- - Keeping it up - -

Alright, I'm trying really hard to keep it up -- I mean the blogging. :)

It is interesting how blogging has begun affecting my life. I feel like a kid who has received a new gift; just cannot take my eyes off it. I spent a good part of Monday (7/14), admiring my debut post, sometimes re-reading it and eagerly waiting for your comments. I am curious if this has happened to you too? To the ones who cared to leave encouraging comments -- thank you! This post is dedicated to you.

Blogging is tough. I for one, need time to collect my thoughts and put them into words. This entails at least two hours of uninterrupted time. Given the current scenario at home (parents visiting), this is pretty much impossible. Guess what? My parents are visiting an uncle in Brooklyn, NY and DW is busy catching up on a project deadline. This gave me some alone-time with my blogspot and an opportunity to catch up with you all.

Early last week, I heard (and read) from colleagues at work that many businesses are becoming conscious about their environmental (or carbon) footprint. The European Union for example, has taken firm steps towards control of carbon emissions and several businesses are now feeling the heat. Anyway, this got me curious about what have I been up to lately? After all, real change starts at home. I visited this website to check my carbon footprint. After answering several habitual questions the "number of guilt" i.e. your contribution to environmental abuse (in tonnes of CO2), is shown to you. The only reasonably quantifiable variable that I could locate in this exercise, was the gallons of gasoline used each month. It turns out that a person living in New Jersey (USA) emits ~ 8.76 kg of CO2/gallon of gas consumed. So, I began digging through my gas bills starting Nov 2007 and came up with figure 1 i.e. total monthly expenditure on gas (I've tried to reason the two big spikes in spending). I then looked up the average monthly price of gas in NJ in the past year and estimated my total gasoline consumption in gallons per month (indicative of the kg of CO2 per month), show in figure 2. Before you judge me, I'd like to remind you that I live near Clinton, NJ and drive to work at Allentown, PA. The commute is 96 miles back-and-forth. My car typically gives about 34 miles-to-the-gallon, which puts my basic usage at 60 gallons/month (indicated in figure 2 by the red dashed line). But clearly, my claim in figure 1 about increase in gas prices being the lone culprit is not right. My usage has definitely gone up (figure 2).

Yes, I do feel guilty about dumping ~ 8 times my body weight of CO2 (on an average) in the atmosphere every month. Thought I'd share this with you and alleviate the guilt a little bit. Seems like this blogspot is going to serve an additional purpose -- my personal confession box to the world! I must also tell you that I've begun the efforts to reduce my carbon footprint, e.g. carpooling to work.

Moving on to more fun things -- a few of us (dear parents (DP), DW, DFs Viju, Deep, Arvind and Kalpesh) got together for a beach trip to Cape May, NJ. The drive was a pleasant one along the NJ coastline. After getting there and locating a metered parking (tough to find, carry a lot of quarters if you plan to go there -- 15 mins/25c, 10 hour limit), we started with beach volleyball. Completely failed to impress but it was fun.

We then moved to what beaches are meant for -- to enjoy the cool ocean water. The most hilarious moment came along when Deep and I forced my mom to get into the water with us. Check out her clearly freaked-out-face.

We then continued to the Sunset Beach (yes, this exists even on the "east" coast). This is a smallish beach with (as the name suggests) a beautiful view of the sunset. We reached early and ended up playing mini-golf (18 hole course) for the first time in our lives. DW was ecstatic! The participants and scores are shown in the adjacent table (Congrats Kalpesh!). Mom and Dad took over from Viju and I respectively from hole 8 onwards. They did pretty well.

By the time we finished, the sun had begun to set. We witnessed a touching ceremony conducted every single day during sunset (between memorial and labor days), wherein deceased war veterans are honored by singing the American National Anthem and lowering the flag (hoisted earlier in the day). Every flag used is special as they come directly from servicemen caskets. You can check out a video of the beach and the ceremony here. I managed to capture a good snapshot of the sunset too (see below)!

If you'd like to check out the gallery of all photos taken during the trip follow the links: Shailesh's gallery and Viju's gallery.

Moving on to movies -- we watched two really good movies in the past week. Both completely different in content and message. Jaane Tu Ya Jaane Na was light-hearted fun romantic movie with a whole lot of Dil-Chahta-Hai-like content (both newcomers, Imran and Genelia were impressive). On the other hand, Aamir was a gripping thriller with excellent direction and a serious message to convey. You must check these movies out, if you haven't already.

Finally, I decided to introduce a new section in my blog -- "DW's obsession of the month" (DWOM). Every month or so, DW is hooked on to something that she likes to listen or dance to over-and-over again (it is treat to watch her dance btw!). Anyway, we watch "So you think you can dance" every week and enjoy it big-time. DW being a super dancer and hip-hop fan, absolutely loved this performance by Twitch and Comfort. Thought you'd enjoy it too.

This is a good time for me to sign off. I hope you enjoyed this update. The next one should come in a week-or-so. Have a superb weekend y'all!