Days pass by

Finally I got the guts to rent a car. Driving is the only thing I like US better than in India. Its simple and easy since driving is predictable here, you can define how the other vehicles are going to act. Its transportation automation here. But Indian driving, its R&D...

Ok, Friday evening I visited Annapurna restaurant at San Mateo. Same place, nothing has changed really. Even the waiters are the same. I order for a "Sambar Vada" and a "Masala Dosa". The Dosa was so big that I could have slept on it, but I did not complain, a week without dosa is too much for Sudhu.

More importantly I found some company. A guy called Vasanth, an employee of Accenture working for a project in Oracle on a short term trip as me and staying in the same hotel. We went out Friday and finally seems like I got some company to hang around! He was expecting some guests and he would be out on Saturday, but I had a plan for Saturday too.

Saturday was lonely but not too boring. A vehicle makes all the difference here. The vehicle I rented for the weekend was a Pontiac G6, a full size car. For breakfast I drove out to Ralston and had a coffee breakfast at Starbucks. Then I collected some information on Sony service for Sriram anna's broken laptop. I found one at Stanford shopping center at Palo Alto about 15 miles from my place.

Drive to Stanford was eventful, lost my way a couple times and then clawed back into the right route to finally get to the shopping center. My God it was huge. Managed to find the place and give the laptop for service, its gonna take a week to a months time depending on whats gone wrong. The way back was easy and I came back with no issues.

Each drive was carefully planned. Go to maps.google.com for a route chart, get accustomed to the turns and curves and then write down the text map. Then start the drive. Late afternoon I drove back to Ralston and lunched Chinese at a Hongkong restaurant. Was nice, not too different from the Indian Chinese food. But 90% of the menu is pork and beef based and I avoided all those and took to a chicken order.

Done with the food and a chat with its Chinese owner, man that guy was very informative, he has been living here for 30 years... Drove back to the hotel and spent a quiet afternoon. Actually I was just waiting for the evening to arrive. At about 8 PM I started the drive to Saravana Bhavan at Sunnyvale. This was a simple route and one that I had taken numerous time during my last trip, but I got lost.

Instead of talking the Fremont avenue exit, I went past it, but it helped that I knew the route, basically I had to go left on taking the exit into Fremont avenue and at S Mary I needed a right. So I decided to take the next exit and follow the same path and try my luck. Yes it did last, the next exit into the lane parallel to Fremont also met S Mary and I reached the restaurant unscathed.