photography

What a week!

After visiting doctors, labs and pharmacies for the front end of the week, the later part of the weekdays were just spent surviving the days. 

The routine was wheeze from 11PM to 5AM, go to bed at 5AM and be woken up by a work phone call or the kids, get some idea of time and space and go to work by 9, struggle through the day and come home. 

Survived till 2PM, 3PM and managed to work till 4:30 today. So that is improvment on the stamina side of things.

The breathing is still iffy at best and have found that sleeping in the sitting position till exhaustion takes over is the best strategy. 

Krishna Ummachi's birthday came and went without me doing anything of significance. Being able to partake a few of the dishes in sample quantities was my contribution to the function. As a rule of thumb it is very difficult to even be sick in this house with the parents and MIL present and having the kids in the house with no school.

You come home at 2:30 and want to go sleep and 

a. Parents come out all concerned and give you two suggestions every 5 minutes (usually the same suggestion with a time lag) on how to improve your situation. Most of these are not going to help in anyway as they will be things I have already tried or know won't make a difference.

b. MIL will either join with parents with the concern or try to push me the other way with some enthusiasm. "Let's go back to the hot room and you will be fine!" she will say and off I will go and barely survive the session. That is better than the first option to some extent. 

c. The kids who are not used to seeing daddy gasp for air will try to wake me up every 15 minutes in an attempt to cheer me up. Let's go biking daddy! Let's go to the park daddy! etc. etc. Their idea is that if I do physical activity the lungs will forget the problem. Little do they know that going outside itself is an ordeal now..

and of course how can we forget d.. or di or my own little Kolaveri di.. 

d. San will come home from work to check on me and declare "if you can pick up the phone and answer a work call or participate in a meeting even on mute, you can help the kids with the Kumon or go back to work. today is the last day I am losing sleep because you won't rest during the day and wheeze all night!" Well, she has her point and so does everyone else in the house.

The best thing I actually did was realize that there was no place where rest was possible.. not at work, not at home. So parked the van under a tree near the house and slept there one afternoon for a couple of hours. That was a great move! 

The weekend is here and for starters got my mind off of things and started browsing old pictures from the Canon Powershot S30 days with the kids. Found a few JPG's that were interesting and processed them on Photoshop and uploaded them to the Galleries. 

In case you only read the blog on reader... do checkout the Galleries tab at www.sundar72.com

Here are some samples...

Hanuma bay in Hawaii when we visited for two days en route to Australia in 2004!

Bryce canyon in Utah.. We were there the day the Tsunami hit and did not know as we were cut off from civilization!


Took this one with one hand while parasailing in Seattle right around Sunset!

There are more pictures. Going to start a new tab in the website called "The story behind the pictures" and explain the photograph in more detail. Maybe it will be of some use to other Photographers in training...

More tomrorow..

Until then, I will pray for better breathing, something we all take for granted all the time!

Everglades

We had 6 hours to spare on our last day at Miami before we were to go to the airport. This was more of a scouting trip to get a sneak peak of what to do and what not to do if we go back to Florida for a many day vacation centered around Miami instead of driving back and forth to Orlando.

Got up early and went to the Visitor center of the Everglades National Park. The rangers were nice and came to the point quickly..

"Let's see. You are here in the wrong season. You should come here during the dry season which is November to January, instead you are here.. smack dab in the middle of the wet season"

Me : So?

Ranger : With very old people and little kids in your party, it might be a stretch to see anything. Not many birds around in this season and not many alligators close enough. Also way too many mosquitos. That will be a problem for the elderly and the children. I can meet you at a point 20 miles from here and take you for a one hour walk. You will see things and I can point to them"

Me : We have only till 1PM

Ranger : Your best bet is to visit one of the farms around this area and go on a airboat ride!

So we thanked the ranger and drove to the Everglades Alligator Farm. They had just opened for the morning and had a 3 hour agenda with a snake show, an alligator show, a walk around the tanks where they sort the gators (and Nile crocs) by size ...

Here are some pictures from the shows which show the young and old having fun.

We did get to hold the alligators (with the mouth taped shut as a precaution) and the snakes that were not poisonous..

and the grand finale.. an airboat ride into the everglades for almost 20 minutes where we got to see the turtles, birds and alligators up close and personal. 

What is a post on everglades without a video of the airboat ride. It was water sprays everywhere and this is the sum total of all the videos that I was able to take with both the iPhone and the 5D Mark II. No points for guessing which parts of the video were taken with which camera!

We had a great time given the time constraint. It was scary for the oldest adult at places but we made it!

Simply put, awesome entertainment and money's worth!

Varalakshmi Nombu Function

The Varalakshmi pooja in our house is usually done on a smaller scale. This year my parents are here and my mother brought the deity from India knowing that for the first time since San married into this family my mom is here with her to celebrate.

We had invited many of our family and friends to this occasion. I was not well but managed to hang on and do my bit at the function.

The kids and my parents enjoyed the whole thing. 

With both grandmas dotting over them it was a special treat.

Some pictures..

 

and finally a picture that makes this year special in my eyes..

The decorations for the hand were done by Bombay paati and the Paavaadais (frocks) were from Madras paati.

Bombay and Madras may have become Mumbai and Chennai but notice how Bombay Paati and Madras Paati sound way cooler ?!

We get to rest a little bit before things catch up again with work. Now the focus will be on daddy getting better over the next few days.