Angelina Jolie, Chicago & St. Louis

The past week saw some of my dreams come true, and others just crash away. Having been deprived of a good theme park experience all my life, I owe it to St Louis’ Six Flags to de-virginize my 18 year-old good theme park virginity. I have now been on enough roller-coasters to satisfy my tank for another year or so; Universal Studios and the Disney experience still beckons.

Also at St Louis, we witnessed one of the greatest spectacles to hit the saintly city in the recent past: the St Louis Arch. Now this mammoth structure is the most pointless, lazy, BIG, metallic, upward parabola I have ever seen. Yes, its giant-ness gets you awestruck for a second, but then it’s back to ‘why the hell would you spend 13 million dollars on such a large pointless, slightly beautifying but blatantly bland silvery upright rectangular parabola?’ There is probably some “deep”, metaphorical explanation for its presence, a whole bunch of “leading into a new world” theories, but all that is pretty darn useless because it is only mildly fascinating. To put it into better light, it at least, seems to be more worthwhile than the 200 million dollars that are being spent in capturing Beck-sie Boy, his Posh and his Romeos and Juliets. However, the St Louis Arch experience wasn’t all that bad; add some younger-cousin-companionship, a decent documentary on Alaska [yeah, we saw it inside the arch in this I-Max like theatre], a sweet family picture and a glimpse of a packed baseball game through the tiny window from atop the Arch which we paid a ludicrous sum of 15$ per head, and it seems pretty worth it.

A road-trip to Chicago was next and the only major highlight was that I was fortunate enough to meet a married close friend of mine from Dubai. Slightly nostalgic, the meeting was mildly therapeutic in its own way. Oh, and I pretty much know all the basic information that there is to know about the architectural work pieces of Chicago along the Chicago river. But the second major highlight is what you guys will be really interested in: Angelina Jolie (and family) were in Chicago when I was there and were about 3 kilometers from us in a museum [we found out later]. Now if it was Sandra Bullock, I wouldn’t care much [not that I hate her, but you get the point]. Oh and we saw Oprah’s building too. =P

Sprayed between and during these road-trips were circuses, and lunches and dinners at all the finest of places that the US of A has to offer, devouring a variety of cuisines and being wonderfully spoilt – that’s what a holiday is all about. All this was possible only because of my highly loving and generous uncle and aunt. Thank you so very much for a lovely stay [Chacha, I am not sucking up!].

Right now, I am heading to Austin, Texas. Excited but more nervous, I don’t exactly know what to feel. Not blessed with the company of a decently attractive woman like last time, I am still passing time wonderfully well. We will be landing in another 45 minutes or so, and then my soon-to-be-father cousin will pick me up. University of Texas tomorrow – I really can’t wait.

P.S. The “Angelina Jolie” in the title is also a publicity stunt to get more hits. 😛
Oh Bharath (and all other faithful readers), I apologize for the constant bickering and justifications of my why my posts are turning out to be long.