Sunday, February 10, 2013

Five & a Half and Counting

We have been in Thailand over five and a half years now, and our time here in the land of smiles is almost at an end.  This summer we move back to the United States.

In some ways it seems like we have been here such a long time.  We've been here longer than I was in high school or college (thankfully).  Jacob was a second grader when we arrived, now he is completing the seventh grade.  Nalin was a first grader and is now a sixth grader.  Aleena was not even three years old when we moved here, now she is eight.  She's spent about two-thirds of her life living here.

Sometimes it seems like we haven't been here as long as we have.  It doesn't seem like it was five years ago that we just arrived.  I'm sure the next few months will go by quickly.



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This is a photo of Tim and the kids a few months after we moved to Thailand.




This is a photo from a month ago.  They have definitely changed.

House of Cards

I recently finished the Netflix original series, House of Cards, starring Kevin Spacey. Spacey plays the majority whip in the US House of Representatives (3rd in line), who ruthlessly pursues power. House of Cards presented a compelling story about power politics in Washington.

 Instead of releasing an episode of the show each week, Netflix made all episodes available at once. I think that this is a great model and is how I would prefer to watch serialized dramas. Of course, I could do that for every series that comes out by not watching any until they are all released, but I usually don't wait to do that.

Sunday, January 27, 2013

1st Bowl Game

The 2013 Rose Bowl was not only Jacob's first college football game, but was also mine.  I've been to a many professional football games, both as a Bengals's season ticket holder and earlier as a food and novelty vendor, but I had never been to a college football game.

I knew that I wanted to take Jacob to a football game or a basketball game while we were in Southern California.  I was considered the San Diego Chargers game against the Oakland Raiders, a Lakers or Clippers game, and even USC basketball games.  Those were just another game in each of those teams seasons, while the Rose Bowl seemed a little more special than the others.

One thing that struck me was how much calmer the fans were at the game.  The fans were cheering their team, but it wasn't nearly as loud or crazy as a Bengals game.  There were only a few times in the game where the fans stood up.  Maybe it's just that Southern California laid back vibe.

The guy who sat next to Jacob told us that he had flown in from Minnesota earlier that day, and that it had been minus 17 when he left.  I think it was 60 or so degrees during the game, so that is quite the temperature change.



More Vacation Trip Photos

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Beach

Of course we had to spend some time at the beach while in Southern California.  It was a little too chilly to get in the water, but we stopped by beaches at Huntington Beach and Laguna Beach.  I really enjoyed the rock formations around Laguna.


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Hurray for Hollywood!

On their last day in California, Tim and I took the kids to the Hollywood Boulevard to see the sidewalk of stars.  In addition to the stars on the sidwalk, we stopped by Grauman's Chinese Theater to see the celebrity handprints in concrete.

We decided take one of the open bus tours through Hollywood and Beverly Hills.  In addition to the celebrity homes, we saw David Faustina (Bud from Married with Children) and a couple of housewives of Beverly Hills.  Nalin was very excited because she saw Justin Beaver's house (from a far distance).  While Nalin is not a big fan of Justin Bieber, her friend Skylar is a huge fan.

After the family left, I was actually able to get tickets to a taping of the Jimmy Kimmel show.  It was fun watching the taping, although I'm not sure that I would want to do it very often.








Christmas in the States

Our Christmas vacation plan was to visit New Zealand this year since it is a lot shorter flight from Thailand than from the U.S.  With our decision to consider moving to Southern California when we go back to the U.S. this summer, we decided that it would make more sense to spend some time there to see if we really like it.

The holiday was a combination of house shopping, site seeing and family time.  We rented a house for five weeks in Huntington Beach, about a mile from the ocean.  I was there the full five weeks, but the family the middle two and a half weeks.  The reason that I went early was to scout out some locations before the family arrived, and I planned to stay afterwards in case we found something and I needed to be there to wrap things up.

After we arrived, we discovered that Nalin's idol and obsession, Ariana Grande, was performing at the Pasedena Playhouse's performance of Snow White.  Tim took Nalin and Aleena to the show, and waited with them after to get a photo and autographs.  This was a huge deal for Nalin.  She told us before we left that she would meet her idol on the trip, but we cautioned her that the chances were very unlikely.  Perhaps she has a bit of her mother's luck, because it worked out for her.

On New Year's Day, Jacob and I went to the 2013 Rose Bowl to watch Stanford battle Wisconsin.  The Rose Bowl Stadium is a fun place to watch a football game.  The San Gabriel Mountains provide a gorgeous backdrop for the stadium.  The game was competitive until the final few minutes as Stanford forced a turnover to secure the win.  Fortunately Jacob is thin, because we were in bleacher seats and the two rather beefy Wisconsin fans were taking up their seats and most of mine.  

On the whole we probably spent seven or eight days looking at houses in Irvine and the San Diego area.  The housing market in Southern California is experiencing a shortage of inventory (not a lot of houses for sale), which made looking a bit more challenging.  One thing is for certain, the houses in Southern California are much more expensive than back in the Midwest.  Yeah, I know, no surprise there.

Home shopping with the kids can be a challenge.  As we entered just about every house that we looked at, Nalin would exclaim in a loud and excited voice, "this house is great, we have to buy this house!"  She would then proceed to run up to find "her" bedroom in the house.  A few days we left the kids at home and shopped by ourselves.  It was a lot easier to talk to the agent without the constant "dad, come look at this" or "mom, I want this to be my room."

Of course, it seems like no trip is complete without a trip to an amusement park or three.  This time we visited Disney California Adventure, Legoland and Six Flags Magic Mountain.  We visited Disney on the day after Christmas, and it was packed.  It was cold and a bit rainy on the day we visited Six Flags, but the lines were extremely short, and Jacob and Nalin loved the roller coasters.  It is nice to walk on some of the biggest attractions with no line at all.  Legoland was also bereft of a crowd, making the park a lot more fun.


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We also visited the San Diego Zoo Safari Park, which was a lot of fun.  I splurged for preferred viewing for the cheetah run, and was rewarded with some pretty nice photographs.  The good thing was that we were very close and we had an unobstructed view.  Being that close actually made it more challenging to focus on something moving so quickly.  In order to get some nice shots, I focus locked on a spot that I knew the cheetah would pass.  As it approached the spot, I held down the shutter release ( I was in burst mode) to get as many photos as possible.  It worked, as they ran the cheetah twice, and I got one or two nice photos for each run.

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