Go kart racing

When we are local and want to engage the kids.. the usual drive through Vasona park or playing indoors inside some Jungle type place are not options anymore.. we now have a "tween" and a "teen"!

They had tried this racing once in summer and gave it rave reviews. So we went again to give it a shot. It is 35$ for two races of 10 minutes each (14 laps where the kids average 35-40 seconds a lap) and a 30 minute break between the races to let other folks go. They treat the first race as a warm up!

 The little one likes to compete while Jr. was mostly happy going at her own pace and having fun.

They both yelled at me afterwads because I was cheering them from the side on the long leg where they come straight at me. Apparently it was not a good idea to take their eyes off the track to look at "cheerleader daddy" as it made it difficult for them to turn. How was I to know?! My job was to watch and cheer. Maybe next time I will do a race to figure this out. 

Strongly recommend this if you have teens or tweens bored out of their wits and it is cold and raining outside, when the rest of their friends are instagramming picutures from warm and sunny beaches! 

Another first

It has been a busy November with business and personal travel and the first two weeks of December seem to have flown by as well. 

Now that the rains in Chennai have stopped and things are returning to normal slowly, that is weighing less on our mind. That didn't mean things came to a halt here in Cupertino. It has been an interesting week here. 

The little one has been learning the violin recently. However, she is very shy and reluctant to go on stage. Her message to us has been "I want to learn because I like it. Not because I want to perform. So if you force me to go on stage, I will quit". 

With a lot of encouragement from her teacher and us, she participated in the annual recital.

The best part of this for me was to watch her recover even if she made a mistake and smile through the whole thing. Now that she knows she can do it, she seems to be more confident. 

Hopefully this brings out the Violinst 2.0 in her! Given that she saw the other kids from the school perform for the first time, she is definitey inspired to practice more. 

Funny thing is that Jr. now wants to learn violin too and has been making a stong case on why she should learn Violin asap. We are now mulling that over.. 

The girl with the golden sax

This year, Jr. decided to play the alto saxophone at Golus instead of singing songs. She practiced the weekend before and played three or four small pieces.

She looked majestic in her half sari and the saxophone matched her dress like another jewel!

Jr. has been teaching herself these pieces. Not that confident yet on her ability to play south Indian classical music. We are all encouraging her to practice more. This year her teacher has promised to help her with understanding the complex notation as well as making it easy to play these pieces. Next year, she might play the entire songs.. 

Here is a small clip from this years Golu at a friends place..

She made us proud just for trying!