The big event of the weekend was a grand family reunion for members of the David, Martin, and Philip families. I’ve never attended a formal family reunion so this was an interesting experience. Not everyone made it from around the globe, but many people did fly and drive to get to Bangalore this weekend.
The family members organizing the big event rented a hall at The Shack nearby for the lunch. We got there first, and that gave us an opportunity to meet the family members when they arrived and chat it up.
The event began with some introductions, then four speakers took turns coming up to present on the various family trees, using onscreen visuals and family photographs. It was soon time for lunch and large family photos.
We all got kicked out of the hall at 3 PM, and then a number of us regrouped at Dipu and Meena’s flat for snacks and drinks.
Big day. Interesting day. Nice job by everyone who helped plan and organize an event like this.
On Friday, we drove into a section of Bangalore to meet with a bunch of my wife’s cousins from her mother’s side for lunch at Hotel Imperial. It supposedly has amazing food, and is well know for their red chicken. The owners are Muslim so we had to tool around the neighborhood for an hour until they opened at 12:45 PM.
Lunch was pretty good. After lunch, we all drove over to another cousin’s place for drinks, snacks, meeting more family, dinner, and lots of conversation.
At the end of the night, we ordered an Uber that drove us 45 minutes back to the flat…. for only 236 rupees. With tip, it worked out to $4m Gosh, that’s cheap.
My wife’s uncle Dipu picked us up from the Bangalore International Airport after we exit Immigration and Customs after 3 AM. A hired driver drove us all to their flat in about 45 minutes, and we met up with my in-laws and my Dipu’s wife Meena. Reunion time! We had a late snack (early breakfast?) at 4 AM, then we retired to an upstairs flat that we would be using for the next few days.In a few short hours, we were up and about puttering around. It was an easy first day and getting acclimated. My sister-in-law and her family showed up (they had been in Bangalore since Saturday) and would be sharing the same flat with us until Sunday. More reunions!
Nums is trapped in the backseat with some crazy kids
In the evening, nine of us (including my in-laws) drove about an hour to a relative’s place on my father-in-law’s side. We experienced some of the infamous Bangalore traffic firsthand, and it was rush hour too. Crazy, man.
Once we got there, it was more family reunion time. I had last met everyone 15 years ago when I was last here in 2014, so I needed a bit of a refresher. The kids had never met anyone so Namita introduced them to her relatives. It was nice to meet and chat with everyone – all were so nice and friendly, with plenty of smiles, laughter, and good conversation to go around. The kids all played card games with each other, and you could hear the laughter from a room or two away.
Art display at the airport
At the end, Namita’s cousin Sunil rented a large van and driver, and took us on a short tour the surrounding neighborhood. That was nice.
More than two years ago, we started thinking about a big trip to India. While the details and dates changed over time, the general outline was that we would time the trip to coincide with the extended David family in the US also going to India, visiting my relatives in Kerala, and sightseeing in the north. It’s taken this long, and lots of discussions, and finding the money needed to pull this off. I didn’t know this was ever going to work.
But the day is finally here. :
The minor details and dates have changed, but the general plan held on:
Three days in Bangalore to hang out with the extended David & Philips clans.
Three days in Kerala, staying at a Kumarakom backwaters resort, and visiting the Ipe side of the family tree.
Three days visiting Agra and New Delhi (plus travel time
Three days of international travel time.
It’s nearly two weeks, but really only nine days with boots on the ground. It doesn’t seem like an awful lot of time considering the travel costs to get there and back again, but it’s all we could afford to be away.
Namita and I have been racing to get our work stuff all situated so that we can be gone for those two weeks. We’ve also been ordering new clothes and new suitcases and supplies for the trip. The cats were taken care of, airport parking reserved, car loaded up, and we eventually got on our way.
Much later than planned? Yeeeeeesssss, but we checked into our flight before the 1 hour mark. We went right through security and grabbed a quick snack while standing on line at the gate. Talk about efficient!
The overnight flight (7 hours) went well enough, but the kids couldn’t sleep so they mostly watched movies and played games on their devices. We landed in Frankfurt and spent our six hour layover hanging around and trying to catch a few short winks.
The 2nd leg of the journey was all afternoon and evening (8 hours) and we’re scheduled to arrive around 2 AM in Bangalore.
Four months and one new role later, I finally make it to Frankfurt
Hotdogs appear to be very popular at Frankfurt
Josh is very proud of his breakfast hotdog
Even I got in on the act
Lily enjoying her donut “brezal”
A wide assortment of non-standard Pringle flavors
Passing the time in one of the leisure zones during our layover
Kids meal
Flying over the Arabian Peninsula
I hope we can get some rest tonight (and stretch out!), and adjust to the jet lag relatively quickly. It’s a short visit in Bangalore with lots to do Friday and Saturday.
Going through my iPad and I found this photo they took a few years ago when my wife’s cousin & family came to visit the States. They will get to hang out again next week. I hope they’re looking forward to seeing them again.
Only a couple days to go and we depart for the big India trip.
For the upcoming India trip, I wanted to get some additional photography gear. For one thing, I’ve had my eye on a 35 mm fast prime lens for street photography and headshots. I’ve been using a 50 mm prime lens for headshots, but I learned later that particular lens is best suited for full frame cameras, or headshots in certain specific conditions. For one thing, you need to stand back pretty far to use it, and that’s not often an option.
With a 35 mm Nikkor prime lens, I plan to use that for days when we’re walking around. With a prime lens, there’s only one zoom level, so it’s important for the photographer to move around when composing his or her photo. This should be an interesting experience while in India.I only had the one 64 GB SD card, so I bought a second one as a backup.
Lastly, I needed something for backing up photos off of SD cards. I could use a simple card reader, but I don’t have a laptop. I’ve looking at the WD Passport Wireless SSD device for a while now. It’s one-stop upload – insert card, press the button, and it backs up all of your content to folders organized by particular SD cards and dates. Lastly, you can access it wirelessly. Seemed interesting, so I picked one of these too. Lily swore she would be vlogging on the trip using her little digital camcorder, and she could back up content to this device too. The first drive I received was defective, but Amazon was able to send me a new one overnight.
See the gallery above. I took pictures of the girls using the 35 mm lens, and I like the quality of the shot and the bokeh effect. The SD card…. worked (no surprise there). The 2nd WD Passport Wireless worked, but it’s a little slow. Is it the drive, or the iPad?
Using Lightroom for iOS was fine though, and you can see above that I did some post-processing on these two photos. However, I found trying to save and later export photos using the iPad a little cumbersome. I blame iOS and it’s secretive inner workings. I had no idea where photos were getting stored on the iPad. I had to take multiple steps to export photos to the Camera Roll, to my Google Drive, then pull down again. Oye ve. I kinda want a Windows 10 2-in-1 laptop now.
Namita has been on a lucky streak this summer. For some time now, she’s been playing these mobile app-based lotteries daily to perchance win discounted tickets to see various musicals on Broadway. Last year, she won two different pairs of tickets to see Hamilton. Namita & Lily went in February to see Hamilton (I thought it was suspicious, and then she won again in August and took Josh the night before our London trip. Crazy, but that lucky streak had to end there, right? Nah!
I went to see Hamilton in late June. Now that I’ve seen it, I understand what all of the fanfare is about. It’s a very good show! I was impressed by how they created such a modern show about events and characters from the 18 century.
Lily and Namita saw Frozen in July. They said the show was very good and the special effects were fantastic.
The girls also saw Pretty Woman. While Lily was entertained, my wife said the show was basically a retelling of the film, and there was no added value.
We won tickets to see Oklahoma and that was interesting. It’s a much different take on the original Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. It’s very avant-garde, less lighthearted, and a little off putting. Also, they gave out free vegetarian chili and cornbread during intermission. I thought it was so cool to see the award-winning cast up close and personal too.
Finally, we went to see Be More Chill. A very interesting and entertaining show about a nerdy socially inept high school kid who takes a special pill from Japan to make him cool. Would definitely recommend seeing it as it’s closing at the end of August.
Last Sunday with both of the kids away for a week at their respective summer camps, we had some free time to ourselves. We wanted to watch The Farewell (2019), starring Awkwafina.
Oddly enough, the film isn’t playing anywhere near us! We could only find it playing at theaters in NYC. After we dropped off Lily to the Crossroads camp, we drove all the way east on I-78 to Newport in Jersey City, parked the car at the mall, took the PATH and then subway to the Lincoln Square to catch the showing. We didn’t have too much time for dinner, but we were able to grab a quick bite and drink at a Shalel Lounge on West 70th St.
In the film, Awkwafina portrays Billi, a Chinese-American writer who, along with the rest of her relatives, tries to shield her grandmother from the news of her terminal illness. The entire extended family travels to China under the pretense of a family wedding. In reality, they are all attempting to bring her whole family together before she passes.
I found this Awkwafina quote from a recent interview, and I thought it best summarized what the film was about:
“So much of what the film is about what the characters are going through, it’s all a way for them to manage their grief,” she said. “The thing that none of us can control is that we have to say goodbye and I think that’s the thing that people probably resonate the deepest with.”
I thought it was interesting to watch the family dynamics, dealing with loss of a parent and grandparent, and seeing what looked like a realistic view of China. And the characters! The actors and actresses did such a nice job portraying the characters as real people. Not cartoons.
And the character of Nai Nai was cool. I hope we can be beloved grandparents like her one day…. in the far, far future.
