Ropes course in Santa Cruz mountains

As part of the leadership workshop, we went to the ropes course in Santa Cruz. We climbed ropes, solved problems and had a fun time. My team was called The Simpsons, thanks to an idea from one of our team members. The place is in Scotts Valley in Santa Cruz, really far away from the freeway. It was pretty cold in the morning, but once we started climbing, no one felt cold! This was the first time I was doing a ropes course, and reminded me of how unfit I have become... I thought of the upcoming ski season and that I should exercise if I have to make sense of it!

Gilroy Gardens

It was Anu's idea to go to Sea World last week and this week she decided to take us to Gilroy Gardens. Its a great place for kids and Adi thoroughly enjoyed the place. We adults enjoyed the rides too, which were mostly family rides.

SeaWorld in San Diego

Priti was visiting from India, and we decided to go to Sea World. I booked a hotel very close to Sea World. We saw Shamu's "Believe" show three times. Priti was really excited to be drenched by Shamu (something I would have expected from Adi!!). In fact, Adi started crying inconsolably when he got drenched, which we should have anticipated. He had a great time in Sea World. We were there for two days, and covered all of it. I liked Journey to Atlantis a lot. On the second day, we also went up to Mexico's border (at Raj's request) and to Coronado beach. The water at the beach was surprisingly cold, but we had a great time. Overall, it was a great trip. Adi even enjoyed looking at planes on the airport.

Lunch Cruise on SF bay

We had a celebration cruise on SF bay which involved a luxury yacht. Lunch was on the yacht and was really good. We hiked on Angel Island, with amazing views of both the Golden Gate Bridge and the Bay Bridge from various parts of the hike. There was dessert on the way back on the Yacht. All in all, a fun filled weekday.

Offsites in various parks

We went to two offsites, one in Cuesta Park and the other in Flood Park, both with the Adwords API team. Cuesta Park was marked by great Mediterranean food, Vegas showdown (which I won) and Croquet. Flood Park was marked with arranged games, and I won the crumpled soda can throwing game!

Rafting on the American river

This was a company offsite, and we went rafting on the South fork of the American river. It was a hot day and the water was cold but not chilly, so made for a perfect combination. We had lunch and hopped on to our rafts, going through the scenic valley. I jumped in the water many times and actually swam through a rapid.. which was great fun.

Trip to SF and Santa Rosa

We visited Santa Rosa in July 2009 to meet Ankita. We met up with Selvin and Dayana on the way up.

We went up to Healdsburg and spent the day in a park which has a small beach cornering a natural swimming pool. They actually built a swimming pool around the water for lap swimming. The ground was smooth pebbles so that was nice.

In the night we went to see "Up", our first movie with Adi. The theater was totally empty so that helped. Adi slept most of the movie, so it was fun.

Trip to Seattle

Two factors caused this trip to happen:

1. Adi's daycare was closed on June 12 for staff development day
2. It had been a couple of years since we visited Seattle, and our friends out there

We flew on June 11 with free tickets thanks to frequent flyer miles. The flight was delayed for a couple of hours, and instead of reaching at 10 pm, we reached around 12 midnight. After all the renting and collecting baggage, we reached Vivek's place at 2 am. I had thought Adi would follow his regular schedule of sleeping at 9 pm, but he was all excited at 2 am to see new people and would not go to sleep, until we did at 3 am.

Next day we went to Snoqualmie falls. The falls had plenty of water and was fun to b We spent the evening at Kirkland waterfront and waverly beach park with Arpit, and headed to their home thereafter. Adi had an adrenaline rush seeing new people and had a lot of fun. Watching Ariv and Adi play with each other was also interesting.

On June 13, we went to Discovery Park. We packed a bunch of food and played frisbee and did some hoops. Adi and Ariv enjoyed the tot lots. In the night, we chatted and played Modern Art till around 4 am.

It was time to fly back on June 14, but we had lunch with a Gaurav and bunch of our juniors at Inchin Bamboo Garden. It was a fun trip and good to meet up with friends and Adi thoroughly enjoyed every bit of it.

Adi's first birthday in Miami

We decided to celebrate Adi's first birthday in Miami. The idea was to just stay at the beach and unwind. Reaching Miami turned out to be more adventurous (in hindsight) and frustrating (at the time). Since the United flight got canceled, they put us on American, but did not reissue the ticket. So I reach the counter and find out I cant fly, and must talk to United. The check-in lady was on the phone with a United rep for almost an hour and I went to security literally 10 minutes before the flight. I was running in the concourse like a mad man to catch my flight.

The hotel was good, mainly due to its location. It was right on the beach, and Adi seemed to like the water with some apprehensions. He loved the hotel lobby where he used to go crazy. I was in the water everyday. We could walk to the nice shops and restaurants. We ate mostly pizza and a nice Indian restaurant called Guru. It was a good break.

Two bummers:
1. Adi got diarrhea on the last day.
2. I could never see the sunrise due to clouds on the horizon. I woke up everyday before sunrise.

SXSW at Austin

I am writing this post from the airport getting back from SXSW. It was a great conference for meeting people in the social networking space. I liked a couple of panels.

One was "Building a web business part-time". The big take-aways from this one was that partners and an advisory board are really important. Plus, the more you can bootstrap through friends and family, the more you can be independent and take your time. Once you start looking at Angels and VC, you are on a clock and there are many strings attached.

The other was "Converting Piracy to Profit". They are trying to convert pirated content to syndicated content, so that content owners can make money off of it, and the "pirates" can become content distributors. They are trying to negotiate with Ad networks to provide a share of the revenues on this pirated content to the content owners. I think they have a good case, and DMCA takedown notices is their stick in the carrot-and-stick analogy.

We ate at a bunch of places. The Gnocchi at the Hilton was amazing and so were the custom made vegetarian Quesadillas at the Hyatt. Moonshine won the dessert prize with their fresh Stout Brownie topped with Coffee ice-cream and Whipped Cream.

And of course, I must talk about the Blogger party which was awesome. People had a lot of fun and they were all happy when they left. Also met up with an old friend, after 4 years, which was good. It was a fun, insightful trip.

The India Trip

The trip started with Diwali just around the corner. This was the first time we visited India in October and it was really hot. But I was really happy to be there for diwali for the first time in 8 years. Anu dressed up in traditional Diwali clothes and I went to my Dad's office as per tradition. We picked up the new books for the year (where we do all our accounting in business). We fasted and ate great food made by the "Office Cook" at night. Very nostalgic experience.

We went to Rajasthan for Tammu's marriage and Adi's mundan (a ceremony where he loses all his hair for the first time). I went with the marriage party in an AC coach, which was a lot of fun. My wife and sis flew in with Adi the next day. The marriage was in Jaipur and the mundan was in Kadel. Adi cried his heart out during the mundan, but otherwise we had great food, met with a bunch of relatives and saw a bunch of places. One remarkable place was Salemabad where I plucked radishes from the farm for the first time. We were really tired on getting back, but it was worth it.

Next, we went to Nasik and Pabal to meet Anu's folks. We rented an Indigo and I was pleasantly surprised by the state of roads and how much it has improved. We met all her relatives and received a warm welcome everywhere. Got Adi's ear pierced in Nashik and he cried his heart out.go back.

And finally, about my time in Mumbai. I ate at my favorite restaurants, met a bunch of friends and also went to an awards show. Also attended a bunch of marriages with my parents. Since we were there for two months, we could really laze around, but time flied fast and before we knew, it was time to go back!