As the dream of most parents I had acquired a degree in Software Engineering and joined a company based in USA, the land of braves and opportunity.

When I arrived in the USA, it was as if a dream had come true. Here at last I was in the place where I want to be. I decided I would be staying in this country for about Five years in which time I would have earned enough money to settle down in India.

My father was a government employee and after his retirement, the only asset he could acquire was a decent one bedroom flat.

I wanted to do something more than him. I started feeling homesick and
lonely as the time passed. I used to call home and speak to my parents
every week using cheap international phone cards. Two years passed, two
years of Burgers at McDonald’s and pizzas and discos and 2 years watching the foreign exchange rate getting happy whenever the Rupee value went down.
Finally I decided to get married. I told my parents that I have only 10 days of holidays and everything must be done within these 10 days. I got my ticket booked in the cheapest flight. Was jubilant and was actually enjoying hopping for gifts for all my friends back home.? If I miss anyone then there will be talks. After reaching home I spent home one week going through all the photographs of girls and as the time was getting shorter I was forced to select one candidate.

In-laws told me, to my surprise, that I would have to get married in 2-3 days, as I will not get anymore holidays. After the marriage, it was time to return to USA, after giving some money to my parents and telling the neighbours to look after them, we returned to USA.

My wife enjoyed this country for about two months and then she started feeling lonely. The frequency of calling India increased to twice in a week sometimes 3 times a week. Our savings started diminishing.

After two more years we started to have kids. Two lovely kids, a boy and a girl, were gifted to us by the almighty. Every time I spoke to my parents, they asked me to come to India so that they can see their grand-children.

Every year I decide to go to India. But part work part monetary conditions prevented it. Years went by and visiting India was a distant dream. Then suddenly one day I got a message that my parents were seriously sick. I tried but I couldn’t get any holidays and thus could not go to India. The next message I got was my parents had passed away and as there was no one to do the last rights the society members had done whatever they could. I was depressed. My parents had passed away without seeing their grand children.

After couple more years passed away, much to my children’s dislike and my wife’s joy we returned to India to settle down. I started to look for a suitable property, but to my dismay my savings were short and the property prices had gone up during all these years. I had to return to the USA.

My wife refused to come back with me and my children refused to stay in India. My 2 children and I returned to USA after promising my wife I would be back for good after two years.

Time passed by, my daughter decided to get married to an American and my son was happy living in USA. I decided that had enough and wound-up every thing and returned to India. I had just enough money to buy a decent 02 bedroom flat in a well-developed locality.

Now I am 60 years old and the only time I go out of the flat is for the routine visit to the nearby temple. My faithful wife has also left me and gone to the holy abode.
Sometimes I wondered was it worth all this? My father, even after staying in India, had a house to his name and I too have the same nothing more.

I lost my parents and children for just ONE EXTRA BEDROOM.
Looking out from the window I see a lot of children dancing. This damned cable TV has spoiled our new generation and these children are losing their values and culture because of it. I get occasional cards from my children asking I am alright. Well at least they remember me.

Now perhaps after I die it will be the neighbours again who will be performing my last rights, God Bless them. But the question still remains ‘was all this worth it?’

I am still searching for an answer…………….!!!!

22nd Sep 2006

There isn’t much I’ve done since morning. I had an early breakfast and sat at the Internet cafe for more than an hour to update my friends and to see if my job is still there .

I slowly checked out of my hotel (check out time is 12:noon) I walked down to the quiet and airy Baan Sabai restaurant and decided to feast on some real Thai food

Tom yam soup with river prawns

Ham and bacon salad

Phad Thai fried noodles with bean sprouts

stir fried chicken with Sweet and sour sauce

Fried noodles with mince beef

21 Sep 2006

There are numerous places to shop around in Bangkok. For the more upbeat type of stores you can visit the Siam Paragaon and for more budget oriented shopping it worth a visit to the MBK shopping center at Siam center. You can reach MBK by taking the nearest sky train to siam (pronounced as sayyam) station. From Th. Khao San take the ferry service a.k.a Chao praya river express from Th. Phra Athit to Takshin ticket: 13baht, and then take the sky train to Siam skytrain ticket: 20baht. Siam is an interchange station commuters interchange here for travelling north of Bangkok toward Mo Chit (Northern bus terminal, buses to Aranyaprathet: Closest town to Cambodian border, depart from here but beware Mo chit skytrain station and the bus terminal are NOT close by so if you intend to go to the bus terminal I suggest you hail a cab or a tuk-tuk and ask for Mo Chit mai). Mo chit is also close the Chatuchak weekend market worth a visit. Even though this is a weekend market one can still find shops during the weekdays. The market opens at 9:00am and closes by 6:00pm.

For all you techies: Even though I haven’t been there personally I’ve heard that the best bargains for all kinds of electronic goods can be found at Panthip Plaza which is also very close to Siam square.

If you are an evening shopper, like me, then head towards Silom village and then to Patpong street. Take ferry service from Th. Phra Athit to Takshin ticket: 13baht, and then take the sky train to Surasak skytrain ticket: 10baht Silom village is walking distance from here. Cheap clothes, bags, wearables, shoes, tatoo’s and other accessories and available in abundance here.

Patpong street is for the hedonists. Dingy bars, sex shows, go-go bars, pimps (both men and women), massage parlours and anything sex sells here. As I walked down the street Murray head played in my head. Honestly, I thought whoever wrote this song must have landed directly from Don Muang (Bangkok International Airport) to Patpong street and he judged Bangkok. I walked passed all of the go-go bars dodging all the pimps out of Patpong and headed towards Sala Daeng, the closest sky train station after you exit out of Patpong street. Another mark that you are in Patpong is the sky train line which runs above the whole evening market.

The clock now struck 7:30pm I climbed the not so steep stairway (as compared to the steps at Angkor) and walked to buy my ticket back to Takshin where I would catch the ferry service back to Th. Phra Athit. But to my disappointment that day Wednesday the ferry service closes at 7:00pm, strange! I saw them operate yesterday at 8:00pm huh! well I should have read those days and timings a little more carefully. Anyways I hailed a cab and it rushed through the already fading traffic and dropped me off at Th. Phra Athit for 63 baht.

I walked down Phra Athit to find the night dwellers already on their duty and the street smelled of food. I stopped by a friendly noodle maker and bought myself a “mee foon” (rice noodles) and a spring roll for 35baht and on my way I picked “Singha beer” which has soon become my favorite.

When you design pages that look like wizards and when the information you are gathering flows over into multiple pages you might want to give your user a feel of filling a page in which case you would want to display your NEXT buttons as text.

Actually it is very simple our task is now to style the button so that it looks like text here is how we define the style

.btn {  background-color: transparent; border: 0; padding: 0;}

now you can apply this style to the button you wish by calling the pseudo-class by name like

<input type=”button” class=”btn” />

Styling hyperlinks could be used effectively to replace the old style navigation buttons.To create this effect we style the :hover and :active pseudo-classes of the anchor tag. Am gonna define style separatley one for the :link and :visited styles and other for :hover and :active

Personally I like the hyperlinks to appear in a contrasting color to the page background by default, with a dotted underline, and on hover I would like to change the text-color so that it appears highlighted.

CSS code:

body{
background-color: #171717;
}

a:link, a:visited{
font-family: “Trebuchet MS”,Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-Serif;
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 1px dotted #eee;
background-color: transparent;
color:#fff;
}

a:hover, a:active{
font-family: “Trebuchet MS”,Trebuchet,Verdana,Sans-Serif;
text-decoration: none;
border-bottom: 1px dotted #eee;
background-color: transparent;
color:#4eb5e1;
}

and the html looks like this

and on mouse over the links looks like this.