Posts filed under 'Life'

Happy new year!

Well,………… its that time of the year again where we say bye to one and welcome another!

Wishing all of you a very Happy, Prosperous and Peaceful New Year 2010!

Add comment | December 31st, 2009 at 08:18pm

Wifey’s Web!

Introducing my wife Chitra’s home page / blog! ..

Welcome to the blogsphere, dear !

Add comment | December 31st, 2009 at 08:15pm

Pump it!!!

I am pretty sure most of you must have heard the sound track “Pump it ” by Black eyed peas. More so, you might have heard some variant of the track! When I first heard this song from the Black Eyed Peas, i was like…hmm.. i have heard that tune some where!

So, being curious, I did some search on wikipedia on this song… and was presently surprised with the history of the song… Its based on a Greek song called Misirlou.

Further digging brought up this site : http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/archives/297. The author has nicely documented the history of this song. There have been so many different versions of this song – starting from the 1930’s! Check out the progression:

In addition to the above, this musical note has been used in various other recordings and sound tracks! No wonder, we have heard that track before! :)

Add comment | December 27th, 2009 at 11:17pm

Amogh loves these videos….

Posting some of Amogh’s favorite videos..

Current favorite video : Lakadi Ki Kaati (from the movie Masoom) – He kind of sings it in his own words :) Its too funny to hear it when he sings it.

The next one on the list is: Chulbuli. Kids love this video. Its cute. And its got around 2.1 million views (21 lakhs) already! (Amogh would have contributed at least 5,000 views :)). BTW, its a Ad for Clinic Plus :)

Up next is Bholanath. A old Marathi song for kids. He loves it :)

There are many other videos — but the above are definitely top 3.

Oh, then there is the classical: Kuhu Kuhu Bole Koyaliya – he loves this song too…

1 comment | September 28th, 2009 at 01:40pm

Hello!…….Knock Knock

A quick post … basically to say that I am alive, and this blog is still live. Its just that it has been very hectic for the past few months with very little time left to blog :)..

And yes, Amogh is keeping both me and Chitra busy :)

Amogh is one year old!, Trip to India & the economy!

Yes, over a month since I posted. Has been crazy lately. The US economy is totally down & its my first recession after entering my professional career.

Well the tech slowdown in 2001 too effected me any many in my age group and it was pretty bad. Almost our entire class lost an year due to the 2001 slowdown.

This time around the situation is quite bad compared to the previous slowdown, and USA is officially in recession. The major difference this time is that its not just the IT industry thats hit, but almost all sectors are hit badly. Specially the housing & the financial market here in the US. And in today’s world, everything is interconnected. So, people from all walks of life are impacted one way or the other.

On the work side, many projects are being axes or postponed, budgets are being slashed and people are more and more cautious when it comes to spending money. For now, I have enough work lined up for the coming months. Must see how it turns out.

In other news, Amogh, my son turned One on feb 8th. Time fly’s by so fast!

Like mentioned in my previous post, both Amogh and Chitra are back in India. … and I could not miss Amogh’s 1st birthday. So, I flew all the way back to India for a week! :) and it was worth it! The special thing about the trip was, it was a surprise trip!. Only Chitra knew that I would be flying. So, it was fun to see the reaction of every one who saw me there on his birthday!

….even for Amogh, the day I landed, it took a while for him to realize that it was his father who had suddenly disappeared from the scene sometime back. And then, after a few minutes, he knew it was his dad :) … and clearly seemed to be very happy that day.

The Trip was quite hectic — 30 hrs of travel one way — 1 week in Mangalore & again 30 hrs of travel back to Houston!. So for around 2 to 3 weeks, my biological clock was totally out of sync due to jet lag/timezone changes! But it was worth it.

Its a pleasure to see Amogh these days. He now walks and virtually runs all around very comfortably. …and has now started to climb the stairs. He blabbers in his own baby language! ….. and has become very naughty! :)

If all goes well, Chitra & Amogh should be here soon — may be in a week or two. Waiting for thier arrival !

5 comments | March 1st, 2009 at 08:56pm

Happy New Year!

Wishing all the people who (still) follow this blog a very Happy and Prosperous new year! …

The year 2008 was definitely an eventful year for most of us!…and for me, personally, it was a year that was not soo good expect for one good thing that happened! ……yes, you guessed it right, our baby…. Amogh. If not for Amogh, I wouldn’t want to see a year like 2008 again.

I hope 2009 would be better!

Oh, yes, one more news, Chitra and Anogh flew back to India this week. They celebrated the new year in Mangalore.

Chitra had to get her work visa stamped.., so she had to travel back. More than the visa, everyone at Mangalore was missing Amogh.. so we thought it would be good if Chitra and Amogh visit Mangalore before Chitra resumes work.

Everyone at Mangalore is happy! Wouldn’t have been possible if Chitra hadn’t taken the difficult and painstaking journey with a 10.5 month old all the way from Houston to Mangalore all alone! Love you dear!

Nothing more…

Again, wishing all of you a very happy and prosperous 2009!

3 comments | January 1st, 2009 at 10:35pm

Amogh keeping us busy!

Nothing much happening :).. .. kind of busy with work and home :)

Amogh is keeping both me and Chitra busy!.

Boy.. he is growing so fast. Already 10 months old now!. He has started to walk.. takes around two to three steps.. and then realizes that he can crawl faster.. and crawls :)

He has also started to blabber words…which only he can understand ;) …… its really soo much fun to watch him grow and learn new tricks every day :)

Nothing much happening otherwise….!!!

Add comment | December 18th, 2008 at 04:44pm

Ike and us…

Ike

Its over a week and a half now since we faced Hurricane Ike. Well, for my readers from India….Hurricane is nothing but Cyclone, as its known in India.

So, how did it all go ?

It was a major storm, and the first and worst we ever faced. Hurricane Ike hit Galveston as a strong category 2 hurricane with wind speeds of up to 110 mph (~178 kmph!). Galveston is the coastal area which took the direct hit. Within Houston, which is around 55 miles away from Galveston, the wind speeds were around 90 to 100 mph. The Eye of the hurricane passed directly over Houston downtown (city center).

We live in the Houston Suburb called Katy which is on the west end of Houston. Luckily for us, we were on the clean side of the hurricane, but we did get winds of up to 80 to 85 mph! Its not just the wind, its wind and rain like you have never seen before. The sound of the wind is awful & scary!

I really appreciate the city of Houston for the way they handled this unfortunate event. They were very well prepared for this hurricane (after the lessons they learn’t from Rita and Katrina). They ordered evacuation of areas that were really needed (unlike whole of Houston during Rita — which lead to major problems on the evacuation routes). The city Mayor Bill White and Judge Ed Emmett did a commendable job. I can’t imagine our city corporators and politicians back in India doing such a amazing job.

Ike was a very big hurricane in terms of size (around 400 miles in diameter), with the eye being around 50 miles wide. Ike made landfall at Galveston Island at around 2.10 AM on 13th September (Saturday morning). And due to its size, we felt the winds pickup in Katy area around 6 hrs prior to landfall.

We lost power (in Katy) at around 2 AM on Saturday. And soon, we could feel the Hurricane force winds (winds over 74 mph). It was pretty scary. My main worry was if our window glasses & our roof could withstand the winds. Luckily they did. The wind and rain continued to pound till about 8 AM in the morning and then slowly died down. By noon, the weather was much better at least in our Area. The hurricane had moved north and was causing havoc there.

Prior to the Hurricane, the power company (CenterPoint energy) predicted that if Houston took a direct hit, it would take up to 4 weeks to restore power to everyone. And they were pretty accurate in predicting it. CenterPoint energy has 2.2 Million (22 lakhs) customers (connections) in Houston. At the High of the storm, almost all of its customers lost power. Around 100k customers were with power. Talk about Luck! As I write this, around 25% of Houston is still without power. Its the biggest power outage in the History of US. Well, for us, we got power back in the evening of 15th September (Monday). So we were without power for around 60 hours!

In India, power cuts and failures are pretty normal, and people are used to it. Life goes on smoothly without power. :) … But here in the US, there is too much dependency on electricity. I have never seen a major power failure in US. Tooooo many things are dependent on electricity here. So, without power for 60 hrs was a challenge!

To give you an Idea… no power means:

No water (since the pumping stations don’t have electricity to pump water).
No AC or Cooling – Immediately after the hurricane, it was typically hot and humid. The houses and other structures here are designed for Air-Conditioning — so not many windows to open !
No cooking – since most homes have electric cooking range (and not gas). Even if its gas based, then the gas supply would be disrupted.
No TV, No Internet – all down. The only means to get information is via a battery operated Radio, assuming you have stocked up enough batteries.
The cellphones/laptop last as long as the battery in them last!
No fuel – All the Gas stations (petrol pumps) work on electricity.
No hot water to bath. (if you are lucky to have water supply)
All the food in the fridge goes bad – (also means if you have stored medications like Insulin .. etc in the fridge, they are gone!)
No way to wash cloths!
Many people could not shave!!! (Thanks to the electric shavers!!!).
No ironed cloths.
None of the shops/supermarket open immediately. Even if they are open, they only accept CASH since the credit-card machines won’t work without power. ATMs won’t work without power – so you can’t withdraw cash!
No water = toilet flush won’t work!

Luckily for us, we had water supply through out the event. So, a major relief. Also, I had fill up the fuel tank of my car before the hurricane, so we were able to drive around. And we had stocked enough drinking water and non-perishable food. Overall, we were pretty well prepared for the storm, thanks to the hurricane preparedness guidelines published by the government and various other agencies.

The only inconvenience for us was being without power for two and a half days. But that’s nothing compared to thousands of other people who are still without power or worse, without a home to stay :( and lost everything that they had.

We feel blessed!

Thanks to all the people who called us right after the storm to check if we were all right.

Overall damage : estimate at the lower end is around USD 27 billion.

Some photos of the aftermath (source : unknown; credits the people who clicked the snaps; I did not click them):