Check List

Thanks for all your comments!

A follow up to Wish List...

A day with my dad where he gets to talk and I get to keep quiet for once

Check

Although it was a very emotional and tired dad who mostly gave me the "life is short, make sure you do this after my time... blah .. blah.." bit and I listened and then gave him a retaliatory lecture on why life is what happens when you play with grandkids at this age.. Yep Sujatha Ramesh was right on the previous comment. I do not stay quiet for long.

A day with my grandpa and grandma, put my head on her lap and sleep for a minute, even if only a minute, just like when I was a small kid, put my ear to grandpas tummy and listen to rumbling noises and giggle
Check

I could not say bye to my grandparents this time. It was too difficult. My grandpa keeps falling down into his imaginary chair and hurts himself one too many times a week. He has good days and bad days. Happened to catch this on one of his good days!

a trip to kapalishwar temple in mylapore with grandparents, share a goli soda with my brother, a paalgoa for each of us with a transluscent paper with the kapali temple on the paper in bright red, some kaara sevai from the ambika appalam depot, a stop at RUBY stores to buy a chandamama or champak, watch grandma bargain with the vegetable vendors

Check check check check .. . hmm lets see.. went with my mum and aunts, uncle , different people, different days and times (10AM, 4AM, 8 AM, 9AM) to see the "utsavam" where they carried the gods on various vahanams. You will get the complete Kabali Kovil Utsavam series over the weekend! here is a sample ..

a trip to the marina with my brother and sister and some soan papdi from the cute bell jar

No beach trip. Did buy some Soan Papdi from grand sweets for Jr. and the little one though

a jackie chan movie at alankar with my brother

Right now the only thing my brother is watching is angio scans on a CD. this has to wait for better times or just wait for time...

So do the next three things. Mom walks and stands enough in hospital waiting rooms. She was sooo tired after the trip to the utsavam on the "ther" day, it was hard to watch.

walking around the srigery mutt temple behind my mom

perform topaz blade surgery on my sisters dolls with my brother as assistant surgeon

watch my dad bargain with an autorickshaw driver for 15 minutes for a trip that might take him only ten

Dad does not have his bargaining voice back yet. He also cannot pull off that brick walk away from the auto with the "if you dont come down to my price, I am walking.." dialogue. My dad almost tangos with the auto driver.. it is a dance and the drivers do the sequence of negotiating in this weird way almost to humor themselves. This time every auto driver in the stand told me "enna saar.. appa-vukku attack vandhudche..avara romba miss pannarom saar!" and I went WTF? he is my appa, you guys talk as though he is yours! Guess the man touches peoples lives in ways I cannot understand.

fold clothes from the clothesline on the terrace and watch the kites

Check . No kites in April. fold clothes I did!

eat pori kadalai from Kapali kadalai Nilayam and savor it one rice grain at a time, and marvel at how some pori tastes a little bland, some a little salty and once in a while that single grain of arisi pori just tastes perfect!

Check. A full post on that later..

etc.

etc.

etc.

Some of these might come true soon in some form or other. The rest will be retreived from permanent memory, savored in otherwise sad times, and be neatly tucked back in, for the sights, sounds and smells of a time long gone are still in the head, with definition better than any blue ray disk can offer, better than any photo or video ever stored.

Life takes you places, but sometimes when it takes you to the same place, there is a certain magic to it!

At one point when the plane was half way across the pacific ocean, it felt like a "trishanku sorgam", neither here nor there, halfway from parents, halfway from kids.. too many words, too many emotions, tears that came from nowhere while sitting in the middle of a sea of people at 35000 feet, tears that could not be put in words or in the right context, because every thought as a parent came with an instant contradiction as a child and it all stopped after letting go of the whole thought process and just giving into the fact that not all questions have good answers. Not everything is right, or wrong.

Some decisions take you far physically, others take you far mentally. Have known people staying in the same house without as much as saying a word to each other for decades and people who care for each other very much living on opposite sides of the globe. All of us make choices and live with them and find brilliant ways to justify our day to day actions, from brushing or not brushing our teeth to deciding to have children to relocating to far off places.. and to everyone and nobodys bewilderment, life does go on.

All said and done, felt the magic. Still feeling it inside.

.

Zipping through

To Chennai and back in eight days is a zipping through experience.

Visiting a dad who is recovering, albeit with complications
Meeting grandpa who are not doing very well
Grapling with the same issue of being a "remote child" all over again and coming up with no tangible solutions.

On the bright side, after 17 years got to see Kapali Rock! He sure rocks during the festival season. Took videos and photos of the Kapaleeshwar temple Utsavam and showed it to dad, grandparents, other uncles and aunts who are not able to move around easily anymore. They were all happy that they got to see the festival, as though they were actually there.

On the brighter side, got to spend time with everyone in India and got the most important things on the wish list done.

Things will never be the same again, now that I have seen my dad the way he is. Have to learn to adjust to the fact that this is a new phase in life, for everyone in the family.

Jr. and the little one both had tears in their eyes when they came and hugged me today. They were struggling to find words to express how they missed me. They just wimpered like puppies after seeing me.

Hopefully, the development of a molecular transporter is a top priority on Obama's Act on science and technology. Or for that matter the little thingy that the Star Trek doc's hold in their hand and heal people.

Over the next few weeks, there will be posts, a lot of them, taking you to Mylapore and Mandaiveli... sometimes to 1979, sometimes to 1992, to 2009 and back to 1987. Same place, different time... kind of like the TV Series Lost, without the light flashes and the bad guys.

All that if things pan out in Chennai and all goes well.

Here is to growing old!

.

There is always a first time

At 36 years and pushing, decided to put on skis for the first time on saturday.

What could prompt such lunacy?

Well, it was one of those blanket IOU's that had been promised to the wife. After listening to the Ramayana since my first memories formed, it looks like I have somehow selectively forgotten the part where king Dasaratha gave such a blanket IOU to his wife and paid dearly for it with massive cardiac arrest when his wife exiled her stepson to the forest just before he was to be annointed the king!

One never learns!

After one of those bouts of work (yes, worked for almost two days straight two weekends ago) where yours truly completely neglected the wife, MIL and kids and played spoilsport with all of their weekend plans, I blurted out:

"I had to do this work for the last two days and I cannot even keep my eyes open. please let me sleep and will do anything, ANYTHING you ask me in the next two weekends!" and went on to sleep for 13 hours straight. (It was actually 12 hours, but the damn daylight savings made it look like 13!).

San has not forgotten the Ramayana. She used Kaikeyi as her mentor and fairy godmother and said "we have been cooped up in the house all weekend for the last few weeks because of your work. We are going to go out somewhere. I have always wanted to Ski!"

Note, there are priors when the wife has said the sentence "I would love to _________".

Once upon a time , approximately ten years ago, when we were just married, the wife would get a present every month on our wedding date. As it so happened, a few days before the fourth monthiversary, she said "I would love to play the piano." So on my way back from work, I decided to surprise her with a full size Yamaha keyboard from what was then Circuit City, something that AR Rahman would have wished his mom got him when he was a toddler!

I bring it home and yell "SURPRISE!" and setup the piano and say "ta da! you can play it now. Come on, show me how you play" and San replied "I don't know how to play the piano. I said I would love to play. Didn't say I know how to..." A slow motion replay of a Courtney Walsh delivery uprooting an Indian tail enders middle stump and ejecting it straight up a dozen or so feet played over and over again in my head. Those were days when Cricket was still followed in the house....

After that episode the wife has loved to do a lot of things without knowing how to. Skiing was one such thing, I inferred. In any case it was time to honor the IOU by banishing myself to the snow and after a long journey in peak traffic we reached the destined hotel on Friday night. It was facing the lake and there was such a wonderful view when we woke up. Some breakfast later, we were on our way to Donner Ski resort on a cloudy saturday morning.

The entire family took turns skiing. Jr. and the little one went first. They did a lot better than the adults, considering they were fearless! The parents did not fare so well. Daddy took the brunt of the falling and came back sore. Unable to support his body weight equally on the van seat, he drove back the entire way like a tilted mannequin.

The first time on skis was not easy, but, yes.. there is a but, I liked it. I might actually go back someday and try it again! Somehow the few seconds of balance on the skis outweighed the slips and falls.

There might actually be a second time!

.

Olympic National Park - day trip from Seattle

The last day of 2008 was spent in Olympic National Park.

Knowing that there was 5 inches of snow expected that day at the park and that there was already 51 inches of snow piled up in most places, it was a risky decision to go. We have made five to six trips to Seattle since 2001 (started way before the BIL became a Softee) and we have driven around this park only once from Port Angeles to Seattle.

This time we wanted to see Rialto beach and Crescent lake. So we started off with hopes that the main road through the park would be ploughed and it was!

Considering it is a day trip, we used the Edmunds to Kingston ferry to cross over and then drove through cute places like Port Gamble, Discovery bay, Sequim and Port Angeles into the park and past an incredibly beautiful place called Piedmont.

We drove through rapidly changing weather, snow, then slush, rain, followed by clear sun, then fog to end up in Rialto beach. The temperature was a warm 33 F (but with wind chill it was 27 F) and the kids and some adults could not handle the winds at the beach.

The group spent 20 minutes there for a quick photo shoot and turned back just in time to beat a sudden spurt of rain. On our way back we did stop at Crescent lake to play in the snow at the edge of the "moment of time" trail. There was this beautiful house in the background and lots of fresh snow.

This is the first place where you see a mountain with snow and five minutes later you are on the other side at a beach!

Little one playing in snow for the first time at an age where she can understand what is going on. At first she was puzzled by the strange white stuff falling from the sky which instantly disappeared when she touched it.. after a few minutes she was thrilled with the possibilities of this new material..

There were snowfights, pictures, smiling faces and all round happiness! That made the trip worth the trouble.

Here are the stitch shots...

Had to wade through 3 1/2 feet of snow across a small bridge to get this shot.

A slice of heaven!

The next two shots were taken with 16 to 21 pictures. Fast moving waves and a fine mist in the air were challenges. (a tip for other stitch enthusiasts : get a flower hood and shoot with ISO1600. I did not have a hood on because it was low light conditions. there are pros and cons of not having a hood. you get more light in but the boundaries of the adjacent shots are visible. Maybe there is software that can correct for that?!)

The ones at Rialto beach were the most difficult because my fingers were numb from the cold and wasn't even sure if I hit the button or not! My appreciation for nature photographers went up several notches after this trip..

All the roads from the highway into various view points and attractions like Hurricane ridge, the Ho rain forest , Sol Duc, hot springs etc. were closed for snow or fallen trees.

That means, another trip to this place is due, preferably sometime when it has just started snowing and the roads are still navigable! Sunset at Rialto beach should be amazing, and we hope to see that on our next trip.

The cottages at the lake front looked very inviting. Someday, someday assuming the Venn diagram for "this body still has some strength left to press on a gas pedal" and "there is no obligation to be in this rat race" has an intersection, Sundar and Sangeetha will be at that cottage and spend a long time there watching the snow fall while sipping tea on the lakefront!

Until then, it is back to school time!

.

Future of Flight - day trip from Seattle

Boeing has a museum of sorts and a tour of their assembly line in Mukilteo, Washington.

It was impressive, to say the least. But we constantly learn that technology and grandeur alone are not enough to carry the show.

First the impressive stuff.

They had the Rolls Royce Trent engine on display. This puppy is supposed to be the latest and greatest to power the 787 (yes, we saw three being built on their assembly line and one near completion) but the guide did tell us that everyone is going for the more proven GE engines!

If you are a materials engineer who did work on composites and you are in the high tech industry, this is as impressive as it gets to watching materials meet mechanics with a whole bunch of electronics thrown in, and we are not even talking about those cool aerodynamic wing tip designers !!!

They had sections of the plane on display, and an evolutionary history of the 7x7 series we are so familiar with today, in a self tour bay.

Let us say that the new 787 is a smaller plane than the 777 but is more spacious and fuel efficient and can go from Vancouver to Sydney non-stop! How? How? How?

Well, they switched from Aluminum to Composites for the entire body, a thing that was the holy grail of materials scientists for over 25 years! You see, these composite structures cannot be welded that easily and cannot be reformed or reshaped either. So you have to get it right the first time and we all know how difficult that can be!

There is also a lot of ergonomic improvements. The whole cabin area looks streched in x and shrunk in y (might be a problem for tall folks, but my guess is finally Boeing and its customers have figured out that the average person is 5 foot 5 inches and it makes sense to go wider and shorter).

They had a nice display with the cockpit. Kind of cramped and your head just spins after seeing all those dials and knobs and makes you realize why the "driver" (Jr. slang for pilot) is so important.

There were no cellphones, cameras, anything electronic allowed on the factory tour. So no pictures of the half built planes I guess.. Also the release date of the completed 787 is a closely kept secret. All we know is the first plane goes to All Nippon Airlines and is having technical difficulties!

Now, for the comment earlier about not everything being perfect. Boeing does not understand the concept of customer service (being one of two companies that makes such monster planes, probably never had to understand the concept!)

We asked for six tickets for a tour and they gave us 3 each for two different tours and did not bother to mention that they split our group! So our subsequent plans got all messed up and they had a big issue with accepting the fact that they screwed up!

That episode apart, the tour guide was extremely nice and the rest of the tour was uneventful.

Expensive but if you are a high tech or flying enthusiast, a must see if you go to the Seattle area!

.