A vacation of a lifetime

Last October my wife and kids declared that they want to see Europe. They were going to go with or without me. All I had to do was join them. 

Then there was the scheduling issue with me going to Asia on a regular basis. So it was decided for a lot of reasons to book a two week trip in early July. As usual work always made it more difficult. I had to fly back from Asia and fly to Europe the next morning with family. This was like a recipe for disaster with Jet lag lag..

San planned everything with help from the kids. They had selected 640 places to visit in Europe in 12 days and out of respect for the laws of physics and some constraints with the time space continuum, they zeroed it down to one city per day. 

Had agreed to join them as a traveler as long as there was no driving involved and I would do the same things they did. So the deal was on. There was also one other stipulation. It was summarized in a simple Tamizh phrase "poththindu varanum".. which crudely translates to "shut all your holes and come".. or in English "Not one complaint from you on the planning"..

So I did not complain.. during the trip. There is always the post trip blog for that..

Step 1: Fly to Rome via Zurich. The flight was great. Then we ended up in the Zurich airport for a good 9 hours because... 

So we spent some quality family time together at the airport. Took some pictures.. 

Then I got to work on a yoga photo for a good 3 hours while the wife and kids did their thing. 

Here is the end result. I had posted a smaller version of this before leaving because there was no single minded focus and attention to detail then.. 

The family was just blown away by my Photoshopping dedication. Hadn't left the seat for 3 hours.. it was me and the laptop.

Oh yes.. some pictures from the airport.

We then ended up watching the world cup game where Argentina got eliminated at the gate and eventually made it to Rome. 

When we got out of the Rome airport a guy said he was the official Taxi stand guy and said 60 Euro for 4 people. We told him the hotel already told us 48 Euro. He agreed and asked us to wait at a door. We kept waiting and the first thing that hit us was the Cigarette smoke. Looks like there are more lit cigarettes at any time in Rome than there are mouths.. after some time we realized he was a quack and we found the actual taxi stand. It had a nice label. Fixed rate, 12 Euros per person per trip anywhere in city! so we stood in line, got a taxi, showed the address and reached! The driver gave us a mini tour of sorts describing places as we went from airport to hotel. 

It was actually not bad. When we finally made it to the room in Rome at almost 11PM, there was a sense of satisfaction. We had made it as a family to Europe after three earlier aborted attempts!

It could only get better from there.. 

To be continued.

Combining two interests

Yoga and Photoshop..

call it what you want, but these two pictures were a good time pass.

Jr. volunteered to take the individual shots. She said it was more fun to keep clicking and watch me do yoga than have to do the Yoga herself.. also she got to yell "body down, stretch forward" a few times. (had taught her to repeat the right keywords at the right times to motivate me). 

One of my teachers Matt always tells me "Sundar, you have to take it one millimeter at a time. Trust the process. It is a process. Go for progress instead of perfection". Every word is etched in my head. 

Being a process engineer by background, this Process is asymptotic and can be imperceptible on a day to day basis.. but, a millimeter a day adds up to 36.5 centimeters a year.. that is more than a foot! That assumes you come every day. Sometimes a weeks break can reset you more than 7 millimeters.. but that is another story. 

If you keep going and practice routinely, you can see the millimeters add up.

Will leave you with these two pictures of the half moon pose backbend 

and standing bow pose

both of which were incredibly difficult for me to do as a beginner and as a regular student in every class.. Was probably going back or forward only to the first step you see in the pictures. Today can do slightly better than the lowest bends in these pictures given all the poses we do prior to doing this (in heat) compared to directly jumping into it without any warm up at home. 

Matt was right.. those millimeters all add up over the years. 

All that said summer is always a tough time to keep up the regularity of the practice. So the process takes an erratic path and some semblence of regularity is regained in fall.

Was originally going to spot the 10+ things wrong in every pose, but today has been a good day. So instead I took a different approach, admired my handiwork on photoshop and decided all those things can wait. 

They are going to take a lifetime to fix.. and I am surprisingly okay with it!

Hope all of you got to do or try some Yoga on International Yoga day on Thursday. If you tried it for the first time, hope you had a lifechanging experience and you keep coming. If you got your regular yoga done, go you! 

It takes an inner will to be absolutely selfish to go do Yoga on a regular basis. The only way you can take care of others if you take care of yourself first. 

Holi hai!

This year we knew that if we did celebrate, we would go to Foster city for a repeat of last years celebration. This event is very well organized with a nice DJ, great music and a lively crowd. We were not sure if the weather would co-operate. Even though it was raining in Cupertino when we left, it was nice and pleasant in Foster City. 

A sea of people celbrating and dancing together to music.. 

and the colors! 

did I say "sea of people" ?

although I pulled off this shot, the idea to make her lie down on the floor full of color was not mine. It was her friend Anika's. Any good photographer should always copy compositional ideas.. with pride! 

I have one child that co-operates for photos and another one that does not even show up to the celebration because she is going through a "photo-aversion" phase of life! It was heart breaking for me to miss the little one this Holi. Will wait for her to turn around.. 

My 5D Mark ii saw its toughest time today in the park, with fine color powder flying everywhere.. some kid threw powder directly into my lens. Still managed a lot of good pictures for the day (some of which will be shared in the events FB page). Spent a good 30 minutes cleaning the camera after coming home. It was a good thing that the 70-200 never even came out of the bag. Took everything with the 24-105mm.

The iPhone never came out, but wanted to try the portrait mode and got this shot in the parking lot.

Not happy with the way it defined the edge to cut portrait. Had a shot with the 5D that Jr. took just before we exit the park..

Used refine edge (to be fair spent 20 minutes on this image) but the end result is way better than the iPhoneX. Apple has to improve on the Refine edge algorithm to get smooth edges for shirts and sharp edges for hair sticking out..

There is no family portrait this year, but there is always next year...

Wishing everyone a happy Holi! May your life be filled with joy and color!