Nelson lunch spots ... (Go Mexico, Bar Delicous, Falafel Gourmet, House of Sushi, Crema)

We've been spending a fair amount of time in Nelson during the day running various errands and paying bills that were due some time back. We also get to enjoy lunch in nelson while running these errands. Here's what we've tried in the recent past, the nelson ethnic food scene is definitely getting much better :)

• Go Mexico: This is a mexican place run by a North Indian on Bridge Street (close to Collingwood). Our friend Chris had visited this place when it first opened and his reviews were not stellar. So it took us a much longer time than normal to visit this place. We went there for lunch today, and boy was it good!. Mari has the grilled fish (monkfish) burrito with a mild salsa and a horchata (home made). I had the chicken burrito with the medium salsa and a fresh lemonade. Ordering the drinks was a mistake :( The drinks were very good but a bit too big and took up valuable stomach space. My chicken burrito was excellent. The rice and beans had a nice spice and sour taste to it from the chicken sauce / salsa. There was a reasonable amount of meat but the combination hit the spot. The burrito seemed to be more like a home made chappati. Mari's fish burrito was also quite good. I tasted the fish and it was fresh and flaky. We only managed to finish half the burritos, so we have a yummy lunch tomorrow. After i mentioned Chris's review, the owner asked me to send Chris back to the place and pick up a free burrito on the house. The burritos are a bit on the steep side for those of us used to $5 taqueria burritos, but the quality of ingredients and size makes up for the cost (its get amortized over 2 lunches!). If you are in Nelson, go visit Go Mexico! now. We need to ensure it stays in business.
  
• Falafel Gourmet is another great lunch spot (actually all the places on this list are great lunch spots!). I always get a large lamb and mari gets the smal vegetarian falafel. The large is good enough for a meal and a half. The tahini sauce they use is quite good. We need to get some pita bread and hummus from that store home the next time we are in town
• Masao and Yuki from our favorite sushi place (House of Sushi) have opened up a new, slightly larger branch on Vanguard St (past the New World). We had lunch there last week. Mari had the fried warehou and salmon over rice with a small salad. I got a pork katsu over rice. We also shared a seaweed salad (which was a large salad with some amount of seaweed in it). We picked a few of their desserts for snacks for the kids. They were ok, i found them a bit too sweet. Masao's japanese curry is very good and worth having. I tried making a japanese curry at home earlier this week, it was good but nowhere close to masao's :(
• Bar Delicious is our alternate to Hopgoods since its next door. It recently won the best cafe award in Wild Tomato (a local lifestyle magazine). The nicoise salad is very good here, so is the pork belly. Mari got the pan fried fish of the day (warehou). She liked it, but i thought it was very average. We finished off lunch with an excellent coffee from Crema (a coffee cart near the cathedral)

Its so good to be back home and not have to travel for the next few weeks / months :)

Brady trip report ..

Our friends the brady's spent a month in Nelson, New Zealand over the xmas holiday. You can read his trip report here. You can also see some good photos of Nelson and NZ here. This link should help folks who complain that the blog has no photos :) Speaking of which, we hope to upload some of our photos to flickr sometime in the near future :)

lobo

A Mumbai Wedding

Claudy and Ruby’s Wedding. It was an outside evening wedding decorated w/ flowers, lights, and more flowers. Pink and white were clearly the chosen colors. The bright lights delayed bedtime and the music started the party. We arrived on time and so we had our choice of tables. Maya and PJ were full of energy and happy to be dancing to fun music on an empty dance floor.

When Maya and PJ’s cousins finally arrived, they happily danced around with them. I took this chance to take pictures of all that was happening. I wore my friend’s sari that she so freely lent to me. Thank you Smita. It was fun to wear as I felt I blended in with the other few hundred guests. Some advantages to wearing a sari – it’s a good guard against mosquitos, and allows air to freely flow through. I had shorts on just in case of it all falling apart. I found myself adjusting it a lot but maybe more so than needed since I was thinking about it’s looseness whenever I wasn’t roaming around taking pictures or keeping up with the kids.

When the two guests of honor arrived, the DJ did a great job keeping the party alive. Everyone had a good time throwing the pink and white tiny styro-foam balls as Claudy and Ruby walked passed all 400+ guests. Right after that they cut the cake. Kurund was more than happy to open the bottle of champagne and squirt a few lucky people. I was very lucky. After the toasts, the dancing started.

While the dancing started, I and Maya wandered around the buffet table. The servers were kind and allowed Maya and I to take some food before the official food announcement. There were a lot of food choices for vegetarians, carnivores and mithai eaters. The jellibee was the best I’ve every eaten. The chocolate cake was excellent too.

There were crayons and paper available to all the children which helped entertain the kids while the adults filled the dance floor or just relaxed at the table while enjoying the moment.

Around 930pm or so, Maya and PJ fell asleep on a couple of the cushy chairs. They’re cousin Anika joined them. When the music stopped around 10pm or so, everyone quit dancing to eat. To end a fun filled evening, we went on stage to congratulate Claudy and Ruby once again.

You can view a few of the wedding pictures here.

Trip Report: Final Days in PI ...

We decided to take the family to Normi's beach resort in Bacanotan. Mari's mom has a huge family, so we invited only the kids. This was an unplanned event, so trying to figure out food and transportation for 100 people or so was not really feasible. We ended up with approx 25 adult/kids at the beach. Bacanotan is quite close to the water, but there is no public access to the beach. This is really sad and shocking. Its amazing places exist where there are km's of coastline but no public access. Most of the locals cannot really afford to pay the $3 (USD) to a resort to access the beach. Due to the high cost a beach visit is a very rare occurrence for most of the family. It was quite nice to see all the kids have a great time at the beach. We had a big wave drench all the little kids and then the group decided it would be a bit more fun to play in the swimming pool. After the swim session, we had a snack of club sandwiches, fries, cold drinks and topped it off with ice cream.

The number of kids / young adults is very noticeable in PI. In the villages the percentage is even more noticeable. Mari's dad mentioned that more than 50% of the population is under 30 years. Family sizes are quite high in the villages, and quite a few teens are kids. PI is also a very religious country. Most towns have churches of quite a few denominations (roman catholic, iglesio de christi, seventh day adventist, latter day saints). I suspect the high birth rate is due to a combination of the influence of religion / church and lack of education. Quite a few of mari's cousin's drop out before they even complete high school.

We drove to Manila a few days before our departure to HK / NZ. We stayed at Fraser Place Apartments in Makati. The apartment was quite spacious and the kids had a great time running around the place. We were travel fatigued by the time we goto manila, and took it quite easy and stayed in and around the apartment most of the time. Manila was quite hot during the day and the ac apartment and swimming pool were quite attractive. We had the families of Joy and Alex (maris cousins) visit us in the evenings. Maya and PJ had a great time playing with alliana and justin. Since we were such a large group we just picked up some takeout food for dinner.

We then flew to HK and spent the day there before catching our flight back to NZ. HK was quite cold so we could not spend much time outside. We did have a great dim sum meal at the Celestial Cafe at the Sheraton in Kowloon. We also spent some time in Kowloon Park. We then took the ferry to Hong Kong Island and spent the remainder of the day at IFC mall. We found a good market there, CitySuper, which seems to be similar to whole foods in the US. We got some good bread and a great sashimi platter for a light dinner. We made the children march up and down the escalators at IFC mall and the airport a fair amount. This worked out quite nicely since they slept on the plane even before the plane took off and were knocked out for the next 9 hours.

The flight back was uneventful. We got back home at 5:00 pm. It feels good to be back in a place for the next few months at least ...

Trip Report: Tam-awan Village

We read about Tam-awan Village in the Lonely Planet while looking for places to stay in Baguio. The description was interesting enough and seemed like we would learn a bit more about Filipino culture and tribes that we decided to stay there. On friday evening, we landed up in Tam-awan Village. Alex is not very familiar with Baguio, so it took us some time to find the right road to get to Tam-awan.

There are some places that seem just right at first glance. Tam-awan Village is that place :). To get to the reception/cafe, you climb up 30 steps or so. Its a small patch of forest surrounded by some old and lots of new development. While climbing the steps an artist entertained the kids by mimicking an elephant and falling water sounds (a hollow bamboo stick filled with seeds or rocks). There is a small open area courtyard (dap-ay, a stone paved gathering place) which is the main focal point of the village. Surrounding the courtyard is the cafe, the art gallery, a performing stage and an Ifugao house which can sleep upto 8 people. The group stayed in this house while we stayed in a smaller house slightly further up the hill. The house is made up of heavy hand-hewn timber, the roof is covered with hay and bound with reed and cogon. In the original construction, nails were not used in the building (probably because nails were not available either). The houses were disassembled and tagged at the source, and reconstructed in the village (was relatively easy to do due to lack of nails!). I had an interesting discussion with maya about the differences between the hut and the houses we have stayed in on this trip. Some of the things we talked about were that the hut was basically a single room, all cooking / cleaning / bathroom was outside the structure. The ceiling was also very very high. The hut was quite warm despite the cold outside (good insulation with the wood). The door was basically a piece of wood that slid open (and hence not attached). The door slipped out of its groove when mari tried opening the door. This freaked the kids out as they thought we were now stuck in the house forever. Inside, the house had a benches on all 4 sides, where guests could sit and chat. The benches were made of bamboo and hence we could see the ground underneath. The benches were also handy to keep all our stuff. There was a small wooden bridge to get to the other side of the complex and to a view point, hence the name Tam-awan, which mean a vantage point. On a clear day, one can see the south china sea, however we were fogged in on both days and visibility was quite limited. While at Tam-awan, we also had some artists sketch portraits of the children.

We had two dinners and a breakfast at the village. The meals were quite excellent and we managed to sample most/all of the dishes. We had some cordillera (moutain region) cuisine. One of their special dishes is pinikpikan (killing-me-softly chicken) chicken, which is chicken in a clear soup broth. There was also few different preparations of bangus (milkfish). Their adobo dish and longanissa was the highlight. Alex and Arlene liked the tuyo (fried salted fish) quite a bit. Breakfast was pretty much the same as dinner, with a fried egg added to the meal. We also had an excellent bottle of rice wine. The next day at the cultural show they released a coffee wine. They had a coffee arts festival starting the next day, and we were told that their coffee was quite good. We thought it was a bit too weak and not as flavorful as some of the other beans we've had in the past.

The next day mari's mom got a two hour (hilog) massage which she recommends highly. We returned that evening to Tam-awan for a cultural performance (and even more food). We saw a couple of indigenous dances including an excellent mindaon performance from a manila based group. The kids were quite enchanted with the tribal dances since there was lots of movement and sound. The indigenous dances were done by kids from the local school. The last dance included audience participation and mari graciously volunteered the two kids. During the break, PJ entertained the female dancers and invited them all the New Zealand. Maya decided to invite the girls to San Francisco. I suspect our kids are as confused about where they really live, as we are :). Both PJ and Maya agreed not to invite any of the boy dancers, since in their words, boys are too much 'masti' (naughty). I suspect the 'lion episode' in singapore zoo is still haunting them a bit. The village seems to have a fair amount of local support since most of the crowd was filipino, and many of them seemed to be local to baguio city.

Tam-awan is run by the Chanum (which means water in Ibaloi) foundation. It was started 12 years ago (1996) by a group of 3 men from Manila.The aim of the foundation is to sustain and nurture indigenous customs, promote awareness and respect for the cultural heritage and arts in the Phillipines, particularly in the Cordilleras. I spoke a bit with one of them, Chit, during our stay there. Chit was an electronics engineer for 10+ years, and then worked in the government for a few years, before he decided to focus on Tam-awan and the Chanum foundation. He has a great working relationship with the staff and artists and seems very much at ease at the village. He was also a contributing editor to Lonely Planet, PI. I suspect the prominent mention of Tam-awan in the LP guide, gets them quite a few visitors. The current goal for the foundation and village is to raise money to build a museum and display gallery for work. The foundation also has art therapy classes for kids from the surrounding provinces. We hope to link them with some of the other schools and organizations that we support in PI.

In this blog post, I have borrowed liberally from the tam-awan brochure. Please see the tam-awan website (http://www.tamawanvillage.com) for more information and/or contact them via email (tamawan@skyinet.net) or phone (+63 921 588 3131, +63-74-423-0570)

Trip Report: Baguio City, Phillipines

Baguio is a 2 hour drive from Bacnotan where we are staying (in Northern Luzon). We decided to do a short road trip to Baguio City and check out a larger city in PI. We were joined on this trip by Arlene and two of her nieces and a nephew. To avoid traffic we left at 7:00 am, however we still hit school traffic in San Fernando and were stuck in it for some time. We were soon past that traffic and climbing up the mountain on a fairly steep twisty road. At the top of Quezon Hill, a hose of the car blew and we were stranded near Baguio City. Luckily, mari's cousin and our driver Alex is also a mechanic, so while he made a trip to town to get a new hose, we jumped into a Jeepney and went to the main plaza and Burnham park. We found a pretty large playground and kid cycle rental in the park. That kept the kids entertained for the next couple of hours. Maya was quite happy to be playing outside (instead of sitting in the car) and was biking around the park like crazy. PJ on the other hand was content to be sitting in the passenger seat driven around by the older kids.

Since we did not have the car and the kids wanted to be like the grandparents, we had lunch at the nearby McDonalds. After lunch we headed to SM mall since mari's dad wanted to get a new cell phone or sim card. What was supposed to be a quick trip, turned out to be a 2+ hour wait at the mall. There was a bouncy slide thing at the mall, so the kids were quite happy jumping up and down. We finally had a decent cup of coffee at the mall. Its been a long time since I've been to a large mall, but a bit sad to see that most of the food carts were selling junk food (donuts, nachos, hotdog and fries). No wonder obesity is an epidemic in today's world. While we were hunting for Mari's dad and mum, they were at an Internet Cafe and playing Bingo respectively at the mall. Finally after gathering all the troops we piled into the car and headed to Tam-awan Village. The place was quite amazing and warrants its own blog post which I'll do next.

The next day we headed to Burnham park and the kids ran around for a couple of hours. Mari's dad wanted us to visit the Botanical gardens, so we headed there next. We could not find it, and decided to goto John Hay Park. The kids wanted to go horseriding, so we rented a couple of horses and went on the trails for some time. John Hay park is definitely very nice and we could have spent a much longer time there. However we were running a bit late and had to rush to meet the rest of the group at SM mall (again!). We had a mediocre meal at Taste of Laoag (the province that mari's dad comes from) in the food court at SM Mall. PI food courts are a bit better than the ones in the US but cannot be compared to the ones in Singapore. Its hard to have a quick meal with a large group in a restaurant. We then did some handicraft shopping at Easter Weaving Room (near Tam-awan Village). Mari bought a few traditional filipino costumes for folks in NZ, her dad bought a bottle of rice wine and berry wine (which were quite good). We then headed back to Tam-awan village for a cultural show before heading back home to Bacnotan. We had a good time in Baguio and would have prefered to stay another night. However the other folks in the group wanted to head home, so home we went :(

First impressions of Phillipines ...

After an uneventful flight we landed in Manila, Phillipines in the afternoon. Maya seems to have gotten over her motion sickness since she has not fallen ill the past 5 flights. Hopefully this is a thing of the past. PJ was quite tired and slept for most of the way. The Manila immigration queue reminded me of Mumbai's queue 10 years ago. Not sure why it takes folks such a long time to realize that a snake queue, with a controller at the top, is more manageable and fair rather than 10 separate queues, which tend to split up and merge as the lines lengthen, counters open / close. After some initial confusion as to where mari's dad and alex were, we were finally picked up at the passenger pickup point. We needed to book our tickets from Manila to Hong Kong, so we headed over to Cebu Pacific Air. We could not book our tickets on the internet, since their credit card processor refused to accept our credit cards. The office was relatively empty compared to the number of staff there, but the progress was super slow. It took us close to an hour to book our tix. the agent made 4 copies of 4-6 pages of our passports, we also had to sign for the receipt we received. Not sure why they need to waste so much paper. This was probably our first indication of how things happen in PI.

Due to some mixup in communication, we were scheduled to drive for another 5 hours after we landed. We were hungry and tired, so i was not really looking forward to a long unplanned road trip with the kids. Luckily the kids love mari's dad, and I was hoping he would be the savior (which he was, thanx grandpa!). We had a quick lunch at Makati (the financial capital of PI, sister city to Manila) at a fast food place (Deli France and JolliBee). This was kinda sad, since we had avoided eating at any fast food place on our trip (i don't count an udupi joint in India as fast food, though you could make a very convincing case that it is!). We then headed North towards San Fernando de la Union, which is where the tagalon clan resides (mari's mom side). The five hour trip turned out to be a bit more than 6.5 hours. We finally reached home at 10:00 pm. The kids were asleep, which helped ease the transition.

Phillipines and India are quite similar. Most of the highways are 2 lane. There is significantly less traffic in PI. However the tricycle (a motorcycle with an attachment that can seat 2-4 people) are quite dominant on the highways. These vehicles are quite slow (35 kmph) and basically get down the overall speed of the highway to their speed. These vehicles are not well lit either, so you have to careful and aware of their dim lights at night. It reminded me a bit of our Hrishikesh road trip a couple of years ago, where the bottleneck was even slower bullock carts carrying sugarcane crops.

Mari's parents have a place in Balatacon, adjacent to the highway. So there is a constant vehicle noise all times of the day and night. Luckily its not a super crowded highway, so the pollution is not as bad as mumbai. I'm typing this with a window to the highway, and hear a vehicle approx once a minute or so (at 8:40 pm at nite). The one big advantage, PI has over India is clean restrooms (they are called comfort rooms out here). A few days sampling has revealed that most/all places have pretty clean restrooms. In india, the worst part of a road trip is the unpleasant restrooms (unless it a super busy corridor and you hit a few cafe coffee days along the way). Balatacon is close to the ocean, so we were hoping to go to the beach on a regular basis. Public access to the beach is a foreign concept here. So far we have not seen any public access.

Mari's dad mentioned that he knew a doctor who lives on the beach. So we headed over to the doctor's house. The family was away, so mari's dad went in to call them from his cell. It was super hot and approx 20 mins later, the gate opened and we were granted permission to access the beach. I noticed Mari's dad sitting on the bench with his head down. This is strange behavior for him. I kep watching him and wondered what he was doing. He then got up, but could not support his own weight. I shouted to mari that her dad is sick and we rushed over and supported him. We lifted him into the car and drove towards the hospital. The car had its AC going on full blast, so was quite cool. He recovered pretty quickly and insisted we go home, rather than the hospital. He did mention he was dizzy since he took a tablet a bit late (he was supposed to have taken it the previous nite, he took it in the morning). We listened to him and went home. He looked and felt much better by the time we got home. Mari's mom insisted we get a doctor and do a home visit. So Alex, Arlene and Winnie (mari's extended family cousins) went in search of a doctor. They located and came back with a doctor an hour later. The doctor realized that he has a very low pulse and recommended he stop taking one of his pills for a temporary period of time. She also recommended he check himself into a hospital. He ignored the latter half, but did take a break for the rest of the day. PJ and Maya were quite shocked and saddened to see their grandpa fall sick and could not understand what was happening and why. Later that evening, he felt good enough to join the extended Tagalan family for a clan feast.

Food in PI is not bad, my major complaint is that its always served cold. I'm used to eating food that is piping hot, so making this transition has been quite hard. At mari's place in alameda, we always have the option of microwaving the food to heat it up, which i frequently exercise. Out here in the country, the option does not exist. I'm hoping to taste a few more delicacies from other parts of PI I suspect we'll hit a few restaurants to try these delicacies. the LP guide seems quite good in this regard. The coffee is still Nescafe, so the country needs to make a few strides in the coffee department. This opinion is very biased, since we are in a small town in PI.

We decided to goto the beach early today since it gets quite hot in the afternoon. We hit the beach by 8:00 am (after picking up a few relatives along the way). We went to Normi's resort a few km south, which also has a couple of swimming pools in the resort. We spent a large part of the morning there, had a decent breakfast before heading further south to the city of San Fernando. While the kids were playing in the playground, Mari and I took turns scouting out for good lunch places. Seems like most place in PI are "taru-taru" (point and pick), with very little food being cooked (or at least assembled) to order. We lucked out and found Midtown Manor, a fairly crowded place (high turnover hopefully means the food is more fresh). The place also had upstairs seating, where we could order food (not sure whether it was cooked, or just carted from down below. i suspect a combination of both). While we had a pretty good filipino lunch, mari's parents went to McDonald's. We had gone our separate ways since they wanted to go to PI's Costco, which we decided to pass on. Later in the evening, we visited Mari's cousin Winnie's stall in the market. She runs a pretty happening halo-halo stall in the market and has got quite a few customers (while the other shops are closed for the day). Unfortunately halo-halo has lots of crushed ice, made from ordinary water. While tempting, we had to pass on it and decided to have a treat and had a coke. Singapore and PI are the only places (so far), where i've desperately felt the need to have an ice-cool coca-cola.

We are headed to Baggio in the morning, a hill station to the east of san fernando. We are supposed to be staying at this pretty cool arts complex. more reports from there (i'll also post this entry from a cafe there). Internet in PI is super cheap. the cafe charges 20 pesos / hour, which is approx 50 cents / hour.

Trip Report: Singapore ..

We left Mumbai late 26th night / early 27th morning en route to Singapore. I'd forgotten how short this flight is (4.5 hours). Kinda makes it a bit hard, since the kids do not get a decent night rest. Gaurav, a friend of my brother Stephen, offered to host us in his apartment in SG. We decided to take him up on his offer.

In retrospect, it was quite an excellent decision to stay with Gaurav. We saw life outside of Orchard Road and Marina and got to explore the non-tourist side of Singapore. The kids were thrilled since there was a small play structure within the apartment complex. Gaurav rents a fairly spacious 3 bedroom apartment in Buket Purmei. The apartment complex was built by the housing board of singapore and has probably 20 buildings or so along with a lower school etc. There is a fair amount of green space for the kids and a few play structures in the complex. We also visited my friend PMT and his family, who also live in another apartment complex on east coast parkway. This apartment complex is private and has a few more facilities, specifically a swimming pool and a gymnasium. Its also much smaller in total number of apartments compared to the HBD complex.

Spending time with another family who has kids with the same age range makes things so much easier. PMT's daughter, Sheba, is also 5 years old and goes to a Montessori school in Singapore. it was quite entertaining to see how sheba and maya would play with each other. They were very polite and shared things nicely. They seemed to agree on when it is ok to break their self made rules. Mari has taught maya the dot game (you lay down a bunch of dots and then fill them up with squares and your initial). Its quite a easy game to teach and play but does provide endless hours of amusement and fun for the kids. We had an excellent lunch at a seafood place on East Coast Parkway (Red ???). PMT thinks that all the places there are similar. We ordered a chilli crab, a black pepper and garlic crab, fried rice, chinese brocolli with ginger and some fried bread. The bread with the chilli crab sauce was most excellent (one of the top 10 dishes of our trip!). The pepper and garlic crab was interesting but lacked the sauce (which IMO is quite important).

We then played at ECP for a few hours, watched some surf boarding at the man made lake there and saw lots of planes land at Changhi (amazing as to how busy that airport is!). We then went for a quick swim in the complex before heading to Chinatown night market. The kids were quite exhausted (not a lot of sleep the previous nite on the plane), and we had to carry them and give them a couple of good sugar drinks (coconut water and watermelon juice). The food at the chinatown night market (on smith street) was quite excellent. We got peanut/sesame ball soup, chicken porridge and fried noodles (char kway theo?). You need a big group to eat at such places, too many choices for a small group.

The next day we went and visited our good friends at the NZ immigration office. Compared to LA consulate, this office was very busy and quite slow. We waiting for 30 minutes before seeing the person. Unforunately our files had not yet been transferred. The person was nice enough to call our case officer (JD) in Christchurch, who immediately fixed the situation.Good thing that SG and NZ are relatively close from a timezone perspecitve (+5.5 hours). We were asked to wait for 30 mins and so we decided to head down to Food Republicj in Wasim Atria for a quick singaporean breakfast. We had a great breakfast at Toastbox (toast with eggs in a sweet soy sauce and white pepper). The other places at Food Republic seemed quite good also. We did want to have lunch there, but unforunately, we could not hang out in that area forever since shopping is the main and only attraction on Orchard Road. The much advertised and signed aquarium in Wasim Atria / Ngee Anh City is basically a large fish tank at the basement of the building. We then picked up the visas and headed to the zoo. We wanted the kids to experience the SG subway system, so we took them to the zoo on the subway. Maya has a slight aversion to subway's after seeing kurund miss the subway in NY. We finally convinced her it was ok, and off we went.

SG zoo is a must visit. Its quite amazing to see how kids change as they grow older. We've taken the kids to the zoo multiple times in the past. This time it seemed a bit different. Maya was really curious about some of the animals. It helped that the male lion got into a fight with the female lions and scratched one of them pretty badly and prevented the lioness from getting any feed. PJ was quite upset with the male lion. One of the trainers explained that the male lion gets teased a lot by the lionesses and hence reacts that way when his patience runs out. PJ seemed to relate to the situation (she likes to tease maya a lot, and maya gets mad at her periodically), but insisted that in her case it is very different. After playing in the park they wanted to go back and visit the lions again. They also liked seeing the other cats. The orangutans and chimpanzees also put on a good show for us. We convinced the kids to pose for a picture with the orangutans. The camera uses a wireless card to store the image on a computer at the picture desk (a few meters away). So you get the picture pretty much immediately after its clicked. Pretty cool use of technology. A new kids park / animal rides is being constructed at SG Zoo and this is scheduled to open in June 2008. Kinda cool to see them making things even better. The kids were having so much fun at the zoo, that we had a mediocre lunch at the zoo and played there till a bit past 5:00 pm. We arranged to meet our friends PMT and family at their house and then head to the hawker / food court at Vivocity, a new mall in SG. The Vivocity foodcourt was very mediocre. We had some decent dim sum and a collection of different noodle dishes. We over ordered a bit for the kids, and then ended up eating that food. In retrospect, we should have headed to a more historic / renowned hawker area like Maxwell, Newton or the more recent Glutton Bay (near esplanade).

We had an early flight the next day morning. We got to the airport well in advance and hoped to find a good breakfast spot at the airport. I was not aware that the better eating spots are in the public areas, while the transit area has the more mediocre places. We ended up eating an awful masala dosa and chai from Kaveri. The kids had inari and tamago from a sushi boat place. there were quite amused by the sushi going in a circle. There was a pretty cool block art area for kids and adults at the airport. We spent some time there before we boarded the plane to Manila, for our final leg of the journey.

Eating adventures in India ..

Its a bit sad, but its kinda hard to try out new and different food places with kids. In general eating out with kids on a regular basis is hard. It took a fair amount of time for maya to get comfortable in Mumbai. It did not help that we would take a trip out of Mumbai every other week. PJ on the other hand was willing to go with anyone who offered to take her. That said here are some of the places we ate at (and liked) in India. You'll need to check the Times food guide for address / hours. The places are listed in the likability order:

• Cafe Madras in Matunga, Mumbai. Good dosas and absolutely the best filter coffee. They also have good banana chips, chaklis and great halwa for sale.
  
• Mahesh Lunch home near Khadi Bunder, Mumbai. Great seafood preparation. the fried prawns with garlic was divine. The stuffed pomfret and butter garlic crab were not bad. Bob had a great dining experience at Trishna, which is mahesh'smore expensive and fancier offshoot.
  
• Mitre Samaj in Udupi. The best snack place in Udupi. Great dosas, decent coffee
• Jaihind in Parel, Mumbai (near ST bus stand). Good fresh seafood at reasonable / cheap prices. Limited menu. The fried prawns was excellent as was the stuffed masala pomfret. If price is included in the rating, Jaihind beats Mahesh very easily (the price is a third of Mahesh)
• Badshah Kulfi House at Crawford Market, Mumbai. Good pau baji and badshahi kulfi (dont get the royal falooda)
  
• Madhuvan Village, Mangalore. Decent food for that area, crappy service.
• Elko Pani Puri in Bandra
• Wild Grass lodge in Kaziranga, Assam. The assamese food at this place was quite good!
• House of Sushi. Takeout sushi made by Ravina in Mumbai (check TOI food guide). The rolls need a bit more filling and less rice. Unfortunately she does not have any raw fish rolls :( but the rolls she does have are quite good
• Ratan Tata Institute (RTI). We've gotten snacks from this place and have wolfed them down (might have been because we were super hungry). The pattice and quiche are not spicy and the kids love it.
• La Pattisserie in Taj Mumbai for birthday cakes.
  

Places that we'll probably skip the next time include Caravan Serai, Ideal Cafe, Noodle Bar, Baghdadi. Bade Mia seems to have lost its charm for me (or i really dont care for kebabs a lot). I was not impressed by the various biryani providers either (Olympia, Noorani, Lucky, Jeff's caterers). My aunt (annie aunty) makes a better biryani than all the above providers :)

And finally we can go back to NZ ...

For most of the trip our final destination was always a bit in suspense!. We could not enter NZ unless our residency application was successful or immigration figured out how to get us a temporary visa (since we had hit our limit of a max stay of 12 months / 24 months).

Our legal team (Karsten and Julie from NZ Immigration Concepts) did a great job, filed all the papers soon after we handed it to him and followed up with the immigration department on a regular basis. We were fortunate to get a very understanding officer (i'll use the initials JD, since i'd like to avoid mentioning the name of the person) look at our papers. All things fell in place at just the right time. We recd a letter a week before we left India about an interview in Christchurch before our application could be finalized. We explained to JD over email about our situation and our unsuccessful try at getting a visa at the LA embassy.

At this point, JD suggested it might be easier to do a phone interview and potentially finalize the application immediately. This would enable us to bypass the entire visa application process and get a residence permit (and returning resident visa). We had the phone interview last tuesday on our way to the web access office. We clarified a few things with JD and seemed satisfied with the answers. There was a minor hitch, since she was not aware that we were working full time on CiviCRM and assumed we would be looking for a job. We exchanged some more email and on thursday we recd our residence permit via email. We paid out migrant levy fees and confirmed that we would obtain the permit in Singapore. We got the permit on our passports earlier today at the NZ immigration office in SG.

Overall it was an incredibly smooth and excellent process. We managed to get the residence permit in approx 5 months which is quite cool considering the amount of paperwork and back and forth that needed to happen. Being able to talk directly to your case officer is so beneficial and smooths the process a lot. The Bureau of Immigration in the US might want to learn a bit from their NZ counterparts :)

So the uncertainty is off, and kinda glad to know that we can stick to our original plans and go back to cool Nelson. Hopefully we have not missed most of the summer. We are off to PI in the morning

Things to do / food to eat with kids in Mumbai

(most of this is from maya and PJ and what they liked doing in mumbai)

• Cooperage Pony Park (south mumbai)
• Mumbai Port Trust Joggers Park
• Chowpatty beach in the morning (its clean and deserted)
• Bandra bandstand park (on the water). The promenade walk is a couple of km's and has three playgrounds along the way and a Cafe Coffee Day at the end of the promenade.
• jechand talakshi toys (51 empire bldg, above mcdonalds at VT). A great selection of montessori based teaching materials.
• nehru science center, museum and planetorium. We did not get time to visit this, but it was high on our list
• Skip Byculla Zoo, Taraporevala Aquarium and Aquaria (unless u want to buy some aquarium supplies)
• Balodyan a playground for kids and women ONLY. This is near charni road station

Food and restaurants that are kid friendly

• Cholle Bhatura from Cream Center
• Natural IceCream
• Kulfi Falooda at Badshah (near crawford market)
• Sada (Plain) Dosa at any Udupi restaurant
• Pani Puri at Elko's (bandra). The kids can experiment and make their own pani puris and decide what goes in each puri
• Fresh Lime Soda or Lassi in any restaurant. A good alternative to water and not too unhealthy (if u regulate the amount of sweet syrup u add)
• Some snacks (chicken pattice, veggie quiche) from RTI (ratan tata institute, colaba)
• The bakeries carry quite good bread. We've bought good bread from Birdy's and CeleJour. La Pattisserie makes excellent cakes. Maya chose a chocolate truffle cake for her birthday which was very good

Trip Report: Mangalore ...

On our return from Guwahati, Assam we spent a couple of days in Mumbai. We attended Claudian's wedding (which was quite grand) in Mumbai, before we headed down south to my mom's native place, Mangalore. We always look forward to going to Mangalore. The weather is very nice, the beaches quite clean and the water warm. The traffic is also quite minimal (relatively speaking).

The airlines in India like to serve good food even on a short flight. We flew Jet airways to Mangalore and the service/food was quite good and similar to Kingfisher. There are some new cheap no-frills airlines which have started recently (Indigo, Spice Jet, Air Deccan etc) similar to the Southwest model. However, unlike the US there is no passenger bill of rights. So if there is a long delay, these airlines will cancel their flight. The passenger is then left to fend for themselves. We had this experience when the Pune->Mumbai train was cancelled and each passenger had to fend for themselves.

Mangalore is pretty close to the Kerala border in South India. The scenery is very green and lush year round. There are lots and lots of coconut trees and there is a decent sized river every 10 kms or so. Typically the river and the town share the same name (mulki, udayawar, katapadi). Similar rivers across the state boundary in Kerala have a thriving houseboat tourist industry. We had done a one day houseboat trip near Bektal, Kerala two years ago. I think one day was a good amount of time, it gets kinda boring at the end, and there is only so much scenery you can look at and admire.

When we got to Shankerpura, we gave the kids a bucket of water and let them play in the front yard (aangaan). The kids can spend days just playing like this. We managed to keep the kids entertained and snuck out to the big town of Udupi. We visited our favorite Udupi restaurant (Mitre Samaj near Krishna temple) and then took the bus back home. Mari and the kids went with my brother Frank to Coondapura on the second day, while I attempted to recover from a mild cold and fever. The third day we went to our aunt Sunita's place in Mulki. Her brother, Peter, drives us around when we are in mangalore. They have a great place in Mulki, adjacent to the confluence of the Mulki river and the Arabian Sea. They have built a new house in the past year and have a good 2 bedroom apartment on the first floor for guests and visitors. We are sending our friends Michal and Piotr on a 5 day trip to Mulki and environment later next week. I suspect they'll have lots of photographs. If anyone is interested in staying at Mulki at Peter's place, you can him at: +9194481 04396. There are lots and lots of beaches (most of them clean) around that area (Surathkal, New Mangalore Port, Kapu, Malpe, Ullal).

The next day we took all the kids, Ashwita, Allan, Anita, Maya and PJ to a water park near Mangalore (Manasa water park). We had a lot of fun on the various water slides. However, there the kids school was also going to be at the park later that day. So the kids were a bit on edge, as any group of kids sent them into scurrying away since they thought it was their school. This turned out to be wrong a few too many times, before we decided to pack up and leave. We had lunch at Madhuvan on the airport road. Its got pretty good manglorean style seafood. It also had spaghetti with olives which our kids devoured (it was a wee bit spicy!).

We spent the last couple of days just hanging out at home and playing with the kids. Mari started teaching the kids baseball. We used a 2 liter coke bottle as the bat and the kids collapsible ball as the baseball. It was good fun watching Maya and PJ trying to figure out the various mechanics of how to hit the ball. Its quite interesting to see how all these small things add up in the development of a kid. Its amazing how many things we take for granted :)

four different kids, four different personalities ...

we just 5 days with Amitav and Nandini in Assam. It was quite entertaining to see the kids interact with each other over a decent period of time and how different each one is. Here are some of my thoughts on each kid and their parents (i'll try to be politically correct and postive)

• Both Maya and Amitav are moody. Amitav goes in and out of moods quite quickly. He rebounds quite nicely from a down mood. Maya switches moods less often, but she takes a long time to get back into a good swing
• PJ is always upbeat. She is very binary. She's either charging full steam ahead (1) or she is sleeping (0).
  
• Nandini and Maya knows exactly what they want and when. They get quite upset if things dont match what they expect. Maya being older, is a bit more logical and is right most of the times
• Maya and PJ are two very different creatures. Maya is like a cat, who does what she wants to do. PJ is more like a dog, who can be influenced to do things. Maya is sensitive, PJ is more thick skinned. Maya gets upset even if you just raise your voice when talking to her. PJ is always thinking of how she can get by with eating less good food and more sweets. PJ seems to be a very carrot-stick kind of kid
• PJ and Nandini get along very very well. They are the best of friends most of the time and are always holding hands and cuddling each other. Its interesting to listen to their conversations, since they are always talking about two totally different things on two different topics. Hence there is really no need to disagree with the other person
• Mari and I have very different playing styles and conversations with the kids. Mari is much more creative and language oriented and can get the kids to sing / talk in various languages and pass time away in a car. I look to the environment and things around me to figure out what can be done to keep the kids amused and entertained. Mari had a great conversation with Amitav on the way back from Tezpur where they talked about everything from Pokemon to shopping at Target. My conversations with Amitav are much shorter and each of us trying to get the better of the other.
• Mrinal has a very quiet peaceful way of dealing with the kids. He never seems to get angry or mad at them. Smita spins things in a very different way than us. She managed to convince PJ not to suck her thumb for 5 sleeps in the car.
  
• PJ adores crowds and attention. She loves people cuddling and kissing her. Maya is not very comfortable in crowds (like her parents). She clings to us a bit more in the presence of strangers.

Trip Report: Guwahati / Kaziranga National Park, Assam

We just got back from a 6 day trip to Guwahati, Assam. We stayed with our friends: Smita, Amitav, Nandini and Mrinal. The two sets of kids and parents get along quite well with each other. I went to school with Mrinal at REC Warangal more than 20 years back (yes, we are old!) and always wanted to goto Assam and the Northeast. So to some extent this was fulfilling an old dream of mine.

We flew on a kingfisher flight from Mumbai to Guwahati. I suspect this is one of the longest flights in India. Going there was more than an hour faster than coming back, most likely due to the west -> east winds. Also for some reason the flight did not cross Bangladesh, at least on the map crossing Bangladesh seems the best route. On the way over, we gave Maya a Dramamine tablet for her motion sickness. It did do the job quite nicely, but also had the unpleasant side-effect of making her feel wierd (and hence cranky) for the next 12 hours. On the way back we decided to limit food intake and skip the drugs. This did work, but made her a bit queasy after the flight landed and hence not a very happy camper either :(. I suspect we'll skip the drugs for the next couple of flights.

Smita's parents have a great place with a lots of space on the yard and rooftop. This was quite a treat for our kids after being enclosed in an apartment in Mumbai. We spent the first day just playing various games on the terrace. The next day, we rented a tata sumo and set off for kaziranga national park. From a distance perspective, its relatively close to Guwahati (210 km / 110 miles). However, this being India the trip took us pretty close to six hours. India is making progress at an incredible rate. Will be good indeed when the traffic moves at a significantly faster rate and you can cover distances in reasonable time.

We stayed at Wild Grass Resort in Kaziranga. We got in at approx 4:00 pm on Monday and decided to take it easy and let the kids run around. The resort is great for kids since there is lots of running space and some swings / badminton set etc. In summer, I suspect the swimming pool is also open. We had all our meals there, and the food felt like home cooking. We had some traditional assamese dishes and there were a few hits and misses. We signed up for the elephant ride the next morning and a jeep safari in the afternoon. The kids enjoyed both events and found it quite thrilling to be on the elephant (pictures coming soon). We were quite pleasantly surprised to watch Maya enjoy the jeep tour. She was the only kid to be awake for the entire tour. She was also the kid who complained the most about the long car rides. So kinda nice to see her realize that there is some benefit of being in a vehicle.

Kaziranga lived upto its reputation and we saw abundant wildlife other than tigers. There were quite a few one horned rhinocerous, wild buffaloes, deer, sambal, jungle fowl and wild swine. In contrast we just saw one mother/baby rhinocerous on a trip to Chitwan National Park (in nepal) 8 years ago. The population growth is nice and linear for all species in the Park. India's parks are more like reserves / sanctuaries. There were no hiking trails within the park that we could explore with kids. Adding some hiking trails in various parks would allow people to spend a lot more time within the park. I suspect this will also allow poachers much easier access, so there are some disadvantages :(

We drove back to Guwahati on Wednesday via Tezpur. The DK guide led us to Cole Park there which was a very welcome spot for the kids. The park is well designed in a limited space and the play structures are not bad. We then drove back to Smita's parents house with a short snack/dinner break. The car ride was a wee bit too long. Mrinal's answer was its two more hours to home irrespective of the distance travelled

On thursday we visited Guwahati zoo which is spread across quite a few acres. Significantly better than Mumbai's pathetic Byculla Zoo (which we refuse to take out kids to!). We saw quite a few elephants, some cats, a couple of tigers and a brown bear. The kids were in a perpetual state of hunger, for snacks we gave them digestive biscuits (none of the adults had read the label very carefullty). After a couple of hours at the zoo, we headed to Beatrix in town. We had the Indian-Chinese food there while the kids had a chicken / fish burger. The food was not bad, and a good change from all the Indian food we've been eating the past 3 weeks. The digestive biscuits seemed to have done the job quite nicely, since all the kids had to use the bathroom. Each kid seemed to take their own sweet time and were occupying the potty for 15 minutes or so. We shared quite a few amusing (and disgusting) potty stories while we waited the next hour. We were having a pretty early lunch, so we had the top room, and more importantly the bathroom all to ourselves.

After lunch we trooped over to the Assam State Museum and learnt a bit more about the various assamese tribes. The kids did seem interested in seeing the various model villages and other activities. Would be good if they had some hands on activities. The bathrooms were beyond disgusting and we headed to the nearest cafe coffee day. Yes, it does seem we spend a lot of time in bathrooms :). We then played at the park across from the museum.

The final day we went to Nehru Children's park which is supposed to open at 10:00 am but in reality opens at 10:30 am. The play structures were ok, but it has a pretty cool maze and we spent 30-45 minutes playing hide and seek there. It was just perfect for the younger kids. We then headed to Dynasty, Guwahati's premier hotel and restaurant. The Indian restaurant was not open, and we had to settle for the breakfast menu at Chopstix. The food was passable but the service was pretty pathetic. The food took forever to make, even a simple plain dosa :( We asked for the cheque which took even more time than the food to arrive. We managed to get out of there just in time to catch the plane back home to Mumbai

The good and bad of Mumbai / India ...

We've been in India a bit more than a week and its quite amazing as to the city evolve and change with the times. Here are a few things which we love about mumbai

• The three essential books that any tourist / family should have are: The Times of India Food Guide, TimeOut Mumbai Kids Guide, Outlook Weekend Guide (you can get a copy specific to the big five/six indian cities)
• Thanx to the above books, we had pretty good sushi rolls from House of Sushi, got a few good cheeses from a cheese shop in Crawford Market, discovered a few new parks in the Colaba area and a small aquarium in the Bandra area. Kinda nice that we can get everything out here, kinda sad that it took us so long to discover these places
• The food as always is amazing and so so so tasty. There are so many places we want to eat at and we probably wont even eat at a fraction of them. Its a bit more difficult to eat out with kids at night (jet lag, getting them on schedule etc)
• Maya says that her favorite activity is playing at Chowpatty beach. We tend to go early in the morning to avoid the crowds and that has been working quite well
  
• Hanging out with friends and family is always a treat. The cousins get along well with each other (most of the time)
• The joggers park in various parts of the city is a nice place to get away from it all (especially the one in colaba)
• Traffic discipline is so much better and gets better every year. Drivers do stop at red light at night these days (some of the time).
• The city is so much cleaner. Fining people for littering is a good thing :)
  

And for a few things we do not like about the city

• The traffic sucks. We've been doing better this time and planning our trips during non-peak hours.
  
• The poverty and seeing all the kids in the street is hitting me much harder this time. Its sad, and there does not seem you can do that much. This does not mean you should not do anything :)
• Crossing a street with kids is an adventure and/or a video game (depending on your outlook in life). Drivers still refuse to stop even if you try to make eye contact (not that traffic is moving very fast)
• The parks / playgrounds have very strange hours. They are open in the morning and evenings only. What do we do during the day folks? We like to play all day and all night :)
• Bob C does not like the short ceiling height of the taxi cabs. He is 6'2'', which is significantly taller than the average indian :)
• Its a bit hard and frustrating dealing with St. Catherine's. While we are very grateful to them for raising PJ and giving us the opportunity to adopt her, its been real hard to schedule/plan any visits. Simple etiquette of taking messages and returning phonecalls is a foreign concept. Hopefully we'll be able to visit a few more times before we leave
  

A visit to St. Catherine's

As most of you know we adopted PJ (Pranjali) from St. Catherine's close to two years ago. The adoption process was quite interesting and fairly long and deserves a seperate blog post of its own. At that point, we did not really get a chance to see the place where PJ spent the first twenty months of her life. We had decided to go back and spend some more time out there when we visited India the next time.

We went back and visited St. Catherine's on Dec 28th. It was a wonderful experience and I'm so glad that we did it. St. Catherine's is part of PJ's life and she was looking forward to the visit. She knows pretty much all what we know about the place (which is not a whole lot), but she does remember Sr. Helen and all the chocolates she gave PJ. Sr. Helen was on vacation, so we coordinated with the Sr. Superior (Sr. Udaya) for the visit.

We went at 3:30 pm when the kids were waking up from their afternoon nap and ready to start the afternoon session. There were approx 30-35 kids with at least 16 infants including an 8 day old baby. It was quite nice to see a very high staff to kid ratio. There was approx 1 staff for every 2 infants and 1 staff for every 3 toddlers. It was nice to see how they raise the kids and the kids interaction with each other. There were a couple of kids at the place that reminded us of PJ.

Quite a few of the staff remembered PJ and were very happy to see her. We met some of PJ's primary caregivers and made sure we got some photographs and names of them so we can have some more details of the PJ story. PJ was probably a bit overwhelmed at the visit and for the first part was very very quiet and stayed relatively close to Mari and me. There were a couple of kids who were there when PJ was there, so there was a mini reunion. The two kids who were still there were handicapped and hence i suspect they were still there. I did feel a bit sad for them, but they are also getting really good care from a great group of sisters and staff. PJ got a bit more playful as the day progressed but was still quite reserved compared to her normal self. We will visit St. Catherine's a few more times before we leave and hopefully she will get used to it and enjoy the experience and interact with some of the folks who took care of her a lot more. There was a movie screening that night, so we left a bit earlier than expected. All the kids were quite excited to go see a movie. In addition to the kids orphanage, they also operate quite a few other services for abused and hiv children.

We were pleasantly surprised to see one solar street light which they are testing. We'll probably get them to install quite a few more for the rest of the complex. It also seems to be lacking a good play structure for the smaller kids. We'll probably chat with the sisters about both these projects

Knitting in Nelson

When winter greeted Nelson, it was especially freezing for a California family whose warmest jacket was made of recycled plastic bottles. One sunny clear morning as the kids were riding to school in a warm heated car, I got on my bicycle and rode down the hill and headed for the city. Not even down the first hill, my bare knuckles and face were splashed with freezing air. I thought of going back home, but the idea of having to walk up my bike on the steepest hill of my bike ride convinced me to continue riding to the city.

My body warmed up from biking, but my knuckles were cracked, brittle and dry. When I finished my errands in town, all I could think about on my bike ride home was that I needed to go wool shopping. Our first month in Nelson was spent exploring random places. One of the random places we visited was Grape Escape. Coincidentally we visited on Grape Escape's 10th Anniversary. I think it was 10th but was definitely an anniversary. There was a jumpy castle in addition to balloons and play structures. Also, child size picnic tables alongside regular size picnic tables.

Next to Grape Escape Cafe were about 6 other shops. One shop that i especially liked was Cruellas. The yarn is locally knit and dyed. The scarf and poncho I ended up buying was made with a combination of wool and alpaca. It was super soft and after removing the poncho, I wanted to put it back on because it was warm, and light in weight rather than bulky. Cruellas also offers instruction once a week for $10. The insruction is on what ever project you want help on. Included in the fee is tea, coffee and baked treats. I've never been to the tea and instruction but saw the baked cakes on the table and it looked very tempting.

The coffee at the cafe is pretty good and definitely a good idea if you want to enjoy a coffee while the kids are running around the play structures.

Zurich trip report

Zurich Trip Report

The dramamine did work :). However it did not put her to sleep as I expected. So mari and maya spent a large part of the flight doing various painting and cutting projects. It was a short 7 hour flight across the pond (atlantic) and we landed in a cold frosty zurich early saturday morning. We flew Swiss Air for the first time. Air NZ and Singapore airlines spoil you a fair amount (video on demand, good travel pack for the kids). Swiss Air did not meet their high standards. However the child meal was not too bad (veggies, mashed potatoes, chicken strips).

We did not have to fill any of the stupid custom/immigration forms that most countries make you fill up. So customs/passport control was a breeze, we got our bags and headed off to rent a car. Rented a car from EuropCar along with a GPS navigation unit (which is so so useful). We typically tend to avoid renting cars for short trips, but for some strange reason, I figured a car might not be a bad idea on this trip.

We drove to the youth hostel near Lake Zurich and checked in. Had our first cup of bad, weak coffee at the hostel. We love the common spaces that are so common in hostels but unknown in hotels. The common space and steps saved us the next two nights. We then headed off to Shopville/RailCity which we assumed would be indoors. We also assumed there would be some activities for kids as advertised. We were wrong on both counts :(. We did spend a few hours there moving constantly between the semi-cold and very-cold places. The kids had a sausage for lunch while mari and I shared an excellent mozarella tomato sandwich and a good latte. After a quick afternoon nap, we then headed to Planet Magica which is an indoor playground for kids (similar to Chipmunks). The kids bounced around for two-three hours before we headed back to the hostel. Maya was jetlagged and did not want to goto sleep. So mari and i took turns doing various projects with her. We finally made her climb the steps in the hostel (5 floors) a few times to tire her out. She finally went to bed at 12:00 am or so. PJ seemed to have had her rest by this time and decided to get up. Luckily for us, we coerced PJ to go back to sleep after an hour or so. Maya had two semi-big falls from the bunk bed at nite which made things even more interesting. As parents, you need to deal with the combined jet lag of you and your kids, which makes travel even more fun and interesting. Hopefully it will be a bit better in India.

The next day we went to Kinder City (older kids should check out technorama) and spent a few hours there. Its quite a large indoor spot with lots of interactive activities. Its a bit like exploratorium. Maya got a bit car sick and was not well for the first couple of hours. She finally threw up and then felt much better. The cleaning staff at the museum were not very pleased with us :( (obviously they dont have kids!). We had a great thin crust cheese pizza at kinder city. Maya and PJ then enjoyed the big kids exhibits for another hour or so. There were additional activities like bread making, dinosaur sand blocks, chocolate making which we had to skip, since we did not know how good/bad maya felt. Its quite amazing to watch her bounce right back and continue playing before/after she is sick. Zurich is really cold (-2 degree cent), so we cannot spend a lot of time outside. We have a fair amount of warm clothing but dont have all the things like mittens and ear muffs etc. The kids start freezing and are unhappy after 5-10 minutes outside.

Our next destination was trampolino, an indoor playground similar to planet magica but much bigger. It was also quite crowded, but the kids had a great time jumping and doing various activities. Its kinda cool to see them persevere in various things and keep trying till they get it. For one of the slides, i had to jump in and help them climb up. We hoped to exhaust them before bedtime. Unfortunately, i did not have time to do any research with regard to food places, so we did not really eat any good swiss food. PJ was also quite tired by 6:30 pm or so, which made getting dinner outside even more difficult. We got some good bread/cheese/smoked fish/salmon roe/meatloaf from the grocery store (coop is one big chain, migros is the other) and had a pretty good dinner. Gave the kids a bath to get them in the sleepy mood. This worked great for PJ who was out by 8:00 pm. Maya stated that she was not tired but was kind enough to keep herself entertained for the next hour or so. She ended up making a fair amount of noise which woke PJ up and now we had 2 jet lagged kids to deal with. Once again, the common spaces in the hostel and the steps saved us. After making the kids climb up and down three times and a few games in the lobby, we headed back to sleep for a couple of hours before we got on the flight to Mumbai.

We had to get to the airport a bit early, since we had to find our way there and to the rental car return. We also take our time to feed the kids at the airport, do lots of postcards with them and in general get them physically and mentally tired (hence i can type this blog post, while they snore next to me!). Maya was nice enough to remind us of her "dramamine" medicine, even though she does not like chewing the tablet.

Onto India and more fun travels. We'll start using some of the home schooling material that we've lugged half way across the world. More home schooling stories coming up in future blog posts.

New York trip report ..

We flew into new york on dec 18th on United. The flight was quite comfortable and turbulent free. However, Maya got sick on the plane, for the third time in a row and threw up. I suspect plane travel does not sit well with her. The kids decided I was their favorite parent and wanted to sit next to me the entire time. We had a 3-1 seat configuration and mari got to chill for some time. We spent most of the time playing melissa and doug's pattern travel game. Its a bit too easy for maya, so will need to get her something more challenging for the next flight.

We spoke to a pediatrician in New York, who recommended we give her Dramamine before take off which will dull her balance sensors (they are behind the ear). They seemed to have worked well so far (writing this on the Zurich->Mumbai flight). However, she did throw up on a car trip yesterday when we did not give her Dramamine.

This has been our first trip with two kids who are grown up (relatively speaking). Its a lot of work with kids at this age which makes travel quite hard and different. When the kids were younger, we could carry them on backpacks and pretty much do things we liked, wander the city, stop at cafes etc. At this age, we think more about what activities will entertain and educate the kids. So we basically hunt for discovery / exploratorium museum equivalents in various cities. Both New York and Zurich will be cold this time of the year and will limit any outside activities

We got into NY late friday. The kids were glad to be in a spacious one bedroom apartment and we spent the evening doing various projects. Mari, Lara and Frank went to dinner at Frank's Italian restaurant in the East Village and came back with a pretty good report. The next morning, i had an excellent CiviCRM meetup with some of our users and consultants. The kids wanted to stay at home and do school, which is what Mari did using some of the home schooling material we have. We went for lunch to Momafuke, the noodle bar in east village. We got the sashimi appetizer, the hot mushroom bun and the squid salad. The squid salad was exceptional and definitely worth getting. The other two appetizers were quite ordinary and a bit disappointing. The portion size seemed a bit small. For the main courses, Mari got the chicken ramem, kurund got the shrimp and rice, and I got the pork and poached egg ramen. All three courses were quite good and devoured by us (with some help from the kids). The pork pieces were quite fatty (which makes the soup tasty). Its kinda ironic that restaurants are going back to using the "good parts" of an animal to prepare food. This is quite common in my Mom's home cookin. We then took Metro North to visit Kavya, Esha, Suhrud and Chayya. We had a delicious indian meal at their place (baingan bharta, cholle and upside down veggies). The kids took care of themselves for most of the visit. Kinda nice that the kids can entertain themselves at this age.

The next morning we headed to the Museum of Natural History (MNH). We met Mari's cousin, Rona there. On our way there we managed to lose Kurund in the subway. For the next three hours, the kids were quite sad and kept mentioning that Kurund is lost and they will not meet him again. It did not help that MNH is a very hands off museum (see, read but dont touch) and the kids got bored there pretty quickly. MNH does have a discovery center which is open ONLY from 1:00 pm - 5:00 pm. Not sure why such a large museum has such limited hours for something which all small kids like. MNH was very crowded and the noise level was so so high, seemed like all schools in NY decided to visit it that day (or so it felt). Overall MNH is not a great museum for kids under 5, IMO. The one thing that did excite the kids for 30 mins or so was the evolution of man (from chimpanzee to neanderthal to man). Maya went around checking which one was male and which was female. PJ was quite happy to see monkeys.

We then went over to Time Warner Center for lunch at Bouchon Bakery. We were a large group and bought food from the takeaway. The menu is quite limited and we tasted most items on the menu. The sandwiches (tuna salad, roast beef, turkey, vegetarian) were made on some great bread and the quality of ingredients was high. The focacia sandwich was the tastiest which yummy bacon on top :). The desserts (macaroons, chocolate chip cookie and chocolate cake) met our high standards. The chocolate cake was as good as any of the chocolate stuff from tartine, if not a wee bit better.

We then visited Elin Waring and Manhattan Country School (MCS). Elin has deployed CiviCRM at MCS. MCS is a small progressive school on Upper West Side. Diversity in NY is so so different than diversity in San Francisco. While all the SF schools make a strong attempt at being diverse, it still means that 60% of the kids are white. The kids at MCS were like a mini-UN (borrowed from lara's description of a subway car in NY). Visiting MCS made me think that staying in NY for the spring / summer / fall might not be a bad idea (assuming we figure out what we will do with the kids education). NY in winter might be a wee bit too cold for my liking. Our final destination of the day was Manhasset, Long Island. We took LIRR and the kids entertained (or tortured) the other passengers by playing phone the entire ride over (30 mins). We had another great indian meal (alu gobi, dhal and shrimp curry) and the kids used frank as a jumping bag.

The next morning we had coffee and breakfast at Araca (with lara and rona) on 7th Avenue. This place (another Lara find) was started by someone who worked at Blue Bottle Coffee in the Bay Area. The coffee was obviously quite excellent and the food was very good (poached eggs on fry bread, chile poblano sandwich with avocado salsa, egg and potato quiche). This place was so so small that only 4-5 people could stand inside at any given time. There is a bench outside so we rotated people and food from inside to outside on a regular basis (was quite cold that morning). We then headed to Children's Museum of Manhattan (we wanted to goto Children's museum of art, which opened a bit too late for us, 12:00 pm). I took a 90 minute walk along the riverfront while the kids enjoyed the museum. We also purchased some Kapla blocks as a present. Seems quite an interesting set and we'l probably purchase a set for our kids when we get back home. We were running a bit late and to mine (and rona's) disappointment we had to skip Katz and settled for H&H bagels and cream cheese for lunch.

Now off on another plane ride to Zurich. Maya is getting a bit tired of planes and has mentioned a few times she does not want to get on a plane to goto europe. The postcard game is quite entertaining (and a great diversion) and we spent an hour or so writing postcards to all our friends in NZ and other parts of the world.

The evolution of Maya and PJ

Its kinda cool to see a kid grow up and evolve. We've seen quite a few changes in Maya since PJ became part of the family close to two years ago. Its fascinating to see how they interact with each other and how maya has adapted in how she deals with PJ. Initially, there was the timid Maya who did not really know what to do with PJ. These days, we see a Maya who gets on the offensive a bit more than needed. PJ knows maya's soft spots and does not hesitate to use them at times. Not sure if its the younger kid syndrome, or PJ's character, but she does like to needle maya. Most of her attempts are when she thinks no one's watching. Unfortunately for PJ, maya does not take this lying down any more. So fireworks typically follow such outings. Kinda reminds me of the line of control between india and pakistan.

With PJ's influence (or so i think), maya has become more social and interacts with people more easily. She had two children sessions by herself at two schools in SF recently. She enjoyed both the sessions quite a bit, and had a pretty distinct spring in her step after the second session at Live Oak. However, when we visited the other two schools where PJ is also a potential student, Maya was quite reserved and was glued to our sides. Mari's theory is that Maya thought it was little children's work since PJ was there, and hence did not participate

Maya has taken an interest in computers these days. We've started spending some time on a computer and she sits on my lap typing the various numbers and alphabets. We then do a bit of spelling on the computer where she decides what words she wants to spell. Today she decided she wanted to learn how to spell stinky and yucky. She seems to find great humor in this.

Another fascinating topic for her these days is death and dying. Need to do a bit of research on what our responses should be, but we do have good conversation about this. She mentioned earlier today that only people died and animals did not. Mari explained to her that a pig had to die for her ham and cheese pastry earlier today and fish need to be sacrificed for her sushi dinners.