Last night out

The guys at the office dragged me out for a final happy hour / night on the town yesterday. It was a great way to cap off the year with some fun times all around. We went to this bar called Hint - nothing special, a typical European-looking bar. We were goofing around a lot and telling stories.

One of our guys, Gordon, went over to chat up a girl at a table in the corner. To help him out, I went over to talk to the younger girl (who turned out to be a sister). It turns out that Gordon's girl is a Bollywood actress! Nicolette Bird (see pics). So I finally met someone in Bollywood - I'm surprised that it took so long, but I can finally check it off my list.

I'm all packed up. Some things I wanted to keep had to go anyway (space limits), and I'm over the weight limits - bring on those extra baggage fees! But I guess I'm almost through here. It feels like I was living in the US just a minute ago, and that this year has passed so quickly. The move is going to be a huge shock... it just hasn't hit me yet.

The Taj Mahal

A few weeks ago I was scheduled for another business trip to Delhi. And I thought to myself, "Self, you really need to get yourself down to Agra. Who knows when you'll be in Delhi again?" This was probably my 10th or 15th trip to Delhi. Interestingly, it would be my last! So I was fortunate swing by Agra when I did.

What a journey. It's almost 5 hours each way by car over bad roads (frequent stopping for cows / kids / etc.). That's one of the interesting things about India; all of its sights are nearly inaccessible. I ended up missing my flight back to Bangalore that night. But on the bright side, it allowed me to catch up on some R&R in a hot bath at a 5-star hotel in Delhi.

The Taj is beautiful, sure. But I think the mystique from the story behind it. At a time when most Indian kings took 100 wives, the king who built the Taj took only one. And when she died, he built this memorial to her, and never looked at another woman. The building is completely symmetrical in every aspect, and the interior has tons of semi-precious jewels around the queen's grave. They're all set into the marble to form flowers and vines, it looks wonderful.

Because of its symmetry, the Taj photographs perfectly from every angle. Every picture I took came out like a postcard. It was really hard to pick which ones to post here.