Pets and kids

Yesterday the girls and I went out to a mid week, late afternoon farmer's market. The crowd consisted mostly of Moms and kids. There were kids in bathing suits running around in the water fountains, some good food and a lot of bad live music.

I had Anjali in my tow and Maya was walking they played a little in the water fountains. As we sat down with a taco we saw a lady pass by with a small stroller and there was a cage instead of screen. I empathized with her as I can remember some situations where I could have used a stroller with a cage. But wait it wasn't a kid it was a dog in the stroller!

By then I was intrigued, so are there other people doing the same or was this woman one of kind walk-the-dog-in-custom-stroller lady. As any busy mom of two would do I came back and googled it right away and ahoy! Here it is. Looks like there are others, enough for someone to sell these online.

I want to dish out some juicy comments but I will exercise restraint because I don't get the whole pet thing. Maybe this attitude is just our family. We never had any pets growing up, not even a fish, nada. I do remember catching some bugs and saving them in a box till they died. The only person in our family who showed some affinity for animals was dadi, my paternal grandma, feeding the street dogs every morning.I think that was more a part of collecting brownie points with God (good karma) more than any love of animals or pets. She also mentioned that she didn't feed the cats because the cats eat with their eyes closed so they don't count towards good karma. Go figure... I don't even remember asking our parents for a dog.

Partially it could be cultural also. I see far few Indians, for that matter Asians owning pets than other cultures. One of the standard reply I hear from parents is "Why do we need pets, we have kids?". Is the reverse also true? Are people substituting pets for kids in all the ways down to strollers? I've heard people give their last names to the pets and address themselves as Moms. Again I'll reserve my judgement.


This post will not be complete without mentioning(thanks Ravi for bringing this to my attention) the "kid leashes". I've seen people walking with their kids on leashes some attached to the backpacks.


Well the trip to the farmer's market was good I scored a free cloth tote and got Ravi's favorite granola for 2$ less than the health food store. As for the lady walking her dog in the stroller and people with kids on leashes, each to her own. Why not?

ps: I have a lot of time these days on my hands hence so prolific on the blog. There are reasons I cannot reveal now but maybe after the storm has passed:-)

Out of the nose and on the .....

Brithday parties have always been tricky at our home.So far Maya, Ravi and my collective social anxiety had prevented any huge birthday bashes at our house and then came Anjali with a huge personality packed in that little body. There was no way she was taking a little playdate with a couple of friends at the park for a birthday party. So we planned a birthday party with handmade monkey invitations, cake, pinata, food, the whole nine yards.

The party started pretty well and kids were basically doing there own thing raiding the backyard,jumping on the trampoline, girls' room and adults were eating, enjoying the drinks and chatting. We did the pinata which was a NEMO pinata(the urge to beat to death your favorite character is a topic of a different post all together) and got all the kids high on sugar after that there were a few obligatory meltdowns from 2 year olds. One potty training accident.

After that it was CAKE TIME. We had a cake with a monkey face and everything was set and Ravi chose this time to tell Anjali that "we were going to smush her face with cake after she cuts the cake". I don't know if it was the candies or general excitement Ajnali started bawling, I don't mean little sniffles, tears all over the face bawling that is usually accompaied by lots of drainage from the nose. This whole scene was taking place in dining room with no tissue in sight I ran to the kitchen to get one and ran back Alas... too late... I saw the booger drop from her nose and land on the CAKE!!!! It was a scene right out of a sitcom. There was a moment of silence and then a burst of laughter from all corners. What did we do with the cake you ask? It took some careful cake cutting and a bunch of totally booger desensitized parents and the CAKE WAS HAD....

aussie winters

aussie winters suck. not JUST because it's cold but because big brother begins with winter :-( for those of you who are not familiar with the show,

a) be thankful to god
b) its a show that puts 15 losers in a house away from loved ones so that they can decide who the biggest loser is.
c) be thankful to your TV channel provider

can' wait for september... (it finishes sometime around september)

Swimming through swami troubles

There is a temple in Austin called Barsana Dham and it's a very beautiful temple. More like an ashram plus a north Indian temple. This temple holds a very special place in our family because this is pretty much the first place Ravi and I went to by ourselves, so I guess our first date, we got married here, we celebrated Maya's first b'rthday by sponsoring the lunch at the temple and then Anjali's first b'day by doing the same. So even though I'm not super religious this temple has always been a part of our major milestones.

If you were wondering where this is going, patience my child. Most of the people living in the ashram are westerners who found solace/escape/answers in the Hindu religion particulary the flavor and interpretation being practiced by the Swamiji who founded this temple. They are all extremely sweet people who honestly believe in this swamiji enough to leave their normal lives and live here. Over the years we have come to know a lot of the people living at the ashram.

The ashram holds a mela every year which is a blast irrespective of your religious beliefs. They have elephants and what not. This year I decided to invite some friends over to the mela so I sent out an email to about 20-30 friends(mostly parents of the 5 year old set) one month before the mela. The day before the mela this appears in the paper.

I sent an email out to all of my guests letting them know about the 'situation'. We did end up going to the mela but talking to Swamiji's devotees was very hard. They seemed in complete denial that allegations could be true at all. I feel indifferent to swamiji's fate but feel very sad for all the people who have completely dedicated their lives to him.

Tilburg and Frogs

It's been a while and lots has happened: we moved from Oz to the lowlands (aka the Netherlands), went from summer to winter and now to spring, bought a house, found jobs and daycare for Colwin, settled in, had lots of visitors. All in all: everything went fine and we start feeling at home in Tilburg. That doesn't mean that we don't miss Sydney, though.

The one person Colwin misses most is his friend Andre.



In a way, kids here are more boisterous than the kids Colwin had been hanging out with in Sydney. And he just needs to find his place in a group that has already been together for a while. But things are not all bad: Colwin's slowly finding his place at daycare, too. A couple of weeks ago, they were dressing up. This is the result:



I'm still not sure how they got Colwin to dress in this costume :) And it will haunt him until the end of his days...

Microsoft Word X-(

I have been using Microsoft Word as my primary authoring tool for years now. And the more I use it, the more passionately I hate it. Do the people who design this ever get feedback from users? Do they know how annoying it is to try and format a simple document without Word trying to read your mind and doing it for you?

And now, Word refuses to let me open a docx file someone sent over, as I don't have Office 2007. It prompts me to download and install the file converter. You would think this would fix my problem, but no, it still refuses to open the file!!!

Argggh!!!!!!

Basic curry recipe

This post is credited to Gail who made me remember that I need to put a simplified recipe for everyone :) So, here it goes...

Ingredients for curry (serves 6)

Heavybottom saucepan with lid
30 ml oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
2 bay leaves
4 cloves garlic and one finger of ginger (made into paste)
2 big onions chopped fairly fine
2 big tomatoes, chopped not very fine
1 teaspoon chilli powder
1 teaspoon turmeric powder
3 teaspoon coriander powder
salt to taste

Mix chilli, turmeric and corainder powder and add about 40 ml of water. mix to form a thin paste.

heat oil in the pan and when hot, throw in the bay leaves and cumin seeds (in an even fashion). reduce the heat to 6 o'clock position and after 4-5 seconds in which the cumin seeds will become whitish, add the ginger-garlic paste, stir and about 10 seconds later add the onions. heat till the onions are brownish (which should be about 15 mins) stirring occasionally. increase heat to max and add the spice powder paste prepared earlier. stir continuously, add about 30 ml water again when the paste starts thickening and stir again. after about 30 seconds, add salt and tomato, reduce heat to 6 o'clock position and sitr occasionally for about 20 mins.

THAT'S YOUR BASIC CURRY - YAY!!

Now let's say we are adding chicken

turn heat to max, add the diced chicken (Don't add any water), cook for about 5 minutes keep turning the paste from the bottom of the pan (folding) so that the chicken cubes are sealed to keep moisture in them. put the lid on, turn the heat to 3 o'clock position and cook for 25 mins. DONE!!!!