A 'Good Dinosaur' themed party

Recently, we were hunting for a theme for our kid's birthday party. With a boy and girl to cater to, gender-specific themes such as 'Princess', 'Dora' or 'Cars' weren't appropriate. 'Mickey mouse & clubhouse' was an option, but it seemed old & cliched, atleast to us even if not for the kids!

Thats when the kid's growing interest in Dinosaurs and they getting besotted with the 'Good Dinosaur' movie provided an option. Apart from the interest, they emulated the characters as well: Arlo, big but a tad timid dinosaur, and Spot is the other extreme, a tiny baby with temerity to fight bigger things, while both are extremely protective of each other. After looking at other themes like the popular Chhota bheem-Chutki, we finalised this one.

However, since this theme was relatively new, no preset templates were readily available for the invitation cards, cake design or the stage decorations. With a couple of days left to prepare, we decided to customise and get the templates created. Picking up images from the various sites and the movie's posters as the base, we did some quick edits. Here is the collection of themes and templates we finally created on Sketch, and handed over to the respective vendors.

Invitation Card:

Cake:

Stage Decoration:

Please drop me a note if you'd like any of these templates shared.

Playing pacman on a Highway

Photo by Adam Jones
adamjones.freeservers.com

In my last post, I mentioned about the hectic touring around my home town, Madurai and my ancestral places around Karaikudi. This post is about the 'eventful' driving experiences during the vacation. The roads in this part of the country had got a major face lift recently, after the Golden quadrilateral highway project started linking most major cities. Subsequently, several toll roads have been built that makes travelling here quite convenient, atleast until one gets into the village interiors. However, one tends to have more 'adventures' in these new highways, rather than the pot-holed village roads. Tough to believe, but let me relate 2 of the several mad incidents I had to literally 'play pac-man' in.

Game-1:

I was driving at over 100 kmph one late evening in the 4-lane highway NH-45B towards Madurai, when at a sharp bend in the road, I was flummoxed to see over 100 goats crossing the road. The goat-herd was standing on the divider, supposedly unflustered, while the goats were casually crossing the highway which was passing through the grazing fields, to get home at end of the day. I sharply careened the vehicle around the road to avoid the herd that had covered half of the road by then. By an abundant serving of luck, the goats escaped jumping headlong into a plate of biryani, much ahead of their time.

Game-2:

At 9 PM on another night, I was on a different stretch of the same highway, but at similar speeds. With very minimal heavy vehicle traffic, most cars were zipping past each other at 120+ kmph. This time I was closer to the divider when at a slight bend in the road, I noticed an almost ghost-like outline of a scrawny, old man, apparently mentally unsound and in rag clothes. He was moving at a shaky pace, with his feet struggling to stay steady, while he appeared headed straight towards my vehicle. 

Alarmed, but fortunately since there was some distance to cover, I avoided the man by moving to my left and sped past him. Meanwhile, he continued to walk diagonally across the road moving to the centre, perhaps unaware of what was happening around him. Rushing onto the next toll-gate, I reported the incident and asked for help to be sent, hoping the other vehicles would have avoided him as well. While I paused for some breath, the eerie incident I had encountered in Hyderabad less than a month earlier, flashed in front of my eyes.

In a country with dense population, most of our highways have recently sprung up right in the middle of towns or villages. Thanks to Build-Own-Operate-Transfer models, the quality of these toll roads is excellent wherein 120 kmph feels like just 60, and people often test the limits of their cars in these stretches. However, the locals are unaware of the dangers lurking right next to them, while the livestock use these as extended living spaces. When rash-driving incidents kill people in the unlikeliest of places in cities, these highways are recipes for disaster.

Remembering ancestors of 200 years

I was vacationing over the past 10 days, and this involved a series of trips around my hometown attending a marriage in the family and a couple of functions around my native place, near Karaikudi in Tamil Nadu. This was hectic in its own way, with chauffeuring the family around, connecting with friends, baby-sitting two hyper-active kids, apart from routinely trashing my diet-watching with a daily feast thrown on each occasion.

A memorable function that I got an opportunity to participate in was an offering to ancestors,  called 'Padaipu' in local parlance. This was my first-time to such a ritual and it was fascinating to learn about how this was done. Paying homage to ancestors is something that's practiced in several cultures world over and is considered very significant in India as well. However, the ritual and specific customs vary across the country.

I've learnt that the offerings are generally paid to one's parents and in several cases also to ancestors who could be from 3 to 5 generations back, or earlier. This ritual was on my maternal grandfather's side in a village called Nachandupatti, near Trichy in Tamil Nadu. The offering was to 4 ancestors from 4 generations back. The preparations were elaborate, starting with buying new clothes for each of the ancestors, and to their taste. Then, jewels and ornaments, some of which were ancestral and rest from the descendents were collated. Meanwhile, a feast was prepared with customised menu based on culinary preferences of each of the ancestors, while also accounting preference for vegetarian food versus meat. 

Offerings in place for our ancestors

Finally, against the pictures of ancestors or earmarked places (for those who lived in the pre-photography age), the clothes, ornaments and banana leaves were neatly laid out. People took turns to serve the complete menu, with all hospitality accorded to a special guest of the home. Dessert was a rich assortment of fruits including some exotic and imported ones. Unlike the formality of a temple worship, the air was light and cordial with relatives joking about things like moderating the sugar intake in the food to factor in the possibility of diabetic ailments for any of the ancestors!

With the offering consummating in a prayer, the 30 odd members gathered from an approx family count of a few hundred, concluded the ritual and enjoyed the feast. It was interesting to learn about how the ritual and specific steps have been passed down over the generations, including documented manuscripts and drawings of the procedure.

Adaikkammai appathal

While I was in awe of this practice, I heard of another popular offering ritual in the same village for an ancestor, Adaikkammai appathal who lived 4 centuries earlier. With about 10 to 12 generations spanning the 400 years, the total family size can be approximated to roughly over 10,000 members, which would be the size of a large village. This is a once-in-2-years affair, where thousands of descendants and relatives participate in the offering and its celebrated like a mini-festival. Interestingly, this ritual has its own website that documents the history and proceedings, while also having its active social channels!

Pains of switching over to a Macbook

At work, we had decided to migrate from Windows machines to Macbooks. The excitement and supposed 'coolness' of using a Mac notwithstanding, there was anxiety considering that the Apple ecosystem is a platform I've never been exposed to.

The first day I started setting up the machine, the pain in the transition was evident at multiple levels. I spent a good 30 minutes 'searching' for the Hard Disk and eventually found it by googling for help. My day On Windows machines used to start on the desktop and all activity was driven through 'My-Computer' icon or the Win-E shortcut. Don't believe me on how this query stumps first-time users? Check this Google snapshot on what's searched for most:

Having 'found' the hard disk, the next obstacle was in moving files. For a new user it was frustrating that there is no straightforward way to 'cut-paste'. Googling led me to Apple's discussion forum with several threads on the matter and many experts providing 'easy' ways to copy-paste and cut-paste files! Here is another screen grab showing that this is the top search query for Mac users.

The biggest handicap for Windows users on Mac is the absence of keys like Win, Ctrl, Alt, or the universal SOS combination Ctrl+Alt+Del ! Earlier, when I used to switch between Windows machines of Dell or Lenovo, a minor irritant used to be the changes in location of the Pg-up/Pg-down and other secondary keys. However, a radical change in keystrokes was something that went right against my muscle memory of many years. I'm still getting used to Mac's all powerful 'Cmd' key and the secondary 'ctrl' & 'option' keys, but I guess it will take a while for my fingers to learn that.

These irritants notwithstanding, there were some pleasant surprises that are to-good-to-be-true on Windows machines, for instance the lightning fast 'Spotlight search'. But more about these in a follow-on post. For now, I'm looking at immersing myself in the experience and getting used to the Mac shortcuts and ways of working, for the intent is not to survive but to leverage a lot of the platform's productivity hacks. 

I strongly believe that the first 2 to 3 weeks is a golden period of any transition since it keeps your mind open to explore and learn at an exponential pace. Post this, the learning curve drops steeply and one just gets used to the ways of working learnt by then, even if its inefficient or inconvenient. Surprisingly, I've found this to be true, not just for a new platform, but for new devices or even a new physical location.

My Goodreads Challenge

I have been looking at hitting the "reading" target that I set for myself in 2016. I've noticed that tracking something brings about a good focus and gamification further raises the level of connect. My pace and quality of movie-watching had gone up several notches in the past couple of years, ever since I started using IMDB to track it.

I had stumbled upon a Goodreads challenge and set out to evaluate other 'reading' portals/app available. My evaluation criteria was simple:

• Should have a good catalog of books, including diverse genres and popular Indian authors
• Ability to easily create a reading list, track completed ones and maintain favorites
• Ability to export all the data as a CSV or Excel file at any time

Amongst the sites I skimmed through, Goodreads looked like a clear choice and I went about setting up the account. The initial experience has been great and the site starts offering you recommendations based on your past book ratings. It was a pleasant surprise to notice the integration with Facebook friends and social sharing options.

So, I've taken up a Reading Challenge and signed up to finish 20 books, if not more! 

2015 in Review, and Hello 2016!

Is it any coincidence that New Year resolutions get way too much attention, than Year-end self reviews? Post from a friend, inspired me to reflect on my past year. So, here is my self-assessment of the year gone by:

What went right?

1. Travel: Went solo backpacking this year. Got other avenues to travel domestic and abroad, a mix of official, leisure and treks.
2. Focus on Interests: Found time to focus more on areas of interest - Data, Technology, Startups & Design. Could start connecting with the community on these areas.
3. Writing: Got back to blogging & maintained a decent rhythm through the year.
4. Social network: New-found connect with Twitter that helped focus on areas of interest and with people to track; though need to carefully balance this away from becoming an addiction.
5. Movies: Watched a good set of Movies, including top rated regional ones.

What went wrong?

1. Poor execution: Did not really track against the yearly plan that I had put together at the start of year.
2. Insufficient Reading: Continued to accumulate too much of stuff to read, but didn't devote enough time for most of it, including books.
3. Sub-optimal self-organization: Better prioritization & time management scream for attention.
4. Inefficient housekeeping: Not too happy with the way I've re-organized internal stuff such as notes, pictures, videos, articles and other things of interest.

Perhaps, goes without saying that for 2016 I need to continue with the 'rights' and fix the 'wrongs'. That's pretty much what I look forward to in the coming year.

"Let no one discourage your ambitious attitude. You don't need a fan club to achieve your goals. Be your own motivation." - Unknown

An unusual night ride on the highway

Couple of weeks back, one Sunday night I was driving back home, on the Mumbai Highway in Hyderabad. Considering it was late in the night and close to 10 PM, the road was largely empty except for few trucks and heavy vehicles, that were on their way to destinations far away. Driving on a regular route amidst familiar roads, I was on auto-drive mode, with minimum attention necessitated for the road, while my mind was half-occupied with a random set of thoughts.

And that was when, I got a mental alert to divert full-attention back on the road. There seemed to be unfamiliar object in the path. From a distance, it looked like a bright cloth flown away onto the highway, and fluttering on the road in the night's wind. Unsure if it was big enough warranting a diversion or a drive right-through, I moved ahead. Turning on the high beam, as a last minute decision, I decided to swerve around the road to avoid hitting it. The more I swerved, the longer it seemed to stretch and I pulled across more than half of the road to avoid it.

That's when, a sideways glance struck me with the horror sight - it was a lady's body lying apparently motionless, right across the breadth of the road. A couple of vehicles behind me were now past the body and had avoided it as well, but were speeding on. At this time of the night and with pitch darkness in the highway, some vehicle was sure to run over the body, even if it were lifeless. With a thousand thoughts rushing through my mind, I finally decided to pull over.

Hurriedly parking the car by the road-side, I ran back towards the body on the center of the road. By then, a couple riding a bike had pulled over and were moving towards the body as well. Signalling to the vehicles that were rushing on behind, we lifted the body and carried it to the deserted pavement. It was a lady who must have been in her mid-twenties, she had a deep cut in her forehead and was bleeding profusely. The lady wore a bright red salwar and looked like a part of the tribals who camp by the road side on the outskirts. Fortunately, there were signs of life, but she was unconscious. 

As we rested her on the pavement, the girl who was riding with her husband started cleaning up the wounds. By then, a small gathering had formed on the road-side around us. Quickly someone telephoned the ambulance and cops from the nearby police station. In about 15 minutes, the lady slowly started coming to her senses and could respond to some of the questions. Though unable to give emergency contact details, to everyone's horror she indicated that a known person had inflicted the wounds and thrown her onto the road.

As we were wondering what to do, a cop arrived. Enquiring us about the sequence of events, he tried getting the wherabouts and contact details from the lady. Though she wasn't fully conscious, she answered and provided some details. To add to the complication, the lady appeared to be in an inebriated state. With an ambulance on the way and the cop assuming control, the crowd slowly dispersed. Unsure, we hesitatingly left the place hoping the lady gets the needed attention and meets her loved ones. 

What an unusal night my ordinary day had turned into? Thanking my senses on avoiding the collission and for pulling over, I drove on to get back home.