. Deepak has the strategy that for his trips, the last item would be a park so that the tiredness will find a partner in the grass and you have added one more item to your things done list. The planetorium offered reclining long seats in addition to boring lecture stories to have Deepak and his colleague sleep peacefully. As the parking lots were full, we had taken shuttles to the observatory. We had some dependency on the shuttle and when it shows up etc but we reached well in time for the bus departure at the GreyHound bus stop in a dingy looking old town that looked drastically different to the happy conveniences that Santa Monica presented for instance. While a few of my processors were down, I was relieved that we did not get caught in any traffic jams like we had done the previous day and were well in time for the bus. As Deepak continued his warmth filled conversations, he asked me to sing a song and say goodbye. While I am very well aware that I am nowhere near a good singer, I also felt that I should not let that gesture pass. With minimal energy, I sang "Kadhaymama.." which has lyrics to the effect that "Let us sit together in the evening and tell stories till we disperse .. "
It was an awesome weekend and that is why this blog happened while I had been planning to extra sleep out the tiredness today