When you change the way you look at things..

Wrote this many years ago. Still having the same thought process.

We will go to the local "Memorial Park" in Cupertino and say a silent thank you to the folks who let us have the life we do by sacrificing their lives. We also went to the Livermore temple and said a prayer for all those souls to rest in peace. All of those folks gave their lives to fight for the USA, just to ensure "our way of living" is secure, but as civilians, shouldn't we all think the other way around?

Maybe we shouldn't have to be in this many wars and have our servicemen put in harms way for no reason? Can we reduce the number of casualties in our armed forces, if we change our habits for the betterment of the US and the world? Maybe consume less gas, waste less water and food, even use less plastic packaging, electing the right politicians, disconnecting the war mongering machinery that creates more conficts to ensure arms suppliers continue to make a profit at the expense of the world, etc. etc. every choice we make every minute today seems to make it worse for our armed forces! 

In true American tradition, we cut down a bunch of 50 year old oak trees, put a road through it and call it "Oak tree road", kill every bear and dry out the local creek and call it "Bear Creek road", butcher every native in the area and name the roads after their tribe.

Along the same lines, we send a bunch of kids to war in far off lands to die on false pretexts and erect memorials in their name. 

Yes, the cynic in me is at a 100% and the irony meter has maxed out, but isn't that what is going on even today?

We should think about the consequences of our actions and see what we can do to change them. I give up most times, because the changes we want simply don't seem possible,  especially when you realize that you are fighting big money, and the only way to fight money is with more money!

In any case, irrespective of our choices and where we are, where we are going to end up in as a country, the dedication of our servicemen is something we should all be grateful for.

This year, we are not traveling for Memorial day.

One good thing about having a blog is you can see where we have gone for this weekend over time.. In the last 10 years we have visited so many different places (we could have a similar list for 4th of July, Labor day or Thanksgiving and Christmas) 

2005 - India Trip for Grandparents wedding wows..

2006 - Disneyland, Seaworld with San's grandparents

2007 - Yellowstone National Park

2008 - Mt. Shasta, Lassen National Park

2009 - Menocino, Fort Bragg

2010 - Monterey Bay Aquarium

2011 - Palm Springs 

2012 - Stayed home, went to Great Mall and Cherry picking in Brentwood

2013 - Denali National Park

2014 - Lassen National park - a rerun

When you set the travel bar at this level, there is an expectation to go somewhere, anywhere! This year, I am just too tired. Simply do not want to see an airport or sit on an airplane seat. Just happy to be at home, eat, sleep and finish off some chores at home. At least that was the plan when I wrote this post on Saturday morning and forgot to "post".

I did manage to clean the Aquarium which was long overdue. Then I got the flu on Saturday night. The last 72 hours has been very painful. Travel get sick. Don't travel, still get sick.. So per San and the kids, might as well travel and be sick.

Sometimes a three day weekend is not enough just to get to a sense of normal! The kids think given I got sick, it is normal. They can be cruel sometimes with their jokes.

To think that I am complaining about a 3 day weekend not being enough when our troops don't get to see their families for years at a stretch is maxing out the irony meter again.

Here's to the guys who defend our "freedom". That freedom should be freedom of speech, expression, social values, religion, etc.. not freedom to be irresponsible! 

Competing for eyeball time

It is not just the Googles, Facebook's and Amazon's that are basing their business on trying to get a share of our viewing times.

Every precious nano second where your eyes are target towards any screen, now count for real $. 

So much that there are technologies out there that actually read your cell phones vibration (from the gyro) and tell the source of what you are looking at, data about how long you looked at it, glanced at it, or just plain skipped through it.. all this from how you held your phone or iPad while viewing a page!

That is not where it stops. We like in a world where our kids are labeled "post-google" which means they grew up with the internet. So this stuff rolls over.

Three weeks ago, I had a picture of the little one as my screen saver. 

Last week Jr. comes to me in the evening, snaps her hands in front of my face and says 

"booyaah! There, I now have proof!"

Me: Please stop with this booyaah agressiveness. I dont know what it means. What proof do you have of what?

Jr. : I have more proof that you love her (little one) more than you love me!

Me : It does not matter how much proof you think you have. I KNOW that I love you both the same.

Jr. : She was on your screen saver for two weeks. Then you knew I realized it and changed your screen saver to my picture and it was not even a pretty picture. That too I was on it for 2 days. now it is a picture of both of us and she says she is cuter in that picture than me! so there you go.. Booyah! 

Me : !!!!!

Now we need a software that does facial recognition and devotes equal screensaver time for the two kids. Added plus if the kids can rate your screensaver, let you know how cute they think they look in those pictures etc. etc.

We live in a world where things are measured like never before! There is more data being collected than can be analyzed with any reasonable value. 

In case you are wondering, here are the pictures of Jr. and the final joint picture where LO is supposedly cuter..

Go figure!

Now don't get me started on the Chromecast screensaver that runs on the big screen TV in the living room... 

Designated bag

On our recent India trip, there were 14 people in a Tempo traveller! Needless to say, there was a lot of eating, sneezing, wiping hands, cleaning up spilled water, juice etc. going on.

Jr. drank a juice in a carton shortly after the Van trip started and asked grandma 

"Paati, where is the designated garbage bag?"

My mom understood what she wanted, because when we go on road trips in the US, we used to take a plastic bag and hang it on one of the hooks in the van. It would be our "designated garbage bag" till it got full and we would dump it at the rest area or at the fast food joint garbage containers where we stopped for a break. 

Sometimes, on the long weekend trips, one can see a pile of such "designated garbage bags" outside of the large garbage bin in the fast food places at Coalinga, given that everyone is trying to get their cars and vans smelling okay again as they get back on the freeway. 

Getting back on topic... my mom replied "there is no bag here. Use this small plastic cover". So that cover held for all of 30 minutes before it was full. 

When it was clear that there was not going to be a rest stop soon, Jr. got a recommendation to simply throw the bag outside the window on the side of the road, on top of an existing pile of garbage we were passing. She was not a happy camper because she thought all that effort went to waste. 

Recently Indian social media is abuzz with the "clean India" campaign and every alternate FB post on my timeline is about some politician, movie star or cricket player, showing how they are contributing to the campaign. Some just talk, some actually clean. Then there are the posts that say "we are like that only!" and just like any other issue which has folks torn on all sides, there are posts about "how Indians will never change", "why this is yet another fad and this too shall pass", "why this time it is going to be different" etc. etc.

One thing that did catch my eye, was a bunch of articles on why this attempt won't work because the concept of garbage bins and their regular clean up was not possible, given the poor security for the bins themselves.  

"A garbage bin needs security?" is what I asked myself! Why would anyone steal a garbage container? I have seen folks steal shopping carts here in the US but never garbage containers.

Wanted to find out what was so appealing about the garbage containers in India that was worth stealing and the answer was "they are made of metal" and "they are very large" and as irony would have it, "they have great recycle value"! Maybe the solution is to make them with the right material that has less resale value?! was the next thought...

The latest news feed items suggest that the campaign is trickling down, as are the posts about the campaign. Somehow this is not going like the ALS challenge as one looks at it from the other side of the world through social media. 

On a side note, we now have no plastic bags in Cupertino. I am wandering around the local Target, Trader Jo's, Safeway grocery stores etc. with a big cloth bag that says "Hari Agencies", Mylapore! 

Talk is that SFO is going to ban bottled water soon, as the plastic bottles pose a cleaning problem. 

We live in interesting times. . . Cupertino is forcing folks towards reusable cloth bags and stores in India are using plastic bags for everything from Mutka Dahi to Malli poo! Just 20 years ago, the opposite was true. I was amazed at how many plastic bags we used to come home with after a trip to the grocery store in the US and how we used the same Venkateshwara Coffee bag for grocery shopping for years at home. Even remember talking to my mom about this ten years ago. 

The times, they are a changing?!

Gender profiling hits closer to home..

Friday evening. Mom asks dad to stop by the Indian Grocery store on the way home from work. She gives a long list of things to get.  

The kids come back from evening class. It is time to unload the stuff from the trunk and given how the stores don't give plastic bags anymore and also given that daddy is not the default shopper, there are no big bags. All the individual items are just spread across the trunk. So we need as many hands as possible to do the unloading fast.

The kids are helping and Mommy says "I asked for beans. I expect you to buy beans for making curry for the four of us for one meal. Not for two. This is waaay more beans than I would have got"

The little one decides to join in the bashing "If you thought he got too much beans wait till you see how much Vendaikaai(Okra) he got!" which turned out to be a false accusation. When Mommy saw the quantity she thought it was too little.. Nevertheless, you folks get the picture..

Jr. decides to chime in "See, this is what happens when you send a 'boy' to get vegetables!" . This 'boy' is the one making them their special sepankizhangu curries etc. and suddenly this 'boy' is not to be relied on for buying vegetables?! 

It is not easy living with three girls.. When they decide to pile things on, it comes big and deep. Daddy has decided to stop doing a few things around the house till they come around. 

They are watching too many serials on the iPad that designate daddy as the person who takes out the garbage and plays with power tools in the garage. Time to unplug the internet connection in the house. 

10 years flies by

On our tenth wedding anniversary, we did what we do best. Did the SFO tour for visiting relatives.

The golden gate may not rank in the top 5 romantic spots in the world, but it sure ranks in the top 5 for us! Most notably the most romantic spots in our life being

1. our bedroom
2. our bedroom
3. our bedroom
4. our bedroom
5. golden gate bridge vista point

This was our umpteenthuncountableth visit to the vista point over the last ten years and we still had a blast in spite of the cold winds and chilly weather.

We also had a nice dinner at one of our local favorites, the Chaat house and followed it up with some dessert at out other favorite place (the reason we went to San Francisco in the first place!), Ghirardeli Square.

The ice cream as usual, was excellent.

So are the moments and memories!

This week will not see that many posts as we are going to celebrate the anniversary over a whole week with relatives and friends!

Once again, thanks to our parents who by logic or fluke got us together and more importantly to all powers unknown to us that played a part in this partnership!

As for the next ten years, we say "Bring it on!"

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