Beyond Here

Its been a while since I last posted. A couple of out-of-town travels, Diwali and then some things back home kept me occupied. But I am back and hope to catch up from where I left off. First weekend of October I travelled to Ann Arbor again to spend some time with Sunit. I also hoped to catch some fall colors which are supposed to be wonderful in Ann Arbor. But as luck would have it, it was still pretty warm in Ann Arbor and Sunit was too busy so we could not travel to the upper peninsula to catch some colors. Hence we compromised for some local gardens itself. We decided to visit the Matthaei Botanical Gardens. We researched on the internet and from what we saw it seemed interesting. It also seemed to have a waterfall and I was very eager to see it. The gardens were beautiful and well kept in their natural splendor. There was a waterfall all right - the problem was it fell just 1-2 feet. Photography can do wonders indeed and the picture we had seen on the internet seemed to be of a go...

On my third day of stay at Ann Arbor, I decided to visit the University and its campus. A striking thing about the Campus was the architecture itself. Some of the buildings were old and Gothic in style while others were more modern. The Law School Legal Research Building ( East Triforium) I especially liked the Law School or the Law Quadrangle as it is more popularly known. This beautiful Quadrangle was a gift to the university from William W. Cook who was an alumnus of the same school. Rumor has it ( Tip 1: Courtesy Sunit) that Cook wanted the building design to be inspired by the Law School at Oxford. But although he was involved with many aspects of its construction, he never came to Ann Arbor to see the magnificent facility either during construction or upon completion for the fear of it not living upto his dream.They say construction of the Quadrangle took more than a decade and rightly so, for I think it has resulted in one of the most beautiful student campuses I have ever se...

Last weekend I travelled to Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was my first visit since Sunit had joined MBA school. After a lot of lazing about, we decided to take a walk in the Fuller and Gallop Park. I name both because I am not sure which one we ended up in - Both were next to each other on River Huron and we couldn't figure out when one ended and the other started :-) The Parks had a river flowing right through the center and serene wilderness stretches around. There were some people canoeing in the river, some cycling about on some of the paved paths and some like us were just walking around enjoying the surroundings. There was this one particular stretch of boardwalk that ended in a rugged path along the river. We decided to walk it. We had just taken a turn back and I was just catching a breath when Sunit whispered - "Pooja !!! Look !". I turned around and lo behold, about 30 feet away was a family of deer. This was the first time I had seen one at such close quarters. I st...