My conference trip to San Diego kind of time-sucked my entire week, so I never got around to blogging about our trip last weekend to the Jersey Shore.

We wanted to find a few places nearby that we could do short drives to, fitting it all around Arav’s schedule. The beaches at the south end of Jersey (Cape May, etc) are pretty famous and known to be good. For some reason the ones closer to us, in Central Jersey don’t enjoy good reputations. Still, the short drive (a little over an hour) was alluring, so we packed our bags and headed off for the Long Branch beach.

It turned out to be a really good decision. It was nice sunny day, perfect for the beach. The sand was nice and the water was just a little bit cold, which was perfect for this kind of weather. It was crowded for sure, but not crazy by any means. And the boardwalk at Long Branch is pretty decent, with some nice restaurants and shops. Seems like there has been a lot of redevelopment in the area, because all the beachfront properties here seemed to be new, built with a plan to making the area a vacation destination.

Everyone had a good time, even Arav. We spent most of our time walking along the boardwalk. And for the most part Arav seemed to enjoy it, looking around in fascination at everything he could see from his vantage point inside his stroller. And it was nice to see Tanu’s parents having fun like little kids at the beach, going into the water and having a nice time. We had some excellent greek food at It’s Greek To Me, though Stewarts disappointed by not having too many options for dessert.

Walking up and down the boardwalk, we saw a beach wedding and a lot of partying going on. Traffic getting in and out wasn’t too bad, all things considered. All in all, it was great 5-6 hours, and I would tell people that it is a good place to escape to if you need some down time.

Our last night in San Diego was a blast. The conference went pretty well, and after hanging out at the after conference vendor suites, the usual crew head out to try and find a good time. We ended up at envy, the rooftop bar/club at the top of the Ivy hotel in the Gaslamp District. Seems like Thursday night is the night to party in San Diego, as it seemed like the entire population of this tiny city had poured into the Gaslamp District, and all the pretty people (not including our dysfunctional crew of geeks and nerds; apologies Ranjeet for lumping you in with us) were queued up at the entrance to the Ivy hotel.

After essentially buying our way in by getting a table with bottle service, we found ourselves on a rooftop in the Gaslamp with a great party scene, a nice view of the surrounding area, and (most importantly) an extremely talented wait staff. It all contributed to a night of great fun.

Some of us were content to have a drink and just chat. Others found themselves roaming the roof in search of prey. I don’t think anyone got lucky in their hunt, but the journey must have been fun (I would guess). Anyway, I had a lot of fun hanging out with the crew (this is a new crew for me, since this year a lot of the old crew couldn’t be around; those that did only stayed for half a night), and the night ended with some of us scarfing down personal size pizzas at a Pizza Hut Express at 3 in the morning. That, my friends, is the sign of a good night out on the town.

I am definitely making my way back to San Diego.

It’s been a while since I posted, since I’m in San Diego this week attending one of the biggest industry conferences in my field. While I happen to actually enjoy attending sessions at conferences, looking to learn and be inspired, the real value is the networking and the partying. This year is no different, even though there is a visible effect of the downturn in the economy.

One of the funkiest things I did was being able to meet “Bono”. I am a big fan of the U2 frontman, so hanging out with him and having a glass of wine while rocking out to “Vertigo” was out of this world. Actually, this was part of the theme of the hospitality suite the guys at Cisco did, which was centered around the video game “Rock Band”. They had the Bono look-alike at the suite singing and having photographs taken with the guests. It was pretty cool.

Most of my night was spent at a party at the rooftop bar above the Marriot in San Diego’s Gaslamp district. The fire pit in the middle of the roof proved to be a popular meeting ground, and everyone was having a good time, especially after a few mojitos.

And the view from the roof of nearby Petco Park (home of the San Diego Padres) was pretty awesome. There are actually residential buildings right next to the park that have the same view. Can you imagine having condos next to Yankee Stadium with this kind of view? The prices would be through the roof!

India’s continues its march onto the global scene (last covered in my post on Tata’s acquisition of Jaguar and Land Rover), with news of the Reliance Conglomerate trying to breach another western bastion – Hollywood. Following up on financing deals with the production houses of some major stars like Brad Pitt and George Clooney, Anil Ambani has now set his sight on one of the premier names in Hollywood, Steven Spielberg.

Anil’s Reliance Entertainment is in talks to invest a large chunk of change in Dreamworks SKG in return for an undisclosed stake. This would allow Dreamworks to split from parent Paramount, and instantly make Reliance Entertainment a global media powerhouse.

Now we can finally look forward to a Hollywood superhero movie starring Kal Penn, Bipasha Basu and Angelina Jolie, where he is mild-mannered call center worker by day, and a daredevil vigilante by night, trained by a bad ass Jolie, and with Bipasha as his love interest.

Added new albums called “Arav Smiles” and “Life with Nana-Nani” to the ‘Family Scrapbook‘ section.

Also added some photographs to the existing albums “Hanging with Arav” (photo 5). “Memorial Day Weekend” (photo 16) and “Arav Solo Shots” (11 – 16).

Watching coverage of Euro 2008 this month, I have seen this ad over and over again. But I don’t mind, because it is the best ad ever.

I wonder if I can sue Nike for infringement, because it does feel like they literally downloaded the dreams I had growing up (and still have sometimes) onto film, down to the last free kick, foul and kiss (I attribute the minor rewrite of our protagonist getting selected for Arsenal instead of my beloved Red Devils to some stupid ad executive somewhere).

The ad is completely brilliant, and literally transports me back to a time when I didn’t care about technology, career, blogging, 401Ks or family responsibilities, just girls and glory (well, not everything has changed). I’m sure a lot of guys had the same dream growing up (just substitute your choice of sport). But for me, this ad is perfect. I used to be a pretty good soccer player growing up, and maybe if I had been able to buy some magic Nike cleats back then, well, who knows…

I feel like working out nowadays. I’m sure the feeling will pass soon.

…the new office has somehow made me do just that.

Oh, the new office is in a much better building, with a much nicer lobby. On entering the elevator bank past some sleek frosted glass doors, one encounters a really nice modern art sculpture (”Debonair Apache” by John Chamberlain), all of which makes for a really upscale effect. Walking around the office neighborhood, I found that within one block of the office is the Disney Store, the Maserati and Mercedes-Benz showrooms, Aquavit (that amazing restaurant Tanu and I love) and the Sony Experience store right across the street. There are also some nice public indoor spaces, where I will probably sit with my laptop from time to time.

But that does not make for a good office neighborhood. Walking around trying to find a place to eat I found a few Europa Cafe’s, a few Cosi Sandwich shops, a few Burger Heavens, and some deli’s. There is absolutely no variety to serve the office crowd. No pubs, not even a decent pizza joint. I didn’t think I could miss the old office, but at least there was one of everything around there. This is truly urban decay – the normalization of everything into chains.

Oh, how I miss our old Chelsea Market office. Being in those digs was like being in a gastronomic paradise. Midtown sucks! And my cubicle is worse too!

I’ve been on Twitter for a long time, but I never really knew what to use it for. Until Facebook introduced mobile updates, I used it as an easy way to update my status. But that was unusually constraining on what I could and couldn’t use it for (since all Status updates had to fit the format “Nishant is…”). So I always knew that I wasn’t really using it the way I should/could.

But my experience following the twitterings of some folks, and my meeting a number of avid Twitterers over the weekend at a Techset cocktail party at the Gansevoort, has made me rethink how I am going to leverage Twitter going forward.

<aside>
I’ve been long enough in the professional world to know the drill of how to exchange contact information. Usually it’s an exchange of business cards, with the occasional email address or cellphone number written on a napkin thrown in. However, at this event, all I heard was “you can follow me on twitter at…” or “my twitter handle is on my business card”. I felt so web 1.0!
</aside>

Anyway, I’ve decided to try and leverage Twitter as my micro-blogging platform. No more having to wait to get to my computer to write a full-fledged blog post (blogging by email feels too clunky). And no more trying to figure out how to think up complete sentences, suitably composed paragraphs, and lucid thoughts. For things that need only a few words and possibly a link, Twitter does the trick better than anything I know. The ability to do it all by text message is pretty convenient too.

So the upshot is, there is going to be one more way to follow my random musings. If you are on Twitter, you can easily follow me by visiting my profile and clicking on “Follow”. If you don’t want to sign up for yet one more social thingamajig, then you can subscribe to an RSS feed of my twitter postings here. I promise to try and keep it interesting (For a sample, check out the “My Lifecast” widget in the right sidebar of this blog for my most recent tweets).

Now if only Twitter manages to stay alive…

It’s been a while, but I have uploaded some new albums to our website. I added new albums called “Hanging with Arav”, “South Street Seaport”, “Papa-Mummy Anniv 08″ and “Memorial Day Weekend” to the ‘Family Scrapbook‘ section. Also added some photographs (7 through 10) to the existing album “Arav Solo Shots”.

Thanks to Twitter, I found a great blog post by Russel Davies on “How to be interesting“. It’s describes 10 simple things to do in one’s everyday life that will make us all a little more interesting in the long run. He basically says that one can only be interesting if one is interested in others.

My friend Ranjeet may not need the advice, but it has certainly given me something to think about.