When you change the way you look at things..

Wrote this many years ago. Still having the same thought process.

We will go to the local "Memorial Park" in Cupertino and say a silent thank you to the folks who let us have the life we do by sacrificing their lives. We also went to the Livermore temple and said a prayer for all those souls to rest in peace. All of those folks gave their lives to fight for the USA, just to ensure "our way of living" is secure, but as civilians, shouldn't we all think the other way around?

Maybe we shouldn't have to be in this many wars and have our servicemen put in harms way for no reason? Can we reduce the number of casualties in our armed forces, if we change our habits for the betterment of the US and the world? Maybe consume less gas, waste less water and food, even use less plastic packaging, electing the right politicians, disconnecting the war mongering machinery that creates more conficts to ensure arms suppliers continue to make a profit at the expense of the world, etc. etc. every choice we make every minute today seems to make it worse for our armed forces! 

In true American tradition, we cut down a bunch of 50 year old oak trees, put a road through it and call it "Oak tree road", kill every bear and dry out the local creek and call it "Bear Creek road", butcher every native in the area and name the roads after their tribe.

Along the same lines, we send a bunch of kids to war in far off lands to die on false pretexts and erect memorials in their name. 

Yes, the cynic in me is at a 100% and the irony meter has maxed out, but isn't that what is going on even today?

We should think about the consequences of our actions and see what we can do to change them. I give up most times, because the changes we want simply don't seem possible,  especially when you realize that you are fighting big money, and the only way to fight money is with more money!

In any case, irrespective of our choices and where we are, where we are going to end up in as a country, the dedication of our servicemen is something we should all be grateful for.

This year, we are not traveling for Memorial day.

One good thing about having a blog is you can see where we have gone for this weekend over time.. In the last 10 years we have visited so many different places (we could have a similar list for 4th of July, Labor day or Thanksgiving and Christmas) 

2005 - India Trip for Grandparents wedding wows..

2006 - Disneyland, Seaworld with San's grandparents

2007 - Yellowstone National Park

2008 - Mt. Shasta, Lassen National Park

2009 - Menocino, Fort Bragg

2010 - Monterey Bay Aquarium

2011 - Palm Springs 

2012 - Stayed home, went to Great Mall and Cherry picking in Brentwood

2013 - Denali National Park

2014 - Lassen National park - a rerun

When you set the travel bar at this level, there is an expectation to go somewhere, anywhere! This year, I am just too tired. Simply do not want to see an airport or sit on an airplane seat. Just happy to be at home, eat, sleep and finish off some chores at home. At least that was the plan when I wrote this post on Saturday morning and forgot to "post".

I did manage to clean the Aquarium which was long overdue. Then I got the flu on Saturday night. The last 72 hours has been very painful. Travel get sick. Don't travel, still get sick.. So per San and the kids, might as well travel and be sick.

Sometimes a three day weekend is not enough just to get to a sense of normal! The kids think given I got sick, it is normal. They can be cruel sometimes with their jokes.

To think that I am complaining about a 3 day weekend not being enough when our troops don't get to see their families for years at a stretch is maxing out the irony meter again.

Here's to the guys who defend our "freedom". That freedom should be freedom of speech, expression, social values, religion, etc.. not freedom to be irresponsible! 

Life without Maggi

Maggi is an inherent part of our diet right now! The Nestle made noodles are a favorite evening snack for kids at least once a week and also a dinner option for daddy and the kids at least once a week! 

Daddy is the Maggi expert and can make it in many different ways with any combination of vegetables, as a soup, just with enough water or cook it so that the "noodles don't stick to each other", depending on what the kids feel like on any given day.

When we come home after any all day outings, dinner is always Maggi, as it can be done by the time kids go take a shower. 

So it is a rude shock to see headline news that Maggi has lead and a lot more MSG in it than it is supposed to. Given Nestle is an international brand, the expectation was always that there will be "some" quality control. 

One good thing I do is to not use the Masala packet that comes with the noodles. Instead I use a combination of :

Salt + Sambar powder (made in India with my Grandma or mom's recipe) + turmeric powder + a small pinch of asafoedita (kids like it, I skip it)

and we save the masala packets. Think I have posted on this earlier as well. 

Given all the Maggi consumption, we have a drawer in the kitchen just dedicated to noodles and masala. Today I decided to go clean out the Maggi drawer and this is what I saw..

poured it on the ground and counted the packets to clear it out..

That was 670 packets of Maggi Tastemaker masala! This is just from Jan of this year. 

Going by some crude math, we would have possibly injested enough lead to make us brain dead for the next seven generations if the reports are true!

Then again, we do not know how much of the stuff is in the noodles. Will watch the reports. Maybe the New Jersey Nestle that imports it from India will do some spot checks?

It is also true that noodles (be it Maggi or Ramen) have a lot of wax in it.. so I do boil the noodles to remove the wax on occasion or dry roast it to get rid of the wax before using the noodles. 

Given the data, we are not an occasional noodle family! So we should take this seriously. In the meantime, we are going back to adai, dosai, kunukku for "tiffin" where possible.

Responsibility 101

Jr. went to Great America for a day to perform as part of her school band. They were done by 11AM and the rest of the day was play time till the school bus dropped them back at 7:30 PM. She "termited" us (kept pressuring us till we gave in) to pay 60 dollars for this outing! 

Around noon, something falls into her eye. She tries cleaning it with water and no luck. Given a choice between calling us ASAP and telling us she has something in her eye, or continuing to go on rides with her classmates and attempting 6 more washing eye routines all with no success, she choose the latter. 

To top things off, she develops light sensitivity and to solve that problem, buys herself a dark 5$ sunglass of poor quality that makes it worse if anything. When she stepped down from that school bus all teary eyed and in dark sunglasses, our first thought was "did someone abuse our daughter?". Once we got the full story and saw how bad her eye was, we knew how the rest of the evening was going to go..

Spent the rest of our evening in ER, mostly waiting. Finally when our turn came, they put a numbing drops into her eye, put a dye in there, looked at it under a powerful scope, found the thing under her eyelid and pulled it out. By the time though, the damage was done and the white of her eye was bloodied. 

So we came home with antibiotic ointments and a moping Jr. 

This morning I was talking to my mother on the phone and told her about the experience while Jr. was listening in. Then I mentioned that "if she had called us as soon as it happened we could have solved this earlier, with a lot less drama and for 20$ copay instead of 250$ emergency visit". 

Jr. was upset over this. She tells me "it is my eyes we are talking about! you are upset over 250$ vs. 20$?"

That kind of pushed me over the edge because I don't think she understands how difficult it is to make 250$ vs. 20$.  The fact that she is my number one concern doesn't change. The fact that I bring this up is to worry about a daughter who doesn't undertand the value of money. 

Then she came up with "it is not like you didn't have accidents when you were my age! Paati(grandma) told me all the stories about how you got hurt so many times doing stupid things!".. I muttered something to the effect of "good that she doesn't have a FB account or I will not be able to have any conversation with my kids"

True. True. Very true. I almost ruined our Poonal ceremony by falling off a parapet wall and getting stitches on the back of my head and that is just at the top of a long list of things. To my credit, I promptly told my parents or grand parents or any nearby relative of my stupidity, so they could take timely action!

It is not easy to have Responsibility 101 conversations with kids, given they know everything already! Wonder why a kid smart enough to argue with me on technicalities is not making the right choice when it concerns her own eye?!

The good news is that she is doing fine now and her eyes have cleared out. Good enough to go to school tomorrow. I am also happy  that this happened while I was in town or it would have been very difficult for San to handle on her own!

For my part, I did apologize to Jr. if I sounded like the money was more important than her eyes. For her part, she has promised to be more responsible and call us ASAP when it comes to any medical emergencies! 

Lets see how the promises go..