.....!......!.....*$#@%.........
I think what that is , is my way of saying I can't encompass my thoughts into one subject line...

Firstly
 
PICTURES FROM MY LISBON TRIP CAN BE SEEN >>>>HERE<<<<<
Congratulations to Pritha & Vandit  who got married this past weekend
Congratulations to Mohit and Tanya who also got amrried in Poona this past weekend.
 
Happy Birthday to Randhir Dugal & Prakash Shastri(23rd June), Rohit Keswani,Nikhil Dauria and me(29th june), Priya Kapoor(30th June), Akshay Dhavle & Pooja Ramtri(Ist july),hmmmm....., Nitin Ramtri(4th july)....and to all the other cancerians that tax my grey matter every june and July...

Secondly,here goes nothing.... 


My last meaningful post was sometime in early June. I watched England go down to France at a friends place on a sad Sunday afternoon(12th or 13th). Zidane should be nominated for sainthood along with Mother Theresa for his contributions towards society(read lucky egocentric french people)..Two moments of sheer brilliance comparable to acts of any other GOD won them the game against an almost there England.The GREEKS suck....Italy sucks even more....Spain was unlucky....Holland(waste of a generation)...Chechs(....hard luck)..England...probably unlucky..but all credit to Portugal who played like crap in the final.
 
In the interest of certain colorful individuals who find footbal uninteresting, the rest of my Euro 2004 ranting will be in future posts....
 
I left for Lisbon on the 19th of june....I met up with the Shroffs at Newark for an hour before flying to lisbon on a different flight as them. We got to Lisboa on Sunday morning..rented a car which was our lifeline throughout our trip...and drove to Oieras which is 30 min drive from the Lisbon airport. Our youth hostel in Oeiras  was facing the sea and although the boys and the girls had to sleep in different rooms, the place was great...We met some interesting people all along right from an australian chef of greek parents who had been travelling for a year around the world and was in portugal supporting the greek team to hoards of supporters from different walks of life...the first night we went into the city center where we watched POrtugal win against Spain on this giant screen. The partying that followed was awesome....Although shishir and I were dissapointed that Spain was out of the competition....the atmosphere that night was worth every bit of the 3hrs we took to get back home.....little kids draped in red and green were screaming in the streets..The chants of  Portugal,Portugal( pronounced "Po-rtoo-gaal") all night and the week that followed will always stay with me... The next day...the amaerican indian conquerors set out to see Madrid. It took us a good 7-9 hours to gete there..since we didn't take A5 for whatever reason...since we were a little confused as to when we actually left, thats the reason I say 7-9 hours..on our way back it only tok us 6 hrs...
 
We drove through the cities of Santarem,Portalegre, and Caceres on our way to the city of Maadreed:). We entered Spain thru the smallest and most beautiful of villages where we saw orange trees with big oranges on either side of the main road in the village....Events worth mentioning along the way are...hunting for veggie food, bathroom breaks gone bad, asking for directions and coming across to the cutest and wierdest people, thinking in Kilometers,20 questions in which I kicked ass, and not taking the shortest or the fastest way to madrid.
 
We reached madrid at around 9.00 p.m.....it was OBVIUOSLY so bright and sunny that we didn't realise that everybdoy would be asleep soon...After scavenger hunting for hotels,food for almost 2 hours, we were lucky to find Hostal Oriente....A hotel right very close to the center of the city....The guy let us in at 12.30 a.m. and the place was awesome..clean and great location...
 
The next dat we hopped onto a Madrid tour bus and spent almost all day exploring the Spanish capital....The highlights of the tour(places we got off the bus and visited) were the Santiago Bernebeu and the Del Prada Museum....We spent an hour each at both these places...and the home of Real Madrid Football club was like a dream...It was an almost larger than life expereince ...more on that in the pictures of my trip...
 
That night we went out for dinner and also to a bar which we left early to maximize the following day..The next day we went to another museum with original Picassos and tons of other great art which I highly reccommend...We left for lisbon that evening and rashmi drove like she was on amission..We got to the city of badajoz which is a city just before we hit Portugal...That night was apparently our lucky night cos we got to see a spectacular fireworks show as part of some Fiesta that everybdoy was talking about...Also worth mentioning is our recurring luck in finding an awesome place to stay..although in the process of food/lodging hunting..rashmi did fall into an uncovered manhole..but luckily escaped without any major injuries....She was in there for almost a minute..and since we were in the car...we didn't know it had happened till later...
 
Badajoz was lots of fun though....Our trip back to Lisbon was awesome..we sang..slept...screamed...and generally gigled our way back to Lisbon airport at noon on Thursday to pick up none other than our German Maharastrian electro beat monk who flew all the way from Koln,Germany to meet us...the poor guy wasn't well all throughout and had to cut his trip short and was operated as soon as he got back home.....Thanks Ambrish for coming all the way..We appreciate it....
 
Thursday evening.....the moments that turned out to be larger than life...
Shishir and me landed up at the Luz Stadium..We were 2 of 65000 screaming fans.... England lost to Portugal in one of the games of the tournament....To see the likes of Figo.Owen,Deco and Beckham from up close was an experience in itself..Shishir and me painted our faces..and although we were supporting opposing teams..it exemplified the fun filled friendly atmoshere amongst the fans.....Shishir mistakenly washed the paint off during half time when he stroked his T-Shirt sleeve across his cheek :)....funny..v v funny....The see saw game for those of you who saw it had us on edge throughout and the decibel levels when the goals were scrored including when ricardo finished of the last penalty were mindblowing......I know I sound like a pompous Egoistic Dog..but the whole experience was simply out of this world.....
 
The dissapointment that followed didn't dampen my desire to experience portugal to the fullest in the next 2 days....We drove around LIsbon and also did the whole Lisbon city tour, shopped, partied, met up with Racardo and Paula and Ambrish who showed us a wonderful time before we flew back to America on the 27th of June..
 
That week was a short week..since I had the 1st and 5th of July off from work....where rohan,Puja,Anoop,Meenakshi,jui and I met up in Montreal,Canada..more on that awesome trip in my next post.....
 
Check out pictures....go see Fahrenheit 911, make people aware of Israel's illegal construction of a barrier in Jerusalem, make the greeks realise that they were lucky and they won Euro 2004 cos they played dirty football, Support Kerry and Edwards in whatever way you can, take a vacation to Spain/Portugal, come party with Arjun,Neha,Jui and I this weekend in rottenchester and last but not least Smile and Save a life :)


 

- posted by Amit @ 5:05 PM
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Eureka..Eureka...
I'm finally back. The voice of the world has been silent for the past month due to technical difficulties. My apologies ...

I have lots to report..lots includes trips to Lisbon,Portugal and Montreal,Canada and all of Euro 2004, birthdays,news,gossip,pictures and a lot of other stuff..

Stay tuned..
- posted by Amit @ 1:57 PM
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