Restaurants Around San Pedro September 28, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Bay Area, Food, Review, USA.Tags: Bay Area, Food review, Foodies, Restaurant Review, Restaurants, San Jose, San Pdero, Simarprit
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I am a foodie and would love remaining one for rest of my life. My work place is just across San Pedro Square in downtown San Jose, this post is aimed at putting on a piece of paper on what I like most at that specific restaurant. It is not a detailed review but more like – I have been there and I have liked this.
- The Old spaghetti Factory – Shrimp, Spinach and Artichoke Dip – Quality and quantity both are fine 7/10 & Lasagna Vegitariano – 9/10 This is yummy Marinara sauce makes huge difference (Both have artichoke’s)
- The Old Wagon – Popcorn Shrimp – Yummy 8/10 & Been Fishing, there take on Fish & Chips – Chips were out of the world, fish was fine too, decent portion 8/10
- 71 Saint Peter’s – Pan Seared Crab Cakes 5/10 Not to my taste & Bruschetta 9/10 – the way it should be. Main course Seafood linguine - Prawns, Scallops, Mussels, Lobster, Tomatoes – this is my favorite and I give it 10/10 – very tasty, very juicy and filling
- Sonoma Chicken Coop – Crispy calamari – Its is flash fried and tastes awesome, good helping 9/10 & Grilled Salmon Risotto 10/10 – The Wow dish of the downtown – I’ve had it over 20 times and every time the experience is just out of the world
- 19 Market – The Vietnamese fine dining – Crab and Avocado Spring Rolls – a bit dry but very tasty 7/10 & Grilled Salmon with Spicy Green Beans 8/10 (2 points go the portion is slightly less at this price point) & Brown Rice 8/10
- La Vic’s – Best Tacos and Burritos town – Super Veggie Burrito – 9/10 – awesome taste too filling and a meal for the day and Veggie Tacos – 9/10 Wow taste – in Orange Sauce takes you there 101/10
- Amici’s - Artichoke Panzanella Salad – All the veggies with bread cubes thrown in - 8/10 Tastes best with some Olive oil and vinegar & Veggie Pizza – Green Pepper, Mushrooms, Onions, Black Olives 10/10 – There just can’t be any better Pizza in this category
- Peggy Sue’s Diner – Clam chowder in a Sourdough Bread Bowl – 9/10 tastes good, filling & Fish n Chips – 7/10 Chips are great, fish can be less oily, helping is generous.
The above are my best 8 out of about 20 and I have had food at them several times. San Jose is a foodies delight and the San Pedro neighborhood is a jewel in the crown.
Flip Mino – My New Toy September 28, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: Flip, Review, Twitsnaps, Video, Video Recorder, Video Sharing
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Day before yesterday I finally decided to buy Flip, or to use a clich I flipped for Flip. On my every visit to Fry’s or Target I would seriously consider buying it but comeback without doing so. I always felt – both my mobile phones have video camera, my Nikon records videos and I have a Sony handycam too. So what made me change my mind – A toy which works. Yes, I saw this toy being used extensively for extremely serious purpose at 140 Twitter Conference, I accepted that I was missing something – skipped my lunch break and decided to read what I was missing. I ‘read and read and couldn’t find anything which I was not aware of, so I decided to just go and buy, telling myself I can afford $163.00
I flipped for the Mino, half the juice at the same price when compared with regular Flip. My reason, if I don’t get hooked my daughter surely would. I opened t up at Chicago airport, telling myself, let me just play around, play around I did and got hooked in the process too. So what makes Flip happen for me, here are my quick takeaways which I couldn’t find in any review:
- It is simple, I got going in less than a minute
- It is focused to the job in hand – doesn’t do 100 things and complicates matter
- On it, shoot it, upload it
- Works with http://TwitSnaps.com
- Cool zoom feature
- You can walk around with it, becomes your third eye which is recording as you move
- Quickly gets charged
- No cables to worry about and hang yourself with
- Looks cool, while you are holding it, you don’t look like a fool (as you do with the bluetooth devices sticking out of your ear)
- Doesn’t ask any questions
Flip comes with the mindset – Made for, does that. It does serve a need and that is to conveniently shoot and share.
This is not a conventional review of Flip, it is more like sharing my personal user experience.
I am loving my new toy, I hope you too.
Now watch this: http://uurl.in/3NXh2
Shaminder Kaur Oberoi September 16, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: Obituary, Shaminder Oberoi
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My cousin called me three hours back and broke the news “Shaminder Maami is no more”
Maami Ji, or Shaminder Maami as we all fondly called her, has left behind her fair share of memories for all of us.
I would miss her “Simar puttar” with Puttar said in her acquired Punjabi accent. Shaminder Maami’s mother tongue was Bangla, after her marriage to my late Mother’s brother she embraced Sikhism as her faith and Punjabi as her language.
I remember how on my insistence she took to teaching me Bangla, I was 5 when she taught me to tell my name in Bangla, ask “What is your name” in Bangla and say ”I don’t know Bangla” – She taught me so well and with so much interest I remember that session with her as if it was just yesterday.
I remember her story telling sessions – she introduced me to Bikram and Baital, and I particularly remember her reading me a story from Chandamama.
Whatever she got to doing she did with a zeal unmatched by her contemporaries, be it daily paath or keeping busy or cooking delicious Punjabi food. Her Punjabi food was amongst the best home cooked Punjabi food I have ever had, no shortcuts be it fish curry, roasted chicken, daal or her salad trays. My first memories of artistically cut tomatoes on salad plates are of dinners organized by her. Each dinner was an event and she celebrated it as much while cooking as she did in joining on the table.
I remember the face she made when, in my childhood pranks, I disturbed her while she was making Karah Parshaad, she was good at it and her parshaad would exactly taste the way it should. I can see those eyes looking at me as I pen down that memory.
Once when we (cousins) broke the sofa at our grandparents home, she collaborated with us to ensure that we were not in deep trouble. I remember her sitting in her white salwar kammez on the floor with the Punjabi Belna from kitchen in her one hand and nails in the other, she did manage to fix it but we were caught and received our share of slaps and scolding.
She was good to me and I value her love.
Shaminder Kaur Oberoi died on September 16 in Kolkata India at 3:45 PM
Ghost Tweeting Has Arrived September 8, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: Ghost Tweeting, Ghost Twitter, Tweeting, Tweets, Twitter
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There have been ghost writers in the past and we all know their contribution in distorting history and in creating English language wizards out of foul mouthed, limited vocab perpetually drunk famous men and women. Let us all join our hands together to welcome the Ghost Tweeters and accept Ghost Tweeting as something which is going to stay with us. Yes, “Ghost Tweeter” has been defined, soon he will find a page on Wikipedia too and so would “Ghost Tweeting” they have arrived. I must come clear, I am disturbed by this. Social media ghost tweeting is absolutely unethical it is like using the advantage of darkness to pretend to be spouse and start lovemaking. It is so sad that I have noticed celebrities of all kinds resorting to this – Films, rock, sports and now even journalists of repute have jumped into the fray. Ghost of one such journo is so sick that I have lost all respect for the publication and the person, I was a big fan of both.
So how do we identify ghosts, the way I am doing is:
- By charting out their tweeting pattern in terms of time and language and relating it to general environment. If a celebrity is tweeting and there is heavy downpour happening in the area where he or she is tweeting from you know the kind of reaction to expect, if that reaction doesn’t come – just drop. Ghost.
- If the celebrity tweets in English but you know that the celebrity is good in Spanish too, just drop a light comment in Spanish immediately after the tweet – If you get a response after few hours you know you met a ghost.
- If the celeb has just arrived, and the arrival coincides with an upcoming grand show or a movie release and the celeb tweets as a seasoned pro, it is easy to spell G h o s t
- Celebs are likely to share anecdotes from their career and react to them, I have been teasing few of the ghosts with these, I know they just rush for their phones and revert with clinical replies like Hmm… I remember, Yes, yes how true, Oh! You remember that and so on. Once I told a ghost, you are ghost and the ghost decided to challenge me, when I accepted the challenge – the ghost was quickly told to block me.
PR agencies in their own interest should decide to leave social media outside their frame of reference, it will help them and help us. Social media offers a great window other than direct exploitation and celebs and PR business need to work on them rather than taking this disastrous path.
I would love to read your comments and know more about your Ghost Tweeting experiences
My 25 visits to the US September 6, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: American Dream, The US, USA
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Yes! I returned back from my 25th visit to the US, a silver jubilee of sorts. Here are my 25 thoughts about the US and travelling to and fro so many times. I have tried to link it up with the visits, though it may not be exact.
- A land of opportunity, a land of hope
- A new window, synonym of growth
- The air doesn’t smell
- Back to school? Yes! Back to school!!!
- There is more to American English than the spellings of color
- Discovery of American thought
- It should always be simple, Paris Hilton simple
- It is not as much about Merry Christmas as it about Happy Holidays
- Yes, the nation shuts down
- No Yahoo for Microsoft
- We don’t need enemies, we have President Bush
- Obama, Ossama and Yes, we can!
- Hillary, Obama or McCain
- My name is Obama, Barak H. Obama – let us not talk about H. Oh! Does H only stand for Hawaii
- Palin, the Hockey Mom – Alaskan Oil and the road to nowhere
- Lehman Brothers, Sisters and America. America Gassed, it is all about Gas – America is in recession
- Foreclosures, Insurance and Banks can America sustain – The Nation needs a bailout
- The era of the Stimulus, Stimulus, Stimulus – Mad, what mad? It is Madoff – $50 Billion in a ponzi scheme
- Joe the plumber
- Obama – Barak Hussein Obama – The first Black President of the United States
- Chapter 11 for the GM – what is good for GM is good for America – slogan revisted
- Google learns to tweet
- The mystery of the missing Apple is solved, sorry the story of missing CEO of Apple is solved
- Send the checks home
- Cash for clunkers ends!
Random Thoughts On Why I Tweet September 1, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Uncategorized.Tags: Blogging, Microblogging, thoughts, Tweet, Tweets, Twitter
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- Why I started blogging less? Because I started tweeting a lot.
- Why do I tweet a lot? Because I find it simple and casual, it is like being at home and shorts and earning your bread at the same time.
- It is said Twitter can change the way world works, do I agree? Yes, I agree – it has changed mine in more ways than one. I have become focused, I need to watch less television and it doesn’t hurt me if I miss my morning newspaper.
- Does tweeting give me satisfaction? Yes it does, and as a bonus it also gives me instant gratification. I feel good when within minutes of my loading a photograph I know 30, 40, 50 people have seen it. Works for me.
- Do I miss blogging? Yes, I do and would seriously like to go back to it, but after tweeting it looks tedious
Twitter Fixed It – Vanishing Tweets September 1, 2009
Posted by simarprit in Twitter.Tags: Tweets, Twitter, vansihing Tweets
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It did look like a big problem to me when it happened, in reality it became very tough to cope up with my missing tweets. I kind of started loosing interest in tweeting and started wondering about how long it can last if it has so many unanswered issues. Good for me and good for Twitter, my tweets are back, to me it look like – paradise regained.
Being into this field for over two decades I have always felt that to have bugs and have errors is never an issue as long as you have the desire and ability to fix them. I am glad Twitter fixed it and my tweets are back. I am once again gung-ho about Twitter and more convinced that Twitter is bound to have huge impact on our lives, and even on lives of those who don’t believe in it as yet.
