Astrovelo

For Suku…

This is how her teacher told the story to us…

Ashwini is getting used to daycare slowly in her second week. She still gets upset when one of the other kids come too close to her. Her two classmates have learnt to keep a safe distance between them and Ashwini. Teacher from the neighbouring class came by to chat with Ashwini’s teacher and 19 month toddler Ethan from her class followed. He went about exploring the room while the teachers chatted. When he was coming close to Ashwini, her teacher was ready to go comfort her knowing how she reacts to other kids coming close. But, to her surprise, instead of crying, Ashwini was all smiles.

A colleague, who has two teenage daughters, said that he sits on his living room sofa and cleans his shotgun when boyfriends come by to meet his daughters. I better borrow that shotgun from him soon. I may need it sooner than I thought.

The Political Compass website has a quiz to figure out political leanings of a person and categorize in one of the 4 bins. Check it out. The answer may surprise you as it did me. Never thought that I’d be a left liberal. I knew about liberal but, not too happy about being on the left.

I would call myself liberal on social issues and conservative on economic issues. But, when you take an average of all the answers to some 30-40 questions in the quiz, I guess I fall on the left side of the center, although, some of my answers were clearly to the right. Anyway, it is an interesting quiz and a way to characterize people.

Last night, I was at the awesome performance of this group from Senegal. The leader, Doudou N’Diaye Rose is 74 years old, but, full of energy. He danced and played the drums with the same or even more vigor than younger members of the troupe who are all his family members. It was an amazing experience. There were only drums, no other musical instruments, but, it kept the audience in their seats for more than 2 hours.

Check out the following link for some interesting information on this master drummer. And don’t miss a chance to sway to the drumbeats of this group if they visit your area.

The Oral Tradition - Doudou N’Diaye Rose

I was aware of Indian Ghettos (area with large concentrations of Indians) in Edison, New Jersey and New York. But, I was surprised to find out that similar ghettos exist in California also. A friend of mine lives in Cupertino. In his apartment complex with 120 units, 110 are occupied by people of Indian origin. There are 25-30 marathi-speaking families. It came as a huge surprise to me.

I thought people from all different countries came to US recently to work in the silicon valley. Maybe, they all have different ghettos. Do people really feel comfortable only when they are living amongst others of similar ethnic background? I can imagine this being true a 100 years ago. That is why one can find little Italies, French quarters, Greektowns and Chinatowns in various big US cities. But, all of these Indians I am talking about have been in US for less than 10 years. I don’t think the discrimination of yesteryears is so prevalent that it would warrant such groupings.

Maybe, they want to be in a certain school district for their children. If anyone wondered about this, I would like to hear your thoughts.

Ashwini started going to daycare on Monday. We decked her up in nice new clothes and hat and off she went. Didn’t have any problems at drop-off. She seemed to like her teacher. A new place with all those new toys was very inviting. But, she soon realised the big problem under that nice cover. There were other kids to share that room and all the toys. She had never interacted with any kids of her own age before that. Eventhough, her class has only two other kids, she was almost scared of them. According to her teacher, any of them crawled close to her or even looked at her, she would start crying. She was happy to be in one corner with some toys around her as a buffer zone to keep those other kids away.

On Tuesday morning, she was a little more comfortable with her classmates. She was getting bold enough to touch or scratch one of them, but, started crying when they touched her. We just laughed and laughed when her teacher told this on the phone. By the afternoon, that fear was also gone. When we went to pick her up, she was in a tug-of-war with her classmate for the same toy. This was very good. I think she’ll be fine. It is important to have some social interaction with other kids as early as possible. Hopefully, she’ll grow up to be a social butterfly and not as shy as her parents are.

After just two days of exposure at the daycare, she is sneezing, and has a runny nose. Hopefully, it will not grow into something more nasty.

Back from 3 days of vacation. It was just too busy to enjoy it. Two of my very close schoolfriends came for a visit. These are the guys that I know for the longest(~29 years) in my life apart from my close family. We started going to the same ‘baalwaadi’ when we were 4 years old. Then, we were in the same class for the next 11 years. Probably spent more time with them than my parents during the school years.

So, it was 5 days of foodfest. Reminiscing about old times late into the night with a lot of food and wine. It was wonderful. We were laughing at and about anything that would seem very trivial and non-funny now. Our wives gave us many strange looks. Well… little do they know about those wonderful years that we spent together.

Another schoolfriend is coming for a visit in December. It is going to be a blast too. Looking forward to it.

This photo was taken a few months ago. I got around to doing some processing recently.

For the last few weeks, our little angel turns into a screaming monster in the night. We were so happy that she used to sleep through the night (9pm-6am) since she was 2 and half month old. A lot of people were very jealous of us getting normal sleep in the night. But, looks like our happy nights are over. Now, Ashwini wakes up every night, sometimes at 11pm, sometimes at 1am or 2am or 4am. We thought maybe there is something bothering her physically, because she stops crying as soon as she is picked up as if a switch is turned off. Somebody suggested it could be an ear infection. So, we went to the doctor.

In his opinion, there is nothing wrong physically with her, but, she has behavioural problems. WOW!!! at 7 and half months! What do we have to look forward to when she becomes a 13 or a 14 year old??? The doctor thinks that Ashwini has figured us out completely and has wound us tightly around her little finger. So, we need to be strict and when she cries in the night, we should pick up a pillow and put on our own head to not hear her crying. If we do that for 3-4 days or a week, she will learn to put herself back to sleep if she wakes up. It is very easy to say this than actually do it. We are trying hard, but, end up going to her eventually. Hopefully, this phase will end soon. Till then, we’ll have puffy eyes with big black circles around them.

Here is one of the latest pictures of the monster (but, still adorable….)

Did anyone see the advertisements for the new version of MS Office? They show people jumping around, climbing on tables, cutting down projection screens, etc. What the heck do they want to show? Users like the new version of Office so much that they are delirious with joy? From my own experience (or should I say frustrations) with MS Office, these users seem to have lost their minds after struggling with the new software. ;)

Microsoft ads always were good even though their products weren’t. What happened? Maybe, they hired a new ad agency. Or maybe everyone really lost their mind after using the new software. Wonder what is true???

I did pretty well. Got lotsa candy…

V and I sneaked out to eat lunch together after a long long time. It was Japanese food after more than a month’s gap at the recently renovated Saika. Went there after more than an year. It was good change of taste from our usual Japanese restaurants. I had ‘Una Ju’. It was Eel with rice. Very simple but, extremely tasty and good. Eel is slowly taking over the top position from Salmon on my ‘favorite sushi fish’ list.

Diwali was very good this year. It was Ashwini’s very first Diwali. From the way she was admiring all the ‘panatya’ that we put in and around the house, I am sure this is going to be her most favorite festival. My parents are visiting and my brother came by for the weekend too. So, we had a full house. It was a lot of fun making chakalyA and karanjyA on Friday. V found this new recipe for karanjyA with khavA rather than usual coconut. They turned out to be very nice.

Visited a cousin of mine on Saturday. They had made huge amounts of very very good food. Shrikhand-puri and puranpolyA. I don’t think I had ever eaten these two things at one meal. But, I took the opportunity to stuff myslef till I couldn’t sit up straight.

Their 6year old son is very bright and energetic. Always eager to do something. He reminds me of this story from childhood about a rAkshas that threatens: “give me some work or I’ll eat you.” ;)

Sunday was spent in shopping. Some more clothes for Ashwini, as if she doesn’t have enough. But, it is hard to walk out of those baby stores without buying anything for her. My brother wanted to eat vadA-pAv. So, the day ended in me making my patented batAtA vadAs. They turned out pretty well. Overall, the weekend was just great. Everything was just right. No problems. I really like that. Now, that the year started off with these great days, I hope to see more of them during this year.

Rehash of my astrophotos from the last year. This is my version of fireworks in the sky to celebrate Diwali. Wish you all Happy Diwali and a prosperous New Year!

Those who have seen these before, please forgive me for posting them again.

Here they are in no particular order…

Double star Alberio from Cygnus

One of them is blue and the other one is orange-yellow. I have ovrexposed this intentionally to bring out the colors.

Image on the right is a simulation of Mars for view from earth on that date and time from spacecraft data. The polar ice cap as well as the dark/light patterns on the surface match pretty well.

A few pictures of Moon

Jupiter with its 4 Gallilean moons; Io, Europa, Callisto, and Ganymede. The cloud bands on Jupiter are also clearly visible.

I am coming very close to canceling my subscription for India Today. One out of every 3 or 4 magazines have a cover story related to Bollywood. I am really sick of it. If I want to read about Bollywood, I’d subscribe to Filmfare. Has Bollywood become so important in India, that it takes up 25% of normal Indian’s life and hence commands that much exposure in the leading news magazine? Am I missing the whole true picture?

On the other hand, call it a tactic to attract viewers, but, their decision to publish that issue on sexuality of Indian women was very brave. Someone put their career on the line. Looks like it paid off. There weren’t too many protests about it.

This is from the first round of processing with 6 images. More Saturn images to follow soon…

OK. Here is an update after some more work. The following image is a composite of 27 individual images (F/2.5, 1/50s) taken with a SONY DSC85 attached to a 8" Meade Schmidt-Newtonian reflector that provides 65X magnification with the attached eye-piece.

This image is a little darker, and that brings out some more details such as the Cassini division in the ring and some bands on Saturn.