Onam-2008

Ellavarkkum njangalude hridayam niranja Onashamsakal...

Onam is an annual harvest festival, the biggest and most important festival of the Indian state of Kerala. It is a religious festival and is celebrated by people of all religions in the state . The legendary king Mahabali is welcomed to his kingdom during this time .Thiruvonam is tenth and the most important day of the of Onam. People believe that it is on Thiru Onam that the spirit of legendary King Mahabali visits the state of Kerala. Onasadhya (meals)is the most delicious and important part of Onam.Legend goes that Mahabali who was so attached to his people that he requested Gods to allow him to visit Kerala every year and Keralites inturn wish to convey that they are enjoying the same age of prosperity as was witnessed during the reign of King Mahabali by preparing a grand Onasadhya.
After coming to the US,we havent really celebrated Onam like the way we used to in Kerala (with parents and our extended family usually in ur grandparents place)except for the year that we had spent in Dallas....This time around we thought of doing it differently and decided to celebrate Onam with Krishna Menons family..Thiruvonam was on Sept 12,Friday..Both Krishnan and I took leave...

The ladies had already decided what Onam dishes they were cooking(Ona sadya is stricly vegeterian and grand ) and decided to split the work .... eventhough I tried to intervene with my innovative suggestions which they never cared for....hehe..

We went to a Japaneese store called 'Uwajimaya' and bought banana leaves(from Philippines)....Onam feast is usually served in banana leaves (naakila)..Didnt get naakilla and so we settled for what we got.... What a pain to get Ila, which we used to take from the backyard of our houses 15mts before the Sadhya...

Anju had made Erisherry,parippu,pineapple pachadi and Cabbage thoran...By 11 both of us were dressed in traditional Onam wear... Men wears 'mundu' and women usually wear 'set and mundu'. My initial plan was to wear Mundu from our place, but later changed my mind, and wore it only after reaching Krishnan's house.
Reached Krishnans place at 12 and they were all set and dressed..Siddharth was in traditional wear too..

Suja had made a lot of dishes..Sambhar,payasams(parippu and vermicelli),olan,stew,aviyal and rice.... Pic of suja making Payasam.... We cleaned up the banana leaves and the table was set.... I cleaned and cleaned and Anju was scared that I will tear the leaves, but knowing Krishnan(who is worse than me in cleanliness), I had to do it, for him to eat on Ila, for which he admitted that he was planning not to eat in Ila before seeing it.

Woooooowwwwwwww..Look at the yummy feast!!!!

We served all the elas with all the dishes... Cant find a pic with all the dishes though including parippu....

Anju had been asking me for 2 days that she wants me to serve her while she ate ..so in the middle of the sadya I got a chance to serve all of them...
Photos

Sujas innovative idea to get all of us together in one pic without using the timer on the camera.....

Keralites and Onam ..its just so special.....We had such a nice time and it was so nostalgic....And at the end of the day the feeling was'tripthi' or satisfaction that we all enjoyed the entire day in the most traditional way with friends we consider as family ..I suppose all the nostalgic Mallus every where in the world feel the same.......

Golf Tournament - Sep08

We had our Annual Golf tournament and I decided to participate for the same, eventhough I dont even know how to hold a golf club properly. I was late to reach there in the morning, and Josh had called me wondering whether I escaped...

I got my clubs and they assigned me a cart, which I loved driving, and started searching for a team for me to join as all 3 from my team was no-show.

Finally I joined the team with Justin(left) and Jeff Ley(right), who was my personal instructor, teaching me how to hold the club, how to shoot, the angle and all...It was fun, hitting the ball, especially when everytimg it goes in the opposite direction I hit, with lot of grass flying around.... I cant believe I lost all my cricket skills...

Trip to SilverFalls State Park,Oregon

Oregon state is very famous for its rugged natural beauty...The state provides abundant outdoor recreational facilities..The most convinient factor of all this is is that, most of the natural attractions requires 1 to 2 hrs of travel time even from the down town Portland.
This being a long weekend Krishnan and us decided to go on a small family picnic to Silver Falls State park which is about 2 hr drive from our home . It is the largest state park in Oregon, The major attraction of the park is the collection of waterfalls. There are 10 falls and more than 22 miles of multiple use trails leading to them.
Classic South falls,Lower southfalls,North falls,Double falls,Drake falls,Middle Northfalls,Winterfalls,Twinfalls,North Falls,Upper North falls.

We started at 3.30 in the afternoon and reached there by 5.15pm…This park is extremely big and wide spread with benches ...A lot of families were having picnics and barbeques and a few birthday parties …The kids seems to be having a wonderful time.

The full loop to see all the 10 falls is 22 miles… We decided to see just the Classic south fall and to return back which is just 0.7 miles…

Path to South falls… A few pics of us on the bridge on the path to the classic south falls...

The end of the stream leads to the water fall:-)

Trail to Classic South Falls

South Falls is extremely beautiful. This is the most accessible and the tallest of the waterfalls at the height of 177 feet. The trail allows hikers to walk behind the water falls....the volume of the fall is much more than this…

Moss covered caves behind the falls....

Krishnans and Sujas son-Siddharth...He is a two year old ...He was extremely happy running around and walked all the way up and down the trail with all of us...

The trip was short,funfilled and beautiful.........

Hey hey hey...oh comeon Anju...( This time the whole trip details are written by Anju --this is the first time she is writing in my webpage)...As you guys have noticed, she is more professional in writing the details...Thanks Anju...

But there is one thing she forgot to mention..Anju was not well the whole trip, but still she wanted to walk the trail..When Krishnan and Suja planned to walk around, I thought of using Anju as an excuse to avoid the walking..but she bailed out on me and decided to walk, poor me , I had to follow them. After walking back, she felt little Dizzy..but it was worth the walk,specifically walking behind the waterfalls...I will definitely go back again....

George's Party

George invited my family and Julio's family over for dinner at his place.Look at the nicely carved fruit basket he made for us.

The food was awesome, and it was great fun to play with Ginger and Chloe. The picture above is me trying to make a shark fin hairstyle out of Ginger and she got really happy after I tried a couple of times as below..

Finally she got exhausted and started sleeping....

Chloe's expressions are priceless when it comes to photoshoot......

No pictures of George as he was not happy about publishing his pictures and Julio didnt take any pictures of Stephanie....

New Exercise in office

Josh bought us a new WII in office, now everyone including George quit playing Ping-Pong and WII Tennis is the game of the new era...In the picture from Left to Right, Josh, Me, Kirk and George enjoying a virtual reality game of Tennis.

CHINCHITHAMOL in PORTLAND

Inspite of her busy 3 month schedule in US, Gayathri (Chinchitha mol)decided to visit her sister Lekshmi(Anju) in Portland

. Anju was very excited about the whole visit as it was more than 2.5 yrs since she saw any of her dear ones.We had 100 reasons for not visiting India in the last 2.5 yrs, but I only know how upset she was not seeing her parents and her dear ones back home.So chinchithamol's visit was a big relief to me also.

Anju was preparing the apartment and dishes for her visit and was very excited from the moment Chinchu boarded the flight from Virginia on the 1st of July08.She normally never calls me at office,made atleast 5 calls asking various questions about the transit at the Minneapolis airport(there are no direct flights between virginia and Portland) and the flight timings and gate confusions. I had to repeatedly assure her that everything would be fine.

We left to the airport around 10:00pm and waited in the airport for the flight to arrive.Finally there came Chinchu and I had hard time keeping Anju from jumping the fence of the security restricted area.

See their excitement in the photos(poor quality due to phone camera)

We reached back at around 12am and then chinchu had the wonderful dinner prepared by her chechi which comprised of chicken curry( which she thought is fish curry),fish fry, thoran etc., etc., Anju ditched sleeping with me and went to sleep with her sister.

02July08:

We all got ready after breakfast with dosa and chutney and planned to visit Mt.St.Helens.Set up the GPS in the vehicle for the destination and while on the way I called Krishnan and as per his advice deviated our trip to Mount Hood.It was a little hazy day.
We reached Mount Hood around 3pm, was surprised to see a ton of snow.Anju and chinchu was really excited to see all the snow and started running and playing in the snow.

They both started running towards the direction of Mount Hood while I took a break and watched the whole show...

Then we started towards TRILLIUM LAKE which is very close to Mount Hood.It was the perfect time to visit the lake and we took a couple of photos in the area.

After spending an hour in the Trillium lake area, we started towards the Multnomah Falls, this was too much for a day to travel, but as she only had 3 days in Portland and the last day being July 4th, we had to cover the maximum possible in a day.

After Multnomah falls, we decided to have dinner at PF Changs for which I promptly made the reservations.We had a great dinner,but chinchu didnt enjoy it much.I understood the reason only the next day..she was craving for home food and she wanted to eat what her sister makes and not the food made by a chef....

03 July08:
We got up late and chinchu demanded her chechi to prepare "Puttu" and when I got up, Anju was busy preparing the same for her. Anju was preparing Puttu after more than 8-10 months, but it came out really well. See below the same...

After the breakfast Anju prepared lunch with lot of dishes.

We had lunch, I took a nap and started to the beach. We reached the beach around 7pm, it was sunny and bright,but unfortunately it was very cold.

See Chinchu shivering below due to the breeze:

We came back around 10pm, had kappapuzhukku and fish curry and watched the movie "Vinodhayathra".

The next day was an all shopping day and my job was that of a driver.

Chinchu left Portland on 5th July by the 630am flight.