Just got back from clubbing in Toronto. It was a fun evening with people that I don't normally hang out with so that made it even more fun. Got to meet some new peeps which is always a good thing. First, went to Inside. That is Vince Carter's club and tonight was Asian Night. All I've gotta say is holy cow - that was a sea of Asian people! I'd say that easily 90% of the club was Asian and of them, about 70% were girls. Needless to say - there was a lot of great looking people this evening. After Inside, we went to Up and hung with a few more familiar faces. All in all, it was a great evening. Time for bed though! Action packed day waiting ahead of me.

Also, still have to write about the "surprise" party I through for my bro on Thursday Night at the Airport Lounge . We had about 20 people come out, most of whom were Marathi posse. It was awesome to chill with all those guys (especially after so long for some of them)

I'm falling asleep...it's 3:40 am!!!
Good Night

Don't have much time to write right now but I wanted to give a BIG THANK YOU to Tai before I go to bed. He came over tonight and helped me with my home networking issues. My wireless card for my laptop is now working again, we have some encryption, two out of the three computers are talking to each other and sharing printers. So, we are almost there. Only issues seems to be my work laptop. For some reason - it just can't connect. Perhaps there are certain setting that need to be deactivated. Will keep plugging away at it and we'll see what happens. When Tai left, his car wouldn't start so I had to give him a boost with mine. There we were in the dark on Scarborough streets trying to figure out which side to plug to positive and negative, etc. It was quite amusing but we figured it out in the end.

Today was a good day of work and tomorrow should be challenging. Have a demo for our portable Ultrasound system. It should be quite technical so I'm taking a technical expert with me. Hopefully I can hold my own though!

Today after work, I stopped by Hamilton for a little while to visit my friends J & M and their two young boys. M's sister Bina (the girl I visited in Tampa months ago) was there as well. We all hung out for a few hours and it was great to catch up and chill with the boys. I must say though - I didn't do much of anything but M especially was always moving cause the kids were always wanting to do something. Wow - kids can be a real handful! Don't wanna quite think about that just yet though...

Summer Sizzler tonight - we didn't do too well (will have to see what happens next week)

Blue Jays...what's up boys? Your bulletin SUCKS. I really hope you do something with that. Also, what's up with the Maple Leafs? Not signing any free agents despite the fans and current players getting more and more pissed off. And there is so much dissension in the head office - Pat Quinn is totally a control freak. He stepped down as GM but is still pretty much doing it. What's up buddy???

Night folks,

Night folks (or should I say morning). I am once again up on my computer when I should be sleeping. Man, my sleeping habits royally suck and that is totally why I get so tired at work in the afternoon. I must say though that the last hour or so of chatting with Jacelyn on MSN was amazing. I met her last year in Kuala Lumpur through a friend and we've kept in sporadic contact over the past year. However recently, we reconnected and have been talking about everything. She really opens my eyes ot a lot of things and a lot of different viewpoints and angles of looking at situations so that is great. She is now is the land of Oz doing school and then after...who knows (kinda like a lot of us; me included). Also chatted briefly with Christine tonight and realized that it had been much too long since her and I spoke. And now, I'm speaking with Cantos and her and I definitely need to catch up.

MY DAMN NEIGHBOUR IS PLAYING THE MUSIC AGAIN!!!!!!!! WHAT AN INCONSIDERATE A$$!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My uncle and aunt from India arrived today. They are my dad's older brother and his wife. Both are in their 70's and this is their first trip outside of India. They have been in the States for the past couple months with their son so now they are in Canada. In my broken Marathi on the way home from the airport, I told them that Canada is better than the U.S. so let's see what they think when they leave in a week. Also, my brother is coming back to Toronto tomorrow for the weekend. It'll be cool to chill with him (haven't seen him since February actually). Got a busy crazy weekend ahead of me actually...

Summer Sizzler starts tomorrow. For those that don't know. That is the weekly summer Dragonboat racing series where it is 1 on 1 races. It is quite an awesome and unique event. My crew's first race is tomorrow...By the way, that is my crew (Fox 22) in the expert division. Not sure why we're there but I don't think it is going to be pretty. Hopefully I am pleasantly surprised.

Now it's good night for real.
AND PHUCK YOU YOU DAMN NEIGHBOUR!!!!!!!!! SHUT THE HELL UP!!!!!!!!!!!!

(sorry for swearing)

This weekend was fantastic. Just the way weekends are supposed to be. Got to see many buddies and just really chilled out. Played some golf yesterday. Went to a wedding as well and then today, hung with the family for most of the day and did a lot of cleaning. I played in my company golf tournament yesterday morning and I did really well. I got the longest drive of the day (about 280 metres) for men and when I left, I was closest to the pin as well (within 4 feet) so I'll find out tomorrow if I got that one too. My long game yesterday was definitely on so I'm happy about that. Hopefully the short game gets back to where it used to be...then it'll be smooth sailing.

At night, I went to my buddy Sachin's wedding. He is a friend from work and although I don't know him that well - it was still really cool to go to the wedding. He's Gujarthi and so is his wife. The reception on Saturday night was HUGE. It was actually a shared reception cause the two sisters both got married (one on Friday, the other on Saturday). Since it was so HUGE, there were actually over a 1000 people there. Yep - you heard right. There were at least 95 tables (probably more). There was amazing food (appetizers and dinner) and an full open bar. For dessert, they had all the usuals AND they had these two wicked chocolate fondue fountains set up. The best part for sure was the two big screen's they had set up on either side of the two tiered head table (which contained the two couples on top and the three sets of parents on the regular level). What was on those big screen's you ask? Well let me tell you. They had a live feed of the whole event on one of those amazing cameras that are on a 20 or 30 foot long lever that is moved/pivoted around by the camera man who is sitting down watching the action on a screen. The views provided by that camera mimiced the stuff you see on an NBA game or on MTV. It was so impressive. Very wicked idea. And I'm sure that wedding video is going to be money. The dance at the end of the night was wicked as well - it started out with a lot of Indian music (bhangra and hindi film songs). All in all - an amazing wedding and although I didn't know many people...it was really fun.

Today, I did a lot of spring cleaning. Actually went through all my university notes and tossed out about 80% of them. Wow - what a waste of paper...that is gonna be a whole lot of recycling. It was really funny looking at notes talking about first year physics (F=ma) or Bio (Mitosis and Meiosis) or Econ (perfect competition, etc). Wow, that was some funny shite. Rachel/Chooey/Smith - I also came across our Human Ecology notes from UBC - now that was some funny shite. Man, I couldn't stop laughing...

Time for bed,
Night

I had a great evening with Natalie tonight. For those that don't know her...she is one of my best friends. We met at Shad Valley in 1996 (wow that was 7 years ago) and we instantly clicked, even went out for some time (she was my first girlfriend). Then a few years into our friendship, there was a bit of a falling out due mainly to a misunderstanding (as it always is). After that was cleared up, we were like two peas in a pod and we've been cool ever since. I'd say that she is one of the few people in my life that I can just pick up and be the same with even if I haven't seen her in months (or years, as was the case today cause it had been about 14 monthes since we last saw each other). I can tell her anything. She pretty much knows anything and everything about me. Despite the ups and downs we've had together, she is still very important in my life. I think that having someone like that in your life is very special and healthy because it gives you an outlet and a sounding board when you have things on your mind. She is going into third year of med school at Western in September and gonna make a kick ass doctor when she's done.

We had greek food tonight at Ampeli Grill and Cafe on the Danforth. I must say the service was sub-par. The food was not so good (dry lamb, dry chicken, bad hot sauce) except for the fried calamari - now that was yummy. We had a lot of leftovers when we were done because we ordered too much sub-par food and couldn't finish it. So, we took it all in big doggy bags and were going to go and give it to some homeless people. Drove to City Hall where lots of homeless people chill out and we were walking around for a bit searching for someone to give the food too. Most were sleeping, some didn't look that "in need" cause they had a nice bike or something. Others - you just weren't sure if they were homeless or not so we didn't wanna offend them by offering them our leftovers. We finally found this women and decided on her (it was funny cause at times, we were internally playing this - are they "leftover-worthy" game kinda like Elaine's sponge worthy thing in that episode of Seinfeld). Anyway, back to the matter at hand. We asked this women if she wanted the food and she asked what it was. We told her and then she agreed to take it. As we were walking away we realized that we should have split up the food among a few people in need because we gave that one woman a lot of food.

So Van City got the 2010 Olympics, eh? That is wonderful news and I'm really happy for them. I think it's great for Canada and I think it gives us a great opportunity as a nation to begin more heavily investing in amateur athletics, a stream of sport in this country that is truely suffering. We just don't have the practice facilities, coaching and other attributes of excellent superstars that start at a young age. Also, when you host an Olympic games you don't wanna be a flop of a host country - you gotta do well in the medal count (something we traditionally don't excel in).

Thursday night I got together with the Marathi Posse. It was the first time we were all together in quite some time. Kdot, Ashvin, G, Samp, KB, Romi, Rohan and I all got together at Romi's place. We hung out all night reminisciing about old times (and somehow I was the brunt of most jokeS). We also had some yummy dinner (thanks Romi and your mom) and played Cranium which is a really cool board game that basically mixes Pictionary, Sharades and Trivial Pursuit.

Last thing before I go to bed. Go and check out my boy Ketan's website. He just launched it and he did an incredible job. If you have any leads for him to work on...please pass them his way. He is very competent, confident and looking for more work in his field...Webpages, creative, logo design - hook the boy up... He is one talented mofo.

Etch, have a safe trip to Mexico buddy...

Today was amazing. The ceremony this morning for Canada Day was perfect. It was really interesting to hear many of the same words echoed by so many people today. The judge, the mountie, the Honourable Alan Rock, and many other politicians all said basically the same thing - Canada is about tolerance, opportunity, hope and most importantly diversity. Canada is a country chosen by many new immigrants because of all those characteristics. It is the best country in the world to live in - I will never dispute that claim. And to top it off - Suhas got his Canadian Citizenship today so that was fantastic. The judge was so impressed with him that she even read a portion of his "What being Canadian means to me" letter in front of the entire crowd. I reaffirmed my allegiance to Canada today as well by taking the oath (something I've never done so I guess I didn't really reaffirm but instead - I affirmed it). The morning actually started today at about 6:00 am. G picked me up and we went golfing at Don Valley Golf course. I birdied the first hole and thought I was set for an amazing day. I ended up shooting like crap and only had some amazing putts on 4 other holes to save me. The score was dirty and totally not like how I remember the game when I last played on May 2-4 weekend. That is the whole problem with my golf game - consistency.

So I was talking to Suhas today about a lot of stop - job, happiness, relationships, family, friends, etc. He is an amazing person to speak with because he is so patient, intelligent and genuine. One thing he told me to start doing was really analyze what it is about my job that I am not currently enjoying. It's easy to just say - I am not satisfied right now. It's much more difficult to really dive in and figure out what you are missing or what you don't like. Am I wanting more people contact? What kind of people? What kind of contact? Are the targets and numbers getting to me? Why? Are they stressful? Is it too cutthroat? These are all questions I have to find the answers to. And, more importantly - once those answers are found...what needs to change to make me happy and satisfied. That will really make the difference. So, here's to some long and hard thinking over the next few days. He was also suggesting that I look into alternative things in my spare time to cater to my interests of people, cooking and travelling. Perhaps there are ways to cater to those needs and still learn and grow as a person. One awesome suggestion was more directed volunteer work or community service. I need to look into opportunities available that I can really add to and make a difference with. I was planning on looking into Big Brothers for the past couple of years - perhaps that is something I should look into re-exploring.

Today ended off great as well. Went for a nice 40 minute jog on Warden, Steeles, Birchmount and Finch. I have to do one of two things (and hopefully both over time). I have to increase my pace and/or increase my distance. That is the only way I am going to shed significant pounds where it matters. That being said - I have lost 5 pounds since being back from Milwaukee (I am less than 30% of the way towards my target so I gotta keep working harder). Also went out for coffee with KB and Suhas tonight - we caught up on old times and talked about the future as well...was a nice (and interesting) evening.

I'll make it official now as well. I AM GOING TO LONDON, ENGLAND!!! I leave on July 24 and I'm gone until August 8. I am so stoked for this trip and can't wait to explore London, Scotland and wherever else I go. It's going to be awesome.

Night folks,
Goks