Rites of passage

If you are from Vanatu and you go through a rite of passage odds are there is a vine tied to your feet and you are going to take a 80 foot fall..

However, if you are born to a geek the rite of passage might simply be the handing of a Scientific Calculator from your dad..

Yes! My daughter is now a fifth grader and today was her first day of school. The back to school list said "Scientific Calculator" and she insisted on buying one at target as part of the "back to school" shopping ritual last week.

"Naansense!" said daddy in his typical Tamil accent. We shall have a small ritual at home where Jr. will get the keys to geekdom!

Problem was the calculator which was dad's first (the family's first for that matter) was a 1989 vintage Casio and it has been sleeping in dad's collection of memorabilia in a shoebox for the last 12 or so years.

Today the old "Novino" batteries purchased someplace in Varanasi in early nineties was replaced with some Kirkland batteries from Costco and the thing powered up!

Hat's off to Casio for making something this good. There was no battery leak in the battery compartment either! So a big thanks to Novino also for making some amazing batteries!

Jr. was happy that she gets to use the same calculator as daddy! Daddy is so proud that Jr. is using a Scientific calculator in fifth grade when he used it for his freshman year in college!

It is a win-win!

Likes and dislikes

Today our kids are easily impressed or turned off by things. They also have very short attention spans, considering the amount of time spent on DS and playing Temple run on the iPad, iPhone.

The six year old makes 1.5 million points in under 10 minutes of playing the game. I tried it a few times (okay a few tens of times) and cannot seem to cross 100k more than once or twice.. see, I digress as usual.

We do not have NBC, ABC etc. on our cable. San has signed us up for some special deal where we get only the Tamil channels so everyone except me can watch all the Tamil soap operas while I watch TED talks on the iPad for entertainment and get my news from the internet.

That means? We cannot watch the Olympics. So I keep showing the girls the highlights snippets on the NBC site for olympics.

They both can recite the Chevy Volt Ad by heart because it plays before every video. To top things off more than half the videos crash thanks to Adobe Flash and we end up sending an error report.

Today the six year old says "I hate Chevy volt and I hate Adobe" and she says "why cannot we watch this video in the iPad?" to which Jr. chimes in

"It is Flash. i things don't play flash because they crash"

I was amazed by their knowledge of this. Asked junior how she knew this and she said "We tried to play things on the Mac Mini and tried installing flash player also and we found out that flash cannot be used on Mac and that is why we get a ? in iPad for flash videos"

Technology has truly changed our world when a six year old can hate Chevy volt (for no fault of Chevy) and a 10 year old knows Flash doesn't work on Mac devices.

In another coversation yesterday, told the girls that after my time they can have the house. There was talk of "after my time" because the last two days have been busy with all kinds of tests.. x-rays, EKG's, heart ultrasounds, etc. etc. The good news is my heart is okay but my lungs are not, but will be in a few days with some medical help.

The kids had their usual discussion.

Jr. : What do you mean we can have the house?

Me: We will leave it to the two of you so you can live here

Little one: How can that be possible?

Me: Why not? You just live here till you are old!

LO : But only one of us can live here when we are old and have our own family! Which one is it going to be ?

Jr. : yeah daddy. we cannot both live here at the same time with our husbands and kids. That won't work. So you will have to give us two houses!

My Mom was speachless after hearing them say this. For a generation used to living in joint families to hear from a generation that living as an extended family is not even a consideration in thought was a shocker.

Told my mom that it is high time she understand why San and me have to save for a retirement home early enough! She still has a difficult time reconciling with what she heard...

Another conversation, this time with Jr. after I came home from work..

Jr. : (who happened to be doing her Kumon math on the couch with great difficulty) Grandpa keeps telling me about all his tablets every day . . .

Me : What is he telling you?

Jr.: He keeps counting his tablets, all 18 of them, tells me their names and they always have a number at the end of the tablet name and tells me what they are for. How come he needs so many tablets? and how can anyone have so many problems?

Me: Half the problems are because of the tablets themselves. He takes one tablet for his heart. that has a side effect. he takes another tablet for that side effect and that has two side effects and it keeps going...

Jr.: I am having so much trouble with this Kumon Appa. I really don't want to do it.

Me : If you don't do your Kumon and practice your math, you won't be able to count your tablets when you are as old as Grandpa!

Jr.: In that case I definitely don't want to do the Kumon!

Me: Why does Thatha (grandpa) keep counting tablets? Because he has nothing else to keep his mind busy. You might want to know your counting well because when you are his age and your body is weak, you might be happy that you have something to occupy your mind.

Junior smiled an understanding smile and got back to her Kumon. Not sure if she really understood what was said but at least she got back to the math..

The kids have been over nice to me the last four days because they have seen me visibly sick. They all breathed a sigh of relief when my heart tests came out good.

Today the entire house is in a happy mood that daddy is on the path to recovering.

All grown up

Came back home this afternoon to find the kids all dressed up and ready to go to a function at a friends place.

Another one of those moments where it dawns on you that the kids are growing up and growing up fast.

Too fast for my liking that is. Wish I could freeze frame them the way they are!

Things to know about yourself

The little one handed me the Fathers day gift first thing in the morning.

It was a nice card she had made in school before school closed as part of a class activity.

Apparently I am crazy over my work.. She definitely does not like my work as she sees it as something that competes with her for my love.

Understandable considering I am going to be back in Austin soon.

Thought she got used to my travel by now.. looks like deep down she still has some misgivings!

We thought of buying another tree and planting it for Fathers day. Especially since the mothers day Japanese maple tree is not faring very well in the heat. I am the only one that waters the tree and if I forget the tree starves. It has already lost all the leaves in 25% of the branches.

Jr. : What tree should we plant?

Me : something that can be big, give lots of shade and have fruits. Lemon tree?

LO : our lemon tree is more like a bush. but do you know it has 5 lemons on it already? It will not grow big but it can be our only lemon tree.

Me: ok. so we are back the question. What tree?

LO: How about a money tree?

Me : !!!!!

Jr. : The bank is the money tree LO! You can only get money from a bank.

LO: Daddy, you say you invent things. Can't you invent a money tree or something ?

Me : !!!!!! (I have no answer to that one.) I have promised her an answer soon..

In our house your competence or intelligence will be challenged so frequently that you start deflating it as a default over time.

Celebration weekend...

Thirteen years ago, this day saw a major turning point in our life. Got married to a girl I had just met!

While every astrologer worth his salt in south India had predicted that San and me will live a happy life for a long time to come and our parents were so sure of the future, we did not know what the future held for us. At least we had an open mind to things being unpredictable.

So far, it has been an interesting 13 years. We have grown to accept each other over time and yes, cannot imagine anyone else having the ability to put up with me the way she does. She was definitely given some special skills just to deal with me and we are destined to be together or at least that is what it feels like!

We usually do three things on our anniversary if we are here at home. A visit to the temple, lunch or dinner at Chat House in Sunnyvale and ice cream at Ghirardeli square in SFO and a visit to the golden gate vista point.

Today we started off with the temple visit but plans changed. It was a 107 degrees in Livermore and by the time we walked barefoot into the temple from the parking lot the oldies and the kids had a tough time recovering from the heat. So we took it easy, cancelled the ice cream trip and decided to eat closer to home as well.

With age comes some realizations and flexibility.

Tomorrow is fathers day. So to all the dads out there who are about to be suprised by their kids with trinkets, I wish you the ability to smile and rejoice at the gift. To the others, happy fathers day. This year my dad is with me and that is our gift. I am not big on the whole special days for different relatives thing. At the most it shows you how the world has moved to having one day at least in a year where you have to try something special for a certain relative when you should be doing that everyday anyways!

If my kids can promise to behave on fathers day, why not every day? One can always hope!

The little one was moping today because apparently she had made a special card for me and mom had thrown it in the garbage without realizing it was for me! Told her that the best fathers day gift for me is a kiss from my two girls. If not for them, I would not be a father, would I?

That logic seemed to work with her and she cheered up. My own gift this year for this weekend?

Varupayaru! "What the ?" is what is going through your mind. Will explain...

When we went to Seattle recently for the BIL/SIL's baby shower, as part of the ceremony they gave us all this snack which was mixed dry-roasted grains. It is a tradition and it is a good source of protein for the pregnant woman (and guessing if it is good for her it is good for everyone!).

It has nine grains in it. Tried to find out recipes for this and finally had to reach out to older relatives to get the recipe.

San was initially not for my cooking experiement with soaking grains, drying them and roasting them etc. because she thought this would be one huge waste of expensive raw material.. but she relented.

So here we are at step 2. The grains were all soaked in different vessels and now are nicely drying out on bounty towels. Tomorrow..... Roasting time!

Will let you know how it comes out. . .

Happy Fathers day to all who celebrate it. The rest of you who think every day should be fathers day.. well, dream on!