In Pursuit of Wisdom

We had a quick Portland trip during the labor day weekend of May. I had lot of works pending in office and hence I didn't want to take extra day offs for the trip. Also Amin would have been able to join us only if he wouldn't have to take any leave. Considering all these I decided to fly to save time as well as not put much pressures on Shusmita at a time when she came just came out of first trimester. I purchased air tickets from priceline by a bid as tickets were sky priced at the very last moments for this long weekends. I took Holiday Inn through my citibank thank you points. Amin joined us shortly. Shahriar, sachi and safwan drove to Portland at the same time in Saturday so that we could join the train ride together Sunday. Wali Bhai dropped us to san francisco airport Saturday afternoon and n we reached Portland airport, we found Shahriar there outside the airport. I took a toyota camry from airport and then had dinner together with sharij restaurant. The next morning ...

Hereby I declare victory over the Half Dome! Finally we did it. I, Shahriar and Nitol succeeded in our mission to hike Half Dome of Yosemite in the first weekend of October and we finished the hike in less than 13 hours despite facing a long wait time in the cable to ascend on top of half dome. We have taken a  lot of preparation  before going to this hike. We are relatively new hikers (specially I was the last person on planet earth to get involved in any kind of physical activities or sports) and hence those preparations made good sense. Before I tell more about myself, I should tell a little about my 2 co-hikers in this trip - Shahriar and Nitol. Quazi Shahriar Rahman (Sujan) is an Electrical Engineer in Cadence Design in Sillicon Valley, the first Bangladeshi batch mate whom I came to know in California by chance more than 3 years ago. He is a guy with sheer interest on physical activities and sports. He is a good soccer player, r...

Our preparation can now be declared as complete for hiking Half Dome of Yosemite this Weekend. Below is the image of Half Dome that kept me day dreaming about this time for last 2 months. It has been a relatively long wait before the day is so close now. My first hiking experience tells how I came into this whole thing 2 months back. During this time, except a short break last month in Ramadan, I have been hiking every weekend in different trails of bay area, mainly in Mission Peak. It turned out that hiking is not as tough as I used to think initially. However, make no mistake, it's tough enough to test all your endurance. I have lost 4 pounds of weight during these preparation which is even a lot considering I am under-weight and there was no fat at all to loose. Interestingly, my 2 other partners lost a huge amount at the same time. Nitol lost almost 12 pounds while Shahriar lost around 30 pounds (well, even after loosing that much he is slightly over 200 pounds now!). ...