Gold and Beautiful

I totally share Woody Allen's love of beautiful cities. First New York, then Paris and now Rome. Definitely makes me want to live in these cities. Thoroughly enjoyed "To Rome With Love".  #perpetualfanofWoodyAllen

Today was the last day of classes and as students left the classroom, many of them thanked me. One girl stopped by, said "Thank you" and then said "You are a woman. How are you so good at this?". I was not prepared for this. I am used to (quite a few) students saying "This is hard" and (few saying) "You make it look so easy", but not this! I have thought very hard about how computing is done. That's my job. But I have never thought about the gender connection..... in anything, let alone computing. What has problem solving skills got to do with gender? What has (almost) anything got to to do with gender? I guess I will never understand. I have read the research, but I cannot relate to it. And I think I should thank my parents for it. Thank you mom and dad.... for never saying "because you are a girl".

I don't really watch as many movies these days as I used to. Growing up I was a huge Bollywood fan. I still love the bright clothes, the singing and the dancing. I hate the action movies and the melodrama. I started watching English movies much later in life, when I was in engineering college. I enjoy commercial movies and indie movies equally. I agree that not all Hindi movies are great, but I have a huge problem with people who make categorical statements that all Hindi movies are bad. I knew people who proudly said "I don't watch Hindi movies, only English" (with the same pride they (Maharashtrians!!) said "I can't read Marathi". Another post on that later.). Here's the thing. I agree that most Hindi movies are not worth watching, but some are. Also, Hollywood also dishes out tons of crap every year and they spend much more $$$ creating that crap than Bollywood can even think of. So, here's my point: If "Nacho Libre" is funny, then

" Every lawyer at least once in every case feels himself crossing a line he doesn't really mean to cross. It just happens. And if you cross it enough times, it disappears forever. " -- Rudy Baylor in John Grisham's The Rainmaker.

Hope everyone had a great 4th of July celebration.

Although I am not as big a fan of D.C. as I am of San Francisco, both my trips to D.C. have been interesting. Not to mention the amazing Ethiopian food available there. Last time when we went in Fall we participated in the Insanity Rally organized by Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. This time the family reunion made it special. The heat was a torture though. A good decision we made was to book the hop-on hop-off tour. The bad decision was sightseeing in the day time. The hop-on hop-off tour is only available from 9am - 6pm, so there weren't many options. Unless you want to do a 3 hr night tour. I would have liked the night tour if it was also a hop-on hop-off tour. But the idea of a time restricted tour did not appeal to us. If you can, I highly recommend touring the city at late evening and night. Leave the daytime for museums, which are plenty and free. Even though the city is full of free museums and monuments, the private museums are also worth a look. Day 1: National