Social Entrepreneurship

Check this out:
http://www.benetech.org/

One of their ventures is Bookshare, which provides access to books for the visually impaired. I'm thinking wow! Why should anyone be left out of the world of the books?! Now that's putting technology to good use.

Les Miserables

We witnessed the "Les Miserables" musical at Curran theater in San Francisco. The theater is beautiful and artistic. The orchestra was fantastic and the music got under my skin. But the story of Jean Valjean is what steals your heart. Les Miserables is a rather sad story. Written by Victor Hugo, it is what some may call a tragedy. It starts with his release from prison after 19 years imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his sister's son. A free Jean is given good food and refuge by a kind priest in a church. As a token of gratitude, he steals silver candlesticks from the church and sneaks out by night. He is captured by police officials and brought back in front of the father. To his amazement, the father gives him two more candlesticks and says that he forgot to take all the gifts he had given him. This, the famous "silver candlesticks" episode, is Jean Valjean's first encounter with kindness and brethren love. No one has ever shown him mercy before. He wonders why the father did what he did. Jean Valjean sees everything in a new light and is a changed man.

The story then moves to how he saves innocent Fantine and brings up her child Cosette as his own daughter. He transforms completely into a noble and forgiving man. Even during the troubled times of the French revolution, Jean remains a man of honour and mercy. His rival Javert eventually realizes Jean's benevolence as well. The story ends with Cosette and Marius's union after which Valjean passes on to join Fantine in everlasting peace.

It is amazing what one act of kindness and compassion can do to change a person's life. Revenge and frustration will rarely lead to anything good. If you ever have a chance to give love or forgiveness, take the opportunity. There's nothing to lose and everything to gain.

The Rockies Rock!

I finally have something that is worth writing about and that I want to write about - The Rocky Mountains. For the longest time, the Rockies were just one of those places that seem so far away and that you only read about in geography class – just like the Andes and the Prairies and the Savannah. But this weekend, it was a reality – and such a magnificent and breathtaking reality at that.

After battling through several plans for the long weekend, I finally made plans with my undergrad classmates to meet up at Denver and explore the Rockies. We were a group of seven – six classmates and my roommate as well. We all arrived at the (rather deserted) Denver airport on Friday night and headed to a hotel in Aurora, about half an hour from the airport. We were up early Saturday morning and ready to set off by about 7am. We had reservations at Clear Creek Rafting in Idaho Springs, which is about an hour from Aurora. Driving in Colorado is a visual treat – the mountains engulf you. The rafting was awesome - the rapids were mostly Level III and Level IV occasionally. The water was extremely cold and I was drenched (in spite of the wetsuit), probably because I switched places with one of the guys in the front and had a most “exciting” time. The weather was gloriously sunny and so we were not too cold. By the time we had finished and changed, we were all ravenous (skipped breakfast to make it on time at Clear Creek). We had lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Idaho Springs where we tested the patience of this nice old woman with our “no-meat-no-egg” chants! Since we had not shopped for groceries in Denver the previous day as planned, we found a Safeway store in Idaho Springs and bought all the stuff we needed. Then as per plan, we set off to the National Park area where we would drive along the scenic Trail Ridge Road.

Setting off from Idaho Springs, we found out that Highway 6 was closed and so we had to take Highway 119. This took us to the pretty town of Boulder and we drove through UC Boulder. It looks very much a university town and the campus was very welcoming. We stopped for a coffee and then took 36 heading towards the Park. Estes Park is the town closest to the National Park and Highway 36 took us right into Estes Park. We reached the Park entrance, paid our $20 for a week’s entry, grabbed the Park map greedily and we were on our way. The Trail Ridge road is a winding, windy road that climbs from something like 9000 feet to 12000 feet, which is above treeline. We were awed by the mountains and took a ton of pictures. It was one of those occasions when I felt that any camera would be hopelessly inadequate in capturing this beauty – only the mind’s eye could retain this splendor. Our Camry served us well and we headed back down to Estes Park. We has to retire early because three of us were going to climb Long’s Peak on Sunday and had to be up in time. We located the cabin-like family unit, which was pretty comfortable, ate and slept.

Sunday’s adventure to Long’s peak was the highlight of my trip and it is well-worth another post. I will save it for later. For now, let me just say that a snowstorm at 12,760 feet after hiking up 6 miles is no jolly ride. Anyway, we walked around Estes Park Sunday night browsing through the curio stores and eating ice cream. We had dinner at this Nepali place where they had pictures of the Himalayas everywhere (hmm…). We returned to the lodge and celebrated one of my friends’ birthday with a surprise cake et al.

We had originally planned to drive to Colorado Springs on Monday and explore the gorges, but we changed that plan because of the excessive driving that would entail. Plus one of the guys had a flight out of Denver at 7pm. So instead, we traversed the Trail Ridge road again, but this time, we went all the way down to Grand Lake. I was disappointed by it – it is like any other lake, extremely crowded with tourists. There are some water sports that you can do, but unfortunately, we had no time. We had lunch at this Mexican place which was a crappy experience because we had to be seated in the bar and spent an hour sitting indoors! We then began the drive back along 40, which is again a beautiful drive. As we drove by, it appeared to us that Shadow Mountain Lake and Granby Lake with their meadows were so much prettier and more pristine than Grand Lake. 40 turned out to be way longer than we had estimated and we (okay, maybe just me) were starting to panic as we finally hit I-70. It turned out that there was no reason to be worried as the airport remained as deserted as it was on Friday night – wonder why even a long weekend did not draw people to this scenic paradise! (I am not complaining though). We dropped off one friend and since we had 2 more hours before our flight, we drove back to the “Mile High City” (which is what Denver is called) where we checked out the 16th Street Mall. This is an outdoor mall where there no motor traffic, just horse-drawn buggies and a free Hybrid-Electric/Alternate Fuel shuttle bus. It is nice hangout place. We tasted some chocolate from the Rocky Mountain Chocolate factory and drove back to the airport. The flight back was enjoyable because the three of us from San Jose managed to get adjacent seats which meant that it was non-stop nonsense the whole way! A good night’s rest followed and today it’s back to work.