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!
It has been years since we went to Disney. Given we have been there almost every year, this has been a long break. There have been many Disney or Disney related posts in this blog...
We wanted to go somewhere, anywhere as a family. The only place the Kids agreed to go was Disney! The happiest place on Earth! We had hotel reservations but no confirmed tickets till the last minute. The way it works now is that you check availability on that day and if it opens up, book the tickets. It is total headcount based per San's information! The Disney main park is booked solid. We did get an opening for the California Adventure on Friday for a Sunday visit. We took it!
The road trip itself was fun. I got to drive and drive and clear my head after a long long time. Long drives are cathartic in their own way. The family has a playlist of songs I don't like and I am sure they wanted to play those so I will not try to sing along.
Disney has changed a lot post COVID. First the prices. We expect that from Disney and were not grumpy. Disney tickets are now variable pricing like United. So no surprises there!
Next the mask requirement and enforcement. There are signs everywhere, things being said on the speakers and by the folks who are working the lines, but... there are a lot of folks who simply are not following mask guidelines. So you go at your own risk! Again, expected to see this given the demographic in the US.
Then the demographic of the crowd. Normally we see a colorful crowd. This time the crowd we saw was less than 20% of colored folks. Most of the folks who were working in the restraurants, kiosks and the folks responsible for line management were black/Hispanic/Asian. The walking, riding crowd was not. We saw 4 desi families total from 8AM-4:30 PM in that park! That was interesting. Maybe all the desi folks are risk averse and don't want to risk COVID by coming to Disney? Maybe the ticket prices are ridiculous that not many follks think it is worth the trip? Don't know!
Then there was the fast pass..we could reserve a fixed time window for a ride and go at that time to save time instead of standing in line. There were restrictions but it still worked. You needed some planning skills. Now there is no fast pass. It has been replaced with the "lightning pass". You pay 20 bucks a person and you get to go through this line for the top three rides in the park. Then there is another 20 bucks a person pass for all other rides. Think "special Darshan" queue at Thirupathi..
Initially we thought maybe maybe we could go to guest services and switch the ticket from California Adventure to the main park, but it was not meant to be. So after spending 30 minutes after park opened to try switch tickets, we ended up walking into the California Adventure park. The minute we walked in though, the kids eyes lit up. The Avengers theme area was in this park!! We always wanted to see this since it opened. So we ran to the first big ride and realized the wait time was 90 minutes. We stood in line for 105 minutes to see a 3 minute ride. It was great, but we promptly bought the lighting pass and the other paid fast pass. Then we covered the next two top rides in the next hour. As soon as you use the pass, it lets you book the next ride on the App.
we just love this "Radiator springs" area which Jr. used to call "Gladiator springs".. the attention to detail to the Cars movie series is just amazing!
Between the big rides the kids would take us to the little rides in each area!
The extra money was well spent as we pretty much covered everything by 4:30 PM. The last ride we went to was the Guardians of the Galaxy (which used to be the drop tower now converted to a new themed ride).. except.. except.. instead of one drop, now there is 7 drops and you just keep going up and down for 3 minutes. Haven't screamed like this in a long time and my fingers were white from holding on to the arm grip the whole time. The funny thing is that the lightning pass for this had a wait of 30 minutes. Guess by 4PM everyone paid for a lightning pass! The regular line wait time was 2 hours!! Reminded me of United Airlines again "All group 1 ready to board!" and you see 400 out of the 420 people on the plane line up as group 1! It is just a question of time when they introduce the Thunderbolt pass which is 100 bucks a person and an escort will walk you to the ride and sit you there and put the seat buckle... you heard it here first!
Was telling the family "Thirupathila kooda mottai adichcha sandanam freeaa kudupaanga.. Disneyla sandanam sold separately!" (even in Thirupathi, when you go tonsure your head, they will give you sandalwood paste for free to apply on the head.. if it was up to Disney, they will charge for that separately). They are trying to make up for the park closure during COVID by charging for everything.
The kids were extremely helpful in using the App, planning, making us run from place to place, ordering food on the App, etc. It is great when your kids are old enough and they tell you what to do! Told them that for the first time they moved from the liability to asset column and they both rolled their eyes!
We just decided that there was enough exposure to unmasked people for the day, or for our life and walked out at 4:30. The small parade was fun to watch on the way out!
You can no longer take pictures in front of special props. For every such place, there is a Disney Photographer and a line! They take the picture and you pay for it.. we just clicked pictures as we walked along.. with our phones. For once I didn't even edit these pictures from the phone to post in the blog!
We did not stay back for the fireworks. We had seen it the previous night from the restaurant where we had dinner. The kids were like "we covered everything thanks to the paid pass! Let's go get some rest!"
On the whole it was a nice day, pleasant weather, great rides. The food at Disney sucks and it has gotten worse over the years and the unmasked crowd is a little scary.
They have redone a lot of rides and it was good to go on these.
We will still recommend Disney to anyone as it is guranteed fun for the day! The happiest place on earth is accessible only to folks who can shell out a lot of money at short notice and the more you fork out, the happier you are!
A video of the day.. Have captured the cars thing here.. the kids wanted to go on it again.. so we took the single rider option where we are all separated and went back to the line for 30 minutes and did it twice. This is one ride that makes the California adventure worth it! Truly amazing!
Disney is still king.. just need to improve on the food options, especially for vegetarians! No better place to enjoy the holiday spirit!
Had a nice dinner at a local Italian place to made up for the bad food in the afternoon, and called it a day!
Our drive back was interesting thanks to a great rest stop!
2021 definitely wrapped up nicely with this one day adventure!
The best part for me was to watch the girls talk to each other all day, jointly plan what to do next.. it was like watching them be kids again and that alone was worth all the driving!
As a person working very hard to bring a new better memory to market.. lower power, higher density at lower cost etc. just to name a few attributes, I delude myself into thinking that this memory will make the world a better place.
You can go directly alter bytes in this memory so there is not a lot of copying back and forth happening.. People will save power and if you take every pico joule saved and multiply it by a jillion copies, those things add up to Giga Watts in no time. Used to think that all those twitter retweets and facebook shares are melting icebergs that this memory is going to change.
Then again, Enrico Fermi or Einstein did not think Hiroshima when they did the work on nuclear fission. Hiroshima happened anyways.
Why bring all this up?
A little more than a month ago saw this mami (aunty) on the flight from India to US. She was looking for a charger desperately.. think "Eastwood as Blondie crawling on the desert floor looking for a drop of water" desperate! Finally she found one..
Turns out you can download old Tamil serial episodes on an iPad and binge watch them at airports. Not sure what service they use or if Netflix now has megaserials like Chitti and all 1890 episodes of Metti oli! (not kidding.. that serial actually had 1890 episodes and my wife and MIL probably watched every episode).
There was a time when Jr. would not eat her dinner unless she heard the title song of Metti oli. It was so pavlovian that I actually recorded that song on a VHS tape and took it to Australia with us when she was 20 months old. We had to play it there to be able to feed her! (these were pre-Youtube days.. now you can enjoy it by clicking this link... I am sure when Jr. watches this after almost 13-14 years, she will turn into the Winter Soldier)
To think that all my hard work bringing in a new memory for the people is going to enable replays of Delhi Kumar walking down the street to his house, while pausing a few times to try and remember what he forgot for a full 30 minute episode is heartbreaking to say the least.
Delhi Kumar alone is responsible for a few glaciers disappearing, leave alone those poor polar bears desperately trying to find that next floating piece of ice to survive.
By that token Radhika Sarathkumar has single handedly raised ocean levels by a centimeter over just a decade!
Apparently there is an age you cross, when these Tamil mega serials (Soap operas) start appealing to you, per mom, MIL, and dad. My FIL seems to have skipped this age.
Hoping that someone euthanises me if I succumb to watching Tamil serials.. at any age!
