Progress.. slow and steady

No.. not a yoga post.

The little one continues her violin practice and has definitely made progress, the slow and steady way!

Her cooking interests take a priority over other things but she does practice twice a week at least. 

Over the weekend she performed at a Violin and Viola festival at Trinon Theater in downtown San Jose. Given I have stopped watching her in class because of my travel schedule and meeting schedule now overlapping her class... it was a treat to watch the improvement!

If you watch your kid every week, maybe not easy to see the improvement.. Watch her play after almost 6 months and you go "wow! that is a lot better now!"

There was a large group of students from multiple music schools who played 10 songs in the end for the audience. One interesting thing they did was play the theme from Game of Thrones with a Karaoke track in the background. I hope none of these kids are watching that serial as most of them are 10th graders or lower. I tried watching it on United when I got upgraded to Biz class once after hearing so much about it from other folks who are fans. Had to turn it off after a few minutes because of the violence and sex. The entire thing was pretty much that.

They played that well though!

Hope the kids keep up their engagement with music. It is not easy to post anything on Youtube which has copyrighted material. They promptly stop the video and I have to go agree to things before it comes online. However same thing is not true for content from my blog that gets copied over! Sad.. bigly sad. That is the world we live in.

where were we? Yes. Violin playing... 

Here is to many more years of music in the kids lives!

A dinner to remember

The little one and her friend had done a "cook for family" thing during lunch last year and I missed it. They repeated the "cook for family" and this time it was dinner.

The two seventh graders had planned this over a week. They cooked for four plus hours yesterday and we were treated to an amazing dinner. 

The macaroons were just amazing and they made the tomato soup just for me because the butternut squash soup had some ingredients that were on my allergy list.

Every dish was made with so much care and served with precision and love! 

We thoroughly enjoyed the food and the effort put into this by the kids. I had happy tears, when I saw the tomato soup and their reason for it..

Never pick your middle aged dad to help with assignments

Jr. learned that lesson over the weekend when she asked me to videotape her baking for a school assignment. Given she wanted a "high quality" video, I used the 5D for the video shoot while being worried that it had a focus issue. Luckily shot it with the 70-200 mm lens which seemed to work fine. 

The only mistake she made was in picking me to do the video. I stressed her out with a lecture on the value of money, trying to be perfect, not waste things, be fast etc. Pretty much micromanaged the thing and lectured her. It is not easy to work with me or work for me.. or live with me for that matter. So while watching this video I realized that I owe my wife, kids, friends and colleagues and especially my boss an apology for being so pushy and demanding and being obsessive compulsive in a lot of ways. The only people who are immune to this influence are my yoga teachers and yoga buddies. 

At the end of it, the cookies came out very tasty. The little one helped big time in being moral support for Jr. as well as coming in and providing her expertise in fixing mistakes during the baking process. 

The smiles say it all! 

The little one and her Violin

Last week was a busy week. We also had the little one doing her summer recital as part of Galina Andre's music school. It was in a nice theater in downtown San Jose. 

She has improved a lot, now that she plays the violin every day in school. Before she was only taking lessons once a week and practicing twice a week. Now that it is a daily thing, she has more confidence and we can see the transformation from a shy hesitant kid to someone who goes for it!

She made me very proud. I am sure there will be videos from the music school.. I took a few videos of the final group perfromances and they are below.

Glad she likes the school and glad she loves to play! Makes my day to watch her practice on her own without me having to sit there and turn pages on the notebook or be the stand for no reason!

Let's see what one more year will bring!

Dreading that day..

Jr. is part of a student exchange program and is spending the spring break in Asia. Given dads struggles in Asia over the last three years to get around, get the right food etc. and realizing learning Mandarin in your forties is not easy no matter how many languages you already have a grasp of, asked her to take Mandarin in school as the language.

She thought it was a good idea and went with it. Her Chinese is already way way better than mine, given she spends an hour at least on it every day and I spend 20 mintues in the night on days I get a chance. Also that brain is more moldable!  

We dropped her off on a rainy evening to go be part of a 9 day trip to put her Mandarin to test, be with a host family, make new friends and have an experience that she will remember for a long time..

We are going through a partially empty nest syndrome this week. The house feels empty because the mom daughter or sibling fight noises have reduced to nothing! 

I know that I did this to my parents and left the house and have not gone back, but my brother stays with my parents. Not sure if either kid will stay with us the way things are going.

The little one does come and sleep on my hand every now and then. So this morning I told her

"do you want to go to 

Daddys arm college of engineering,

Daddys arm college of Medicine,

Daddys arm college of arts and sciences or

just stay with daddy?"

She gave me a shy smile and said "Daddy, you know I will have to go to College somewhere right? Don't worry, I will come back!"

Know she means it, but things will change. Made that same promise to my mom and went back on it because things changed, I changed. 

Later in the day there was a discussion about that conversation and daddy was being psychoanalyzed and the conclusion was "maybe I am scared of being alone with my wife and worried about getting her undivided attention".. 

Now that day, I dread! Right now anyone she turns her attention to, is under pressure and the three of us take turns. Imagine all the power of that glare concentrated on one person.. I will be like those ants burnt by sunlight being focused by a water drop in one of those National Geographic programs!

It is going to be an interesting time when the kids are off..