Surprise surprise

A conversation with Jr. just after coming home

Jr. : Daddy, do you like surprises?

Me : No!

Jr. : Why?

Me : I keep telling people at work "don't want any surprises" and somehow over the years I have come to not like surprises as a person. Why are you asking?

Jr. : No reason!

Me: Let me guess. You want to give me a surprise birthday party?

Jr. : (grins sheepishly) Yes. Thought we could organize a surprise 40th birthday party for you just like Suja aunty did for Vijay uncle.

Me: Don't think I will like that.

Jr. : In that case I think our only other option is to buy you some new lens for your camera and take you to some national park and watch you take photographs of non living things even though we don't like to walk around the national park!

Me : I love you lots. You have at least made an effort to understand your daddy. Don't think your mom will ever say those words that you just did!

So there you have it!

Jr. knows what it takes to make me happy. Walking around national parks taking pictures of "non living things" and them being around me although they hate it. That last part kind of hurt my feelings because all along I thought they all loved walking with me.. Apparently not!

Maybe we will spend a day as a family and they can ship me off to some Park on my own to take pictures?!

and yes.. WILL accept new lenses..

Rites of passage

If you are from Vanatu and you go through a rite of passage odds are there is a vine tied to your feet and you are going to take a 80 foot fall..

However, if you are born to a geek the rite of passage might simply be the handing of a Scientific Calculator from your dad..

Yes! My daughter is now a fifth grader and today was her first day of school. The back to school list said "Scientific Calculator" and she insisted on buying one at target as part of the "back to school" shopping ritual last week.

"Naansense!" said daddy in his typical Tamil accent. We shall have a small ritual at home where Jr. will get the keys to geekdom!

Problem was the calculator which was dad's first (the family's first for that matter) was a 1989 vintage Casio and it has been sleeping in dad's collection of memorabilia in a shoebox for the last 12 or so years.

Today the old "Novino" batteries purchased someplace in Varanasi in early nineties was replaced with some Kirkland batteries from Costco and the thing powered up!

Hat's off to Casio for making something this good. There was no battery leak in the battery compartment either! So a big thanks to Novino also for making some amazing batteries!

Jr. was happy that she gets to use the same calculator as daddy! Daddy is so proud that Jr. is using a Scientific calculator in fifth grade when he used it for his freshman year in college!

It is a win-win!

Summer success

Jr. has been busy with a nintendo DS. In spite of our pushing her to do something else to occupy her time from a learning perspective she has been busy with the DS.

The only things she has done to make a pleading daddy happy are

Read the first Harry Potter book. She is halfway through the book and seems to enjoy it so far. How a kid who loved books till second grade suddenly became averse to books is beyond us. It is not like she reads iBooks and therefore is averse to paperbacks. She just doesn't like to pick up a book. Have been trying real hard to change that and hopefully Rowling will do the trick for us.

Play the Alto Sax with coaching!

She has improved a lot in the last month and has impressed most importantly, herself! She can see that she is improving and that keeps her going.

Hope is that she will keep going and learn the saxophone to an extent where she can play a geetham on the alto sax by Navarathri. At least that was the goal set for her by daddy.

Told her that we will play a duet with Guitar and Saxophone before the Golu season begins. The little one who is now pining to learn some instrument or other overnight has volunteered to video tape said duet.

Time will tell.. through this blog of course!