My obsession with cars

Porsche's, Ferrari's, Audi's are all I think of these days. I was recently having dinner with my ex-advisor at the University and he happened to mention "Murali, you have a nice car", and then I went on about the cars which I tested and the latest models and stuff, went on to confess that I was getting crazy about (cars) before I could complete it, the professor just completed it by saying "I can see that". I am just waiting for the day when I will my own Porsche 911 with a 6 speed manual gearbox. Well Ohio sucks with speed limits like 65, I hope to be driving it in Montana at 100 mph. My colleague Anna will join me there for sure, but i dont if she wants another drivers license rusticated. But at present I have no qualms about my Rav4 V6, it just rocks. Simply too stable, amazing power and a joy to ride. Too bad they dont make it with a stick-shift. Some things are better handled manually, anyway the typical lazy american wants a coffee in one hand and the steering in the other, so there goes the stick-shift in the bin. Amazingly almost entire Europe and Asia still seems to love the stick. Of course you dont want a machine to drag you along the Autobahn, you want it to be doing what you want.

after an year

I cant believe, I haven't scribbled on the net for almost an Year. Well it was no doubt an eventful year. I graduated, found a job, bought a nice new car, lost my love and I am still kicking. Life has definetely become more eventful and I am sure I will blog pretty often from now on.

I'll go for a recap of the year next time, but today let me just go over something interesting I encountered on the construction site today. The guys were apparently alabama union workers. Working in an field engineering firm like GRL Engineers has let me travel widely within the United States and I can say that I do know something about the disparity in the wages of labor across the country by now. I am not sure if the guys (I am not even referring to the foreman, I am just talking about the people who go up the leads hook up the hammer, do welding, put up bolts and nuts) in New Jersey were so exceptional that they make 75$ an hr, while in Alabama they make 10$ and hr and someone in seattle makes 20$ an hr. Weird isn't, I am yet to get a grasp of it, but all i know is that a technician in NJ makes quite a lot of dosh, even more than most engineers and a guy working at wendy's beats the guy who slogs his day out battling the scorching heat of alabama hands down. Well I guess it is all still better than the truck driver I met in seattle airport who casually mentioned that "I made 8000$ a week in california". damn it, thats a lot of money, freaking too much. anyway enough of this.

I would love to start writing about other issues that have been eating me up, but i'll save it for later.