For god sake my father is doing better day by day with up and downs. But he didn’t stop worrying in any case. If he feels better any day he worries about the routine things, other wise he worries about his health and says I am not going to think abut routine things. But next day as usual. I can understand the situation.

He was in Mission and HIG hospital for four weeks in that around 16 days in CCU and 12 days in private room. When he was in CCU, Mission hospital, some how his palms got bubbles and still not recovered. Now he shifted to Hyderabad and staying at my sisters place. Here he was shown to couple of famous cardiologist in Hyderabad and none of them agreed with the opinion of Mission Hospital and suggested Medical Management only based on his body conditions. They didn’t mean that Surgery is not required, but the risk is more in Surgery than Medical Management based on his health conditions. AT Mission they took Angiogram and advised Two Bypass surgery and valve replacement. We want to show one more famous cardiologist and waiting for him as he went on vacation. Probably we go for Medical Management. I learned how corporate hospitals make big money.

On April 17th afternoon around 3:30pm (It was 1am in India), I received a call from my sister as my father was taken to Hospital as he got chest pain and not comfortable even after taking couple of tablets. On Sunday night (Monday early hours 5am in India) shifted to another Hospital where ventilators are available which is The Mission Hospital Durgapur, West Bengal as per doctors advise and he got survived. On Monday afternoon around 1pm I started in Albany and reached Duragapur on Wednesday afternoon around 2pm (430am Albany), after 40 hours. I traveled around 25 miles in Kolkata city and I didn’t see even one single clean street or good neighborhood. It just resembles Indian documentaries about poor India.

I went to see my father after 3pm in CCU, I spent around 20 minutes. He was on Ventilator and under sedation. I was not scared that much as I saw one friend before who was also on Ventilator and I was guessing for couple of days my father situation. After that I was standing out of the CCU along with my brother-in-law, that was scary time. When we came out he got VT(Ventricular Tachycardia, fast heart beat) and can lead to Cardiac Arrest. Later he got again another mild stroke was given electric massage. That was another critical and scary time. Then we called my brother to start from Phoenix, AZ. He reached Friday afternoon. He was better that day and since he started recovering slowly but white blood cells count was fluctuating from 13000 to 21000 per cmm. At present he is better and still in same Hospital and planning to shift to HYD on Saturday May 15th. All credit goes to my brother-in-law for his immediate actions and great care taken by him all the time.

Will be continued later…

Last Monday, we thought of visiting this place for toddlers in Latham called Tumbling Tykes. My wife had seen it in one of the blogs she reads and she said it had gotten good reviews. One of our friends also attended a birthday party that was held there and she said that we should check it out because our son might like it.

So Monday being a holiday, it was perfect timing for us because they were open the whole day, whereas during the weekend they are only open in the morning. The fee is seven dollars, which is good for the whole day. The place has adequate space, probably 30 by 100 feet give or take, and has lots of toys and activities. One corner is dedicated to children below two years old, so they have toys there like the push toys and musical instruments. The rest of the room is for the older kids, with toys of different kinds. There are at least three slides of different heights and slopes. There is balance beam about a foot from the floor. There are two trampolines, one small and one big. There is a small monkey bar and a big monkey bar. There are two mini-cars that go up and down a mini-roller coaster. There are at least four little tykes cozy coupes. There is an incline (made with soft padding) where kids can roll down. And there are also many different kinds of little toys and costumes.

They also offer different kinds of classes for different age groups. We thought the atmosphere was good and the quality of the toys and environment was good, plus it’s nearer than Treepaad!

Last Sunday was my son’s second birthday, but we wanted to have the birthday party on Saturday instead. We had looked around for some places to have the children’s party. We thought about the usual places like Jeepers Creepers in Crossgates and Chuck E. Cheese in Latham, but they seemed a little too crowded. In Clifton Park we looked at the Bounce Around place in the Clifton Park Center mall, but the party areas were small and the activities were (as their name implies) mostly bouncy-bounces.

My wife did some searching and she saw in one blog this place in Malta called TreePaad. The pictures in the website looked interesting enough, so we decided to check it out. One Sunday afternoon we drove to Malta and went to see the place. We almost missed it because the sign on the road was small and the place from the outside looked more like a warehouse.

Once inside though, we liked it a lot better. It was spacious and there were lots of different activities, and for different age groups. We had our son try out some of the activities and he liked them, so we asked about their party packages. They seemed reasonable enough and looked like fun for the kids. Each package includes two activities, plus a free activity called “Fort Ballocity”, an enclosed area full of foam balls and slides.

We signed up for the package with 10 guest kids, then had to pay extra for 5 more kids. All the kids enjoyed the activities and had a lot of fun. Even some of the adults (like me) joined in on the fun because if the child was too young then an adult or the coach can accompany them.

Our only  complaint really was the food, because the place didn’t offer a lot of food choices (just pizza, hot dogs and chicken nuggets) and you are not allowed to bring your own food (except cake and ice cream). I guess this is because they cater mostly to kids (I was told Americans would drop off their kids then just pick them up after the party), but for cultures such as ours who always celebrate with adults, this can be a little limiting.

Anyway, we did have a good time and the coaches were very helpful too, so we’ll see next year. If they have better food choices or if they’ll allow us to bring our own food, maybe we’ll have our son’s third birthday there.

Hi guys,

I would like to share my enjoyment i had and the fun i had on this holiday Thanks Giving Day.I really thank aravinda for organizing the pot luck in his apartment and for the nice games we had. We thought of meeting in aravinda’s home at around 11.30 AM on Thursday but every one turned up at around 12.30 PM as usual typical Indian guys:). I had made chicken dum biryani and taken it to aravindas’ place as my food pot and sridhar brought nice awesome puffs and aravinda’s family prepared cholae,saagu and they were really nice and dhariyas family brought the maasi.I dont know the name properly but it was also so nice and aravinda’s friend ravi’s family brought grilled chicken and chicken stuffing and poori.

The Food was too heavy for us and around 9 people gathered and we had a brunch and then we started the poker game and we enjoyed really as we have enjoyed before when we all guys meet at sridhar’s place and we played nearly for 3 hrs and we watched bachana ee haseeno of the bollywood movie of ranbir kapoor and deepika padukone.It was nice watching in Panasonic 1080i 42” lcd tv. It was nice and we enjoyed the day by chit chatting and playing games and really had fun.

I like to have these kind of get togethers and have fun.I thank once again Aravinda for making this get together so successful and entertaining us .

We have reached a quandary in our daughter’s education. Should we allow our daughter to watch TV or Not?. I don’t want to become one of those families that are defined by the TV, watch it in the morning while breakfast instead of having a conversation or that used the TV as a cheap babysitter but at the same time, TV can allow us to have a quite time as well as to provide some education to our daughter. Plus this is one opportunity that we can use to teach her to distinguish good TV from horrible TV. Or we can try to avoid TV.

What to do? After some debate ( I was for not TV, Miriam for some TV), we settled for a comprise. We will select only a few shows for her to see, which are:

Plaza sesamo: The Spanish version of sesame street. It is filmed in Mexico and it has some of the characters from Sesame Street as well as some original characters.

Nouky and friends: A French show for kids, which is about 3 friends (Noukie, Paco and Lola) that play and learn together. Now even though is a French show, it is in Spanish.

We will add shows as we review them but so far these have been a success.

This is the continuation to my previous posts

Post 1

Post 2

Let me talk about few more customs/Beliefs.

Bad sign if a cat crosses you while getting ready to go out.

Bad Cat

Cat is the most ignored animal in India and reason being the belief that its a bad sign. It is really hard to find a Indian who have cat as a pet. My daughter has been requesting me to buy a cat but this belief that we had is stopping us though cat is allowed in out apartment complex. I was going through my local language show and there was an explanation for this belief  and its interesting.

Cat’s favorite food is milk, butter and yogurt as per Indians and I am not sure for real. Now, we do store all the above items in fridge and safe. In olden days its totally different. We do store milk, butter and yogurt in pots and store in the closets. So, if you see a cat crossing you when you are leaving house then it might be entering your house or leaving from your house. So it is treated as a bad sign to alert the house owner to go back into house and check. Over the generations this have evolved as a bad sign.

This belief is so strong and as per my knowledge its really really strong in southern part of India. There are so many stories where people postponed even very important things just because a cute cat has crossed the person while going out.

As I have close to my 300 words, I will conclude this post. Next week I will be talking about few more exciting customs from my land.

• Why do Indian women wear red dot on forehead ?
• Why do Indian women remove the red dot from forehead when she become a widow?

I have started a post long back about various customs from India. Been a long time since I have touched it and here we go.

Eating on the floor

Sprinkling water around the plate before eating.

Its a age old custom for Indians to sprinkle little water around the plate or banana leaf before eating food. It has been centuries that this custom is followed all over India. Let me take this opportunity and explain the real reason behind this belief.

All most all the customs that we follow are backed with some reason. This reason is usually related to health or hygiene. But every custom or believe is actually covered with some god or fear to make people believe. The same rules are applied for this tradition too.

Banana Leaf

This custom is very much followed by Hindu religion. Before the British rule we are not exposed to any of the modern living style. Using dining table is a modern style of eating for us. Before these changes we are used to sit on the floor and eat food, usually in a banana leaf or a plate.

When you are eating on the floor and there is possibility that ants or any bugs crawling around you would come on to the leaf. So, when you sprinkle water around the food, chances of these bugs coming close to food are less.

This tradition is now a days mostly followed by many people even though we do not sit on the floor when eat. I know many people that sprinkle water around their plate even though they are eating in a hotel.  It may look little weird for many people if they know that Indians eat on floor. Well, here are the benefits of  doing it.

When we eat on floor, we usually sit on a 2 inches high base.

1. Because you are eating in a sitting position, your stomach is little squeezed and you will definitely eat less compared to eating on a table.
2. Since the type of food we eat demands no silverware, you have bend for each time for food.
3. Eating in a banana leaf is a healthy concept too. A green leaf still has life in it and oxygen is still coming out of it and that makes the food even better.

Let me know your comments.

Last time I talked about the different factors to consider when picking your location. In this post I’ll talk about our house-building experience after we’ve picked the location.

While choosing between locations we knew we preferred Clifton Park. Maybe it’s because we’ve lived here for a number of years, so you could say we were already familiar with the neighborhoods and landmarks. And even though it would take us 20-30 minutes to get to the office, we were already used to the commute and we really didn’t mind (we used to commute hours in the Philippines, so this was nothing).

So we started looking at houses. We looked at new developments and we also looked at pre-owned houses. It was very easy to be captivated by the new developments, because their model houses were so extravagant and were decorated very lavishly. Needless to say, they were expensive and over our target price. The advantage with the pre-owned houses were that they were less expensive, but you really had to look and look if you wanted to find one that you really liked–it’s surprisingly hard to find a house whose owner has the same tastes as you. And in those days of the housing boom, once you find the house that you liked, you had to put in a bid real quick (and a really good bid too, usually higher than the asking price) or else the house is off the market in a matter of days.

We had initially found a new development that we really liked. The roads were winding, the whole neighborhood was full of trees and it even though it was off the main road, you can still get to the highway in a few minutes. It was also an addition to an existing subdivision, so there is an existing neighborhood already, even though you and your immediate neighbors will sort of “grow into” the neighborhood together.

The catch: it was over our budget. Not by much, but still. So we decided to look around for pre-owned houses and see if we find anything that we like. At this point I should mention that we had already signed up a real estate agent. In retrospect I would prefer to get an agent that somebody had recommended, but during that time we were charting new waters so we had signed up an agent that we met at a house-buying seminar. Not bad, but we could’ve probably done better. We told our agent what we were looking for in a house–number of bedrooms, what style, location, etc.–and she did most of the searching. We looked at maybe half a dozen houses, and we did find a couple that we liked, but by the time we found them they were already sold.

So we sat down and thought about things, and realized we really liked the new development we saw earlier. We worked the numbers, and it turned out we could still afford it, maybe not by a big margin, but doable. For us, being in a house that will make us feel glad to go home everyday was well worth it.

When I have applied for my so called I-485 application, I had to complete medical examination at USICS approved doctor and submit along with. These tests include MMR. TB and couple more and since my wife was pregnant one of the test/vaccine was not given to her and the same is mentioned in the application. I am well aware that this test would be due any time after the pregnancy. This happened in August 2007 and we were through the pregnancy in January 2008. I don’t know why but I have completely forgot about the pending test.

I sent my family to India on June 21 2009 and before their departure date I was talking to Sridhar and recalling the fact that the test is pending and what shall be done if the request from USICS is received. Guess what, I just received the request for initial evidence or RFE requesting the remaining tests for my wife.

These are the following option we were working on.

Option 1: Since I have only 30 days to send the reply, bring only my wife to USA for a week time and complete the tests. Costs me $1200 for round trip.
Advantage: I get to see my wife.
Disadvantage: Our kids have to be alone with grand parents for a week to ten days.

Option 2:Bring all of them and they will be here till my vacation time and we all go together and return as per schedule. Costs me $2200 for all of them.
Advantage: Get to be with the family totally
Disadvantage: Expensive.

Option 3: Change the return dates of the current tickets and bring all of them here and cancel my vacation and live happily ever after. Costs me $600 to change the dates.
Advantage: Get to be with my family.
Disadvantage: I get to cancel my vacation and my parents will be upset.

If I had planned the test or at least thought of this well in advance their vacation, I would have been free of these brain storm and money. At the end of the day, I did learned a good lesson. As you have all guessed, I may be going with option one but would have saved a lot of money.