Growing up fast..

The camera has been out for 5 days this year. That means photographs of the kids or family are few and far between.

Got a rare chance earlier this month to take a few pictures of Jr. in the backyard just before she was going to her dance class.  

She is already a handful and is a deadly cross between two of my favorite women.. My wife and my sister. If she doesn't do something that reminds me of one, she does remind me of the other. 

Jr. is already planning to take over mom's closet and shoe rack, given she is now the same size. I just sit back and watch the fun.

Yesterday we were talking about hairstyles. When I told Jr. that I might think about paying for her to get "highlights" in her hair, San jumped in and said "too early. I didn't get highlights till college" or some such thing.

Jr.'s response?

Wow. You actually had highlights. It is good to know that my mom used to be cool! 

I had no words to respond to that. San had some choice things to say which are unprintable. 

We have officially entered unchartered territory!

When the hairline receedeth

A clump of hair was caught in the hood of the jacket after coming back from one of those deep freeze long haul flights. Turns out the hair that is already clinging on for dear life is easily uprooted, much like the stumps after a batsman misses a Malinga yorker. 

Unfortunately, I cannot come up with an analogy for the gray hair. 

So there were two choices.. start to dye the hair and comb what is left acros the head or get rid of it.

It was an easy decision. Nothing says "Do I look like I give a $hit" like a Tibetian Monk look. 

Jr. also decided to join in the haircut experience with me. So we took some prefies and postfies.

Looks like I have aged 2 years in the first half of 2015. Now it feels like some huge burden has been removed!

Jr. looks a lot younger than she is. At first she was complaining and all teary eyed because of her "new look". Then she realized it is easier to manage this hair and it does look cute and was all smiles. 

They are all getting used to my new look though.

On the plus side, my smile is widening now with the hairline. So we are all good!

Infrastucture

One thing I have recently cherished is trips on the Maglev (Magnetic Levitation) trains in Asia. On a given day they do 300 km/hr speeds on the steady stretch and on a good day 420 km/hr. Was told that this is not the top speed and it goes higher on other days. 

The recent record in Japan is 600 km/hr! 

This was going to be a long post on "why can't we do this in the US of A?" The country that built the Hoover dam cannot build a single high speed rail line? at least for a "we can also do this" reason?

Then realized that the answer was simple. Our politicians are inept. Hoover dam came about because of some clever interstate deal making by visionary politicians. Today the country is so polarized that bullet trains have something or other to do with abortions, gay marriage and desert salamanders. 

We live in a funny world. I am glad that at least I got to ride in a train like that in this lifetime. Going to take my kids on one of these trips and show them that the outside world is not necessarily what the local news media portrays it to be! 

The best education we can give our kids is to take them around the world and let them experience firsthand what is going on in other parts of the world, where it is safe to take them. 

Like I said on FB before, have train envy now!