wish it were a sunday.

so this weekend we took a road trip to the land of beaches, casinos, and buffets. in other words, atlantic city. i have to say though, the beaches are not very clean. and the highly touted trump taj mahal is really gaudy. and i really sincerely hope pple who havent seen the real taj mahal dont mistake this for the real thing. it is far far from it. but its still good fun and there are lot of fairs and its like a night long mela. still, worth a visit.

the other weird thing we found was : in a small antique shop in atlantic city we saw a framed picture of divya bharti. the lady who owned the store was an american middle aged lady who had a poster of aishwarya rai in her backstore, and exclaimed to us that divya bharti was an actress in the 80s who apparently fell to her death from a high storey building, some say pushed by her husband. and when we acknowledged that aishwarya rai is a bollywood actress, the owner of the store exclaimed angrily no! she was in bollywood now shes in hollywood.

okayyy..if only the rest of america knew that too. (just kidding)

neway my overall feel about the place. despite the bright lights, i still feel a sense of sadness. especially when you see elderly pple gambling away at mindless slot machines. there is really no level of skill involved in slot machines. and the overall probability of losing is much much higher than winning. but we are all driven by hope, hope of winning even when we are losing, hope of getting better at work, hope of belonging, hope of hope. perhaps its not the addiction that causes downfall, perhaps its the hope that sometimes drives us to the extreme. hope can be a double edged sword.

so anyway we nearly got kicked out of the casino as we decided to stop and stare at some pple playing poker or roulette or something i dont even know what it was. we werent going to play we were just looking. we dont even know how to play. however the dealer wanted to be mean about our existence and asked for our IDs and then the "executive" of the casino shows up and asks us for our IDs too. and as luck would have it, im the only one who didnt have my ID. and so he kicked us out.

i wonder if i should be happy that he thinks we look under 21 or i should be sad that racial discrimination is still existent even in happy-g0-lucky-atlantic city.