Entertainment book is one of the topics, which I selected for this week. The reason why I selected is, because some people are not aware of it, when they hear about it they might have a plenty of questions like.

What is entertainment book? Why we need entertainment book? Is it necessary to a buy an entertainment book?
Entertainment book contains a lot of deals and coupons, which includes restaurants, movies, shopping, car service, travel, attractions, furniture’s for home and lot of free coupons like free movie ticket on our birthday etc.

All the coupons in entertainment book covers only cities within the state for example, if we buy in Albany, it covers only cities within the New York state. We can use this entertainment saving coupons either by entertainment savings card (in order to use the card, we need to register through online)or printing the coupon through online or cut the coupon in entertainment book.

This is first time I’ve purchased the Entertainment book for this year. I felt coupons in this entertainment book are very much useful because all the coupons in this entertainment book are valid from December 1st 2009 through November 31st 2010. This Entertainment book is very much useful to me because I bought this book for 20$ and saved 50$ up to now.

Falafel Stand (Street vendor) in New York City (Near Wall Street).

My colleague and I went out for lunch. Actually it was one of my colleague who told us about the Sam’s Falafel Stand. We saw the huge line for falafel sandwich and we figured the food must be good. We waited about 15 minutes, but totally worth it. There is usually a big line during lunch time, but the line moves very quickly. Pita chips that you can grab and eat while on in line. The food is tasty and cheap ($4 for the works).

So I went for the Combo Platter ($5) and the food is AMAZINGLY good which includes
11 falafels (crispy on the outside, moist and tasty on the inside and less spice),
Fresh pita bread
Fried eggplant
Stuffed grape leaf – Which is not that great?
Salad – Chopped lettuce, tomato and sweet onions.
Creamy hummus
Jalapeno pepper
Baba ganoush – Perfect dipping sauce for falafels.
Hot sauce – If you want it.
Deep fried pita chips in bag

My colleague went for the Falafel Sandwich ($3) was also available. They stuff the pita with falafels, hummus, baba ganoush, fried eggplant, salad, sauce and get one pita chip in bag.

Perfect for holiday shopping. You can find great deals on many brands. First, I can say don’t go here on a long weekends seriously. I say this because the place is packed. The Commons has a very large parking lot. It will be full you will drive around in circles. In fact, it took more than 45 minutes to find parking. The best tip that I can give is to arrive early on a long weekends. And get good parking so you can easily return to your car. The best parking spaces are near Applebees or all the way around back near the Correll dishes store.

 If you are a member of AAA or working for New York State then stop by the food court and get their free coupon book. There are lots of stores here (over 200) pretty much almost anything you would want including outlets for places that you don’t usually see. There are many brands and designers and most of them have great deals and some great stuff. And don’t think that you can hit every store in one day.Sometimes NY State has the Tax Free weekends on clothes. Unfortunately, when the state does this, Woodbury Commons is not included in that therefore, you will still pay tax there (4%). 

Last week I post about the College Life , here is the continuation:

One who didn’t perform this time throws a challenge on the topper and here starts the competition. The second year is the most precious, this is only time where we will be our self, probably the last time to be so.

We will live our life in the second year not bothering about the future may be this is what we are used to. We will have fun, there is a cold war between the branches to hold the college cup that year in sports first and of course scores too. Here afterwards everything changes, the friendship is not the same, we concentrate more on studies or try to act so. We start thinking about the future now and most of us are confused which way to go most of the times. The one who ragged us come to our rescue. They tell us what to do and what not to. I hardly spoke about my faculty over here, because prestigious institutes have all the worth in the faculty, as you go into the ocean of colleges in Andhra Pradesh which counts equal in number that the country itself have, we hardly find good faculty. All the work is left too students. They come and teach but they don’t bother whether we got it or not. All the classmates are now serious about their career. They try to get back the name which they lost before making it to the college and try to make things fall in the right place. We end our life at college with these words

“FOR WHEN I SAY I SHALL, I WILL

I WILL COME TO CHERISH THE ESSENCE OF THE PAST

TO REVIVE THE MEMORIES WE SHARED

TO LIVE THE WAY WE DID AND TO RICK THE WAY WE WERE”

Life at college here is a cocktail. Probably it sounds odd but true. It’s all about ideas, thoughts, dreams, affairs, fights, wars, egos, affairs and last but not the least the important of all “STUDIES”. Now, it should be stated as education but nevertheless here it’s studying rather than learning.

A regular guy like try to focus on his studies after a downfall because of a huge rank in the entrance exam. Eyes full of dreams he enters the school bus and faces a strange experience from the start. It’s all a different thing what you dreamt of. Life at college starts with fear, the fear of ragging, respecting seniors, giving them treats, trying to be nice to them to avoid them. Then comes the best part new friends, new faculty, new books (least bothered though). As a fresher in the college faculty try to show their authority as we have no idea about them. After the seniors, the most dangerous are our lab in charge. They try to scare as much as possible to be in the way they wanted us to be. Some are good ideas to follow but most of them are unnecessary. After getting used to this life, things get diluted as time passes. The zeal you had in the beginning is no more and we always dream of what we don’t have instead improving what we have. Our seniors throw a party indicating the ragging has end. Then comes the results, they make things worse. But this brings our seniors more closely. Then many of them start affairs as it’s the only hot topic that makes most of them jealous about. Then the proud of seniority starts and repeats the heritage. Here I forgot to state something, the annual celebrations, this will be the day where all the talent shows up, people suddenly become famous with their acts and get few fans too.

It will be continued in coming posts.

In 2002 I brought Toyota Camry LE 1999 model with 32k mileage. I was happy with my car without any problems. Suddenly In 2006, it had a problem with the speedometer. When I going on freeway car stops and speedometer reading showing 0 Miles per hour. I have to restart the car. Took my car to several Toyota dealers they told me that nothing wrong. Finally left the car with dealer in Albany they told me that speedometer has to be change. Changed the speedometer after that no more problems. Last week, I went to the MI. It is 12 hours drive from Albany including breaks. It is nice drive but I felt that car is not good for 12 hours long drive. Then in traveling I decided to buy a van. Now I am planning to buy a used van. Which model is best in Honda Odyssey. Can you please give me your suggestions any way?