Here is a recap of our 2006 year that was sent to family..

The Balasubramanians in 2006

This was a year full of joy, adventure, travel and familial renewals for the Balasubramanians. We welcomed the New Year in the RV Park in Austin TX. We had a good community and friends as we had grown close to some of fellow RVers.

In March we started looking for a house in the Austin locale and ended up finding what we wanted and needed in the town of Cedar Creek about 30miles from downtown Austin. The house was part of a new development and we ended up closing and moving into our new home in April. The house is spacious to accommodate all of us and the dog, has enough acreage for Raj and Stef to start their mini farm and is very close to Sam’s school.

In September we visited India as a family along with Aunt Krith for Raj’s maternal grand mother’s 80^th birthday. The trip was a long one in the plane and a short one on ground. We were there for less than 12 days and took in as much as we could. We slept on the floor, sat on the floor and ate with our hands and went vegetarian for 10+ days. We also developed an ear for Raj’s mother tongue “Tamil” and got to know our extended family. Raj and Stef also got to renew their vows in front the elders.

November saw Stef playing the hostess for a family Thanksgiving. We had invited all our family in the US of A to show up at our new home for turkey and gravy. Due to various circumstances, only Stef’s Mom could make it. She was a trooper and made the drive from CO to TX non-stop in a day. She enjoyed the kids and the food and the Austin facilities.

We will be vacationing in Gulf Coast of Texas and visiting NASA over Christmas break.

Rohan is 3 going on 30. He is one tough guy being the “bosser” of the family. He also has switched football teams from being a Georgia Bulldawg to Texas Longhorn. He still owns our house and continues to pain his older brothers.

Jay is going to be 5 in a month and shows off his status as the older brother to Rohan by showing him the ropes. He is starting to read and write and is a sharp dude. He still wants to be a Texas Ranger baseball player, among other things. He played Soccer this year and scored over 5 goals in the few games he played. He is getting ready for T-Ball and baseball next year.

Sam is 11 going on 19. He bikes to school almost daily. He is pursuing his Kungfu and is an Orange Sash. He will start Saxophone next year and is excited to have his Uncle Steve’s Sax refurbished. He is in an advanced placement class and relishes the interaction with other bright young adults. He has made few good friends who are musically inclined and they plan on starting a band next year.

Stef is trying keep sanity between the three boys and Raj. She has started substituting in the local schools to understand the school system and to see if teaching is something she would like to pursue. The kids love her and has gotten several complements to take on full time roles. She is contemplating getting certified as a teacher among other things, once the boys become more independent. As her baby, Roh grows up next year, she will have more of a freedom to pursue some of these options on a regular basis.

Raj is enjoying his work and family. He will be starting his MS in Computer Engineering at University of Texas, Austin in January. He continues to travel and pile on those miles and points, which he promptly uses to take his family on vacations.

Holiday wishes and cheers from our family to yours!

Catch us online at http://balasubramanians.com

[another one of my 3 year old stories]

Rohan was adament that he had seen a HO in the mall. My 11 year old son who is hip and cool and knows all grown up dialect, started laughing uncontrollably. My wife and I were apalled that our 3 year old was saying such unspeakable things. Upon further questioning he said he had seen HO HO, the Christmas Dude!

I was working seriously on some code, when my 3 year old [Roh] comes running into my office all happy and joyous, yelling - “Daddy I can breath through my nose….see..” [and begins to demonstrate nasal breathing]. He then proceeded to tell me in detail how he had managed to get all his boggies out, by himself and cleared his nasal. For the rest of the day he kept showing off his nasal breathing to his brothers and annoying them.

I am not as creative as Mark to write a poem…but I thought it was funny enough to blog in the same spirit as that jingle-butt, as it will be the last post for a while as I go on vacation for the next week.
Backdrop: Roh never lets me or my wife clean his nose, always has some excuse and is too wiggly for us to do anything with. As much as we try he ends up with some clog and breathes through one nose and moth or a combination thereof. So this is a HUGE accomplishment for him…

I am finishing this fantastic, albeit older book on psychoanlysis of why Gandhi did what he did. It answered a lot of my questions and created some that I didnt have to begin with. Erik has done a great deal with clearly establishing the framework and taking key events in Gandhi’s life to show how he was able to accomplish what he was able to do, in a progressive manner..I am now looking to start the auto-biography  in the next weeek…

Thanks to a peer of mine, I am now hooked on finger style guitar - specifically TOMMY EMMANUEL and PETE HITTLINGER.

If you want a sample of what it sounds like, check out this one. If you want a sample of what Stevie Wonder’s Superstition sounds like on a solo guitar, see here. If you dont know how the original song sounds like, click here. It will blow your mind..it sure did mine.
Thank you Miles!

DeWitt Clinton recently wrote about the predicament I go through every so often. As I am starting on a new work project (one that I havent encountered before), I think of setting up an “enterprise” quality environment to design develop build test and deploy. I spend roughly 1.2 times more than the actual design/build etc. of the project. The key justification I give myself for spending that extra time is to make sure whatever I am doing is duplicatable the next time around…Given my role as an architect ,that next time comes seldom or frequently (when I least expect it)…Its unpredictable.

So here is a conundrum. Since I dont know if I am going to write JSR168 portlets with JSF, next time around, do I need to spend a weekend setting up Eclipse (or lately Emacs), Ant, Maven, Tomcat, XDoclet etc. so after I am done with this project, I can reuse this another time- whenever that happens?
The question I always have asked is WHY. Why do I go thru’ this pain? Other than the masochistic kicks, I cant think of a reason, given my style of work [read “doesnt code for living”]…But I do know that by going through my primitive work environments, it was upto my standards and what I needed, unbloated, even if its only a half day programming project.

May be you have something to say about that?

I took the kids to Saturday Morning Math Group (an open and free Math lecture for kids and adults alike) at UT. They have had some cool lectures in the past (although, this was our first one). Dr.Burger gave a pasiionate talk on Number Theory focusing on GOLDEN RATIO. He was funny, in command of the show and very erudite. I really had lots of fun. Sammy was a zombie [he had a sleepover at his friends and watched Superman movie till 5am] and barely enjoyed the lecture. He says he “got” the Fibonacci sequence. Jay and Ro were in their own world. They enjoyed the free treats and clapped when everyone clapped. Jay thought the golden ratio spiral picture was cool. So he proceeded to do his own rendition of the spiral, rectangle and other math problems.

In all I thank UT Math Dept for putting together. It took most of the grad students in the department and volunteers to get this amazing show going. The entire lecture hall was packed. There were kids from middle school, high school and under grads.