San Francisco trip

It has been a while since I posted anything to my blog. At the end of April we all went out to see my son graduate from Ex'pression College with a B.Sc. in Audio Engineering. These are the best photos we took of the trip:

http://50yearadventure.com/SanFrancisco/

These are my favorite family shots:

snowy winter

So far this winter we have had two snows in the last two weeks. The first one was really a layer of ice with some snow on top followed by more ice. Not a very nice snow for playing in or making snow men. On Friday night it was a perfect snow. Yesterday morning my wife and daughter were the first to go outside and tried to make a snow man. Then Jake and I went out to finish off the job. We rolled what we thought were huge balls of snow by packing them by hand. Jake went into the front yard and created a heavy duty ice ball. He needed help in lifting it and moving it across the driveway to make it even larger. I then heard a cry for help only to find him exhausted leaning on the snow ball on the side of the house. I rolled it the rest of the way into the back yard and that ice ball became the base for our snowman. While he was working on his ice ball, I had made threes large balls made mostly of compacted snow. It took us a while to made them flat on top so we could stack them on each other. We packed icy snow around the gaps where the snow balls met. My daughter objected to us using four snow balls and also the size of them. We added a stick for one arm and I took a photo to send to my one armed friend as a tribute snowman to him. As soon as we came inside glowing over our handiwork, my daughter and Andrew took over on what we thought was a finished product. We spent over an hour on our snowman. Two hours later they were finished with the amazing Fuquay Varina snowman. This morning as I wrote this blog I saw a bright smiling face looking at me through the window. I had to asked about the buttons and the nose, to which Andrew told me the red nose was a lawn croquet ball and the three black buttons are actually office chair coasters he found in the garage!

Stones into Schools

I just finished reading Stones into Schools by Greg Mortenson, who is also the author of the wildly popular book Three Cups of Tea. Here are some memorable quotes from this book that I really like:

pg 13
If you teach a boy, you educate an individual; but if you teach a girl, you educate a community.

pg 17
The first cup of tea you share with us, you are a stranger. The second cup, you are a friend. But with the third cup, you become family - and for our families we are willing to do anything, even die.

pg 19
Anything truly important is worth doing very, very slowly.

pg 36
When ordinary human beings perform extraordinary acts of generosity, endurance, or compassion, we are all made richer by their example

pg 191
When you take the time to actually listen, with humility, to what people have to say, it's amazing what you can learn. Especially if the people who are doing the talking also happen to be children.

He has also publisher an image gallery that is very interesting and a full report on the research for this book which also includes more photos.

our son the cook

For our family Thanksgiving meal this year our middle son used these recipes:

Ham with Gingersnap crust
Ruth Chris' Sweet Potato Casserole
Pineapple upside down cheese cake

Most recently he experimented on us and made this yummy food:

Honey Brined Turkey

International food for Christmas

Four years ago we decided to start a new family tradition of allowing our middle son to choose where he wants to eat when we go out for his Christmas Eve birthday. It is sometimes difficult to find a place open on Christmas Eve, but since he likes trying different international food, that makes it easier actually. Many years ago we were visiting my mother in Tucson for Christmas and we could only find a single restaurant open. It was a Mexican food and that started the idea I think. Four years ago when living in San Antonio, Texas he came up with a great idea of eating Thai food. My coworkers pointed us to what many considered the best Thai food in the city. It was definitely a treat to take all of the family to that place. After returning to North Carolina the following year, our son decided he wanted to try Sushi. He knew it was not my favorite so he found a place that served both Thai and Sushi. Last year was difficult as we called so many places that he wanted to try but they were all closed. We found some other interesting places but they were too expensive like the "Melting Pot" which serves only fondu. So we decided on Greek food, which was a great choice. This year we went for Thai food again and it was wonderful. Who knows what next year will hold? At least we decided not to get ice cream cake this year as we have not had much success with those in the last few years. The photo on the right is the straw covers from our Thai ice tea which were mysteriously formed in beautiful rose shapes. The rice served for our curry dishes was also interesting as one was the shape of a teddy bear and the other one was a fish. Such a great place to eat. It was called Sawasdee.

local prisoner

As we have experienced in our family - problems never go away if you ignore them. I read in the paper today that a local man was sentenced to six years in jail for child pornography. It reminded me of a web site I found when I discovered one of our teenage boys looking at pornography at our home:

http://xxxchurch.com

Here is a link to his story:

http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2009/09/14/testimony-i-am-facing-8-years-in-prison-for-child-pornography

Here is the blog he is maintaining:

http://www.fromshame2grace.com

I really like the steps in this article:

http://porntopurity.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/are-you-a-step-away-from-child-pornography

1. His slide into pornography was gradual – Nothing happened overnight. David’s porn habit grew slowly over a period of many years.

2. His slide was progressive – It started with his father’s Penthouse, chatrooms then trading pictures. David’s behaviors got worse over time. It also took more to get his “fix”. And it took more and more of his time. The things that once seemed repulsive actually became exciting.

3. Many secrets were hidden - Porn grows in the dark, and feeds on a secretive life.

4. He was successful on the outside, yet decaying on the inside.

5. He is a regular guy, just like you and me, that slid in a horrible direction – This is the scary thing. Many of us have similar stories. We allow porn in our life thinking it’s not harmful. Thinking we can control it. All along, our lust is really controlling us.

NC state parking

Last Sunday I managed to get the boys up out of bed at 9am and we were on the road by 10pm heading west on I-40. The goal was to spend the day in Hanging Rock State Park. I have wanted to go there ever since we first moved to NC many years ago. I read about it in the local newspaper in a Sunday morning newspaper travel special. For some reason we never made it there until now. I decided I needed a special event on the day before I turned 50 years old. Two months ago we were close to making it as we went to Stone Mountain State Park with hopes in also making it to Hanging Rock but that did not happen. After five hours hiking in Stone Mountain we just did not have the energy to go to Hanging Rock even though it was only 30 minutes away.

This time we had my son's GPS to help guide us to the state park. The route was not obvious at all and not the way I would have picked. I had driven on Highway 52 a couple of times which goes right by Pilot Mountain State Park and I saw signs for Hanging Rock right next to it. I was kind of surprised at the circuitous route the GPS suggested. It took us right to the main gate which was quite far from Highway 52. In fact we never saw Pilot Mountain while up on the Hanging Rock so it was much farther than I thought. We even spoke of going to Pilot Mountain afterwards and saw a glimpse of it as we drove a different way out of the park.



It was worth every minute of the 3 hour drive to get there as I enjoying climbing up the steep trail to the Hanging Rock. We also followed the park map and visited all of the waterfalls on the park grounds. We hiked around five miles all together. The weather was absolutely perfect for such a day's activities. I took along our digital camera as I have become quite addicted to since I used it so freely in India. As long as it is set to "auto" I am good. While in India because I took it in and out of my backpack frequently, I found the dial was often changed to some other setting which ended up taking a horrible photo. I do not pretend to be a photographer, but that "auto" setting was made for me. We were all pleasantly surprised to find many photographic moments around the waterfalls, which was an added bonus.

These are the photos from that trip:

http://50yearadventure.com/HangingRockStatePark/

scare me?

I just don't understand why someone would want to scare themselves on purpose. Why do kids like to be scared? I am not sure. Our two sons who are still living at home with us decided this weekend that they needed a good scare, so they drove an hour and a half to Greensboro to see Woods of Terror. One of them won free tickets somehow so at least they did not pay $25 each for such a thing. I heard three versions of the same night of terror. Our daughter talked to them when they got back so that was the first version we heard. Then I had to discuss it with our oldest son to see how he described it. Then I talked to my youngest son to hear his version. Somehow they enjoyed getting scared out of their wits. For me I think I would have died of a heart attack from the fright that they described. I really don't think it is good for me health and so I will use that excuse from now on.

While talking to my youngest son I found out why he has not been able to sleep at night the last four days. He watched a movie on the internet called Paranormal Activity. He said he watched it in bed on his laptop with headphones and has yet to be able to sleep at night. I heard him a couple of times this week running down the hall and then slamming the door to his room in the middle of the night. That certainly does not sound like a healthy affect to have on a person. Anything that makes you that fearful is definitely not a good thing. My son told me it was about demons. Also sounds like yet another reason not to see it. Now I understand why it is so scary for him. If you believe their is another spiritual world, then this is probably not the best film to see. The problem is that demons and angels both exist but neither of them should be our focus or concern. Jesus is here to protect us and keep us safe not to give us a spirit of fear. We should strive to help our fellow man not fear what we cannot see. If our fear keeps us from helping others, then I am 100% sure that is not something that GOD has sent to encourage us. I am not into calling things demonic but I would call this movie a scary distraction from what we should be doing with our lives.

trip down memory lane

Today I drove with my two youngest sons around town looking for BMX grips. We went back to a store we had frequented so many times in buying skateboards and accessories like shoes called Endless Grind. The bike store above it was closed so we had to find other bike stores in the area. Since we did not have my son's GPS, I had to rely on my unusually super sense of direction to navigate the area. My middle son told me that his electronic generation was too dependent and had lost sense of direction. That was true in more than one way! It was interesting to think back to being in that very same store ten years ago with much younger little boys. In roaming around the area we finally ended up in Sk8-Cary Skate Park. We actually went there when they first opened in 2001 as the three oldest boys all skateboarded. It just so happened that today they were having a BMX competition with some locals and professionals. It was very cold but we stayed and watched the first round since we were shopping for BMX equipment anyway. It brought back memories from the past and we made new memories all at the same time!

Stone Mountain

While my wife and two younger kids are having fun on a Princess Cruise to Scandinavia, my middle son and I decided to go hiking. I have always wanted to visit Hanging Rock State Park or at least hike up Pilot Mountain State Park next to it. Yet again I did not go to one of these as we decided to visit Stone Mountain State Park instead as we heard it had some waterfalls. Once on the park trails it reminded us both of the area where we last saw waterfalls earlier in the summer. Just when we were getting tired we decided we had to see the actual Stone Mountain while in the park. When we reached the grassy open field to see it we did not to expect such a huge granite rock mountain. As we looked closer we saw people at the top and some tiny little people climbing up the side. We went to the very bottom of the rock face and saw ropes that people were using to go up the 600 ft rock face. When I looked at the park map, I saw there was a trail that crossed the top of the mountain. Since we had to backtrack to get back to the car I suggested we try the trail so we get on top of the huge rock. The trail map said it was a strenuous climb but all we saw was a series of never ending steps. The more we walked up the steps the harder it became until we had to stop a couple of times to rest. It was all worth it when we reached the top as we had a full view of the Blue Ridge Mountains in all directions. I wanted to stay on the 2305 ft mountain top forever and just soak in the beauty that GOD created. We did not have a camera or else I would have taken a whole roll from that point. I did not find any posted on the internet either that fully captured the scene. I included a couple that I did find. I need to move back into the mountains and forget the city life.

photos of kids

785 miles later

For the long 4th of July weekend we decided to take a trip to the western part of NC to visit waterfalls that we did not see in our last waterfall trip two years ago. It was a five hour drive for the three of us as we decided it would be a guy only trip. We finally reached our first destination at 3pm. The last time we had reached Panthertown Valley it had started raining on us as we got out of our car and after a short walk we gave up and returned to our vehicle. We were determined to actually see waterfalls in this park and we found around ten vehicles parked on the dirt road to the main trail. We reached Schoolhouse Falls after a long walk and there was another family in the water with the father and grandfather fishing below the falls. It was only after talking to him and showing him the map we had did we realize where we were in the park. He told us where to go to see Warden Falls as it would be possible to reach that and have plenty of time to return. The hike was pretty steep in places and when we reached the falls there was camping equipment scattered all over the area around the base of the falls but no one was around. We decided to go in the water since we were pretty hot. After swimming across the pool we walked up the side of the falls and found the moss under the water really think and spongy which was so nice on our tired toes. We also noticed how soft our skin felt and I could see mica and fool's gold particles all in the water and the sand around the falls. I tried sliding down the lowest part of the falls and bruised my tail bone, but it was a great remote place to relax and enjoy the beauty around us.



Once we got back to the car after the long walk back we decided to see one more group of waterfalls before nightfall on the way back to Brevard, NC. We decided to take a short sidetrack to see the French Broad river where there was a group of rapids around the Cathedral Falls. We had written down directions before leaving as otherwise we would have never found them. We were the only car at the small gravel pull off on Highway 215. There are a series of falls right next to the road with a small dirt path leading to all of the falls. Our favorite was called Bird Rock Falls and we stayed as long as we could climbing around the rocks going down the river. After a full day we headed back to Brevard and found out that both of the hotels were completely full, but the person in the Hampton Inn told me they had rooms in the Etowah Country Club and gave me directions on how to reach it in the dark as it was around 9:30pm. We decided to eat at the Brevard Pizza Hut, which was the very same place we ate the last time we were in this area after learning that the hotels were full. When we reached the country club they had plenty of rooms and so we settled in for the night. In the morning as looked out the front door of the hotel room I saw the two golf green style croquet fields in front of me. I did not even know such things existed in the USA! The night before one of my sons had walked on it and thought it was spongy astroturf.


It was a tough decision the second day on where we should do. One of my sons wanted to go to Sliding Rock, but when we got up and felt how cool the air was outside we talked ourselves out of that morning cold shock. We decided to eat at the Huddle House for breakfast and then head to Gorges State Park which was west of Panthertown Valley. The hike was not as remote as the one the day before to Warden Falls, but it did seem to go forever. We saw several people walking back on the trail even though it was 10am. No one else was going in the same direction so we began to wonder if we were going on the right path, but there was only one path and we kept going. A couple hundred feet on the top of a ridge I asked the people coming down if we were close and they said we were. When we saw Rainbow Falls from the railed overlook we were all amazed. It was the most spectacular waterfall we had ever seen up close. We crawled down the rough dirt path to the bottom of the waterfalls and decided we should get in and go for a swim. The water was quite cold but the boys went in first. After they both got in and started swimming, I dove in from a near rock and swam over to the cliff. It was cold but not unbearable. We stayed for a long time to enjoy the cold water and marvel at the falls. It was hard leaving but there other falls in the area we wanted to see. It turned out that both were disappointing. We actually stopped in the parking lot for Whitewater Falls but we were too tired to make the walk even though I tried to force the boys out of the car to see it. On the way back home we stopped to see Looking Glass Falls right outside Brevard as we had seen it before. The problem with that waterfall is that it is so easy to get to that it is always crowded. That ended our 4th of July waterfall adventure trip for the summer of 2009.

sunset beach vacation

Photos from our yearly family vacation to the beach:

Sunset Beach

mother's day 2009

This was waiting for us when we came home from my wife's parents house on Mother's Day:





Lazy afternoon on Mother's Day as the kids were checking out the Princess cruise details for this fall:

series on breakdowns

The past week was just a series of things breaking down around our house. First our clothes dryer stopping working. I cannot recall the exact date when we fixed it previously, but it was within a few months of the last time we had it repaired. Our house has the worst possible location for a laundry area. I dare not call it a laundry room as it is more like a laundry closet. The problem is that the washer and dryer barely squeeze into the closet. The last time we had problems with the dryer, we shopped around for new ones and none of the ones that are made currently will fit into the closet, so we are forced to repair the ones we have. Soon after our dryer decided to stop functioning, our refrigerator started making scary sounds. It was like a slowly accelerating engine that would then deaccelerate. Up and down it would go all day long. It was especially obvious in the morning when I woke up as it was the only sound in the whole house. Fortunately, we have a really great appliance company near our house who helped us before. For under $200, he was able to fix them both.

Soon after buying our son a car, we heard a sound company from the back end of the car. I called my trusty mechanic to check it out. Both my wife and son complained about the brakes so I had him check those at the same time. Turned out that the brakes all needed changing and the noise was pretty harmless and should some day be fixed when our son gets a job and has money to fix it. At least the brakes are good, which is important for a new young driver!

The last thing to cause trouble was our Windows Vista laptop. For months the family account has had mysterious screens show up when you logged on. I tried downloading a couple of tools from a company called "PC Tools", hoping they would find this virus and kill it. I have Norton Antivirus on this laptop but I just thought I should try something else. After buying a couple of their tools, I was no better off than when I started. In fact a couple of days ago my youngest son informed me when I got home from work that the laptop was frozen. The new tools were complaining about the Windows Defender was running and it could not be running at the same time as these tools. It took me an around an hour to stop Windows Defender. Then the next day that same son told me that a third window was popping up when he logged on. It was in fact getting worse by the day. I had tried to update these tools and it hung the tool and the laptop. This morning I finally removed all of their tools and had to delete our family account and create a new one. For now all is back to normal. In my frustration last night with all of our computers, I decided to buy a new iMac for the family and a new MacBook for myself. I tried Windows for a couple of years and that was all I could take. I am back to an all Apple home again, like the good old days, 10 years ago when I had nothing but Apple machines. It is just not worth the struggle and fighting to have Windows any more.

rollercoaster of life

The past couple of days was quite the up and down affair. At work I had lunch with a man who had lived in the Middle East and we had a great time talking about our past experiences. He had also lived in Houston and his wife helped him decide it was time to leave just like my wife had helped me. After getting back to work, I had a meeting with a screaming woman who obviously hates me for some odd reason. The most unprofessional immature meeting I have ever encountered. Within a few minutes I went from feeling great to feeling awful. After taking 30 minutes of abuse, I got up and walked out of the conference room. I felt so bad that I had to take a sick day on Friday to recover. I guess she won in accomplishing what she intended to do and that was to make me feel really bad.

Yesterday, we bought my son a car and then on the way home we stopped by to see a local car show of hot rods. We had a good time as all of the boys at one time had enjoyed looking at cars. My son commented that now he understood what a really fine automobile looked like. After eating supper at home and sitting down to watch our latest Indian movie, our daughter entered the room and said one of her classmates had killed himself by a rope on a tree in their backyard. How horrible is that for a 14 year old to have to deal with. From happiness to horror in just a couple of hours. Such is the rollercoaster of life.

car shopping

There just is nothing worse for me than shopping for cars. I don't mind bargaining as that part is kind of fun but the vulture like car salesmen scare me with their forceful mannerisms. This weekend we were trying to find a car for our middle son, who is the latest in the succession of boys to have cars in our family. Like our next to oldest, I let him search the web to find cars he likes as he knew the amount that he had to spend and what he wanted to get. In these economically troubling days, small dependable cars are a bit hard to find as the days of the gas burning SUVs is on the downturn and people want just the car my son is looking for. He wanted a small car with good gas mileage and finally found one in north Raleigh last weekend that he wanted to see. He has been searching for the last couple of months but had to pass his final road test to get his unrestricted driver's license first before a car could be considered. That extra time was good as it enabled him to figure out what kind of car he really wanted. We test drove several cars so he got a feeling of what he liked also. Yesterday was the big day when he drove with his other two siblings and myself to see this car. It was a beautiful sunny day, which I tried to convince everyone that it would be a great day for hiking, but I got overruled as car shopping got a higher priority. The whole affair was fairly painless as the small used car dealer where the car was located had just bought this car at an auction and was happy to sell it to us. I bargained a little and before we knew it we had a car. We pick it up today as I did not have enough money with me and our son did not feel comfortable driving it by himself for the 30 minutes to our home through downtown Raleigh. Today we have yet another Hyundai in our family.

Car shopping brings back memories of past events with the other kids. Our next to oldest did his own searching for months and we bought his car at the local flea market since that is where the owner met us for the exchange of money for the car. He as so happy when he got home with his car, and yet just after a couple of months he accidentally ran into the post at a local gas station when his flip flop caught on the gas pedal. That resulted in a very nice "V" in the front of his car. His gray car became two shades of red as he found a bumper and hood at junk yard near our house. Then as he was driving home the hood flew back and smashed the windshield as the hood was not latched properly, so yet another car repair. The most amazing thing ever is that this car made it all the way across the USA as my son drove it with his best friend in a cross country road trip. Recently the car stopped working and may have met it's very end. Hopefully this latest car to enter our family will not be inflicted with such car abuse.

Then our oldest son was in such a hurry to buy a car in San Antonio that he quickly found a car and bought it in one week. The used car dealer was not a very reputable one and basically ripped us off. The good news is because we were buying a Honda from him, so the car could take much abuse and still keep going. He failed to tell us the radiator had a leak in it and since it was 100% plastic, it could not be repaired. The brakes were pretty much shot as well. In my son's frantic desperation, we had a car but just barely. Once we made a couple of expensive repairs, he decided to drive all the way back to North Carolina in a non-stop 22 hour driving spree. Eventually when he lost his driver's license, we sold the car to someone else by advertising with a for sale sign as it sat in the nearby WalMart parking lot. The car was in pretty bad shape but still with over 200,000 miles on the odometer, someone bought the Honda Accord for the good gas mileage. May our son's car make it that far as it has a little over 100,000 on it now.

spring break

This week was not just another week, but it was spring break, which meant our son came home from Emeryville, CA. It started out bad as he was supposed to be here last Friday but when his flight was canceled due to bad weather in NYC, it actually took him 36 hours to reach our house. He left this morning and hopefully will have a better experience getting back to school as this time he is going through Dallas, TX. However, I just checked the weather and the only place in the country that has bad weather is a region around Dallas! That is really pretty amazing as it was the same story when he tried to go through NYC last week.


My daughter was really hoping that this week would be better than the last time her oldest brother came and she was very disappointed in the lack of time she got to see him. This time was much better as this brother was around more and actually let her use his nice Apple laptop the last couple of days and even took her to the beach with him. Actually all of the kids went together to see my wife's parents in Wilmington and spent the night on Thursday night. It was the first time in over 20+ years that we were in the house without children. It is interesting how much of our lives revolve around our children as it was odd not hearing around the house that evening. Other than the beach trip they did not do anything special but just hung around each other. On the first day he was in the house they were all sitting on our middle son's bed talking, which unfortunately I did not get a photo of scene as it was a classic. Last night we went out to eat together at a local Japanese steak house in Fuquay and the food was really excellent and evening was entertaining as the cook prepared the food in front of us and definitely amused us.


The final event of the evening was the family bonfire as my middle son had been preparing a perfectly stacked pile of wood all week long, for the final evening together. The photo I took came out really cool as it looks like a fire breathing dragon coming up out of the midst of the fire pit. It was a relaxing memorable week, of which I am sure we will hear memories discussed around the dinner table in the weeks to come.

odd week

After ten days of not feeling well, I finally recovered enough to say I was over the recent nasty sickness. Even though I was at work for the first couple of days this week, it seemed like everything I touched went wrong. Maybe it was the sickness looming over me and maybe my mind was not clear enough for intensive work conditions. Whatever it was, I was not very encouraged by my slow progress on my tasks at hand. Just about when I was ready to give up all hope, I finally found a way to fix the bugs I was slaving away on all week. It has happened to me several times in my long career in software development.

In addition several other things happened yesterday of note. At lunch a friend of mine, who is a mechanic, showed up at our house to fix my car, which had a check engine light on for the last several weeks. The Nissan dealer told him it would be six hours minimum as the manifold would have to be removed in a long timely process. Being the experienced mechanic he knew to try other things first. He found and fixed the problem without the labor intensive procedures the dealer had suggested. The best thing of all was that the charge was half of what he originally estimated, which had to be at least half of what the dealer would have charged me.

Then when our kids got home from school, I was appointed to take my son to get his drivers license. Seeing that he had hardly driven, the end result was predictable as he failed the driving test. The people at the license office were not very friendly and were definitely intimidating, which definitely did not help matters at all. There crabiness never prevented a single accident or drunk driving teenager death and yet for some reason they spread their unhappiness to all who entered attempting to get a new license.

To top off the day, our son was to arrive from California, but his flight was canceled due to bad weather in NYC. He missed all of the flights for the evening and at the minute we are still waiting to see if he makes it on the next flight as a stand-by passenger. A typical end to a most unusual week.

Valentine's weekend

The last two days seemed like a long weekend, but in this case it was a good thing. At lunch time yesterday as I was talking to a friend I have known for almost 30 years, the mail woman rang the doorbell. I initially ignored her as I was on the phone and I thought someone else would get the door. Then she knock on the door leading to the garage in desperation. I walked out the front door and found her in the garage. She said I had to sign so she was determined to find me. She had the painting of the family as it arrived from India on Valentine's Day! I handed it to my wife and on opening it we noticed the painted was folded and had creases in it, which was the only thing wrong with it. Everyone had to make comments about it as they all saw the canvas laying on the floor. This morning I searched on the web to figure out how to re-stretch the oil painting to fix the creases. I found a useful video by artist Michael Bell which was on this wikiHow site. I found a couple of sites that sold canvas stretchers, which are really specialized pieces of wood. Then I found this site that explains how to make your own. My middle son and I followed these and now we have a stretched canvas, which is still creased, but at least it is mounted properly.



Yesterday afternoon my wife and I went to see Billu Barber for our anniversary entertainment. Since it had Shah Rukh Khan, we expected to be entertained. We have recently had no such things happening as we watched rental Indian movies. The new ones coming out are just not that good. This one on the other hand had us laughing like crazy near the middle and crying at the end only like King Khan can do. Plus it had a a couple of great points. Billu was very poor and felt ashamed to bother the famous movie star who was his childhood friend. Everyone else wanted to take advantage of them both. Billu's family had to decide if it really matter whether they met the famous movie star when they would always have their father. As usual I would much rather see a movie with a point than just be entertained. I feel like I did not waste my time every time we leave the Indian movie theater. I cannot say the same for other movies.