Past Few weeks

    I shouldnt say i had been busy but there are a few things that occupied me for the last few weeks. I spent a few hundred dollars going for the Driving school. 100$ per 2 hours is what it costed me. Uncle Sam's Driving School - David was my instructor. I took first two classes with him picking me up daily at 7:30am and dropping me back at office. The First class with him, he taught me "Parallel Parking" which is the most deciding factor in getting a drivers license here. I got it done pretty fast. Thanks to the thought i had to learn the car with driving school and definitly my extra stress in reverse direction practise in bangalore with my 20 day driving school helped me a lot boost my confidence, get the parallel parking done in the first shot. After learning couple of tricks on the DO's and Don'ts which were clearly articulated by my driving master, i got it. He drove me to the MVA (motor vehicle admin) and showed me from far, couple of people taking the drive test. I took the second class just to get a feel of the car on the normal roads.

     The weekend started and myself and mitesh (my roomate) started to the Enterprise Rent-A-Car where i booked a rental car (18$ per day) economy. Thanks to the free upgrade they gave me. I got Black, Mercedes Benz 2009 Model which drove about 5000 miles for just 5$ extra upgrade. I got complete insurance on the car by paying extra and started on from there on. Saturday and sunday ran so fast. I have been on the highways I-270, I-495, I-95 running about 170 miles in two days and ofcourse doing a lot of shopping in between. It was really good to drive the Merc. I had been to my office parking lot to practise the parallel parking as well.. that was a bummer.

    Work kept me busy for a few days. The adobe software i had crashed all of a sudden and the way i used to work changed drastically. I was handicapped with no photoshop, no adobe contribute to blog. Writing a blog using the browser editor sucks, atleast to me. With Mitesh all set to end his 8 month long await for his marriage, he started to pack his bags and got really busy then on. I had a small trip in between for the long weekend to New York where the temperatures froze me completely. I could witness the crowd same as how we fight for busses in bangalore to hyderabad during the diwali season. Very long Que's to board busses and this long weekend took nearly 8-9 hours to travel while it should take 3.5 hours on a typical day.

    I started to get on with my driving practise for a class more before the exam and i was all set for the Day.Not for the sake of exam, the nerves were tight and the temperatures are freezing outside. With my appointment at 8:30am in the morning where the previous day rained a lot, i was lucky to see the sun just coming out. I started my drive test and finished parallel parking, k-turn, 4-way stop, reverse, park back. We have to do a lot of acting though in the test. I passed. It really took more time to me than what it would take normally. With initial confusions of planning to get a written test cleared in New Jersey to get a license went in vain.. I had to do Drug and Alcohol test here, followed by written test and then i scheduled my drive test appointment (almost 22 days later than my written test). I got my DL last week. I went to see off mitesh going to india for his marriage, and i am on a chase now to shift appartment. Planning to remain in the hamptons, just looking at the best options possible. I spent couple of days hunting for used BMW's and Mercedes, later decided to wait couple of months before i make a thought on moving forward to buying a car soon.

    I orderd a Nikon s550 from COSTCO which was for 150$. I recieved it a few days ago and it so sweet and very little. With Christmas around the cornor, and the black friday which went couple of weeks ago, i am all set on looking at daily deals. Planning to look for GPS. Garmin or TomTom?