Happy New Year

Happy New Year everyone!!!. Wish you all the best for next 361 days; already late by two days to post the first one of '09.

Only one resolution we take -- that is to update our blog often and complete the list of posts we are supposed to for long time; there are some of travelogue too to complete. Keep coming back and put your comments that really makes us going.

2008 - mixed bag

Thinking of 2008... it was an eventful year. We started by adding a new member to our family after going through lot of apprehension. Now our new world started to revolve around baby with umpteen number of diaper changes and sleepless nights, his cries, bowel movement and what not.....

Pamela's parents were at Mumbai to help us in our happily tough times. Even before completing two months Aarush left Mumbai for Pamela's hometown. They spent a cruel summer in Durg from March till June with temperature soaring high up to 47 ºC.

In between in May I moved to Bangalore continuing with the same company. Domestic reallocation was a Herculean task as I had to manage every thing myself from finding apartment to movers, closing or transferring various accounts and establishments. My international reallocation experiences were like piece of cake compared to this.

In June Aarush had his rice ceremony at Siliguri which is elaborate and very similar to Bengali marriage ; in nutshell exhaustive but full of fun and festivity. After that we three came to Bangalore directly, the journey form Durg to Siliguri and Bangalore via Calcutta each time was first long trip for Aarush where he got the taste of train and flight.

Even before settling properly within a months time I had to travel to Singapore for 3 weeks on business in September. Pamela managed pretty well with Aarush by herself.

In October we traveled again to Siliguri to attend a family marriage for a week.

By November we started to get familiar with Bangalore and its surroundings. Initial days Aarush used to get very uncomfortable after 30 minutes drive in car but now got accustomed to it and enjoys the same.

Two weeks before we went to Mysore and Coorg. It was a great escape with a change and Aarush behaved very nicely as he spent his first night at hotel. This vacation was a perfect one as we had no pre-set agenda we moved and stopped as we wished.

We will cherish this bygone moments as we are about to accomplish one year milestone of our parent hood in few days. I have faced new scale of challenges through out this year on professional front too. World economic news yet to bring good news for all of us.

Peekaboo

chocolate Banana Muffins

First weekend of December past with lots of activities - a trip to commercial street, malls and office. On Saturday Aarush forced me to leave bed early - deprived me of extended sleeping on the weekend. After that I was busy with him mostly for breakfast. Nowadays he has developed a nasty habit of prolonged (around an hour or more) eating times be it breakfast, lunch or dinner. After that he played for while but soon he was sleepy for nap. That created an opportunity for me to try muffin which was long time overdue.

I searched quickly for “chocolate banana muffin” recipe and found this one and went with it as it looked simple and easy except few changes. I beated powdered sugar with melted butter first. In between I kept two eggs outside of freeze to bring them to room temperature. Mixed one tea- spoon of leveled baking soda and baking power each in the flour and sieved 3-4 times to make sure there is enough air mixed in the flour. Then I whisked the eggs and added milk to it; after mashing banana in the grinder I mixed all three together.

Now kept adding half of the dry and liquid ingredients alternatively to the sugar - butter mixture. Lastly, stir in chocolate.

With that my job was almost over as soon as I put the tray for baking; to my surprise and delight they started to rise nicely. Best part of the whole exercise was quick yet successful result. It only took 40 mins to prepare and clean up the kitchen. It might take much less if you are prepared as of my case it was all impromptu right from searching recipe to oven. Anywayz, after a long time enjoyed my time in kitchen – thanks to Aarush for his nap :)

P.S. May add little bit more sugar if you prefer muffin sweet.

Wear the red Ribbon

December 1st 2008- World AIDS Day - today, AIDS is one of the main causes of mortality on the planet. 33 million people are HIV-positive in the world, but 90 % of them ignore it. Given the numbers, there is a definite need to increase the awareness levels about the disastrous effects of this incurable disease.

I am sure there are plenty online about the same which can be accessed quickly but the main problem remains in uneducated rural areas where it is not even mentioned forget about a healthy discussion.

Change

In last 20 months “change” was one of most used word thanks to new President elect Obama. I admire the way he delivers speeches and uses words. Most reporters must be missing those malapropian phrases used in last 8 years.

I took this picture in February at Mumbai Airport; personally I too was thinking about the change and transition I was going trough at work and home at that time. A long waited post with little details but again the line from Gandhi says it all.

Back to Bangalore

It is almost a month posted any thing on the blog. It’s neither that boring nor that there are not enough events happening in our life which can be shared with you. It is just that we do not have any time for ourselves where we can sit and relax which sometime looks like a very remote luxury now.The day starts quite early at around 6:30 when Pamela gets up and prepares breakfast for Aarush ; that allows some extra sleep for me if Aarush permits. As soon as Aaursh is fully awake around 7:30 I need to kick start my day ; try my best to feed him every morning but there are days when he demands for Pamela especially.After that breakfast part its me who try to entertain Aarush while Pamela finishes cooking. Same time try to get all my personal morning “hustle and bustle” taken care.Same time need to keep a Corbett eye on Aarush as he is very unpredictable and things happens before you can blink. Aarush now crawls with speed and he stands up as soon as he finds any thing to hold. He has not mastered the technique to sit from standing. All we do is pick him up and start laughing loudly which causes enough confusion for him. And it takes away the fear and cry from his face and he forgets about the same in next 5 minutes. Today we lost our faithful blue-vase as Aarush was quicker than Pamela. This was bit special as we bought in Wal-Mart and may be as couple one of first purchase we did in 2002 winter. Around 8:30/9 ish Pamela finishes cooking and I start for work and her demanding day gets more demanding. After 2/3 hours of

As time flies...

We feel elated to celebrate our sixth year of togetherness @ IndiJoe. A journey full of sweet, bitter, sour, spicy and many more...... flavours. After all soft items like paper, linen etc finally we reached anniversary which is represented by metal -"Iron Anniversary".

This year's anniversary is extra special because we were given a very precious gift from God, our son Aarush, and now we've moved on from "couple" to "small family", and it feels amazing. So,for the first time we celebrated it as parent rather than couple. Aarush was at his best which helped us to finish our lunch buffet. Though we did not had the luxury of time as we had to stuff ourselves quickly. By the time we reached for dessert he wanted to crawl all around in restaurant.

Long Time no see ...

Well we are still connected to internet just not having enough time to spare to post. There are few posts which are long overdue. Only time we can type in peace when Aarush is sleeping but by that time we are so tired that we retire quickly. Do not worry will post more often as we try to get back into a more strict routine. BTW I just registered myself in Facebook after lots of deliberation. Eric correctly said --

"Viva santanu! viva Pamella and viva the little Misra! Welcome to this stupid and so fundamental place that is facebook ..."

Just upgraded all the plugings and WordPress to the latest as dashboard showed I need to complete this task quickly.

Wish Pamela

If you are reading this post on 17th September please call up, e-mail if you have not done so yet.

Well why I am writing this post -- I am stuck in a business trip and missing her and Aarush for last 3 weeks. Sometime I wish I just could dump my current job and spend some quality time with Family. But with Financial commitment I don’t think I can do that soon :(.

Any ways wish Pamela on her special day!!

Extempo Performance

Pamela's maternal cousin Jeet was our guest in Bangalore for three nights from Calcutta. His purpose of this trip to meet his school and college mates as most of them are working in Bangalore IT sector. Jeet plays guitar and mouth organ as hobbies. His musical talent is in his gene , he got it from his mother who is a trained singer and used to perform in All India Radio in her young days.

Well enough of introduction -- this was a very informal recording as we noticed Aarush was enjoying his first live music. Normally he turns his head towards speaker when we play some music to locate the source of sounds. But nothing comes close to a live performance a little one also realizes the same :D.