Ramanan's Musings

We just got back from another ultrasonic womb inspection and I am happy to report that Junior is doing well and is bigger than expected :). For anyone who knows me, why would that surprise you :). Listening to the loud thumping that is Junior's beating heart, I could not but reflect upon the life that Junior is currently leading. Intravenous feeding, large living room, well insulated walls - whats not to like :). The Mrs on the other hand is not happy. She had to imbibe 10 ounces of some sickeningly sweet dextrose so that she can be tested for gestational diabetes (GD). If a mom-to-be is diagnosed with GD, the baby is at high risk for Type 2 diabetes early in its childhood if the mother is not treated for GD. The Mrs has excellent health and so we are not worried.

It is day three in the four day weekend and it has been a fun filled three days so far. On Thanksgiving day, we partook in a vegetarian thanksgiving potluck feast with some old German friends, and some new German friends and family (brother and his wife). A fabulous thick and creamy pumpkin soup was followed by a piece of a very traditional German quiche. This was accompanied by some potatoes, spinach and feta cheese all stuffed inside a red bell pepper. And this was just the German part of the course. For the Indian part of the thanksgiving feast, we brought two curries (malai mattar panner and aloo dumwale) while the brother prepared the vegetable pulao and raitha. Entertainment was provided by the three German kids who enthralled the guests with their diction and language skills (and eating skills :)). Day two started with some general house cleaning and a round of tasks for the resident handy-man (yours truly). This of course led to the mandatory Home Depot visits and the purchase ...

A certain world traveling friend of mine requested my thoughts on pre and post fatherhood. Since I am still in the pre-fatherhood phase, I shall enlighten my friend with some words of wisdom as someone who is actively making all the wrong choices and the right mistakes :) Choosing baby names can be an interesting experience. First time parents-to-be like yours truly and the wonderfully rotund mrs are often perplexed with the myriad choices for baby names. Now throw in the rigors of Indian names and you are looking at several zillion permutations and combinations that is likely to cause the parents-to-be run screaming for the exits. Thanks to my mother, I am blessed with a _long_ name. While it does inconvenience me from time to time, I have always looked upon my long name as a blessing since it pretty much guaranteed that I will never suffer from identity theft or fraud. One look at my name and most people just give up :). So given that the baby will have at least one long name (the f...

It is a sleepy Sunday morning here in the bay area. The mrs is watching an assortment of cooking shows on HGTV that is making my mouth water for the glorious chicken. Of course, it doesn't help that next week is Thanksgiving and all the cooking shows are showing how to cook that perfect succulent bird (turkey or Cornish game hen or the regular full chicken). I had to swear off eating meat (chicken being the only meat that I would have liked to consume) as one of the preconditions for marriage with the mrs :). She feels quite strongly about this and so I have had to make the ultimate sacrifice and give up eating chicken. If I was a member of AA, I would have been given a platinum medal because it has been approximately 5 years since I last consumed a good chicken dish. Looking back through my life, I guess my infatuation with the chicken really started in boarding school when week after week, while most children enjoyed special Sunday lunch meals (which usually was different succ...

Wow - It is Nov 17th already and it has been 16 days since my last post ... what hectic lives we lead - no wonder we all sooner or later succumb to some stress related disorder. But morbid thoughts aside, here is my "detailed" Om Shanti Om experience. Kutti (those on a need to know basis know who I am referring to) and wife called us to go catch the Om Shanti Om flick at my brother's deserted theater - (begin footnote) it appears some of the local mainstream cinema halls have stumbled on the fact that screening Bollywood movies is a sure way of generating copious quantities of moolah given the zillion or so well-heeled fanatic Bollywood fans in the bay area but this is a topic best left for another blog (end footnote). Anyway, the rotund and 24 weeks pregnant mrs and I made our way to the "deserted" theatre 10 minutes before the agreed upon time. Turns out that the zillion fanatic Bollywood fans also decide that this was the movie to see on a Friday night at ou...

Not a very original title, I must admit but hey, it is the first day of November, 2007. This is the day I resuscitated my blog on Blogger - of course, my old blog is gone, lost among the several zillion blogs that never got a post after the first initial post. I hope this one survives beyond this first initial post.