#45 Boston - Married to a Tree - April 15 2007

Greetings from Los Angeles my friends - and yes, it is sunny here - a fact that made me quite giddy bordering on delirious yesterday, and I realized that I have not seen the sun in weeks in Boston. It has been consistently cold and dreary since early February, it is mid-April, winter has shown no inclination to let up any time soon. It either rains or snows, and rare are the sunny days in between. Boston is possibly expecting snow for the Marathon on Monday, I think for the first time in its 111-year history.

Easter was no different, it was cold outside, and what a good time to host a few friends, and have a warm and spirited get-together inside. Mostly due to the presence of my wonderfully charming and funny friends Mona and Rohini, we learned all about Bollywood movies and their intricate plots. For those of you who don't know, Bollywood is a genre of Hindustani films from India, most of them with elaborate dance numbers, music to tap your feet to, and of course a hefty romance between two beautiful looking people.

In the context of this positively animated discussion, we learned about "mangliks" , who (I certainly hope I am explaining this right) are folks who are born during certain astrological period. Once this happens, you are doomed my friend, it is supposed to be a bad omen for all sorts of things, in particular relationships, marriages and other living group arrangements - it could lead to divorce even, or worse, the over-early death of your significant other. Now here is the deal: if two mangliks marry each other, the bad vibes cancel each other out. That would be Plan A. Plan B, which comes into effect if you cannot find another manglik you like to the degree that you want to marry them, would be to ward off the evil spirits by having a ceremony of sorts, where the manglik bride or groom gets married to an inanimate object, such as a banana tree or a Vishnu icon or sorts. Another version of Plan B would be to marry an urn, which then gets destroyed immediately after the vows have been spoken, and the manglik is then considered a widow/er and free from the curse. You see, this whole manglik curse business only applies to your first marriage, after that you can pretty much do what you want. Check out Lago Raho Munna Bhai, if you feel so inclined, a Bollywood feature that features a Manglik subplot. Rohini has offered to host a Bollywood party at some point in the near future, where we will be introduced to the finer intricacies of this genre of cinema. I for one am looking forward to it.

The rest of Easter was pretty much spent on the couch with movies, the weather did not improve as the day went on or any day thereafter. Monday's track workout at Community Running could only be tolerated because I was promised some excellent Mexican food at the MIT burrito shop, which I have to admit has the best freakin' quesadillas I have ever had.

Alright, Los Angeles - I barely got here yesterday after an extremely bumpy flight from the East Coast. Storms were raging all over the country, Denver got dumped with snow again, Texas is being wiped clean by tornados and Los Angeles has been experiencing severe wind speeds to the point where some flights the day before could not land at LAX at all. After two failed attempts one plane had to retreat to Long Beach, some corn field nearby or God knows where. Apparently the flight was a Northwest flight, and there is no NW crew at Long Beach, so all the passengers were carted by bus to LA, whereas the plane stayed in Long Beach, and when the winds died down, flew the luggage to LAX. Not only was our flight bumpy and unpleasant, the English language channel for the in-flight movie ("Freedom Writers") never worked, only the Spanish one, and that means that after "Yo se Hillary Swank" they pretty much lost me.

I am staying in the Millennium Biltmore hotel, one the classic hotels built in the 1920s - it has a sort of "faded elegance" look, and a history to boot: in the 1930s and early 1940s it hosted the Academy Awards, and still is a frequent location for movies (Cruel Intentions, Chinatown, Beverly Hills Cop....) or even a Britney Spears video (now that's classy!). In the Biltmore's Crystal Ballroom the Oscar statuette was first introduced to the world. I was immediately captured by its beauty, and I stood there with my mouth open, staring at the ceiling, and looked fixedly at its Italian-Renaissance columns and colorful and elaborate ceiling frescos.
(http://www.millenniumhotels.com/MCIL.nsf/lu_hoteldoc/115$$hotelDescription?opendocument)

Maybe it was the nice weather yesterday, but I did not have the immediate sense of repulsion I expected to experience upon visiting Los Angeles. While it may be the West Coast poster child for urban sprawl, the city has put a lot of effort into making the "urban metropolis style of architecture" look good. In between glistening high-rises that seem to disappear in the sky, modern art sculptures, inviting spots to sit and watch water displays, and small parks give LA's working masses much-needed repose and are easy on the eyes. As far as its modern downtown financial district goes, I was pleasantly surprised.






I did get some running in yesterday, and armed with a little map provided by the hotel, headed out for a 5-mile run in search of Echo Pond - which did prove to be a little gem in a neighborhood where I would least expected it and provides a nice view of the skyline of Los Angeles in the background. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_Park%2C_Los_Angeles%2C_California

I then headed onto a bus, yes my friends, I took public transportation in Los Angeles, which was actually not so bad and always beats a 60$ cab ride - I squeezed in with six million commuters on the 720 express bus and hightailed it out to Santa Monica. It always amazes me just how vast the LA area is, it took me 1 h 15 minutes to get to Santa Monica, and that was on the express bus!! After a quick stroll along Santa Monica Pier and a quickie glance at the Pacific Ocean (I did miss it a bit), I zipped over to Venice to see my childhood friend Hans, who recently sold his two restaurants to open up a new cafe and bakery. Three Squares on the corner of Abbot Kinney Boulevard and San Juan is a delightful place, with bright, simple and cheerful lines, and fantastic food based on Hans' and his business partner's Wolfgang's German and Austrian ancestry. The Spaetzle with morel mushrooms and white asparagus was phenomenal, the mac and cheese soufflé worth flying to LA for, and Wolfgang's Austrian flagship dish, the Kaiserschmarrn so good I could have eaten two risking a rupture of my already pleasantly extended stomach. We drank yummy yummy Austrian wine, and I was sent home with pretzel rolls from Hans and Wolfgang's bakery. http://www.dailycandy.com/article.jsp?ArticleId=29122&city=2 Of course, aside from the food, it was nice to catch up, I had not seen Hans in 25 years I guess, and we did compare our paths in life that both led us to live in the United States. A memorable evening for me, indeed. (And just in case if you were worried, I did take a cab back to the hotel.)

A couple other observations about LA to round out the report - it is definitely greener than I thought or remembered, and folks are friendly, very friendly. The homeless are more aggressive; this morning I had some pregnant lady not only ask me fairly energetically for some money, but I think she was planning to follow me into the Starbucks into the hope that I would buy her a muffin... tss tss!

The conference started today and as usual on the first day is always a lot of meet and greet activity and setting up meetings. Tomorrow the exhibit hall opens and the academic posters are on view, I better hope I don't get CRAFT Disease ("Can't Remember a Fucking Thing"), which always seems to befall me at some point.
Off to work I go!!

pet:)