Siddharth’s Blog

Today morning, it felt like its been a while since I posted. And just how long “a while” is became apparent when I saw that there has been no post for 2008 altogether! Can’t say that it was a memorable year, but all the same I am grateful for the year that was.

2009 started with travel as Vrushali and Neha left on the 1st to be in time for Bhabhi’s delivery. The baby took his time to make his appearance though and finally Bhai and Bhabhi were blessed with a boy mid last month. Neha’s terribly excited about the new arrival in the family. We celebrated her birthday at Ahmedabad and she had a nice time as she was aware of what to expect this time around. It was her favourite back forest cake too, so all the more enjoyable for her. Pics are coming up shortly on my flickr page as usual.

Been reading a lot of books of late since we joined a library just before the new year. Read a couple of novels by Agatha Christie (my obsession with Poirot continues) and also read a couple of John Grisham (Playing for Pizza, The Broker). Finally read Bill Cosby’s ‘Time Flies’. All were interesting. Did not like ‘The Broker’ so much, but it was tolerable.

We also went for a movie with the office team (‘Chandni Chowk To China’ or CC2C as it is called) and sadly Akshay Kumar disappointed us. The silver lining though was that the buffet lunch at Copper Chimney prior to the movie was awesome.

So much so for the status of affairs. Will post something more interesting (I hope) in the immediate future.

For us in India, Dussehra and Diwali are over, but the wedding bells are still ringing all over the place at this time of the year. For the folks in the US, Thanksgiving and Christmas season are coming up. So (I guess) it would be time for some peace, quiet and family reunions all over. Hence, without further ado, I wish everyone of you a very happy time with your families!

I and Vrushali were very happy to meet up with our parents and other family members for a week earlier this month. Neha got a diversion from her daily routine too and also got the ‘taste’ of her first Diwali. I mean this quite literally since there were pedas, burfis, halwa and a whole lot of sweet preparations waiting for her everywhere we went! She did not quite enjoy the noisy crackers so much but had fun watching the ones that give more light than noise (i.e. the anaars and zameen chakkars). Pics are at my flickr page (as usual). Vrushali had done a wonderful job finding Indian dresses for Neha before we went home and that added to our joy on the festival day

Amongst my hobbies, I have not done much of casual reading last few months. I did manage to read a couple of Fredrick Forsyths’ though: Icon and The Afghan. I liked the former more than the latter. I also ended up buying a used hotshoe flash for my camera. It is a Vivitar 285 HV. It was pretty reasonable on the pocket, and as a friend once said (rightly) to me: ‘lighting is much better bang for the buck!’. I am enjoying clicking in RAW these days. It does take up at little time doing the post processing on the pics, but I like the output much more than clicking in jpeg and uploading ‘as-is’.

Made a quick trip to Mumbai over the last weekend. Was a lot of fun to meet family and so many friends in the short period of time that I was there. Took a few pics of Neha that are added to her album on Flickr. Binux had lent me his Canon EF 50mm F/1.8 II lens for the trip and it was a lot of fun to click with something other than the kit lens. Also read Agatha Christie – The Murder on the Links (Poirot) on the trip.