Astrovelo

Ashwini: When is Devenmama coming to visit us? Me: I don’t know. Ashwini: He came such a long time ago. He should visit us again. Me: Ask him when you talk with him on the phone. Ashwini: Maybe, his house will break down in earthquake and then, he will come.

I hope it doesn’t take something that drastic to make him to come visit us.

Pre-ordered two new books from Amazon.com. 5% extra discount for pre-ordering.

• When you are engulfed in flames by David Sedaris
• The Wordy Shipmates by Sarah Vowell

“Who are these silly little kids that are stealing my chocolate filled eggs???”

The teardrop on his right cheek is due to wind blowing and not from crying.

On Saturday, we went to see the Diego Live show. Both Adit and Ashwini were just totally amazed to see their favorite characters: Diego, Alicia, baby Jaguar and most of all, Dora! They just loved it. It was pretty good broadway-style production. Definitely exceeded our expectations.

On the way back, Adit was asking us to turn the Dora DVD on in the car.

Adit: I like it. Dora DVV. I like it. Dora DVV. I like it… (repeating over and over and over….) Ashwini: We can’t watch Dora on DVD, Adit. Dora and Diego are still in the theater.

When we have innocent conversations like this, I realize that Ashwini is still a little girl even though, she sounds like a grownup when she talks. OR… she really is a grownup kid and she was trying to trick Adit.

Heard on A Prairie Home Companion podcast:

Oli was visiting Sven who had recently bought a new cow.

Sven: This cow is funny. She farts whenever I milk her. Oli: Let me see…

They walked over to the cow, Oli sat down on the stool, pulled at her udder and the cow let out a fart.

Oli: Hmmm. Is this cow from North Dakota? Sven: Yes. How did you guess? Oli: My wife is from there and she does the same thing.

I had taken a sip of my coffee just before Garrison delivered the punch-line. It was so unexpected, most of that coffee ended up on my monitor. Had to do a major cleanup. Thanks, Mr. Keillor!

When Ashwini got ready to go to school on her birthday last Friday, she was very excited to show off her new dress, new tights, new shoes and a new hairband. Adit was feeling left out of all the action, I guess, and he decided to dress up as well. He picked up one of Ashwini’s hairbands and it was a big surprise to us when he put it on his head all by himself.

Happy Birthday to my dearest BIG girl.

A birthday post will follow soon…

“My daddy put powder cheese in my mouth”, Adit told his sister last evening.

Adit’s talking has been improving quite a lot lately (thanks to his sister). According to the baby-books, he should be making simple 2-3 word sentences. This one above has 8. It is also good to see that he has started using words like ‘in’, ‘of’ and ‘for’ which he found to be useless until a few weeks ago.

Beach at Torrey Pines State Reserve in La Jolla, CA is just breathtaking.

Sometime last evening…

Adit: Happy Balancesteins, Ashwini. I love you. Ashwini: Adit, it is not Valentine’s day anymore.

On another note, Adit calls me and V, “Ashwini’s daddy” and “Ashwini’s mommy”.

Correction: It is actually “My Ashwini’s daddy” and “My Ashwini’s mommy”.

Sky over Phoenix as my plane took off around sunset on Feb 13th.

Whenever Adit asked for anything… food, toy or book… he always says, “I like it. I like that one…” We were scratching our heads thinking how come he likes everything that is around him. We were congratulating ourselves for being such great parents that we have filled our house with all the things that Adit likes.

Then, one day we figured it out. At school or at home, he often gets asked, politely, if I may say so, “Adit, would you like a banana?”, “Would you like to draw?” or “Would you like to read?” which sometimes can be substitued for “Adit, do you want a banana?”, “Do you want to draw?” or “Do you want to read?” Because of these questions, circuits for “like” and “want” are crossed in his head. He uses “like” when he means “like” and also in place of “want”. Now, it all makes sense.

V was talking with someone: Ashwini will be 5 next month. She will go to Kindergarten in September. Adit overheard her while looking at a book: Adit go olivegarden*, too. I like pasta, pizza and nooooodles!

It is so easy to miss which garden you are going to.

*olivegarden = Olive Garden.

It looks like beginning of a new tradition. For two years in a row, I had dinners at nice restaurants with my co-workers on Valentine’s day instead of my wife.

2007: Miki in Ann Arbor, MI 2008: Fleming’s in La Jolla, CA

I picked one of the worst days to travel. There was an icestorm on the east coast on Tuesday night and I was supposed to fly on Wednesday morning. My Continental flight to Newark got canceled and they put me on USAirways to go to San Diego through Charlotte. Turned out that Charlotte to San Diego flight wasn’t direct and had a one hour stop in Phoenix. So, instead of arriving at my scheduled time of 11:50 am, I reached San Diego at 7:00 pm PST. Another hour after that to get my bag and find a taxi to get to my hotel. After leaving home at 4 am EST, I reached my destination after about 19 hours. It took me shorter than that to reach Mumbai last month. I am definitely convinced that महाराष्ट्र परिवहन मंडल (S.T.) runs a tighter ship than most of the airlines in the USA.

Here is the original Honda ad made using spare parts and here is a video with similar idea seen in the ad, but is more elaborate.

The Honda video at least seems to be one shot unless there is some super-slick editing, but there is no way of telling if the second video was made in one shot or not. If the whole thing really worked like that, they are great engineers.

I had heard a lot about it for the last couple of years and finally, I got to see it with my own eyes, yesterday: Bodies Revealed.

It is one of the most fascinating exhibitions that I have ever seen. The exhibited bodies seem so real… oh, wait! they are REAL. Whole bodies as well as different organs and parts are preserved using a special polymer preservation process. Every specimen is arranged in order to display different functional systems of the body such as digestive, circulatory, nervous, skeletal and muscular system, etc. It is one thing to see a 2D drawings on paper that shows the anatomy and then viewing the real thing like this in full three dimensions. It gives you a whole new perspective on how the complex and fragile human body is put together.

One of the displays showed a woman with blackened lungs from years of smoking. Next to it, they had a clear garbage container with packs of cigarettes in it. Don’t know if people threw them in or it was a part of the display. Looking at what smoking does to your lungs, I am sure many would be inspired to discard their cigarettes.

One exhibit that I liked the most was “arteries of arm”. It showed just a mesh of blood vessels from an arm and without any other part, it actually made the shape of an arm complete with all the fingers. It was very surreal.

At the end, a couple of people were answering questions and they had a preserved brain and a cigarette-blackened lung for everyone to touch. It felt really really strange to handle these real body parts.

I wasn’t sure how the exhibition would be for kids, so didn’t take mine along. But there were a lot of kids there and many were of Ashwini’s age. I am going to make sure that Ashwini visits the exhibition with V before it goes away from here.

Don’t miss it if it comes to a venue near you.