Update on 12/24 – finally updated the photos. They have come out really well!
Here’s one of the sunset – http://tinyurl.com/ArnabPicsSunsetGC. And another one of the highway along the hauntingly beautiful landscape – http://tinyurl.com/ArnabHighwayGC.

View the full smugmug gallery: http://tinyurl.com/ArnabAlbumGC

This weekend we (Maa, Ujwala and me) are off to Grand Coulee Dam – the biggest concrete dam in North America – generates about 6500 Mega Watts – the highest for any dam in the world.

The drive from Seattle is beautiful – it passes through the Seattle hills/lakes, the Snoqualmie area (water falls, snow-capped mountains and passes), beautiful farm-lands and then on to the arid eastern Washinton area. The route follows the Columbia river and there are some really amazing viewpoints over the gorges along the way. There is a sound and laser show on the dam every evening from 8:30 PM (May-September) – the lasers use the dam as the screen! It is supposedly the largest such sound and light show in the world! The Columbia rivers history is depicted – so all that this weekend.

and the trip weather looks good: weatherbonk link

Bumbershoot is Seattle’s Arts and Music festival. It takes place during the Labor Day weekend (September first weekend usually) every year at the Seattle Center.

Me and Ujwala had gone for day-2, last Sunday… Quite a few shows on. We saw School of Rock (Paul Green) – really amazing how great kids are! School kids rocking with electric guitars, drums and amazing powerful vocals. Loved it!

Heard Paramore from the sidelines and saw a few other things as well.

The other highlight was Offspring – I always wanted to go to one of their concerts. It was fast and good! They even called the fest much bigger than Bumbershoot – it was “BumberSHIT”

Here’s a pic from the Offspring concert…

Have you heard A-ha’s Hunting High and Low? You can get a preview here.

That’s exactly how I am feeling today. The day began as best in quite a while – yes you guessed it – another night out. But it was special.

One of my closest friends (Diganta – or Diggy as he’s known here) left for India today – ending his tenure at Seattle and moving back to Bangalore Infosys. So we had a party last night – and believe it or not – we were around 15 guys and we finished 84 beer cans!

The best part of the beers was the new stunt called “shotgunning” that a cool dude called Stan introduced. Make a small hole towards the bottom of the beer can – cover it with your mouth (so don’t spill any yet) – and then pop-open the can! It’s amazing – the full beer goes down with some awesome pressure – if you like beer you must try this once! More on this in the wikipedia article.

So yeah – you guessed it – we were having fun alright! And then I was a bit dizzy and I went back to GTalk – where I have spent quite some time recently

And to my pleasent surprize I caught the person I was hoping to catch online! There’s something wrong between us and the conversations are just amazing! You have to see it to believe it! Anyway, we chatted for an hour or so – then I got the phone number – and then we talked till morning 630! No sleep or no sleepy feeling at all!

And then was the best part – we went out to have breakfast to downtown Seattle – it was a nice drive and we ended up spending some time talking and driving! I really like this person’s company and I guess it can develope into a really nice friendship. But there are always complications in life huh?

So what a nice morning isn’t it? I mean come on – how often do you spend the night talking and then go have a nice morning drive and breakfast at a fab place? With a person you find so interesting?

Anyway – after that – the rest of the day was spent with Diggy – just talking – lunch and stuff. Finally we all (around 15 ppl again) went to the airport to see him off! Popular guy eh? (It kinda reminded me of the time when everyone came to see me off when I was leaving NYC for Seattle in Jan’08). Liked it.

And then I came home to my fabulous downtown apartment! And just looked at the beautiful sunset over the Pudget Sound and the Olympics that I see from my balconies.

And then I started feeling kinda low again – you know this lonely feeling? I know it’s normal to feel that way – to put it right I have never had a better professional life yet – I just love the job I have right now – and that comes at a price right? But yeah – sometimes I do feel lonely… so that’s what I was doing today evening…

So that’s High and Low for me today… One of the highest I have been recently and then feeling so low in the evening. Anyway I am feeling quite at piece now that I wrote this blog – Gonna have dinner and watch a nice movie… and tomorrow morning’s gonna be cricket – so yay! Hopefully another High day?