Sunday, January 17, 2010

January 2009 update

It was a depressing start to 2009. All the three of us, Amma, Appa and myself went down with flu which we may have caught from our new year revelry at East Coast Park. We had to postpone our Bangalore trip by a couple of days and then when we arrived there, Bangalore was very cold and Bagyam-paati also had to undergo an emergency operation.
The entire time we were there, we were mostly visiting the hospital. Appa took me go-karting at Patel's Inn. I decided then that when I become big, i'll be an F1 driver and my car will go zoom-zoom-zoom very fast!!!
Appa also wanted me to experience the Birla planetarium in Bangalore and we had a good time viewing the story of our universe and its various inhabitants.


Appa also took me to the Visweswariah Museum in Bangalore which is where he said he learnt a lot of things while he was a kid. I saw scale models of India's rockets, the various machines, the optics displays and except for a minor scare when I went missing from Appa and Amma's radar for about 3 mins, everything went fine there.
I also witnessed first-hand the whims of Bangalore's auto drivers. Appa got into a swearing match with an auto-driver outside the museum who demanded payment far beyond the normal rate. There was also a ludicrous experience when the fare went above 99 and the auto-driver immediately raised it to 115 and Appa was mighty pissed with that and kept on arguing on the principles and the policeman interceded and Appa had his way. Appa then told Amma that it wasn't worth arguing. His verdict: Just don't take the auto.


We also managed to catch up with Harsh maama at Crossword and we also had a shake-shake fries experience in McDonalds. In Singapore, the shake-shake fries seems to be an alien concept.

Then I went to Ambikapur, my mom's maika (hometown) to see Lacchi paati (grandma). On India's Republic Day on Jan 26, I went to Lachi-paati's school and watched her unfurl the flag and joined the kids in singing the national anthem.




My doctor perima (aunt) had come over from Benares where she is training to be a doctor. She told me the importance of brushing teeth regularly. This made Amma's job a lot easier and now I brush my teeth regularly without a lot of persuasion. We also went to Mahamaya mandir (kovil) and Sai mandir (kovil), two of the most important places to visit in Ambikapur.

The song of the month was Massakali

Sunday, January 03, 2010

Update from December 2008

The month began with a visit to IMM accompanied by Vaishnavi and Mihir to see all the Christmas decor and a Barney show.

Shreyas visited us with Nirmala perima and we had a gala time playing in the tenthouse with the multicoloured balls. Bhaskar periappa joined us later for dinner at home. Shreyas is one smart cookie. He enjoys doing to me what I used to do older kids when I was his age.. i.e. troubling them.


I continued on my quest to become a Picasso but Amma complains that my attention span is too short. What does she now? Every artist has his or her own quirks!!! Mine just happens to be a short attention span, but hey, there's some sort of output .. The paper has colour.. its got my interpretation of life on it (even its just a few lines and spots). Appa ran the Standard Chartered Marathon 10 km run for the first time. He wanted to see if he could do run the 10km and even got a medal for finishing. I even checked out some yachts from the SAF Yacht Club and did a photo session there. I'll maybe tryout yachting sometime in the future and play among starboards, sterns and keels.







The rest of the month was spent in planning our Phuket visit, executing the plan and then telling everyone in sight how memorable the trip was!! A learning during the trip was the phrase sawasdee krub!
My first jet-ski experience was wonderful. I also had the ride on an elephant. The friendly mahout (driver of the elephant) was kind of enough to offer me a mahout-ship and I had fun directing the elephant. I became a huge fan of Ramesh athimber, (or shatimber as I have named him). We went to Phuket Phantasea. The elephant show was wonderful, although what really caught my attention was the huge elephant dropping "hagggoooooooooooo!!!!" during the performance. Apart from that, the pool, beach, kids' room etc. at the resort was just fun of the highest order.
All in all a memorable trip.











































































Back in Singapore, we had the year-end Christmas parties that we went to. In the one organized by the CC, I had the opportunity to go on stage and play some games and get some gifts. There was another at mom's friend bhawana aunty's house where we had some riproaring fun.
The song of the month was Touch Me, Touch Me, Touch Me, Zara Zara
We signed off 2008 and ushered in 2009 with a barbeque party at the East Coast Park.