An eventful weekend - A year of college, 25 years of marriage, Father's day

This week marks 25 years of our marriage.. the original events happened between 10th June to 16th June.

Everything we did and are doing in this time frame is being called a celebration! I am happy with that. 

We also had the kids finish another year of college and celebrated Father's day!

On Friday both San and me had to take the day off to go vacate the little one from her freshman dorm. Thankfully she goes to live in an apartment with three friends starting next year. 

Given so many schools along the coast all having graduation ceremonies this weekend( as well as dorm vacation deadlines the same weekend), we expected 101 S to be a zoo.. and it was!

Started driving before 5AM, made it to Santa Barbara by 9 AM, got the kids room cleaned out and van loaded in under 2 hours. Most of the time was spent waiting for elevators on a 10 story high rise building where everyone has a cart with stuff loaded and waiting for one of two elevators.  The eleveatorshold two carts and two people max at one time, and serve a gazillion students and parents. 

Then the little one had to go study for her finals. We got her something from Chipotle, dropped her off at the library and had time to kill till she finished her finals. 

The kid suggested we go to Apna kitchen and hang out in State street. So off we went. The food and chai were excellent in this place. We also had some ice cream from a local ice cream place right near the restaurant that was downright yummy (McConnell's) . We still had time to kill.

Gandhiji providing some quality cognitive dissonance... 

There was a movie theater near the restaurant and we decided to sit down in air conditioning for two hours. My legs were killing me after that morning drive and I had to do the entire drive back. San was still recovering from her muscle tear!

We saw a Will Smith movie. I dozed off in the middle of the movie and it was too slow moving for a supposed action flick. Then I got a kick in the ribs right in time to see some action scenes. Apparently she loved it. At least one of us got paisa vasool.

Did I mention that we were the only two people in the theater for the entire movie!!! They ran a movie and trailers just for us!

We left the movie and literally picked up the kid right as she got out of the exam hall and drove back. Had a 20 min stop to eat the tamarind and curd rice that San had made. It tasted so good.. we had to gobble it up and start driving. We made it back by 11PM.

Legs are still recovering from driving 11 hours and walking around all day. That movie was a good decision!

Apna was interesting.. Gandhiji wearing coolers and endorsing beer... Kaliyuga is well and truly here was my thought. The bay area is overrun with "kudigara pappans".. something I tell my wife all the time. It is the times we live in. That is not the topic for this post.. so will leave it at that. The food was great! 

Jr. drove back from Irvine by herself without a stop! Was very worried but happy when she pulled into the driveway. The best 25th anniversary gift is that we are all in one place!

We went to an Italian place (Rollati in downtown San Jose) to celebrate this morning. The little one had scouted this one out. The food was delicious. Ate a full pizza and am in python mode right now as this post is being typed. Strongly recommend this place. Great food and great service! 

After this we decided (San did) to walk around SJSU as she was showing us where she went to school, her library, her cafeteria, where she had her graduation etc. etc. The kids have not seen this nostalgic side of San. Neither have I .. it was fun while it lasted. We did take a "bench photo" at SJSU. 

We wrapped it all up with a dinner at Sri's kitchen. The dinner was simple but great! Also ended up visiting my first ever job location which used to be a walk from this strip mall. The whole place has changed as have we over the years.

It has been a great week of "celebrating". Let's see what the next Quarter has in store for us.. 

In the middle of all this I did work on a collage for my dad to wish him.. not sure if he can see it properly! Pretty much all highlight photos of him (from the photo of his wedding) to the last one we took with him during our visit to Chennai in February on his 85th birthday. 

Spent a lot of time looking at pictures today! If anything, hope my kids keep taking pictures every now and then and store them!

This should go without saying.. but the credit for us rolling on smoothly for the last 25 years completely goes to Sangeetha. I was hired as the #2 employee of Sangeetha Inc. 25 years ago and the small startup has released two successful products and the company is still going strong under her leadership!

I lucked out big time in this birth!

Unattainable...

As of last week San and me have been together 11 years. A very short time compared to my parents (39) or my grandparents (73 years when grandpa passed away), but long enough for us to understand a postponing of the celebration because work.. work.. work.. came in the way.

Just like Indian festivals, birthdays, etc. etc. being pushed to the nearest weekend, the wedding anniversary plan was to go to Livermore Temple and say a prayer with the kids and San's parents.

We knew there was a Kumbhabishekham going on at the temple and we expected the crowd. It was a good walk to park and finally when we washed our feet and went to the entrance, the god's appointed bouncers asked us:

"are you kalasA sponsors?"

Me : No.

GAB : Sorry Sir. Today the temple entrance is for kalasA sponsors only. If you are a sponsor you can take the kalasA and go inside and come out.

Me : !!!!!?????!!!! We have come from south bay and my father in law is here only for three weeks. Can we go in and come out real quick?

GAB : very sorry sir. they are making arrangements for the puja tomorrow. regular devotees have to come back tomorrow.

So now we were "regular devotees". It did bother me a bit and got to thinking of how this blog got started and how the blogger mellowed out over time.

We drove all the way from Cupertino to Livermore and back without as much as going into the temple. This was a first with this temple.

They could have mentioned the prominently in the website or the folks who were regulating the traffic outside the temple could have asked us the same question and could have turned us around. Would have at least saved an hour, changed plans and driven my in-laws to some other place to celebrate. The Ghirardeli chocolate factory was actually our other(usual) choice.

God is in chocolate! God is in Vanilla! He is in every flavor is what we have always been saying.

Next year, the ritual changes. We celebrate at our usual favorite spots. The GG Bridge and some great ice cream.

Balaji Ummachi, why do you make me have this love hate relationship with you? Why?

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High Key - trial Photoblog

Visthra had posted a facebook linkpointing to another site with some tips for high key photography.

This weekend started off very differently with both in-laws being out of the house and just the four of us starting off a lazy weekend. The nose was acting up and that meant no outdoor stuff. Perfect day to find the right bright window and play with the kids, right?

Wrong.. as it turns out, the models should help by not moving or this thing does not give you good results.

Finally what worked?

Crank ISO all the way to 1600, go 1/60 to 1/200(for the moving models we raise in this house), and go as open as the aperture would allow me with the 18-200mm at 150-200mm. No flash (but used two foam sheets to reflect light back on to the kids..

The other option was to use the 50mm and go f1.8 with the ISO still at 1600 and 1/250 seconds.

Expose for the subject, don't worry about the background. Let it flood the shot. That pretty much summarizes the "high key" concept. Can totally see why a bounce flash would be useful in this case.

Here are the first trial results. They will be perfected over time..

Thanks to Visithra and Louis Pang for making an otherwise ordinary Saturday morning, exciting!

ps. on a side note.. ain't manual mode great? If you took a picture of the kids in automatic mode in the same location with the same setup, this is what you will get! There is more to photography than having a good or great camera. It is all the little tricks and the experience you build with constant experimentation, learning from failures and improving on successful shots that makes a difference.

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