One of the local parks here (Vasona park in Los Gatos) has a Fantasy of Lights event where they put nice Christmas light displays and you drive through them at <5 miles per hour with the matching music to go on a local radio station.
The light displays were amazing! The kids were initially entertained, but they were not happy with the open passenger side window. While it accomodated the photo/videographer, it made the van too cold for their liking. This was followed by questions like
"how much longer do we have to drive like this?" "are we going to stay here forever?"
etc. etc..
It is a good idea to teach your kids a few patience lessons before taking them on this drive...
Or should we say "belated" happy 4th, since it is already past midnight!
This year, the 4th of July was celebrated at "Roaring Camp" which included a nice train ride through redwood forests.
This was followed by some activities for kids (you can see Jr. and the little one trying to do some Hula Hoops in the video.. note the little one trying a hoop with a diameter larger than her height).
Then daddy took the kids to watch Fireworks with K. while the ladies went to watch the latest Hindi Movie with ARR songs, which for some reason is sold out, playing in the local english movie theaters as well!
All said and done, a fine day.. but.. but.. but..
Daddy made the mistake of formating his CF card just before the fireworks, forgeting the fact that he never downloaded the roaring camp photos from the camera! All may not be lost as there are apparently some software out there that can retreive the formated photos, provided we buy a card reader that can show up as an external drive on the laptop!
We have our fingers crossed..
In other news, Bush and Bush Sr. of the house have mandated that daddy edit them out of the video for this blog post!
That was not easy.
1. The guide told us so many interesting things on the train and I wanted to have all that in the video. 2. The ladies planted themselves right between me, the kids and the driver and made it next to impossible to get them out of the frame! 3. I could have been that dude from the next coach taking a video of the whole thing with GWB and GWBS who is possibly posting it on youtube right now with them in the frame!
It is high time the democrats in this house came to power!
Seriously, learnt so many new things today..
a. Switchbacks and how they work b. redwood tree seeds lay dormant for upto nine hundred years. c. The seeds germinate only after a forest fire. A forest fire is almost a must to get the next generation of seeds to sprout. Had no idea! For some strange reason this got memories of Gavaskar and Tendulkar .. on a freaking narrow gage train up a mountain! d. I still love cricket, somewhere in the back of my head! e. Most of the trees we saw today were 300+ feet tall and were >1000 years old! f. Butterflys love a steam bath or at least excess moisture. From out of nowhere a bunch of butterflies came to enjoy the steam puffs from the engine.
and much much more, like how to switch from standard to night vision in my camcorder, how to possibly retrieve images from a formatted CF card, etc. etc.
A day well spent. Here is the video....
Next years July 4th will be interesting.
A different president! A different US of A! A different world? A more powerful daddy?
When I was a small boy, every year it would be a festival or a function, be it a marriage, baby shower, birth announcement, or some such thing, where the old ladies would gather in the kitchen and make some sweets and savories that make your mouth water, just thinking about it!
A couple of bricks would be placed, clay plastered around and before you knew it, the stove was ready! They would have charcoal and "varaati's" (dried flats made of cowdung and straw) as the fuel. The extra large vessels reserved for the special occasions would be gathered from the "paran" (attic) and the ladies would go about the preparation process.
The chilies were sundried, the rice soaked and dried off on large towels, the trips to the mill to powder chillis, rice, lentils and even sugar(yeah, these were days before electric dry and wet grinders were there in every household!), the impatient waiting to see the goodies take shape!
Usually kids were not allowed into the kitchen area during these times. My grandmother always made an exception for me, simply because I would watch and ask her a million questions! Somehow between my grandmother and my grand aunt, who was referred to by every kid in every generation as "Ambulu Mami" , they would actually take time and explain things to me, probably because they were bored, or amused at my curiosity. Incidentally, Ambulu mami, was my grandma's aunt, but just a few years older than my grandma, so they were more like sisters!
They would take turns stirring the jaggery paste to make "vella paagu" aka caramel and then put peanuts, cashewnuts or split roast peas (pottu kadalai) and pour it into a large tray which had clarified butter spread on the surface.
At this point, the two ladies who had spent almost an hour stirring the syrup with the giant ladles with bored looks, would act like they just got an overdose of adrenaline. There would be a frenzy of activity, where they tested the temperature of the rapidly cooling mix with their fingers. In a motion that reminds you of gymnasts powdering their hands before going on the rings in the Olympics, the two of them would powder their hands with a mix of rice flour and powdered sugar and rip out small globs of this hot mix and roll it into little balls.
They had a small time window before the whole thing would solidify into a hard mass. "Reheating the mix would deteriorate the taste!", they would tell me. Sometimes they would put the plate (taambaalam) over a vessel with hot water to keep it from solidifying so fast. I am sure there is a lot of science behind the various phases of sugar syrup and the temperature vs. hardness response to rapidly cooling sugars, but this was definitely more art than science!
There is something to be said about making stuff and eating it, as opposed to just buying it and eating it. My grandmother is too old. My mom is going through surgery after surgery. Making all this stuff at home is definitely lost with the new generation, be it with San, my sister or Sister-in-law. They are all good cooks, but they would not venture past the usual rasam and sambar, to make laddus, or Jaangiris or even the therati paal.
"That is too labor intensive. Why spend all that time when I can go to Grand Sweets or Sri Krishna sweets and just buy it?" would be the question. In all fairness to the fair ones, they just don't have the motivation! They can all make the pongals, payasams and vadai's for the special occasion, but that is where it stops. My mother-in-law is still old school and she can do non-standard stuff and sometimes we talk about somehow capturing these things for posterity! She is probably the last of the dinosaurs, if you exclude me from the list.
Call me old school, but eating is just part of it. I would always long for the semisolid "Mysore pak" that is still bubbling on the stove than eat the cold solid pieces a day later. Same goes for Kaju Kathlis or Badam Halwa. Taking in the smell, the texture of what is cooking is a whole different deal. Somehow I feel Jr. and the little one are missing out on this.
It has been raining heavily here for the last two days. Wanted to get back in the kitchen and make something out of the normal. So went about making pottukadalai urundai's. Brought back lot of memories! San was definitely amused. She even videotaped the stuff. However, Jr. was just more interested in the eating than in the making. Who knows, even having a kitchen stove might become an alien concept two decades from now and the microwave will replace the stove!
Maybe there is no point to passing on these tricks to the next generation?
Here are the finished "yummies"...
I have been thinking a lot of my Sachi Patti (Saraswathi!) and Ambulu mami since yesterday. Do not know why. Went through my old photos and actually dug out this one from the early nineties. The one on the left is Ambulu mami and the one on the right is my grandma.
Like I told San, you can learn to do anything as long as you have great teachers! I was gifted with two great teachers when it comes to making caramel and kadalai urundais!
(the secret video.. shows a door for almost a minute, but that is what secret video's are all about. Listen to the soundtrack for hilarious dialogues)
All this reference to babies has to do with peer pressure. Let me explain. Everytime, one of her classmates announces a baby brother or sister, or we go to see newborn babies of office colleagues, there is peer pressure on the real mommy in the house!
Typical conversation in the last few weeks:
Jr. : Mommy, can I have a baby? Mom : No. when you grow up and become a big girl, maybe. Jr. : When I am 10 years old? Mom : aaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrghhh!
Jr. : Mommy, when is your tummy going to get big? Mom : Not unless I eat a lot and put on weight.. Jr. : When will there be a baby in the tummy? Mom : !! What part of No don't you understand? Jr. : But, Mrs. xyz (a teacher in her school) is having a baby! and she already has kids.. Mom : Enakku maamiyaare vendam di, nee podum!(I dont need a mother in law here. You are enough to drive me up a wall!)
Add to these, the embrassasment of Jr. asking any women we know "do you have a baby in your tummy?" and they feel like strangling her! I bet this alone keeps the women who have recently put on some weight from visiting hour house!
In a fit of what can only be called 50% rage and 50% exasperation, mommy was heard cursing the little one yesterday.
Here is as close a literal translation as possible:
"I am cursing from the bottom of my heart, that you also have kids, who are exactly like you, and they trouble you, just like you trouble me! Only then you will know what I am going through now!"
On further investigation, found out that this curse runs in San's family and generation after generation, the moms curse their girls along these lines and the grandmoms smile, knowing that their curse came true!
Who knew?!
In any event, it is too late now. The curse has been passed on to one more generation.
ps. The MIL driving one up the wall reference, is more of a cultural thing. San gets along real swell with my mum.
These days when I either remember my dad giving me the "in those days, I used to walk 50 miles home everyday carrying 50 kgs of rice on top of my head!" speech or when I give Jr. the "in those days, we used to bike 5 miles to class every day carrying 5 kgs of books on my back!" speech,
there is a realization that she will probably give her kids a little monologue along the "in those days, we had to surf 50 websites in 5 minutes" and there is a good chance that her kids will be going "in those days, we had to surf 500 links in 5 seconds!"
It is not about how long and how heavy anymore! It is how much, how fast!
A different world awaits us..
In case I haven't made the point yet with the video, Jr. can turn on the computer, open IE, go do google searches for websites or images, find my blog and read it, go to Youtube through my blog, watch videos and watch linked videos on Youtube, play online games!! etc. etc. It is very scary that she is 5 years a few months old.
Seriously thinking of putting some parental controls on the computer (need to find out if Youtube has some kind of parent guard so that she doesnt end up watching or reading something nasty)!
The world is changing constantly and these days one rarely disagrees with that statement. Somehow, generation after generation, parents feel that their children are pushing the envelope and they are not prepared enough to handle the challenges their kids dish out to them! My parents must have challenged theirs with their love for city life, compared to their parents who lived in villages.
We(myself, my brother and sister) tested our parents enough and more, and for the most part (now thinking back to those days), they were growing up with us and they still are when they see us live our life the way we do and raise kids the way we do!
Now it is our turn to grow up, and be tested by the little ones. We might not comprehend their world a few years from now, no matter how many advanced degrees we have, tech. savvy we are, etc.
Their world is different, and they will bring us challenges!
Just hope that I remember to read this post and keep my sanity and learn to let go, when Jr. and the little one push the envelope of their times...
ps. In case you didn't catch the sound in the video, the little one wants to see daddy flying, every day! She never gets her request because Jr. does what she wants anyways.. that, is another post in itself!
Sunday, December 28, 2008 at 5:08PM 
