Google trends - Sex, technology and India

Came to know that google has this feature called 'google trends' that shows you the most used keywords from a particular location - jus type the word and it tells you the city, country and language that most searches were from.

The pervert that I being am, I typed 'sex' in the field and the results were surprising - 3 out of the top 4 cities were from India. That's not the end - the most number of searches were from my language - tamil...and my city - chennai...Now I understand why our population is unshakeable :))

Certainly I dont mean it in the negative sense but thinking about it, the population will have the most number of 'working' people in the future. When the world abstains from procreating, we shall awake for active replication and prosperity!!!

Now, comes the interesting part...I type technology, economy and most of the top cities are from India. Especially 'technology' retrieved top 4 cities and were all from India.

Hmmm certainly something to be proud about!

My surroundings

After a detailed 'exploration' of my 'new world', I am posting some pictures of lab floor entrance, view from the 9th floor, my university entrance and my apartment in downtown Dallas. I live in the 'Inwood on the park' apartments, about 20 metres (ya u read it right its metres = 100 cm) from my univ.

The close proximity puts me in a convenient position to

1. Work (???) latenights
2. Avoid getting a car
3. Dodge public transportation (which is useless) and
4. Not getting killed (living in Dallas downtown and walking late night is the most effective way to get killed, next only to driving bike on the highway)

Indeed its a pleasure to be so close to the lab...imagine waking up at 8:15 in the morn ing and realising its 15 mins to the really crucial lecture...This is where living closeby figures as a significant advantage. The floor entrance to my lab is here:


Here is a pic of view from my lab floor (9th floor)

And my University :)

By the way I introduce here a new term which I coined - its called 'ALANDERING' and stands for AimLessly wANDERING. Its my favorite pastime. On weekends or wen I find a rare chunk of 10 hours useless time, I pick up my camera and head somewhere...nowhere...without any destination in mind. I use public transport - trains and buses, tains being my favorite. Its a great way to explore the city and get on and off wherever I want, watch people go about doing their daily activities. It feels great to not be a part of the system and instead 'watch' the system. The prof who tells his colleague about his work, the executive listening to his Mp3 player, the adolescent making out with his girl, the beggar asking for money (ya u do find beggars here!), the young girl reading the book, the slutty girl chewing gum with tall pointed high heel shoe and listening to mp3 giving me a weird look - people from different walks of life. Then again I head to the starbucks to pump up some caffeine and continue my ppl-watching. Sometimes I hang around reading books in trains which is really great experience. Travels like these introduce me to new people, places and exciting time. Its a whole new way to see a place. Esp the people are so much fun to b with when they are 'engaged' rather than passive watchers.

My new year party celebrated Spanish style...

2007 is a year I will never forget. My first new year outside India. I usually celebrate new year in India with my family and friends. Typically I would watch new year speacial programmes on TV, talk with family members, go out with friends, hangout at shopping malls like Spencer's and catch a movie at Sathyam...By evening i will be home with family, go out for dinner and come back by night and watch countdown on TV. By 12:00 pm, we call all other relatives and frends and wish each other a "happy new year" of course added with all sorts of adjectives like 'prosperous, wealthy, healthy'...

By 12:30 my mom with the womenfolk of the household go down to put the color kolam (a decoration on the floor at the entrance of the house using colorful salt and other materials)...There would be some 'kolam competitions' when judges would be visiting houses the next morning to see which 'kolam' is the best...

We menfolk would watch tv for sometime and crash. This was until i had the pleasure of owning a motorbike...After i got one I would hangout on new year night with friends. Last new year when I was in India, i went to Kishkinta for the new year party with frends and had an awesome experience. The year before that was the Tsunami year and we were at the Tsunami struck "Marina beach" jus for the heck of adventure. After that we went back to a friend' house, watched movie, drunk (juice and coke - I was a teetotaller then...) and crashed.

BUT

This new year was totally different. Its unique as I experienced it outside India, in the United States and celebrated it the Spanish way with Hector and his folks from Spain. Hector, his GF Laura, his mom and his sister, Elena made awesome Spanish food for us, Zhuo and I bought wine and beer and a big pot of icecream. At 9:30 we had the food, for which his folks had brought ingredients all the way from Spain. We ate the food that consisted of Pajaja, Spainish Omlette and vegetable cake. There were desserts made from Almond which was specially made in his district Alicante in Spain. His mom and sister explained to me some places in Alicante and have invited me to their place and I thanked them and told them - "You always have a home in India" "-)



The we watched the countdown and according to a Spanish custom for the last 12 seconds of the new year we have to eat 12 grapes. I tried to follow the custom but missed a grape and cudnt finish 4. Besides my mouth was full of grapes and I was looking like a monkey (I shd admit the grape was fantastic!!!)

I played the Domino game, a game consisting of wooden block with numbers that needs to be arranged. Each player starts with 7 blocks and has to dispose all the big numbers and the one with the lowest numbers added together wins. Check out the video



We then danced to some spanish and english music...Laura and Elena became fond of the 'It's the time to disco' song from KHNH and even sent the song home for their fols to listen and enjoy...I learned and spoke some Spanish and i shd say it wasn't so difficult to understand the Spanish they spoke with my limited vocabulary...

Dancing to music...



Finally drunk and tired I retired back to my apt and crashed into an instant sleep...