Like Duck To Water

New year wishes..

2011-12-31T16:57:00.000-05:00

Things have been crazy since we have been back from India. For one thing, the mom part of me has completely taken over my life. I just don't get any time for myself, so the blog has sadly been neglected. I have all these ideas I want to write about, but I never ever get the time. When I do have a few free moments, I'd rather laze around rather than start typing. Poor Sunny hasn't even had a post of her own yet. And there are so many things happening each day and I am regretting not noting down each and every thing like I did with Snugli. But I am determined to get back to writing soon. Meanwhile, I feel frustrated, angry and stressed out most days. There are bright days now and then, but all the other days are passing in a haze and I don't even know what to about it. I feel like taking a break, but there is no break for a mom from her children and ain't that the truth!

Well, its sad that I couldn't even jot down a post on Snugli's birthday. We didn't celebrate it very grandly this time. She did have a party at school and we did take her to an indoor kids play area (where she enjoyed to the maximum) and her favourite restaurant for dinner. But I just didn't have it in me, to plan another party outside and arrange things. I still feel a little guilty over that, but she had fun and thats that. Oh man, she's 4 already and I wish all the time that I had a pause button to life, sigh.

On a sad note, one of my good friends passed away last week and so the past week has been depressing for me. She was sick with a rare disease and suffered a lot in the past month, but we never expected that it would take her life. I was fortunate enough to spend a weekend with her in September when she came to visit us here. I keep remembering little things about her and it keeps getting to me now and then. We expect death at ages lot older than ours and imagine that we'll have all our friends till the ends of our own lives, so it becomes very difficult to accept it that she died at 32, she had a lot of spirit and lot more in her. I hope she's in a much better place and is happy and at rest finally. You know what I have realized from all this? Her life is no more, but our lives go on, they have to go on..

To put a positive end to this post, I did get my macro lens finally - Canon 100mm f2.8 macro and I'm glad that I haven't let go of photography completely, despite all my "troubles". Have some pics uploaded on my facebook photography page in case you are interested. Here's a recent one:

And so, to summarize, 2011 brought me a dear daughter and took away a good friend. It also brought me my first silver hair ;-) (sounds better than gray or white and I'm sticking with it :-p). The year has been a mix of gains and losses, easy and tough times, tears and laughter, basically life going on in all its glory. There's still much more to see, many more things to do and hope 2012 has ample opportunities :-).

The end of the world is coming folks ;-) :-D. 2012 is here! Wish you and your loved ones a very happy and prosperous new year :-).

The facade..

2011-11-22T21:06:00.000-05:00

The facade...

Days beckon with
infinite drive.
Nights sink tired;
Crash dive.

The body dances
the daily grind..
The mind droops,
feeling confined..

The inside me wants
to cut and run..
The outside me has
worries none.

Uncertainty questions
"Am I really needed?"
Confidence prevails,
all doubts receded.

Behind a joyous mask
sadness taunts..
Behind a brave facade
vulnerability haunts..

Its all about the money!

2011-11-04T21:49:00.005-04:00

Sorry to have vanished from the face of earth for more than a month, but as you can guess things have been crazy busy for me. What you cannot guess is that we had been to India for a 5 week "vacation" :-D. We obviously celebrated Sunny's Naamakarana and Annapraashana there, so there were the usual functions, get-togethers and travels to and fro amidst ill-healths that spread from one person to another. Right now we are back in US and I am getting adjusted to a routine with 2 kids. Snugli will be off to school from next week, so things should be a lot more easier. I have so much to write but the stories will have to unfold quite slowly. Meanwhile to tide things over, its Snugli story time :).

While we were in India, Snugli was introduced to a concept she was quite unaware of here in the US - MONEY, thanks to all the relatives who gave rupee notes to her as gifts (she knew "cents" because thats what makes her favourite machine horse run, but not about notes).

*********************************************************************

It all started when Snugli's great-grand mother (Sri's mother's mother) gave her Rs 500. She immediately grabbed it claiming it to be "my money".

Sri somehow convinced her to give it to him, but the next day she went and asked him for "her money". Since he had already spent it on something, he thought he could con her with a Rs.10 note. Her response?

"This note says 10. My note said five zero zero. This is not my money. Give me my money!"

Baap re!

*********************************************************************

She soon got used to getting these 500s. After a get-together in Bangalore, we were looking at all the gifts when she claimed that one of the money envelopes was hers. She opened it to discover a Rs.100 note. She says -

"Ellaru 500 rupees kottaru, ivaru yaake 100 kottiddaare?" ("Everyone gave 500 rupees, why have these people given 100?")

God! I'm very thankful that that particular person was nowhere near to hear that statement!

*********************************************************************

One day we were invited to an arshina-kumkuma, to which I took Sunny and Snugli along. Since they saw Sunny for the first time, as usually is the custom, they gave her a Rs.100 note. Snugli immediately cries -

"Where is my money!!!"

I could only shut her up by handing over the note that they had given Sunny. I wonder what will happen when Sunny becomes aware of "money" - I can already imagine a tug-of-war over a 100 rupee note :-D.

*********************************************************************

There were many times where she wanted to hold her money while we were in India. While all the above instances were sort of embarrassing for us, what happened today was sweet to the extreme. Since we have been back, Snugli has very obviously been missing her grandparents and Bangalore as such. Today she saw a plane and this conversation happened -

Snugli: "Lets catch a flight and go to Bangalore"
Me: "Sorry we can't sweetheart. We'll go there next year"
Snugli: "Why?"
Me: "Because we don't have so much money to spend."
Snugli: "Don't worry. I have lots of money. Many 500 rupees to buy tickets."

Wish we could honey, wish we could :-\.

Oh joy!

2011-09-20T10:15:00.002-04:00

Oh joy!

In the earth so green,
That it hurts the eye.
In the deep blue wrap
Shrouding the silky sky..

In wings that fly outside,
Chirping and singing..
In children that play inside,
Their giggles ringing..

In the melliferous voice
Riding the radio waves..
In gurgling waterfalls,
Tall mountains, cold caves..

In colours of flowers
Be it bluebells or daffodils..
In colours of dawn or dusk..
In warmths and in chills..

In the crimson sun,
that bids stars goodbyes..
In the velvety night's
Soft whispers and sighs

Happiness lurks
At every corner and nook.
All you have to know
Is just where to look.

The peace..

2011-09-17T10:31:00.002-04:00

Spent early morning sitting on a park bench near a misty pond, surrounded by ducks of all shapes, sizes and colours with fresh dew on the grass under my feet and quacks ringing loudly in my ears. It was peaceful :).

The duck that turned 31..

2011-08-21T16:15:00.012-04:00

This duck is 31 years old today. But as the years pass, is there any change in the wisdom at all? The duck has certainly changed from what it was, say 10 years ago. It has obviously grown older physically and there's a lot of change in ideas too. Has all the change been for the good? Or is the word "good" also an illusion?

In the past year, the duck has had a baby duck added to its family. It also lost a grandma duck to death. It has faced high and low tides. There were some mind numbing lulls where nothing happened and then there were waves of excitement. There were a few storms that felt like hurricanes and tsunamis (they probably weren't THAT bad), but the duck has survived it all. It cannot really claim that it hasn't been chafed some, life, after all, is all about the downs too. The duck still believes its lucky to have what it has.

Many a times the duck wonders if the other beings in this world even realize what it is all about. Some beings expect too much of it - if it brings and shares a lot of fish, they think that its nothing taxing as the part of the sea the duck lives in has plenty of fish. They actually blame it and criticize it whenever it gets tired of sharing. Then there are others who think this duck is a good duck and don't seem to realize that this "good" duck has its bad moments and bad days too. They complain "you were not like this earlier", but somehow forget that they in the past were not like what they are today either. And maybe the duck actually has evolved into an unknown being. Or maybe what they assumed the duck to be in the past was actually wayyyyyyy different from what the duck actually was. Maybe they never knew the duck. At all.

One thing the duck has realized in the past year is that man, it has a temper. When it quacks several times and is not heard, the quacks turn into screeches and screams and the duck literally throws a tantrum. Maybe it should learn to gather all the algae/seaweed around it and stuff them into its hugggggge ears, so that it doesn't hear half the things that make it mad. What is a better idea is to stuff the sea weed into its mouth (which is wayyyyyyyyyyyy bigger than its ears), so that no quack comes out ;-).

The duck sometimes finds itself torn between what should be and what is. It doesn't understand what is expected of it sometimes. Torn between complaints and consolations. Torn between taunts and praise. Torn between blasé and insinuations. Torn between accusations and agreements. The duck is thankful for the steady rock that its partner is and somehow they hope to figure things together. The future will only bring with it more expectations, more challenges and whatever the duck may have faced before, its all nothing compared to whats ahead. The duck will surely face it head on :).

The duck is in a very poignant mood today and hence will not be putting up the usual Garfield birthday comics. The duck is also sorry to have confused many beings with this post and shamelessly admits to being thoroughly confused too :-p.

A very happy birthday to the duck and super cheers to all that it actually is :).

The truth :-D

2011-07-27T18:32:00.002-04:00

Pardo's First Postulate to Murphy's law: "Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening."
Arnold's Addendum: "Anything not fitting into these categories causes cancer in
rats."

Sad, but true :-p.

The punishment :-D

2011-07-20T09:07:00.005-04:00

Snugli is the featured student for 2 weeks at her school and hence this is my punishment ;-) :-D - a poster featuring her and everything she loves :).

The things parents need to to when their kids are in school!!!

I don't really like this type of manipulating from the schools. How does it make me a good mom/parent if I am concentrating more on the poster than the kids? We were out of town on the weekend and the teacher suddenly dumped this on us on Monday (no warnings at all and it was needed "right now"). Moreover Sri, God bless him, doesn't have a single artistic bone in his body, so I came up with the concept, designed the template, got the photo printouts, cut them all out, glued everything together literally in 24 hours all with a cranky baby and an extremely inquisitive pre-schooler around. All this to please a few teachers because Snugli hardly paid any attention to it and I'm sure her classmates would have been the same :-p. I could have done a shabby job, but the perfectionist in me had to get it right :-p. Basically, I think it becomes a matter of pride for the parents.

I'm already ruing the day when Sunny will be all grown up. Proud of myself though :).

The concern :)

2011-07-15T09:51:00.005-04:00

This happened about 3 weeks back, you know why I haven't been able to put it up ;-).

One day while I am feeding Sunny, Snugli comes and sits right next to me.

Snugli: "Amma, puttu baby amma hotteinda bantha?" ("Mom, did the baby come from mom's stomach?")
Me: "Huun." ("Yes.")

(Whenever she troubled me too much, I told her that since the baby came from my stomach, I had aches and pains all over and so she asks)

Snugli: "Amma, ninge hotte abbi idya?" ("Mom, does your stomach hurt?")
Me: "Huun."
Snugli: "Amma, ninge bennu abbi idya?" ("Mom, does your back hurt?")
Me: "Huun."
Snugli: "Amma, ninge kai kaalu abbi idya?" ("Mom, do your arms and legs hurt?")
Me: "Huun."
Snugli: "Amma, naanu Walgreens hogi medicine tharthene. Ninge abbi ella hothade." ("Mom, I'll go to Walgreens and get some medicine for you. All your pains will be gone."). Walgreens is a pharmacy store here.

:).

On a side note, typing a post on iPhone, moreover by left hand is HARD :-p.

The audacity!

2011-07-13T13:31:00.013-04:00

Some people are so full of themselves! (Another huge rant in progress, consider yourself warned :-p)

Today morning I get this message from a person saying "don't u answer u'r freinds e mails". Now this person was my best friend in childhood and we have been touch for many years thanks to my efforts and absolutely no thanks to her (my calling her "person" instead of "friend" shows you how angry I am). We lost touch a couple of years back thanks to her constant changing of phone numbers. No, I can't even say we lost touch because I have her email and kept mailing her on her special days - her birthday, anniversary, her kids' birthdays and so on. And she never replied a single thanks. Plus I have told you how fond I am of sending photos to friends and relatives once or several times a month (:-p), she is in my mailing list and again, she never ever, not once, got back on whether she even saw the photos.

Out of the blue last week, I get a message from her giving her yet-another-changed-phone-number and asking me for my contact details (this is despite the fact that my phone numbers haven't changed since 6 years, from the time I came to US). Thanks to a 1.5 month old that was born to me and that I'm quite busy caring for (which again I had informed her through a mail), I haven't been able to keep up with all the communication. So I didn't, make that couldn't, reply. And I get this message from her today! I am so outraged, just what do people think of themselves? And how much do they expect of me? The more I do, the more I'm expected to do.

There have been many days in the past when I've gotten sick and tired of the whole thing and think I'll just quit putting in the effort. This is one of those days. But then again, I take a deep breath, tell myself that just because some people are atrocious, it doesn't mean that I should give up what I am and then make the effort again to keep in touch. But seriously, this was like I was literally stabbed with a long sharp knife. I wrote a blistering reply to her and being the goody-two-shoes that I am, I should have regretted it by now, but I haven't. One big part of me is very very very angry with her while another small part of me is actually sad - it feels like I have literally lost a friend. Or maybe I lost her years ago, have been deluding myself all these years with my puny efforts and am realizing it only now :(. How dumb I must be!

Update: She replied saying that she was busy with her household and kids for all this time and that she took liberties with me as she was "eager" to get back in touch with me. Oh well, I didn't know "eagerness" can translate to years and you know me, I am a free spirit without households and kids :-p. Anyways, enough of this subject, lets move on :).

The unoriginals!

2011-07-03T11:06:00.001-04:00

Whats with Indian music directors these days? I'm so sick and tired of listening to old songs remixed and changed these days. Yeah there were remixes earlier in pop albums, but you didn't really have to listen to them unless you wanted to. These days the songs are in the movies and whenever I watch one, I end up being really mad. Is coming up with an original tune so difficult?

I especially become angry when I hear a favourite tune all jumbled up and made weird by these weirdos. The last straw was hearing "Ravivarmana kunchada" (originally sung by the great PB Srinivas) made all so-called modern (meaning destroyed) in the movie Buddhivantha (I know I'm late in pointing this out but bear with me since I caught up with the movie only now). If you can't come up with something nice, atleast please stop spoiling what was good. Is there no thing called copyright for these things?

The reality..

2011-07-01T10:59:00.003-04:00

As the title states, this is what happens at our house at nights these days..

* Snugli falls asleep
* Sri falls sorta asleep..
* I feed Sunny and put her to sleep.
* Sri and I start to cuddle.
* Snugli wants to go potty and Sri takes her..
* Sri and I start to cuddle.
* Sunny starts crying, I console her and put her back to sleep.
* Sri and I start to cuddle.
* Sunny cries again, Sri changes her diaper, I swaddle her and put her back to sleep.
* Sri and I start to cuddle.
* Snugli starts sucking her thumb. One of us gets up, removes the thumb :-p.
....
..
..
.
So on and so forth until both of us are so exhausted that we fall asleep as soon as we hit the sack - the cuddling all forgotten :-p.

Its as if they ... {horror music}... Its as if they KNOW! ;-) :-D

Burptime story :-D

2011-06-17T07:24:00.001-04:00

One thing moms with infants know is how difficult it is to burp babies. So whenever I get a successful burp out of Sunny these days, I involuntarily exclaim "Good job!".

I don't really have to tell you what happened next right?

One day Snugli after finishing her lunch comes to me, burps loudly and says "Look mom, I burped!" :-D.

Hehehee :))).

The best laid plans :-p

2011-06-15T10:07:00.003-04:00

Two things before I start off on the birth story this time. One, thanks to all those who left their wishes on Sunny's birth. Things have been so hectic around here that its been difficult to even leave a comment and I'm sorry for that. But right now, we are adjusting to a whole new routine and you know that takes time :). Secondly, as I said this is the birth story, so those who don't want to read the "gory" details, please leave now, or you know you'll regret it later ;-) :-p. Also, all of the definitions in Snugli's birth story hold good for this post as well. So please feel free to refer to that anytime :-p.

They say, the second time things will be much faster. They say that the delivery usually happens a lot earlier than the first time. They say the contractions become frequent, regular and painful sooner. They say you won't have time to get to the hospital, so you better leave early and so on and so forth. But well, "they" were all wrong in my case. 39 weeks and I wasn't even having proper contractions - they were still in the Braxton-Hicks mode. They were in no way painful (and believe me, I'm glad about that :-p), but things weren't progressing as I expected them to. I had felt heavy throughout this pregnancy so was expecting the baby to appear sooner and nothing was happening. I was already out of patience..

On May 20th, I had an appointment with my gynec, in which I was told that she was worried about my weight and she was thinking that the baby might be on the heavy side. I was told to get an ultrasound weight measurement and warned of the possibility that the baby may be heavier than 10 pounds. If so, then we'd have to seriously consider a C-section. I wasn't really worried about the so-called surgery (though I did run a scenario in my mind where I'd be wheeled to the operation theatre and holding Sri's hand, would say to him "Agar mujhe kuch hogaya toh khudka aur humaare bachchon ka khayaal rakhna" :-D) but C-section has several consequences - breastfeeding is tougher, recovery takes time and all that, so was a bit worried about that. But obviously we would follow the gynec's advice, 'cause thats what ensured the safety of the little one.

Well, the Ultrasound was scheduled on Wednesday, May 25th and the day came. We couldn't really make out anything in the pics as such as the baby was grown, but at the end of it, we were told that the baby was measuring 9 pounds and 7 ounces. There was a 10% margin of error and we were hoping that it'd be on the lower side ;-). My gynec suggested that since there'd be a weekly growth of half a pound for the baby, there was simply no point in waiting (as the 10 pound threshold would be crossed) and the best thing would be induction. The induction had some risks of suddenly becoming a C-section, but since we were looking at the same thing if we waited, it wasn't really a risk as such :-\. So it was decided that I'd get admitted to the hospital the next night and they'd start the induction process. The initial procedure would take the night and in the morning, the process would speeden up and the baby was expected to be born at around May 27th afternoon.

The next day, May 26th, everything went according to plan, meaning nothing happened for me to rush to the hospital ;-) :-D, so we went and got admitted in the hospital at around 8 PM in the night. I had told Snugli several times about how I had to go to the hospital and stay for a while there, but wasn't sure how she'd take to both me and Sri being missing for hours together. So I asked him to go back home with her and keep her bedtime schedule as normal as possible (meaning wait till she falls asleep) and then come back to the hospital. I had also asked my parents to sleep in our room, so that they can keep an eye on her. So once everyone left, the nurse asked me a 100 questions about medical history (as usual) and placed the baby heartbeat and the contraction monitoring devices on my abdomen. She also set up an IV in my arm. Since my cervix hadn't dilated to even 1 cm, the first process would be cervical ripening.

Cervical ripening refers to the softening of the cervix into a dilated opening. The agent they used in my case is called Cytotec which is inserted vaginally to start the ripening. After 3 hours, I was checked again (this time the cervix was about 1.5 cm) and administered a second dose. I was hardly able to sleep since the baby was moving all the time and the nurses kept coming in to change the position of the baby heartbeat monitor :-p. At about 3:45 AM, the actual contractions started - they were not very painful, but just enough to wake me and keep me awake. At 6 AM in the morning, the next stage of induction started. The nurse added Pitocin to my IV to kick off the contractions in full mode. And mad, did they! In about half an hour, the contractions had speedened up and by 7 AM I was screaming at the top of my lungs for the epidural :-D. I can grin at it now, but the pain was crazy, it felt worse than the time I had Snugli, but seriously I don't even remember enough to compare.

The nurse checked my cervix and it had dilated to about 5 cm by then. Epidural, as I have said in the earlier birth story, takes its own sweet time :-p. Since epidural lowers the blood pressure of the mom, the mom is first given fluids through the IV and only then the epidural is administered. So yeah, I was screaming for another hour before I was given the damn thing. The good part is that my water broke somewhere within that hour, so that water-breaking part was avoided. All this time, Sri was holding my hand and trying to encourage me to breathe. Half the time, I was crying because of the pain and he'd ask me to stop crying since it'd make me lose my breathing pattern. I think, at one point I literally shouted at him that I couldn't help but cry and that he could shut it :-D. At the end of the hour, I called the nurseline and shouted for the anesthesiologist. Thankfully he was on his way and what seemed like many contractions later, I was sitting up and the epidural needle was finally piercing my back into my spinal chord. Man, I can still taste that relief. Later I told my mom that she was great for going through 2 deliveries without epidural and "nanna doDDa namaskaara" to all such women ("my big salutation" :-D). I have to marvel at the pain-suffering capability of women and am glad to have born in this world which has epidural :-p.

Anyways, after epidural, it was bliss for 2 hours in which time my parents, Darsh and Snugli came to the hospital to see how I was. Dad, Snugli and Darsh soon left to wait at the waiting area which even had a play area for Snugli. Then the nurse came in, checked me and declared that I had dilated to 10 cm. She called my gynec for the labour and got everything else ready. Soon, my gynec was there and I was pushing with all my strength (which I had to gather again and again). After several of these pushes, nothing happened :-\. The baby's heartbeat was falling and I was given an oxygen mask to breathe through and ease that. 2 more pushes later, still the baby wasn't making an appearance, so the doc decided to perform an episiotomy and pull the baby out with the help of a vacuum. And so, Sunny came into this world on May 27th 2011 at 11:22 AM EST.

I was crying again, mainly because of relief and the baby was again placed on my belly and Sri was asked to cut the umbilical cord. Sunny was taken to the warmer and checked for the apgar. The baby weighed 10 pounds and 7 ounces! Baap re! I don't even know how they got her out! I was told that they would be checking her sugar levels since bigger babies usually have lower sugar levels. But she was fine :). Her pediatrician later said that she was surprised to have been brought into this world suddenly so there were some problems with her breathing patterns but everything else was fine. She even has a small bump on her head thanks to the vacuum, but the doc says that'll soon be alright.

This time, we had the camera with us, so were able to take photos once my family joined us :).

Here's Sri with the newborn..

Me with my 2 darlings :).

Here's Snugli with Sunny :).

And here are my parents:

And there's Darsh who was really afraid to hold the minutes-old baby, but soon was behaving like a pro :-D.

And here's the 3-day old Sunny :).

So what else has happened in the past 2 weeks?

1) I have realized that a few more things you never forget once you learn how to do them (other than swimming) are swaddling and diaper changing :-p. Or Maybe you should ask me when I am a grandmom :-D.

2) Unlike Snugli, Sunny didn't have a jaundice problem. She did have high bilirubin levels in the hospital and we were asked to go to the pediatrician for a follow-up, but the levels, thankfully, remained low. But I do have a major rant. Usually babies lose weight for a while after they are born until the mom's milk starts. And the particular pediatrician we saw raised concern about it and insisted that either I have to pump and supplement her or feed her extra formula. I remember the same guy doing the same thing for Snugli too (he must be the organization's formula marketing fellow :-p). Sometimes even though you know its not necessary, you have to follow what the doctor says. So I pumped, 2 times, when I faced the engorgement monster. Man, I was so mad at that stupid doctor. I must have cursed that man a 100 times :-D >:-). I stopped pumping after that and never gave Sunny any formula. Next day when we went for the follow-up checkup, she had actually gained weight (we saw another doc, had we seen the same doc, I'd have given him a piece of my mind grrrrrr).

3) Snugli absolutely loves little Sunny. She wants to hold her and carry her and what not. Sadly, during the first week, Snugli had a bout of cough and cold and we had to keep her away. But now that she's alright, whenever she sees Sunny, she shouts "Saani" and cleans her hands with a sanitizer (her dad's insistent rule :-D), then runs to her side to hug and kiss her :). She is curious about everything - the diaper changing where she insists on helping (God save us :-D), the swaddling and even the feeding (much to my discomfort :-D). On the flip side, her behaviour with us has turned to a worse phase. She doesn't listen to anything we say, doesn't obey a bit and usually listens only when we threaten her with spankings. She was pretty okay during the 2 days we were away at the hospital, though she asked for me whenever she got up at nights. But after that, she has been quite unbearable. Some of it might be due to her grandparents' pampering ;-) :-D, and some might be because she didn't go to school for the first week, but the rest of it, the pediatrician says, might be just to get attention (he says "if not good attention, then bad attention" :-D). Hopefully things should be back on track soon.

Thats about it for now, I still have loads to write - want to write about Sunny's thottilushaastra, and about the baaNanthana thats going on (have been wanting to write about that since Snugli was born, better late than never :-p) and many more things. But don't really know when I'll get the time to post, sigh :-\.

Its a girl!! (.....again :-D)

2011-05-28T11:38:00.002-04:00

Our new latest diamond is all polished, lustrous and ready to be set.

Please join us in welcoming our second bundle of joy Saanidhya into this world.

Saa.ni.dhya

1. Proximity
2. Closeness
3. Affectionate
4. Togetherness

Delivery: Normal
Birth Date: 27-May-2011
Time: 11:22 AM EST
Weight: 10.7 lbs!!!! (yeah poor mom :-D)

The mom is a bit tired (to say the least) from all the pounds on the baby and the baby still a bit surprised to be dragged out unexpectedly (induced because of the weight anticipated). But both are doing well and will be home in a couple of days. The dad is a professional diaper changer already and the new big sister is all excited about the little one :). Photos will be up shortly :).

Snugli the big sis to be :).

2011-05-22T22:12:00.006-04:00

Today I complete 9 months date wise, the due date is still a week away and I have no end in sight :(. I am running out of patience and though I pull my tired body along, its like c'mon little one, its time :-p. I feel like a dullard half the time (not that I can claim to know "what" a dullard feels :-p), tired and achy all the other times. The only good thing is that I am able to go ahead and cook a few specialties of my own for my dearest family who are all here (before you jump on me for that, let me specify that I'm not straining myself too much). Its wonderful to have dad back here, but whats better than that is having Darsh. Last time he couldn't be here and this time he already has a couple of plans in place to visit his friends. Yet, its very nice to be with him whenever we do get the time. The best part is that he has never seen me pregnant before, so he keeps eyeing my stomach as if it has an alien inside :-D. Even refers to it as a basketball (yeah my stomach texture actually feels like that - all rubbery and strong). Kinda brings back my first pregnancy memories :-D.

Anyways that certainly wasn't why I'm writing this post. I have been meaning to write this one and a couple of other ones before delivery, but I'm not sure whether I can deal with the 2 other posts I planned. So glad to be able to put up this one atleast. This pregnancy as I have told you has been full of weird times. Where there were some really tiring times, there have been crazy times like me running around in my 6th month :-D. Don't worry, I was running in the swimming pool for exercize inbetween swimming sessions :-D. There have been astonishing moments other than these, especially thanks to having Snugli around. So lets wrap up the incidents.

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I think I have mentioned this before, but we decided to inform her the news as soon as the doctor confirmed. I was really insistent on that because I didn't want the news coming to her from others, even grandparents for that matter. 3 year olds aren't really supposed to have lasting memories, but you never know what impacts where :-p. So the first person we informed after the doc's appointment was Snugli :). I don't even think she understood, because there wasn't much of a reaction at all. After I repeated the news a couple of times her response was -

"Puttu baby bandre naanu hello heLthini" ("If little one arrives, then I'll say Hello" :-D).

Hehehee :).

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One of the things parents are worried about is the dreaded question - why? It happened once and thankfully I was able to escape without giving away the technical details ;-).

Me: "Amma hotteli puttu baby ideyalla" ("There is a little one inside mom's stomach.")
Snugli: "Yaake?" ("Why?")
Me: "Maththe nin jothe aaDlikke yaaradru bekalla ninge?" ("You need someone to play with you right?")
Snugli: "Huun" ("Yes" happily).

Phew, beeso doNNe tapthu (I escaped the swinging bat :-D).

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Once the little one started kicking, I tried to get Snugli to feel the kicks. But thats easier said than done with a hyperactive 3 year old :-p. Whenever I would feel movements, I'd call her and tell her to "Shshsh" with my finger on my mouth sign and try to keep her still. Her response?

"Amma enu sound keLtha illa" (Mom, I can't hear any sound")

I had to convince her each time that there's no sound with the kicks :-p.

Once she has been able to feel a few flutters, other questions (obviously) have risen :-p.

Snugli: "Amma, puttu baby yaake kick kick maadtha ide?" ("Mom, why is the small baby kicking?")
Me: "Puttu baby ge hotteli jaaga illa alwa, adhikke." ("The small baby doesn't have much space in mom's stomach, thats why."

God!

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I keep reminding Snugli that she needs to share her old rattles/toys with the little one and she has always seemed happy to (don't know what the reality will be :-p). One day, she suddenly comes to me with a big smile and a rattle in hand. She says:

"Amma, ee rattle puttu baby ge. Naanu puttu baby ge rattle shake shake maadthini, puttu baby ha ha ha antha nagthade" ("Mom, this rattle is for the small baby. I'll shake the rattle in front of the baby and the baby will laugh ha ha ha")

:).

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Now that she's aware that the little one either sleeps or kicks inside the stomach, this is something that happens regularly at our house :-D. One morning,

Snugli: "Amma, puttu baby enu maadhta ide?" ("Mom whats the small baby doing?")
Me: "Jojo maadtha ide." ("Its sleeping.")
Snugli: "Good morning aaithu, innu yaake jojo maadtha ide?" ("Its good morning, why is it still sleeping?")
Me: "Hotteli kitaki illwalla, puttu baby ge good morning antha goththagolla. Addrinda jojo maadtha ide." ("There are no windows in mom's stomach, so small baby doesn't know its good morning, which is why its sleeping").

Yeah, it hasn't been easy to have a quick reply ready :-p.

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One day I was eating some adike (arekanut), when Snugli madam wanted to know what I was eating. Since I wanted to avoid giving her adike, I gave her some jeerige mithai and told her I was eating the same. She immediately retorts - "Open your mouth and show me"!! Madam wants proof, hehehe :)).

Yet another day when I took her to the library, I parked the car in a different section than I usually do as the usual one was almost full. Her retort - "Why didn't you park there? There are still 2 spots open!", pointing to the empty spots available.

God! Most of the times, it feels like I have a grandma around who is always criticizing everything I do and proof-checking things. I told her that she was "nammane ajji" ("Our home's grandma") and her reaction?

"Naanu ajji alla. Naanu akka aagthene puttu baby ge." ("I'm not a grandma, I will be a big sister to the little baby.")

There's no outsmarting the little one, not anymore :-p.

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One evening, I was sitting with Snugli next to me when the baby inside kicked.
Me: "Hi baby, how are you?" to the little one inside (in English).
Snugli: "Amma, puttu baby 'Fine, thank you' heLlilla" ("Mom, small baby is not saying 'Fine, thank you' back") with a sad puzzled face.

I had a tough time convincing her that the baby is not going to be saying anything anytime soon :-D.

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Since about more than a month, she has become extremely adamant. Despite threats and bribes and severe consequences, hardly listens to us. Even her teacher was complaining that she doesn't even respond when her name is called. After my mom came along and now that my dad and Darsh are here, things have only gone downhill. Even if we scold her a little, she cries at the top of her voice and makes a big fuss with heavy drops of ears in her eyes. And you can imagine how grandparents are :-D. So yeah, we have tough times ahead ;-).

I have started preparing her for my hospital trip - saying that I'll be gone for a couple of days and that she has to be with her grandparents for that time. And though she can come and visit me, she'll not be allowed to stay there and so on. She nods as if she understands, but I know there's going to be a fuss. I hope it'll all be minimal. Plus one of Sri's cousins gave me this idea of the older sibling exchanging a gift with the new arrival - a ritual that kind of makes the older kid comfortable ;-) :-D. I thought that there would be no harm in trying it and so I went with her to shop for a small gift for the little one. We both wrapped it up today and had a good time decorating it :-D. Meanwhile, I have a secret gift ready for her (from the newly arriving baby :-D) which is something she has been asking for and hope she loves it :-D. So the gifts are all set to be passed to and fro :-D.

I'd be lying if I say I'm not worried about the whole transition. She still calls out to me for certain things, so I plan to make it a point to be there for those, but I know it can get a lot tighter with the various chores and stuff. I only hope I have the strength (I know I have ample support :-D) to manage it and cross everything in a smooth way. Lets see :).

The one-sided conversation :-p

2011-05-17T15:17:00.005-04:00

16th May 2011, Monday night:

Me: Just wished happy journey to Dad and Darsh who are taking a flight here :). I'm so excited! But man, oh man, I forgot to tell them that there'll be only..

The baby kicks.

Me: Uh, where was I? Yeah, there'll be only one customs form issued per family. I didn't even ask what they were doing about..

The baby kicks.

Me: If you keep interrupting my thought flow with your kicks, how am I supposed to think? :-p. Now what was I thinking about? Umm, immigration. I hope they..

Another kick.

Me: Man, I give up!

(I guess this little one is not even as patient as Snugli was when she was in my womb - she'd atleast listen to her mom's weird thoughts before proceeding with her timely kicks ;-) :-D, hehehe).

The thinking corner: The questions to life..

2011-05-05T15:26:00.002-04:00

I know this might be a wrong time to start a new set of posts as I may not really get the time to follow up on it for quite sometime, but have been meaning to do this for quite a while now. My brain keeps running with some serious thoughts sometimes and I feel like putting them up in a post, but somehow they become too many and then I don't feel like writing anymore. Recently, I joined a group on Facebook and managed to post a set of thoughts there. Thats when I got the idea of doing this on my blog - a themed set of posts where I ponder seriously about something that takes over my brain. Hence, presenting the "Thinking corner". I don't want to push this any more, so lets start off without delay :).

There are many times when I wonder why we are here. Why are we born? Why do we live? Why do we die? Are we just specks of dust that are aware that they exist? Or do our lives really make a difference anywhere in this vast universe?

We all know that our lives affect atleast a few. Imagine concentric circles with the centre point being you. Your spouse or significant other is the first circle. Your parents, children, in-laws make up the second one. Your best friends form the third, first set of relatives the fourth, so on and so forth until your acquaintances make up the last circle. Most of the time, your life affects only these concentric circles and never ventures beyond the acquaintances circle. Yes, people in public lives like authors, celebrities or politicians go beyond these circles and affect the lives of strangers. But for a normal human being, the acquaintance circle is the end of it. And the nearer the circle to the center, the more the effect of your life, meaning the effect of our lives decrease as the circles become bigger. So who does my life impact most? Me.

My life belongs to me the most. Your life belongs to you the most. My life makes a difference, to me. We have all heard of reincarnations (life beyond the current life), souls and ghosts. Its all good to hear, but we don't have solid proof for any of it. Death might be the complete stop for everything we know. So for all we know, this might be the only life we have. We may not get another chance like this. I do not believe in past lives, I may have had them, but I don't remember them anyways. And so it goes for future lives as well. I have been extremely lucky in getting the sort of life I have now and I may not be so lucky even if there are future lives. Hence I believe in taking full advantage of the only life I have, in living as much as I can in the short duration we have in this world. We don't know what tomorrow holds for us. The question you have to ask yourself is this "If tomorrow is the end of your world, would you have regrets?". If so, then you need to make changes so that you don't.

We all know that we have to compromise and make adjustments for things in our lives to go smooth. But if the compromises and adjustments you make are causing you unhappiness, then are they really worth it? At the risk of sounding extremely selfish, there is a limit to everything, even personal sacrifice. If you are the only one making compromises and nobody else is even putting in the effort, then its bound to cause regrets at a later point in life when you look back and see what you have been through. There is just no point in bending to everything and everyone and later complain about how you have sacrificed all your life. Sometimes, to live your life, you have to be assertive (not aggressive) and let people know what you expect in a clear manner.

Though some of the following might sound like cliché, I have seen people never expressing what they feel to their family members, not showing they love them; People not taking vacations despite being able to do so financially, not spending enough moments with their spouses or have spare time for their children; People whose aim is only to make money and not really spending it for a worthy cause; People who don't help others in need or contrastingly do help, but only to show off; People making promises they never keep; People who are total hypocrites, preaching something while they do something totally opposite. Is this really how we want our one and only life to be? Ultimately, we are the ones living our lives, we are the ones making all the decisions. Live in the moment and try and make a difference.

All this being said, I don't have answers for any of the questions I asked in the first paragraph of this post. The fact is we may never have the answers. Everybody doesn't have the privilege of searching for answers, many don't have the financial circumstances for it and many others don't have the interest. Still others go for religious and spiritual guidance to look for answers. Yet others have pondered the questions, have decided that they probably will never know the answers and are satisfied with that. There are all kinds of people in this world. What works for someone need not work for you and what works for you need not be the solution for someone else. Whatever makes you happy is the key to life. Live and let live.

"The answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42"- by Douglas Adams in " The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy".

"So if your life flashed before you,
What would you wish you would've done?

Yeah, we gotta start
Looking at the hands of the time we've been given
If this is all we got and we gotta start thinking
If every second counts on a clock that's ticking
Gotta live like we're dying

We only got 86,400 seconds in a day to
Turn it all around or to throw it all away
We gotta tell them that we love them
While we got the chance to say
Gotta live like we're dying"
- Kris Allen in the song "Live Like We're Dying".

Saas bahu oh no!

2011-05-04T09:34:00.006-04:00

One of Sri's technological projects as of now, is getting Indian cable channels here in the US over the internet without paying the outrageous dollar prices they charge here for the packages. Since I have never been really into it so far, you'll have to head to his blog for the technical details :-p. But what basically it is, is a kind of modem that connects to the Tata Sky modem in India and relays the transmission over the internet. The best part is that it can be accessed from anywhere as long as there is an internet connection - on a laptop, desktop or even the iPhone, the limit being that it can be accessed only once (once the player is switched on on any device, it can't be accessed from any other). There are still kinks being ironed out but its been working great so far and I'm impressed :).

Anyways the whole thing started because my parents were heading here and believe me when I say mom loves having it :). But you know the equation when it comes to moms,

Mom + Indian TV = Saas-bahu serials.

I have completely stopped seeing any of them since the time I moved to the US (I can download the episodes off the net, but have never had the slightest inclination to :-p) and I guess my aversion has turned into something of a drastic nature. A couple of the serials mom is into have been bearable so far, but mom wanted to watch this new serial that started recently called "Sasural Simar ka". Well, one day I ended up watching half an hour of it and I'm pretty sure thats the reason half of my hair is gone (I must have torn them out of sheer frustration :-p). From the silly plot to the constant focusing on faces, from the over-dramatized dialogues to the over acting, man, was it pure torture! I wonder whether this can be classified under enhanced interrogation techniques and whether hard-core criminals can be subjected to it. I'm sure they'll give up all kinds of information in just under 5 minutes :-p. And I wonder who comes up with the ideas for such serials, such people should be subjected to non-stop marathons of their own idiotic serials!

Anyways, I have decided to turn and walk out of the room if I ever even see a glimpse of this serial again. Thats the only way for my poor remaining hair to survive :-D.

The pregnancy diaries mk II :-D.

2011-05-02T18:00:00.005-04:00

Well, where there is the first version for the first child, there has to be a second one for the second right? Its only fair methinks :-D. Plus today is the day I complete 36 weeks, so the bun in the oven is officially full-term and ready to pop :-D. But I'm hoping it'll stay snug and tight in there for 3 more weeks atleast mainly because my dad and Darsh are heading over here in 2 weeks (I can't wait!! After a long time we'll all be together as a family for a solid 2.5 months!). But on the other side, there's the fact that I suffer from heartburn and swollen legs everyday without fail (my legs are swollen but my BP is completely normal, go figure!) and I'm literally tired of being so tired ;-). The doc asks me to sleep with my legs up to help with the swollen leg syndrome and asks me to raise my upper body for the heartburn. I don't know how I'm supposed to sleep with only my stomach lowered and upper and lower body raised :-p. I keep muttering to myself "just one more month to go", but am well aware of the reality that the only thing thats going to change is that one kind of trouble is going to be transformed into another kind ;-) :-p.

Anyways lets get on with what we are here for the pregnancy this time around :).

The day I took my pregnancy test and it turned out to be positive. Even though it was for the second time, there was lot of happiness because we had been trying for sometime before striking the lottery :-D. Since I wanted to announce it to both families as soon as possible, I took a doctor's appointment immediately. When the doctors confirmed the news, there was excitement, maybe not as much as the first time, but lots nevertheless. The worry about how we are going to manage has not been as bad as I had last time, basically because we have been through so much with Snugli and are sure of our abilities. But there have been times when I have wondered whether 2 kids are going to be a bit too much to handle :).

The day I had my first ultrasound. This time around the first ultrasound was done at about 7 weeks to make sure the baby was ok and its heart was beating properly. The experience was emotional, because after 3 years it felt good to be back seeing the baby in its earliest form. Yeah it wasn't as overwhelming as the first time (yeah yeah I know I'm comparing everything, but I wanted to record the changes in me ;-) :-D). In some ways it was different, but in others we were back to being first time parents - We could see just a finger-sized clump on the monitor with a heart beating, literally jumping out of the tiny body. Again we were relieved that there was only one ;-). Just 4 weeks later, when 3 nurses weren't able to find the heartbeat using the Doppler (which got me totally tense, as you can imagine), I had a second ultrasound, just to make sure the baby was doing fine. And it was :).

The day I completed 3 months. As I have said in earlier posts, this time I had morning sickness every day in mornings and evenings. Thankfully I wasn't vomiting anything. So I was really looking forward to the completion of 3 months not only for the end of first trimester safety issue, but mainly because people generally say the 2nd trimester is the time when a pregnant woman feels her best. Sadly, that wasn't the case. The nausea continued and so did the tiredness. Despite these, I was subjected to the usual blood tests (taking out 3 test tubes of blood from me and checking it for everything from the Rh-factor to HIV) :-p. Everything was normal this time too :).

The day of my third detailed ultrasound. This time the detailed ultrasound took place in my 19th week (it became the third one since I had the unexpected 2nd one). They checked whether the major organs/systems of the baby are developing/working properly and like the previous time, this was a major highlight of the pregnancy. The scan encompassed the brain and heart measurements (which we were able to make out), the spinal cord check and then the kidneys (which I wasn't able to recognize at all :-p). The best part was when the little rascal decided to yawn and opened its mouth wide - the technician even managed to snap a shot of the same :-D. Moreover the baby even put its thumb into the mouth and started sucking just like its elder sister :-D. We did find out the baby's gender this time too, but lets leave the story until after delivery ;-) :).

The day I felt the baby's first big movement. It is said that after the first pregnancy, in any subsequent pregnancy, everything will be exaggerated. As in the woman will feel movements sooner, expand more and is basically sensitive to changes. So I was expecting the movements to be much much sooner, but that wasn't really the case. The first time I had felt the movements first time at around 22 weeks, whereas this time it was around the 20th week. It was as exciting as the first time. I feel that for women, the baby becomes real to us when the first big movement happens. Thats when it strikes us that oh wow, I really am carrying another human being inside me and the love for the baby starts there and then. Whereas for men, its usually only after the baby is born. Anyways, the major difference between the first time and now has been that this baby feels more active than Snugli. With Snugli, there were days when she used to be totally silent and I literally would be scared and these days, this little one moves so much that I literally feel like a washer/drier (the rumbles and tumbles in my stomach feel like that :-D).

The day I had my gestational diabetes test and it turned out to be normal. As I said in my last post, the gestational diabetes test happened in the first week of March and thankfully it was normal this time too (I had a tiny nagging worry about it). But as I said unlike last time, this time the hemoglobin levels were a bit low and I was prescribed iron tablets. They checked it again after a month, the levels had raised a bit, but still low, so I was asked to continue the tablets. I am sick and tired of the damn things, since I'm supposed to take them on an empty stomach and not mix them with milk. Plus have the prenatal vitamins as usual :( and the iron tablets don't go with them either (have to take them with a gap). Hopefully the next time they check, the levels will be up and I'll be rid of those damn tablets :-p.

What else? Yeah I have had the leg spasms like last time where I get up crying and Sri ends up rubbing my calf muscles like crazy until the pain subsides. I have been feeling painless contractions (Braxton-Hicks) a lot earlier as well - have been feeling these for more than 2 months now and I have atleast one each day. Its not very painful, but damn uncomfortable. But one of the worse things has been the stretch of the stomach ligaments. This time I did expand more as the doctors had mentioned. By the end of 6th month I was feeling like I was in my 9th! I felt heavy and huggggggggge. But the stomach didn't show any signs of slowing down at all :-p. When I had the flu, it got worse, whenever I coughed, it was literally as if somebody was tearing out my stomach ligaments and the pain was horrible. But this pain has been popping in now and then other times too. Whenever I sit, stand, or do anything for that matter, my stomach stretches and the pain is literally like pulling the skin. Sometimes oil helps, other times calamine did and yet other times nothing does, but it has been a big experience this time.

Well, just one more month to go, just one more month to go, just one more month to go, take a deep breath and repeat 100 times :-D.

Spring sprung and is no more..

2011-04-26T10:30:00.003-04:00

Things have been varyingly hectic (I mean, hectic due to different reasons) in my household. Have lots to write, but just don't seem to have the energy to sit in front of the computer and type these days. I can always use the pregnancy excuse, but somehow feel like its the easy way out. No matter what, I wish I had an assistant to type out whatever I wanted. Wait a minute! Sri............ :-D.

Anyways as I said, various things have happened to me over the past month (yup it has been a month since my last post in case you didn't notice :-p). After I wrote the last post, the very next check-up I went to was the Gestational diabetes + Anemia check milestone one. My gestational diabetes was fine, err I mean it doesn't exist :-D, but hemoglobin wasn't. It was low by a couple of points and so I was suggested iron tablets to bring it up. Well, now we know the reason for my tiredness. I also found out that the antacids I have been guLuming for my heartburn aren't very helpful when it comes to iron absorption - it seems they coat the stomach wall and don't let the iron be absorbed easily :-p.

Just when I was getting used to the iron tablets (just a week later), one day I woke up with a sore throat. It turned into a cold and cough next day and that very night I woke up with chills. Next morning checked my temperature and found it to be a 101.7. Now I had to get to the doctor, right? Took an appointment and after several tests found out that it was the dreaded flu - flu is supposedly very bad for pregnant women. Immediately was prescribed an anti-flu medication and thankfully the symptoms were gone in 2 days (otherwise my gynec had threatened to have me hospitalized :-p). But for 2 days, the household was literally in shambles as I couldn't even get up for the minutest chores. Thank God I have Sri, he took over everything! Even cooking (to my horror :-D).

After some sad few weeks, April 2nd week was one of the happiest with my mom heading here on April 11th. She was a bit ill the previous week and was travelling alone again, but this time I was pretty calm about the whole thing since she has travelled here already and I was confident in her abilities. Until the day she left India. I had told her I'd call her after her check-in formalities and every time I called, she still was in one of the lines with the plane leaving in an hour or so! So the headache was back in full measure :-D. Later I did find out that she climbed aboard the plane which was a relief. Then the whole 24 hours wait began - the first flight was from Bangalore to London, 2nd from London to Chicago, then the immigration and customs in Chicago and a 3rd flight from Chicago to Cincinnati. We picked her up at almost midnight in Cincinnati. She had a bad headache in the first flight and was okay in the 2nd. But the Chicago immigration line was really crazy with about a 300 people and though she had 3 hours layover, it was 2 hours by the time she got through immigration and customs. Well, she safely reached Lexington and that was a major relief. I had packed a couple of paratas for her just in case she was hungry and guess what Snugli's first dialogue to her ammamma was? "Ammamma, mammu tandiddivi nimge." ("Ammamma, we have brought you food") :-D. From then on she has been her ammamma's shadow, making even me jealous some days, hehehe :-D.

Phew, after mom came here, we have been eating all the goodies she bought us and they are all almost gone ;-). Dad and Darsh will be here next month, now thats going to be lots of fun :). Meanwhile, we have been enjoying walks around with mom enjoying the remaining flowers of spring. But before she came here, I did take some photos of spring flowers in and around my neighbourhood. They are all up on my photography page on Facebook - Through Deepthi's Eyes photography. The below picture reminded me of a thoraNa and click on it to see the Spring glory :-D.

I did not know that about songs..

2011-03-20T14:08:00.005-04:00

One of the things that I constantly accept these days is that most of the Hindi film songs that I fall in love with are usually blatantly plagiarized from some unknown foreign country band. I mean, I can't believe that some of the Indian music composers are so dumb that they think the people wouldn't have listened to the original in these much much global internet times ;-). For example "Kya Mujhe pyar hai" from the film "Woh Lamhe" - I really loved the song when I first heard it, but felt a little bit letdown after finding out that its a copy of the song "Tak Bisakah" by an Indonesian band called Peterpan. I still love the song, but yeah it has lost its charm ;-). Another song is "Kaho na kaho" from the movie Murder which is the note-to-note copy of an Arabic song called "Tamally Maak" by Amr Diab. I prefer the Arabic one not only because of the voice, but because of the unmentionable actors in the Hindi version ;-) :-D.

Hence recent songs, unless by some exceptional music directors, can be written off as a copy from some corner of the world or another :-p. So its not a very big deal (more examples are "Dil mera churaya kyu" from "Akele Hum akele tum" which is a copy of "Last Christmas" by George Michael, "Nazare mili" from "Raja" which is a copy of "Come September" and so on). But now when it comes to olden melodies, we still respect many of the directors and composers as true masters and all of their songs are held to the utmost devotion. Yes, there were many songs there too "inspired" by western compositions, one major example (atleast for me its a major one because I love the song so much :-D), is "Itna na mujhse tu pyar bada" from the movie Chhaya which is very much inspired by Mozart's much admired "Symphony No. 40". Another inspired song I came to know about as I was writing this post was "Babuji Dheere chalna" from the movie Aar Paar, inspired by a spanish song "quizás, quizás, quizás", though it has only about 2 notes in common :-p. I'm sure there are many other olden goldies whose notes were influenced from the then famous music from around the world.

But what led me to this post was the song "Kaun hai jo sapno me aaya" from the movie "Jhuk gaya aasmaan" sung by Rafi.

As I have said a couple of times before, Rafi is my most favourite Hindi singer and this song has been one of my favourites for a long time. Well, you don't have to imagine my shock when I learnt the song was a copy of "Marguerita" by another of my all time favourite singers Elvis Presley!

I love Elvis's voice and I have a couple of songs by him I absolutely adore ("Love me tender", "Can't help falling in love with you", "Its now or never" etc :-D), but I hadn't heard of this one until I read about the plagiarism part :-p. The initial part is obviously a copy, but even the stanzas seem a lot similar :-p. Well the shock did wear off after a couple of days and now I have 2 similar songs that I love basically because of the singers - I cannot let go of either Rafi or Elvis ;-).

Do let me know if you know of more such "inspired songs" :-D.

A blogger's best friend..

2011-03-08T08:50:00.002-05:00

Thats what my blog has become in 6 years to me. Thats right, today is exactly 6 years since I started writing my blog. That certainly means that there have been atleast 6 posts including this one, talking about how much my blog has come to mean to me. Good excuse to write a post at the least :-D.

Seriously though, I cannot believe that I'm still writing. I mean, ideally I did think and do think that I will be writing all my life, but the situations in life don't really give you that kind of a comfort level or that kind of a time. I've seen blogs and the associated bloggers disappear without a word suddenly because of life pressures and I don't really blame them. When I had Snugli, there were many points in time when I did wonder whether I was 'neglecting' her by dedicating a bit of time to my activities (especially blogging). But there's my duties as a mother to her, as a wife to my husband, as a daughter to my parents and then there is a duty to myself. To do the things I love to do :).

And I do love to write. The posts have been slow for the past couple of months, due to the little one that I'm carrying. Call it fatigue or maybe laziness, but to be honest, I don't mean to give up on the blog yet. Have no idea how tough it'll be after the delivery, but right now, I plan to make some time somehow :). So hopefully there will be a post next year celebrating the 7th birthday of the blog if it goes as well as it is going right now. And to add, I don't really have that many commentators pestering me to write, so that must prove that this is purely for myself and few of my family/friends who are regular visitors :).

Another hindrance to blogging is the evolution of day-to-day social networks like twitter and facebook. I'm still not on twitter, thank God (cannot afford to update yet another one), but I am on facebook and I have to admit that its easier to put up daily thoughts there, than create a post for it on the blog. Obviously there is no detail-oriented stuff as it is here in this blog, but its good for a quick quote or a quick link pointing to a news I thought was interesting. Yet for me personally, that can never take the place of this blog - even though for some people apparently it does. I have seen people update 10-20 status messages per day, upload irritating photos of what they cook daily or see daily or do every second of every minute of every hour of every day and people updating the damn thing when they are attending weddings (right now while attending someone else's wedding, but I'm sure the day will come when they'll be updating during their own as well :-p), or watching cricket or doing anything. And everytime I see this I feel like shouting at them to stop and to enjoy what's happening in actuality rather than striving to keep strangers "updated" (sadly some even consider strangers as very good friends :-p). But oh well, its their life, their choices.

Anyways, a very happy 6th birthday to my beloved blog. Hope you continue to exist as long as I do :).

Craving and caving in..

2011-03-02T11:11:00.003-05:00

I figured that I owe you all a pregnancy post after that abrupt update :). First of all, thanks to all who bothered to leave a comment and wish me, and to all who thought of leaving a comment but were too busy to do so (:-p). No thanks if you said "Meh" and walked off :-p.

The decision to have a second baby was for us, a combination of many reasons. For one thing, we both have siblings ourselves and we, especially I, wanted Snugli to have that experience, that particular companionship. Secondly we felt it kinda was the right time. We didn't want it too early (needed time to recover from the first one :-p, :-D) and didn't want it to be too late, when a second one will be more of an intrusion than a welcome. Thirdly, we had started to go through this terrible nostalgia about Snugli, hehehe. I mean the first year was full of frustrations, but it has been our lives' highlight to watch Snugli grow up (I think its any parent's life's highlight :-D) and we did want a repeat of that. Yeah, nostalgia, half the time ends up helping you make the craziest decisions :-p.

What I'm saying is that the second time pregnancy hasn't been as smooth for me as the first one was. Yup, the comparison begins now with the second baby still inside my womb :-p. While carrying Snugli, I literally had no pregnancy symptoms except for heartburn in the last couple of months. But this time around, man, has it been a wild ride! I have seen it all. First trimester (the first 3 months), I had morning sickness the entire day, every day. So well, "morning sickness" definition wasn't really suitable to what I had :-p. Thankfully I wasn't vomiting at all, but would feel queasy the entire day. Plus I used to feel tired. The tiredness was so bad that I would drop off to sleep in the evenings while sitting on the sofa! I was waiting for the 2nd trimester relief, but there wasn't any. The queasiness continued and so did the tiredness. No break. As of now I'm in my 7th month and I still have the morning sickness (it is thankfully limited to the mornings these days) and the tiredness - yeah you'll still find me nodding off in front of the TV some evenings :-D.

Plus heartburn made its appearance in the 2nd trimester end - so guess this little one will be born with a head-full of hair like Snugli did ;-). Thats not an old wives tale btw - John Hopkins actually did a research on that and proved that excess of estrogen causes heartburn in mothers and more hair in babies :-D. Jokes apart, the heartburn seems worse this time, sometimes I start feeling it even when I taste something while I cook! So yeah queasiness+tiredness+heartburn implies this baby is a troublesome one already :-p. My gynec says that the tiredness is basically due to the fact that I have a toddler to run behind and she insists that even the littlest things I do for Snugli contribute towards the strain. But honestly speaking, Sri has taken over most of the chores and it feels like all I do is laze around :-p. And did I mention how glad I am to have him as my partner? ;-) :-D.

And then there were the cravings. This is the good part, believe me ;-). I never had a single craving when I carried Snugli. My mom always would talk about the cravings she had when she was pregnant with me - it seems she ate a whole box of jalebis once and so on :-p. My parents weren't that well off then, so I would tease her that cravings were just excuses to eat whatever she wanted during that time, hehehe :-D. Well, this time, I found out how wrong I was. My cravings started with a simple McDonalds icecream cone (the 49 cents one which is like a version of our Bangalore Softy) and I think it was sometime in November. If you haven't tried it, believe me when I say, its not all that good. Its okay, a bit different from any icecream that you get. But craving a softy in winter was a surprise ;-).

But I didn't really know how worse it'd get until I started craving the Garlic bread from Pizza hut. Now, I regularly have frozen Texas toast garlic bread in my freezer (you just have to heat it up in the conventional oven for sometime and its ready to eat), but I didn't want that. I wanted the salty Pizza hut one and nothing else. After thinking (and drooling :-p) about it for about 3 days, I finally asked Sri to get that and a pizza from Pizza hut one night. There is a hitch in the Pizza hut garlic bread, the thing is that all locations don't serve them, a couple have them and a couple don't. The one that Sri went to didn't and the guy coolly calls me up and says that they don't have it and hence he is getting bread sticks. To excuse the poor guy, this has happened a couple of times earlier and I've always been quite okay with it. But nah, not this time. I literally burst into tears over the phone, shouted at him, slammed the phone and hung up on him. God!! I have never behaved that atrociously in my life ever. The poor guy went all the way to another Pizza hut location to get his crazy pregnant wife the garlic bread she wanted :-D. Moreover we always get 4 pieces, this time he got 8 and I ate 5 of them!

Phew, that particular craving was done after I had garlic bread a couple of more times. Today, if you ask me, I don't even feel like looking at the damn things :-p. After that there was gobhi bajji (cauliflower fritters) which I literally kept dreaming about for 2 consecutive nights! Then finally the third day I made them myself and ate to my heart's content :-D. After that, there have been jalebis (available in Indian stores here, but not very good ones), pakodas (made them myself twice) and little things like that. I keep teasing Sri that he should be thankful that I have been craving only inexpensive foods, otherwise he'd have been a goner ;-). I think he is more thankful that the raging maniac he encountered hasn't made a reappearance, hehehee :))).

So thats it, the journey so far. I have to be thankful that things have been pretty normal and it has been a low risk pregnancy. More will be up whenever my brain keeps recovering from the shutdowns it has been facing on and off, then and again ;-).

Happy 34!

2011-02-27T00:00:00.000-05:00

Someone in the house is turning 34. Its not me and its certainly not Snugli ;-). Now, who's remaining? :-D.

Happy birthday to a wonderful husband and an even more wonderful father :). May your life be filled with more joy and more irritating people :-p.
Love ya, Sri :).

Snugster is backkkkkkkkkkkkkk!

2011-02-23T21:04:00.016-05:00

I cannot believe that its been more than an year since I pestered you guys. Well, I am a busy baby going to school these days, so I have absolutely no time to hack into mom's blog. I hope you understand. In case you still don't know who I am, I am Snugster {evil laugh}, hehehehe >:-).

I thought since mom has been slacking so much in keeping the blog updated, there's nothing like some photos of me to keep you guys interested :). How else to trouble you guys? Oh yeah, I'll also be listing a set of rules that people have to follow around me. Hope that keeps you satisfied until mom pops in (don't tell her I've been helping her, its not good for my reputation, ;-) :-D).

So whats up with me? Early December, I had a Christmas party organized by my school. I had a good time singing "Jingle bells" and "We wish you a merry Christmas" at the top of my voice. Mom keeps saying I was the most enthusiastic one out there :-D. Here's me with Santa Claus :).

As you know I celebrated my birthday in December. Yeah I was a bit ill, but I can't let a meagre illness spoil my troublesome nature now, can I?

I had a good time at both my parties (one for our friends in Lexington and the other for my friends at school).

Then January was the time for Sankranthi and bhogi pallu, so here I am getting hit with blueberries, chickpeas, flowers and coins :-D.

I have to admit that I joined in the fun - I threw some at myself too ;-).

What else? One fine snowy day, when mom and I both weren't sick in any way, we went out and had a good time playing in the snow..

We made this snow man errrrrr snow alien :-p.

Mom built her snow sculpture of the year - this caterpillar. I did help with some of the sticks :-p.

What else? Toys, toys and more toys :-D.

Got this laptop as a birthday gift from a friend and I love it. I love irritating mom with its sounds obviously :-p. Then there are the Lego blocks. I am always creating new architectures, but mom and dad always want me to clean up later. How am I supposed to be the next big architect then? :-p.

I have a set of vehicles which I usually take all around the house and "park" them. The parking lots can be anywhere from next to a door to under a chair. And no, I don't want to park them in the toy box, thank you very much :-p.

I also got a play dough set which mom doesn't really let me use when she isn't around - you know her reasons why :-p. We made these turtles the other day..

Last but not the least are the wooden puzzles mom got me. I cannot do this on my own (I hate to admit this but have to tell the truth sometimes ;-) :-D), so mom has to help me leaving all her work whenever I order her to :). And I usually say "Ta-Da" when I finish one :).

Thats it for the new toys. I promised you Snugster's laws, didn't I? So here goes -

1) I only operate on bribes or threats - so if you expect me to listen, then be ready with either. I prefer bribes btw :-D. For eg the days I eat on my own, I get a sticker. And the days I don't listen, I get threatened with everything from "no going out" to "giving away toys". But these people aren't very great at implementing threats :-p.
2) When I am talking, everyone else should be silent. If anyone tries to interrupt, then I have the right of saying "Shshshshshsh", "Silence" or "Don't talk back!" to anyone :-p.
3) All matters are important to me - so all words should be spoken clearly. If not I can ask questions anytime.
4) Actually, I get to ask any questions anytime anywhere :-p.
5) If anyone doesn't know how to play with any of my toys, they are to consult me and no one else :-D.
6) If I order someone to sing songs (yeah I'm looking at you mom), they should comply immediately - especially when they are bothering me by combing my hair. BTW here's a hair joke from my household -

Dad: "If you don't wear your hair in a pony tail, you won't be going out with us!"
Me: "But dad, you are not wearing one either"..
Hehehee :)).

Had enough of the laws? Ok gotta go now. Why am I feeling like I'm forgetting something? Oh right! I am going to be a big sister soon! I don't really know what that means, but mom keeps telling me that there's a little baby inside her stomach and the baby will come to our house by May 30th. I have generously offered to share my old rattles and other baby toys with the baby, but I can't promise anything else :-p. Mom will tell you more stories about me and my questions about the new baby soon. Bye bye and hearty congrats to mom and dad :).

The ice collection..

2011-02-19T16:07:00.003-05:00

Sorry that I haven't been around much - my brain seems half shutdown these days, the reason for which will be up soon somewhere in the next post :-D.

Meanwhile, just putting up a photography post to tide things along. As I've been saying, things have been pretty bad around where I live, snow, ice, cold and sicknesses, we have had it all. And I just had to capture some of the ice around with my other eye - my camera. So they are all up on my photography page on Facebook. - Through Deepthi's Eyes photography. The below picture reminded me of a diamond ring (yeah, yeah whats with girls and diamonds :-p) and click on it to see the Icy album :-D.

6 barson ki he dil ki kahaani :).

2011-02-04T08:58:00.012-05:00

6 years! ಆರು ವರ್ಷ! छह वर्ष! Cannot believe its 6 years since we said "I do" :-D.

Sometimes I wonder where all the time went, but other times I know that its time well spent. Every day has been a new adventure and as I have said many times here in my blog (and will say it lots more times in the future :-D), I am blessed to have the life that I have and the life-partner to go with it :). I always wondered (and even now I wonder) how I'll feel as the time goes by and the years pass - I have to admit, there has never been a dull moment so far or a moment of regret. Instead, even though every moment hasn't been exciting or happy, most moments have been promising and satisfying :).

Sometimes I wonder whether I appreciate him enough and other times I know he is my world. I know that there are many women with husbands who don't help them out enough or complain all the while even when helping. And then there are those who mistreat their women treating them like mindless slaves. Still more who don't consider women as equals or disregard their opinions. Its not that I don't thank my lucky stars that I have him, but maybe sometimes, just maybe I complain too much or expect more of him. Well, if you are used to good things, its natural to expect more good things :-D.

Sometimes I worry that I take him for granted, but other times I know he doesn't really mind it ;-). Again its not that I'm not grateful, but there are times when I think that some other woman is lucky, because their husbands ooze poetry about them or are very open about the love they have for them. Sri is not very expressive when it comes to some things and not very "romantic" in the word's true sense. Yeah I take the love he has for me granted too many times :). So here's another sappy, catchy song I've been in love with for quite sometime (its one of the tunes in my zumba dance class), especially for Sri :). The song's called "Say Hey" by Michael Franti :).

Thanks to MichaelFrantiVEVO for the video.

Just love this part from the song..

I've been to a lot of places all around the way
I've seen a lot of joy and I've seen a lot of pain
But I don't want to write a love song for the world,
I just want to write a song about a boy and a girl

and ofcourse this part :).

It seems like everywhere I go
The more I see, the less I know
But I know one thing that I love you
I love you, I love you, I love you.

And so the journey of a lifetime goes on :).

The ignorant..

2011-01-31T14:21:00.003-05:00

Wanted to post one incident from the Vegas trip, but forgot. Anyways this deserves a tweet of its own :).

We were walking through one of Vegas's casinos when we were approached by a man from a beauty shop.

He: "Hey! Are you guys from India?"
We: "Yes."
He: "Cool. Let me ask you one thing. What is the best thing you have for skin problems in India?"

Just as I am about to answer "Sandalwood", Sri replies "Turmeric".

He: "Did you know that it contains artificial components and chemicals?"

We both burst out laughing and didn't even stop to listen to what he had to say further :-D.

What happens in Vegas..

2011-01-21T14:00:00.006-05:00

Will end up in this post :-p. I have been wanting to write this post for months now. But these days with my photography experiments going in full josh, the editing of photos takes a lot of time (its a digital era and since we take 100s of photos, editing and deleting repeats and blurred photos is always a good idea). Plus as I have mentioned before, I don't like to upload the same photos multiple times, so had to wait for the single complete upload I do :). The intro over and done with, lets get on with the post, shall we?

Las Vegas and Grand Canyon were one of the final must-see items for me in the US (yeah I'm almost done :-D) and I have been pestering Sri for quite a while regarding this. But Sri, having lived for a while in Phoenix, Arizona before we got married and having seen all of it, wasn't too keen. We finally made a decision to head there in the Thanksgiving weekend of November 2010, since we didn't really have plans of much shopping anyways ;-) :-D. We thought that since it'd be winter, we didn't really have to face the harsh desert summer there. But well, the story turned out to be quite the opposite.

On Thursday, November 25th 2010, we left Lexington at around 6 AM in the morning and caught a flight to Houston, Texas and from there onwards to Las Vegas, Nevada. The trip map was something like this from there onwards:

We reached Vegas (Point A/E) at about noon local time. Our plan was to have lunch there, see Hoover dam and start driving to Grand Canyon that day staying at Williams, Arizona (Point B) for the night. If you enlarge the map, you can see the Colorado river at Boulder city and thats where the Hoover dam is.

The Hoover dam is supposedly the 6th largest dam in the US and one of the most famous ones ;-). It is built across the Colorado river and has the Arizona-Nevada state border inbetween.

Thats the Mike O'Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. Here are Sri and Snugli in front of the dam :).

And here's the state border between Arizona and Nevada :).

Laughing at borders :-D.

I knew there was a sky view of the Hoover dam from somewhere (later found out that it was from the Mike O'Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge) but we missed the entry point for that thinking that it was only a memorial. Since Hoover dam is only about an hour away from Vegas, we decided to get back to it later and were off on our way to Canyon. Stopped at Williams, AZ for the night - the room there wasn't really very comfy in the beginning with only a slow oil heater for what was a very cold environment (thankfully we did carry coats since we found out what the weather was likely to be before we left Lexington - it was in single digits to freezing temperatures). We knew that the town didn't have many restaurants and so carried some microwavable ready-to-eat food with us.

Next morning we left for Grand Canyon. We had to drive about 1.5 hours from Williams to get there, so when we saw the precipice, we could hardly wait to get down and see it :). This was our first view ;-).

And here's us :).

The Grand Canyon is a very steep canyon basically carved by the Colorado river. The Wikipedia entry says that its 277 miles long, 18 miles wide and over 1 mile deep. The depth was what was fascinating to me. Imagine people travelling around in the olden days - if its dark and you cannot see whats in front you, they certainly didn't have a chance if they were around the canyon. The Canyon can be seen from any side but its south rim is the most visited part - since it has most of the sight-seeing points.

Since I first came to know of the canyon, I have always wanted to hike down the canyon and go to the Native American settlements thats somewhere below (summers are really hot down there and people have died due to the heat, so winter time is better for the trek). But when you have a toddler, any kind of trek/hike is out of the picture :-D. So maybe some other time :).

Another part we did think of visiting was the West rim Grand Canyon sky walk. It is a glass bottom observation deck directly over the edge of the Grand Canyon from which you can actually feel the depth of the canyon. But we decided not to go there mainly mainly due to 3 reasons - the first being there is no proper road to reach there - there's a stretch of 12 mile mud road which wasn't a good idea on a rented car. Second, the tickets are really expensive and thirdly, cameras aren't allowed on the skywalk (actually no objects are allowed, the reason being that if you drop anything on the glass, the glass may get damaged). The third reason was a major no-no for me :-D. Later I didn't even have any regrets about not going since after seeing the canyon from a few view points, it all started to look the same :-p.

One major addition to my photography equipment is the Canon EF-S 10-22mm f3.5-4.5 USM lens with Canon hood which is basically a wide angle lens and considered very good for landscape photography. I wanted to fully utilize the same for the trip. Plus another idea I wanted to experiment on is called HDR imaging (High Dynamic Range) which basically translates to taking the same image in different exposures (basically on a tripod to keep it constant) and merging them all together to get the perfect luminance. My plan was to take several images this way and try to achieve a HDR panorama. It was a lot of work - taking about 7 exposures manually of each image, merging them to get the HDR image and then lining up several (about 3-4) HDR images to get the panorama, but I was able to do it :). Learnt a lot about photoshop toning of the pictures and the experience has been very positive overall :).

Here's a HDR image from another viewpoint called the Yavapai point :).

And here's a HDR panorama I created (its literally is made up of 21 images from the camera :-D).

Click on both the above pics to see a slightly enlarged version :).

Here's us at the Yavapai point:

From there, we decided to catch a bus (the Hermits rest route) which would take us to several other view points. We had to wait a bit at a place near to one of the lodges in the Grand Canyon village called the Bright Angel Lodge. The view was great as expected :).

The route from the Bright Angel lodge to Hermits rest is about 7 miles, but takes some time because of the forests and wildlife around. Plus it has snowed a couple of days ago and the roads were slippery, so the buses were being extra careful. Since it was going to take a long time to see everything on the way, we decided to stop at a couple of points where we knew for sure that we could see glimpses of the Colorado river. The first point we stopped at was the Hopi point where I took another HDR panorama (this one consists of 28 images in total). Again click to see a slightly bigger version.

The Colorado river is in the left above the orange coloured platform..

The next point was the Mohave point where you can see the Colorado river 2 places..

As I said earlier, by this time, it all had started to look the same. I mean, maybe I was overlooking the nuances between the view points, but after sometime it wasn't as fascinating as it initially was. I still admire the grand canyon, but the different view points don't really offer different points of view ;-). So we decided to turn back and have lunch. We went into the Bright Angel Lodge's restaurant to have lunch. We had packed a couple of ready-to-eats in the morning because we didn't really hear of good vegetarian food in the Grand Canyon village as such when researched on the internet. And usually such famous places hardly have good food - all vegetarians get is a slice of cheese pizza. But this place actually had a lot of choices for vegetarians (they had different cuisines in the food court, so there were a couple of options to chose from), albeit expensive. They did have a microwave, so we were able to heat up what we took and eat it without too much of a hassle, but all that worry about packing food could have been avoided ;-).

After lunch, I still wanted to visit one more view point called the Desert View which is famous for its historic watchtower built more than 75 years ago which has Native American art and crafts. The view from the tower is pretty good, but again feels a bit same-old :-D. But the view of the tower and the canyon together was good :).

By that time it was already 5 PM and almost time for sunset and I had heard about another view point called Lipan point where the sunset views are pretty good. Since it was our supposedly last view of the canyon, we thought we'd see that too. But when we got there, the sun had already set, but the canyon was certainly looking a bit misty and mysterious :). So here's a last one of the canyon..

And so we said bye to the Grand Canyon. Our plan that day was to drive to Page, Arizona and halt for the night. On the way, after it was dark, I told Sri that I wanted to stop and get some shots of the Milky way if possible, so we did stop at a deserted side-road. I spent about an hour getting most of what I wanted but poor Sri and Snugli had to sit tight in the car (it was brrrrrrrrrrrrrr cold) listening to music for all that time :). I am just putting up one photo here (I have taken about 25 exposures to be stacked, but haven't really edited any of them as an astrophotograph is supposed to be, but am planning to get into learning all about it and implementing techniques soon). Its a larger photo than usual and if you hover your mouse over the photo, you can see where the Andromeda galaxy, the various constellations and clusters are :). So hope you like it..

My back broke drawing all the details on the photo :-p. You can click the photo to see the enlarged version, but no drawn details on that photo, I'm afraid :). I also tried to do some star trails, but the once-in-a-while cars on the road nearby made long exposures impossible. Some other time..

The next day our plan was to visit the Antelope Canyons, which is what Page is famous for. There are 2 canyons - the Lower Antelope Canyon and the Upper Antelope canyon. Both the canyons are managed by the Navajo tribe - the local native American tribe and you need to take a guided tour to see them. Before we talked to the tour company, my idea was that we'll see the lower antelope canyon and then I alone would take up the Upper Antelope canyon photographers' tour (I read on the internet that its about at 11:30 AM) - since Snugli would probably be a hindrance as such. But well, the winter timings were completely different from those on the internet and the photographer's tour at 9:30 AM was already full by the time we asked (at around 8:30 AM).

And so things changed. We found out that the tour for the lower canyon was offered at the entrance of the canyon and there was a normal tour to the Upper Canyon after 1 PM in the noon. We decided that all of us would go on both the tours. We were at the entrance of the Lower canyon by 9 AM, heard that it'll be opened by 9:30 AM and so we waited. The Lower Antelope canyon is literally a hugggggggggge crack in the earth. You have to step into the crack, wiggle down and then climb down to the floor of the canyon. Plus the passages are very narrow and usually steep down. So yeah, this is not a good idea when you have a toddler :-D. Here's how it looks from above the earth, this is not the actual entrance to the canyon though..

Here's the entrance and you can see people getting into it..

And this one shows exactly how deep it is at the entrance itself..

One of the reasons we went to the Antelope canyons was for me to try some photography there. Since we went in winter, the light is a bit less, as you can see from the above picture. So the photography becomes trickier and basically requires longer exposures. Low light photography requires a tripod and having a remote control is a plus (the remote will usually have a click button that'll not vibrate the camera like the one on the camera does - so you can use the remote trigger or use a 2-sec timer so that the camera stops vibrating before the photo is captured). So yeah, while Sri was lugging around Snugli (who naturally had a difficult time climbing down narrow stairs etc), I was lugging around the camera with the remote shutter control and the tripod around the very same stairs. But yeah got a couple of beautiful HDRs which made it all worth. Here are a couple of HDRs:

The sandstone layers were amazing! It was really fun to see the play of light everywhere and even some shapes in the stones (which are considered sacred by the Native tribes). Here's an eagle:

And here's us in the canyon:

The climb up was really really steep. Sri went ahead with Snugli and I still don't know how she managed it. Sri later told me that she was fully enthusiastic and that it wasn't a problem at all. We were totally tired by the time we got back to the car. I repeat, this is not really a good place to visit if you have younger kids (well, unless you are adventurous :-D).

We had time only for lunch and then had to get back to the Upper Canyon tour. The tour in this case, started in the town where we had to climb some all-terrain vehicles - the Upper canyon is off-road and personal vehicles aren't allowed at all. The upper canyon, luckily, is like a cave in a hill with open ceilings, broader passages and flat floor surface. But since the surface has sand, we couldn't really take a stroller for Snugli with us and she, it being afternoon, fell promptly asleep and wouldn't get up no matter how hard we tried. So well, that turned out to be the major difficulty. As Sri had to carry her around (we couldn't obviously leave her in the car), I had to carry the camera, tripod, accessories and a backpack in plus. Poor Sri had a really bad time since I had to stop to get the photos I wanted, but well, we realized that the canyons were simply a mistake with a kid once again.

But oh well, there we were and we did manage to see the entire thing. Here's the entrance to the Upper Antelope Canyon.

There was an elephant shaped rock right inside and I was joking that had this been in India, we'd have a Ganesha temple around it by now :-D.

Again the light play and the colours were amazing - here's a HDR to prove it ;-).

The Upper canyon is most famous for its light beams - in summer since the sun is directly overhead, you have light beams that light up the canyon in a very beautiful way. But again, we went in winter and missed it. Well, good reason for a trip in summer ;-). The canyon opens up at another place since the hill ends and here's us at the "exit".

We had to walk all the way back to the entrance and that was that. Page is also the home for another famous photography place - the Horseshoe bend, where the Colorado river takes a U-turn :). It was pretty near from where we were, but there was about a 3/4 mile to and 3/4mile fro hike involved and we were just too tired for that. Plus we had to get back to Vegas that night, so we simply gave up. Another good reason for another trip ;-).

We reached Vegas by about 8 PM, I think and to watch the city lights as we approached the city was fabulous :). We headed straight to our hotel room at the Excalibur Hotel and Casino. We didn't really do anything that day, simply had dinner at the hotel buffet (the desserts were wonderful, but as for the rest, it was so-so) and retired for the day. This was the view from our room window at night:

Thats the New York New York casino and there is a roller coaster around it which Snugli just loved watching :). The antelope canyon tour took a real bad toll on us, so we hardly did anything the next day till evening - just went to an Indian restaurant for lunch. Evening we went back to the Hoover dam to see the view from the Mike O'Callaghan – Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge. Sri and Snugli sat in the car while I climbed up about 3 floors to see the view. Sadly it had already crossed 4:30 PM and the sun had set, but the Hoover dam night lights view was pretty impressive :).

After returning, we went on the Casino rounds at the Vegas strip. The strip is about a 4 mile stretch of land where the major casinos of Las Vegas are all located. The Excalibur is at the south end of the strip, so we started the tour there and caught a tram to see the Mandalay Bay and later the Luxor. The sight of enormous rooms full of slot machines is something else ;-). It all feels so surreal. Plus different casinos have different themes and its all wonderful to see.

From there we went to the MGM Grand which has a white lion exhibit, but sadly that was closed. So we took a bus to the Bellagio in front of which is a fountain show every hour in the evening and every half an hour after about 6 PM in the evening. But it was very windy and extremely cold outside. As long as we were inside the casinos it was fine, but otherwise, man, it was terrible. But we were there to see around right? So literally wrapped ourselves up and saw what needed to be seen. Here's the Bellagio fountain show:

The fountain show was good, but I personally think that the Mysore KRS one is better :-D. From there on, we walked into the Bellagio and here's the view of the street from there..

We went into the Bellagio hoping for a good buffet, but it was really expensive and mainly non-vegetarian. So we moved into the cold again and headed to the Planet Hollywood casino hoping again for foooooooooood :-D. The buffet there was a bit on the expensive side, but Snugli was already sleepy and so we didn't want to run around in the cold looking for something else. Again there were a lot of cuisines and lot of options, but most cuisines, I am sad to say, are pretty bland for people like us who are used to spices and heat in our food. I did manage to devour the desserts though :-D. And then we caught a bus back to our hotel and ended the day :).

The next morning our plan was to head to Death Valley. When we actually planned the trip, we didn't really have a plan to go there. But once we went to Vegas and Sri mentioned hearing about it, I thought that it'd be a good idea. I mean, there's not much to do in Vegas unless you have millions to throw away ;-) :-D. And it'd be good to cover something Sri hadn't seen :). So well, we decided to go and finish it in about an afternoon. Death valley is a desert situated actually in California, but only about 2 hours drive from Vegas. It has sand dunes and its especially famous for Badwater, which is the lowest elevation in North America - which is 282 feet below sea level.

It was a beautiful drive to the valley, but as you get to the valley, you start to see the bare hills and barely there vegetation. Death valley is also famous for the highest temperature in the western hemisphere - so summers are an absolute torture (the temperatures are so high that its literally hot as hell and hence the name). The winters are the best time to visit - it was actually lot warmer than Vegas and pleasant :). We got to the Badwater basin by about 10 AM.

The Badwater basin is so named because its home to a small pool of water which is completely salty and undrinkable :-D. Supposedly the whole valley had the ocean here and due to the continental movement, the seas got drained to where they are today. But the salt remained. And when the basin fills up some of the salt dissolves and when the heat evaporates all the water, the salt is deposited as crystals and pushed into hexagonal honeycomb shapes. Here's the walk to the salt deposits..

The basin has what seems like miles and miles of the hexagonal deposits..

Here's us at the deposits :).

I like Snugli the Ninja :-D. Well, now that we have a compact Canon point and shoot camera, whenever Snugli sees it, she insists of taking a photo and here it is..

God, I never knew a 3 year old can take a photo like this. One part of me is again upset that she's growing up so fast and another part of me is really happy to have this photo with Sri (its been a long time since we have been able to take a photo of just the two of us ;-) :-D). Oh well, the good part is better :-D.

I really wanted to see the dunes because I have never seen sand dunes till now. But we found out at Badwater that the dunes would be another 3 hours to and fro drive which didn't make sense since we had to get back. So much to my disappointment, we canceled that part and headed back. But something else happened to make us really really late getting there. Sri has been wanting to make some changes to his bank account and sadly, the bank has no branches near Lexington and "near" means in all of the neighbouring states :-p. We found a branch in a small town on the way back to Vegas and stopped to the get the work done. Lets just say the small work took a long long long long time :-p. There were more of long unwanted conversations about everything including Snugli rather than the work that was needed to be done :-p. Well, small towns, what can you do about them?

We finally got back to Vegas hoping that we wouldn't miss the MGM Grand lion exhibit and thankfully we didn't. They have the white lions in a glass enclosure and Snugli really enjoyed seeing them. We next went to the Flamingos casino which has a free Flamingo and fish exhibit for kids. It was a bit dark and the Flamingos were all hiding their faces, but Snugli really loved them, the ducks and the fishes around. Next we went to the Mirage where they have a volcano fountain show in front and that was a ton of fun too..

It was a mixture of water and fire show and a good one at that :).

From there, we went to the Stratosphere casino which is actually a tall tower and has a view of the entire Las Vegas strip at the top. But once we went up, the view wasn't that good and it just wasn't as impressive as I had imagined it to be :-p.

You can see the strip between Snugli and the wall and as I said, its not a very good sight :-\. We got down and went to the Riviera casino which had an Indian fast food place :). Loved the food there - simple and tasty, I felt that was the best of the lot we had tried. Sometimes simple Indian food beats the most expensive buffet and ain't that the truth :-\. And to add there weren't any desserts, none at all ;-).

The next day we had to catch our flight back and just before we left the hotel we took this snap at our hotel room with the window view :).

And that was it, caught a flight back to Houston and then to Lexington and reached home thanks to a delayed flight only at 12 midnight :-p.

What about gambling you ask? We weren't really goody-two-shoes when it came to that. One night, we sat at the slots with a sleeping Snugli on the stroller and were told that children weren't allowed at the gambling floor at all unless simply passing through. So well, we took turns, I blew some money one night and the next night Sri did. We did go a bit beyond our budget for the same and never won anything (I guess sensible people like us rarely do :-D). But I can understand why people are so addicted to gambling - its like you keep hoping to win the next one and play and play and guess what, nothing comes back ;-). It was a lot of fun anyways - though a bit of a guilty fun :-D.

So another trip done and 40 photos on this post :-D, don't even know where we would want to go next. I do want to go to Alaska sometime, maybe Hawaii and want to take on a cruise sometime to the Caribbean, but none of them are I-have-to-see-this kind of a trip. I would prefer to go to Europe instead :-D.

Anyways, just wanted to add that for more HDR images and panoramas of Grand Canyon, and various images of Antelope Canyon, the Las Vegas Casinos and the Death Valley, visit my facebook page - Through Deepthi's eyes photography :).

The people..

2011-01-18T13:29:00.004-05:00

I am sometimes extremely surprised about some people's naiveté. I am not talking about children here, but about people who are generally older than me lacking in what according to me is basic knowledge or awareness, blindly following one thing or another without thought. Or maybe I'm the one thats cynical.

And then there are others who are so full of hypocrisy that it makes me dumb (something that can actually shut me up :-D). When each of your actions is miles and miles further from the words that come out of your mouth, then how can I be sure of what you are all about? Or maybe I'm the one thats naive ;-).

And I think to myself..
It takes all sorts to make this world..
It takes all sorts to make this world..
Repeat 10 times :-D.

I did not know that about actors..

2011-01-15T12:28:00.004-05:00

The next post in my "I did not know that" series.

With internet so easily accessible these days, I have a habit (don't know whether its bad or good) of surfing IMDB whenever I watch a movie. I am a self-confessed over-thinking, over-analyzing person, so whenever I see a movie I like to find out what other people think of it, whether their views match mine etc. But this advantage I have of finding out more information about the movies/actors I have really liked has brought out quite a few surprises for me :).

For example, when I watched "The Matrix" for the first time, I recognized the actor who played "Agent Smith" immediately - I had seen him as the character "Douglas Jardine" in a cricket-based mini series called "Bodyline" and really admired his work in it. But I didn't know his name, at all. Even after 2 other sequels of matrix (which I watched in India before coming here) and the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I never even found out his name, the poor guy. Some months ago, Darsh and I were discussing the voices we love in English cinema (For eg, Morgan Freeman). I said I loved Alan Rickman's voice (the man who plays Snape in the Harry Potter series) and Darsh was talking about Hugo Weaving (who played a voice character in "V for Vendetta", I haven't watched that one btw). I literally asked him "Who the heck is Hugo Weaving?" and he was baffled to say the least. He was like "You say you love Douglas Jardine and Agent Smith and you don't know who Hugo Weaving is??". I was stunned to learn the name behind some of my most beloved characters, hehehee :).

This was not the first time that such a thing happened to me. The 2nd example is when I watched "The Sound of Music", I knew the actress was Julie Andrews, but didn't know the name of the actor who played Captain Von Trapp. I didn't really bother finding out then or remember it whenever I watched the movie on TV. About 2 years back, when I watched "Inside man" (a brilliant movie btw, if you haven't watched it yet) and was "researching" it on the internet, I ran across the character - Arthur case who was played by Christopher Plummer and didn't even recognize the actor who actually played Captain Von Trapp all those years ago! Imagine my surprise when I learned that he has been in many of my other favourite movies :).

The 3rd instance happened just a couple of days ago. I watched a crappy movie called "Dracula 2000" a long time ago on cable when I was still in India. Seeing how attractive the actor who played Dracula was, I was telling my friends that if this is how the real Dracula looks like, then I wouldn't really mind being bitten by him :-D. My friends can vouch for that, hehehee :))). As usual, never found out his name. A couple of days ago, I had just seen a movie of Gerard Butler, who, I have to confess, I really find quite attractive and was looking at his profile in IMDB. I was shocked to find out that he played the Dracula in the movie I watched, but it did bring a huggggggggge grin on my face :). Looks like my tastes haven't changed one bit :-D. Further, in that movie, Christopher Plummer also played one of the main characters!

To be honest, I don't mind such discoveries. Its nice to get these kind of surprises once in a while and think about, how come I never bothered finding out this before :). Which is the reason I started the series anyways ;-).

The new year..

2011-01-01T00:00:00.003-05:00

2010, for us, as you very well know, has had its ups and downs, happy times and not-so-happy ones, but until we know what bitter is, how will we learn to appreciate the other "good" flavours of life, right?

Its 1/1/11!! Looking forward to what 2011 has hidden under its wings :).

Wish you all a very happy and a prosperous new year from all of us..

Once upon a Snugli :).

2010-12-19T07:35:00.004-05:00

As usual I have a hugggggggggge backlog of Snugli stories (they keep piling up since something happens everyday :-D, sometimes even twice/thrice a day), so I thought why not put some of them up for her birthday :-D. She imitates us day-to-day in mannerisms, words and gestures and its simply confounding :-D. For example, a few months ago, she kept repeating the phrase "Enu samachaara illa" ("there is no news") whenever she spoke to both sets of grandparents (which amused them to no end and hence they kept asking for more :-D). I'm certain she learnt it from one or either of us :-D. Whenever I would do something with my camera, she used to make a mock-camera with her Lego blocks (loves them and is always constructing "buildings" :-D) and would pretend to take pics. Now a days we have another point and shoot in place, which she demands to handle and I'm very proud to say, has taken several snaps of us with :). I usually have a habit of kissing her Good morning while waking her up. The days I missed, she'd demand "Kiss Kodu" ("Give me a kiss") :-D. She sings so many rhymes whenever we don't ask her to and becomes awfully quiet whenever we do :-p.

These days she likes making a big fuss out of small hurts - for example, she falls down and cries loudly at the top of her voice, just to be cuddled by me. And no matter that its me who yells at her and spanks her, she always comes to me with kisses and hugs. Sri is the softer one and he hardly gets anything :-D. I guess thats the bond between a mother and a child :).

Now lets get on with the stories :).

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One day, a couple of months ago, we were both having bread for breakfast. I don't really like eating plain bread while she does. So I put some pickle (Indian red chilly pickle not vinegar stuff they call pickle here) inbetween 2 slices and she immediately wants to know what I've put in it. I show her the pickle and her comment in English is -

"Mmmmm that is nicccce!"

Don't know till now where she learnt it from :-D.

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Summertime, as I've said before, we'd head to the playground now and then. But if Sri or me were too tired, we couldn't really say the word "park" aloud too much. because once she hears the word, then she would insist on going. So we would spell it out P-A-R-K. Guess what, she soon learnt to associate the spelling with the word and soon started saying "P-A-R-K hogona" herself :-D. We had to change the word to Udhyanavana, park in Kannada, which I'm pretty sure will be understood in the next summer :).

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Whenever Sri and I try to hide something from her oh-so-sensitive ears and talk softly, she comes and shouts at us "Hmmmm? Enuuuuuuuuuu? Enande?" ("Hmmm? What? What did you say?"). Hehehee, grandma wants all the details :-D.

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One day, I had made avalakki oggarane (a breakfast item with flattened rice - thick poha). I have a habit of using lots of veggies in my cooking and usually have carrots, peppers and edamaame (soya beans) in that particular item. I was feeding her, when suddenly she pointed to an edamaame and said "Edamaame Snigdha na nodthide" ("Edamaame is seeing Snigdha"). When I laughed, she ate the edamaame and said "Edamaame gulum maadbitte" ("I swallowed that edamaame") and grinned :-D.

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When we get out of the house, she knows most of the time, the general direction of where we need to go. There is an intersection about a mile from our house, where we go straight to get to her library and take a right for most other places. You can take a right and get to the library, but it'll obviously be a longer route. I did that one day and was promptly reminded by her highness that to get to the library I had to go straight and not take a right :-p.

Most of the times, when we are going for our weekly shopping or any of our eating expeditions, one of the regular questions we get asked when we reach that intersection is "Naana, straight hogbeka? Right hogbeka" ("Dad, do we need to go straight? Or do we need to go right?")!! Moreover if we go right, she knows that we approach a particular road (which is a freeway ring road around the city) and asks "New circle road hogbeka?" ("Do we take the New circle road?"). God!! Plus she can point to where her doc office and another library are once we are on the New circle road (you can't see the buildings from the road as such, but she knows the particular exits!).

Past couple of days, because of the slick icy roads, we took a different route while coming home (went straight instead of right at an intersection) and got to see lots of Christmas lights. Just today when we were coming home, Sri took our normal route of turning right and she says "Naana, straight hogu, Christmas lights nodbeku" ("Dad, go straight! I want to see the Christmas lights!"). They are becoming more and more brilliant, I tell you!

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While we are on the road, another thing she knows about are the traffic lights. We have taught her that red says stop and green means go. But you know that traffic rules aren't that simple. Here in the US, most intersections have free rights albeit you have to yield to the vehicles who have right of way (like free left turn in India - since its opposite lane driving here). So yeah, when we do take a free right, with the traffic light showing red, you can guess her question - "Amma, yaake hogtha iddiya? Red ide" ("Mom, why are you going? Its red!").

Similarly, if there is no green arrow but a normal green light, you have to yield to the vehicles in the opposite direction before you take a left turn (yielding means wait until there are no vehicles in the opposite direction. If you have a green arrow, then you have the right of way and don't need to wait for anyone). So yeah, you can guess again, when its green and I am not going but waiting, she literally shouts "Hogu, yaake hogtha illa? Green ide!" ("Go, why aren't you going? Its green!"). Hehehee, I still can't explain the road rules to her - I just say we need to wait, until the vehicles coming in front pass. But sometimes it can be stressful to say the least ;-).

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We have video calls with her grand parents every weekend (one set Saturday and one set Sunday). One day when we were connected to Sri's parents, they asked her whether she had her milk and when she answered affirmatively, her thaatha, paternal grandfather, asked her "What about some milk for me?". She replies instantly - "Thanthange naanamma ready maadthaare" ("Naanamma will prepare some for thaatha") :-D. Ensured several rounds of laughter around :).

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One good thing about Snugli (there are several good things about her :-D), is that whenever she takes something and plays with it, she usually remembers where she left it last. Once I was searching for Sri's mobile and knew she had been playing with it last. Not finding it, I asked her where it was and she told me it was on the table. I again searched and later learned that it was under a hat on the table ;-).

Well, one day, we went shopping and when Sri took out his wallet to pay, he found his driver's license missing. He asked me to take over the driving (since we didn't want to get caught at the wrong time and I had my DL with me) and once we reached home, searched at all the usual places in no vain. Remembering that Snugli was last seen playing with it, he thought of asking her about it, but didn't know whether she'd know the word for it. So he showed her my DL and asked where his was. She doesn't hesitate the least, goes straight to the computer table, climbs up and pulls it out of one of the floppy nooks! If she hadn't remembered, we wouldn't have found it for a long long time, maybe months together!

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Now that she goes to school, she is slowly, step by step, learning to speak English, especially with an accent. Most of times, she just speaks some accented gibberish but yeah, there are some times, when she really scares me that she's turning into a little Miss American :-D. Several examples:

1) Sri pretends to be ill around her just to hear her ask "Naana, what happened? Are you okay?" in perfect American accent :-D.
2) One day she asked me if I saw her toy and when I said I didn't (in Kannada), she says "I didn't see it either". I was shocked to hear her use "either" :-D.
3) One day, the DVD player remote was nowhere to be found. Since she is usually the one playing with it, we asked her where it was. Her response? "DVD remote? I don't know!" with the accent, the gestures, everything :).
4) There was a time, she would say "Oh my Gosh!" for everything. Don't know whether she learnt it from school or one of the TV shows :).

These are very small examples. She usually pronounces normal English words with accent, words which she couldn't possibly hear in school. Which makes me think that they learn the syllable accent, rather than the words themselves :). My in-laws are already worried that they'll not understand her anymore after a few months. Well, I have to admit to that worry myself :-D. Which is why I have started to insist that she speak either Kannada or Telugu at home..

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Talking of school, she knows most of her classmates (she calls all of them her friends) by name. I have heard her mention more than 12 children by name and she has about 18 classmates. Plus she tells stories about how one boy was naughty and was given a time-out, or about the cartoons they watched, or how they went to the playground and she fell or how she played "burger party" with a girl. I love hearing these day-to-day reports :-D.

Plus she loves school - we sent her only for half-day the Friday this week and she asked me about 10 times why she wasn't going to school and how much she wants to go there :-\. Even if she's ill, she wants to go. I'm very happy to see her enthusiasm for school, but a cynical part of me does wonder how long this is going to last :-D.

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The days she is at home, she's literally hyper active. I have to keep a continuous eye on her no matter what I'm doing. One minute, she's pulling a stool to wash dishes in the kitchen sink (or try and drink water from the dirty dishes!), the other minute, she's drawing on the walls. The next minute she's up on a chair trying to access something she can't and the very next she's jumping either on the sofa or on the table. One day, she locked a bathroom door and jumped up and down till I opened it, only to dump some toys in the sink and try to wash them! She loves the bathroom sink, insists on washing her hands herself and usually this hand-washing business lasts for many minutes until one of us shouts at her to come out of the bathroom :-D. Another day, a package arrived for Sri and she insisted on it being opened. I told her to wait until her dad came home (because I wasn't really interested in one of his technical toys :-D) and turned away for a moment. The next moment I see her trying to cut open the package herself with scissors! When I warned her, she put away the scissors, but turned the package up and down wondering whats in it. The moment Sri was inside the house, she brought the package to him and asked him to open it, the curious kitten. So you can see how exciting it is to have her at home :-D.

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Another thing I have seen her do in recent times, is pretend. Her imaginations is growing leaps and bounds and its fun to see her implement that with her toys. For example, I saw her take one of her teddy bears to potty the other day and say good job :-D (I immediately insisted that she do so with the toilet lid closed, because I was afraid of her dunking a stuffed toy in the toilet :-p). I have seen her give timeouts to her toys. The other day, she made her stuffed toy sit in her high chair, fed it some food from an utensil, made it drink water with her water bottle, wiped its face and got it down with a good job :-D. Whats more, I have even seen her giving bath to her stuffed cat toy in the bathroom sink (it was half wet by the time I found out). Fun times :).

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Snugli loves books. I still take her to the library twice a week and we make it a point to read atleast 2 books twice a week. If she's been very naughty, sometimes she gets a choice in punishments - either a timeout (sometimes replaced with 2 spankings) or no reading that day. She usually insists on the timeout or the spanking instead of the no reading :-D. Plus, recently I have even see her go through the books once I have read to her and go over some of the phrases or expressions herself - generally telling the story in her own few words :).

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Lastly, another thing these days she has an increased awareness of, is time. She usually associates the morning with sunrise (whenever Sri tries to wake her up in the morning and she can't see the sun yet, she literally shouts at him to leave her alone and that Good morning hasn't happened yet :-D) and the nights with sunset (which might not be too accurate since in winters the sun sets by 5PM here :-p). But thats not what I'm talking about.

Remember that she can't read a clock yet. Just 2 days back, she woke up after a nap of just 1 hour - slept at 1 PM and woke up at around 2PM. She was lying down for quite sometime and later played for a long time while I was watching something. Suddenly at about 4:30 PM she comes and tells me "Naanange call maadu. Kelsa idya antha keLU. 4:30 aaithu yaake bandilla innu?" ("Call dad. Ask him whether he has work. Its 4:30, why hasn't he come home yet?"). I called Sri and passed the phone to her, just so that she can pester him with the very same words I generally use ;-) (he's usually back home by 4:30 Pm or 5PM in the evening, and if he gets late, I usually call him).

I still don't know how she found out the time. There are digital clocks in the kitchen on the conventional and microwave ovens, but I don't think it was that. It was more of a body clock thing where she realized it was evening. But the "4:30" might have come from imitating me, because when it crosses 4:30 PM in the evening and Sri hasn't come home yet, I can usually be found muttering the very same thing she said :-D.

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And so the stories go on..

My fierce little warrior has been ill for sometime now. High fever on and off for 4 days got us worried and yesterday, we took her to the doctor and found out that she has some ear infection which is causing the ups and downs. Hopefully she should be alright today, but it has been sad to see her ill during her birthday week as such. Not at all the way we were expecting to celebrate her third birthday.

I keep repeating myself, but I can't believe she is 3 years old today. They grow up oh-so-fast. We are just hanging on, trying not to miss all the "moments" - the good times and the bad, the fun times and the sad, the frustrating times and the glad :). There have been lots of those and I know there'll be many more in the future. And thats what keeps me from looking back and makes me look forward :).

"Happy birthday and loads of love to my not-so-little-anymore Snoogli bear :)."

The update..

2010-12-17T13:30:00.005-05:00

Things have been hectic in the Deeps household to say the least. I know it has been quite sometime since my last post and I do have things to write but these days I simply seem to have an aversion to the computer, of all things! (Nice excuse, don't you think? :-D). First of all, we went on this hugggggge trip to Grand Canyon and Las Vegas on Thanksgiving weekend, so there is a huge travelogue to be written. Around that time, I somehow lost touch with my computer :-D, and somehow didn't have the urge to get back once we did get back. At first I thought it was a good thing (I am finally over my addiction to Mafia wars - a game on facebook I have been avidly playing for an year!), but now its getting in the way of my filtering/editing the photos, writing blog etc. Hopefully will get my enthu back, starting with this post.

Secondly, things have been crazy around Lexington since we got back. Its been snowing almost continuously, so its chilly, cold and cheerless :-p. Plus lucky us got an ice storm a couple of days ago, so every single thing around is frozen. There were these window-pane like ice panels frozen on the car, which I had fun breaking apart today - until one almost fell on my feet and brought me to my senses (most of these are sharp and you could get easily hurt). Plus every sidewalk is slippery - its almost like skating/skiing when you are trying to walk :-p. The temperature went as below as -1 degree Fahrenheit one night which is about -18 degree Celsius :-p. Good times :-p.

Thirdly, Snugli's 3rd birthday is coming up - so we, err I have been running around in preparations for that. Invites, bookings, stocking up on decorations, ordering cakes (yeah plural because she has a party at school) and what not! Plus there was a Christmas party at her school yesterday - in which she and her friends sang a couple of songs (she was totally the enthusiastic one of the troupe :-D, goes after her mom in that :-D), so there were some things needed for that. Sunday is her birthday and her birthday party for our friends here. Today was supposedly her party at school, but since her teacher and about 10 of her friends didn't show up, we postponed it to Monday (this despite my running around to get the cake and balloons for today :-\). Plus Snugli has a doc checkup coming up on Tuesday next week. So next week is all crazy now :-D.

Finally, above all this, Snugli has fallen ill. Poor thing, she has a cough and a fever and has generously passed some of it to Sri and me :-p :-D. She is lots better today, but I'm afraid that its not looking so good for the rest of the household. Hopefully we'll be able to hold it together for the parties ;-). Things just can't get better, can they? :-D.

I'll surely have a post up for Snugli's birthday, so see ya then :).

The fall collection :).

2010-11-24T14:31:00.007-05:00

A glimpse of fall colours taken around where I live is up on my facebook page - Through Deepthi's Eyes photography. Fall is my favourite season basically because there is so much to see and appreciate in every direction. Every colour competes to be eye-catching and sometimes its such a pleasure especially during the golden hours (a couple of hours before sunset). Tried to capture some of it (click the pic to see them) :).

Realization dawns..

2010-11-19T21:52:00.001-05:00

I have realized that you cannot take anything for granted - not even things that have already happened. Just when you are thinking that everything is going well, life suddenly throws a curve ball and the very next day things might be the total opposite of yesterday.

"Life has a funny way of sneaking upon you when you think everything's okay and everything's going right" - Alanis Morisette in the song "Ironic".

I have realized that pessimism can actually be a good thing sometimes, though this fact is painful to admit for an inherently optimistic person like me. When you are totally optimistic, if things don't go your way, you'll obviously be disappointed. But being pessimistic, the hurt will be much less and if things do work out, the happiness will obviously be more ;-). Well, its not easy to change this intrinsic quality :).

I have realized that some things take time (take their own sweet time actually), no matter how much you pray, you wish or you worry. Bribing Gods only goes so far. Sometimes things happen without even trying and other times, no matter how much your effort is, the return is just not equivalent. This is especially true if you are wishing for something good to happen to someone else other than you. If you are praying and the other person is not really making decisions for the good, then tell me, what can God do to help? If you yourself don't do anything and keep pointing the finger at everyone else, then sorry to say, things will just not go your way..

I have realized that everyone is addicted to something or another. Need not be bad always. People generally hear of the bad addictions like smoking, drinking, drugs etc. But sometimes even religion (as in God), culture (as in not-meaningful-anymore rituals) or even self-obsession can be an addiction. For an example, I'm addicted to travelling, I just cannot sit at home for more than 3 months. I just long to go somewhere and see something. I also cannot do anything half-way. If I get into a new activity and I like it, its usually like building a resume - I have to go deeper into the thing almost to a semi-professional level, if not totally professional. Glad that Sri does understand and support this addiction of mine :).

I have realized that there is no point in arguing with someone with a different point of view, even though you are right in the logic. Some people stick to their opinions like they have been plastered to them with the most potent glue. And just because you fight/argue with them or write lengthy mails explaining it all, things aren't suddenly going to change. Just because you obsess over the right things to say and question your decisions of the mile-long explanations, it doesn't mean that they are doing the same thing or will have regrets about their behavior or apologize to people that have been hurt by their attitudes. Such people exist and though they are totally against the beliefs you have grown up with, you just have to deal with it and accept them.

I have realized that being young is getting to be more difficult these days. It was probably never that easy to begin with, but these days, with all the social networking, nothing you do is private anymore. When I met Sri, I wasn't on Orkut and hadn't heard of Facebook. But these days even though youngsters are subjected to arranged marriages, you can find their profile here or there. And most are public with their friends posting their photos (which can be awkward or embarrassing) or revealing messages. You can even see if you have common friends and find out more. It might be actually good when it comes to potential partners, but I kinda feel that it may lead to judging that person before actually meeting him/her which can sometimes be harmful, when all that he/she has been upto is harmless fun. Its like they cannot catch a break ;-).

I have realized that moms are the same every where :). The languages are different, sometimes even the generations are different, but the concern, care and the attitudes regarding the children are the same (of course there are extreme exceptions to this). The librarian of the library I take Snugli to daily said this to me the other day - "Sometimes when Snugli gets too excited, I have heard you say things to her. Half the time I don't understand what you say to her, but I know the voice. Its the mom voice" :-D. I have also heard moms here speaking to their kids and admonishing them when they touch certain things or do certain things, and hug them when they hurt just like I'd with Snugli :). Its a great feeling of comradeship :).

I have realized that no matter how much you try to convince them, some people living in India believe that living in the US means making loads of money. Though we do earn in dollars, these very same people seem to forget that we also spend in dollars. I know there are probably many people residing in the US who are actually here for that very purpose of making money. But sometimes the people in India just don't understand about not generalizing. Yes, personally speaking, we do have some savings. But our main purpose of being here is family life - Sri gets to be around us everyday, certainly more than a regular software engineer in India (this is what makes me okay with the fact that I don't really have a career these days). He doesn't have to leave early in the morning or stay very late in the evenings or work on weekends. In fact he comes home for lunch. I have seen some cousins/friends in India with zero family life and am grateful to have this while we do. Plus we travel a lot and go to India atleast once every 1.5 years (and carry gifts for everyone around) which doesn't come free. The only way we'll make money is if we win a lottery :-p.

I have realized that a person is as busy as he/she wants to be. Though I don't work, as a mom, I'm pretty busy. But I try and make it a point to blog, put up pictures, make calls, mail friends, wish people on their happy days whenever possible. Its not that I have time to spare, but I make the time, because I don't want to get lost in my day-to-day life. I have always thought that I shouldn't be like others, even though they might not keep me updated with everything, I have always tried to keep them in touch. But recently I have been getting very much irritated at friends/relatives who just don't reciprocate. When I put in the effort of uploading 100s of snaps and writing captions for them, atleast reply and let me know you have seen them, dammit! I know I make sure to keep you updated, but it would be nice to receive a "Hi, how are you?", just a single line mail from you. I am tired of hearing excuses of "Oh I'm too busy". How can anyone be busy to reply a single line or like a photo I put up, I'll never understand. Just how long does it take to type a single line comment? As a friend/relative, can't you spare a few seconds out of your life for me? People with kids keep telling me that they show Snugli's photos to their kids as if thats a consolation. Don't you get it that while you all know Snugli, Snugli doesn't know anyone of you because you don't bother to keep us updated?

I have realized that I'm using this post to clear out a few cob-webs in my head that have been bothering me recently and I'm certainly glad to have ;-) :-D.

Through Deepthi's eyes..

2010-11-15T14:31:00.004-05:00

Finally I did it. Presenting the facebook page for my photographic reflections - "Through Deepthi's eyes photography" (or as Sri quips Through-D photography :-D). I hope this encourages me into experimenting more and learn more :).

Click on the pic to see it :).

Nannavane (my man)..

2010-11-13T10:47:00.005-05:00

Today is the day Sri and I met 6 years ago. Wanted to do something special for that and thought of writing a poem. But when it comes to Sri, I have written so many poems that its very difficult to think of a non-repeating matter :-D. So well, I decided to write in Kannada this time. Its been a long time since I wrote a Kannada poem (probably more than 10-12 years back) and I have never written one for my blog, somehow never wanted to. Well, better late than never. I tried my level best to translate it into English but the feelings weren't being expressed as good, so this one is specially for the Kannada knowing readers of my blog :). You know who it is dedicated to :).

ನನ್ನವನೆ...

ಕನಸಿನ ನಾನಾ ಗೋಜಲುಗಳಿಂದ
ನನಸಾಗಿ ಇಳಿದು ಬಂದವನೆ.
ಮನಸಿನ ಕವಿತೆಯಲಿ ಬೆರೆತು ಅರಿತು
ಬಯಕೆ ಹೂಗುಚ್ಛವ ತಂದವನೆ.

ಮೆಲ್ಲನೆ ಮಾತಲಿ ಎಳೆದು ಸೆಳೆದು
ಹೃದಯದ ಬಾಗಿಲ ತೆರೆದವನೆ.
ಸಲ್ಲದ ನಾಚಿಕೆಯ ಬಂಧವ ಕಡಿದು
ಕೈಯಲ್ಲಿ ಕೈ ಹಿಡಿದು ಮೆರೆದವನೆ.

ಆತಂಕ ಆವೇಶಗಳ ಬಡೆದೋಡಿಸಿ
ನನ್ನೆದೆಯಲಿ ಪ್ರೀತಿಯ ಹಡೆದವನೆ.
ಸಂತಸ ದುಃಖಗಳ ಸಪ್ತಪದಿಯನ್ನು
ಹೆಜ್ಜೆಗೆ ಹೆಜ್ಜೆ ಇಟ್ಟು ನಡೆದವನೆ.

ನೋವು ನಲಿವಲ್ಲಿ ಬಾಳ ಸಂಗಾತಿಯಾದ
ಪ್ರಾಣ ಸ್ನೇಹಿತನು ನೀನವನೆ.
ಜೀವನದ ಅನೇಕ ಆಶ್ಚರ್ಯಗಳಲಿ
ನನ್ನ ಪಾಲಿನ ವಿಸ್ಮಯ ನನ್ನವನೆ.

The grand past..

2010-11-10T13:25:00.004-05:00

Some children are fortunate enough have both their sets of grandparents and get to see the love and affection between the pairs, but I have never been one of those. Since I was born, I had only my grandfather on my dad's side (I called him "Ajja") and my grandmother on my mom's who I called Ammamma. Ajja was there for 15 years of my life when he succumbed to a heart attack (I was studying 10th std then and it happened right before my final exams) leaving us in shock. The only grandparent I had left, my Ammamma, passed away more than 12 days ago on 27th October 2010.

Neither of the grandparents I had, could ever be termed as affectionate, though I do remember Ajja being loving towards Darsh. But it was certainly not what you see in happy movies - grandparents giving hugs and kisses and sweetmeats to the children around. I am not saying this with any regret, because I know what they were, were because of the way they spent their lives - life certainly never was easy on them. And I have a tremendous respect for who they were for basically how my parents are and how in turn they have influenced me and Darsh.

Ajja was a hotelier, though not as grand as the word sounds. He had successful hotels and total failures, the fail part more often than the success part. He would open a hotel in one part of Andhra Pradesh and continue there as long as it was a success. If things were good, he'd sell that one in profit and move on to another place. Same thing with losses, if the hotel turned out to be a loss, there'd be no choice, he'd have to move on. So my dad and his 4 siblings lived all over Andhra. Ajja was mostly a workaholic because he had to feed his family and it didn't help matters when he lost his wife. Dad did get his education, but he had to work all mornings (grinding idli/dosa batter and chutneys) and once he came back from school as a waiter. I remember him telling me that they couldn't even afford oil lamps at home and that he studied under street lamps. When things were good, he got money to watch cinemas, but until he was about 16 or 18 (I think), he didn't even have footwear. But being the son of a Udupi hotel owner, he atleast had enough to eat. My mom didn't.

BharaNi nakashatra-davaru onda dharaNi aaLthaare athwa beraNi thaTthaare.

Meaning "The people born under the BharaNi star either rule the earth or make cow-dung patties" (implying either they'll be either very rich or very poor). My mom always uses this quote about Ammamma adding that she saw both. Ammamma was born to a very rich and very orthodox family. She was married off at a very young age and mom tells me that she was sent to her in-laws in a Chinnada pallakki (gold carriage). Her in-laws were very well-off too, but her husband was a different case. My maternal grandfather was a total gambler - the only 2 accomplishments I can list of his are gambling and making babies. He drank away all of the riches and died leaving Ammamma with 5 children (she also had a couple of miscarriages) and thankfully, a house to live in. She had some cows, so she sold the milk and earned some money. But it wasn't enough when it came to feeding her children. I think she even cooked and helped out in houses, but she hardly had anything to eat. She sent away my mom to her mother's place for some years and later to her elder daughter's place (my doDDamma was married and with her family then) for some more years. Staying with her grandparents and then her elder sister, mom was a bit better off, but it didn't mean that she wallowed in luxury, the opposite in fact. Things were difficult there too and to this day mom says that she'd have preferred to live with her family than anywhere else (which is why she never entertained the idea of sending me or Darsh away anytime). Even later, when she came back home, things weren't better. Ammamma would make sure all the kids got food, but for herself, she'd walk miles to the Udupi maTa (where they serve food for the poor) to get a belly-full food once a day, bearing all insults and evil eyes around.

Things didn't get any better for a few more years until my parents found jobs - my dad did his bachelors in Science and got a job, while my mom applied right after her 2nd PUC and got one (she completed her bachelors in arts degree later through correspondence). My mom was able to request her boss into considering her brother for a job and from then on, there was a lot of improvement in that house. Ajja didn't give up on his ventures until my parents got married and even after coming to stay with his eldest son, he still wanted to be independent and had a shop running for quite sometime (oh yeah that reminds me, he'd get me candies from his shop - so there was bit of sweetmeats :-D). From then on Ajja was quite happy living with us. Being a hotelier, he would interfere in the kitchen and cause some amount of irritation to mom, so there were the usual bickering now and then (but I think my mom learnt a lot about cooking either from him or due to the competition :-D and to this day according to me, she is one of the best cooks around). But things were getting better by the day - all his children were pretty much settled and his death, when he passed away was very much unexpected. He was one of the healthiest people around and had gone on one of his trips to Mysore - when he saw the Nanjangud temple after many years and we don't know what happened, his heart simply gave out that night. He was at my cousin's place and by the time we drove there (I still remember dad driving like a maniac that night), he had had a 2nd massive heart attack and was gone.

Today I still picture Ajja sometimes - he'll always be this old man in a white panche to me, very fond of his nashya dabba (snuff powder box) and talking a lot and making yummy khaara mixtures and gulab jaamun at home (for the mixture he'd make 5 to 6 different things and we'd keep running to the kitchen to sneak stuff, obviously getting scoldings in return :-D). I remember him at every happy occasion at home, when my dad bought a house, when I got a job, when I got married and later when I had Snugli. Every time I wish he was there to see and enjoy the occasion with us.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Ammamma was doing well - taking care of the birth of grandchildren and basically taking care of the grandchildren themselves. She has taken care of some of us when we were ill, when our parents couldn't attend to us and so on and so forth. As we grew up, she grew into this old lady who lived with one of her sons but travelled to our place often (once a year atleast for 3 months) and we grand kids would love to tease her. But recently as she grew to her 80s, she had become quite weak and travelling had become difficult for her. She was not really in a good shape when she came to Snugli's namakarNa, but I was glad that she was able to make it.

Last year, she fell ill pretty badly and I was very worried about her. So in our India trip, I made it a point to make a quick trip to Udupi to see her (which now I am very glad I did) - it was literally a flying visit. She had some memory problems then - she's ask the same questions again and again, forget that she had just eaten etc, but she was looking well. But after we came back here, things got a lot worse. Her health deteriorated and she even had a fall which resulted in a brain stroke. After that she didn't recognize anyone. My cousin who grew up under her care got married there just about a month back and she didn't recognize her own children and grandchildren. She didn't talk much, had incontinence and later even got bed-sores which resulted in her getting admitted to a hospital. Mom was inconsolable, but Ammamma couldn't even talk about what she was going through and how she was suffering. It was a miserable time for everyone. Just about 20 days back, she had even stopped eating and was being given liquids through a food pipe. We actually had started praying for her suffering to end..

Yet when I heard the news of her passing away, it still somehow came as a shock. One part of me was glad - she didn't have to suffer any longer, while the other was very sad - I lost the only grandparent I had, my future child if any, will never even have the opportunity of interacting with her like Snugli did. I have a photo of hers with Snugli on a wall and I find myself going to it and wishing she is in a good place. Ammamma also had a heart attack and she was almost 90. The most clear memory I have of her is of her sitting on her cot at nights, eating adike (arekanuts) which she was very fond of and powdering karpura (camphor) to put in the eyes and cool them. I remember her voice and some of the things we'd make fun of. Some part of me still cannot believe she's not around anymore, but I'm glad we had her until now.

One of the reasons why I admire my parents so much is because they are products of their past (I wasn't always in awe of them, when I was in my teen years I thought the whole world was conspiring against me, but I digress :-D). They didn't have everything on their side, everything going for them, yet they made something of themselves. Theirs is one of the personal success stories that I've seen and though neither I nor Darsh have had difficult circumstances while growing up, we were taught to appreciate where they came from. I see people day to day blaming everything from their parents, to their past, to their circumstances, i.e everything except themselves for what they are today and I get really irritated at them. Yes your past matters to some extent, but you can always overcome it. If you insist on not doing anything and keep finding someone or the other to place the blame on, your situation is not going to get any better. My parents never gave up and neither did my grandparents.

I can only hope that I have inherited a little bit of the persistence, the strength and the resolve to go on, no matter how bad the circumstances, how dire the consequences and how hard the times are. I can only hope that I can bring up my child(ren) how my parents have brought us up and teach them to appreciate the sacrifices and the hard work of their grandparents. I can only hope that my grandparents are in a happy place and will be watching over us for time to come. I can only hope..

To swim against the tide :)

2010-10-17T16:00:00.003-04:00

It all started a long time back when I was about 12 years old. It was summertime, Darsh and I were attending a swimming summer-camp for about 30 days. It was all good until about 15 days. I had been taught the front stroke and was in the process of getting to know diving. That was when the incident happened :-D.

I remember only bits and pieces, not the entire thing (it has been more than 18 years!). We had these 2 kids living in the house right in front of ours then and we used to play together a lot :). I remember we were playing one of our games, probably some kind of a run and catch game when it happened. I fell and my right knee got scraped pretty bad. It wasn't really a scrape, it was as if all the flesh on my knee had been cut open (I don't know to this day what I fell upon to cause it to rupture like that but the speculation is that it was a part of dad's scooter :-D). There was some white visible stuff underneath all the blood (this is what Darsh keeps insisting scarred him for life :-D. Again don't know whether they were some kind of nerves or bones exposed!)). Thankfully dad was at home and immediately took me to the nearest physician, who was also our family doctor.

Well, the first concern was not really a scar, but to close the opening as soon as possible. The doc could have suggested me to be taken to a hospital, but he decided to stitch me up himself. I was given a tetanus shot and stitched up. Don't know the number of stitches, but I know it was pretty bad, because that opening was certainly bigger than my forehead one. My leg was bandaged and I was told to keep it as straight as possible (not to fold it) and keep it dry. There went my dream of becoming a swimming star :-D. To be honest, I never had that dream, but really wanted to learn swimming, so was very much disappointed. Imagine sitting at home with a stiff leg for 21 days while Darsh went swimming and being told enough stories to get me all jealous :-p.

After the 21 days I did recover and my leg has been okay (except for this ugly scar on my knee :-D). I did go swimming now and then, to practice the only stroke I knew how - the front crawl. I wasn't very good at it, but somehow never tried to take a class again. Indian swimming pools, to be very honest, aren't the most comfortable places for women as such and I would feel extremely conscious whenever I did go. But knowing what I know now, I wish I could have taken a class and improved my swimming lots earlier. Better late than never I guess :).

After I came to the US, I went swimming lots of times and took water fitness classes. I always had this idea running on the back of my mind that I should take classes and polish (to put it very lightly :-D) my skills. But I was somehow very embarrassed. Had so many "what ifs" running through my mind. I mean I had been told all my life that swimming is learnt best when you are young (same with cycling). What if I was too old to learn? What if everyone else in the class is young and I stand out? What if I was would waste away the money without results? So in the 4 years I had been here, I just went to and fro and never ventured into it.

I don't know what changed in November 2009. But something did. I think it might have been that we were thinking of enrolling Snugli into a swimming class and I wanted to be proficient around her :-D. I mean, I had seen parents guiding their children in deep water and I wanted to be that parent :). One day, I finally said "What the heck! Lets do it and think later" and registered for the class. I am a member of the local YMCA so it cost just an additional $26 for 8 classes which was not too bad. In the first class, I was relieved to a huge extent - I was the only one taking that class (2 classes later I was joined by another student who actually had hydrophobia and I was in total awe of her for even getting into water, but the first 2 classes were exclusively mine) and that my teacher was a young lady (very much younger than me :-D). The latter part turned out to be inspirational rather than disheartening because it was good to have a younger teacher who swims so well. The best thing was that she understood exactly what I wanted.

My front crawl, though I was able to swim a couple of laps, wasn't refined at all. I had practiced what I remembered from my summer camp (which wasn't much to go on) and I would always be out of breath at the end of half a lap. Which certainly implied that I was doing it all wrong. First of all I wanted to get that corrected and then learn all the different strokes (I could float on my back, but always failed when I tried doing the back stroke. The other strokes, I hadn't even tried till then). Another major thing for me was that I had never learned to keep myself afloat in the deep end, so though I wasn't really scared of the water, I was very much afraid of the deep end. I mean though I would go out to the deep end, I would always be afraid that if I lose breath somewhere in the middle, I have nowhere to go. So there was lots to learn in mere 8 classes :-D.

As I mentioned, the teacher immediately started pointing out the flaws in my front crawl and giving me tips on how to improve the moves. One of the first things she mentioned was to get a good pair of goggles (they let you see where you are going which help the confidence level, plus keep the chlorine out of your eyes). I hadn't bought anything as of then, so that was fine. She also suggested I don't buy nose plugs because once you get used to them, its difficult to swim without them. As far as the front stroke went, first of all I wasn't keeping my body straight and as much afloat in the water as possible. Secondly when reaching out for the next stroke, my arms weren't as out of water as they should be and hence they were slowing me down. Other than this, my breathing technique wasn't really proper (I wasn't breathing out inside the water and instead was trying to do it all - breathe out and in when I came up for air) which was tiring me out majorly.

Obviously I couldn't make all the changes in one go. If I concentrated on the breathing, I would forget about the arms. If I concentrated on the leg movement, I would forget the breathing. So the first couple of classes were tough on me. I had only one class per week, but I went twice a week to practice all I was told to. I also made it a point to pin-point my doubts and ask the teacher those particular queries. By the third class, my teacher actually said that she could see a conscious improvement (I didn't really believe her, yet :-D). Thats when she decided to teach me the breaststroke. Now that redefined "difficult" for me :-D.

The breaststroke has totally different moves compared to the front crawl. The arm movement is different, the leg movement is different, the breathing is different, basically just about everything is different :-D. For a person who has just been doing the front stroke for a long long time, it was like a different reality. The arm movement pushes the water outwards horizontally while the legs push the water out vertically. I kinda got the arm movement pretty fast, but the leg movement - I would simply forget and switch to the front stroke related leg movement, which certainly wasn't helping :-D. The arm and leg movement in a stroke obviously work together to propel the swimmer forward. So mix and match hardly ever works :-D. I still don't know how I got through that one, only that it required tremendous amounts of concentration. Now the breaststroke is one of the easiest strokes for me and I love it :).

I think it was in the 4th class that my teacher noticed that when asked to swim a lap, I would stop at the spot where I can still reach the ground and come back. Thats when I told her that I was a wee bit afraid that mid-way through the deep end, I would struggle and would have to be "rescued" :-D. So her method was simple, she asked me to get to the deep water, convinced me that even if I go down, it was hardly 12 feet, so I could come up very easily (I knew it but sometimes fear doesn't have logic :-D). And she showed me a move to keep myself afloat. It was a softer version of the breast stroke, standing up in the water rather than laying on the stomach. One point she stressed was that each person will have a point of balance on which they can do the movement and the trick was to find that point. In the subsequent practices on my own, I would force myself to go to the deep end and try different ways to keep myself afloat. I lost the so-called fear of deep end in the 4th class itself and started enjoying being there where my legs just can't reach the ground :).

I was also taught the backstroke in the 4th class. Yup, lots of things going on simultaneously :-D. As I said before I knew how to float on my back and it was only a matter of learning how to kick the legs out and the arm strokes backwards. The difficulty lies in the aspect that whenever you are getting the arms out of the water or putting them in, any splash of water can straight hit your face and in turn your nose, causing panic :). So the trick is to soften those 2 moves (for each arm, so total 4 times per each complete stroke) - when the arm is coming out of the water, use the thumb and when going in, use the side of the palm (rather than the palm itself which can result in an unwanted splash of water) :). So to learn the stroke itself wasn't that difficult, but these little tips were (again needed a lot of concentration).

The teacher did miss out one week in between the 4th and the 5th (and later b/w the 5th and the 6th), so it did give me lots of classes inbetween to practice :). The 5th class (again seeing my improvement), she taught me the butterfly stroke. Now this is the most difficult, the grand-daddy of them all :-D. The main problem of the stroke is that it uses the entire body, so there is no part of the body that is not exercized. And since it requires all of the body parts, it also needs lot of concentration, plus lots of stamina. In addition, its THE stroke for abdominal exercise, because it uses the core as the strength. The leg movement is the key (called the dolphin kick), coupled with the body movement, that give the swimmer the ability to actually push the upper body out of the water. Also there is a very tiny breathing window (actually a breath every other stroke is suggested, but I still have to take a breath every stroke ;-) :-D). Needless to say, I still haven't got this one perfect till now. I do try to do atleast 2 laps each time I swim, but every half-a-lap I have to stop for breath. My kicks aren't yet synchronized with the arm movement (there are 2 kicks to each stroke), so lots of practice ahead.

I did go the 6th week, to gather more little details and tips to make it all better. By this time December end had arrived and we had to leave for our India trip. The teacher and I decided to take it up once I was back, but you knew what happened after I came back - with my not keeping well and later the incident :-D. Even later when I wanted to, the teacher had some exams going on (she is still a student in our local university), so it got postponed again. So to this day, we haven't got a chance to get back to the 2 remaining classes. I want to improve my butterfly, learn flip turn (a great help in lapping without stopping - tried it a couple of times, but its been a long time since I have done any paltis, so my head reeled :-D) and learn on-the-spot diving (tried it, but my ears ring, so I'm sure there must be a trick to it :-D). Well, its been almost an year, so maybe I'll actually take further classes some other time.

Right now, I swim twice a week (thinking of making it thrice a week from next week onwards :-D). I have come a long way from someone who used to swim about 4 to 6 laps in an hour. Now-a-days I swim minimum 12 laps in half an hour including warm-up and inbetween flexibility exercizes. The routine is usually 2 front crawls, 2 breaststrokes, 1 butterfly and 1 backstroke, 2 times. Plus another 2 laps in the end as relaxation laps where its a lazy swim :). I love breaststroke and enjoy frolicking in the deep end. As for the rest, I am still practicing keeping my legs up in the front crawl (which I've heard improves the speed), keeping my concentration in the backstroke (lying on my back tends to get me wool-gathering and I forget the tricks until I get a splash on my nose :-D) and trying to improve everything about my butterfly. I've been complimented a couple of times on my swimming (which I cannot believe as I still feel very incompetent sometimes :-\) and I am very proud of what I have achieved :). I have been trying to convince Sri to take up some classes (he knows swimming, but he is not comfy with any strokes other than the front crawl just like I was an year ago), but well, he is still dilly-dallying :-D.

I still cannot believe that one year ago I even had the hesitation. One thing the whole experience has taught me is that a person is never too old to try something new. I mean, yes there maybe a hesitation, there maybe embarrassment, but believe me, its all worth it. It helped me prove to myself that this old dog can learn new tricks and oh man, is there a lot more to learn :).

'Destin'ations old and new :)

2010-10-06T21:00:00.002-04:00

Oh man, its been a month since the trip to Florida already and I still haven't put it up. Well, I did have to edit/filter out the photos (which was awaiting the month end), plus upload them before I wrote this post, so that I don't have to upload them twice :-p. Excuses, excuses. Per kya kare? I have so much to write and literally very little time. Wonder what would have happened had I actually been working?

Anyways, we went to Destin, Florida, the Gulf coast, on the Labour day weekend. We had been to the same place about 3 years back before Snugli was born and para-sailed there. Though it was cold when we went that time, we loved the clear waters and white sand beaches and wanted to go there again. Well, the time was now :-D.

Sri did suggest camping at a lake around 2.5 hours south of us and trying some adventures there, but Destin seemed more attractive. The only thing we were worried about was the much talked about oil spill and the impact there. But after much research it seemed like that was alright. And so we packed the 3rd September 2010 day and headed out afternoon on the drive. I'm not going to put up the route map again, its pretty much same as the previous one (except that we didn't go to Pensacola at all this time).

Driving with an almost 3-year old Snugli is much easier these days. I mean I hardly need to pack any food except for snacks, because she's not fussy about eating stuff on road - loves pizza, pasta and tacobell chalupas (and one of these can be found almost any place :-D). I did take some toys and books for her, but again she enjoys seeing stuff on road (points to every damn thing from water tanks to power lines). She recognizes hotel rooms, gas stations (petrol bunks) and various restaurants, points them out and shouts until we make a response. For eg:

"Amma McDonald's. McDonald's. McDonald's! Amma Kelsitha? McDonald's" (Kelsitha means "did you hear?")

That can be a bit frustrating, to say the least :-D. But it does have it uses ;-). Also she loves music of any kind - so basically its easy to keep her occupied on the road :-D. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this is going to be so for a while :).

As we generally do, we drove halfway to a town in Alabama (having dinner on the way at Woodlands, Nashville, TN - vegetarian South Indian food, yummmmmm :-D) to stay for the night (the time from then onwards in central standard time, so an hour early compared to home). The view outside the hotel the next morn before we left:

We drove all morning and it was after lunch that we reached our hotel in Destin. The order of business for the day first? Jet-skiing!!

We were worried about Snugli's reaction to the entire thing. But well, at first she sat in the front and fiddled with the controls, wreaking havoc on an already bothered Sri (he wasn't really getting the hang of it, plus was worried about losing control and dunking all of us in the deep ocean :-p). After sometime we had to transfer her in between us (she switched the jet-ski off when it was moving pretty fast causing Sri to panic :-p). Sri, free of her, was able to be more confident and things had just started to get interesting when Snugli, safely cocooned by my arms, promptly fell asleep on the speeding jet-ski! I was amazed! We are brave, but she is the ultimate :-D. After that, we were able to speed to our heart's content for more than half an hour and the girl didn't stir an ounce :-p. I wanted to get in the driver's seat, but well, didn't want to go into that circus with her asleep :-p. Here's us after the "ordeal" :-D.

After that, since we were already drenched, we just went to stroll on a beach :).

Night after dinner, we again went to a beach to enjoy the waves and the breeze in the dark. I did take some night photos, but nothing worthy putting up (Damn! I really need a wide angle lens ;-) :-D).

The next morning, the agenda was to head to a beach and do some kayaking if possible. One thing about the area is that you just have a single lane road most places and the place can get crowded very easily. I mean, everyone wants to go somewhere, especially to the beach :-D. Is is any wonder when the beaches look like this?

We did ask about the oil spill (worried after seeing some dark stuff on the beach, which turned out to be algae :-D) and found out that the spill reached Pensacola, but not Destin and no, they weren't affected that much.

We took a chair and umbrella rental for the day and settled down to enjoy the water. People were swimming, tanning, kayaking and jet-skiing. I call this - "The hare and the tortoise" :-D.

I took some photos, then stashed away the DSLR safely and set out to enjoy the water :).

(the above snaps were taken from a cheap point and shoot)

Snugli had a wonderful time playing in the water (as you can see) and then playing with the sand.

She would gather the sand up and go to the edge of the water to generously donate it all to the ocean (Kereya neeranu kerege chelli :-D), hehehe. Later she even collaborated with a boy to build a tunnel :-D. Sri picked up lunch from a nearby tacobell and we made a picnic of it on the beach. Relaxing under an umbrella on a hot day at the beach is something else :).

Sometime later, we rented out a kayak and went kayaking for about 45 min.

It was a lot of fun (though rowing is a bit of a hard work), but the sun was pretty harsh. So we didn't linger a lot. Sri did do some solo kayaking later for about 10 min or so.

We stayed for some more time, but then had to get back to hotel for a shower and a cleanup. We had a sunset cruise planned for the evening, so after resting a while, we headed to the pier to catch the boat (named "Kokomo" of Destin Snorkel sunset, dolphin and fireworks cruises).

The cruise started out pretty fun. The sunset views were pretty fabulous plus there was a flight show bonus :).

Here's us :).

One more sunset view :).

Form then onwards it all started going bad :-\. The dolphin part of the cruise started after sunset, so you can imagine the disappointment. We did see a couple of dolphins, but they weren't really in the mood to play, they were on their way somewhere. So that whole part wasn't really as much fun as we hoped it to be. Plus after that there was a long wait (more than an hour) for the fireworks and guess what, there was no cruising. The owner simply took the boat around in a no-wake area (means idle speed) and showed buildings ("Hello, we can see those from the car" :-p) for about 15 min.

After that he halted at a place where fireworks were supposed to start and then nothing for an hour! He had drinks available for everyone, but the cruise is advertised as a family cruise and there was literally nothing for the children (we had taken some snacks but it was almost dinner time). Plus there were singles and couples on the boat who thought nothing of smoking around the children (had we known, we wouldn't even have booked the cruise). There were a couple more families like us, but I felt it was a singles/couples cruise rather than a family one. So yeah, if you are planning to go on one of these cruises, please make sure about these stuff :).

Finally got to see the fireworks at about 9PM..

Had dinner at a Pizza hut and called it a day :).

The next morning the plan was to go to another of the beaches, stay a while and then head back on our way. So thats what we did..

It was hotter and sultrier than the previous day and Snugli just wanted to get into the water (which we didn't really plan on :-D).

So yeah, taking photos turned out to be a struggle, because she just didn't want to :-D.

Anyways, soon we said our byes to the place and were on our way out. We took turns driving for more than 8 hours and got to Nashville for dinner (yeah woodlands again, yummmm :-D) and stay for the night. We had to get up at around 4 AM the next morn (since its 5 AM at Lexington) since Sri had to go to work and took turns driving back home :). Reached home by 8 AM, back to normal chores and life :).

This was a very nostalgic trip. Most of the places we recognized, even remembered our hotel from last time. Plus it was wayyyyyy better in September than April when it was chilly and uncomfortable. We'll probably go there again if we get a chance :-D. Sometimes it feels good to revisit memories and make a second version :).

Of mouse and girl :).

2010-09-28T13:25:00.003-04:00

Lots of things going on with and around me these days, but I just don't have the time (more like patience :-p) to sit and even write it down. But today's story, I just have to post :).

I've mentioned before that we don't really allow Snugli to use the computer. One main reason for this, according to me personally, is that I don't want her to "grow up too fast". I mean these days, parents seem hell bent on proving that their kids are geniuses that the kids have access to everything, and hence I somehow feel that it takes away the simple enjoyments of childhood. Moreover I want her to spend time with her toys rather than stare at a computer screen or a TV screen for that matter.

The exception to this rule was today. As usual we headed to the library and reached there pretty early. The children section has some computer consoles and I wanted to see what kind of games they have and switched one on. Found a simple game on Disney (a connect-the-dots-by-knowing-numbers) and told her to spot the numbers while I scroll with the mouse and click. She grabs the mouse, spots the numbers and moves the mouse and clicks them herself! I was stunned, stunned stunned!

Believe me, we have never taught her how to use the mouse (and its certainly not easy for a beginner to control it). Once we came back home for lunch, I put the game at home and demonstrated the entire "action" to Sri. I can still see the look of amazement he had on his face! We both were like, "a mini software engineer in the making" :-D. My God! Where do these kids learn this from? It shows how much she observes each and everything we do. It now feels like she wants to grow up fast and I'm holding her back :-\. From now on, I've decided to allow her 1 or 2 games per day, after all she has earned it ;-) :-D.

The war...

2010-09-25T22:44:00.004-04:00

The war

Tumultuous waves bombard the very cores
Of inert rocks and long forgotten shores..

Incessant rain erodes the broken earth
Insensitive of the damage to home and hearth..

A strong wind turns into a hurricane gale
Crushing the spirits of trees, already frail..

Fires rage south and north, west and east
Scorching on their way, all man and beast..

Thoughts harass, pester and never retreat
Until the battered heart admits absolute defeat.

Camp rocks :)

2010-09-03T08:40:00.001-04:00

Since I have already given you a clue about this in my last post, I don't think I have to mention that no, this post is not going to be about the teen movie :-p. After 3 years, we went on a camping trip. It was obviously Snugli's first camping trip, unless you count the fact that the last time we went I was pregnant ;-).

Well, the story happened on 13th August, Friday, that too pretty late in the day. We have been planning to go camping right since the start of summer, but something always came up (its funny how things always come up in summers and there's absolutely nothing to do in winters :-p). That day we faced a tug of war between going and not going. The weather was predicted to have rains in the night and camping is certainly not fun with thunderstorms (well, I disagree, but I digress :-D). When we checked at about 6Pm in the evening, the weather prediction had miraculously (yup, I am being sarcastic :-p) changed to clear skies :-D. After a little bit of to and fro, we simply decided to get going.

Packed up all we needed, bought the rest and got to the Lake Kincaid park (where we camped 3 years ago). We liked having the lake right next to the camping sites and thought that with Snugli around, the place would be a known devil scenario :-D. Plus the place has proper restrooms (albeit a bit far from the camping site). We were able to find a site (without advance booking) and started setting up stuff. Everything was smooth except that there were clouds near the horizon and it got dark pretty fast.

It was amazing how we put the tent together in a matter of minutes (another thing you never forget once you learn how :-p).

It was a little too dark to get stuff ready for cooking in the fire, but that part was manageable. The parts that weren't were the heat (it wasn't pleasant in any way) and Snugli's bewilderment. She was not really scared, just that being outside in almost total darkness with the sweltering heat was a strange experience for her. There were a few times when she hung onto me and refused to let go. But I did manage to distract her with the stars (that was one of the reasons we went - for me to try and photograph stuff ;-) :-D) and chirpy cricket sounds :-D. We somehow managed to eat up our usual camp diet of roasted corn, roasted veggies, roasted panneer and roasted burgers in the dark (we made a note of lanterns as things to buy for the next camp trip :-D). Later pumped up the bed and settled down for the night.

Or Sri and Snugli did ;-). I got up at around 2 AM to first catch some more meteors if possible (I saw around 25 meteors on the previous night, but no photos since I don't really have a lens wide enough top cover the entire sky :-\) and photograph the dark non-light-polluted skies. I did catch about 5 meteors, but again no snaps. It was literally Murphy's law :-p. So presenting the Deepthi's corollary to Murphy's law -

"If your camera is pointed to a specific part of the night sky, then the probability of meteors appearing in that particular area is much much much lower (almost close to 0) than that in the rest of the sky".

Sad, but true :(. Anyways I did manage to capture some pretty pics including this one of the Pleiades star cluster and emerging dawn (click to enlarge) :).

And one of Jupiter, the biggest "star" in the pic below (Before you jump to correct me, I know its a planet :-p).

I did take lots and lots of snaps (I think I was up for more than 2.5 hours! But the thing is without a tracking mount (which is helpful in contradicting earth's rotation), the only way to take good pics is by taking multiple short exposure photos (minimum 25 of each object!). I still haven't gotten to the post processing of images, so maybe will get back once I do :).

Went back to bed and got up after 8:30 AM :). After finishing our morning ablutions, Snugli got to play in the playground for a while..

And then we had breakfast at camp (yeah, I took the photo with a timer, had to run to and fro from the tripod :-p)..

Snugli enjoyed the morning camp much much more than the earlier evening (she surprisingly slept well and didn't fuss at all in the night). Here's her posing from the tent..

We then proceeded to dismantle the camp and head home :). All in all the trip was pretty much a success. It was great that the adventure lamp is still burning brightly within us and Snugli enjoying most of it was a bonus :). And photographically, it was another successful experiment :). Here are 2 daytime snaps I am pretty proud of :).

Very much looking forward to camping once again before winter sets in :).

Snoogli bear, off to school!

2010-09-01T22:15:00.003-04:00

Have a load of posts to shed ;-), but somehow time keeps slipping away from me, like this quote I heard recently -

"Time sneaks up on you like a windshield on a bug." - John Lithgow.

One of the huggggge reasons for me not being aware of the time is that we finally started sending Snugli to a daycare/school since about 3 weeks back. Its more of a daycare than a school, I'm planning to search for a proper pre-school once she completes 3. Right now she is going thrice a week for only 3 hours each day. But the hours are from 8 AM to 11 AM and hence its been pretty bad for me as such. We changed our schedule to fit in with her school needs a week earlier - so we finish breakfast and all our baths by 8AM. Her school's lunch timings are 11 AM to 12 PM, so incase we plan to put her there for the entire day, we are also having lunch at 11:30 AM now. Which is all well and good except for the fact that my mornings are hectic to say the least. Yes I do get time for myself when she is away, but half of the time goes in cooking. And the morning work takes such a toll that all I want to do in the noon is lie down. I hope that as I get adjusted to the routine, things will be a lot better :).

Sending her to school hasn't been easy, it was pretty bad the first 2 weeks. Now she has adjusted to it, so things are a lot more smoother. So as I was saying, Monday August 16th 2010 turned out to be her 1st day of school :). The obsessive parents we are, we both went to drop her off at 8AM. She said bye and everything was fine till about 10 AM when her teacher tried taking her to potty and it somehow triggered something off (maybe because she isn't used to going with anyone other than us). She started crying for us and didn't stop until I got there (the place is just 5 min away from home). At first she just wanted to get out of there, but later she slowly confesses that "School chennagithu" ("School was nice") :-D.

Yet, the 2nd day, the hesitation started at the school door itself. She wouldn't let me say bye to her, so I had to sit in her class for half an hour (each time I got up to say bye, she'd come running and tell me - "Lets go" :-D). Then finally I convinced her that I had work to do and had to go. She did say bye, but later the teacher told me that she cried for me for a while and then forgot all about it. She did stay for the entire 3 hours that day (though she didn't go to potty :-D) which was certainly an improvement.

The 3rd day was the worse. She started crying while taking her bath and wouldn't stop. We tried not reminding her of the school, but she'd remember and tear up. Her big eyes would fill up with tears and her lips would start trembling. God, it was a struggle from bathing to feeding her breakfast. I stayed in the class again for a while, then got out. While I was signing out, she opened the door of her classroom and was bawling her heart out. I felt very bad leaving her when she was crying like that :(. I was totally upset the entire 3 hours and was wondering whether sending her at 2.5 years was even the right thing to do, basically second-guessing the decision. But guess what I find when I go back to pick her up? She was playing happily and her teacher said that she was fine just after 5 min (while I was stewing away at home :-p). She was even taken to the park to play and the children had a wonderful time playing with bubbles! That was it, I asked Sri to drop her off from then on (her school is on his way to office) :-D.

The 2nd week, once she started going with Sri, there was a 5 min crying period just before he left her there, but it was a lot better. On the 2nd week, 3rd day she had a cough and so we didn't send her to school. Despite Sri's protests, I told her that she wasn't going to school because she wasn't well. Come this week Monday, I tell her she has to go to school and guess what? She coughs dramatically (like the overacting old men in our old Hindi movies :-D) and says in a pretend-tight-throat voice -

"Cough bartha ide. School beda" ("I have cough, so no school")

My God! How fast they learn :-D. Sometimes she is so brilliant that I wonder whether all 2.5 year olds are this smart :-D. Anyways things have been a lot better this week, she even went to the restroom in the school with the help of a teacher. As for me, I somehow miss her quite a bit when she's not around. I keep listening for the sound of her anklets behind me and find myself wondering what she's doing (well, she misses me too as evident by the tight hugs she bestows upon me after coming home :-D). A part of me is obviously proud of her for adjusting so well so soon, but another part is saddened by the fact that I'm back to being alone (I've hardly been alone at home after Snugli came into our lives). I know I know that its only for a few hours, but well, there's no convincing the heart right? :).

Anyways, I have a camping trip post coming up (its been 2 weeks already since we went) and then we are out on another of our long drive trips for the long weekend. Lots and lots to write and don't know when I'll get to it. For the umpteenth time, where's a mind-reading blogger when you need one? :-p.

3x10=30, your face is dirty :-D

2010-08-21T09:30:00.010-04:00

Not too dignified of me, I know :). I'm 30! 30! 30! 30! Somebody stop me :-D.

Heyy, I'm not that old! Not yet anyway :).

Seriously speaking (says she who's been acting like a spoilt child for quite a while now :-D), as I mentioned earlier, I am very happy to be where I am today. One of the things I always wished and wish to do is to live my life without any regrets. Yes, there are a couple of regrets about a few lost friendships, but other than those, I have no regrets whatsoever. Which is pretty good for a 30-year lifetime, hehehe :).

Another thing I always wanted to do, is to try and see most of what there is to see and to do most of what there is to do. And as you have seen on my blog, I think I'm doing a pretty good job in this, to be very modest :-D. Its been a great journey so far and man, there is lots lots more to do! There are so many things in this world that one mere lifetime is not enough to see and do everything. I hope I get a chance to do a little more, see a little more, day-by-day and thats it.

So what do you get for a person who wants everything? :-D.

Mmmmm everything? Hehehehe :). By the way, my over-smart hubby has conveniently claimed the DSLR to be his special gift in advance :-p (I actually had thought of it as my special gift to myself, but oh well, who cares as long as I have got the camera :-D). I can't ask for anything more now, can I? He just knows how to shut me up ;-) :-D. But that doesn't really stop me from hankering for a cake :-D.

One thing I have to mention is what Sri said the other day - he is 33 this time, I am 30 and Snugli will be "03" in December, so our ages are all combinations of '3' and '0' :-D. If not anything, it saves us from buying more number-shaped candles, hehehe :-D.

And so as I stand on the 30 year peak of my life, looking forward to more helpings of what I have already and trying not to be too greedy about it ;-) :-D, I realize that I am very fortunate to be here, for there are many many people who are not and every day I thank God for having it so good. Before I get too emotional, I just have another thing to say on this day:

Happy birthday to me
Happy birthday to me
Happpppppppppppy birthththththththdayyyyyyyyyyy to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee
Happy birthday toooooooooooooo meeeeeee :-D

(BTW this is Snugli's favourite song and I'm looking forward to hearing it on a continuous loop today, hehehee).

Tomorrow never dies..

2010-08-20T09:21:00.004-04:00

Well, certainly today it doesn't. Yup, tomorrow is the big that I turn thirrrrrrrr, thirrrrrrrrrrr, thirty, there I said it :-p. Sri, have you ordered my cake yet? :-D.

A cake doesn't seem to be very dignified, does it? :-p. Maybe I should celebrate it in a more subdued manner ;-).

Nahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh! Get the cake, pronto!

3...2....1...Boom!

2010-08-18T17:52:00.008-04:00

Yet another countdown post ;-). I know I know even I'm getting tired of these. But only one more I promise and one actual birthday post. Its actually one too many, but a "30" year tag deserves atleast so much :-p.

So whats the plan after 30? Oh man, where do I start?

Lots of things to do, LOTS! But you'll see them here as they happen, don't want to spoil the surprises :-D.

Cannot believe the D-day is only 3 days to go :-p.

My feelings are all mish-mashed these days. One part of me is happy that I'm truly becoming an "adult" now (20s are still childish according to me whereas 30s are more dignified :-D), while another thinks what the heck is the difference anyways (because I'm suddenly not going to morph into a dignified adult, hehehee :-D), while yet another is feeling kinda despondent that the years are rolling away like this (and I'm still nowhere close to being a dignified adult, hehehehe :-D).

This countdown is sure accomplishing atleast 2 things -

1) Boring the few remaining readers off my blog ;-) :-D.
2) Keeping an account of my feelings as the actual birthday is nearing :).

See ya soon with more :) (if you are still here, that is :-D).

"Fair"y tales :-D.

2010-08-10T14:42:00.010-04:00

I've been meaning to write something other than a "birthday countdown" post for what seems like days. But have been busy - hopefully will get to one such post in a couple of days. Meanwhile thought of putting up a couple of pics of the local fair we get here annually (I wrote about it last year). Last year Snugli was a bit too young to enjoy all the bits and pieces and I wrote how it'd be different this year :-D. Well, yeah, it was different as in suddenly we were pushed into the role of spectators and she was the adventurer.

We made it 2 times to the fair this year and this post is mostly about the 1st time (the 2nd time my camera was already poof and the iPhone taken photos don't really count :-p). The first time we did take passes for all of us, because we thought she might create a fuss and its better to ride with her. But she was totally at home :-D.

That was her first ride on her own, ever :) (well, the boy eventually did sit beside her, so on her own as in without us :-\).

We did go on the caterpillar roller coaster ride together (same as last year :-D)..

And the giant wheel (or the Ferris wheel as its called here) later..

I don't really like rides which go round and round, so Sri went with her whenever required (yeah I conveniently dumped the honours on him, hehehee).

And then there was a helicopter ride..

A dinosaur ride..

A bike ride..

The standard merry-go-around..

And a racing car ride which was her "favourite" (she says its so to this day ;-) :-D).

There was also a plane ride (no good pics to speak of) and this dragon roller coaster which she loved.

Phew! I think she enjoyed 12 rides in all. Seeing her enjoyment, I "absolutely" "had-to" take her there once more and hence the 2nd time (I pestered Sri until we went :-D). The 2nd time, we didn't even buy passes for ourselves and bought one for her, thats it. I was ready to run out and get one in case she panicked, but well, our little girl is truly growing up. She went on 12 to 14 rides without even giving us a second glance. I cannot be more proud, believe me, but some part of me was actually sad to see her be so independent. It was difficult for me to let go.

Its not like she's totally independent, but that day brought home the fact that time is slipping away. And no matter how hard we try to hold on, time always gets the better of us. Fortunately or unfortunately, there's nothing you and me can do about it..

P.S: On a totally different note, the Perseid meteor showers are this week, supposedly peaking on Aug 12th night and 13th early morning. I have already seen a couple of meteors in my pursuits of Astrophotography (thats the post I have been meaning to put up, so will be up soon) in the past week and I will be up on Thursday with my camera trying to photograph the pesky things :-D. Oughta be fun :).

Just a number, right?

2010-08-09T12:19:00.006-04:00

Right? 30 is just a number. I don't know why there's hugggge hullabaloo about it :-p.

Alright, alright :-p. Maybe crossing over from the twenties has become equivalent to losing your youth. I firmly believe that we are as young as we feel, so I'm 25, thank you very much :-D.

But to be honest, there are no alarms on my side. I'm glad to be where I am, whatever age I am because this is precisely where I want to be. And I've never understood why people are afraid of growing old - for me its all about the experience and so far it has been a wonderful enjoyable experience :-D.

Well, I might still panic on the D-day, so somebody please hold my hand ;-) :-D.

P.S. Folks, My birthday isn't here yet, still part of the countdown :-D.

Come august :).

2010-08-01T13:47:00.004-04:00

Well, the month is finally here. This month I reach another pivotal point in my life :-p.

Err, kindly imagine the calendar in the comic to be August :-D.

Since I'll be crossing over from the twenties to the thirties this month, I have decided to celebrate this extremely happy (:-p :-D) occasion, by having a sort of countdown to the D-day :-D. All the more to bother you with silly posts, my dearies hehehee :)).

Meanwhile today is also the first Sunday of August which means its FRIENDSHIP day!! And friendship is certainly more important than me becoming 30 years old :-p.

Happy friendship day to all :)

The circle of camera life :-p.

2010-07-30T15:57:00.013-04:00

Finally!! After much deliberation, research and what not, my new DSLR Canon EOS 50D arrived last week on Tuesday the 20th July 2010. So why wait till now for a post, you ask? Well, I "assumed" that the camera would work on an SD card and found out only after I got it that it needed a compact flash card, which arrived today ;-). So here's the gear:

This photo above was taken by my trusty Canon S2 IS which promptly died soon after the arrival of the new one, apparently as if from jealousy :-p. In fact this was one of the last photos I took with it. Last friday, I was working on re-capturing the same image (because I wasn't completely satisfied with it), when the lens got stuck and refused to retract. Supposedly its the infamous dreaded Lens error. I felt very very sad, it was difficult losing something that was so close to my heart. The camera was a silent ever-present friend to me and it was as if I lost a part of myself. I found out that it'd cost almost as much as $150 to get it repaired.

So I decided to open and check it myself. Well, the engineering degree I have in electronics has to be useful sometime right? :-p.

Please forgive the bad quality pic - it was taken from my iPhone as I hadn't gotten the CF card for the DSLR yet :-p. I have to tell you, I was scared like hell that I'd end up corrupting it further. But I didn't. Yesterday evening, with a bit of Sri's help, I pin-pointed the fault to the USM (ultra-sonic motor) inside (its most probably that or else there's nothing I can do about it). Now have the option of getting a spare part from ebay and fixing it myself, but still thinking about it :-\.

Lets get back to the DSLR now. Today I got the CF card and immediately had to take snaps :). Here are my favourite subjects :).

Looks good on these hands right? :).

So the first 2 steps in my Astrophotography dream are done (learning photography and getting a DSLR). The next step is to master the DSLR and try taking astrophotos without an equatorial mount (used to negate earth's rotation while taking long exposures of the night sky). Just can't wait :).

Meanwhile the MasterCard ad was made for this post ;-).

Canon EOS 50D with 28-135mm lens - $957
Canon EF 50mm f1.8 lens - $87
LCD protector - $3
Compact Flash card - $60
Having it in my hand and jumping up and down - Priceless!!

Man, was it a lot of money. I thought again and again on whether I'm confident enough to invest such an amount (had second thoughts about it even after buying it :-p). But you know what? I'm ready for this, to move on and learn more. To know and to do more :).

Or else, I can always blame this particular madness on the big three-oh (coming up soon), hehehe :)).

An excursion to Milwaukee..

2010-07-23T21:20:00.002-04:00

I told you that we went to Milwaukee for 4th of July weekend. The trip was pretty much a success far as the fireworks photos were concerned :-D. As for the rest of it, you'll just have to read and find out :-D.

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is about 8 hours drive away for us. We found out that the 4th of July fireworks was about an hour long, so we thought it might be worth it. So yeah here's the road map :).

We left Lexington on 2nd July Friday evening at around 4:30PM. The plan for that day was to drive to Lafayette Indiana (Point B) and halt for the night. We were thinking that we were making good time and were about an hours drive away to Indianapolis when the inevitable happened. The traffic stopped suddenly and we got stuck at the freeway for more than an hour! Later we found out that a truck caught fire on the freeway and hence all the traffic had to be stopped. We even got to see the burnt truck (this snap was taken on my iPhone)..

I was glad that we weren't anywhere near it when the incident happened. Once the traffic started moving, we had dinner and got to out motel at night.

The next day, early morning we headed out and started driving north. We still had about 4 hours driving to do and yeah, we had to pass through Chicago to get to Milwaukee. It was good to say Hello to the Sears tower yet again :-D.

It was noon when we reached Milwaukee. After resting in the hotel for a while, in the evening we went to check out Veteran's park where the fireworks were being held (on July 3rd night). They were having a Kite festival there, but there were huge crowds and no parking at all, so we simply drove through.

We stopped at a small park which had a kids' park and steps down to a small beach. Milwaukee has lake Michigan right next to the city and it was a great view :).

Snugli loved first playing in the park and then playing in the beach..

The weather was so good that we were about to regret not getting swimsuits (we were being careful after the California trip ;-) :-D), when we found out that the lake water was collllllllllllld! Plus it had lots of rotten algae floating around :-p. Anyways, we did have a good time before finally climbing back..

Then we went for some dinner (was really tough getting out of all the traffic) and went to a small park called Bayview park to watch the fireworks. This time I wanted to shoot the fireworks from a little faraway. But it actually turned to be a little more further than I thought it'd be :-D. Well, I got a couple of wonderful shots, so it was all in all a good try :).

The fireworks themselves weren't as good as the Louisville ones. Here are the US flag colours..

This one feels something like a fountain :).

The full effects:

Love the multi-level reflections on this one..

We were pretty outside the crowded region, so didn't face too much traffic while getting back to the hotel room for the night..

Next day morning, our idea was to get to the Harley-Davidson museum.

Harley-Davidson was actually founded in Milwaukee almost a 100 years ago! The museum is a dedication to all the motorcycles that H-D ever built. It has more than 450 bikes + 100s of 1000s of accessories!

From postal motorcycles to racing ones, from world war ones to bejeweled ones, the place had them all :). We marveled at the different ones - some were really amazing. They even had an area where we could climb on bikes and get the feel :-D. It was mostly fun, but after a certain time, it kinda got a bit monotonous :-D. Too much of a good thing, perhaps :).

We soon got out of there and went to another beach area called the Lake shore park.

Again the water was cold and had algae, but it was still enjoyable :).

Snugli didn't want to get out of the water :).

We literally had to drag her out. We next had lunch and went to the Summerfest happening there.

Summerfest is a festival for summer (duh :-p). It was a hugggggggggggge area and had various concerts going on. Basically it was a place for crowds to gather and have fun. Snugli and Sri had a good time riding on a ropeway (I stayed back because we had the stroller with us and couldn't leave it anywhere :-p).

It was extremely hot and humid. I had to wait quite a bit before they got back and man, it was pretty bad. We went to a children area where Snugli had a lot of fun :).

She wasn't really getting tired, but we were ;-). And we had to get back to Lafayette again for the night. So after a bit of tussle, we got back on the road.

While we were driving from Indiana to Wisconsin, we had noticed many many wind energy harvesting fields. And when we got back, I insisted on stopping for a view :). It was amazing to see man made stuff and nature so much in harmony :).

It was beautiful :).

I had a good time taking snaps from various angles I could think of (while the dear hubby and daughter fidgeted :-D).

Anyways, that was it for the day. The next day, since it was a holiday too, we lazed around and left Indiana only by 11 PM. By the time we got back home (thanks to a lunch stop and some shopping in Louisville Indian store), it was evening :). And so another long weekend was gone.

Just can't wait to get away again, sigh..

Vanity, Thy name is Woman :).

2010-07-14T16:36:00.006-04:00

Well, the actual quote by Shakespeare is "Frailty, Thy name is woman" (in Hamlet), but Vanity has taken over even the quote in common usage :-D. I have always put my absolute faith in the common usage quote :-D, mainly because I have no illusions about myself. I mean we women dedicate ourselves to threading eyebrows, waxing arms and legs most of the times, or in general torturing ourselves all in the name of our vanity :-D. Jerry Seinfeld says it best :-D.

I will never understand how a woman can take boiling hot wax, pour it on her upper thighs, rip the hair out by the roots, and still be afraid of a spider - Jerry Seinfeld.

I love Jerry and this is my most favourite quote of them all (I'm not afraid of spiders or anything that crawls btw :-D) :). But I never thought how our vanities matter in our day-to-day lives until the incident (is that ominous enough? :-D).

I wanted to write this post on July 10th commemorating the 5th month anniversary of my fainting incident. But well, I am writing it now :-p. As you read then, I had/have a sense of humour about it, as long as I was at home and not facing any crowds. As soon as I had to get out of the house, the anxiety would start. I had a blatant scar on my forehead and a very noticeable lump and scar above my upper lip. So I would obsess that everyone would notice it (I know I'm not queen Cleopatra, to turn everyone's heads, hehehee, but sometimes my imagination runs wild :-D). I would wonder what anyone might think about it. In fact, things were so bad the first month that I hardly ever got out of home.

This is the only photo I have of me during that first month. It was taken on Sri's birthday, i.e 18 days after the incident. Atleast it was winter then, so whenever I did go out, I wore a wintercap which covered my forehead (I couldn't do anything for the scar above my upper lip). I have photos of Sri and me hung over the walls and sometimes, I wouldn't even be able to look at them without feeling sad and angry. I wouldn't accept invites from any acquaintances we have here, because I didn't want to narrate the entire story to them..

Sri was completely supportive and my parents were literally trying to knock some sense into me. Mom would recount stories of worse accidents (women who lost their teeth in accident and had major surgeries) and somehow though I understood everything, I simply couldn't help it. Dad was like, people have their own concerns and why would they be concerned with you. It'd always make me laugh, but again I would regress. Maybe it was some form of depression. I mean I have had accidents before, but having something on your face is different from anything else. To this day I don't know why.

I would apply vitamin E oil to it twice or thrice a day plus some other ayurvedic ointment at night (kumkumadi thaila) - both are supposed to help with scars. Slowly things started changing, but not because the scars started fading or anything like that. But because I would make myself go out - thats when I started taking Snugli to the library. I used to apply a thin coat of make-up to hide the scars, but if you stared right at my face, the scars would still be visible (I used to joke to my close friends that I have never applied make-up all my life and now I am becoming an expert at it :-D). And I got back to swimming, making it a point not to apply makeup for that :-D. I did catch up with people I knew when I went swimming, I'd see some questions in their eyes, but they were too polite to ask about it :). About 2 months later, I'd even go to the park nearby without make-up.

Today, 5 months later I still apply some compact powder before I go out, but thats about it. The scars have faded a lot, but the areas are still a tiny bit sore. There was a lump on the area above my upper lip which was pretty bad and which I worried about, now the soreness is gone and the size of the lump has reduced a lot. The scar there is hardly visible (unless you look at it too closely). The forehead scar is a horizontal 'Y' and it is visible. But the main thing is they are not on my mind all the time as it was then. I don't bother about them at all now. Guess I just needed time..

I took this photo today (no makeup whatsoever :-D, the thing on my chin is a pimple :-p - vanity strikes again :-D). On a side note, this was another photography experiment - getting the feel of portraits by taking self-portraits first :).

As I said, I still don't know why I was so bothered about it. Maybe I was afraid that people judged me by looks and hence would not even try to get to know me, the person inside. Or maybe I am shallow when it comes to certain things. Or maybe I felt like I lost a part of me forever. Or maybe I was just insecure and wondering whether people who loved me would continue to love me despite this (meaning I was being an idiot :-D). Well, I have been proved wrong in many of these already and as I said sometime back, I am me no matter what happens :). Like Aamir says in Dil Chahtha hai, "Perfection cannot be improved", hehehehee :)).

Snugli story-time :).

2010-07-09T09:13:00.007-04:00

I don't even know where to start when it comes to Snugli these days. There are so many things happening each day that its quite hard to keep track of them :-D. And whats amazing is her ability to generate so many emotions in me. Sometimes she makes me angry, other times laugh, yet other times literally makes my mouth hang open in surprise. Its fascinating that such a little person can do so much :-D. We haven't yet decided anything about her playschool, but hopefully will finalize something soon :). Now onto the stories.

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Her questions are getting more and more atrocious these days. I know I have to grateful that they haven't crossed certain "boundaries" yet :-D, but sometimes its hard not to get frustrated at all the whys. This conversation happened after one of our video calls to my parents:

Me: "Ammamma Ajjange bye hELu" ("Say bye to Ammamma and Ajja")
Her: "Yaake?" ("Why?")
Me: "Avaru malgbekalwa adhikke" ("Because they have to go sleep")
Her: "Yaake?" ("Why?")
Me: "Avarige susthaaithalla adhikke" ("because they are tired")
Her: "Yaake?" ("Why?")
Me: "Avaru dina idi kelsa maadidranthe adhikke" ("Because they have been working the entire day")
Her: "Okay bye, See you next time, Good night, Sweet dreams"

Madam just doesn't stop her "why"s until she's fully satisfied with the answers :-D.

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One of the regular (I mean regular as in daily :-p) things she does is ask who gave that particular clothing item whenever she changes into any dress ("Idu Yaaru kottiddu?" It can be pretty frustrating for me since I have bought 90% of her clothes :-\). One day just before bath (thats when I pick out a dress for her) she comes and declares that she wants to wear a dress given by her Naanamma (Sri's mom). Since both her ammamma as well as her naanamma are fond of pampering her with clothes (to say the least :-D), I didn't know which dress she was talking about. So I started to point to dresses asking her whether it was the one. After a few items, she gets frustrated and tells me "No, Nannamma kottiddu red dress!!" ("The red dress that naanamma gave!!"). Well, thankfully there was only one red dress that she gave :-D.

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One fine day, I discovered that her baby lotion bottle was empty. Since its a daily ritual after her bath, she missed it and prompted me "Baby lotion! Baby lotion!". I told her that the bottle was empty and the next time we went to the store I'd buy some :).

Cut to a couple of days later. I was talking to Sri over phone, telling him to get a couple of groceries from the store on his way home from office. And Snugli literally shouts at me "Baby lotion, baby lotion!" and in many words tells me that I need to ask her dad to get it from the store :-\.

And this hasn't been a one-time story. One day I took Snugli shopping and she kept reminding me about baby carrots, buttermilk etc at each appropriate section. Sri keeps telling me that I don't need to write a grocery list anymore, hehehee :)).

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The next one happened when we were getting back from our trip to Milwaukee. Whenever we go anywhere, she has one standard question "Next elli hOgONa?" ("Where are we going next?"). So we told her that we were heading home to Lexington. Her reply?

"Illa. Beda. Restaurant hOgi mammu thindu hotel room ge hOgONa" ("No, no. We'll go to restaurant, have some food and then go to the hotel room")

Guess she really loved jumping on the bed and handling the remote in the hotel rooms :-D.

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After coming back, the very next day I returned to our normal routine of taking her to the library. While coming back, I took a different road back home than the one she is used to on a regular basis. I think you can guess her reaction..

"Elli hogtha iddiya? Lexington, Kentucky hOgONa, manege hOgONa!" (Where are you going? Lets go to Lexington, Kentucky, lets go home!")

I was dumbstruck! I had to struggle to convince her that we were going home albeit on a different road ;-). As you can see right now she can't see the difference between the town and home. For her, her home is in Lexington, so they are equivalent :).

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The very same day early morning I was a bit hassled and in a bit of a rush. So when she tried to stress her independence by grabbing onto the soap/lotion etc, I tried to convince her by saying "Ninge adu kotre late aaguththe. Ammange innu tumba kelsa ide kanda - innu ninna ready maadbeku. Amma ready aagbeku. Library hogbeku...." ("If I give you that, we'll get late. Amma still has so much work baby - I've to get you ready. Amma has to get ready. We have to go to the library...") and so on. Guess what she tells me once we get back from the library..

"Amma bega! Snigdha ge tumba kelsa ide - Innu dudhdhu kudibeku, Mickey mouse nodbeku.." ("Mom, hurry! Snigdha still has so much work - I've to drink milk, then see Mickey mouse.." and so on!

God save me! Hehehehee :)).

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Just yesterday (I don't really remember the context now), I was telling her how she was a big Somberi (lazy bum) and she corrects me saying "Illa. Snigdha small somberi. Amma naana big somberi" ("No, Snigdha is a small lazy bum. Mom and dad are big lazy bums" :-D.

True that, hehehehe :)).

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Her memory is growing by leaps and bounds. She has these flashes of memories - suddenly she remembers how she went on a scooter ride with my dad (during our India trip) or on a bike ride with Darsh. Yesterday evening she was narrating how she went to a boy's birthday (remembered his name too) and how she played with his elder sister there (remembered her name too!) and how they ate baby carrots and noodles together. All true :). But the birthday happened more than 4 months ago!

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Today morning I was in the kitchen when Sri started to leave through the front door. She tells him "Bye naana. Hogbeda. Innu Amma bye heLbeku" ("Bye dad. Don't go yet. Mom hasn't said goodbye to you").

I just don't know what to say anymore, hehehee :)).

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This happened after I posted - decided to add it here today itself than note it for another post. Yet another thing she is aware of these days is that I switch on a shower cleaner after both our baths. She never fails to remind me of it every day. Today was no exception. The conversation went like this:

Her: "Shower cleaner, shower cleaner!"
Me: "Ivaththu beda kanda" ("Not today baby")
Her: "Amma snaana aada mele shower cleaner" ("After mom's bath, shower cleaner")
Me: "Amma snaana beLiggene aaithu baby" ("Mom's bath was done in the morning baby")
Her: "Amma batte neeru biddu galeeju, adhikke snaana maadbeku" ("Mom's clothes are wet and hence dirty, so mom has to take bath")

Not to mention that my clothes were half-drenched due to her bath :-D.

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Last story of the day. Snugli is very fond of typing on the keyboard. And we are not at all fond of it :-D. Just yesterday somehow she managed to manipulate the PC into shutting down! So the rule in the house is that if she touches the keyboard, she gets a rap on the bum from a paddle bat (before anyone gets all riled up, its a very cheap and delicate bat and believe me when I say it hurts zilch :-p). And usually as soon as we get up from the PC chair she's on it. Again today was the same. I got up and she went to the PC chair. Sri called out to her "Paddle bat beka?" ("Shall I get the paddle bat?"). She says "Illa beda. Naanu muttilla innu" ("No Don't. I haven't touched it yet") :-D.

God help Sri and I :-D.

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There are so many such stories happening that I usually have to make a note of it to remind myself about it later :-D. More stories will be up as they happen :-D.

From L.A to San Francisco Part 2

2010-07-02T09:06:00.001-04:00

Part 1 is here.

7th June 2010, Monday, the first thing we did was to visit the Mystery Spot at Santa Cruz (Point F in the route map in Part 1 :-D). Sri and I visited another place similar to this in Tennessee..

Waiting for the tour..

The mystery spot is a place where people just cannot seem to stand straight, they seem tilted in a dramatic fashion. The tour guides there claim that its all due to some kind of gravitational variations and magnetic anomalies in that particular spot. For eg:

But since I saw the one in Tennessee, I have believed it all to be an optical illusion. The cabin itself is built in a way that it distorts your vision. Once you step into the cabin, there is no reference to ground. So even though you stand straight, due to the effects all around you, you feel like you are tilted. See this one:

Compare Snugli with the trees and the cabin. She and the trees are straight, while the cabin is not. The description on wikipedia does seem to support my POV :-D. Well, we somehow stood and took the photos, but poor Snugli was totally bewildered by the place. She obviously didn't understand what was going on and was actually scared - you can imagine how it'd be for her. We got out of there soon enough and had lunch somewhere near Sunnyvale (Point G).

We headed west first to Redwood shores which is home to the Oracle headquarters. I am an ex-employee and always hoped to go and work there sometime. Oh well, better outside than nothing :-D.

It was very overwhelming for me, the company has been a plus point of my career and I can never forget that..

From there we drove further west to reach a place called Half Moon Bay. All this because I was still hoping for a sunset. Well, no such luck, it was misty again and cold yet again!

The currents were pretty bad there, so no one was allowed into the water. What I did like about the beach was that there were campsites right next to the beach and I thought "Wow, now I'd love to camp in such a place". Sadly we are nowhere near a beach :-\. We just took in the place for quite sometime and then headed back to our hotel in Santa Clara. On the way, there were a few more vista points..

We had dinner at Udupi Palace, oh man, now that was something. I miss vegetarian Indian restaurants so much here. And that was it for the day..

Early morning on 8th June, we set out, bravely facing the horrendous morning traffic and went directly to another lodging for the day at San Francisco (Point H). We parked our car there and carrying only a bag with all the essentials we set out to explore the city. It was very windy and chilly and the hotel owner did warn us that it may get colder later. So we bought a couple of jackets (for me and Sri) at a nearby store. Thankfully we carried a jacket and a shawl for Snugli from home. But it turned out to be more miserable than we thought.

We did check the weather, but never thought that wind chill would matter so much. I had packed only summer clothes for myself and Snugli, so there just wasn't a way out. I mean Lexington was hotter than San Francisco, can you believe that? Plus we decided to take the city transport to avoid expensive parking fees which turned out to be another mistake.

We planned to go to Pier 35 first to book tickets on an Alcatraz ferry. First of all we didn't find a bus for a long time and later walked for a long time assuming that the pier wasn't very far off. Snugli who is always on her feet at home, simply refused to walk (we didn't take the stroller with us - another mistake) and so Sri had to carry her. In turn I had to carry the heavy bag and it was a mess all around :-p. Plus when we reached the Alcatraz cruise, it was closed for the day and we had to buy tickets for the next day. We also found out that they had a ticket-booking online! Mistakes happen and lessons were learned :).

Things were a bit better after that - we caught a tram and had lunch at an Indian restaurant. Then walked around the Fisherman's wharf and Pier 39. A view of Alcatraz island from Fisherman's wharf..

And the famous sea-lions at Pier 39:

From there we again caught a tram to the Ghirardelli square..

I obviously insisted on going to the shop and we had a nice strawberry milkshake and a fabulous sundae :-D. It did compensate a lot for the morning's woes.

Our next stop was the San Francisco Cable car station.

Our plan was to take the cable car to the Crookedest street and back. But moods again got worsened as there were mile-long queues to catch a cable car. The wind felt like it had a mind of its own and was upto cause lots of misery to people around. Plus the cable cars were very very slow. La-di-da they are cable cars! :-D. Meanwhile atleast Snugli had a bit of fun - a roadside artist was playing some fast songs on his guitar and she had a nice time jumping and dancing to his tunes :-D.

Finally we caught the trolley and landed near the street. Here's the road on which the trolley travelled..

SFO, let it be known, has some crazy up and down streets. The only thought in my head was that I wish I could ride a cycle there, hehehe :-D. Here's the view from the top of the crookedest street (or Lombard street)..

We got down the street to the see it from below:

The curved street was created because its very steep to have a straight road down! And its not only tourists who use the road but also the people living in the adjacent houses who have garages in almost every corner of the street. We did take the usual snap :).

Climbing back up was a horrible horrible thing. Sri carried Snugli all the way (she absolutely refused to get down - would cry a lot if we put her down) and I had to carry the heavy bag. We were totally tired by the time we got to the top. Yeah it was that steep :-p.

After deliberating for sometime, we were still torn between going back to the hotel room and ending what hadn't been that good a day and going to the Golden gate. Though Snugli promptly fell asleep on me, we decided to tackle the Golden gate and be done with it :-p. We soon caught the cable car back and then climbed a bus to the Golden gate.

The Golden gate bridge was the longest suspension bridge when it was built. Again it was misty and freezing, as you can guess from our appearances :-p.

Poor Snugli's nose turned red due to the cold :-\.

Thank God, that was it for the day.

The next day, 9th June, our last day in California, we decided not to take any chances. We packed up everything, cleared out hotel room and went in the car to Pier 35 and parked it to head for our Alcatraz cruise. We certainly didn't want a repeat of the previous day :-p. As the boat ventured out, Alcatraz island and the surroundings were encased by mist and it was somehow very mystical (mist-ical :-D). The Golden gate had turned invisible due to all the mist :).

It was a short ride, but once on Alcatraz, we had to climb quite a bit to see the actual prison. Knowing Snugli would make a fuss again, she and I took a tram ride (offered only to people with needs) while Sri volunteered to walk. When we entered the prison we were provided with devices for an audio tour and I had my first view of prison cells (Sri had been there once before).

It was a bleak and depressing place :(. Yeah they did have a library facility and a big prison yard, but it somehow didn't make me feel better (I know they were bad people and they probably deserved it, yet I felt bad for them). Anyways we also saw the solitaries where my cute prisoners struck a pose :-D.

We also learnt how only a few people ever tried to escape the prison and now they were not successful. By this time we just wanted out and next saw the gardens (the crew and their families lived on the island) and the lighthouse there. By this time the mist had also cleared and we could see the Golden gate stretching across the bay.

The gardens were the best part obviously since my photography skills happen to gel well with those :-D.. The island is home to Snow Egret herons and we saw several of them...

Here's another shot from the garden that I'm proud of..

There were a lot of seagulls flying around too. We soon got down and climbed onto the boat to head back. The mist had completely cleared up by then and here's a view of the island from the boat, you can see the prison, the lighthouse and a bit of the gardens..

It was noon by then, so we had lunch and went across the Golden Gate bridge to see it from a different angle..

We also tried to go to another view point from which you can see the bridge from way above, but the route was closed due to some construction happening. We just stopped someplace before the construction to get this pic..

It was still about 4PM and our flight back was not till midnight. Since we had hours to spend we decided to drive to Napa (Point I). Napa valley is very famous for its vineyards. There are miles and miles of grape vines and though most of it is plain land, its somehow fascinating to see. Sadly by the time we got there, it had crossed 5:30PM and all the vineyards were closed for business. It'd have been nice to go on a tour, maybe some other time ;-). We did stop on the way though..

We didn't spend too much time as we had to get back, drive to the SFO airport and drop our rental car. On the way we did stop a while for a night view of the Golden gate :).

That was not it. After we reached the airport and our gate, it was chaos. The earlier plane hadn't yet left at the time our flight was supposed to leave and we literally panicked thinking its our flight. The board showed our flight while the earlier one was boarding. There were hoards of people waiting for both the flights leading to further confusion. Our flight to Detroit was delayed by an hour and in turn we missed our flight to Lexington from Detroit. Since it was a weekday, thankfully there was no rush and we were able to get tickets on the very next flight. Guess what the compensation for missing our flight was - a $6 coupon each for breakfast courtesy of the airline :-p. Well, flight delays have become such common things that they know they won't hear any complaints :-p.

Anyways, that was it :-D. We had a good time all in all, except a few minor mishaps :-D. There are a couple of places that we'd have loved to go to, but 5 days aren't enough to cover everything right? So hopefully there's another time (have to go to Yosemite). The major achievement for me (other than finally going to California :-D) was that this time I took about 90-95% of the snaps in complete Manual mode of my camera. And all 884 (!!) of them came out great :-D. Well, many of them were repeats because I was petrified that all snaps would be either underexposed or overexposed, so I didn't want to take any chances :-D. It feels good knowing that I am capable of what I set out to do :). So..

Photos taken in total - 884
Photos filtered and sent to friends/relatives- 254
Photos uploaded to Orkut/Facebook - 36
Photos on the 2 blog posts - 56
Self satisfaction - PRICELESS!!! :-D

Heading to Milwaukee today for July 4th fireworks, so see ya after I'm back :).

From L.A to San Francisco Part 1

2010-06-30T15:23:00.006-04:00

Oh man, this post is gonna be huggggggggggge. 5-day trip with full-time photography in manual mode to boot. Since I plan to put up lots of photos, I thought I'll divide this up into 2 parts (maybe more if the need arises :-D). So lets start off without too much ado.

I've mentioned it once or twice (or maybe a little bit more than that) how I want to see California. When we first came here, we thought that Sri would get a change sometime and we may move towards west coast. So we didn't really plan a trip then. Added to that Sri had already been there a couple of times before we got married, so lets say he wasn't too keen :-D. But since Sri is currently in a fixed position and we won't be moving anywhere anytime soon, we had to make a move sometime.

Sri told me along time ago that he had heard about Highway 1 in CA and how he had never been there. So we thought that if we ever go there, the plan would be to drive on the highway. While we were planning a trip and looking for return tickets to either Los Angeles or San Francisco, we realized that driving to and fro didn't make sense. Driving one way was okay, but driving back just to catch a flight was a waste of time. After this stroke of brilliance, Sri booked a one-way flight from here to Los Angeles and another one-way ticket from San Francisco to here. The plan was to drive from L.A to SFO and check out all that we could in between. The one-way tickets were a bit expensive but we'd save time and effort of driving some 5-7 hours.

The plan was put into action on 4th June 2010 Friday. We left Lexington at around 5:30 PM in the evening, caught a flight to Cincinnati and then from there to L.A. Due to the time difference of 3 hours, we got to L.A at 10PM local time. I had packed some phulkas for the night which we guLumed on the second flight :-D. Sri had told Snugli again and again all about the trip. So she was all excited. She knew where we were going, how we were going, who were all going, what we'd do there and recite the entire thing when asked to :-D. She didn't fuss at all on either of the planes and fell asleep on the 2nd one :). All we did after landing in L.A was to rent a car and head to our hotel.

On 5th June the plan was to explore Los Angeles. L.A is famous for only a couple of things - Disney world, Universal Studios, the Hollywood sign and the Hollywood Boulevard. We have been to Disney World and Universal Studios on our Orlando trip. We do want to go to Disney again for Snugli, but we can always go to Orlando again for that. So we decided to avoid those parts completely in L.A :).

Our first stop in L.A was the Griffith Observatory. It serves as the vista point to the Hollywood sign. You can't really see the sign up close, because the entire area is restricted. When we went there, the sign was covered with mist, so we could hardly see it. So we spent some time in and around the observatory.

The observatory was interesting - we didn't see any shows, but they had pretty good displays. An exceptional display was the actual periodic table with all the elements on display. There were also a Foucault pendulum (which shows the rotation of earth) and several telescopes. By the time we got out, the mist had cleared up a bit. Here's the Hollywood sign..

and here's us :).

2 more :-D.

Enough of the sign :-p. Next we went to the Hollywood Boulevard. The main point of interest was obviously the Hollywood walk of fame which is a set of sidewalks where many celebrities are immortalized by stars on the footpath.

We took a walk around for quite sometime and looked around. I really didn't know what to expect, but I somehow felt sad seeing all the names being trampled by everyone's feet. I mean what kind of a monument is that? It felt totally weird. But hey, it didn't stop me from taking photos :-D.

We stopped for a moment at the Kodak Theatre where Academy awards (Oscars) are organized annually.

Snugli met this guy in front of the Disney store and refused to let go ;-) :-D.

We moved around and saw many "stars", some of them being Charlie Chaplin, Arnold Schwarzenegger, John Travolta, Robin Williams, Walt Disney, Mickey Mouse, Kevin Spacey etc. We also went to the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in front of which are many celebrities' hand and footprints embedded into cement. But soon we decided to move on, have lunch and start on our drive. Here is the entire route map (click to enlarge)..

Pheeeeeew :-D. The plan that day was to drive to Solvang, then to Lompoc (our hotel for the night) and back to Santa Barbara for a sunset on the beach. On the way to Solvang there were a couple of nice vista points :).

Solvang (Point B on the route) is a small village in California which offers a "taste of Denmark". The architecture is all Danish with small houses, shops and several windmills :).

It felt like a place in fairy tales - very pretty, very sweet and quiet. We took a surrey carriage for rental and had a lot of fun cycling around.

Snugli had fun too, except she wanted to be the one steering and pedalling ;-). We also tasted some Danish pastries and chocolates :). In the evening we first went to Lompoc (Point C) to rest at the hotel for sometime and then to Santa Barbara city for a bout at the beach and dinner.

We stopped at the Arroyo Burro Beach and I was surprised at how chilly it was. There was a mist, so there was no sunset, plus there was a pretty strong wind blowing. We had thought of stepping into the water for a while, but it was too cold to do that.

Did stay for a while before we had dinner and then put ourselves to rest :). The only problem the entire day was that Snugli got some rashes, don't know from what - whether it was the bed, the exposure to the sun, allergy to the sunscreen or maybe some plant she touched on the way, no idea. Can't believe I forgot to mention that (this part is an addendum to the post). Shows how something that drives you crazy at one time doesn't even matter a few days later :-\. Well, I was scared that it'd spread, but thank God it didn't. But she was hell bent on itching it like crazy and we got this all-purpose Benadryl gel (it took all factors into consideration) and the rash was gone after we came back :-D.

The next day 6th June 2010, was the D-day for our drive on Scenic highway 1. The "scenic" part begins at Morro Bay (Point D) and supposed to end at Monterey (Point E). The special thing about this route is that you have the mighty Pacific ocean to one side and some mountainous landscape on the other. We were warned that there was no food or fuel available on most of the highway, so we packed a lunch of sandwiches to take with us (Thank Goodness that Snugli eats anything and everything these days :-D).

The beauty started as soon as we started :). There were innumerable vista points to stop at and it was all pretty breath-taking. Here's one of the vista points we stopped at..

There were hoards of squirrels and sea gulls at this particular place, so Snugli had a wonderful time trying to catch them :-D. The squirrels were especially unafraid to come near us (they were obviously used to people), probably looking for something to eat..

We stopped at another lovely place where we could see sea-lions lazing around..

This below one was the only active sea lion around, the rest of them were busy tanning themselves :-p.

We stopped for lunch at another quiet place and made a picnic out of it.

Stayed there for quite sometime, just enjoying the surroundings (well, one reason was also that Snugli took a long time to eat her sandwich :-p). I didn't really mind that as I was clicking away on my camera :-D.

After lunch we started driving again - the only disadvantages being the curvy roads and a fussy Snugli. We tried to stop often and we did have lots of opportunities, believe me :-D.

Flowers on the roadside ALWAYS call for some snaps :-D.

Though the mountains were bald, had no frills and were plain looking, the drive itself was worth it. But I couldn't help thinking that there are such wonderful routes even in India (I know of one such from Udupi to Murudeshwar) and they are not even advertised anywhere. Here is US everything is hyped and it sometimes is just not worth all the hullabaloo. Anyways, our next stop was at the Bixby bridge which is one of the oldest and longest bridges on Highway 1. I took the following snap from another vista point from which we could see the bridge..

And just like that we crossed the scenic part and were in Monterey.

We had our lodging for the night at Monterey, so we put up our stuff and then went to a beach to play in the ocean. It was pretty cold and again the mist made its presence known, so all in all playing on the beach was cold :-D. Not uncomfortable cold though. The only uncomfortable thing about it (which came later ;-) :-D), was the sand getting into places it shouldn't :-p, hehehee :)). Snugli really enjoyed it, so in turn Sri and I did too :). All of us were shivering when we got out and went back to our room for a hot shower :).

Last on the agenda for the day was the 17-mile drive. It is a scenic road famous for its mansions (a community of rich and famous people), its beaches and its golf-courses (one of them - the Pebble Beach golf course is hosting the US open golf tournament currently). It started off pretty good - as serene as a thick forest with mansions inbetween ;-). We stopped at one of the beaches for some time..

It was very private and beautiful :).

But after sometime it kinda got monotonous and wasn't that fun anymore. If you want to visit, be warned that there is a toll fee of $9.50, to enter the premises :-p. We subsequently had dinner at an Indian restaurant (it was called Ambrosia India cafe and it was awesome :-D) and called it a day..

Part 2 here..

The awareness..

2010-06-27T14:47:00.001-04:00

I had this weird/funny dream today that I just had to share.

I was being chased by these robotic creatures (courtesy of the movie "Transformers" that I watched yesterday) when I get to the top floor of this really hugggggge building. You can't even see anything below. From up there I throw my, wait for it, wait for it... iPhone to the unseen ground!!! Suddenly it was as if a switch flicked on between my subconscious and consciousness and I realized it was a dream (within the dream). My logical deduction-> "If this was real life I'd never be foolish enough to throw my iPhone from the top of a skyscraper" :-D. After just a second, that awareness passed and then I was running back below to save my iPhone ;-).

So there was a moment of sanity in a world of madness ;-) :-D, don't we all need that sometimes!

On the wings of time..

2010-06-20T14:07:00.006-04:00

I know its been a long time since my last post. Most of these days, time feels like a whirlwind, it goes so fast that I keep wondering what is happening to it. Actually thats not true, I do know how its going, but somehow get surprised every time that okay another week is over and I didn't do all that I wanted to do! I do have many thoughts to jot out and a huggggggggggge travel post coming up, but sometimes I wonder, is anyone even reading my blog? I know my family does and my close friends do, but I hardly get any comments (even if I do, I hardly respond :-p) and sometimes, only a few times mind you, I feel, why the heck am I even putting the effort? But I do know the answer to that. I write for myself, but even typing seems like a chore these days :-\. And the ramblings go on..

Forget that and lets get on with the updates that I have..

1) As I mentioned earlier, we went to California for a 5-day trip about a week back and had a pretty-wonderful-time-except-for-a-few-things :-D, so I'll be writing about it soon.

2) As for how the time goes, I am hopelessly addicted to Survivor (and Jeff Probst ;-) :-D) these days, so am watching the older seasons on a continuous marathon in the afternoons (about 15 seasons done, 5 more to go :-D). Plus have been reading up on Photography, Astronomy and Astrophotography, so lot of things going on in my head. Yeah, that reminds me, have to put up a post on each of those :-p, atleast something on photography which is still going on in full josh mode :-D (lots of experimenting and lot of success :-D) . So, my morning is gone in cooking and some days, taking Snugli to the library and my afternoons vanish in reading or Survivor ;-).

3) As for evenings, I go swimming twice a week, actually thrice including the one time we take Snugli swimming (yup, another post due). I took some lessons last November, re-learned a few things and learned a few new styles. Basically having a lot of fun :)). There is also my gardening which is going great (which means one more post), my gladioli are back and I have new Dahlia flowers coming up. I plan to plant some chrysanthemums soon, so have lots of work there. Flower photography is blooming to say the least ;-).

4) Have to mention the nights, don't I? ;-) :-D. Since about a week, have been trying to catch a glimpse of Comet McNaught (it appears only sometime pre-dawn, so got up 2 nights for that :-\). Its still not really visible to the naked eye, but I thought maybe my camera can "see" it. Well, I have been disappointed so far, but it is supposed to brighten up next week, only to fall below the horizon. Lets see if I can catch it before it falls :).

5) And then there is Snugli. She is fully into her terrible twos and believe me, they are as terrible as they can get! Since she's literally driving me up the walls (Oh God, I have so many posts!) and school doesn't start here until she's 4 years old (I think or maybe its 5), I have started to look for a daycare/pre-school for her (there are waiting lists for the damn things :-p). I don't really plan to send her for the entire day, but I need a break for atleast half-a-day, thrice a week. Right now still looking into it, hopefully something will be finalized by month end..

6) Also wanted to add that we saw Toy Story 3 yesterday and its awesome, awesome, awesome. Especially the last part about growing up and moving on brought tears to my eyes, reminding me so much of my past (our connection with our childhoods never goes away) and making me think about the future when our little ones will fly the nest :(. I think all the women were crying (I noticed atleast 2 other women, we sniffed and then grinned at each other, hehehe). Please don't miss it and if you haven't seen 1 or 2, then there is no better time than now ;-).

As you can see, things haven't been "boring" in the Deeps household :))). I really wish for the 100th time that I had a mind reader which would jot down posts for me. Is somebody listening?? Oh well, I'm here, I am writing, I am living life as I want it and thats all that counts..

The conversation 2

2010-06-04T08:10:00.003-04:00

She: That guy keeps staring at me!

A few seconds later..

He: Neighbour's envy, Owner's pride {grins}.

Men!!!

BTFYA 9 - Less than ideal :).

2010-06-03T14:20:00.005-04:00

The final post of the series :). I have to say I enjoyed doing this, though I am sad that it is ending at 9 posts (I don't like odd numbers - one of my quirks :-D). I wish I could have stretched it to one more, but don't want to write anything just for the sake of writing it :). But whatever I have written I am plenty happy with and thats whats important..

Five years ago, as a new bride, I wanted everything to be ideal. But more than everything else, I wanted myself to be ideal - the ideal wife, the ideal daughter-in-law and when the time would come, the ideal mother. I cannot speak for everyone, but I think most girls feel like this. We are always conditioned like that by our parents who are in turn pressured by the society as such. Anyways as I was saying, I wanted to follow all the rules in the non-existent book, so to say. I didn't want to be the rotten apple of the bunch :-D.

But things have a way of going in the opposite direction of how you want them to and isn't that the truth! Not that I'm the rotten apple :-D. I have always been basically a goody-two-shoes in a devil's clothing ;-). So sticking to my own "rules" wasn't the hardship I imagined it to be. But slowly I realized that the definition of "ideal" is different to different people. Though you may think that you have been ideal in doing certain things, there will always be people to contradict you and make you think otherwise. I can't really blame them, because their definition of "ideal" was most certainly something else. The more I struggled to be ideal, the more I realized that I was losing myself. Idealism is an illusion, created by a few unknown people, which only serves in making you miserable.

Moreover, it didn't matter whether I was ideal or not. It never does. People around me were never ideal (yup, according to me :-D) and the situations almost always weren't. For a relationship to work, the effort has to be from both sides, be it in any relationship. If the one side is exerting all the effort, never appreciated for the work put in, while the other side is still venting out frustrations without putting in any effort, then the relationship is doomed no matter what. My dad always says that "You try as hard as you can and don't expect the other person to do the same". For example his saying about a simple phone call is "You make a call to the elders out of respect (even if they don't call you) and you make a call to the younger ones because they don't know better" :-D. Very ideal, I know :-D. I have always tried and followed that (and its not only in the matter of phone calls), but still it gets to me sometimes that most people around me don't try as hard as I do. So how is it ideal in anyway?

For a relationship to work, both sides have to make adjustments. There has to be give and take. But as I said earlier, I felt that while making those changes, I was losing a part and later most of myself. If you are compromising everything, even your true self to make a situation ideal, then who is it ideal for? It certainly wasn't for me. I found myself over-thinking, over-emotional and upset with everything, with even myself. And I realized that sacrificing myself for the greater good is certainly not the thing for me :-D. I have made certain adjustments and they are a part of me now, but all in all, I am what I am. If you can't accept me the way I am, then there is nothing I can do about it (I cannot harm my true self for the so-called well-wishers' sake). One of the women quite close to me once said that she has adjusted and compromised everything all her life, first with her hubby and in-laws, then with her children, just to keep things moving smoothly. But I refuse to live like that. Its not that only I should have a say, but that I too should have a say in the decisions made (I hope you get what I mean). I refuse to blend into the background..

I am not having this epiphany after 5 years. This has been a day-to-day learning. But as I look back at my 5-year younger self, I find myself laughing at her, at the ideas and the ideals she had. If she had known what I know now, she could have avoided a lot of pain, suffering and anger :-D. And that my friends, is called life experience :).

Just a note to people who found this post too vague - I know its difficult to understand unless you are in my shoes. But I know many women are - compromising their true self for the betterment of the family and I hope they can relate to this..

And this post is the end to the Back-to-five-years ago series. I hope you enjoyed the series as much as I enjoyed being nostalgic :).

BTFYA 8 - South Africa and Mauritius

2010-05-31T15:07:00.006-04:00

Last but one post of the Back-to-five-years-ago series. This actually happened 5 years and 3 months ago in Feb 2005, but well, I couldn't really put up this in Feb, as things were beyond my control then. Well, better late than never :).

One of things you do after you get engaged and are about to get married is decide where to go on your honeymoon :-D. Well, my first choice was and is Switzerland (still haven't gotten that wish :-p), but any place in Europe is no fun at all in the month of Feb ;-). I hadn't been outside India except for a Nepal (Kathmandu and Pokhran) trip with my parents, so I said anything was fine. When Sri suggested South Africa, I have to admit I thought it strange. I mean I had never had SA in my have-to-see-in-my-lifetime-tick-mark list :-D. But well, as I found out more about it, the more I was excited :). So we thought we'll head to South Africa and then to Mauritius for a couple of days.

Not only that, when I met Sri I told him that I want to bungee jump once in my life. Well, his wedding gift to me was a bungee jumping chance in SA :-D. We decided that we'll go and then take it from there. We never told either set of parents that we were even considering anything like that :-D. The secrecy was fun and if we didn't jump, then they would never even know about it ;-).

We got married on Feb 4th, spent the next couple of days in Hyderabad (where we had another reception ceremony) and were back to Bangalore on 12th. We had the flight to Johannesburg the very next day on 13th.

I always say that you don't know a person until you have lived with him/her. So basically we learnt each others' quirks only on this trip and it was enlightening to say the least :-D. On the flight (I think it was 5 hours long), I woke up to see that Sri wasn't in his seat. After waiting for more than half an hour, I started getting worried thinking he maybe having some stomach problems. Then I get up and look back and guess what I found. My hubby found some empty seats and was sleeping quite comfortably :-D, hehehee :)). Yeah I did try to strangle his neck once he got up, just because he got me so worried ;-).

We landed in Johannesburg on the 14th of Feb and flew to Capetown from there. We took a walk around the hotel and we visited the Victoria and Alfred Waterfront at the Table Bay. The table bay faces the huge Table mountain and its simply a beautiful place. The waterfront was like any pier you see in US, but since I was seeing a pier for the first time, everything was fun. I think we had lunch at a Thai place, another first :). All in all we roamed around the place for quite a while. Another surprising thing then was that the sun didn't set till about 7:30 Pm which was a big deal for me than. I remember being so thrilled that the sun is high up in the sky at about 6 PM :-D.

The next day we went on a tour of Capetown and surroundings. Our first stop was the table mountain. The mountain is named so, because it has a level plateau (of about 3 km side to side) and has cliffs named Devil's peak and Lion's head. You can see 3 main things from the top - almost the entire Cape town (with the table bay), Robben island where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned for almost 27 years and Signal hill which acted like a lighthouse for many years there. The signal hill is famous for the noon gun (which is fired at precisely 12 in the noon).

We climbed on to a rope-way and got to the top. The weather was another plus point of SA. It was very pleasant even at the top and we spent a long time walking around and seeing the views all around.

After that we got down and went to the Cape point. We took the Flying Dutchman Funicular (an uphill railway) to an old lighthouse and then had to climb steep steps to get to a place where the Cape point could be seen. They even had markings in various directions showing how far it was to various places in the world from there (I remember New Delhi being one of the places, but I certainly don't remember the distance :-D).

From there we got down and moved a short distance to get to Cape of Good Hope. Unlike what many people think, the cape is not the Southern tip of Africa (we thought wrong too!), but it is the extreme southwestern tip of Africa. The cape point as well as the Cape of Good hope are both in the the extreme southwestern peninsula of Africa, while Cape Agulhas is the actual southernmost tip.

I felt pretty proud to have visited one of the most talked about places in history :). We went on to visit a penguins colony in Boulders beach and then had lunch there near the beach. Spent some time near the beach and just like that our tour of cape town was over :).

On 16th Feb, we rented and car and started driving (well, actually Sri rented and drove the car :-D). Our plan was to drive to Port Elizabeth and visit a couple of places on the way.

I had never been on a self-driving trip before and didn't really get the charm of it until we did this. The comfort of stopping anywhere you want and visit any place for how much ever time you want to is something else and somehow the trip has been the basis for all the driving trips we have gone on here in the US (hope to continue the same once we are back in India). We stopped for lunch at a place called Mossel Bay (Point B on the map) and spent some time at the beach there. Then drove to Oudtshoorn (Point C) where we'd stop for the night.

The hotel at Oudtshoorn was named La Plume and right opposite to it across the road was an ostrich farm. The big tall birds were majestic and they were oh so curious about the two of us (we were the only people lurking around). We knew that their kicks are pretty powerful and wondered whether the fences could actually stop them ;-). Still I wanted to pet them :-D. Well, I did get my wish the next day :-D.

Next day, 17th Feb early morning we headed to the Cango Caves. The caves were beautiful and we had loads of fun since we took the adventure tour of the cave.

The adventure tour was another extreme thing I have done in my life. It had climbing precarious steps, moving sideways in narrow spaces, crawling and sliding through natural rock openings. It was absolutely thrilling :-D. You can see the entire tour here on this page :-D.

We next went to Cango Ostrich farm, where I got to feed an ostrich :). The ostrich eggs are so strong that they can bear lots of weight on them (we both took turns to stand on a set of eggs!). Well, we could have also ridden an ostrich, but both of us said no to that (I wonder why now :-D).

We had a good time and then visited the Cango wildlife ranch which was right across the road from the farm. It was a pretty normal zoo except that we could pay and touch leopard cubs/tiger cubs if we wanted to. I really wanted to, but it was pretty expensive, so couldn't :-\. From there on we drove to our hotel in a place called Wilderness. The route from Oudtshoorn to Wilderness was on mountainous region, so it made for awesome views on the way.

We reached Wilderness in the evening and went to Knysna (point D) to take a sunset cruise at the bay there :). Knysna is pronounced "Nice na" which was apt for the place :-D.

We came back and stayed at Wilderness. Our hotel was right next to a beach and I remember going there in the dark, sitting on a couple of steps in light rain with Sri and feeling really blessed to be there :).

The next day was the D-day. We went to the Bloukrans bridge where a company called Face Adrenalin operates the world's third highest bungy jump (it was the world's highest when we went there - 216m). We didn't even know whether we'd do it until we went there. I remember seeing the bridge and muttering on the way to myself that I must be crazy :-D. We actually wanted to jump in tandem (harnessed together :-D), but sadly they had only solo jumps. We paid up and then there was no going back :-D.

I was the second person to jump off the bridge that particular morning, the first being a member of the operating team (Sri conveniently dumping the honour on me by saying "Ladies first" :-p). We were bound with harnesses while the team members told us how exactly the jump would happen. People have the tendency to hold their breaths and they told us that we have to try and breathe :-D. I remember being crazy scared all the time, I guess the expression on my face says it all :-D.

I still get goosebumps watching the video :-D. It has been the most amazing experience of my life so far. There is about 7 seconds of pure terror and when the rope (which is elastic) pulls you back, thats when you know you are alive and the adrenaline rush after that is huggggggge ;-). They pulled me up and I was jumping up and down :-D. Next was Sri's turn :).

I still tease him saying that he didn't actually jump, but the guys there pushed him :-D. Here's us all ecstatic :).

We didn't really know what to do with the adrenaline, so we immediately went to the Tsitsikamma National Park where we hiked it off :). We took the waterfall trail which is almost 3 km one way (so hiked for 5-6 km in total) and we had to literally climb rocks to reach the water fall. And it was beautiful. The water fall faces the ocean and it makes for a wonderful view. Here's me sitting in front of the ocean..

Sri was sitting facing me with the waterfall behind him, so you can imagine the scenery :).

Well, we went back to Wilderness for the night and next morning drove to Port Elizabeth. From there, we flew to Johannesburg and stayed the night there at a Casino (don't remember the name sadly :-D). Still don't know how or why it happened, but we were upgraded to one of the highest suites there :-D. And the suite was like a huge mansion. Man, some things you never forget :-D.

Next morning, 20th Feb,our 6-day SA trip came to an end as we flew to Mauritius. Somehow Mauritius felt like a letdown after SA, mainly because of the weather. It was very humid and sultry weather. Sounds nice ;-) :-D, but believe me, it was uncomfortable after being in such pleasant weather all over SA. We had a package tour for Mauritius which included stay in a hotel called Les Cocotiers which had a beach and a 3-day tour. The beaches there surprised me with the serene water and almost no waves. Its almost like the island is actually in a lake :).

The first day tour consisted of going to the Grand Baie (Grand Bay) which was a pier and had the typical attractions of a pier.

The tour had about 6 couples all Indian and all on their honeymoon :-D. Yeah it was a love fest alright :-D. From there we went to the Pamplemousses Garden, which is seen in most Indian movie songs :-D. We even saw trees planted by various Indian prime ministers and presidents there :-D.

And that was that for the day. The next day we went to several places. We saw Dutch ruins, a model ship making factory and a Lord Shiva temple. We also visited the Chamarel Waterfall..

And then went to a dormant volcano crater known as Trou aux Cerfs. Well it didn't look anything like a volcano :-D.

Supposedly this volcano could become active at any time within the next thousand years :-O.

Our next stop was the 7-coloured earth. This was fascinating - at first look it looked like a mud dump, but its actually volcanic sand reflecting off different shades of colours..

We do look tired, don't we? :). That was it for the day.

The next day was the pièce de résistance :-D. We were taken to this beautiful island called Île aux Cerfs (french meaning "deer") by boat. The island had beautiful blue clear water and white sands. We really enjoyed the water and the environment. Though it was crowded and there were no deer to be found, it was still pristine and lovely :). No photos though :(.

Well, the next 2 days we could do what we wanted, but we basically lounged at the hotel and relaxed. I wanted to go para-sailing and do another activity called undersea walking, but well, I twisted my ankle a bit when playing on the beach (it wasn't as bad as it sounds), so Sri absolutely refused the para-sailing idea :-D. Meanwhile we didn't have water shoes and the water in the deer island as well as our hotel had these sharp thorns (don't know what they were) and somehow Sri had these multiple thorns embedded into his foot. So he became a total baby about it and hence we couldn't go undersea walking either :-p. I spent one whole evening tending to the thorns in his foot :-p. Romantic, isn't it? :-D.

I have to admit, we did enjoy a couple of beautiful sunsets at the hotel beach :).

And then we returned to reality, hehehe :)). Back to Bangalore and to our lives together. But soon, we had to move to US and the initial years were something of a long honeymoon ;-).

I still remember how weird I used to feel when calling Sri my husband at that time - the word tasted so new and different :-D. And the phase certainly wasn't all fun - I had never been away from my parents so long, away from my country so long. There was also lot of initial adjustments to each other going on, so there were some weird phases around :-D. It was certainly a period of transition :). Also we did tell our parents about the bungy once we came back and got nicely scolded, hehehe :). I love telling people "We bungee-jumped on our honeymoon" purely for the shock value and the expressions on their faces, hehehe :))).

Writing this post has been more fun than I thought it would be. I had to research quite a bit because we don't have the itineraries anymore and we don't have photos of every place we went to. So I kept asking Sri, did we stay here or there. Did we go here first or there? :-D. Since Mauritius has a French influence, I didn't know the names of most places we went to :-D. With internet, its not impossible to find out stuff these days, thank God :). I loved reliving the memories and got all nostalgic. Has it really been 5 years already? And we have a toddler too! Time sure feels like a whirlwind sometimes :-\.

Well, I really wanted to write this post as this was a major part of our relationship. Once more post in the BTFYA series and I'm done. It should be up soon :).

New to Newport :).

2010-05-10T16:57:00.018-04:00

No excuses this time, will straightaway start on the post :-D. We went to the Newport aquarium on a weekend about two weeks back. We have known about it almost since the time I have been here in Lexington. The reason that we are visiting it only now is because personally I am not too fond of aquariums. I am of the belief that once you have seen one, you have seen them all :-p. But well, having Snugli to cater for (;-) :-D), we have to come up with different things for her to enjoy (a zoo visit is long overdue :-D). Since she always loves the "fishies" in the doctors' office (the only thing she loves about those :-D), we thought she'd enjoy a visit to the aquarium.

And she did :). The only problem we had with the entire visit was a slow irritating drizzling rain that lingered that entire day :-p. Well, aquariums are indoor environments, so I can't really complain about the rain now, can I? :-p.

What with my photography experimentation, I wasn't always with Sri and Snugli, but we had a good time whenever I was able to catch up with them :-D. Sri was saying that Snugli would go to a fish tank and call out to the fishes "Fishy baa illi" (Fishy, come here) and most fishes don't really take kindly to human presence, so they'd promptly run away :-D. We did touch a sting ray together :-D.

Then spent some nice time in front of a hugggggggggge fish tank :).

The aquarium even had a children play area which Snugli enjoyed.

Actually I think I enjoyed it more than she did, because they had a frogger machine :-D. I must have gone back to it some 10 times, hehehehe :).

My favourite part of the whole experience was being able to touch a shark (it was not a full-fledged shark, but I digress :-p) :). I had never touched neither a shark nor a sting ray before that :). Sri didn't want to get his hands fishy :-D, while Snugli tried her best, but couldn't reach any of the sharks (the pool was a bit deep, even though it doesn't look deep).

And that was that. As for my photography, I researched quite a bit about photography in aquariums, but didn't get any concrete settings for a correct photo. So I had to experiment quite a bit (Manual mode, Aperture (f2.7 - f3.5), Shutter speed (1/125 to 1/13), White balance (Tungsten, Fluorescent) and ISO (400)). Most sites suggested a tripod, so I carried it with me (yeah didn't forget the plate this time), but hardly used it as it wasn't easy to avoid the glass glare while using it. Moreover high ISO resulted in noisy photos, so had to use some image manipulation (noise reduction, brightness/contrast settings change) which I am not too fond of (its a necessary evil sometimes, but not always - I'll talk more about my views on it in some other post). With all that, I am not very happy with the photos, need to do more research :). Here are some photos I am okay with ;-) :).

Loved this red fella (the photo is a little blurry, I wish I could have taken a better one) :).

The aquarium also had a small aviary, so took this one of a parrot (forgot to change the ISO, so the noise has been reduced :-D)..

Jelly fish - have to mention this, the music there for the jelly fish section was so apt for the way they moved :).

This is my best of the series I think - its a variety of jelly fish (took it in super-macro mode flat against the aquarium glass)..

The next 2 snaps are movement photos (the background is blurry because of the movement and the subjects are harder to capture this way, so I'm proud of myself :-D) - first one of a shark..

And one of a penguin - this fella was hell bent on doing tricks in the water to please the crowd of children watching :).

Hope you enjoyed the show. Want to write a set of posts within this week (as I said, we have camping, zoo trips within May and a long much-awaited trip coming up in June, so my to-be-written-posts-quota will rise higher and higher if I am not done with some stuff soon :-\), but lets see how it goes :).

Taste the thunder :-D.

2010-04-26T14:28:00.019-04:00

Have been meaning to write a post for days. Have enough material to fill atleast about 10 posts and somehow am not able to make time to type one single post :-p. I still don't know where the time goes.

Anyways don't want to waste time (when I'm wondering where time goes :-p). We had been to the Thunder over Louisville event on April 17th and thats what this post will be about. The last time we went there was 3 years ago, before Snugli was born! When Snugli was born, we went to India so we couldn't go and last year it was raining and we had a birthday party to attend, so we chose the party over the event in rain :-D.

We had very fond memories of the event and thought Snugli would enjoy it. But there were some problems, a few of which were mistakes from our side.

1) Not enough warm wear:

We knew the temperatures were not that warm and we did have our jackets with us. And I did carry extra clothes for Snugli, but we didn't expect the wind chill that was there. The winds blew, blew, blew and blew some more. Half the time I could feel my fingers frozen on the camera shutter button :-p.

I'm realizing now that you haven't seen Snugli at all after her mushroom cut (which is so short that it can be called a boy cut) that I got done in India :-D.

2) Not enough portable toilets:

Snugli wanted to use the toilet almost as soon as we landed there and there were hardly 5 toilets for what seemed like a million people. So there was this huge half-an-hour-lasting queue. And after sometime, the toilets were obviously not upto the mark anymore :-p. Boy were we glad that she asked to go only once.

3) Not enough planes:

I have to admit we did go there an hour late (but we did that last time too). The additional thing was using the restroom and losing out on some more planes. But it felt like there were not as many planes as last time. Last time I remember helicopters doing stunts and I was thrilled by a stealth plane. There was more lingering then. This time lots of individual planes and pairs just flew over us and never came back for round two. I hardly have any photos :((.

As you can see, I did manage to take a couple of good ones :-D. This was the FA-18 hornet demo:

There were 2 new additions that I did like this time. The first was a JBS Offshore Racing Boat:

The next was the meijer skydiving team (didn't really see them jump, oh well :-p).

4) Cruise boats:

We sat in an area facing the river (where the fireworks happen) in between 2 cruise boats. We thought that they'd leave and go to the middle of the river when the fireworks would start. As you can guess, they didn't. They didn't matter that much for the air show, but almost all my fireworks photos have a boat mast to the side :-p. We did have the American flag plane and the 6 LIma Lima stunt planes before the fireworks (the same as last time and I have the photos in that post). And then there was the Bill Leff plane that shoots fireworks from its tails :).

4) Forgotten camera plate:

A major major mistake from my side. I have been shouting about how much I have been experimenting in photography, so my experimentation for this particular event was fireworks. So I researched on what settings would be best to photograph fireworks and made sure I had the camera (My canon S2IS with the memory card formatted and ready to go), 2 sets of batteries and the tripod. What I forgot to take with me was the camera plate that helps to fix the camera to the tripod! I feel sheepish even now thinking about it, but the lesson has to be learned sometime :-p.

What I did do finally was to balance the camera on the tripod and try and avoid the shake as much as possible. The photos have come out pretty okay for that (and the boat masts that I mentioned) and Sri tells me they are better than any I have taken in the past, so imagine how good they'll be with the tripod properly fixed and an unhindered view :-D. Here's the total view:

The following 3 I'm pretty proud of, since they somehow manage to capture the brilliance and the shimmer of the colours :).

Just wanted to add that the images haven't been edited in anyway (no manipulating, no cropping, nothing) and the exposure settings (for those who are interested) are Manual mode, Shutter speed (2s to 4s), Aperture (f8.0), Manual focus set to infinity, White balance set to daylight and ISO (50). Here are the last 2 :).

The fireworks was/is totally worth all the things we faced. I have a couple of videos of the fireworks too, but no time to upload :(. If you do get a chance to see this, don't miss it. The fireworks lasted for half an hour and was totally breath-taking. Snugli was clapping and cheering the entire time, so yeah despite everything, we did have fun, until we found the next mistake..

5) Level parking:

There's plenty of parking available for the event. But this time we parked in a building meant for parking in the 4th level! We absolutely didn't realize how big a mistake it'd be. Once the fireworks are over, everybody rushes to their cars and yup, usually there's a huggggggggggge traffic jam. Last time we were parked in a field, still by the time the traffic dispersed it was already 12 AM and we reached home at 1 AM. This time we were stuck on the 4th level for more than 1 hour! We had to wait till not only the streets cleared but also the 3 levels below us! Atleast Sri and Snugli managed to sleep for that hour (Snugli slept throughout from then onwards) while I was checking out my photos :-p. So by the time the traffic cleared and we reached home, it was 2 AM :-p.

Well, we did think of staying in a lodging facing the river, but the rooms were so damn expensive :-p. You have to either sacrifice the time or the money. This time it was time, lets try and make it money next time :-D.