Roadtrip to Kerala

We drove from Bangalore to Cochin last weekend and I must say that I was quite surprised. The roads were in great condition except for a stretch of around 5 km after Palakkad. It was our first long road trip ever since Ellen was born a year ago. I was a little apprehensive about how a one year old would be able to sit in a car for 12 long hours, but she kept herself occupied. We took short break every 2 hours, for her to be able to stretch her legs. 

Breakfast was ham sandwiches, however for lunch we stopped at a place called Rice Bowl in Kerala, assuming it was the same group of restaurants from Bangalore but when we saw the famous "fish curry meals" in the menu we were pretty sure we were mistaken :). 

Anyways, as soon as we crossed the border into Kerala, we were welcomed by plenty of greenery, paddy fields, coconut trees, rivers and ponds. Loverrrly! 

We stayed in Cochin for a few days and then drove to Kottayam, via Kumarakom, another beautiful part of Kerala popular for its backwaters. However, I did notice that it has turned into some kind of a touristy spot, couple of nice hotels, Taj Vivanta being one of them. 

Kerala is hot as hell in the month of April, so a better time to go there would be in December when it is pleasant, not hot and not raining. 

On our way back, we noticed a couple of elephants being transported in large trucks to Thrishur for Thrishurpuram. Was a pity that I couldn't stay back for Thrishurpuram, but may be some other day !

My little one is not so little any more :)

Here is Lisa on her 6th birthday!

Japan

Cannot understand this catastrophe in Japan, I'm ripped every time I see the videos. How much can the people bear really, an earthquake, a tsunami and now a possible nuclear meltdown?
How can they even begin to rebuild their homes, when it's all just one big dump?
India: we would never ever be prepared for something like this, forget the tsunami, I don't think we can cope with an earthquake of 5.

Happy New Year

Merry Christmas

Make a Smilebox greeting

None of the photo links work!

I just realized that none of the links to the photo albums are working. Photobucket did something :(

Christmas 2008

Here is a photo that I took this morning.

Nostalgia!

We studied together, way back in the 80's. That takes us back maybe 2 decades! We met again in October this year.


From left to rt: Swati (the entrepreneur and engineer), Sophia (the dentist), Yours truly, Urmila (the banker).

Where are their hearts?

Here is the story of Moshe and his brave nanny.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/12/02/moshe.mumbai/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Teaching Math to a 4 year old

My 4 year old daughter, Lisa, taught me yesterday that we should never under estimate the learning abilities of children.

She's in pre-school and came home yesterday with one full page of math homework. I was really upset with the school for having started so early and thought that this was just pushing kids to the limit. However, I was pleasantly surprised. She completed the whole thing- 2+1, 4+5, 5+5 etc etc in less than 10 minutes using all 10 fingers. Very cool indeed.

I also found this link, which describes exactly how she does the simple math:
http://www.thecoloradoindex.com/the_colorado_index/2007/09/on-teaching-mat.html?cid=139939784#comments

Languages

I absolutely love this feature. I can actually write in the local languages:

Hindi: मेरा नाम रीना है और में इस फेअतुरे से बेहत कुश हूँ।
Kannada: ನನ್ನ ಹೆಸರು ರೀನಾ. ನನಗೆ ಈ ಫೆಅತುರೆ ತುಂಬ ಇಷ್ಟ ಆಯಿತು.
Malayalam: എന്റെ പേര് റീന. എനിക്ക് ഈ ഫീടുരെ ഒത്തിരി ഇഷ്ടമായി.
Tamil: எனோடு பேரு ரீனா.

Most of the spellings seem fine, except a couple here and there. Absolutely fantastic, strange that I've never tried it before.

School Hunting!

We've been trying to decide which is the best school in Bangalore for Lisa and somehow it seems to be Sophia Girls School. The only problem is that it's really quite a distance for Lisa to commute everyday. The second on the list is Bishop Cotton Girls school and it seems to me now that it's most likely that she will go there.
I submitted forms to Sacred Heart Girls early this week and I loved the campus very much. Old stone buildings, plenty of trees- lovely environment. What we are looking for Lisa is a place that does not concentrate on only academics but a more holistic approach to developement.
Many of them also told me about Baldwin Girls but it's really not on the top of my list atleast.

The White Tiger

I've been reading Aravind Adiga's The White Tiger and I must say I am impressed. It is hilarious, entertaining and outrageous. All about Balram Halwai's seven letters to the Chinese Premier, to educate him about the real India before his impending visit.
While many in India might be offended by Adiga's narration of the pathetic life in India, if looked through the eyes of the uneducated Balram Halwai, it is in fact the plain truth about the poor.
Everyone likes the world to know India as the emerging economic powerhouse, as long as the facts about the poor, the homeless and the uneducated are brushed away under the carpet.
Being brought up in Bangalore, I have seen how this place has grown from being a quiet paradise where the rich and famous were sparse, to a city bustling with people from all rungs of society, from every state, hoping for the "Bangalorean dream" to come true. Adiga is surely exposing the real India not just to the rest of the world but to some Indians who like to run away from the truth.

Lisa is 4!

Lisa turned 4 on Sept 3rd. Here are some pictures!

This was supposed to be a plain glossy chocolate cake with a big 4 written on it, but the baker let his imagination go wild!

Bicentennial Celebrations and more....

This weekend we were part of the bicentennial celebrations at St. Marks Cathedral, Bangalore. The Cathedral where we worship every Sunday also the Cathedral where we got married.
All of us were extremely tired but it was fun.

The webpage: www.saintmarks.in has some awesome pictures of the Mass Choir and Children's choir who performed at Bishop Cotton Boys School. Lisa is the tiniest of the lot.

Since I'm not going to bother with a new post, here is a picture of Lisa as Little Red Riding Hood for an even in school.

Zoomin

I've tried out this new (atleast to me) website called www.zoomin.com where you can upload your photos and place an order for prints to be delivered within India. Most of the other photo hosting sites take orders only for delivery to the US and so on. But this is simply great.
You can pay for it online and even select what kind of finish you need- glossy, matte or metallic (which is absolutely super). You can also select any size you want.
There is just one bug, which the developers promise to fix- if you happen to lose connectivity to the site or signout when you already have some items in the cart, then these items just vanish. So if you are placing an order, make sure you do it all at once. Don't wait to sign out and come back another day.

My weekend

I think I'm a "Half Yearly Blogger", Not that I've forgotten about my blog, just cannot seem to make time for it, every single day, or every single week, or month. At this rate, it will be every single year.
The weekend was good- I had 2500 bucks to blow, thanks to the generous token of appreciation gifted to me by my company, for slogging myself to oblivion. When I entered this store, I thought I'd never spend the money well but I did, simply because I knew what I wanted to buy.
This store is good, provided you know what you want. It has children's toys (one level) and then CD's (a good collection), latest DVD's, tons of books, home stuff, and much more.
So what did I buy- Corelle plates, a carafe, Cinderella and Noddy DVD's, a Barbie, and the latest album of Coldplay. Hurray! Because it was all done in 2 hours ! Gosh I do really hate shopping, maybe what repulses me is the crowd more than anything else. Bumping into people is not exactly welcome.
Then got the return tickets for the cousins, got a whole lot of stuff cleared up at home and poof- the weekend's gone! I even skipped my yoga classes.

However, my "To do" list seems to be growing at a faster pace everyday. Slowly but surely it shall be done :) As you can see I've started with an extra helping of optimism.

Wonderful!

I have been in a training the last few days and this was about how the world is moving towards Agile and Scrum instead of the traditional waterfall method.
About how the waterfall method was based personal views that really didn't make any sense at all and how the Harvard Business Review of 1986 called "The New New Product Development Game" has really changed the world of software development in many ways. I ofcourse am thrilled, simply because I couldn't understand why any company would have 3 year or even 1 year product development cycles. It never made sense.
This guy called Craig Larman trained us and as of now I am a Certified Scrum Master :)

All these months- Christmas was great and so was New Years (we stayed at home) .

We're off!

I'm looking forward to our 10 day vacation in Dubai. I've never been there and although it was never in my list of travel destinations I'm excited since it's the first trip for my mom outside India.
I don't particularly fancy high tech cities and concrete jungles but I have never seen a desert before, except from an aircraft. So am looking forward to the sand dunes.

Short post, gotta rush.

For some reason...

The site is not allowing me to post more pictures. :)

Anyways! This morning, I parked my car on Brunton and realised that I had parked it way close to the parking signboard. Parking is such a nuisance, really. Never imagined that Bangalore would get so crowded that it would become close to impossible to get parking at 9am.
I've also been following the Madeleine McCann case lately and I really wonder about the media frenzy. I know every child is precious but nobody even thinks about the hundreds that are lost in India. The Indian channels report about a child missing in Europe but don't care for the hundreds missing in our own country! What a shame!

Here is another photo taken at her school.