Jr. learned that lesson over the weekend when she asked me to videotape her baking for a school assignment. Given she wanted a "high quality" video, I used the 5D for the video shoot while being worried that it had a focus issue. Luckily shot it with the 70-200 mm lens which seemed to work fine.
The only mistake she made was in picking me to do the video. I stressed her out with a lecture on the value of money, trying to be perfect, not waste things, be fast etc. Pretty much micromanaged the thing and lectured her. It is not easy to work with me or work for me.. or live with me for that matter. So while watching this video I realized that I owe my wife, kids, friends and colleagues and especially my boss an apology for being so pushy and demanding and being obsessive compulsive in a lot of ways. The only people who are immune to this influence are my yoga teachers and yoga buddies.
At the end of it, the cookies came out very tasty. The little one helped big time in being moral support for Jr. as well as coming in and providing her expertise in fixing mistakes during the baking process.
After a late, heavy and amazing lunch, we went shopping for clothes. There is a street in Amritsar where women can pick cloth, get measurements done for a "patiala" and get it delivered in 6 hours. This information should have been restricted from the ladies in our Van. Our tour guide/ driver who had to that point secured an A+ brought down his grade to a C by just disclosing this information and volunteering to drive there. The FIL and me knew what that meant and gave ourselves a nod "this guy's grade is coming down fast in the finals"!
So there we were Patiala shopping and after giving our hotel address, we decided it was time to get some rest in the hotel. There were two more places to visit. A rock garden and Sadda Pind, a cultural village that gave us a sneak peak of Punjabi village living (we visited a similar place in Rajastan called Choki Dhani three years ago and had some idea what to expect). We decided to skip the rock garden and go to Sadda Pind.
It started raining on the way back to the hotel. By the time we were ready to leave, it was raining like crazy. We called the driver and he said "why don't we drive there anyways? the rain comes and goes. you might get lucky. worse case come back and eat in hotel". We were glad that we took his advice and went to Sadda Pind. A few mintues after we reached there, it was not even a drizzle and the skies cleared. We had an amazing time at this place. There was something for everyone!
Here are some pictures.
as you can tell from the photos, Jr. took the "I am going to try being a Punjabi girl for 3 hours" very seriously and posed for all the pictures and tried every activity available. Then there was an all you can eat dinner that was part of the ticket in a nice closed restaurant. The food was "heavy" and the roti's while not as buttery as the dhaba's earlier, were still thick....
Happened to catch Jr. eating and immediately got flashbacks from years ago. While editing photos for this blog post, got the deja(deja vu)vu's and found the old picture from this post for a comparison.. you can see not much has changed!
and finally a video that captures more of the activities. There were a lot more things to do and see, but it was already 9 PM and we had to rush back to the hotel.. we had an early morning flight to catch and more importantly.. the Patialas would be arriving!
Amritsar is cute. It is a great place to do this "trip within a trip" and you can pretty much cover everything in two days provided you have a good plan and are ready to walk a lot. The food is simply amazing and you come out happier than you went in! If you put on some weight, there is always the Patiala suits that can do some packaging magic to make Photoshop obsolete!
What more can you ask?
Strongly recommended as a vacation spot!
I have finally managed to finish blogging this part of the trip. Have two more posts to write about the India trip itself that are still in "draft". That does not seem to be a daunting task anymore!
Jr. is in India. The first thing she requests from me after reaching there? Daddy, can you tell me how you make ghee fry ?
She meant noodles and she knew I understood her request without mentioning noodles!
Was going to ask her Chitti to make it for her. They say kids will go crave for foods when they go to college.
Mine is in India and gets to eat home cooked food from my sister in law and mom and still craves ghee fried noodles. I have done something right! (or wrong if you ask all the women in either side of the phone conversation)
So here is a videoblog.
We use Maggi noodles in the house, lead or otherwise. If lead poisoning from Maggi is happening to anyone, yours truly should be hit, having eaten Maggi at least twice a week for a good 20 years. Many patents, papers, presentations later, not to mention a moderately successful stint as hubby and daddy over the same time frame, one can conclude that the brain is still functioning after all that Maggi! However, I dont use the masala packet that comes with Maggi and I always put Peas, carrots and Potato in the noodles. Potato is a questionable "Veggie" in our household, but it is one by my definition (for that matter, Maggi is questionable "food" in our household).
Hope the kids watch this years from now and realize that the best ingredient in the noodles was not the ghee but daddy's love.. okay.. that is asking for too much.
It is Ghee! You can make anything taste better with some Ghee!
