Srinidhi’s latest discovery is that he can trick us! Last week one day, he called me several times to play. I was busy with something and told him so. In a few minutes, he started complaining that his bicycle was stuck and he was falling down. He wasn't :). That was the first one.

Now-a-days, he talks to his virtual friends - the toys, the ones on the computer, TV and books. He does that mostly when he thinks we are not noticing. The other day he was navigating pbskids.org. He went to Barney coloring page and did not see the usual virtual crayon (the one you drag using the mouse to color on the webpage). This one was a coloring page to print and color with actual crayons. So he was complaining to Barney, "Where are the crayons Barney?" "Can we find it Barney?" "I want to color Barney." ...

He often does the pretend thing - that he is a robot - in a deep voice, "Amma, I want lollipop". Of course, whenever he puts on the red hat, he is a Fire Fighter and yellow hat, he becomes Bob the Builder, "Let's go".

For a while now, he has been eating his imaginary grapes from imaginary bowls and often feeds us too with them! He also checks us with his imaginary stethoscope and gives us imaginary injections and imaginary boo-boo medicines.

Today, he started doing the puppet thing. He brought his fingers together, and magically one became a "police car" and the other "truck" and they soon had an "accident"! I think he learned that from Rex. We visited Siju's place Wednesday. Rex was telling us a story pretending one hand was him and the other his friend; very imaginative. From that Srinidhi must have learned that he can use his hands to pretend.

ஸ்ரீநிதி இப்பொழுதெல்லாம் பொய் காரணம் சொல்லி எங்கள் கவனத்தைப் பெறலாம் என்று தெரிந்து கொண்டுவிட்டான். சென்ற வாரம் ஒரு நாள், என்னை விளையாட கூப்பிட்டான். நான் பிஸியாக இருக்கிறேன் என்று பலமுறை சொல்லிவிட்டேன். திடீரென, "அப்பா அப்பா, நான் சைக்கிளிலிருந்து விழ போகிறேன்" என கூப்பிட்டான். போய் பார்த்தால், ஜம்மென சைக்கிளில் உட்கார்ந்துள்ளான்!

இப்பொழுதெல்லாம் கற்பனை நண்பர்களுடன் அடிக்கடி பேசுகிறான், அதுவும் நாங்கள் கவனிக்கவில்லை என்று நினைத்தால், விளையாட்டு பொம்மைகளுடன், டீவீ, கம்ப்யூட்டர், புத்தகதில் வரும் கேரக்டர்களுடன்!

அடி தொண்டையில் பேசினால், இவருக்கு ரோபாட் என்று நினைப்பு. அடித்தொண்டையில், "அம்மா, எனக்கு சாக்லேட் தா".

கற்பனையான கிண்ணத்திலிருந்து, கற்பனையான திராட்சையை எடுத்து அவரும் சாப்பிடுவார், நமக்கும் ஊட்டிவிடுவார். அதே போல், கற்பனையான ஸ்டெதெஸ்கோப் வைத்து நம்மை செக் செய்து, கற்பனையான ஊசி போட்டு, கற்பனையான மாத்திரையை நம் வாயில் தினிப்பார். நாம் அழ வேண்டும்!

இன்று விரல்களை கூப்பி வைத்துக்கொண்டு, ஒரு கை போலிஸ் காரென்றும் மற்ற கை டிரக் என்றும் ஓட்ட ஆரம்பித்துவிட்டான். மட்டுமல்ல, இரண்டும், ஆக்ஸிடெண்ட் ஆகிவிட்டதாம்! புதன்கிழமை ரெக்ஸ் என்றொறு நண்பனை பார்த்தான், அவனிடமிருந்து கற்றுக் கொண்டான் என நினைக்கிறேன்.

 Karthikeyan said...

:-)))))))

September 17, 2005 4:20 AM

ഇന്നു പൊന്നോണം. എല്ലാവര്ക്കും ഓണാശംസകല്.

[Yes, I did it myself, with only clarification from Veena that it is പൊന്നോണം and not പൊന്നോനം.]

We spent our 2000 Thanksgiving week as a vacation in Los Angeles, California. I used to travel from Charlotte to LA every week for a project at Nissan. We took days off and Veena flew to LA. We visited the Queen Mary Ship, once an ocean liner now a floating hotel, took a sea plane ride in a four seater sea plane, which was fantastic, and visited the Soviet Scorpion Submarine, now docked as a tourist attraction at Long Beach. We got a tour of the NBC studios at Burbank and got admission to the Jay Leno show on Thanksgiving Day! Tom Arnold (Roseanne's ex-husband) was the featured guest. Oh, and a live turkey too, which escaped from the prior night show and was still perched up on the ceiling structures! I didn't take many photos in that trip :( The only photo I found from the trip was this!! Whoever volunteered to take our photo left a 'lasting impression' of their handy work :) No digital cameras those days to catch their sabotage instantly :) Let me check again and see if I have any more photos from that trip.

We took this series of pictures during Dec 2003 to make our Pongal/New Year card (with his picture on it). Srinidhi was eight months old with no teeth. Today morning, when Srinidhi finished brushing, for few minutes, he resembled this face.

2003 டிசம்பரில் இந்த படங்களை எடுத்தேன். இதிலிருந்து ஒரு படத்தை எடுத்துத்தான் 2004 பொங்கல், புத்தாண்டு வாழ்த்து செய்தேன். இதில் ஸ்ரீநிதிக்கு வயது எட்டு மாதம்.










When I went for my citizenship interview and later for oath taking, I was trying to sport red, white and blue and was looking for my red tie. I didn't find it. I ended up keeping Srinidhi's first tie, red, in my pocket as a good luck charm :)

No sooner than the group was created, interest sparked on the first reunion. I call it the first reunion since this was the first time we have a formally organized reunion: there have been many smaller informal ones such as the ones west coast guys regularly have in their kids' birthday parties.

After a month long discussion and a vote, we zeroed in on Washington DC; the Big Apple New York came in second and the Sin City Las Vegas a distant third! Washington won mainly because of the unending enthusiasm shown by local hosts Gerald, Latha and Gurpreet.

A similar vote for the date of the reunion was arranged. Except for a lone voice or two for the Christmas/New year weekend, everybody wanted the Labor Day weekend (September 3, 4, 5). It falls right before the schools start for kids, summer is easier to travel, and most importantly, five of us wanting to attend expect the arrival of our second babies between October and February!

We expected a minimum of dozen to max two dozen to attend. We ended up with eighteen of us and families making a total of close to 60 attendees, representing six branches, four hostels and a day scholar, and nine (US) states. Good enough response for a first reunion. When the word gets out how much fun it was, we are hoping, more will join next time around. Hopefully we can work few regional ones every year and work towards a grand 20th anniversary one at Trichy in 2011.

பதினான்கு ஆண்டுகளுக்கு பிறகு, கல்லூரி நண்பர்கள் பதினெட்டு பேர், அவர்கள் குடும்பங்களுடன், செப்டம்பர் 3,4,5 தேதிகளில், வாஷிங்டனில் ஒன்று கூடினோம்.

Here is the RECTian group photo:



From left to right.
Standing in the back row:
Gurpreet Singh (ECE, VA), Sai Ravela (CSE, MA), Thirumalai (PE, MA), Sivakumar (PE, IL) K Rameshbabu (ECE, IL), Ganesh (CSE, OH)
Standing in the front row:
Kulandaivelu (PE, MA), Gerald Joseph (ECE, VA), Raghu Prasad (PE, NJ), Murali (PE, CA), Sabapathy (CSE, FL), Shanmuganathan (ECE, NC), Latha (EEE, VA), Vijay Anand (EEE, OH), Joshua (CE, VA)
Kneeling:
Jeyasakthivel (PE, PA), Balaji (CSE, NJ), Muthukumar (ME, MI)

Nobody from Civil, Metallurgy and Architecture! And nobody representing any states other than Tamil Nadu, Delhi and U.P.!

NITT1991

When I left REC Trichy in 1991, I had no hope of meeting or talking to many of my batch mates again. Almost half of my batch mates were out of state, some even out of country. Many had plans to go to US for higher studies and others started their career in different parts of the country. So I left REC with a heavy heart.

Those were the days before the internet and email!

During the mid nineties, one of our batch mates Abraham Sudhakar, who was working at Canada at that time for Coral, used this wonderful new medium, email, to link about two dozen of us. He maintained that email list for about three years. That was the first attempt to bring us together, it was very useful. Somehow, Abe disappeared from the radar over time; we are still trying to locate him!

During early 2000s, Raghu Prasad revived that mailing list and kept adding new addresses. The list had more email addresses but not as much email traffic as we hoped. I guess everyone was busy with their nascent families and establishing their career. Still it was very helpful he kept the link alive. Except for that list, some of us were not in touch with even our best friends from college days.

Six month back, one of my batch mates, Ravin red, sent out a funny email about his trip to RECT using that list. A week later, I replied with my own experience of multiple trips I made to RECT over the years. To my frustration, almost a dozen of the three dozen recipient emails were obsolete and bounced back! As our email conversation went back and forth, it became increasingly frustrating to deal with all those bounces. So I decided to clean it up. Once I started the cleanup, I received several lists of unverified emails from others. Painstakingly, I sent individual emails to each, and depending on the response, kept or removed the address from the list. I forwarded the 'clean' list to all the 'clean' ids. I and Raghu agreed to maintain the list clean and up-to-date and actively add new ids. At that time, Sabapathy came up with the idea of a Yahoo group and volunteered to create one for this clean list. The Yahoo group was created on June 3rd, 2005. That was the genesis of this great Yahoo group NITT1991.

In the past 3 months, what started out as an effort to update the email list, turned into a great forum and resulted in a fun filled reunion over the Labor Day weekend. It definitely has been more successful than I thought. Part of the success has to do with the timing. We are all well settled in our career and family life, we are able to spend time for nostalgia. We are all financially secure and looking for ways to enrich our lives. Part of the success is also to do with our relentless effort to make everybody join.

If you are a RECTian (or a NITTwit, since our esteemed institute is NITT now) from the batch of 1991, this is your group, it is not any individuals or few people's, it is everybody's group; you belong here; everybody is on equal footing; feel at home and please click here to join. I personally invite you, each one of the 300+ RECTians from 1991 batch, to join. If you are still hesitating for some reason, please send me an email with your telephone number or email, I will personally call you or email you and address any question or concern you have. BTW, you are part of this batch even if you spent only few semesters with us. Those from batch of 1990 who did few semesters with us and those who moved from REC Srinagar to do few semesters with us and those who started with us in 1987 but did not finish with us in 1991 are all part of this batch; you are all cordially welcome to join.

The forum is not just for nostalgia and fun, it has become a powerful tool for us to network. Most of us have been very successful in our fields, we now have the ability to leverage that. And it is happening; we are able to give each other business leads among other things.

We now have 78 members from US, India, UK, Middle East, Far East and even South Africa. We still have a long way to go (there were 300+ students from our batch). We are actively soliciting others to join. Some of my best friends haven’t joined yet! (Where are you Gurumoorthy, Ramalingam, Sakthiyappan, Bhaskar, Mathimaran, Sukumar, TTP and others?)

The reunion was so much fun; it deserves multiple entries in this space. I will share as much as I can in coming days. The past three months has been a great journey. I am looking forward to reestablish contact with all my batch mates and have many larger reunions.