1st & 2nd August 2009

It was going to be a wonderful weekend, I was sure. Sachin hired a Chevy Impala and started driving to Philadelphia (actually to Malvern, some 40 miles west of Philly). That was at 2 pm. Praveen left from Charlotte in a Camry some two hours later. Praveen had the company of a friend, but Sachin wasn’t so lucky. He had to drive alone for some 750 miles.

Praveen said he’d reach by 4 AM and Sachin said he’d reach by 2 AM. So I decided not to sleep on Friday night until they arrived. I got some Yuengling beer for us all. That’s Pennsylvania special for them, to welcome them to Pennsylvania.

When I called up Sachin at 1.30 AM, he was some 400 miles away. And Praveen was 200 miles away. So I went to sleep and I was woken up at Ragz* (i.e., 5.30 AM) by Praveen’s call. Whew, he had reached before Sachin!! I served him the welcome drink (Yuengling, of course) and then we went to sleep. Praveen slept on the sofa and I went back to my bed. And almost two hours later, I got another phone call. Finally, Sachin had arrived. He didn’t eat or drink anything, and headed to bed straight away.

When we woke up, it was 10 AM. The complimentary breakfast at my hotel would have wound up. I went to give a try. They were just closing the place, so I grabbed a small milk carton and came back to the room and we made coffee and had it. We had nothing to eat and we also needed time to get freshened up. So we ordered food from a Chinese restaurant and by the time we all were ready, the food was ready. The sweet and sour pork wasn’t the kind that we expected. It was more like pork bajji. It wasn’t too good either.

After lunch, we started thinking what to do, where to go. Once we thought we’d go to the Valley Forge national park closeby. Then we unanimously decided to go to Atlantic City. Google mamu said it is 87 miles and takes an hour and 37 minutes. So be it, we got ready and headed east in Sachin’s car. Sachin had to drive, again. Praveen’s Camry was taken by his friend and I was too inexperienced to drive my Kia Forte.

The drive to Atlantic City was a bit boring. Initially there was a lot of traffic and so we took more than two hours to reach there. Luckily, there were enough private paid parking areas. 10$ for 12 hours. Good deal. We went to the beach and it was boring. Too many people (and a lot of Desi Log too) and ‘beach babes’ were rare..

So we went to Hard Rock Café there. While we were waiting for our turn, Praveen went to the casino and played and lost 75 cents. The loss was too much for him, so he came back to us and we decided to loose money the good way, by drinking beer. Sachin stuck to his usual, Guinness. I had Coors light and Stell Artois. Praveen had Guinness and Shock Top. Neither Sachin nor I could stand the smell or taste of Praveen. As usual, he is weird, totally weird, and unpredictable too.

After beer, we had nothing to do there, so we contributed to the toilet and headed back to Malvern. We changed our clothes from shorts into something decent, jeans. And we headed to Delilah’s, the gentlemen’s club in Philadelphia. I took my car out, to give some rest to Sachin. And I realized that I wasn’t inexperienced, I was just under-confident to drive it earlier. Anyway, my car isn’t as powerful as Sachin’s. but with Sachin’s help, I was able to drive correctly to the club.

I had been to that club once before, but it was at 1.15 AM that I had reached there, and I wasn’t charged an entry fee. This time we reached at 12, so we had to pay 15$ each. But it was worth every penny. Praveen and I bought some beer and we just stood there ‘enjoying the proceedings’. After rejecting some 4 or 5 ladies, I finally gave in to an East Asian lady. She asked my name and I pronounced it and also spelt it for her. She could not pronounce the ‘R’, and she made me LOHAN :-(. And during the lap dance, she told me that her ex-boyfriend was an Indian and she is a Thai and all. And then I saw Sachin walking into the room with another lady, but I wasn’t stupid enough to concentrate on him :-D. After the lap dance, she had no time to look for other customers, as the club was closing. So she started asking me about Indian food. I felt pretty funny to discuss food with her, but that being one of my favourite topics, I did. She asked how to make biryani, and how the rice smells so good and all. I told her about the different spices such clove, cardamom etc. She had never had an Indian curry with coconut in it, and so she was surprised to know that we Indians also use a lot of coconut, so explained that only the people from the west coast of India are fond of coconut..

I still feel weird when I think about it!!!

Then we drove back towards Malven, with Sachin again helping me in keeping the car in the right lane. We went to a Walmart in King of Prussia to buy breakfast for the next morning. When Praveen and I came out of Walmart, Sachin was already sleeping in the back seat. And once we reached my apartment, Sachin hit the bed straight away while Praveen and I shared a beer. No no, not in the same glass (although, I don’t think Praveen would mind that). And we went to sleep at 4 AM.

When we woke up, it was already 1 PM on Sunday afternoon. We had a lot of food leftover from previous day’s afternoon, so we gobbled that up, had egg bhurji and bread and apple fritters. Praveen made tea from the natural and decaffeinated tea bags lying in the room.

Praveen left at around 3 when his friend came to pick him up. After he left, I discovered that the sofa he slept on for 2 nights can be easily converted into a double bed!!

Sachin left at 5. After that, I felt really bored. So I went to sleep at 7, and woke up at 8 AM on Monday morning. 13 hours of non stop sleep!!



* - Ragz alias Raghavendra is a friend of mine. He is known as 530 because of his roll number in 1st year engg (which was the first number in our class, and thus was more famous than other numbers). So we – his classmates – substitute all occurances of 530 (and its variants) with Ragz.