Aditya - Darling is BORN

More Pics of Aditya @
http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/Aditya
http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/NamingCeremony
http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/Aditya1Month

Finally, after making his dad wait outside the labour room for 18 hours, my cute, chubby, Aditya Srinivasan has taken birth on Nov 20, 2008 at 22:26 at PRS Hospital, Trivandrum. The delivery was normal and both mom and boy are doing fantastic. He cried soon after birth and we already started celebrating. I brought sweets and distributed to the entire floor folks and also to everyone I see after that.

Aditya if boy, Gayathri if Girl is what myself and Remya had originally planned. Boy it was, and Aditya we decided. Reason being that my favourite God is Sun God, and also if you remember, we got the confirmation of presence of Aditya after getting down a giant wheel (360 degrees)...We are calling him Kunjiraman at home, just a cute name for small kids....dont get surprised if i utter kunji kunji etc. I took him into my arms, it was the moment of a lifetime. You should have touched his feet as a newborn, my goodness, how soft they were. And Remya was complaining he was kicking hard...i will not believe anyone can kick hard with this soft feet :P :P Remya too recovered from the labor pain pretty quickly and we were all at home within 6 days.

I had to return back to Hyderabad after 10 days of spending with Aditya, since my projects were pending. I went again during christmas, for 4 days. He has grown big (within a month) :P and he is now seeing his dad and smiling, wow...i just luvv to take him up into my arms, on whatever pretext, either in the pretext of making him sleep or just for fun....I am planning to bring him back to Hyderabad around first week of Feb, until then, I am just thinking always about him, looking at the pictures and seeing him live on webcam. Thanks to the technology that my grandmom who is very happy to see the 4th generation kid, sees him through webcam and gives him her ashirwad.....

Aditya, We all Love you dear.....

Aishwarya - My Sister's Kid is BORN

Extremely Happy news...My sister, Viji has given birth to a beautiful baby girl, Aishwarya on July 9, 2008. It was such a nice news to hear considering that Viji and Shiva were waiting for the baby's arrival for couple of years now. She was beautiful, fair and cried soon after birth. My mom and dad went to Mumbai during the delivery and when they returned back I zipped through to Mumbai to see Aishu. Love you Aishu - Your Srini Mama and Remya Maami.

Now Remya too is approaching the delivery date. I am just hoping everything goes well with her and we get a beautiful son or daughter who is healthy and chubby :)

We are expecting a BABY....

Remya's parents, her sister and her grandfather have just come to Hyderabad and we all had lots of fun by dropping in at Ramoji Film City and having a roundup of Hyderabad City Tour. At Ramoji, while all of the other folks including my parents and her parents prefferred to sit, myself and Remya sat in the giant wheel and had topsy turvy fun....you know we are kids... Just to ensure things are 'progressing', I took Remya for a doctor checkup and lo, Doc says "We are going to be parents soon".

Immediately I remembered the Bru Coffee ad wherein the wife brings a small cup to tell her husband that she is pregnant. It's such a joy to know that you would have a kid in your arms soon. That also brings an important topic of the necessity for Remya to take extreme care of her health and not work late nights and not strain in particular. It was such a sweet phase of life, wherein I used to give her Protinex, and with Remya hating milk, it used to take so much effort, cajoling and emotional blackmail to make her drink a glass of Protinex. Both of us were on cloud-9 and used to wait eagerly for Tuesday's when the Babycenter post used to drop into my mailbox. Baby Center is extremely good in informing us the foetal status, the care to be taken including pics and nice images. Remya had gone to an extent of writing poems too on the different phases that the baby is taking shape in the womb, first as a groundnut size, then enlarging to cashewnut, then apple, then pineapple :P and finally becoming round shape.

As I saw Remya progressing through her months, its such a sweet experience not explicable by words. In order to ensure that she gets enough care, we travelled together to Trivandrum during August for the wedding of Kuttan (Kumar - her cousin brother) and had Remya stay there itself with her mom. With her mom too taking voluntary retirement, Remya is now getting glassful of milk and no cajoling here, my mother-in-law is strict, and Remya knows that better :P :P

I did see the foetus during 5th month, when he/she was moving around and waving hands etc. It was just a mesmerising feeling internally....We are all waiting eagerly to see whether it would be a boy or a girl, whether he would look like his dad or mom etc etc. Since on work related assignments, I had to travel to US, I had a month of stay at Charlotte and came back for my wife's Seemantham and then travelled back to US for another month, and arrived early November.

Time'z Running Fast...

Good Bye Oracle

It's been 5 years and counting in Oracle. I just came across a consulting opportunity which I think can take my career to new heights. The work here at Oracle has become more of predictable. I decided to take the plunge after hard thought since Oracle is close to my heart. But now that I have decided to move on, I have moved out of Oracle end of April and joined the new consulting firm. It is a startup to say so, and that means lots of challenges, lot of brand building to do, particularly by delivering quality projects. My aim is always to strive hard for the company which I work for, and my attitude wouldn't change if the company were small or big. Now that I have joined this small firm, I am eager to provide my contributions and grow along with it. Wish me luck :)

Good Bye, Oracle, hope to see you soon!!!

Honeymoon Adventure - Season 2 - Goa

More pics available at : http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/Goa
How can a honeymoon called so if you dont surf the waters of Goa. We headed directly from Delhi to Goa for another week of fun-filled vacation. Having exposed to the -17 degrees celcius of Manali, I was little scared if we would get sick to the 30's of Goa. However, both of us were in no mood of such health issues coming in our way of fun-filled week ahead. I had planned it with care for Remya so that I celebrate the "Feb 14", the first valentine's day of our life to be grand. I had booked the Grand Hyatt hotel at Goa for 1 night that of Feb 14, and then planned to spend the rest of the week in Club Mahindra. As per plan, we landed in Goa, headed straight to Grand Hyatt. I love the way the reception takes your credit card, and gives them back, I could see most of those working folks were from China or eastern country. It was surprising on one-hand but the hotel was 5 star to the core. The rooms were amazing, the bath tubs were scintillating, the beach was private and to top it, it was Feb 14.

We surfed the beach for sometime in the evening, holding hand-in-hand, and then walking through the specially arranged "rose-flowered" candle light dinner for the guests. We enjoyed every moment of our stay in the hotel and when it was time to pack bags and move on to Club Mahindra, I had a sense of satisfaction of being able to give my valentine the best she deserves on the Valentine's Day. We still remember how we look at the chocolate cake that the hotel guests had in our room, wishing us a happy honeymoon :P :P

Once in club Mahindra, it was back to beaches, surfing, walking on the sand, fun-filled activities, lunch and dinner at your leisure etc. The rooms were just about fine with privacy being allowed. We decided to see the "architectural wonder" of Goa including seeing the churches, village folks, the age-old houses which are still being preserved with all portugese stuff and they were very nice.

We had romantic sunsets almost every day in the beach, wherein the sun turned bright orange and it was so beautiful, I must have taken several pics of the Sun. Overall, the week went past pretty fast but we did get some time to catch up the glimpse of Goa and had some purchases as well as ate some Goan' cuisine (without fish) :P

I had planned the honeymoon perfectly well. Everything was as per plan, and the final leg of our journey was to travel from Goa to Mumbai via the Konkan railways. I have always heard so much about this Railways wherein the trackes just bisect the huge caves and the train experience is supposed to be the best. And so it was...I have videos of these train ride inside caves which spans for 10 mts or so, just consider how it would be to turn from bright sunlight to pitch dark for 10 mts and the back to being in bright sunlight. We had lot of fun there. We landed in Mumbai and went straight to Viji's house. Viji was carrying Aishwarya at that time and hence couldn't travel to my wedding. Hence this plan of taking Remya directly to viji so that she feels happy too. Overall, we had a good night stay and said bye to everyone to be back in Hyderabad. The fortnight long honeymoon was slowly coming to a close and the reality of joining work from the next day was daunting to say the least.

Into Work Mode now buddies....but there are more posts to come, wait and watch..

Honeymoon @ Manali - Adventure Begins NOW

Pics of Manali are at : http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/Manali#

After the wedding and settling down in life, per se, myself, amma, appa and remya took the flight back to Hyderabad. Remya's parents couldnt accompany as they have to settle things since wedding requires so much of efforts. We landed at Hyderabad on Feb 4 evening, and the plan to kick off our honeymoon campaign from Feb 6. Remya is seeing my house for the first time. I was nervous if she would like it or not, but in contrast, Remya is such a beautiful girl that she prefers to look for love and care instead of pomp and regal.

We took the auto to Hyderabad airport and our first stop was "Delhi". We had already booked the bus which would start in the night from Delhi and take us to Manali around morning. Since we landed at Delhi around noon, we rode straight to India Gate, there is a "Saravana Bhavan" tamil hotel over there, we had nice lunch and then went to India Gate for closer look of the events and celebrations that happen there everyday. After enjoying that experience, we walked back, we infact walked a lot on that day and then reached the HP Tourism office, from where the bus to Manali was waiting for us. We took the bus, bought some winter clothing like gloves etc and cuddled ourselves into the 2 seats we got, waiting eagerly to see the snow. Neither Remya nor me have seen snow before. So it was more of a child waiting to jump out and play in the snow.

Around midnight the bus did have few stops for tea/coffee etc, and everytime we get down, we observed that the temperature had dropped quite a bit. Good that we had enough cover in terms of winter clothing. We awoke at the noise of the bus conductor telling us that the bus has reached manali, to a lower point and since there is snowfall in the city, he cannot travel further. Look out of the window, and wowwwww, thats such a feeling, fresh snow falling on you. Both of us got out of the bus and our feet were in full snow and it was already chilling you around. Remya was hopping since it was very cold and she had worn those stylish chappals which did not protect her from cold. We looked around and a jeep was ready to carry us till the hotel where we have the reservation. We took that and even there, the jeep could not go till the hotel (Ambassador Resorts) lobby. He had to stop 10-15 steps away and the bellboy was kind enough to carry our luggage till the reception. We are already enjoying the snow all around us like kids. We have never seen both of us in such an enjoyable mood before.

We got adjusted to the room provided to us, to the cold, to the heater, television in the room, and once you open up the curtains, you have to see to believe the beauty of himalayas projecting from the balcony. Snow capped, Fresh, Beautiful, Absolutely spotless, it was a sight which a photographer like me, would yearn for. I started clicking the pics all around and had so much fun in that time.

We stayed in Manali close to 7 days and had planned to venture out every other day so that we g et enough rest in between these trips too. We visited the Hidimba temple (you can see all these pics in the link pasted above), wherein we dressed ourselves with huge fur coat, since it was fresh snow all around. We played snowball with lots of fun near the HP Tourism office, and also we visited several good places around Manali like the Shiv temple, Kullu Shawl Factory, Manikaran Gurudwara, Gayathri mata temple, Manu Aalay (temple), Vaishno devi (not the J&K one, this one is there on the way to Manikaran from Manali) etc etc. This is the first for both of us, in terms of entering Gurudwara, putting up our feet on "cold snow" and then in "hot sulphur springs", in terms of fighting like kids with snow, in terms of slipping down the snow for 20 feet, fortunately we werent hurt. Each moment though would remain etched in our memories forever.

To top it, the Resort provided wonderful food and recreation facilities. We loved the"kya yahiii pyaar hai" music on the background just when we sit for our candle light dinner. We then had a waiter who used to take care of us very sweetly asking us to order more dishes and go for more variety. Sir, do you want "Bada Idly", we thought he might bring us big idly but alas, he brings us Vada and :P, he asks us if you want "Paper Rasam", he meant pepper-rasam, then it was palam, he meant plums......we used to giggle a lot whenever we talk to him and have so much fun having food.

It was very difficult to say bye to Manali, there were several romantic moments and surroundings that it was daunting on us to even think of leaving Manali. However, since there is always a hope in the horizon, we set ourselves to have fun at Goa which is our next destination. Everyone would have thought you planned a "bigg honeymoon" and ofcourse I did. Dont you think me and Remya deserve that??? :P :P

We took the same route as we came in, wherein the bus to Delhi, had tiffin in Saravana Bhavan and then were about to board the flight to Goa.

Manali - Our favourite Honeymoon Spot

Wedding Bells Ring - Day 2

See this link for all pics :
http://picasaweb.google.com/sriswami/MyWedding#

The sun shined on this planet on Feb 3, 2008, waking me up for the most beautiful day of my life. Its my wedding day. In India, most of these auspicious events are done at a particular time. Similarly the muhurtha was fixed for my wedding in the morning of Feb 3. I have seen several Tamil weddings wherein there are huge number of fun filled activities before proceeding to make Remya my wife. They include, Kaasi Yathrai, wherein the groom decides that he doesn't want to marry and instead enter sanyasa (penance) and hence starts off the mandapam with very minimal equipments like umbrella, a devotional book, small moottai of rice and slippers. The father-in-law has to intervene during this situation and he would ask me to not go, and instead take the girl's hands and get married. I would then reconsider my decision and then go to the marriage hall. Sounds funny right, and ofcourse it is. I had no intention to leave to Kaasi, and I have no intention to do penance. I was just nodding my head affirmatively even before my father in law started those dialogues of come back :P Then once in, the maternal uncles have to lift the groom and the girl on their shoulders at which the garlands are exchanged. Obviously to encourage more fun, there is a sequence of going back and forth while exchanging these garlands. Since both of us were "not over-weight", the lifting gang were able to life me and remya up and we had full fun of exchanging garlands in the air :P :P

Finally, the moment had come. After hours of manthropadesam wherein the prayers are chattered and the fire originating from the homagundam has already filled the place, the Vaathiyar took the sacred yellow thread aka Mangalasuthram, and gave it to me to tye it on Remya's neck. Again as per our customs, only 1 knot has to be tied from my end while the other 2 would be put on by the nathanar, here Lakshmi. There is a huge rush to see the moment as it is considered the entering of wedlock scene is the most important of the Tamil Wedding, and I tied the thaali on Remya's neck and made her my wife.

All folks started congratulating my parents and Remya's parents for having completed the wedding formalities. We had to wait for 15-20 mts more due to some more vedic rituals after which we got to receive the congratulations from our close friends. Overall, a huge sigh of relief that the event has passed on beautifully to be etched in our memories. Remya thought for a second that Remya's dad was crying when he was holding Remya on his lap before the thaali tying. You tend to get lot emotional in these situations since it is a life-changing moment. Overall, things cooled down and everyone had a fantastic Kalyana Bhojanam.

Eating food with the better half on your side is always fun. You pass on some laddu to her, she passes on some other sweet to you and all the old ladies standing around making fun of, innum koncham kudu (give him more) :P :P It was a sumptuous meal on offer and all the items tasted very good. We then had a "grihapravesham" function wherein we had to go into Remya's house and also pray to the nearest temple (Shiva) for the longeivity of the marriage. We had to eat lot of "milk+banana" during the wedding celebrations as most of these elders distribute it whenever they get a chance ;) I love both, so had no complaints while Remya doesn't like Milk, she had to compromise :P

Around 3 PM, we had the "Nalangu". This is again a festivity that has its traditions and is aimed at bringing a camaraderie to the newly weds so that they can come out of shell. We never were in a shell, had a good laugh and we were close friends already, so this was more of a fun-filled session as far as we were concerned. I have attended several weddings of my friends and relatives that I know what needs to be done. Poor Remya, she has hardly seen these tamil nalangu and moreover with 10 maamies sitting around giving different instructions, she was terribly confused. On one instance, when the papad was supposed to be crushed on top of my head (at a fair distance above the head), she ended up crashlanding the papad directly on my head. What a scene it was....everyone was laughing, i was laughing my heart out, some maamies started no no apadi ille, etc etc....but we had so much fun that whenever we see that moment in the video, it just makes us laugh again. Meanwhile, Remya did research post wedding of the "original" style of crashlanding the papad and has showed me the dum dum dum movie's song, where Jyothika does the same thing on Madhavan. :P :P Smart indeed, isnt she....

Then as known, she being a "good girl", sang a beautiful devotional song and Kumar (her cousin) sang a nice carnatic vocal. Me being a "bad boy" sand a film song :P (oru maalai from ghajini) and the moment I praised her how she changed my life within a week or 2, everyone were chorusing around, trying to tease me :P

Reception started around 6 PM in the evening, and I had to quickly change my attire to the "formal" coat/suit arrangement. I have been waiting to flaunt my new italian manzoni coat and the suit was so well on me, I loved it. I have hardly worn that since, but it is of high quality fabric and with Remya decked up as beautiful she can be, it was such a nice pair to be right there, on the stage, enjoying the atmosphere and talking to several friends and relatives who poured into the mandapam.

Day has come to a close, and it is my pleasure to be in wedlock. Remya and myself have found a great connection that we became instant friends, sharing our thoughts and learning from each other. I would want all of you folks to wish us a very happy married life and prosperous life ahead of us :P

The next phase would be the "adventure honeymoon" I had planned in the hills of Himalayas....wait for that post :P :P

Wedding Bells Ring - Day 1.....

Its been a long time since blogging. Blame it on the fast moving career and diversions. Anyways, I am here again to let you know how I enjoyed the wedding days and the days after :P. To begin with where I left, the Mappillai Azhaippu happened in the evening of Feb 2, 2008 around 6 PM. Both Remya and me had to adorn traditional attire and we had to take part in the nischayathartham. Ofcourse this is something very similar to our engagement ceremony which happened on Nov 16, 2007. My eyes were fixed on Remya and I was sure both of us were very excited to enter into wedlock :P

Since Viji (my only sis) was pregnant and couldn't make it to my wedding, Lakshmi (my cousin) took over the incharge of "nathanaar" position. She accompanied remya in getting her ready. The flop show in my case was that I had bought all Italian attire for the wedding including Italian Manzoni Suit, Italian Purse, Italian Belt etc etc. The Suit was reserved for the Reception Event the following day, but the Belt was planned to use it on the engagement day, and I tried, lo, it needs extra hole to be punched. On one hand I was excited that my belly has gone under control and hence this requirement of a new hole, and on the other hand, was frantically searching to get this hole done. Someone brought a punching needle, and ultimately Srini was ready. We took the blessings of the Lalithambal Amman in the mandap and reengaged towards a committed life with each other. I have uploaded hundreds of pics in my wedding album (link to be posted in next blog), but here goes one pic of us getting blessings.