Simple Matters

Another July weekend and another birthday celebrated, this time mine (next week will be my father's turn). The minor twist on the birthday meal was Malini asking me to come home for lunch on Friday and she had prepared an elaborate Kerala style meal with lots of my favourite dishes. The coup de gras was the jackfruit jam 'payasam.' I ate rather well and it was a struggle to dig myself off the couch to return to work. To complete the Kerala touch, Malini had served the lunch on banana leaves. As she was getting the leaves ready, Arjun inquired why she was going to use leaves.
Malini: "That's how we used to eat in Kerala for special occasions."
Arjun: "Why? Didn't they have plates?"
Seeing them struggle to eat rice with their hands I was struck by how different their upbringing is in some of these details.

Malini has been having a dry cough for more than a week now and it seems to ebb and flow. Tonight as she was putting the boys to sleep, she broke out into a prolonged coughing fit. Arjun was concerned and suggested "Amma, you should go to the doctor." Abhi was equally concerned, but for a slightly different reason: "Then who will put us to sleep?"

A Sporting Weekend

The July 4th weekend turned out to be a rather good weekend for people interested in watching sports. Friday was uneventful in that regard although there was a spirited discussion about death and sports at the Jothi residence during a potluck dinner gathering (deserves its own blog). Saturday morning I headed out early to take part in a 10k run, part of which was around Miramar lake. I hadn't run this distance in some time and while I was confident about finishing, I did a conservative pace most of the way to ensure that I could finish strongly. Eventually I managed to come in just under my usual 9-minute pace. July 4th was also Day 1 of the Tour de France and the race was once again interesting with the return of Lance Armstrong. With Armstrong in retirement after winning his 7th Tour, I didn't follow the race much the last 3 years, especially after the Floyd Landis (a San Diego guy, btw) doping scandal. Last year a whole bunch of riders got thrown out during the race and it was a big turn-off. Of course a big factor is that the only time I pay attention to professional cycling is during the Tour (or 'Le Tour' as the French call it) and without familiar faces/names in the race, it is not very interesting. For those who don't follow cycling, multi-stage races like the Tour de France are very much a team event. There is a lot of strategy involved and typically all the riders on a team (usually about 9-10) work towards getting a victory for the presumed leader of the team. This automatically means that even before the race starts there are probably only about 10-12 people who would even contend for the overall prize. They do give out a number of other awards such as the best sprinter, climber, rookie, time trial, etc. The overall leader of course has the privilege of donning the yellow jersey, but each of the other categories also have designated jersies of their own. Armstrong used to ride for the US Postal Service team, which was disbanded soon after his retirement. Now he rides for Team Astana, which has at least two other contenders for the overall prize - Alberto Contador (Spain)and Levi Leipheimer (USA). This has made for some controversy - Astana is the overwhelming favorite for strongest team, but who is the leader of the team?

July 4th is also Malini's BD and this one was a bit of a milestone. I caught some flak from Vanitha for not having done anything special to mark the day. She even showed up with some rice dish sample for Malini. Being July 4th there are lots of fireworks to watch, but this year I wanted to catch the one in the SD bay. Trying to account for traffic and parking, the Murthys and us left around 4.30pm and drove to Harbor Island. Parking turned out to be not a problem. Prem & family showed up later after picking up dinner and a cake for Malini. Arjun, Abhi,Bhavana, and Pallavi were riding their scooters up and down the board walk pretty much the whole time. It was a beautiful evening, although it got a bit chilly once the sun went down. As darkness fell, Malini cut her BD cake (to some Nadaswaram music from Prem's iphone) and we were ready for the fireworks. It was quite a show, although I couldn't fully enjoy it focused as I was on trying to take pictures!

Sunday morning brought stage 2 of the Tour, but more thrillingly, the Wimbeldon men's final. It was an appropriate game for a grand moment - Federer going for his 15th grand slam with all the greats of recent years - Sampras, Borg, Laver, etc looking on. Roddick gave it a good fight - I was really hoping he would win, but in the end Federer prevailed.
After this came the final round of the AT&T Congressional golf tournament. In the final pairing were Tiger Woods and Anthony Kim. Kim is considered the next challenger to Tiger's throne and was the winner of this event in 2008. The course was playing difficult and it was engrossing to watch Woods think his way around the course and finally win the tournament by one stroke.

What made watching these events more fun was the interest both Abhi and Arjun showed. Arjun has always been interested in watching sports (especially golf & football), but both of them were clearly enthralled by the cycling - perhaps it is the one thing they can also do and hence is much more accessible to them. I am looking forward to the remaining 16 stages of the race!