Always good to dust off an old book

For a while now I have transitioned to Kindle books and the my new fad is to switch to audio books (I am holding myself from doing that). Of course most books I have bought off late (in last 6-8 years) are non fiction related to finance, self improvement and the usual works. But I am proud to say I have a collection of paper back and hard bound books in my own small library. Considering the amount of time I spend these days in reading any book either kindle e-books or otherwise they have been eating dust :).

Anyways, I have become an avid listener to Dave Ramsey podcasts and he has been strongly advocating people to read a non fiction book for at the least 15 minutes a day. Come to think of it, it is a great habit and my father-in-law had recommended the same to me a decade ago and I had followed the advice for a while, as with everything in life fell off the band wagon.

With Facebook turned off, Twitter non existent and NPR given a boot, it appeared I had more time in hand and decided to pickup the reading habit again. This time around instead of picking up the ipad-mini and launching the kindle app I went down to my mini library and picked up a non-fiction book.  I had bought this one more than a decade ago and never turned more than 10 pages of the same. For the first couple of days, I literally had to drag myself to keep the book in hand for 15-20 minutes before bed time but in the last week or so I got into the groove and love reading this book.

The one wonderful unintended consequence of my new reading habit is it has caught Avni’s attention and she wants to know what is her dad reading? mind you I have had the ipad for almost 3-4 years and have read few books through kindle app on my ipad but it has rarely spiked her interest. I am guessing a combination of her age and her own reading habits that she has been questioning me constantly about what I am reading? and wants me to explain to her what I am reading? Indeed I am not successful yet at that. 

Anyways, moral of the story is "kindle, audible and other apps are good but sometimes a good old fashioned hardbound book is a great investment too".  

Even Daisy knows . . . . . .

Every weekday morning after dropping Avni to school, Daisy knows its her walk time and to an extent demands it as though it’s her right. She patiently waits till Avni has gone to school and won’t make a single peep till I am back after school drop off. She patiently watches our morning rush to get Avni to school, but the moment I am back, she keeps wandering around me and I guess in her language asking me “Can we go now” or"isn't it time yet".

She is patient and waits by my side as long as I am doing real/actual work like using the bathroom or drinking water or running laundry. The moment I take the phone and start staring at it, she loses patience and starts vocally showing her impatience.  Trust me she won’t stop till I keep the phone down.

I wonder if she is saying “please keep the phone down for in not doing so, you are wasting your time (which is ok) and you are wasting my precious time too” :) 

One world meditation

The title might seem off but no it was an actual event hosted by Art of Living foundation on January 17 2016. The event was a curtain raiser for the bigger event World Culture festival to be held in Delhi, India from March 11-13 2016. As you may already know we in Austin are also planning our own local curtain raiser and our folks decided a face to face meeting to be had right after the meditation.

My mind was completely occupied with the logistics for the event and how best we could make this event a grand success and so on, on top of it somehow we didn’t have the right link and when we tuned in for the meditation it had already started. This I believe was the first time that Facebook was hosting, unlike the previous times when youtube used to host and there were some delays in the audio. All in all when everyone else in the room was feeling wonderful after the meditation I didn’t pack the punch.

It was as though the universe heard my dilemma and on screen Sri Sri started talking again (we didn’t realize then but were re telecasting the meditation event) and out of curiosity the volume was increased and lo behold there was one more meditation to be done and this time with no breaks in the telecast and don’t know however many minutes later I opened the eyes and it was a peaceful and beautiful moment.

In case you missed the meditation and the Q and A that followed, don’t worry you can find it here. 

Christmas at Bannockburn–snapshots of the season

This Christmas, thanks to Sandhya who has made this list of things to do during Christmas/holiday season, one of them happened to be performance at Bannockburn Church.

Considering Avni is following a new routine of sleeping at 8:00 and due to other unavoidable reasons we could only make time for the last show on Monday at 7:00PM.

If I had one word to describe the performance it would be, “wonderstruck”. The performances had people of all ages from kids to adults, the dances were extremely well choreographed, the singers had amazing voice, the lighting was just perfect, the artists were extremely talented and last but not the least the dresses they wore just lit the stage on fire.

The best part of the show for me was the myriad ways they performed for the song “Jingle bell, jingle bell … “. If I may divide the show into 2 parts, the first half was fun and joy and that was the part in which Avni had a blast and second part was performance on life of Jesus from birth to crucifixion and re-birth (after which I had to leave). Both parts were very beautiful and kudos to the production team for pulling this off with incredible precision.  

Many thanks to our Circle C ranch Facebook page and the residents who evangelized it. It was a wonderful performance and something I look forward to for next year.