I have been looking forward to my parents’ visit. They arrived to Seattle last Sunday and below is a video diary and here are pictures of what we have been up to last week. We had a fun time camping in Fort Casey State Park on Whidbey Island – this was first time camping experience for my parents !

I took extra care to make the experience a little pleasant! The forecast was rain so we headed for a little less damp and open area. I also switched to an air mattress instead of sleeping bags – and yep brought in all the big pleasures of car camping like chairs, grill, firewood and yep – watermelon!! Oh my parents love the sweet corn!

On a side-note I have been trying to motivate and encourage my folks to pay more attention to their health. The great success is now they track their weight and blood-pressure every day!! A sweet result of this is that now we can correlate the days they have high blood pressure to the days when they are sitting at home!! So yep going on walk is an incentive to see those numbers do better. I think the next step for me is to get a pedometer for Dad so that he can keep track of how many steps he walks every day!!

However the big deal in whole deal of parents’ health is healthy eating!! With typical east indian cuisine a lot of oil, and unhealthy fat makes way in to ones diet. My elder sister who is a Dermatologist gave a tip to try and control the salt intake first, and stress a little more on fruits. I need to make sure that Mom now starts cooking healthy stuff and yep! not give in to pressure/ craving from me or Dad !!!

All right I’m getting a chance to go visit home!! Eh..hoo!! Here is the rough plan -

Hopefully, I can make all the other stuff work. If any of you guys are around do let me know!! More details getting added soon!

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Originally uploaded by vbha.

Yep! yep!! I have been really bad about pinning down India trip tales! Well now i’m getting to it. My first week was pretty hectic and spent most of the time at Samit’s wedding, followed by hike to Trambakeshwar with Pravin and Gang! The next week was work week, well the think week paper i submitted that week got reviewed and commented my Bill Gates (can you believe that !!). Anyways i made a trip to mumbai in my third week and met with Akshata, Saurabhs parents and the site visits to Asha projects didn’t work out . Well in the same trip Vaidehi was welcomed!! The next week and half was pretty hectic celebrating the 1st with a family party and dance, my folks actually danced! woho!! We did a trip to Shirdi and Yeola. A family vacation out didnt work as Sweety got sick, and we didnt have time to plan. Btw, in addition to chilling i did manage to get some workout (I joined a gym – health fitness–?) , a run (did the KTHM Marathon ..) and lots of rest and good food!!!

Well there are many small things i noticed different in India, compared to last year. The westernization has really caught up – my friends are thinking pretty liberal now a days, things are expensive – a small auto ride is alteast 15 ruppees and the growth oppurtunity in terms of job and finance is tremendous!!

Now!! you may ask what about marriage, rather what about arranged marriage? Did you hook up?? Ahuh! well this time my parents really made an effort to get me see some gals. Well i’m 28 now and I had made clear that i dont wanna marry for another year but my parents thought may be i’ll change my mind. As a courtesy to a family friend/relative i did see one gal formally but made it clear to her that i’m not interested in it for a year atleast. There were couple of other incidents of matrimony but i think i managed to get out of them!!! I know you might say its time for me to hook up, and i’m not entirely against arranged marriage but hey i want to give a full committe d year to see if i can make a small dent as an entrepreneur and then w’ll think about rationalizing..

That was pretty much a bland travelogue:).. well the next one is about my time in London!!!