The World is Flat

This has nothing to do with Tom Friedman's book, if still interested go on. My world is starting to get flatter. My dad recently relocated to Kenya for a short assignment and my mom will join him soon. Now we have a place in Africa to visit. How cool is that? After I heard about his acceptance, googled for info about the country and freaked out by its crime rate. I sent an email about my concerns to a friend who is from the same continent but a different country. I did not know whatI was thinking at that time. It is like asking me how is Beijing, if I lived in India. Any ways, my friend was so nice in giving me enough information to keep me calm even though she has never visited the country except for flight transition.

Now that he is there, we will get first hand information to report (just like - our correspondent from Kenya ..). While my brother is concerned more about mosquitoes and malarias, me and Vin are already planning African safaris :) I am dreaming that chotu and vin are playing with the cubs in my mom's backyard. I spoke to my dad yesterday after figuring out how to call him on his cell number that was given to me prefixed by bunch of zeros. Thanks to google for info about calling his cell with out zeros, although I might be shifting my loyalties to MSN from now on that deserves a separate post by itself.

I started this post before the long weekend, and we had our friends Souj and Raja visit us from CA for the long weekend. Guess what they got us? "The world is Flat" :) Maybe I can write about the real book later once I get a chance to read it. It was exciting to talk to them about the future. Raja travels globally on account of his job and is a licensed pilot. After getting a quick cliff's notes on 'how to get a flying license' from him, my next goal in life after my graduation in August is to take flying lessons. Learning to fly is one of my undergrad dreams.

Updates

Sorry for the long break, appreciate the patience of my regular readers who has peeked in at least once to get the updates - mostly my friends and my extended family get updates about us from my blog (information age).

Busy or I should say pretending to be busy as usual. Spring adds things to your to do lists. Since my last post regarding fuel efficiency ...we started car pooling and squished into one car, leaving the van at home. It is working out great - many advantages and not one disadvantage till now. Save money (first one that attracts many), being a part of fuel efficiency and cleaner environment effort, lots of family time:)


DH and Chotu had their birthdays. Chotu had a blast birthday party at BounceArena. This is the first kids party, where the parents also had fun literally. Even the supervisors were surprised seeing parents jump on the bouncers. Stay tuned for more updates..

Shopping for a new car?

This post is in response to Vivek's comment in the below post. I did not know which Hybrid to buy until Vivek questioned (I am in no hurry or NSF). So I googled for "Hybrid Cars and Fuel Efficiency" wallah I found my answers to many questions regarding hybrid cars at this site .

This site is wonderful, if you would give it a second thought about global warning, energy crisis etc., etc., before you purchase your new vehicle.

I compared our current two vehicles and future one that I would buy and the results are here. The first in the row is my future car and the next two are our current means of transportation. Our vehicles use twice as much fuel , for double the amount and emit twice or thrice the amount of greenhouse gas depending on the vehicle.

You do your math now! After the math, we at least for now are planning to leave the van at home and drive in the car, that might cut our house hold fuel consumption to half or less than half.