The tendency of mind is ....

Back in December, one of the parents from my daughter's playschool started the initiative of kids soccer. They said they were enrolling their kid to soccer camp starting in April, a 8 week camp played one weekend every week, they suggested if all kids could join in it would be lot of fun. We all got excited with the idea and jumped on it right away.

Since most of us were enrolling, we requested all the kids to be together in the same team. The wonderful folks at the camp honored our request. Even better, some of the dads became the coaches for the team. Keep in mind the whole idea behind was to let kids have fun outside school and some socializing for us too. The kids are truly having fun, specially since the soccer practice ends with donuts and drinks (snacks provided by different parent each week).

It's been 5 weeks, the kids are enjoying the games and having fun. I would definitely say, they have been improving every week, but our team hasn't won a single match. To put it bluntly we get our butts kicked by the opposing team each and every week. We would be lucky if our team makes 1 or 2 goals in the process and don’t self goal during the match.

I think the reason is simple, each team that we have played against so far has 2 to 3 kids who are much older than the kids in our team and also have played multiple years of soccer. If only we hadn’t made the request during enrollment, may be our team would have gotten couple of older kids too and we would be tough competitor too but if that had happened it no longer would have been team “Kangaroos”, would it be?.

Now, the real point of this blog post, I realized I am going away from the original intent of the whole exercise "having fun" and getting to the mode of winning and analyzing why our team isn't doing as good as others.

I think this is called awareness which my good friends were trying to drill into me a decade ago. Of course life is such "aha" moments and that's what makes it fun.The secret is simple, to breath, want more information visit artoflivingaustin.org

Happy Earth day

I walked to my daughters school for her “Art in the park” day and noticed the following on her class room door.

As usual I was impressed by the artistic expressions and impressed with the teachers and their creativity.

Later in the day I heard on KUT that today is “Earth-day”. Now the art made perfect sense.

Great job teachers. I wish I had known this before I would have taken the picture of the entire door.

Disney on Ice–Frozen

Last summer we took our daughter to watch Disney on ice in Austin. This year took her to Disney on ice frozen, only catch this time it was not in Cedar Park but Alamodome, San Antonio.

This time around it was a bit challenging and needed some prior planning as we now have our puppy Daisy with us, I was on the fence for a long time but thanks to Sandhya, we just decided to wing it.

I remember getting the email back in January itself, they had a total of 8 shows over a weekend (Thursday to Sunday) and by the time we made up our minds all that was left for us was Thursday, rest all were sold out, atleast that's what it said on ticketmaster.com. Our show on Thursday night, barring a few open seats here and there was pretty full.

This was our first event at Alamodome and boy was I impressed by the scale of things. In my mind I kept thinking, 78 miles door-to-door and would need an hour and half for drive and park and get in so should not need more than 2 hours. But the scale of Alamodome is quite a few times higher than our cedar park center, so I should have added an extra hour to make the whole thing more seamless. San Antonio police were stationed to guide the traffic and parking and were doing it very diligently and the staff at Alamodome were quick and efficient too.

Now to the show itself, I had wondered last time itself as to where does Disney find such wonderful ice skaters for its shows. One theory I have is that Disney recruits all the Olympics figure skating rejects for its “on ice” show. Unlike last time which was about a mix of princesses stories, this one specifically was musical story of frozen. It was so well done that Avni who is a big fan of Frozen (dressed up as Elsa but without the wig) barely asked any questions through out the event. I doubt if she even blinked her eyes.

As with anything Disney, it was colorful, energetic, executed to perfection and full of theatrics and special effects.

Most every little girl was dressed up to be Elsa and very few were Anna costumes. Some had taken an extra step to get a blonde hair wigs. One of the attendees I spoke to said, “she felt she had come to Elsa heaven”. 

Door to door it was a total of 6 and half hours venture and well worth it. I forgot to mention, as with everything Disney it's not cheap.

Puppy adoption

Sometime last year Sandhya and I decided to adopt a 4 legged pet (read dog). We thought it would be nice for Avni to have a pet doggie to grow up with. So the search began, initially we thought of adopting a young/adult dog but soon fell in love with pups. Needless to say our adopted pup will be coming home sometime next week. Yes, will post some pics once she arrives.  In this process we worked with multiple rescue organizations across Austin and here are some of the learnings.

• The best resource on the web to find dogs and pups is petfinder.com
• Pups get adopted real fast, if you see something today and like its pic, get to action right away else it will be gone before you realize
• In general whether it is a dog or a pup, I recommend to adopt from a fosters home rather than straight up from the shelter
• There are a ton of pitbull and pitbull mix dogs and puppies available for adoption
• I must have met close to 8-10 foster parents and all of them were very good people. I did learn a great deal by interacting with them
• Be prepared for heartbreaks, for the pup/dog you fell in love might already have an application pending
• Most shelters pull dogs/pups from euthanize list and I am very certain one will never know the dad is but sometimes the mommy dog gets rescued and you get to see at the least 1 parent.
• The fosters are highly motivated people and are experts in the field, interact with them and they can teach a lot. 
• Its one thing to meet a dog in the fosters home and completely different to see it in your own home (hint: if you can get the foster to bring the dog to your home, that’s the ideal scenario).
• If you are ok with a mixed breed dog/pup and not hung up on pure breeds, adopting from shelter much much cheaper.
• Considering the fosters pretty much could be living all over town and sometimes in next town, it does take decent amount of driving to find the right one.
• Patience, patience and more patience    

Austin Pets Alive: Previously known as Town lake animal shelter, located on the banks of town lake. They are mostly a volunteer driven organization and they have a huge collection of dogs and pups. They have a very well designed and searchable website. They mostly work through emails and phone calls rarely. The best part, they have a matchmaker service too, she is pretty helpful specially if you are looking to adopt an adult dog. One thing I didn’t like about them is the fact they did not inform in advance if there was an adoption pending and their website has no way of indicating the same.  

Austin Dog Rescue: I have to admit, these guys are my favorite amongst all (even though I couldn’t adopt from them). They do not have a physical shelter but only work through foster programs. These guys are very structured and do have a very well maintained website, once I showed interest in a dog/pup by emailing the co-ordinator, the foster would call to discuss about the dog/pup and about us (family, house, yard and all) and if they are satisfied they will setup an appointment for meet and greet. If the foster likes the interaction then we go ahead with the adoption process. The foster has the final say in adopting the dog to us.

Austin Animal Shelter: This is a city of Austin Animal shelter and very professional one. They have a 2 step procedure, first show up at the shelter and do the required paper work to become eligible for adoption and then look around their website or the kennels and most dogs/pups go on a first come first serve basis unless they are in foster program where the foster has the final say. Unlike other shelters where they pull dogs/pups from being euthanized, I believe Austin Animal shelter works only with stray and owner surrenders.   

Craigs List: This was my favorite place when I was looking for adult dogs, but the experience wasn’t that great. Lot of the dogs that people are looking to rehome on craigslist are big dogs (80-90LB). I got close to meet and greet through craigslist twice but did not go through with either of them, in one case the lady cancelled the meeting 2 hours before the scheduled time and another case they wanted to hand me the dog over to me in the middle of the road (it became more of an ethical dilemma). On the whole It’s pretty entertaining to read through some of the posts.

Other organizations worth mentioning are

Relocation rescue: they usually post on craigslist and won’t find them on petfinder. I am in good touch with the Austin contact and she is very motivated to find good home for dogs/pups.

Love a Bulll Austin: These guys mostly work with PitBulls and their mixes, super focused on those breeds. They are working hard to eliminate the social stigma that comes with Pit Bulls and are willing to house the dog at our house for however long we think we need to before we say yes/no for adoption. Somehow I am not a Pit Bull fan butt I did end up meeting one of their dogs and sort of liked her.  

Austin Humane Society: I barely worked with them and they are mostly phone based people and not email. I believe they have a shelter somewhere on Anderson Mill road and 183.

Impressions from Mexico

When my dear friend suggested that we should get together sometime this year and we should plan  for a week or so and ideal would be an all inclusive resort, my thoughts were Caribbean or Cancun. Since we had a few friends who had earlier visited Cancun we decided with the same.

The all inclusive was the best and it was the first time for us in an all inclusive  resort which took us close to a day to get used to, but this blog is not about that.

Here are some of my take-away from the trip

• The blue waters and the white sand beaches are truly mind blowing. My best experience was to keep the window open through the night just so I could hear the ocean. The temperature was near perfect 80F through out the stay
• We hardly had to use it but the public transportation facility is very good.
• Being in the resort we are always shielded from real Mexico. Step outside and take a few steps up and down and one gets to see real Mexico
• I felt Mexico lives on bargain, there were multiple layers of agents for every single activity we planned (Chichen Itza, Islas Mujaras, parasailing and water ski). In some sense they have adopted capitalistic system for their tourist attractions.
• As always, the bigger the group and longer we persisted the better negotiating power we had.
• The visit to the Mayan village of Chitchen Itza reminded me of a stroll in our native in India, granted the main roads were much better paved than in India.
• Far too many Indians have visited Chichen Itza as it is evident from the fact that the local sellers were greeting us with "namaste, accha price"
• The tour guides while booking promise you that they will start at 7:45AM from hotel and be back by 7:00PM in the night but in my experience the start time is right but the end time will be closer to 8:45PM, I highly recommend this trip though.
• Outside the resort, I felt the everything had a different rate for tourists vs locals(just like India, not the pharmacy though)
• Islas Mujaras is overrated, when we negotiated the tour to the island the guy was very particular "no swimming with dolphins, only seeing them", I think he failed to mention that we will be in the boat itself when we see the Dolphins.
• It's hard to believe, but the restaurant we went while on the island the food was cooked on an open flame stove using wood as fuel, yes the food had a barbecue flavor to it.
• At the cost of being too harsh to the island, I won't recommend this specially with young kids. Unless you have an insatiable penchant for snorkeling and would do it at any cost.
• There is also the activity of holding the baby shark, that felt like animal cruelty and human rights violations than anything fun.
• I think The island is very very poor and lives on tourist income only, the evidence was when they said pesos 5 to use bathroom to change clothes.
• The resort we stayed from vegetarian perspective always had great breakfast and lunch selection but dinner was so so, come to think they have no other restaurants open for breakfast, 1 for lunch and 5 for dinner. Keep in mind this might be true for your resort also.

Needless to say the best part of the whole trip was catching up with old friends and making some new friends (as young as 2 year), The ocean and the beach were all secondary.

The Mayan village

During our tour to Chichen-itza we stopped at the model Mayan village and the structure of the same surprised me. It totally reminded me of my native village in India. The house was in 3 parts with one part dedicated for the temple, the other for the kitchen and the rest of it was boarding and playing areas. Wait a minute that’s how my native house in my village is built like.

The other intriguing common thing I found was the use of samrani aka benzoin resin, a sort of powder that when put on the burning charcoal gives an aromatic flavored smoke which we use specially around new born. The same is apparently true in Mayan also.

You are still interested, their back yards had Cuban oregano (dodda patre), banana plants and few others, voila that’s again our back yard in my native. We do have a few conconut trees there but these guys seemed to have some betel nut trees instead.

I am not here to talk about any major connections between the 2 cultures as one could argue that the same tropical weather led to the growth of these plants and human beings through evolution figured out the same.

Chichen-itza, the place of Maya

The place is one of the most famous tourist destinations in the Yucatan peninsula of Mexico, it is famous for its monumental constructions and the history behind it. It stands as an example for the Mayan supremacy over astronomy and math.

From what our tour guide described to us, the civilization lasted for over 500 years and through out most of that time they kept building and building and used slave labor to do the same. They developed elaborate rituals to perform the sacrifices and believed the more elaborate the ritual is gods would be pleased better and bestow us with great rains and harvest. I have a theory for this, but I don’t want to put it in the public domain. All wonderful and great for their times and might also would have worked during their times.

Again from what our guide told us, Mayans were like Romans (believed in destruction and conquests) but lacked the knowledge of metals and used wood for everything. If that is true, I am impressed by the knowledge they had about the wood itself.

The structures are plain amazing, specially the main pyramid in Chichen Itza and the way a clap echo's back as bird screaming (a dragon in their case) is beyond any numerology.

The questions that arose in my mind were of a different type, how come the civilization that were so good in math and astronomy that built such great observation towers lacked the understanding that destruction of forest leads to loss of rain.

Granted there were a council of very smart and intelligent people in those times who passed on their learning in astronomy to their next generations, for I do not believe the great pyramid was built in 1 go and there were multiple iterations of the same which were slightly imperfect. I wonder if this what led to the belief that Mayan’s were building for ever to please the gods?

Was there a lack of leadership which could have encourage other forms of science to develop?, its hard to believe that a developed mind like that would have been stuck in one field for that long. As per our guide the lack of food lead to destruction of the Mayans of Yucatan as due to their arrogant nature, they had amassed enough and more enemies among other tribes, even before the Spaniards came.

Looking at the Spaniards destruction of the Mayan temples and places of worship reminded me of the Muslim invasion of India and destruction of our temples. I guess human beings are the same irrespective of their religion.