Happy thanksgiving! Time travel weekend...

This year, my birthday was a simple affair with both the kids making a flying visit for the long weekend. 

After the celeberations were done, jr. and me decided to have some fun. She saw an ad for a service that gets old tapes , negatives etc. and gets them digitized. We had a lot of audio cassettes and video cassettes to be digitized.. but after realizing that the service was ripping us off in shipping fees, decided against using it.

We did however find the old Cassette to MP3 converter and put it to good use. It took us some time to download Audacity app on the Mac and then set it up right so it could read the device! Once we figured it out, it was fun to check what was in those cassettes. 

Most of them were tapes I had accumulated to practice dancing.. one was full of Latin songs, one was all waltzes, one was a mix tape that simply said "To Miss. Smooth, with love, Part 1" and Jr.'s looks at me with raised eyebrows and asks "so I take it that it is a mix tape you made for your girlfriend?". Told her it was for a friend and she did take the part 2.

Then I found two cassettes from Sruthi, an organization in Philadelphia which had organized a Lalgudi concert with his kids in 1993. Remember setting up the mics for it and getting free admission to the concert. We also got to spend the evening with the artists at a professors house. In India, I could never think of being up close and personal with greatness like that! 

Brought back so many memories of how my association with music has always been touch and go.

There was a cassette with Tamil movie songs which my Chitti's had recorded and sent me as a gift. Even today my Chitti's (mom's younger sisters) are my biggest supporters when it comes to encouraging me to sing in Smule! I recognize my Lalli chitti's handwriting on that list.. she would write so beautifully and fast! 

30 years later have sang a lot of those songs.. the ones I missed, will definitely sing! Did not know this cassette was still around till today!

 

Used to get 20 cassettet tapes as a package at Sam's club (think Costco in the early 90's). Had the habit of recording radio stations while sitting alone in the lab doing experiments.. kind of a time capsuley thing.. 

Some of them were from 1993/94, then 96, 98.. It was wild listening to the commercials from those times (mostly beer  and car commercials!). Jr. was having so much fun Shazaming the songs and got a taste of what music daddy was listening to 30 years ago! There were multiple radio stations in PHiladelphia/ Wilmington Delaware, then Albany/Troy NY.. and some Latin tapes that were too rare for the Shazam app!

Then we found some old gold!  There was a copy of me singing Kandar shasthi kavasam at 4 years old. It was the first time my voice was recorded on the cassette player that my Ambi mama bought. The whole family was impressed with the ability to record and replay.. and my reciting slokas was used as the trial run!

My grandpa had saved that cassette and given it to me in 1995. It had made it through all the moving over the years and is now an MP3 .. better a Youtube video. 

Then we found my Naadi Josiyam tapes.. which was one of the reasons for starting this exercise. A long conversation with my friends mom yesterday on how things seem to be predetermined to a large extent in our lives and the best way to use this knowledge wisely to navigate through life.. even if it is all meant to be! 

A separate post on that later!

It has been a fun weekend so far, going back in time with my kid!

Party time, taking some things for granted

This is our fourth year at the annual IBM Christmas party for Children. Those of you who have been reading this blog long enough know that each year we put a caricature comparison of the kids done by the same Artist year after year..

This year is no exception!

Big Al actually remembered the kids this year! This year they have finally outgrown those same tee's they wore three years in a row. Both of them have mature faces now!

We also did the usual face painting, cookie decorating, getting balloons etc.

For the first time we attended the magic show and it was a ton of fun. Have never seen the kids this animated or happy in public in a long time. At Disney it was awe and wonder struck faces. Here is was pure glee!

Jr. gave me a nice pose. The little one erased part of her X-mas tree and was refusing to pose.. she is turning into a mini me. Cannot stay still in any place for more than a few seconds... she was just whizzing through the whole thing!

They do a really great job of decorating the place each year with a different type of tree (one year is green, one year is white, etc.) and the whole thing is extremely well organized!

We are all aware of the real Santa. Still the allure of sitting on Grandpa Claus and getting a picture is fun! The kids loved it.

If you do look at the youtube video link in this post, have tried to explain the issue on the video in the Youtube description. If you have any pointers towards the real problem or a fix, please let me know...

Another year has almost rolled by and is coming to a close. It has been a tough year that is coming to a close. Counting days at work, at home, over the phone with relatives..

Hope we count down the remaining days without any major issues!

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The old Yellow AGFA tape

The tape recorder my mama (uncle) purchased in the late seventies was a novelty item in those days. It was amazing to watch how it recorded sounds and would play it back.

The tape recorder did not have a built in radio in those days. If we wanted to record programs broadcast on All India Radio, we would have to keep our Philips transistor radio (which was the size of a small TV.. not todays flat screen mini 7inch LCD's.. but CRT TV's from the nineties.. boy I talk of the nineties in the distant past.. that means I am old.. very old.. cut cut cut.. change topic!)

The one tape that always would bring me back a lot of memories was a meera bhajan (?!) on Radha. No one is sure who the singer was except grandma who tells me it was someone from Hyderabad named Sita and she was a Station director or something at AIR Hyderabad.

On my last trip, was told that the tape is "no more".

If anyone can give me a audio link to this song or even tell me correct lyrics, would really appreciate it..

It is a Hindi song and my transliteration is based on my poor grasp of the hoarse recording. But even with all that noise, the original song is just so touching that it would make me want to cry every time I listened to it. The voice was so imploring, beseeching that it would touch a yearning inside you for things that you don't know you are missing.. (okay, I really don't know what was going through my head while writing that last sentence, but for some vague reason, those are pretty much the words that come up).

Raadha pyaari thee
darohi banthi--e hamaari

gadi ek pal me
gadi ek mukh me
gadi ek avala dhari -ee saari
meera ke prabho giridhar dhar?
Charana kamal pal haari

Please do let me know.

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Anybody home ?

Follow my logic here.. just humor me..

1. I do not exactly love SUN TV. (I am glad that they were the only Tamizh Channel around, but their programming needs a lot of improvement).

2. I do love everyone who lives at home and would like to see them happy

3. However (there is always a however), their happiness depends on SUN TV programming. As long as Abhi is crying, my wife and mother in law are not. If Abhi (or the other superwomen heroines in the Tamizh soap operas) stop crying, they will make sure I cry instead. So, you could say that I am glad that Abhi's tears are flowing like the Colorado or Cauvery river.

4. SUN TV has to get its act together. The last one week has seen some really pathetic broadcasting.

First it was the double audio. It drove me nuts to watch the heroines work their lachrymal glands with a solid echo. The ladies at home solved that one by watching in a low volume and did not seem to mind the slight(?) inconvenience.

Then it was the video getting stuck at times for a few minutes and jumping frames. You would end up watching a freeze frame of some dude or dudette with their mouth wide open, for a full five minutes. The suspense of what they were going to say next would kill you!

Now it is the delayed video. Yes! The audio is ahead of the video by a solid 45 seconds or so. You get to hear Abhi cry before she actually breaks into tears. This cracks me up, and I am about to roll on the ground laughing, but all I can do is laugh on the inside, because the ladies will crucify me if I show any signs of enjoying this broadcast. They still watch it as though it does not bother them!

I do know that they are in pain, watching SUN TV at its broadcasting worst. If you happen to be a SUN TV broadcaster and are reading this, please, please improve the quality of the video and audio stream. I am saying that because a "painee of your painer is your painee" or vice versa.

ps. I have not been well. Apparently driving for 4 hours with the sun straight on your face, with the AC going full blast in the car, can do wonders to your infection prone sinus! Couldnt even wake up this morning. So, what I am trying to say is, the parnoramic pictures of our trip, will have to wait!

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