Me vs. Nick Jr. (could be Disney next !)

During our recent India trip, my mother-in-law got my daughter 4 small sleeveless T-shirts. Two of them had "Spongebob Squarepants" on them. How a cartoon character popular in the US, landed on a 4 for 100 Rupees (2 bucks) type T-shirt is beyond me.

What added to my woes was that I did not know who spongebob was. I am a busy parent who has not had the time to watch all of Cartoon Network's offerings to the modern child. How my daughter learnt about this character or what it means to her, I do not know, but I am in the process of finding out..

As soon as my almost three year old daughter saw these T-shirts she refuses to wear anything but these two T-shirts with "spongebob squarepants" in it. It is really funny the way she says it, real fast. It has been the only thing she wore for most of the last two weeks.



We are washing them non stop to keep one clean T-shirt at all times. If by chance, both are wet, we are in for trouble. She would rather stay topless till the damn thing comes out of the dryer, than wear something else.

Today, her daycare teacher noticed this. Maybe she thought we are too broke to afford more sets of clothing..

We have a request for grandma to bring any piece of clothing found in the platform stores of mumbai which has SBSP in it . We are at this state, in spite of not deliberately exposing our kid to the Disney advertising machine ! Imagine what will happens when she grows older and is exposed to corporate marketing ?!?

Ps. I did edit this post which originally said SBSP was Disney character. Thanks to Balaji for pointing out that he is a Nickelodeon character!. Goes to show how much I know my cartoons.

Google Talk !!

Over the last few years, I have tried a lot of google products.

First it was gmail which I got hooked to. Had been invited to get the beta version, thanks to a colleagues wife who works at google and loved the new features.. you start typing the persons mail id and it auto completed and I didnt have to throw anything away just like they advertised.

Then it was picassa. It is now my default photo editor. Even crappy circus pictures taken with my autofocus camera become better with the "I am feeling lucky" button.

this was followed by the google desktop search. This is a much better search than the one I get as default on my computer. It gives me results from within my computer and the internet.

Then there was the one blemish. "hello" - an add on to picassa to publish photo blogs. This one is not self explanatory and did not work for me on many occasions. They could definitely improve this software and how it works with picassa or blogger.

Not to mention blogger.. which by now you all know, I am addicted to.

The reason for this blog and I have taken my time to get to the point is that we downloaded Google talk over the weekend. They have a great success rate with new products even when they start in markets where they lag behind. Maybe it is the simplicity of the products or the way the word "google" rolls off your tongue!

We had three voice conversations, one with pittsburg, one with india and another one within sunnyvale. The quality of the voice is crystal clear for all the three calls. We had a long chat with my in-laws thanks to Google talk.

For all you soon to be married, engaged folk who read my blog :

time to do GTalk instead of spending on the phone lines !

GO GOOGLE !!

Spoon Envy !!!

This post will definitely be perceived differently by men and women.. not that any post isn't perceived differently.

WARNING : Any resemblence of the events mentioned in this post to real people is purely intentional. But not all events are based on us! This is the collective experience of many families we know!

Let us say for example, that you are a nice indian girl who has recently finished your undergraduate degree and has started working. Throughout your university life you never had a reason to go into the kitchen and meddle with anything there. You were probably being pampered by your mother, grandmother and other senior womenfolk in your home who wanted you to have things that they never could dream of in their lifetime.. and in a misguided way thought that giving you "bed coffee" and making sure you never know how to cook is their way of giving you the free time you need to complete your studies. That is fair enough, considering that the guys dont do any cooking at that stage of their life either.

Let us also say for reasons only known to you and the almighty that you agree to an arranged marriage with a dude who has spent considerable time by himself in a foreign country as a graduate student. The guy tells you that your lack of culinary skills is a non issue because he can teach you everything you need to know !

You scoff at this and show up in the United States/ Australia / UK or whatever it is.. and you find that the bloke while being messy can sure whip up a full service dinner menu in 40 minutes flat ! Intially you have nothing else to do since you are probably on a dependent visa and you decide to one up the guy ! You start experimenting. You walk into the kitchen and see the following things..

Your heart sinks. You vaguely recognize that the small two piece thing at the bottom left is related to making coffee but beyond that the rest could be torture instruments for all you know !

Two things happen at this point.

1. The guy gets alarmed. The only thing you were really dependent on this guy for was his cooking.. now that might disapper with your interest in the kitchen.

2. You get alarmed. Cooking was not as easy as this guy made it appear. Plus you need to put this guy in his place soon because he has decided to make "mysore pak" at 3 AM on a whim !

Step 1 :

You realize that there is a method to his madness.. he has deliberately arranged all the items in what you thougtht was random order. So the minute he goes off to work, you decide to rearrange the entire kitchen in alphabetical order or by jar size. The guy comes home to find that his whole world has changed ! He has entered the MATRIX or something. He wants to make a simple tea with tea powder, cardamom, basil leaves, sugar and camphor and finds that they are all scattered over the kitchen shelf because of their container size.. By the time you locate all ingredients required the tea is burnt ! His will to enter the kitchen has suffered a big dent. (15 / love)

Step 2 :

The ubiquitous INTERNET. You start using up paper and printer fluid in unthinkable quantities because you download and print recipes from sites like bawarchi . You have all the time in the world and all the raw materials at hand. So you start getting better at the cooking thing. You realize that there is something hidden inside you that makes this thing almost second nature. By this time the guy gets doubly frustrated. He cant do anything in the kitchen anymore because he cant find the stuff and now that he has had a prolonged (month or two) absence from the kitchen thanks to your cooking him "a new dish a day" he gets contented. He says "not bad. you are cooking like a chef. I could really get used to this !" (30 /love)

Step 3 :

You are now on top of the world. You got certified as a great cook by a guy who has had his TV parked in "the food network" as his default channel for years. This from a guy who says "when life gives you lemons, make lemon merengue pie!" . A guy, who probably treats sambar powder, salt and tamarind paste with the same respect and regard he has for toxic gases like ammonia , Argon or nitrous oxide at work. (40/love)

Step 4 :

Only one thing remains. You decide to test this guy after a few years of kitchen detachment by asking him to get back to the kitchen. He has gotten used to not having to come anywhere near the kitchen by now and his idea of time at home is to blow raspberries on his daughters tummy and see her giggle with glee. Under pressure and overwhelmed, he double salts the sambar. He is beaten at his own game and a smile crosses your face.. (game over!)

A note to the guy : You might still be given credit for being the first one to teach your lady the very basics of cooking and for being a constant source of encouragement. So go with the flow and enjoy it. But once in a while, no matter how hard it is to find things in what was once YOUR kitchen, whip up a little dish just to keep in touch!

Greatest Show on Earth !!

Today, daddy decided to take his darling daughter to the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey 3 Ring Circus. Having witnessed Kamala 3 Ring Circus when he was a five year old, daddy was overly optimistic that his daughter would be eternally grateful for the trip to the circus..

Alas..

Making a toddler sit in the same seat for 2 hours plus is no easy feat. We still had a ton of fun and she was a well behaved kid for almost an hour and a half. Since it was a daddy daughter only affair, I decided to pamper her as much as possible. We went backstage to meet the animals (courtesy of IBM's special tickets).





Then we went up close and personal with the clowns and finally watched the show.. it was really cool. But I still think Kamala 3 Ring would give these guys a run for their money. They had all the same things these guys had and more. Here are some photos from the circus trip.

The best part was still the one man with 6 tigers in a cage..











We also left 5 minutes before the complete end of the show to beat the parking lot traffic and were lucky to catch the elephants leaving through the backside entrance.. we got to see all 10 elephants going one behind another on a San Jose street.. a treat to watch.

Aloha party !

My daughter had an aloha party at her daycare center. There is an aloha day on August 12th.. but the daycare for some reason decided to have aloha day towards the end of august.

It was a small party for an hour where all the kids got to sing "aloha means hello" and "I am a little hawaiian child" followed by some limbo and a little pinata event (pretty sure that this pinata thing is a mexican and not hawaiian thing- maybe I am wrong !)

There were pinapples and hawaiian punch, cakes for everyone to eat. The kids loved it. So did most of the parents who showed up with their photo and video gear. For the most part I was talking to the other dads about Canon Digital Rebel XT vs Nikon D70 (I was the only dad with an autofocus digital camera.. what a shame !!)

Without further ado, here are the pictures..