You cannot help being happy here..

Usually the family visits the happiest place on earth aka Disneyland during Thanksgiving and celebrate the parents birthdays. This year, we were not sure what was going to happen during thanksgiving. 

Both the kids were new college bound.. the older one for a masters and the younger one starting undergrad.

At the end of summer we knew they were both going to be in Southern California 2 hours apart in two different UC's. 

So we made a plan on the long weekend to go visit both schools, hunt for housing for the older one, look at the college for the younger one to see how she will fit in and as an added bonus, given we cross Disney, dedicate one day for Disney as well. 

The college visits were not much.. they were empty and deserted as it was a long weekend and in hindsight it was a bad idea to show the kids deserted eerie large open spaces and collosal buildings. Does not help form a good first impression. Still that is where they ended up and have settled in. Both of them got hit with health issues and local hospital and ER visits within a quarter. All that seems to be behind us. This post is about our Disney visit.

Given we have almost been there every alternate year for the last 24 (this blog probably has enough entries to make a parade evolution video), this maybe just "yet another Disney post". 

We did smile all day, have fun, go see the latest Star Wars show. You have to see it. It is just too amazing for words (there are small bits in the video.. but not giving anything away so you go see it for yourself)!

Enjoyed as many rides as possible in one day, but didn't sit in the cold for fireworks. We saw it on the way to the parking lot. We had dinner reservations for a mexican place right outside the gate but within the Disney walkway to the parking lot. So we rushed to have dinner, then watched the fireworks and walked back to the hotel. 

Here are a few memories for later.

The kids wanted to go to Plant power, a burger chain which was apparently the place to be for Veggie burgers! So went with them and ate fries while they enjoyed the burgers as an early evening snack.

We also got to eat at a small Indian restaurant right next this place called Star of India. That place did not disappoint. It was very good snacks and amazing ginger chai!

We did some shopping including my first visit to a thrift store to buy things! The kids had made a reservation at a fancy place, Osteria La Buca (in Melrose) for dinner and we enjoyed that as well. The candle lights were a special touch!

We also got to eat at a place later in Santa Barbara called Masala Spice. That was also good. Finger licking good. 

Have always failed at these pictures that they take.. so we never end up buying one. Someday, I will stare at that camera and smile. The family was mocking me for a good hour after this. "Even Disney is giving us something for free and you mess it up!"

and the parade.. we always love this parade of old and new Disney characters.. they make it so much fun!

Our visit to a sea of storm troopers! We were talking about the possibility of "storm trooping" being a minimum wage job, now that the kids are older and our conversations in Disney seem to be different every now and then.. then the kids hit me with some snarky comment to put me back in my place, so we can all be just kids again and enjoy the rides!

A picture with the main star of the place. We stood in line for more than an hour to get this picture!

and the final fireworks!

and a video as usual!

our smiling faces say it all..

There was a picture of the girls in a tea cup that brough back memories from a different tea cup ride in San Jose downtown.

Kids are all grown up.. but happy to see them still be kids in tea cups!

I am happiest when my girls are all smiles.

This place is priceless!

Given almost every trip has a bittersweet ending for me recently, this one also did. Here is a public service annoucement. Always wear sunglasses when driving back from LA back to the bay area. Yes, the sun is in your face when you drive back and your eyes are wide open after a few hectic days in theme parks or otherwise. The wind is almost always kicking up crap on 101 North when you are near the San Antonio de Padua mission exit. Something went into my eye. It took me a good week to get better after washing and treating it. 

Wear those damn sunglasses..even if you think you don't look good in them. You can thank me later!

How was this even possible?

In 2005, I had posted this about Naadi Astrology and this unbelievable palm leaves that had poems that could accurately give all my details from my birth to the point those leaves were destined to be read. 

It is now your destiny to be able to hear this !! There was no easy way to upload just an audio to a blog then. Now we have methods!

There was no google in 1997 and even then, getting details about someone including their Indian Horsocope which needs date of birth and place of birth with an accuracy of 4 minutes, time windows, family details, names etc.. all in poetry.. not possible with even today's AI and computing power to write those as recitable poems. 

It was just amazing. A lot of folks reached out to me then and I did give them the contact to go find their palm leaves of destiny. However, not everyone who went there, could find their leaf. That is part of the deal. 

Some folks went multiple times over a period of years and managed to find it later! 

All that said, as part of digitizing audio tapes from years ago, found Naadi tapes from when my parents got my leaf and how years later San found her leaf on a visit to Vaideeswaran Kovil. She rushed it and was impatient as she had to come back to a hungry kid. Still you can see two data points.. 

Majority of what was said in detail was accurate. Then again, a lot of stuff was vague when it came to the future. We have two girls. In my reading, that was off. In San's reading it was right. 

If you have the patience, you can listen to this..  pretty impressive actually for a palm leaf that is a few thousand years old and preserved for generations in a temple! 

Maybe our destinies are all pre written.. or maybe there is some time travel involved here. In either case, the beauty of human existence is that we just go about our daily life with amazing selective memory loss. We all assume that we will wake up day after day and do things as we plan them. We put in for vacations 3 months from now, plan weddings, put 5 year FD's, etc.. forgetting that there is no guarantee for anyone for their very next breath! That is actually a good thing, so we can keep moving!

I usually forget this tape exists, except when someone brings up destiny in a conversation. Guess the readers of this blog can scratch their heads after listening.. 

Not sure if these places are still around and do the leaf readings. Have read articles that there are a lot of fake centers and copies floating around. Still not sure how any fake thing can guess this many details right and come up with limmerics in record time while the person is sitting in front of them.. that too in ancient Tamil script!

If any of you have had recent experiences with "meeting your leaf", do share in comments! 

This was out of sight and hearing and out of mind for a good 16 or so years. So it was interesting to listen to after a long time.. especially with Jr. listening in on every word  and asking questions. 

She was laughing so loud hearing my dad keep interrupting the reader about my wedding plans! 

This was way way ahead of Chat GPT !!! 

Happy thanksgiving! Time travel weekend...

This year, my birthday was a simple affair with both the kids making a flying visit for the long weekend. 

After the celeberations were done, jr. and me decided to have some fun. She saw an ad for a service that gets old tapes , negatives etc. and gets them digitized. We had a lot of audio cassettes and video cassettes to be digitized.. but after realizing that the service was ripping us off in shipping fees, decided against using it.

We did however find the old Cassette to MP3 converter and put it to good use. It took us some time to download Audacity app on the Mac and then set it up right so it could read the device! Once we figured it out, it was fun to check what was in those cassettes. 

Most of them were tapes I had accumulated to practice dancing.. one was full of Latin songs, one was all waltzes, one was a mix tape that simply said "To Miss. Smooth, with love, Part 1" and Jr.'s looks at me with raised eyebrows and asks "so I take it that it is a mix tape you made for your girlfriend?". Told her it was for a friend and she did take the part 2.

Then I found two cassettes from Sruthi, an organization in Philadelphia which had organized a Lalgudi concert with his kids in 1993. Remember setting up the mics for it and getting free admission to the concert. We also got to spend the evening with the artists at a professors house. In India, I could never think of being up close and personal with greatness like that! 

Brought back so many memories of how my association with music has always been touch and go.

There was a cassette with Tamil movie songs which my Chitti's had recorded and sent me as a gift. Even today my Chitti's (mom's younger sisters) are my biggest supporters when it comes to encouraging me to sing in Smule! I recognize my Lalli chitti's handwriting on that list.. she would write so beautifully and fast! 

30 years later have sang a lot of those songs.. the ones I missed, will definitely sing! Did not know this cassette was still around till today!

 

Used to get 20 cassettet tapes as a package at Sam's club (think Costco in the early 90's). Had the habit of recording radio stations while sitting alone in the lab doing experiments.. kind of a time capsuley thing.. 

Some of them were from 1993/94, then 96, 98.. It was wild listening to the commercials from those times (mostly beer  and car commercials!). Jr. was having so much fun Shazaming the songs and got a taste of what music daddy was listening to 30 years ago! There were multiple radio stations in PHiladelphia/ Wilmington Delaware, then Albany/Troy NY.. and some Latin tapes that were too rare for the Shazam app!

Then we found some old gold!  There was a copy of me singing Kandar shasthi kavasam at 4 years old. It was the first time my voice was recorded on the cassette player that my Ambi mama bought. The whole family was impressed with the ability to record and replay.. and my reciting slokas was used as the trial run!

My grandpa had saved that cassette and given it to me in 1995. It had made it through all the moving over the years and is now an MP3 .. better a Youtube video. 

Then we found my Naadi Josiyam tapes.. which was one of the reasons for starting this exercise. A long conversation with my friends mom yesterday on how things seem to be predetermined to a large extent in our lives and the best way to use this knowledge wisely to navigate through life.. even if it is all meant to be! 

A separate post on that later!

It has been a fun weekend so far, going back in time with my kid!