Full picture set available here.

Wow. My website has not weathered the years well. The thumbnails look like crap, I can no longer get pictures to NOT be in a row, and it takes forever to get pictures up anyways… needs an overhaul. (MICHAELLLLLLL HELP A BROTHA OUT)

First, my job. I like it. I joined the Consumer Telepresence Business Unit (CTBU) at Cisco. We are working on a consumer version of Cisco’s already well established Telepresence video technology. Check it out here. I’m pretty excited to be working on a product that I can personally connect with since many of my friends and family live across the country/globe and I would love to be able to see them in a 1080p quality video call. The product will be released at the end of the year and should be on Best Buy shelves sometime next year.

Next, my living situation. I moved into a new apartment about a month and a half ago. I live alone on the 7th floor of a 1 bedroom apartment in downtown San Jose. It’s a pretty nice place, I’ll post pictures sometime soon.

What have I been doing? Adjusting to life after graduation is a pretty big one. Hanging out with friends. Running and biking a lot. The bay area has amazing weather and geography for biking. I can bike into some 5000 foot high mountains without having to step into a car. Another one of my favorite reasons for living here in the bay area is the music. So far I’ve been to the Treasure Island Music Festival (The Flaming Lips, Beirut, Yo La Tengo, The Walkmen, The Decemberists, Grizzly Bear) as well as seen Mew, Vitalic, Hot Chip, the xx, Gui Boratto, Basement Jaxx, Infected Mushroom, and the Faint. Coming up is Annuals as well as Sasquatch music festival in Washington and Electric Daisy Carnival in LA (largest electronic music festival outside of Europe).

Anyways, to the pictures!… which for some reason wordpress keeps sticking the HTML line break tags into over and over again forcing them to each be on a separate line… I have some work to do.

The 2 week trip across the country was amazing.  We visited some of the most beautiful places like Rocky Mountain, Zion, Arches, Bryce Canyon, and Sequoia National Parks.

Check out the picture slideshow by clicking here.  Note:  The pictures are only 800×800 at the largest so I recommend not full screening your window if your resolution is higher than 1280×1024 or else the pictures might pixelate a bit.
First day of work is tomorrow, I’m looking forward to it.

Grandapa:  There are lots and lots of places where families live and convert them into guesthouses for tourists to stay at.  They are generally minimal with hardly anything more than a ceiling fan and a bathroom.  There is usually only 1 drain in the bathroom so the shower sprays directly onto the floor as does the sink.  Prices usually range between 4-10 dollars for a room.

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Has anybody in America received a postcard from me yet?

Srinigar was great, sleeping on a houseboat on a lake. I spent our day in Srinigar not sightseeing but instead meditating and cultivating peace of mind and happiness.

We spent a few hours today seeing the Taj Mahal, a beautiful building but an unsurprisingly touristy experience. We have a car rented now with a driver who is going to take us around to see some much deserved sights in our last week here. 6 hours of driving to Jaipur today.

No more time to post, it’s time to ride. Road trip, wooooooooo!

The next day 4 of us (Me, Chris, Trudy, and Korbi) went in a jeep to Tsomoriri lake with Sasha following behind on his motorcycle.  The ride was an incredible 6 hours with just enough time to enjoy the sunset at the lake.  The next day we packed our tents up and headed to Tso Kar lake which was even nicer because it gave us a chance to camp directly near the water and away from other campers.  The lake was quite high at 15,000 feet, higher than any in America, and the stars were out in full force creating one of the most beautiful night skies I have ever seen.

Today is a rest day after our 5 day non stop activity fest.  Tomorrow Chris and I head to Srinigar on an overnight jeep ride.  We have a flight from Srinigar to Delhi on the 24th where we will (hopefully) have arranged a rental car that we are going to use to go around and see the sights of Rajasthan for 6-7 days.  This will include the Taj Mahal in Agra.  After our hurried trip through Rajasthan it’s back to Mumbai for a few days before we fly out of India.  My trip is coming to a conclusion but there is still so much to see… what gives?

The drive to get here was a great experience on its own.  It took us 2 days to drive 300 miles.  The road is essentially only 1 lane but there is still traffic going both ways.  When vehicles pass each other they generally do it very slowly or stop and often have to back up to find an acceptable place to pass.  There are no guard rails or anything and you come remarkably close to falling off the edge but you just gotta trust that the driver knows what he is doing.  I have a few pictures of truck corpses that had fallen and rolled down the mountain some time ago.

We have been hanging out with the same people (2 German guys and an Australian girl) for the last week or so, traveling together from McLeod Ganj to Manali and then Manali to Leh.  There are tons of Israelis up here and we’ve been having a good time with some of them as well.

Today we went white water rafting on the Zanskar river, known as the “Grand Canyon of Asia” here.  It was an incredible 1.5 hour drive to get there and then 2.5 hours of rafting through a hugeeee rocky valley.  The perfect weather, rapids, and scenery made it a superior rafting experience for me compared with the rainy Seti river in Nepal.

Tomorrow we are going to take a jeep up to the highest motorable road in the world (18,000 feet) and then mountain bike down from it (1.5 hours).  Apparently it was snowing up there a couple days ago.  Oh man I love India and Nepal.

The day after tomorrow a group of us are going to Tsomoriri lake to camp for 2 nights.  Check it out (not my picture):

No more time to type but I will quickly say that I have some bad news.  I have noticed multiple viruses on my external harddrive and I have met some body who had gigs of pictures ruined because they got viruses on their external harddrive.  It happens when you connect it to computers here.  It means that to play it safe I’m not going to post any more pictures for the remainder of the trip (less than 3 weeks).  Anyways, things are great in India.  More after our trip to Tsomoriri.

I had a strange experience in McLeod Ganj during a run.  Jogging is not a popular past time here so first of all people are staring more than normal, yelling random things, and shaking my hand as I run by.  A few groups of Indian guys tried to stop me and talk but I successfully avoided them and kept running.  One group though got me to stop and one guy says to me “Can I have just one kiss?” Uhhhh… I was pretty dumb founded and didn’t really respond to that.  While I was standing in surprise another guy who was apparently more adventurous didn’t need to ask me for permission and kissed me on the cheek.  In fact, they decided they needed a picture with me so the one guy was just kissing my cheek for 30+ seconds while another was (slowly) taking a picture.  Yeah… pretty gay.

Which brings me to my next point… guys are very touchy with each other here in a way that if you saw it in America you would definitely think they are homosexual but apparently they are not.  Guys holding hands and walking down the street is a common sight.  Men and women are, however, not allowed to show affection towards each other.  You will hardly ever see them holding hands or even just touching in public, you will generally only see it between 2 guys.

Another thing:  Toilet paper.  Not so common here.  At all the places we’ve stayed we only got toilet paper 2 or maybe 3 times.  More common is a bucket that you fill up with water then simultaneously pour it over your butt and use your left hand.  Another less common but popular solution is a small hose next to the toilet that you can use.

The left hand thing is big here which is why most Indians eat with their right hand.  Not with any utensils or anything, just picking up the food in their hand and passing it into the mouth.  This actually isn’t so gross for me until the rice is covered with sauce and then things get pretty messy and difficult for me to look at.  My Western brain just doesn’t get it… I will stick with a spoon.

Anyways, we will be in Manali for 2 days before we take an 18 hour minibus ride to Leh that involves 1 overnight stay at 14,000 feet.  The road goes over some of the highest mountain passes in the world, getting up to around 17,500 feet.  Sweet!