Rhea dialogues

The D Space

In the minivan on the way Corpus Christi, fiona's driving, i'm in the passenger seat next to her, and rhea is all the way back in the minivan.

Me: Rhea do you want to do some painting?
Rhea ( with a slight hint of panic) : What daddy? You saw some lightning??

Rhea looking at our wedding picture:
What's that mommy?
That's our wedding picture.
well i'm gonna get married to josh (who's been in her day care class more or less since they started).
Why Josh?
Cause girls can only marry boys.
Well does josh want to marry you?
Rhea (concerned): Well no..i haven't asked him yet....


Rhea seems to talk like an adult, and pronounces most words just like adults do..
Obviously for a while there when she was around 18 months to a year, we had to interpret the words. most were easy. For example gone are the days of the "itsy bitsy fider" instead of"spider" and "wuv" for love. Those were easy and there were others that she would point to for example "vaaaamp" for lamp, and "blublbublbulbub" for balloon.
The most challening one was bem-bruh.
bem-bruh?? we went to Corpus Christi.... or bem-bruh?? my classroom is yellow
huh?
Fiona finally figured out what bem-bruh meant . It took us a while - almost a month - but we finally figured out that bem-bruh is 'remember'

Those days are now gone of course but nevertheless if you listen closely she still has some gems...

May i have some dive coke please

You're opposed to do this (instead of "supposed")

Are you going to be using the bacuum cleaner?

Interesting Memorial Day Weekend

The D Space

It was an interesting memorial day weekend. Interesting because what happenned in our backyard.

Lets say it involved, some birds and the Austin police department.

It all started just after breakfast , when i heard a lot of birds in our back yard. i thought that they were fighting each other for the bird feed..but i didn't see any of them around the feeder.
So i went outside, and there were a couple of blue jays and a few grackles going absolutely nuts.. ...there was obviously something on one of our oak trees that was bothering the heck out of them, and it took me a full 5 minutes of astute observation, and then i saw it..

Welcome to Texas.

Say hello to the Texas tree snake. It was curled up in a branch about 2o feet high, on the edge of one of our oak trees, just on top of our backyard wall. If he fell from there it was a 50/50 chance of him falling in our yard. But he wasn't going anywere . The birds weren't letting him move.

Our only other experience with snakes was with this one The Texas Coral snake , which is venomous, but the one we saw was around 8 inches, and is not too dangerous except for smaller kids.

So we went inside and called Animal control, who said we should call pest control (which was closed) , and so we then called the non emergency 311 for the austin police department.
The dispatcher told us to keep a watch on the snake but the APD called back to say that they do not respond calls about snakes unless they are trying to enter the house, or already inside :)

So Fiona found the number of another pest control. Its a long weekend and snakes are fairly common in Texas, so this guy had me describe the snake to him. yellow background with black diamonds. Diamondback? Rattlesnake? Well turns out that our friend was a Texas Rat Snake . Non Venomous. But it was between 4 and 5 feet long. and he had now moved lower and was in a branch only 8 feet , and now well within our yard, but still in the tree. And what if i hadn't described him right ?

And he was starting to move. The birds were gone. i watched him slither from one oak tree to the next, around 8 feet above the ground, on very slender branches. The pest control dude said that these snakes are useful because they eat the same food as rattlesnakes, and so prevent rattlesnakes from feeding in these areas. "leave him to do what he does best" was the advice i got.
Yeah. Right. Easy to forget about a 5 foot snake slithering on top of you while you are in your backyard. NOT!!!!
i was about to go in and tell fiona what i had been advised when lo and behold, there was an APD officer standing there. yay!
So i guess they did file a dispatch. Whats more is that this officers partner, was a trained snake catcher. She arrived 5 minutes later, and asked for an old pillow case.
And a ladder.
Her partner asked her if she was gonna use the long stick you use for catching snakes. "naaaahh this guy is a rat snake, ,i'll just use my hands..."

"Your hands? Do you need gloves? i have gloves"

Again, welcome to Texas.

"naaah, even if they bite it don't hurt much."

Two minutes later, she caught him by the head. Her first words were "Wow, he's beautiful".
He was hanging on to the tree by his tail, but eventually they got all of him in. Fiona, Rhea and I stood there fascinated.

You need the pillow case back?

Uh...No!!! please keep it. What will you do with the snake??

(softly and grinning) probably keep it ...

Only in Texas.....

How I almost became a model

The D Space

Almost.

Last week my neighbour Rebekah who works for a great magazine called ParentWise (its a free parenting/kids magazine that you can pick up at the library) told me that they were looking for a dad with boys, for their next cover.
And so she suggested me.
It almost worked out.

But in the end, i just could not get things set up for the same time as the photographer. So Rohan, Ryan and my modelling career will have to wait for just a few more ....lets see ... decades ?

I was planning on picking up all of the 50,000 magazines they distribute but oh well..

Almost.

Mothers Day

The D Space
I had a great Mother's day. My darling husband gave me the day off, so to speak. So I had a nice lunch with mom and dad, minus the kids...so we could actually have a conversation without being interrupted every 20 seconds.
Then I got to take a nap in the afternoon and in the evening, Nandan took the kids out while I got to just chill at home. He also prepared a foot massage for me at nite, while watching my favorite tv show - Grey's anatomy.
So all in all, was a great mother's day....

Fiona

Instructions for pictures

For everyone back home; that would be mom n dad , and swapna; You can click on the archive links (on the right of the page) to look at older topics. i'll be adding pictures to these old stories soon. Ill let you know when i do.

Also to get a full size image, first click on the image in the blog. This will open the image in a new page.
To make this new picture even larger, first click on this image again. Now after clicking on this new image, if you move to the bottom right of the image, a yellow icon with 4 arrows on it will appear. Click on it and this will expand the image some more. If this doesn't work, try minimizin and maximizing this window a couple of times and try again. Eventually it will work.

Kids in grocery stores..not a good idea

The D Space

You never know what kids will do.

I remember this one time where i was out at H-E-B shopping with Rhea.
When its not too crowded, and when i can watch her continuously, i'll leave her in the cart half way thru the aisle, especially if there are a lot of other carts.

That's always the case in the bread aisle. So i left her in the cart and walked maybe 10 yards down the crowded aisle.

"Daddy Daddy", she yelled loudly, and made all heads turn
I expected her to say something really cute, and make all the mommies there go "awwwwwwww".
"Daddy, Daddy .... I passed some gas..."

This other time i had Rohan and Ryan with me. They were in the double cart, where you can have two toddlers sitting aside each other. They typically reach out and touch the vegetables, breads, and i let them do that so that they can feel the texture on things. It helps develop their tactile sense, or something like that.
We were in the frozen meat section, when Ryan reached out and pinched a ladys bottom. Actually he grabbed her a$$. :-) I had turned just for a split second, ok 5 measly seconds, and this lady in her thirty's wearing a really frilly loose dress, was bending over to take a look at something. And Ryan i guess simply reached out to feel the dress.
I apologized and pretended like nothing had happenned. The lady thought it was funny , and I somehow managed to keep a straight face.
Needless to say, it seemed like we passed them by on every aisle. And i managed to keep a straight face, though her husband gave me some really nasty looks.

Surreal

The D Space
That's how I'd describe New York.
It’s easy to see why this is the greatest city on earth.

Fiona and I visited it from April 26th to 29th. We flew from Austin via DFW to LaGuardia.
Fiona searched and found some really good deals on priceline, so we stayed at the Paramount Hotel right in the heart of Manhattan, half a block from Times Square.
Also , smartly she had us flying into LaGuardia which is what you definitely want to do if you want to stay in Manhattan, which is what you should do if you want to visit New York. New York is Manhattan and Manhattan is New York..

Flying into LaGuardia is awesome, the plane flies very low right over Manhattan giving you a fantastic view of the city. The stewardess asked me to turn my camera off since we were landing, but I’d waited 25 years for this, and I wasn’t gonna let a stewardess spoil it for me.. I got a few pictures of Manhattan while landing.
LaGuardia, from the sky, (cause it is fairly easy to spot it, because of all the planes circling around it) looks tiny. And that’s because it is. It has two runways , and they cross each other! One of them juts out into the East River so that makes it easy to spot..

Interesting tidbit…90% of all airline delays in the US occur because of a problem that originated at LaGuardia. Because it has just one landing runway(the other is for take offs), we got a great view of Manhattan as we circled over it.

Flying low you get a good view of Columbia University (you can see the name on the Baseball field), Madison Square Gardens (where the New York Nicks play) and the Verazzano Narrows bridge connecting Brooklyn and Staten Island (the worlds longest single span Bridge, bigger than Golden Gate).


And of course there are the fabulous skyscrapers of Manhattan. Even though I’ve seen tons of pictures, it still didn’t prepare me for the sight of seeing the Empire State, Chrysler building, MetLife and Citicorp for the first time.

On landing, I was tempted to kiss the ground, like the Pope. But didn’t. Instead we got our bags, and took a cab. Its ridiculous how small LaGuardia is. It’s also probably very old, so we had to literally walk out into the street to pick a cab.

For all the folks back home, here's an illustrated pic explaining the various sites . Click on the picutre to see a larger view.



The cab ride wasn’t too bad. Fast and quick, and not as hairy as I thought it may be. Mostly because there wasn’t much traffic. We drove from queens using one of the tunnels, and into Manhattan. We drove through the garment district which was a lot like driving through Linking Road in Bombay. We also got our first taste of Manhattan traffic, and the typical taxi cab drivers absolute disdain for the rules.
There are very few private cars in Manahattan, just a lot of yellow cabs, and more expensive, “Black cabs” and Limousines. Our taxi driver did not believe in the concept of “right-only” turn lane only being for cars turning. He would repeatedly take the lane, and then merge into the straight lane. Over and over again, on every block .So what would have been a 1 hour drive took only around 25 minutes. In 25 minutes we were at the 4- Star Paramount Hotel, NYC.

The Paramount is a very "modern" hotel. A "4-star" in Manhattan, that is priced in the $400/night range, Fiona pricelined it for around 130$. Great find. And half a block from Times Square. We had the biggest room on the floor, which , even though we were prepared for a small room, was still shocking. WE had a queen bed and No walking space. Fiona and i couldn't cross each other without bumping into each other There wasn't even space to put our bag horizonally on the floor !!!



I was still happy. I'm a skyscraper freak, and i loved the view. Not your typicaly Manhattan view, but nevertheless some nice tall building out of our window. Even more pretty at nite.



I think at this point we already knew that this was going to be a fabulous trip.

Picture time

The D Space
So I'm finally going to try and add some pcitures on this blog.

My favorite pictures of Rohan and Ryan is this one, taken on halloween evening, 2005. The M & Ms ...

They look very similar in this picture though Rohan is on the left, and Ryan is on the right.

They both have very mischevious smiles.

You can click on the image to get a larger one.

My favorite one of all three of them is this one, taken on Chrismas morning, with their loot



And of course, importantly here is a picture of another member of our family, Henry.

Added Links to Friends pages

The D Space

On the right of this page, under links, I added a link to my colleague and friend Brock Reeve's blog. It is a little techie, but he has some splendid posts. He is also extremely funny and all of his posts are a great read. He writes very lucidly and has some eyeopening posts. I did not know that he s a cancer survivor.What's more is that all of this happenned while i knew him at work over the last one year or so. And i had no idea. Engineers are like rats , except that we live in cubicles, and are so extremely anti-social. Dilbert is sooooo dead on.

I also added a link to a former colleague Jennifer Smith. She used to be a tech writer in my group, and quit our group and company. Now i've had a lot of people who quit my group over the years, but she had the most original reason. She quit because she wanted to see the world. Seriously.
I mean, don't we all? Well most of us like the idea of doing it, but never really get down to it. But she did. Grab life by the horns, Jennifer !
She plans to travel all of the continents (including, Antartica) along with her boyfriend Mike. I also added a link to her flickr page. Make sure you read about JenAnd MikesBigAdventure !

I better get a convertible during my mid life crisis

The D Space
Driving back from Chipotle, with Rhea.
Daddy, why do you like the Mustang ?
Huh?
Why do you like this car so much?
Cos its cool.
Cos its khool?
Yeah
How do you know i like this car, Rhea?
Cos you drive it to work everyday.What will you do when it gets old?
Rhea did mommy say something to you about the Mustang?
No. But what car will you get when this car gets old?
I'll get another Mustang.
Well i want a Passat.
Excuse me? Rhea what exactly did mommy say to you? Was she complaining about the mustang.
no daddy.maybe i want a car like jay's car (Jay being our neighbour who has a Miata)
Yeah we could buy a Mustang convertible.
yeahh.
ok when we go home, tell mommy you want our next car to be a mustang convertible.

Of course i would prefer a porshe, but i'm not bald yet.