New Year 2013 Celebrations

My first New Year in USA was made completely memorable by my friends at New York: Rohit, Karthik, Vinit along with two new friends - Debashree and Jasdeep, joined by Neelima straight from San Francisco on the New Year! We went around the Times Square looking at the craziness of people to see the ball dropping event. It was for the first time after coming to USA that I saw a density as huge as something I would see in Mumbai everyday! Immense security and pretty organized New York streets allowed us to cut across the avenues to move to less crowded areas. The bars were full, the pubs shouted loud, the streets were lit up - New Year celebration was all around.

Strolling around the Rockefeller center whose courtyard was turned into a skating rink, and looking around the beautifully lit Christmas tree, we went towards another part of the city, quieter and as merrier as the above. We chose a beautiful cafe to hang out, where we went insane at our table - actually a blackboard! We architects and lawyers from Harvard, Cornell and Yale took over our drawing skills drafting out a construction sheet on the table. Occasionally we corrected each other to show guidelines, formatting and essential details! We soon had to order extra chalk exhausting that kept on our table.

Our next session at the night was a long game of Pictionary with Bollywood movies. And let me see if anyone of you can guess the drawings below. Some were so funny and obvious that mere 4 blanks did the job. Others were quite intellectual. Debashree proved to be the most prolific drawing out iconic scenes from movies, while Jasdeep did a good job of guessing some despite not being good at drawing!

We went home late, by around 1 30 am when we started a 6-player Ludo - something retrofitted with the old Ludo version, that Rohit had! The game went on non stop for 4 hours, when we finally decided to retire leaving the game unfinished!

On a round of New Year Resolutions on the next day in a south Indian Restaurant, where everyone decided some, I had none. In the meanwhile, Karthik asked me to visit Boston instead of returning back to New Haven. While I went into my grey zone, Neelima made me go for it, asking me to be more instinctive this year. I thought for a while and dived in. And I think that was one of the better decisions I made. I thoroughly enjoyed Boston - a great city, with great friends, great buildings, and absolutely unforgettable moments.

Boston Story next.