I am so not ready for this

Today my little girl walked into the house wearing long earings.. something I ahve not seen her wear before. So asked her for a portrait picture and she was okay.

Think she sees me as a hopeless person who is coming to terms with the fact that she will be going to college soon. Understanding facts and accepting them are two different things, even if it means you have gone through this experiene before on the other side. It is not much different from being a college kid who drove around everywhere on a bicycle, wishing the car drivers were more careful and when you get behind the wheel, wishing the cyclists were more careful.. or being an engineer wishing your manager grasped what your thought process was and suddenly managing a large group and wishing the engineers knew the larger constraints.. every story has a side.. and this time I want to go find that episode of Barney called Happy Mad Silly Sad.. to cheer myself up. 

Jr. was a bigtime Barney fan. However she was not the one who introduced me to Barney.. it was my college senior Vish's daughter Harita who would make me watch Barney with her everytime I visited their apartment. Then Barney was forgotten only to be played three times a day .. because Barney was the key to open Jr.'s mouth to feed her! Eventually he was replaced by the Metti Oli title song which I recorded on a VHS cassette and had to play it 5 times to finish dinner. We could not watch it past the 5th time or you would have seen headlines like "sunnyvale parents in murder suicide after being forced to watch tamil soap opera title song 1000 times a month"..  Thankfully we are past all that.. or are we?! 

We digress as usual. Now another digress about the digress..

Yours truly has been on a wait list to attend a Vipasana medidation course. It is not easy to get into this one. It was highly recommended by my yoga teacher friends. They are eagerly awaiting to see if this will help me. . It is a course where you are not allowed to speak or make eye contact with people.. My family has already started a pool of sorts on which day of the course, they will be kicking me out and accepting that their practice has failed. Readers of the blog already know how highly my family regards my ability to go on about random topics.. or my general aimlessness when it comes to conversation..

Where were we?  Jr., Earings, College, Portrait, College, Barney, rambling.. okay.. back to portraits.

Jr. was just a few months old. She was able to hold her head. We had just started taking her out to public places. Day 40 we took her to Livermore temple. Then we went for a drive along route 1. That following winter was cold. So we spent time at Great mall.. walking the entire mall with her in a stroller.. and we came across this portrait setup in the middle of the mall. We went for it. They were hesitant about a child this small.. but we were literally holding her from behind (but the hand was covered with a cloth). It was like a magic trick. She was looking at mom and grandma and smiling.. The original hangs on a frame in my office.. this is a photo of the photo.. 

Even today sometimes that is the Jr. I see.. always smiling..  and just like that she is not a kid anymore! 

Went searching for some old photos and realized that the hard drive on which they were stored is corrupted. Have to find a way to back them up more reliably. Those WD passport drives are probably guaranteed for 10 years.. time flies! 

These screensavers are going to make things more difficult, as the kids go to college. 

Right now it is not just the kids growing up.. I am growing up as well. . . 

Photoshop magic..

During the function for my dad on mom  last week, I had to be performing a lot of things.. which meant my stint with the camera was done.. 

I usually don't trust others with pictures for events.. and definitely don't trust others with my camera.. however on recent trips, have been handing my camera to my baby cousin (who is not a baby anymore) and teaching her how to hold steady, focus and shoot with the 5D mark ii and she has a really good eye for composition.. told her to keep clicking and leave the rest to me to photoshop..

She did me proud.. We did hire professionals for the event but they are working on the photos. We should have great pictures in a week or two.

Saw this one pic where San has her cute dimply smile and I really wanted to make a portrait out of it.. (Credit to my cousin for cracking the right joke at the right time!).. 

The background.. I needed some recently shot greenery.. and the photo from Amethyst gave me an idea..

So here is 2+2=6..

The original..

the background from a group photo..

and the end result..

Have been lost in photoshop for a long time.. work calls tomorrow. My cold is almost bearable.. have been doing yoga everyday during the break and resting and working on photoshop as a good distraction.

Also my wife is back from India and that alone is a big relief.. my girls know how to press my buttons and get anything they want and sometimes I don't know if I am authorized to authorize things.. good that the big boss is back in the approval loop.

Ta ta for now..

A social facial experiment

It has been a month since I deleted the folder on my iPhone that said "social" and also deleted the entire history and autologin for all sites on my laptop.

The accounts are all there, but with two easy steps I cut off the urge to go click on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Linkedin etc. 

This is not the first time I have tried this, probably the longest in recent years though..

Still kept blogging and am reasonably sure that deleting the cross post into Facebook/Google Plus for the posts made sure no one actually read any of my posts! Blogging is pretty much dead and other platforms have taken over. Those of us who still blog, do it for their own reasons. . . 

The world is doing what it is doing, my work kept me more busy than usual and I managed to do another 60 challenge, the first time in summer, against all odds. The absense of social media helped. 

Still had to check gmail and everyday would be getting emails from FB and Linkedin etc. saying "have you seen so and so's comment on so and so's picture?", "we miss you. please come back and login" etc. etc. Even my mom was not that concerned when I stopped calling her during my Ph.D qualifying exams in those days!

Given no one was going to see my face in pictures over this month absence, I decided to stop shaving. Everytime I try to grow a beard, there will be so much negativity from parents, inlaws, friends, not to mention San and the kids trying every trick in the book to get me to shave.. the pouting, the "dont kiss me with that beard" routine .. 

Also given the travel to Asia every three weeks, my face has to resemble my passport picture or I am sure there will be some "extra checks". Thought there would be a longer break between travels this time, but that was not meant to be. 

The beard growing was going reasonably well, till this morning. You see there is an activation energy for beard growing. It takes at least 21 days for me to get the beard looking like a real beard instead of patch facial hair. Once it crosses that point, there is some chance of making it with continued maintenance. It is my face, but apparently I have no rights to it per wife and kids! 

This morning I had to shave it off. It was a good experiment while it lasted. It is interesting to watch how people react to this.

Most people at work thought I was mourning something or someone. 

Most people at Yoga said "look different. it kind of suits you, but learn to trim it"

Most friends who saw me said "mid life crisis?" followed by "this too shall pass" or something to that effect.

Then there was one person who assumed I was a muslim because of the beard. That one was interesting in a funny way.

Asked Jr. to take a few snaps, with and without the beard this morning...

Apparently I look a lot better without the beard and look younger per the little one. I am allowed to kiss the family again and that is a big plus point! 

Now it is back to the routine. It is time to login to Facebook again and see who has been born, who has died, who has changed marital status, who has gone where etc.

Will be like visiting Chennai after three years! 

Navarathri Golu 2016

This year we had Navarathri over two weekends, which is always a plus compared to it being spread only over one weekend!

Was way busy with work and had just come back from another overseas trip at the beginning of the festival. Wife, MIL and kids made it to all the Golu's while I chauffered them to select places over the weekends only. They took pictures of Golu's I missed so we can add it to the blog.

The highlight of this years festival was these two photos which we will cherish for a long time. Many thanks to our friends for the clicks and cracking the right jokes at the right time!

 

You need two things for good family pictures. Good lighting and good jokes that the entire family can get!

Then there were the golus. Neat and clean and simple, to complex to creative! Best part was to see the little displays the kids create on window sills and on the floor next to the Golus.. National parks, Hamma bead towns, cricket sets.. you can see they all are still setting classic three slips and a gully while the New Zealand team is now going to a field set up that has only third slip and gully!.. okay, where was I? yes, Golus!

We also had kids sing and dance and Jr. played the saxophone in two of the Golus. She is getting better. I get berated by my friends for giving her "feedback" after her performance, which is interesting in its own way. 

Here is a video of her doing the Thillana this year.

Hope next year she will do the entire piece without any mistakes. I am very proud of her, but given her ability, if she just practiced a little more instead of two days before the festival starts, she could have aced the whole thing! 

Finally the Golus.. enjoy the slideshow!  

Thanks to all our friends who invited us this year. It was fun. Next year, will try to visit everyone!

A weekend in HDR among other things...

Last weekend my sister in law visited us and we went on a local bay area tour of sorts. While the people pictures end up on Facebook.. the Nature pictures and select pictures of me.. end up here! 

There is always an incentive to write a blog post to chronicle local travels, no matter how many times we have visited the place, if we have something new to show.. 

 While editing the pictures where yours truly is smiling, one thought kept coming to my mind.. I look like someone.. but it is not my dad. Six seven years ago, I used to look like a carbon copy of my dad when he was that age.. this time the smile was different. The percentages of "knowingness: sarcasm : resignation" was different.. It was like the basic composition of my face had changed to a different part of that ternary phase diagram. After staring at it for a long time, it struck me! 

I am slowly turning into the next version of my only maternal uncle aka "Ambi Mama"! At first I thought, it must be the receeding hairline, but NO! There is more to this than hairline. Going to take a shot of me with my rudhraksham and towel and match the color balance and you will see soon.. 

As always.. one thing leads to another and before you know it, a post that started off as a weekend in HDR suddenly changed to my facial resemblence to Ambi mama.. Let's get back on topic.. 

 HDR pictures.. 

 This was really one beautiful evening to be out there. Full moon, perfect weather and most important of all, great company! 

This time I took my camera, but did not have the filter kit.. Next time we visit, going to throw a dark ND filter in front of the lens and take a longer exposure shot to blur the waves.. 

That weekend hopefully starts off some travel with family and is a harbinger of better pictures to come this year!