Time flies so fast. Its almost unbelievable that I was in USA with my husband for a month. It feels like I was there only for a couple of days. I was planning to stay there till the first week of September. But had to cut the trip short by 2 weeks because of some immigration problem. Since I went for a conference I was given B1 visa only for a month at the port of the entry in USA though my actual B1/B2 visa is valid for 10 yrs. And neither Joy nor I noticed that until one week prior to the expiry of it. I was very lucky to have seen that in time. Though it could have been extended we though it would be better to go back since I was able to prepone my ticket. We had to cancel our plans of going to lake Tahoe which we were supposed to do in the last weekend (I was in India by that time). However, I had a very nice time there for howmuchever time I stayed there.
We drove down to San Diego to attend my conference. This was first big drive for Joy too. We started on Friday night after he came back from office. we were supposed to start by 7pm but sadly we was caught by his boss in the office and came home late. So it was almost 10pm by the time we started. We had to take some rest in between in a rest area. Then we started again the next morning. By the time we reached near Los Angeles it was noon. San Diego is onnly 100 miles down to LA and took us more than 3 hrs to reach SD because of the horrible traffic from LA to SD. After reaching first thing was to reach at the hotel (Manchester Grand Hyatt) and finish the registration for the conference. Once that was done I had to put up my poster by 6pm for the presentation next day. Suddenly I remembered that I didnt bring push pins and the conference site had already said that they wont provide them. So we roamed about the city to find a Office Depot where we could get some push pins. After some time with the help of Joy's GPS we were able to find one and soon we were back at the hotel and finished putting up the poster. Next thing was to look for a hotel to stay since we hadn't booked anything beforehand. and that turned out to be a disaster. Every hotel we went in, it was full. We searched for some hotels in GPS and I called them up. Everytime the answer was NO ! We went to some 10 hotels and called up some 15 without any result. Called up Joy's online biker friend Venkatesh to help us out. He gave us directions to some hotels where there was vacancy. But by the time we reached it was also full. We had started looking for a hotel at 5.30pm and till 9.30pm there was nothing positive. We did get one hotel where one room was vacant. We asked about the charge and the person said $329 ! He said within 40 miles of SD all the hotels are booked. We didnt know that SD is such a hot tourist place and added to that it was weekend. We decided we can sleep in the car only but before that we at least needed a bath. Finally Venkatesh helped us out by inviting us in his house. We ended up at his place shortly after 10pm. But that time I was so tired, I didnt even have the energy to take bath. So after some small chat with Venky and his wife I crashed...
Got up around 5.30am next morning as I had to be at the conference venue (~25 miles away from Venky's place) by 7am. I went ahead to attend the lectures while Joy was happily accessing internet in the hotel. I came out at 10am to tell him that he could take a walk around the harbour area while i am busy listening to talks. Asked him come back around 12. My poster presentation was from 1.15pm to 2.30pm. Joy was there with me to take some snaps. my presentation went well... after that we went out to eat at Denny's. In the evening we went to Point Loma to watch the sunset. Dinner was already planned. We treated Venky and his wife at an Italian restaurnt for their nice hospitality.
Next morning we took a drive to La Jolla to enjoy some beaches. We saw a lot of surfers there. We also kind of took bath in the sea and since there was no hotel to go to take bath afterwards we were full of sand the whole of the day :) We rhen went to see some museum of navy ships and planes. The whole experience was very nice. We started back for Sunnyvale around 7pm. Around 10pm we stopped and checked in in a hotel as we were very tired. Next morning we started very early and before 10am we were back to home :)
Photos and the rest of the write up will follow soon....
We drove down to San Diego to attend my conference. This was first big drive for Joy too. We started on Friday night after he came back from office. we were supposed to start by 7pm but sadly we was caught by his boss in the office and came home late. So it was almost 10pm by the time we started. We had to take some rest in between in a rest area. Then we started again the next morning. By the time we reached near Los Angeles it was noon. San Diego is onnly 100 miles down to LA and took us more than 3 hrs to reach SD because of the horrible traffic from LA to SD. After reaching first thing was to reach at the hotel (Manchester Grand Hyatt) and finish the registration for the conference. Once that was done I had to put up my poster by 6pm for the presentation next day. Suddenly I remembered that I didnt bring push pins and the conference site had already said that they wont provide them. So we roamed about the city to find a Office Depot where we could get some push pins. After some time with the help of Joy's GPS we were able to find one and soon we were back at the hotel and finished putting up the poster. Next thing was to look for a hotel to stay since we hadn't booked anything beforehand. and that turned out to be a disaster. Every hotel we went in, it was full. We searched for some hotels in GPS and I called them up. Everytime the answer was NO ! We went to some 10 hotels and called up some 15 without any result. Called up Joy's online biker friend Venkatesh to help us out. He gave us directions to some hotels where there was vacancy. But by the time we reached it was also full. We had started looking for a hotel at 5.30pm and till 9.30pm there was nothing positive. We did get one hotel where one room was vacant. We asked about the charge and the person said $329 ! He said within 40 miles of SD all the hotels are booked. We didnt know that SD is such a hot tourist place and added to that it was weekend. We decided we can sleep in the car only but before that we at least needed a bath. Finally Venkatesh helped us out by inviting us in his house. We ended up at his place shortly after 10pm. But that time I was so tired, I didnt even have the energy to take bath. So after some small chat with Venky and his wife I crashed...
Got up around 5.30am next morning as I had to be at the conference venue (~25 miles away from Venky's place) by 7am. I went ahead to attend the lectures while Joy was happily accessing internet in the hotel. I came out at 10am to tell him that he could take a walk around the harbour area while i am busy listening to talks. Asked him come back around 12. My poster presentation was from 1.15pm to 2.30pm. Joy was there with me to take some snaps. my presentation went well... after that we went out to eat at Denny's. In the evening we went to Point Loma to watch the sunset. Dinner was already planned. We treated Venky and his wife at an Italian restaurnt for their nice hospitality.
Next morning we took a drive to La Jolla to enjoy some beaches. We saw a lot of surfers there. We also kind of took bath in the sea and since there was no hotel to go to take bath afterwards we were full of sand the whole of the day :) We rhen went to see some museum of navy ships and planes. The whole experience was very nice. We started back for Sunnyvale around 7pm. Around 10pm we stopped and checked in in a hotel as we were very tired. Next morning we started very early and before 10am we were back to home :)
Photos and the rest of the write up will follow soon....
