Wow..2009 is over

With 2009 coming to an end, I thought i'd write a little on what went on this year. Perhaps for me to reflect in the coming years....

January marked the 5th Year of me being married. Time does fly. The days munged by to April where my Son turned 4 years old. We got him a bike to start off...



and he got plenty more gifts at his birthday party...His nanamma (grandmother) was here as well which made it all the more fun.

I changed jobs in October and then left for my holiday trip to India.
We had an exciting trip to India this time. We stopped over in Dubai on the way there. We spent 3 days, seeing the sights and sounds of Dubai. The iconic Burj Al Dubai:

The gold souk, the indoor ski place, all exciting stuff. Pranav had a blast as well. The one thing that sucked in Dubai was it's beach near the Hotel Atlantis. The water was all murky and pretty disgusting. It was surprising that a 7 star hotel had such a crappy beach, but I guess thats what you get when you over build. However, the city itself was excellent.

One of the displays at Dubai Gold Souk:


One thing that did catch me offguard was, you had to pay for water at the hotel. Most hotels, when you sit down, bring you a bottle of water, and at the end they put it on your bill as well. There is no concept of "free" water.

I also tasted an unbelievably tasty Chocolate Praline Cake. A small piece was about 25 Dhirams (~$6.5), but was amazing!

Dubai is known for it's malls. But, they're really trying to outdo one another there. The Dubai Mall has one of the best musical fountains in the world:



Not to forget, we also went for Dune bashing, followed by a Dune buggy ride & a belly dance with arabic food (was mostly Indian. The only Arabic dish there was Khoobs (bread) and Hummus)







Then our India trip was fun as well.
My Dad turned 60, and as tradition would have it, we celebrated by calling our near and dear friends & family along with the traditional rituals.

Following that we went to Tirpuati, Vijayanagram (the small town my dad is from, and met many of our relatives and some of his childhood friends) and my dad's aunt who pretty much brought him up. Then we went to Vizag, a beautiful coastal city, with a beautiful sea shore.




Then I spent Diwali with my in-laws, back to Chennai with my grandparents and then it was time for me to get back to work. Ofcourse, I probably gained about 5 lbs with all the eating (more like stuffing :) ) the delicious food back home.



Once I came back from India though work got really busy. We're bringing about 60 servers online for a very critical application and managing it all is as awesome as it's tiring. Yes I am a geek and I enjoy working on Sun / Oracle Hardware / Software :).


Somewhere along the way I did turn 31. My wife threw an awesome surprise Birthday bash for me.