Mothers day

Every day is mother's day.. but when you live in a world where only one day is made special to mothers, one tends to go with the flow!

The kids made a cake, decorated it and let Mom cut it. By the time they were done fighting over who gets to write what on the cake, mom had pretty much given up hope on the cake's cuttability if such a word exists. 

Apparently it came out good and the three of them ate a sizeable portion of it. Daddy was happy to just play photographer as all those colorful things on top cannot be good as they are all some concentrated form of sugar!

In case you are wondering why Jr. has a big "bindi" aka "pottu" smack dab in the middle of her forehead instead of the tiny dot right between her eyebrows (mommy style).. she was posing for me earlier!

You see, these days it feels like I am 14 years old again because Jr. has a scary resemblence to my sister at the same age be it both at certain angles or her mannerisms.  To prove my point here is the picture of them around the same age, give or take a year difference!

Same controlled smile, same donna kaadhu, same collar bone showing, same type of earring choice.. just simply scary! Don't think I ever yelled at my sister that much when she was at that age.. but feels like I am making up for that by shouting at my sister's look alike! 

Here's to Mom's! If someone made a movie called "Mom's" the tagline should read 

"MoM's - terrorizing sons and daughters since the beginning of time"

My mother still has a superhuman ability to remote control me from the other side of the world. Not that it is a bad thing because chances are San has that magical ability and will exercise it when time comes on Jr. and the little one! Daddy Narayanan is counting on it!

On a side note, it feels like I have 34 mothers now. Every teacher at BYSJ reminds me of my mother. Almost makes me think that that my mother is giving them some secret coaching classes on how to push me past my limits. They all pick on me in class, somehow know I am trying to take it easy on some pose and call out my name and say "smaller step", "higher", "more".. and I go "how could you have possibly known that I did that? Touched my head to the floor with that wide a stance only yesterday and it was not your class. How could you possibly know! How?" .. that kind of thing happens only with Mom, because she has eyes on the back of her head and can know! 

Hope all those mom's out there had a great Mother's day. Tomorrow is unfortunately... just another day!

Baby photos? Not anymore...

One house tradition here is that we see "baby photos" from the archives once a week before bedtime to tell stories of how things were during those good old days when Jr. or little one were teeny and tiny!

The babies are growing up fast!

Here are some photos from a backyard photo session this week.

here is one where she didn't know the camera was still rolling.. 

Jr. is a big girl now, almost as tall as her mom and the same shoe size. She is making a claim for some of mom's dresses like the pretty frocks and that was tolerated.. Now she started touching the Jewelry and tensions in the house are high!  You want to mess with the Sheik, fine.. but taking those oil wells.. you have crossed the line mister! ... something along those lines... tension!

She looks exactly like my sister at the same age.. This week I accidentally called her by my sister's name and Jr. was giving me the "What the hell?" look. Had to explain to her that for a few seconds it was like my sister was standing in front of me.. frozen in the eighties. She even stands with her toes bent weird!

Worked very hard to make her smile with lips open but this is the best we got. She is still conscious of the braces. Hopefully those come out soon and we can have Jr. smile like she used to without being conscious of anything.. 

Well, another week has rolled by and I learned a lot this week.. some stuff at work, human relations, cooking, dealing with tweens.. etc. etc. 

Planning to teach them both how to "code" at home using some online guides and free ware. If you have any recommendations for materials or tutorials to help introduce "coding" to kids, please let me know. Was watching a Youtube video where this guy Chamath was being interviewed and he was right on. Teach your kids how to code if you want them to have a nice future! 

Java is going to be the Yajur Veda for Jr. and the little one. Maybe I should turn Java into a hymn for easy memorization and make them sing it?! Yet again, the brain is getting all funky on me.. should go eat something and slap myself back to reality...

Treats from around the globe

This post is about two treats.. 

The first one, was served to us as dessert at a Christmas party from work just before the holiday break..

San enjoyed it. I stayed away as Strawberries (most berries for that matter) create a violent reaction in my body. The presentation of these mini sweets was truly amazing. They got such detail into a 1 inch cube...

The second treat was something I happened to see at Walgreens. It was an alltime favorite snack in childhood days.  Pala Cholai Varuval (பலா சொளை வறுவல்) as we used to call it! My grandpa used to get us freshly fried Jackfruit chips from a store in Mylapore. It would still be hot when we ate it. Absolutely delicious. Grandpa was not a big fan of eating on roadside stalls. The one exception he made that I can remember is this. Jackfruit chips were extremely seasonal in Mylapore and we would devour it in no time.

With a lot of high hopes, picked up this packet only to find out that the fruit had gone stale. It was fried but it had a very bad smell and totally spoiled the experience and now the memory of those "freshly fried" Jackfruit chips from Mylapore is haunting me. 

Looks like we have to wait for the next India trip to get that tastebud gap filled!

Death Valley trip Panoramas

Day 4 trip photos are here..

Day 5 of the trip was our return from Ridgecrest to San Jose with a stop at Lake Isabella for 15 minutes to enjoy the serene waters. There were two other vehicles there and the rest of the way we did not cross a single vehicle on either side for almost a good 20 miles!

It was a beautiful drive along the Kern river which at places was moving rapidly and having calm waters to catch reflections of mountains.

These stitch shots are actually really large. Each of them is ~ 100 Mb and the originals are 12000 to 16000 pixels wide by 3000 to 5500 pixels in length. Have resized them to a 1200 pixel max width for the website. 

They were all made by composite merging 8-21 photos all taken in portrait orientation while panning the landscape in full manual mode with the same setting for all the photographs. 

An example is below:

You get one gigantic image from which you crop the right section and play with it to get this...

Plan to print one of these as a 8 foot by 2 foot poster which should still be good at 96dpi ! 

Hope you enjoyed the pictures. We sure will go back and look at these pictures as our new screensaver.

Would definitely recommend an extra day or two for Death valley trips to enjoy the Kern river, the lake etc. on the way in and see other things like Titus canyon, Racetrack Playa etc. 

Knowing what we know now, next time we will probably stay inside death valley at the expensive furnace creek inn for at least two of the 5 days and will be renting a jeep in advance!

Death Valley Day 4

You have seen the trip details and photos from Day 3..

We did spend a 4th day at Death Valley as a grand finale of sorts.

Did the two hour drive from Ridgecrest early in the morning but with a lot of stops to take pictures on the way of the desert landscape and the valley views. We had reserved this activity for the last day as we rushed past these features every morning.

Then we went to the Badwater Basin! It was the farthest point for us on the last day at Death Valley and our plan was to cover as many spots as possible on our way back to Stovepipe wells.

The old chinese workers at the borax mines tried to make their horses drink the water that was collected in shallow pools but the horses or mules would not drink. So they called it badwater and the name stuck. 

In reality the water is so saturated with salt that it is not potable! Given that, it creates such scenic beauty as it leaves salt to dry in ring like sediments, after some point the salt crystals push out of the ground like seeds germinating and have crystalline patterns that literally emerge from the ground. The sun makes this all the more spectacular and the reflections of the mountains is some sight to behold.

After walking around Badwater we headed to another place that is so unique it is aptly named "Devils Golf Course".. Caked earth, salt deposits, sharp edges that make you worry that you will cut youself to death if you fall on the ground..

It was interesting to say the least. We went back for lunch at Furnace Creek visitor center again and started driving to something that promised guaranteed fun if the brochures were to be taken seriously...

We came to Natural bridges! It was a long walk and it ended at a point where we could not go further but we got some unforgettable memories on this trail. The sun cast shadows that turned the canyon from orange, to red to yellow to purple and the camera was clicking non stop.

At some point I just stopped clicking, sat on a rock, took a deep breath and absorbed the whole thing. Then packed up and started walking to catch up to San, BB and the kids. 

If and when I retire, soooo going back to this place to spend a day in the shade sitting on one of those rocks and watching the sun go by! 

After a reality check that retirement was far away, we drove to Artist Point or Artist Pallette as people call it. The rocks and the minerals within them have been exposed by water erosion and the mountains are glowing in colors! We saw a shade of this at Zabriske point on Day 3, but this was way more colorful. Almost spent two hours on this drive at various vista points. The moon comes out close to 2PM and we had some fun taking photographs with the moon in the background!

The sad thing is that the best views are closer to the exit on this drive than on the entrance side. We spent way too much time climbing a little hill where everyone had parked their car only to realize that the really colorful spots were further down the drive! Still, made it through just as the sun set and we came out of the park with some great memories..

Day 5 saw us driving back from Ridgecrest.. We stopped on the way at a few scenic spots .. a lake, a river.. Those pictures are processed as are all those stitch shot panoramas. Will post the last photoblog from Death Valley trip tomorrow!