Author Archives: atashijain

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First Ultra sound

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We told everyone at home and they are all excited about the baby too.

We went in early for our ultrasound so that we could know how the baby was growing and also if we could go to Yellowstone. Our doctor told us that we are good to go and at 8 weeks and 3 days the baby was 1.8 cm long and was beating at 172 bpm. Now that we knew that the baby was inside, we christened it (for the time being) Bhalla Sahaab.

We were allowed to go to Yellowstone and it was a wonderful time with family.

Baby Jainwals first photo

Baby Jainwals first photo

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Worth the Weight :)

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Priyendra and I are very pleased to announce that we are growing our family. We are very excited about it and taking it very very easy. I am looking forward to a healthy growing baby and a smooth pregnancy. I have been so excited but I have decided to keep myself calm this time and not jump to tell anyone..yes anyone means even our parents. We will tell them after our first doctor’s visit.

There have been multiple times when I have wanted to tell my mom since she has asked me once too in the last one week but I have had to keep the conversation away by distracting her.

I am sure she will be very excited but just for the sake of the baby we are trying to play very very low key this time. Cannot wait to make these posts public :)

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Changes

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(An old post which I wrote but forgot to publish it :))

…and then back on track now.

Does it ever happen that life appears to change for you in a bat of an eye? At times, making professional decisions over personal ones triumphs and sometime we need to take stricter and more futuristic decisions for ourselves which means leaving behind everything and starting from scratch. I am not sure if it is such a big decision for many since it is such a common thing to quit your job and enter the start up world. But for us, it was a Herculean decision. Yes Priyendra decided to quit Google and move ahead in life.

This itself was a colossal step in his life. But the interesting thing is that in front of him lay two options. One was to stay here and join a 3 month old start up in a core field where he would continue doing what he is best at and the other was to move to New York and join the 2 week old start up as a CTO. Yes! moving to New York came as a big shock to me but becoming a CTO of a small company kind of lured my husband.

There was a lot of back and forth. Priyendra went to New York to visit the company too. Thank God he went before Sandy struck the east coast. He came back pretty excited about the opportunity and the weekend Sandy hit the mainland USA, it also hit our lives. We had almost decided that we are moving to the east coast. I had started looking up apartments and jobs. I was gradually trying to get excited about the move too by watching a lot of New York based chic flicks.

After a lot more thinking, some Math and some emotional decisions, we have decided that we will not move out of the bay area and stay here with Scaligent!

 

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Happy 2013

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I am alive and so is the world even after 2012 but there seems to be some kind of death of humanity. There is a lot going on on the map of the world: rape in India, killings in Sandy hook, slaughter in Syria and the natural disasters are not helping much either. There is a lot being said and written about all of this. Let me not go on that road but look forward to a better 2013 and look back at the happy times of 2012.

2012 was the year for traveling. We traveled to a new state almost every month. Out of the 50 states in the US, we traveled to the following states

  1. Arizona
  2. Texas
  3. Illinois
  4. Colorado
  5. Wyoming
  6. South Dakota
  7. Nebraska
  8. Washington DC
  9. Maryland
  10. Virginia
  11. New Mexico
  12. Nevada
  13. Oregon
  14. Washington

Not to forget we also traveled to the two ends of Canada. We went to Vancouver in February and to Toronto in September. It was a fun year since we got to make impromptu plans and end up in a state for the weekend. Our trips were short but very detailed. We would try and cover up as much land as possible.

One of my favorite trips was the trip to Mount Rushmore. Here I got to travel to the midwest. There was very little establishment in Wyoming, South Dakota and Nebraska (at least  through the parts we traveled) and that was the beauty to it. Driving through this place was a very calm and soothing experience.

Another highlight for 2012 was Priyendra quitting Google and joining Scaligent. He was very nervous initially but he is extremely happy and satisfied now.

2012 was the year for kids too. Two of my best friends had babies. I am so glad they are both here and I get to play with them very often.

Life is a series of frames and I always hope to capture each frame either in the camera or through pen but I always fail miserably at it. I hope 2013 can give me some stamina to capture as many frames as possible for this year.

 

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April travels

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People can call me crazy but the fun I had exploring the least populated areas of the US of A, was exhilarating. The grasslands in particular were spectacular. They might have been very (very very very…) vast but there was something mystical about them. Each time I would look outside the car in Nebraska, there would be a “wow” from my mouth uttered involuntarily.

Priyendra suggested this idea to drive to Mount Rushmore from Denver. I was thinking of New Mexico this month (April) but the idea of seeing 4 states in one trip appealed to me more than just one state.
We started our journey on the 27th of April. We spent the night in Denver. Next day morning after having a hearty (free ) breakfast at the hotel, we drove towards Cheyenne Wyoming. Cheyenne is the capital of WY but believe me, it just went by. WY is the second least populated state in the US after Alaska. We stopped at this big town of WY called Lusk (1400 population) where we decided to have lunch. Deeksha yelped for restaurants and found one highly rated place called “The Pizza Place”. I think it was rated by everyone who stopped by Lusk while traveling to Rushmore. The Pizza was hand tossed and genuinely worth 4 stars. And that was the end of east Wyoming for us :)

We entered South Dakota and trust me there were a tons of things to do in the Mount Rushmore/ Custer State Park area. We went to the Wind Caves which was one of the longest caves in America stretching to about 163 miles. It was a very different kind of cave since it was more like a 3D cave. We could go down some 300 steps to the second level of the cave. The cave was famous for its boxwork on the roof. Some 95% of the boxwork roof was found here in the wind caves. After taking a tour of the wind caves, we proceeded to drive through the Needles Highway. Now this was one of the very beautiful drives. Needles Highway (SD Highway 87 between Sylvan Lake and Legion Lake ) is located in Custer State Park in the Black Hills area. The 14-mile scenic highway winds through pine forest under a vista of granite spires called “the Needles.” The route snakes through several small granite tunnels. This was worth the 1.5 hours we spent here. We were supposed to do a hike called the cathedral spires hike but since it was flurrying, we could not go for one.

After this drive, we started towards the final aim “Mount Rushmore”. We reached the town of Mount Rushmore at 8 and all the restaurants close at 8 so we had to hurry up to get food. Without checking in into our hotel, we went to eat at the hotel called Ruby House Restaurant. I knew it would definitely offer some bread if there were no vegetarian options. The restaurant was kind enough to accommodate 4 people at the time of closing. We ordered our food after much discussion over what I like and what I should eat.
Priyendra thinks that I do not like spaghetti and I would prefer a bean burger over it. I was not keen on having a bean burger but Priyendra was twaddling that “AJ tumhara toh kat gaya” :)
After dinner we went to see the well lit nigh view of the Mount Rushmore. It was good.

Next day morning again after a hearty (free) breakfast at the hotel, we went to Mount Rushmore memorial again. This time we decided to take the audio tour. One suggestion would be to avoid it :) It was long and spoke only about Gutzon Borglum and his family. He was the artist and sculptor behind the historical monument.

From there on, we moved into Nebraska driving though the Oglala grasslands of Nebraska. They were genuinely beautiful and till horizon one could see the grass. Eastern Nebraska does not seem to be very popular and is very thinly populated as well. The road from Nebraska to Colorado was a straight road and and for miles we could see the road ahead of us. We did take a take out pizza from Dominos in Scottsbluff (may be one of the only Dominos in Eastern Nebraska). We were to travel via Alliance and see the carhenge there but since we were short on time, we planned to take the faster route.
<br/>We managed to reach Denver a little ahead of our schedule and had enough time to try out the best ice-cream in town.
After a sweet ending to our trip, we started with our journey to SF: dropped our GMC, took a shuttle to the airport and discussed about the weirdness of the Denver airport.

Our route for the trip was:

View Larger Map

To check out the pictures, click here.

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Dosa Republic

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As it is said “The Third Time is the Charm” and it was the Jainwals turn to pick a restaurant for the third meeting of gravy gurus. We picked ‘The Dosa Republic’. This is a new restaurant by the famous food truck owners of Curry up now, Akash and Rana Kapoor.

I picked this one up from the “hot new business” section on yelp. I was pretty sure from the start that the food would be good since I have heard great reviews on the curry up now truck.

The food is like south Indian street food with some different cultural flairs to it. The portion sizes are large. Two people could comfortably share a dosa and a starter. We ordered all the starters on their menu.

I liked the manchurian idlis and the uttapam nachos. I did not care for the Panko Crusted Bharwan (Stuffed) Anaheim Chili but really liked the kale wada sambhar and their samosa bits.
After liberally splurging on starters, we ordered main course. Everyone ordered different items. The orders were as follows:

  1. Priyendra: Mysorean Masala
  2. Priyanshi: Sinhala with Paneer
  3. Atashi: Mumbaiyya
  4. Vishal: Mumbaiyya
  5. Arthi: Paisano
  6. Chirag: Vegetarian Tangra
  7. Deeksha: Purani Dilli
  8. Asim:Chilli Chicken and noodles.
  9. Aishwarya:Chennai onion masala
  10. Saumil: Purani Dilli

We had sweet dosas for dessert but the gulab jamun was unparalleled.
Almost all had fun eating the different kind of dosas but I thought Mumbaiyya was the best.

The decor of the place a little rustic with wooden tables and the menu on the chalk board somehow reminded me of Roma burgers in San Francisco. I think they also have their menu written on one.

Wish we had taken pictures of all the dosas. The only one picture that Aish took was :

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The reservation was under my name and somehow the lady on the phone heard my name  “Apishi” :)

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Our first motorcycle: Ninja Kawasaki 650

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Do you wish for something you never had and before you grow old, you want to fulfill this wish of yours. Motorcycle was one such thing for Priyendra. He has been wanting to ride a bike since times immemorial, it was a great bike and he ran in a couple of accidents, but luckily he got legal help to explain who’s held responsible for a motorcycle accident so he can defend himself.

It has been a couple of months with Lalli now and we have been having loads of fun and of course we got a lawyer from the site https://valientemott.com/practice-areas/motorcycle-accidents/ online, so we are covered in case of an accident. We rode it twice to the city (San Francisco) and a couple of times in the South Bay. Priyendra rides it to Google most of the days.

Few more pictures :
while we were at the dealer and other one when Lalli was parked in the garage :)