Month: March 2008

In times when Indians take amazing pride in giving up their culture and values, I find it amazing that most people I meet in DC are heavily influenced by both Bollywood as well as its cuisine. Nearly everyone I meet (through various meetups, random public transportation encounters, etc.) is keen to learn more about at least Indian cuisine. In fact, a Japanese person I met at a meetup.com outing went so far as to say that Bollywood movies were the next American craze, after Japanese Anime.

Even on yelp.com, I regularly see events at Indian restuarants/movies, and seldom even a cooking class.

I, personally, just love Indian food, and even though I don’t cook, I eat it at least once every two days. No other cuisine offers such a deep and varied assortment of flavors in a meal.

I drive a fair amount for leisure and recreation. In fact, most of the miles on my car are from driving from one state to another, or just cruising on the highway. Now, I might not be the best driver in the world, but I try my best to be considerate and adhering towards the written and unwritten rules of highway driving. Every so often, I have to share the highway with drivers who have no business driving. Some of my pet peeves:

1. Driving in the fastest lane at 5 or more mph below the speed limit, and not even realizing that they are holding up the entire traffic flow.
2. Carelessly changing lanes to get on the slower lane just because a trailer truck had to get on the faster lane to overtake someone slow. A truck is HUGE, and needs more length to change lanes. Stop being impatient and let the truck driver move back to the slower lane. If people keep passing him/her on the right, the truck would forever remain on the faster lane. Use common sense.
3. Changing lanes without using an indicator. You’re not slick because you think you got away without using an indicator. You’re an asshole, and never really learned anything from your driving test – always use your indicators.
4. Tailgating. Do it some more when I am driving at 70mph, and I wouldn’t think twice about hitting the brakes just to give you a heart attack. Asshole.
5. Going more than 15 mph over the speed limit. You lack experience, and your car deserves a better driver.
6. Driving with the high beams on when behind me.
7. Not knowing highway merging etiquette. If you’re going fast, don’t slow down to a crawl just to give the merging car a whole minute to merge. Only brake if you can’t change lanes safely, and/or the merging car is almost out of road.
8. Matching speed with the faster lane when driving in the slower lane, just so that everyone behind them is held up until this person gets some common sense.

I think that is all.