Duck tour, Museum of Science, Cape cod and the Plymouth Plantation

On our second day of the Boston trip, we visited one place. The Boston Museum of Science. It probably needs a few days to visit this thingy in all its vastness but we did what we could. We started the day with a "duck tour" of Boston that leaves from the Museum Parking lot.

It was a little over an hour of seeing the old Boston landmarks in and around the Museum from the amphibious vehicle (most notably city hall, trinity church and the shopping district) followed by a ride on the Charles river for 30 minutes. Given we went early in the morning, it was a nice ride on land and water. The kids got to sit at the wheel and drive the duck! It was a highlight for them..

The museum is similar to the California Academy of Sciences, with differnt wings for different areas. The big difference was the Pixar area. The kids and adults just loved this exhibit. 

The monster fans in our group were thrilled! 

There were also many exploratory areas and the kids actually learned a lot in one day. There were chicks hatching from eggs in front of us, things to measure on our body from heart rate to the arch of our feet! You could send all the data from your experiments to a site using your arm bracelet tag. It was impressive!

The little one seems to be all into science. I know things change over time.. but hoping this one keeps the light in her eyes alive for science.  She raised her hand to be volunteer for every experiment and enjoyed it.

Here she is moving the starry nights painting by shaking her hands on a setup that used Kinect to bring motion to the famous painting.. 

The kids had to use rubber bands on a frame with a cloth to create a surface that would bounce a ball the highest.. it had a testing Jig to test the height of the bouncing ball. They had stats from every bounce by day, by week with records on a computer. The kids were all set to beat the record but they lost. It was a great experience for them to see how their theories worked or not when applied in practice.

Then, there was the bed of nails, lightning bolts, animal and bird exhibits, shell collections, a nano science exhibit, an endless list to cover for a single day!

The only downside to this place is that the food shops close at 5:30 or so. We were hungry and tired after all that walking and had planned to eat at the museum before driving back. There was nothing to eat. So we ordered pizza, picked it up on our way home and watched the kids finish pizza like never before. 

It was a day well spent and the kids though tired, were very happy and excited and still talking about some of the things they saw at bedtime!

That was day 2. On day 3, we left for Cape Cod, bright and early. We made a good decision to drive as far as possible when traffic was low and drive back towards Canton and cover the vista points.

Turned out to be a great decision because the traffic had gotten much worse over three hours. 

We went all the way to Provincetown. Walked around the place and the pier and started driving back. 

The plan was to cover a few famous lighthouses and also spend time at the beach.

we made a small miscalculation on the beach part. It was Noon when we hit the beach. It was a very hot day and we could not even set foot on the sand. It was that hot. The kids went into the water for a few minutes but the rest of us could not sit there for long. So we packed up and headed for a quick lunch in the shade in the parking lot. One thing that was new to us here ? We cannot go park at the beach. You park 2 miles away and a shuttle bus takes you the beach every 20 minutes or so. There are long lines for this shuttle. So the wait could be 40 minutes before you get back to parking! 

After lunch, we went back towards Canton with a quick stop at the Plymouth (Plimoth) plantation museum. It was to commemorate the whole Indians meeting and helping the first settlers thanksgiving thing.. Someday there will be a musum to commemorate the settlers screwing the Indians was my thought. Then again, history is always written by the victorious, not the virtuous. Cynicism aside, the museum was a great attempt to recreate events and give a glimpse of what life was like 400 years ago in this place.

The kids saw how boats were made out of tress to go across the river..

grind corn, see how the Indians lived.. 

play games the Indian children played.. 

walk through an Indian village.. 

with folks in costume (and real Indian tribesmen) 

and English actors and actresses who recreate life on the village. They talk like it is 1650AD when you ask them questions. The kids were amused. They kept looking at us and asking "she is kidding right? she is just role playing right?"

This woman was challenged by the little one to see if she will slip up and make a single mistake to acknowledge we are in the current century, but NO! The conversation went on for 15 minutes and she was locked into 1600's. The kids were impressed with that.

That and a private birthday celebration pretty much sums up our trip. Will post the HDR photos soon. 

It was a whirlwind trip but like any of our other whirlwind tours (have started asking ourselves if there is any other way to tour any place), we managed to cover a lot in three days and come back just in time to start the back to school routine. 

This was exactly a month ago. Already feels like ages ago!

The kids are growing up fast. It is one thing that grandparent visits are few and far between. We don't even get to see our siblings often enough. My siblings are in Chennai and Boston. Wife's siblings are in Melbourne and Seattle. Family reunions are getting to be a rarity. Really looking forward to my Sashtiabdhapoorthy(turn 60) or Jr.'s wedding (whichever is sooner) to see everyone under one roof!

That is a lot of forward looking.. but cest la vie!

City of Boston- "same to same" but different

This is a travelog of our Day 1 of Boston touring in mid August. We visited Harvard, MIT and Quincy market and drove back to Canton. 

The drive to and from Canton in itself was quite an adventure. It is one thing to drive in peak traffic in bay area and a completely different thing to drive in Boston. The drivers are very unforgiving if they give you barely enough space to change lanes and you take a few extra milliseconds to move over. You get honked. My sis seems to have become immune to this and has also joined the herd there over time. 

A picture of me at Harvard square after 20 years. Cannot find the old picture from the half dozen shoe boxes filled with printed photos from the pre-digital age. 

Then came a paid tour of the University. Our tourguide was a junior at Harvard. When I asked her what she was majoring in, she told me that her major is "something something in something something and also somethingelse somethingelse in somethingelse somethingelse" and the words she used were all longer than something and somethingelse. I was like "whatever happened to things that could be described in one or at the most two words?"

She did do a good job of taking us through the campus and explaining campus culture, which famous person lived in which dorm etc. etc. She even went over admission procedures, some statistics in student population by demographic, superstitions of Harvard students (which says a lot) and other weird customs like running naked after last day of exams, pissing on statues, etc. etc. Those did not impress the four kids we had in our group and they were asking us "do we really have to go to college? do all colleges do it? can I go to a different college than this?" .. you get the idea!

We also got to watch some rich prospective Chinese supermodel students and a photoshoot.. Then it was time to eat our packed lunch on the lawns of Harvard. It was a beautiful and pleasant day. So we had a nice time in the lawn. They had filled it with chairs so that prospective students and the visiting parents could hang out there. 

Then off we went to MIT. The first piece of advice to new travelers is "keep your car parked at Harvard and take a cab to MIT or use public transport". Why? There is no freaking parking anywhere near MIT. we wasted an hour trying to find parking and the few lots there were all full (we were willing to pay 2x or 3x for it given we did not have much time left, but nothing was there). Finally we managed to find something and walked over to the MIT entrance. It was impressive. There is a separate post with HDR pictures.. so not posting those here.

We were about to go wander through that building when a lady from the visitor center told us that their tours were for kids who are in last two years of high school or college Juniors and seniors and their parents. Our kids were too young (we translated that as "we as parents were too young" and were happy) to appreciate that tour. Instead she said "we have a newly renovated MIT science museum which hopes to inspire young kids like this to take up science and engineering. why don't you go there?"

It was totally worth it. We walked another 15-20 minutes to get there. It was quite hot by then. The kids were tired but once they saw all the exhibits, they started playing, making measurements, watching videos, exploring things. It was a treat to watch the kids do all that. 

They watched a video of this Tuna robot that swims with real tuna. They were impressed. Once they saw all the hard engineering that went into it, they had pained expressions in their faces. I told them "using those iPhones and iPads has spoilt you guys. There is a lot of real work that goes behind what you are so used to getting". They said "yeah. yeah.. please don't start again with .. in those days when I was a kid.. dialogue". I rolled my eyes and moved on.

There were a lot of fun exhibits there that really appeal to kids. Holograms, experiments on strobe photography.. I still remember the NatGeo issue that was all about Doc Edgerton. They had a whole area for his photos. It was great!

Here is the little one doing some experiment or other. 

and for some strange reason "Lady Gaga".. with Jr. promptly posing in front of the photo.

Once we were done with the science museum, the kids were hungry. We wanted to go to Quincy market and get them something to eat.

If parking is hard to find near MIT, it is much more difficult at Quincy market. So we wasted another 30 mintues driving round and round that area. Finally we dropped off San with the kids and circled around while they all got some gelato. They got back into the cars and we drove back as though they got into some getaway cars. The gelato was very good but not exceptional. We have to visit this place another time when we have an extra day or two in Boston. 

Driving in Boston, with a GPS is still tricky than driving in most places in the US. That was our lesson from day 1 !!

The many degrees of "relaxation"

Today was a very special yoga day. Bikram Yoga San Jose had a special class at 10AM with Rajashree Choudhury teaching the class.

We have heard so much about her teaching style and how special her class is from the teachers. So it was a not to miss experience. A lot of times I end up missing classes taught by visiting teachers because of the travel schedule. Was fortunate to be in town to attend this class.

The dialogue in every Bikram yoga class is the same. The time for every class is the same 90 minutes but the teachers are a broad spectrum. On one side we have the high energy fire breathing dragon drill seargents and on the other side we have the hypnotic horse whisperers. Then there are varying mixes of the two combinations. The end result after the class is more or less the same. You are completely drained of thought and you are happy to go out into the world, all zoned out! 

Once in a while you get someone on either extreme who can make you feel more zoned out than you think was possible. Not talking about doing a pose deeper or more correct to the form during class here...

It is about a certain silence in your head that is just quieter than the usual. We should have a scale to quantify silence, that is exponential like the Decibel scale or the Richter scale.

Maybe "silence" is the wrong word here as this is not the opposite of noise. It is more than just the absence of sound. It the absence of any sensory data going into your brain to disturb you. 

We had a great class today where Rajashree took us through the usual 90 minute routine with some tidbits of information thrown in. Most of them were about why we do what we do in class and encouraging us to persevere.  

Then when the poses and final breathing was over and we were all stretched out on the mats, she started talking softly, telling us how to relax. There are one or two teachers who try this by saying "relax your neck, your shoulders, your hips... " and they make you consciously relax your body head to toe. What we heard today was different. It was advice, technique and hypnotism at work. 

After a few minutes of listening to her talk, I had no idea what she was even saying! It was almost a whisper. It was like being submerged in a tank of water or what the astronauts decribe as part of their space walk experience. You know there is a tether connecting you to the world but it seems to be getting more and more distant as time passes.

Got a tingling sensation in the left side of my head after a few minutes into this "whispering shavasana". Usually tingles in the hot room means that blood is flowing to that part of your body for the first time in a long time. Within a few minutes there were tingling sensations all over my brain and at that point the whisper became very faint.

Then everyone clapped for some reason and was back to staring at the light on the ceiling. It was like coming back out of anesthesia after a surgery and staring at the lights or that is the closest I can explain what happened after being "so far out there".

Had been in shavasana for more than 15 minutes. For a person who runs out at the end of 90 minutes on any given day because of a conference call to attend or a kid to pick up from some class on the way home, the extra 15 minutes is a luxury. Today it was a real lesson. Now I know why the teachers say "missing the 2 minute shavasana at the end of class is like working very hard, then forgetting to collect your paycheck". 

Going to stay on the mat after class for longer times, at least on weekend classes or Friday evenings going forward. 

Todays class was like a power surge that forcibly reset the hardware in my head. Now the trick is to relive this experience after every yoga class!

After class we got to talk to Rajashree for a few minutes.  Jr. had come to BYSJ so she could see what this was all about and also clicked a picture.

Wanted to tell her so many things. Wanted to show her how my broken hand is now normal again. How Bikram Yoga has given me a second chance and made me believe in the concept of second chances, but before I said anything she mentions her son wears a Janau and asks me if I do Sandhya Vandhanam every day. Told her that I do it most days but only once a day.

My Bikram Yoga attendance is better than my Sandhya Vandhanam frequency. She says "do that as well! it is good for you"

Jr. was all smiles when she said "your daughter is beautiful". Today Jr. saw almost a 100 people come out all smiling after class and line up to talk to Rajashree. It is my sincere hope she does yoga again soon. Given how busy she is with 8th grade, she could really use it. 

It was truly a "special experience" like the teachers at BYSJ told us over the last few days.

Hats off.. we should really say "Mats off" to Rajashree Choudhury, the "horse whisperer extraordinaire"!