Welcoming 2016

On a last minute whim, we decided to go on a road trip down south to the Los Angeles and San Diego area. We started off with a stop at Ventura, visited the Bonaventura mission, beaches  and then went down to San Marcos..

Had a wonderful dinner with friends in Old Town, San Diego, a place we are visiting after almost 10 years! 

We started 2016 with a visit to the San Diego zoo! The smiling faces of the friends, kids and our first ever sighting of live pandas made our day!

Here's to 2016! May this year bring you the best of health and wealth! 

Another year of yoga

2014 saw me do three (or two depending on who you ask) things

1. Travel a lot for work and figure out ways to cope with that schedule wise

2. Do yoga whenever possible while home and figure out ways to adjust that into the schedule

3. Do the usual things at home when possible (San would give me a D- for that this year.. the kids might give me a B- given they are partial to me)

Travel for work is not a topic for this blog till I start my next gig whenever that might be. The usual things at home do get a blog post or two with a lot less frequency.. that leaves Yoga!

This is an engineer trying to summarize yoga stats. So this post has to have some graphs and charts!

As usual the goal was to try and do Bikram Yoga at least 200 times this calendar year and yet again, I fell short of that goal. Yoga is a process and one gets the benefit as long as one tries in all sincerity. So from that standpoint, will give myself an A+

Can honestly tell myself that I went to the Yoga room at every possible opportunity this year. Given my travel days, the 50% attendance this year is like a 80+ % attendance. It was better than last year.. (just realized that the graph for last year was overwritten by mistake).

For those math geeks, the reason for the double lines is that on some days I did two classes and that messes up the graph.. 

This year it was 181 classes since Jan 5th.  Last year it was 194.. Next year.. again the goal is to go 200 times.. It may be time to find hotels close to Bikram Yoga studios in my travel locations. 

Now for the weight tracking..

Started off flat. After the India trip the weight that was added on seems to have stayed permanently! Either that or the weighing machine had some midway calibration issue when we came back from India and we replaced the battery. It is now holding steady at 149+/-1 lbs when last year it was 143+/-1 lbs for the most part. 

Going to keep collecting this data. Someday someone who decides to do research in Bikram Yoga and weight stability might use this data! 

This year, there was one special "posture clinic" class that I got to attend in October. When I walked into the studio that say and saw that there were only five people who had shown up for that special 2 hour class with the head teacher at BYSJ, was expecting to have the class cancelled. Michelle showed up inspite of her busy schedule organizing the California Yoga Championship and spent more than the alloted 2 hours teaching the five of us little things to remember that improved our postures. 

Something she said that day stuck with me. She said "look at yourself in the mirror. You might not like everything you see there. Some of you look conflicted all the time. It is time to let go of things that you don't like and improve on the things you like when you stare at yourself!"

Today I went for the last class of 2014. Looked at myself in the mirror and saw two people. There is a nice do-gooder spiritual guy on the one side fighting a vice presidential asshole on the other. One of them has to go or a better compromise has to be reached. 

There is also the guy who is happy to just be in the room giving his 110% who has to reconcile with the guy who is perpetually unhappy with falling down, losing the breath or have a symetry mismatch.

Sharing two pictures taken by Jr. this year. (It is good to take pictures of yourself every now and then to see little details)

This is my favorite pose. It takes me all my will power to do this pose knowing that within a few seconds we are all going to be flat on the floor. Can only raise by body clear off my right toe. On the left toe, it is not perceptible. 

The other pose that has frustrated me this year is the Camel pose. Have fallen forward and almost hit the ground more than 10 times this year. Something has to be fixed somewhere. 

Jr. snapped three photos of me doing Camel pose from three different angles. This is a collage of those three shots. The symmetry is off. Something that you cannot realize while doing the pose because you think you are doing it right when reality is far off..

The good thing is that there is no deadline to get any of this to perfection as it is a moving target. It is a "process" and "eventually" this body will find the right balance. 

My FIL asked me last week "Sundar, you are going on all these hikes. Has the yoga helped make things easier? Are you feeling younger?"

My sincere answer was "I am growing older and my body is dealing with that. Yoga is maintaining a status quo! It is not helping me get younger.. but it is helping me not feel older. It is relative!"

Not saying this will work for everyone or this is easy. It has worked and continues to work for me. Maybe it is a good match for my personality and somehow improving on the same routine day after day is something that I can accept as a challenge while others cannot. Maybe the SPC charting guy in me with a manufacturing quality mindset is a perfect match for Bikram Yoga. It is possible.. 

but work, it did! 

Thankful that there is a Yoga studio within 10 minutes from home which stays true to the original Bikram Yoga where a guy like me can still get continued encouragement from teachers and fellow students!

Here's to 2015 and the continuation of the "process"!

Wishing all of you a wonderful 2015. May the next year bring you all that you desire that you know in your heart is actually good for you!

Happy Tamil New Year !

Time flies. We are at yet another Tamil New Year this weekend. The girls dressed up nicely to celebrate. San also did a marathon effort in the kitchen this morning to make some amazing food. I must have added 4-5 pounds just at lunch and to compensate for that did three hours of hot yoga instead of the usual 90 minutes.

The back is also hurting after being squeezed in cramped quarters on long flights next to oversized folks whose bottoms spread laterally into neigbouring seats. My strong recommendation to the good folks who make the 74(+)7's and Airbus equivalents is to create a solid barrier between seats instead of the hand rests. Then again, if a skinny guy like me is suffering, it cannot be too great for said oversized folks. As usual I digressed at the first paragraph.. Tsk!

Where were we? Ah, the new year! Got back home just in time to see the cuties dress up and have fun. To celebrate the new year, I got myself a pair of Bose headphones that are expected to do wonders for future air travel. Don't ask me what Bose has to do with Tamil New Year. It has as much to do with a Toyota or Ford Car sales event has to do with Memorial day! 

This year we celebrate the girls growing older by one more year and the fact that they still pose for daddy when begged to do so.

Had to capture the earrings she is wearing.. they are made of Terracota apparently! 

For once I wished there was a picture of me with the kids to post! Maybe we will take one over the week. 

Happy New Year to all of you. May this Tamil new year bring peace and happiness!

Wishes for 2014

2013 was a good year for this family compared to recent years. As a family, there were no major issues. Daddy Narayanan lost a molar tooth and cursed a few dentists to hell, but other than that it was a healthy year. 

Work kept the parents busy and the kids did well in school and their extra curricular activities

There are a lot of things to reminisce about in 2013, but they all pale in comparison to the last two weeks we spent in Australia and New Zealand, especially New Zealand.

We just got back home a few hours ago and the visuals from New Zealand are still coming up! San's parents, us, her sister's family from Melbourne, her brother's family from Seattle were all there. It was a group of 13 traveling around North Island for a whole week. If this world is gods work, then he was definitely doing overtime when working on New Zealand. 

We had a blast! 

Also we get to say Happy new year twice this year. Once in Auckland shortly after boarding the flight when all the air hostesses wore bright hats and came wished everyone.. and again tonight at Pacific standard time, because we gained 24 hours while crossing the International date line! 

There are more than 3000 pictures from the four cameras and three iPhones. Will post pictures soon...

Here's to a wonderful, healthy and properous 2014 from all of us!

Happy New Year 2013

Yes.. it is the New year for south Indians and we had the usual good eats and spent quality time with family. 

We want to wish everyone a wonderful Tamil New Year, Ugadi, Vishu and anything else the New Year goes by in different parts of India.

This year is named "vijaya" for Victory. Hope truth and righteousness emerge victorious this year!

Here's to 2013 from the Traveling Naryanans.

Learned earlier this year that folks in the west used to celebrate their New Year around April 1st as well a long time ago.. then they changed it to Jan 1st. In order to discredit some folks who refused to change the New Year from first week of April to January, they called April 1st "April Fools day".. don't know if this is true, but thought of sharing this interesting tid bit. 

Apparently the atheist government in Tamil Nadu tried to move the New Years day to coincide with the Harvest Festival and that is being ignored for now. We live in a funny world with all these changes, daylight savings time etc.. Don't know how things will change in another 30 years. 

Hoping it is for the better! Happy 2013!