Saket Vora

11:00am

We left Excalibur, after making another $70. We easily made enough to cover our tickets ($23 a pop) at the Monterey Bay Aquarium that we planned on seeing in a few days. After getting turned around again, we finally made it on the highway and made our way down to Los Angeles.

4:45pm

Los Angeles. The afternoon traffic was bad, and the myriad of intersecting highways and beltlines didn’t make navigating any easier. Our home for the night is Ruchi’s apartment. Ruchi, Naman’s cousin, is finishing her Master’s in biomedical engineering at USC. She did a B.S. in Electrical Engineering back in India. We ran into Bob, her landlord, as we entered the apartment complex (which is full of fellow Indians) who seemed a little spacey and asked about us. We quickly sketched out a plan for the night and unanimously decided on Indian food for dinner. After pizza, tacos, and camp food for many nights, a taste of ‘home’ was in longing.

10:00pm

Ruchi gave us a tour of the University of South California campus. I was surprised at the number of speciality schools/campuses. Our GPS navigation device, which we call ‘Cally’ after its annoying way of saying ‘Calculating route’, took us on the ‘scenic’ tour of Los Angeles. By scenic I mean we got a fairly good slice of the many faces of Los Angeles…without driving through East LA. Dinner was great. Ruchi took us to Artisha, a sort of ‘Little India’ in Los Angeles. We went to a truly authentic ‘chaat’ place and had bhel puri, pani puri, khamen dokhra, panda, dhain vada, etc. Vegetable korma, dal, and roti followed. Needless to say, we left very very satisfied.

12:50am

Free movie! After dinner, we drove back to a movie theater adjacent to the UCLA campus. This part of LA seemed very nice. Upscale condos, streets, good shopping. Sapana knew of a ‘Rodeo Drive’ but we didn’t have time to check it out. We wanted to see Hot Fuzz, but was told it was canceled. As a reconciliation, they said we could watch any other movie (only 4 were offered) for free. We chose Shrek 3. Just as we were going to go in, they also gave us five free movie passes. $100 worth of movie tickets…all because we wanted to see Hot Fuzz. Thanks Simon Pegg. Sapana wasn’t sure about it, but we quickly overrode her judgment. I discreetly informed some students behind us in line on how to get the free tickets before heading in.

Feeling very tired at the apartment, we readily fell asleep. Our short stay in Los Angeles was far better than anticipated.