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!

Blast from the Past

No. we are not talking about my childhood here. We are skipping a generation.

During the recent India trip, my dad handed me some old photos which I had mailed him 16 years ago. Photos for which there were no negatives left because like an idiot, I had sent the negatives to India also and they were lost.

As a bonus he also handed me something from his shaving box (metal box which was his equivalent to my shoe box) and gave me things which he had preserved. Thought I should have it, because of my being internet and media savvy, this might be preserved in some form somewhere. Felt honored to receive his box!

One of those things in the box, was this old postcard he handed me, the only sample of his father's handwriting in his possesion. A letter written by my grandfather (who I never met! he had passed away when my dad was a teenager) in 1957.

It is tough when you lose your mother at 4 and your dad at 18 and all you have is a photo of your mom! My dad did have a tough hand dealt to him as the youngest of 12 kids but he made it through to lead a good life.

Now, here is the letter..

That is one bad handwriting!

Here is to dad. The letter has been pieced together to the best of my ability and is now digitized.

Tomorrow will be spent in zooming into the letter and trying to read it.

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Links to the past

"Post 5 links to 5 of your previously written posts. The posts have to relate to the 5 key words given (family, friend, yourself, your love, anything you like)."

Family -
The only lyric I wrote on this blog..

Friend -

have a lot of them.. but the one dude who defines the word for me, the one dude who I meet less often for shorter times.. is the one drinking Chai with me in this post! If you are reading this, you know I am pissed that you never called me during Thanksgiving break, when I know you were supposed to visit your sis...The other fellows in the picture are equally loved. well almost equally!

yourself -

one of my best photoblogs ever..

your love -

San.. San.. San.. definitely San.. way more than the little cuties! You can wake me up at 3:00 AM and ask me...it will be San..Something about the way she fights with me and how at the end of the fight, I just can't be mad at her and for some strange reason, she almost always looks adorable!

anything you like -

nostalgia. . ah, the good ol' days!

Tagged by Boo..

The tag also says...

"Tag 5 other friends to do this meme. Try to tag at least 2 new acquaintances (if not, your current blog buddies will do) so that you get to know them each a little bit better."

You know me better. I pick up tags if they are interesting, but never pass them on! As usual, this tag stops here.

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