crazy day

Yesterday was a perfect illustration of a day that thankfully does not happen very often, but when it does you are glad it is over by the end of the day. I woke up at 5:20 AM to a sound in the kitchen below us. When I reached downstairs I saw my oldest son finishing off his cooking of eggs for breakfast and was sitting down to eat them. He told me he wanted to get back to his Army schedule. I went back upstairs and fell back asleep. I got up at 7:30 and started working on my autobiography, which continued all morning long. I am now writing about my experiences while in Belgium before I went to India. My writing has slowed down the past couple of days as I kept a detailed journal while in Belgium, so I am trying to summarize a few stories from my journal instead of writing from memory or duplicating my journal. My oldest son decided to go back to sleep so besides my wife I did not see any children all morning long.

For a couple of days our refrigerator was not working properly. The freezer part was as cold as the non-freezer part normally should be. We took it as an opportunity to clean the inside of the refrigerator and threw about half of the contents away. The very first thing on Monday, I called M & H Appliance which had helped us in the past with our dryer. The technician finally showed up yesterday around noon. He took off the inside wall of the freezer to reveal the coils which were completely covered with ice crystals. He got out his trusty commercial hair dryer and after fifteen minutes had the coils completely deiced. He popped off the heater part under the coils and found it was broken. Since he had a spare part in his truck, we had a working refrigerator in under an hour and it only cost me $150.

Then the children all started waking up around noon. Our oldest came down and complained about his throat being sore and his ear hurting. He asked me what he should do about it. Then after my great advice of taking proper rest with plenty of fluids, he wanted to know where his mother was as he wanted a ride to his friends to celebrate New Years's Day. He repeated the same set of questions about his sickness and needing a ride, which to both of us parents were mutually exclusive requests. Kids.

Then I get a call from a friend of one of our sons who was suspecting pot smoking and wanted to know if we suspected the same thing. Of course you want to believe the best of your kids but having lived through many teenagers, we knew that could hazardous to our mental health to completely trust teenagers in this day and time. I went to search the music shed for a missing cell phone and I found a glass bong hidden in one of the guitar amps! My day was not getting better over time. When I approached one of my other son's about it as I told him I was going to break it, he told me not to as it was his friend's. Kids.

On Monday I had taken my middle son to get his driver's license as he had lost it due to his poor grades in school. That is a good thing about the North Carolina under eighteen driver policies that if you fail any classes in school you loose your driver privileges. As a parent you don't have to argue with your children, it is the law. Well your kids can still argue of course, but we have the written law in our favor. We went to the local DMV and found out that to get your driver's license you have to have proof of insurance. I called our car insurance and of course they took him of our policy since he lost his license. I had him reinstated so we could get his license only to learn that by doing so he double our existing cost of car insurance by $100 per month. My wife and I decided that he would have to pay for that in order to get his license. Without a job he cannot pay for it. Without a license it may be hard to get a job. Round and round it goes. Then I told my son all of this and he said he needed a cell phone before he could get a job to pay his part of the insurance in order to get his driver's license. At least he had Christmas money to pay for his own cell phone. Kids.

The only good news for the day was that during this week for the first time in many years all of the kids have been in our bonus room playing Guitar Hero, Rock Band and lifting weights together. It was a shock to see them all together, but definitely a good thing. SO they can enjoy each other after all.

My wife and I ended the day trying to watch an Indian movie that was pretty bad so we shut of the movie after thirty minutes and called it a day. Life in the fast lane with kids can be tiring!

18th Greek birthday

Yesterday was our middle son's 18th birthday. We try to eat out so my wife does not have to cook a special meal for both Christmas Eve and Christmas Day. We have eaten in several different places. One year while in Arizona visiting my mother in Tucson, we searched everywhere to find some place open where we could eat. We finally found an authentic Mexican restaurant that was open and enjoyed the food a lot. One year while in San Antonio we ate at the best Thai restaurant in the whole city. It is the best Thai food I have ever eaten. This year, our son wanted to eat traditional southern cooking, but we could not find a place that was open. We decided at the last minute to eat Greek food. I had heard people at work talk about two of the best Greek places to eat. The one closest to work was not open so we picked the other one. We were a bit sceptical when we arrived at the restaurant as no one else was there, but we were early since we wanted to attend the Christmas Eve service at church later in the evening. It was fun eating something none of us had had in an authentic restaurant. We topped off the meal with one of the best desserts any of us had eaten, which was a raspberry cream cake. It came with a single candle on it. The name of the place was Mythos Mediterranian Bistro.

Aradhna in Raleigh NC

love & movies

In the past week we have watched two Indian movies. Last night we saw Rab ne bana di Jodi. I have been looking forward to seeing it since my birthday in the middle of November. On that day we were in the shop where we rent Indian movies for home viewing. The $1 rental fee for each movie has to be the best entertainment value of anything you can possibly do for that amount of money. On the end of the counter was a holographic poster for the movie was saw last night. It was advertising the soundtrack for the movie. I asked the owner if I could have it and of course he gave it to me, since we are friends. The next day I put the poster on my office door at work. I typically don't close my door as I want people to feel free to come in and see me at any time, but for the last month I have closed my door so everyone walking by could be amazed at my poster. If move your head slowly side to side you can see the actor and actress change from traditional dress to modern bollywood style clothes. I was wondering as we waited for the movie to begin if I would have to remove the poster from my door, which would have to happen if the movie was bad. We were not disappointed as the movie was great. That is why I love Indian movies as there is always a clear point and both love and GOD has to be mentioned. I have to add this movie to my favorite list near the top. The other thing I wish I had done over the last few years was to record all of my favorite quotes from the movies we had watched.

The movie we watched last week was Slum Dog Millionaire. It was about love as well but the movie was actually rated "R" because of some of the violent content that was not appropriate for children. For me this was about the "real" India and not the fairy tell world of Bollywood that sometimes illustrates the ideal that people can hold onto in order to escape from this "real" world. Plus I got to see Mumbai and India like I remember it. I like movies that show choices we all have to make and the results of those choices. Some choose a dark path and reap what they sow. Others want to choose the right path that actually helps people, but sometimes it is just too hard to do. Even though both of these movies had love as the foundation, they were very different in content. The best thing I like about watching Indian movies is that it makes me think about my life and what is important as well as talk to my wife about what love really means.

food in Army

On the first night that our oldest son was home for the Christmas holidays, my wife fixed meat pot pie, which was always our son's favorite. I was really very tasty and nearly perfect in every way. As we sat at the table, he asked if this was all we were having. This was kind of odd since we have always eaten like this with simple but nutritious meals. Last year at this time, when he came home, he was starving from living on his own and a home cooked meal was all he dreamed about. So I asked him why he spoke like this about his mother's wonderful cooking and what the food was like in the Army. He told us of their multiple course meals three times a day. There were many varieties of everything to choose from at every meal. He did not overeat but always looked forward to each meal and made the decision at that time as to what he fill his plate with. He was select a meat, a couple of vegetable sides, always dessert. He was describing a super buffet selection for every meal. No wonder our single dish meal was a bit too simple for him.

finals week

This week has been the week of finals.

I finally finished my Hindi class after almost two years of studying and attending weekly classes with a co-worker who taught the class using Rupert Snell's book called "Teach Yourself Hindi". Now I can read and write the Devanagari script used for Hindi. This next year I want to practice my talking skills, which means I need to start working on extending my vocabulary also.

I finally completed the season in the competitive volleyball league at work during lunch time. We lost the very last game in the finals to come in second place. It was fun playing with such great volleyball players and I learned a lot and am now a better player because of it. That is true in most sports, in that if you play with people better than you then you will improve over time. Every time I enjoyed watching my teammates set the ball perfectly and then watch as one of the other players would spike it with so much power. It is just fun to watch good people play.

This is my final week of work for 2008. The company I work for closes their office the last week of December, which really means every one gets an extra week of vacation every year, which is very nice! I plan on finishing the first section of my new book and hopefully finish all of the sections up until I went to India. I need to find the journals that I kept during that time and review them to figure out what I need to say. That was the most important time of my life so it may be hard to condense it down to something reasonable - it may be a book in itself!

van pool

Several years ago I started carpooling when a neighbor invited me to join an existing carpool. Because all three of us lived in the same small community, it was very easy and convenient to share a ride. After riding for two months, I left the company that I worked for to pursue other opportunities in another state.

When I returned to that same company, I had forgotten about that first carpool. But after I bumped into the same person later in the building where I work, we decided to start carpooling again - just the two of us. This time I was motivated more by the price of gas and the rising cost of my auto maintenance bills. After I had commuted to work alone for over a year, it was getting boring, even though I listened to all kinds of music, occasional audio books, or language-learning lessons. I thought I’d miss these if I started riding with someone else, but I was willing to give it up to save money on gas. Because I was an early-morning person, finding a parking spot at my building at work wasn’t a problem. But it crossed my mind that I might have to walk further each day if I arrived at work later! Another motivating factor: I had worked for the Saudi Arabian national oil company for a couple of years. Seeing money flow freely from the U.S. to the Middle East due to our oil dependency just seemed so unnecessary. I had seen first-hand the amazing wealth it was creating, so I thought I could do my small part by joining a carpool and maybe one day helping others do it too.

Once we started carpooling, we found others interested in joining us who had carpooled previously. Through word of mouth, we found a few more people each month. Initially, some rode only a few times each week, while the rest of us faithfully rode to and from work every day.

An early concern we each had was how to run errands during the week at lunch when we each drove only about one day a week. This required a bit of advance planning because we had to condense everything into a single day. But within a month after deciding to alternate driving, we had a good working system. Anyone having to stay late or go in early simply didn’t carpool. Anyone needing to drive on a certain day to service her or his car or to see the doctor simply volunteered to be the designated driver. To be fair, we devised a simple spreadsheet to record drivers and riders each day and week. Each day on the way home we’d talk and determine who wasn’t riding and who would drive the next day. After a couple of months of alternating drivers during the week, I was driving only once a week. So, instead of spending $65 per week on gas, I was now paying only $65 per month. My only challenge was convincing my wife to get up 30 minutes earlier to take our kids to school, which used to be my daily duty and privilege.

From the very start we considered getting a Triangle Transit Authority (TTA) van because that would mean even less car maintenance for each driver. Many months later, we had more people than would fit into a single vehicle. As the number of people increased, it became harder to balance and maintain fair driving arrangements. But as it turned out, that was actually a nice problem to have. Once we reached six regular carpoolers, we figured it should be pretty simple to find more riders. We had all seen the benefits of ride-sharing, so it seemed obvious that others would jump at the chance to save money on gas. Because TTA paid for all gas and maintenance, we need only to find enough riders to fill a 12-passenger van. The more who joined, the lower our individual cost. We posted flyers in break rooms at work to get the word out about our vanpool and asked those we knew who lived along our route if they’d like to join. At that point a fellow carpooler showed me how to create a list of company employees who lived nearby by using a utility to locate people by town name. Using this, I could find potential riders who lived as far from work as I did who might want to join us. As a result of our efforts, we now have nine people in our vanpool, and we thought this article might entice others to start their own carpools.

Some of the real benefits I have seen can be understood from something that happened to me early on. After entering my car one rainy afternoon, I found I couldn’t start my car. I didn’t have a cell phone, but my fellow carpooler did, so he called security at work. Literally, within minutes, security arrived and jump-started my car so that we could pick up other riders at other buildings at work. Not only did I find a new friend to help me in a time of need, I never knew that security could do such things. Now that we have our preferred vanpool parking spot at our building, I never worry about my car not starting. I also have plenty of new friends on whom I know I can count when I need them. My 30-45 minute commute now goes by so quickly every day as we talk about each other's life experiences and learn all kinds of things in general. I think one of the best lessons I’ve learned is how kind and considerate people are at work, which is not something I can say about other places I’ve worked. Instead of being totally immersed in my current project and the technical abilities of those I work with, from our rides together to and from work I’ve learned that people have lived though and survived personal experiences similar to mine. I feel like I learn something new every ride, so that’s pretty good too. After seven months of ride-sharing, I now miss the days that I don’t vanpool.

Rajastan

There is something that is alluring about Rajastan. I have driven through most of that state in northern India. On the surface it is just one big dry hot desert, which is very dusty. Even after 30 years I can still remember things about it as it is so unique in all of India. I recall driving through the villages and you could easily tell when you have left one and entered another. In one village all of the men would be wearing yellow turbans, in the next they would all be wearing bring red ones and in the next they would be wearing green. The buildings everywhere matched the drab yellow brown sand with few trees in sight, but then you would see the women wearing the most bright colored saris and the men with their colored turbans. An occasional camel would be seen pulling a two wheeled cart. Every now and then you would see an amazing castle on a rocky hill that is centuries old. The hills are nothing more than huge boulders. I have spent the night with friends in the pink city of Jaipur and the blue city of Jodhpur. Driven past the Jal Mahal outside Jaipur, the Mehrangarh Fort on the hill outside of Jodhpur and the Taj Lake Palace on a lake outside Udaipur. So many fascinating and enchanting places to see, so it is no wonder that foreign tourists want to go there.



That is not want I had originally intended to write about today, but the origin of my thoughts was a movie was saw last night called Nanhe Jaisalmer. I have been watching Indian movies since we lived in Saudi in the late '80s, where the local Qatar TV station showed the weekly Thursday night Indian movie. Since the weekend was Thursday and Friday, this was the equivalent on our Saturday night, so I stayed up late watching the movie which ended around midnight. Now we rent Indian movies at a local Indian store. In all of those years and the unknown number of movies I have seen, it still amazes me at now uplifting they are and a true learning experience for me. Of course it really helps that I have lived to see many of the places in India where they shoot the films, but still the culture is so fascinating to me that I learn something new about the culture with every movie I see. I enjoyed the music in "Nanhe" and there were so many wonderful one liners. Just a great family movie with a good story and wholesome point. Who can complain about that?

Army II

Since our son could not leave the Army base without us signing him out, we ventured back to South Carolina for our Thanksgiving break this year. On the first night we stayed at a very nice Homewood Suites Hotel on the west side of Columbia. It was a pretty long drive from the Army base which was on the east side of Columbia, but it was a much nicer part of town to be staying in. Our son wanted to shop for civilian clothes, so we found a mall on the northwest part of Columbia where we joined the masses of people shopping on Black Friday. I have no idea about the rest of the county, but at this mall on this day it was wall to wall people. So many people, in fact, it was hard to get around inside the mall in some places. The mall was very nice and fairly new and our son quickly found a store called Buckle that willingly took his $200 and gave him little in return. I have never enjoyed shopping and the only good thing this time was that I did not have to spend money. We even went into the really high end store Abercrombie & Finch just for looking around as we suffered from sticker shock and quickly left, besides the fact that the store was so dark you could hardly see the prices and the music so loud you could not hear yourself think.

On the second night, we went back to the location where we stayed the last time for his boot camp graduation ceremonies. It is right next to the Army base, but the area is not very nice. When we got to the hotel, our son told us that his sergeant told them to all stay away from the Waffle House next to our hotel. That was odd orders, but then we heard the details on why this was so. Apparently the Army had tracked found the location where some of the soldiers had bought cocaine and it was at this very same Waffle House. We have eaten in one of them and decided not to make this a first time for us!

On the last day in Columbia we had a mission to find a phone that could be used no matter where he would be stationed. He is listed as going to South Korea, but we learned that it could change many times between now and when he ships out on March 1st. For South Korea and Japan they use very high frequencies, so basically the only phones that would work with local service in those countries are the high end PDA phones. The Apple iPhone will not work there on local service, but he really liked the touch screen phones in the AT&T store. After playing with every phone in the store for over an hour, he finally found a phone he liked, but it turned out to be one that would not work in Asia. He finally decided on the LG Incite 3g phone. He enjoyed playing with it the rest of the day, in taking photos of everything and finding wireless networks and chatting. Sounds like a mobile computer to me!