An interesting week

The temperatures dropped this week significantly. The hand which is still trying to close the gap in the bone, is feeling a lot of pain because somehow the metal pieces inside are stressing out the bone.

That has meant no sleep from 4AM to 6AM the first few days this week. Wrapping the entire arm in warm fleece blankets helped a lot.

Then the wife fell ill and between work, the kids calling me a "bad parent" and more pain in the wrist trying to exert myself, it has been a challenging week to say the least..

Going to do some camera accessory shopping tomorrow to cheer myself up.

This weeks photo homework assignment is "Bokeh" and it appears that I am way out of my league here.. Spent two hours to understand the concept (which is to highlight out of focus objects to create light patterns in the background)..

But here are some interesting results (going to work on this some more.. how they manage to get the object in the foreground in focus while still creating the shaped Bokeh is beyond me.. at least for now)

Cut out a star shaped hole on a cardboard and taped it to the focus ring..

Every point of light takes the star shape..

Notice Jr.'s eyes.. even her eyes show the star pattern (reflected from the flash).
Every light point on her necklace takes the shape of the star..

Cannot understand the physics behind it either. A flashback...

When we were going to IIT Physics coaching class, Balu Sir (god rest his soul) told us to go practice with MIR publishers book by Russian Authors "Tarasov and Tarasova" to master Geometrical Optics. There were no copies that we could get our hands on, but the platform book seller who used to have a shop at the bend near Nalli in Pondy Bazaar told me "Tarasov-aa thambi. Oru copy irukku pa.. aana Tamil copy, paravaa illiyaa?" (I have a copy kid, but it is in Tamil, you still want it?)

Two of my friends who saw me buy that book thought I was nuts. Understanding geometrical optics by reading a Russian book translated in Tamil?

Spent the next week understanding the terms for convex, concave, focus, object, image, radius of curvature etc. etc. in Tamil and figured it all out. It was actually very entertaining and rewarding.

But this Bokeh thing, beats Tarasov and Tarasova..

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Pink is the new orange....

In an interesting turn of events, ended up in the hospital and got a new cast.

This one still comes off on the originally planned date, September 21st.

the adventure continues...

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Waxing ...

Yesterday, we went to Costco. After standing there for more than an hour, I was feeling very tired and the hand started acting up again.

On our way back, San decided to put on some nice music in the car to cheer me up.

So there I was, closing my eyes, absorbing the music and all of a sudden got goosebumps.

That is when I realized that it is a very bad idea to get goosebumps when your hand is inside a cast. The elation lasts for a fraction of a second and is followed by intense searing pain of having all the hair in your arm trying to rip out of the bandage at the same instant.

I finally know what women go through when they go for these waxing sessions!!!

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The Chair

The dreaded chair!

Had to sit on it for almost two hours last weekend.

It was not the chair or the usual nonsense associated with it that bothered me.

Have sat on it many times before.. Been there, done that!

We are talking about the Dentist visit here, in case you have not caught on..

This time, they forgot to turn on the water to the drill thingy. Poor me is getting this burning smell from the one nose that is still not numb from the injection (last time it was novocaine, this time the needle said "octocaine".. must be one number lower grade than novocaine!). In spite of the caine downgrade, the mouth did not feel the burn.. The doc figured it out pretty quickly.. called the assistant and said "I think something is wrong.. This thing got extremely hot.. is the water on?" This when the patients eyes are a few inches away from a smoking drill bit that has just burnt some flesh!

They found the water switch, turned it back on and proceeded as though nothing happened. My pain is still there though!

Never listen to a dentist when they say:

"Deep cleaning should be good!"

what they mean is that

"Deep cleaning (your wallet) should be good (for me)!"

Now that all the cleaning has been done, the verdict?

"your wisdom tooth is impacted. We have cleaned everything around it, filled cavities on nearby teeth (which did not hurt me in any way) but still the pain is not going away. So we are refering you to a specialist to get it extracted. It might be a surgery because most of the tooth is in the bone!"

This after the dentist goes "you know it is purely amazing that you have such a big cavity and no symptoms. The more decay I remove from this, the more I see.. this is like Pandora's box!".

I was thinking "Lady, If pandora had the X-ray machine that you used last week to capture my teeth in all its gory detail, she would have never opened the box!".. but because there were a few plastic and metal wedges between my teeth, and a drill a few centimeters above my face, I kept that thought to myself!

Thank you Dentrica!!!! (Dentist in America)

I am soooo looking forward to my next India trip to meet my good old dentist! My faith in the healthcare system has now been downgraded to "Orange". Oh wait, it has always been Orange, like the Security level in the San Jose Airport.. Let me downgrade it to "Red" for a change.

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