Category: Personal & Family

Too many readers!

11 Jun
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Entertainment, Personal & Family

A family with many readers gets its own challenges at times! Never realized that we compete so much for books. During the last weekend, three of our family members are found to be in the middle of reading the three books of a trilogy. I was in the middle of the first book – The Hunger Games; Latha was reading the second one – Catching Fire; Spurthi, the fastest reader of us as of today – was reading Mockingjay. At times, we are stuck while the other reader completes the next one in the sequence. Surya spared us by confining to games and online reading.

I see the same deadlock over some of the recent Telugu books I purchased – both my in-laws and myself wanting to read the same book when we find a few minutes to rest.

In a way, it is good to compete for books – much better than competing for a TV remote.

Cooking

22 Apr
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Entertainment, Food, Personal & Family

Some of the passions I have hardly come out during the regular course of life. May be because of my busy lifestyle or may be because I am surrounded by people who beat me in passion in those areas.

One such passion for me is cooking. It hardly comes out because my wife is one of the best cooks in my life and I know I can never match her. However, my cooking skills come out once in a while, especially in my wife’s absence.

One thing I realized is that I can’t cook in small quantities. I need at least 4-6 servings to be cooked for a decent result.

Here is a glimpse from a cooking session couple of weeks ago.

 

Cooking-2012-APR-01


 

Busy weekend, Bay area style

26 Mar
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Entertainment, Personal & Family

What would a busy weekend in Bay Area look like?

  • Enabling SIP on a Voice Gateway and configuring extensions
  • Installing and testing SIP clients
  • Installing a Mass Phone Dialer for testing the network
  • Validating users on a production automation system
  • Assisting in installation of  a PBX box
  • Installing VMWare, after troubleshooting a few issues and building/rebuilding RAID on a device
  • Troubleshooting and fixing a cable modem
  • Fixing an unresponsive router by reinstalling firmware
  • Configuring a wireless network
  • Setting up a new iPhone 4s
  • Apartment Move
  • Shopping, Laundry, cleaning, …

Darn!

Sankranti Trip 2012

23 Jan
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Entertainment, Food, Personal & Family

This year, only myself and Surya managed to go to our native village during Sankranti. We decided to drive to that place in our Xylo. The onward journey took more than 12 hours, including a few hours of visits to relatives en-route. The drizzle hit highway reduced our speed and we fully complied with that need.

Once we reached our village, it is a travel spree. I covered a bunch of backlog visits to relatives, visiting some of the places after about a decade or so. Most of these visits turned out to be reciprocal, keeping us busy throughout the festive season. The local visits lasted 400+km of driving within a 25km radius.

Gathering of relatives and friends in our village turned out to be a decent success. Bunch of planning sessions, makeshift tents, food courts and other arrangements kept the guests comfortable enough.

Used my Xylo to the maximum extent during the trip. Loaded it fully during some local trips, used it to transport large sized items like sugarcane and while returning, used it to carry essential items for an upcoming wedding.

Each day of the trip followed a very simple pattern – eat a lot of spicy and non-veg food; top it up with ice creams etc. to avoid acidity; drive; meet people; eat again and repeat until end of day.

During our return (which is preempted by more than a day to the last day of the festival) we found that the highway is deserted and we covered the distance in about 7 hours.

The trip made me drive more than 1300km in 6 days. Some pics from the trip are linked here.

 

Sankranti-Trip-2012

 

Welcome 2012

01 Jan
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Entertainment, Personal & Family

 

Milind and Sriya joined Spurthi and Surya in welcoming the new year at our home. After our dinner on 31st, kids spent a couple of hours with friends in the apartment complex. Once they are back, we cut the cake when the clock struck zero hours. The writing of the year 2012 on the cake almost ended up the cake in the cakewrecks list :-).

Here are the pictures from the night. Have a Happy and Prosperous New Year.

 

 

 

NY-2012


 

 

 

Looking Back – Email to Blog Transformation

15 Dec
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Blogging, Entertainment, Personal & Family

Stumbled upon an old email to a group thread, that announced my personal blog and indicated a deviation from the habit of sending emails to relatives and friends groups. This email is sent sometime in Aug 2006 to a group mail of relatives, after I am confident that I am writing blogs regularly. Snipped out personal details of others from that email.

In my case, I started writing lengthy blogs rather than sending lengthy emails ;-).

Read my blog at
http://www.theraju.com/
and especially the personal blog content at
http://www.theraju.com/?cat=4
I may update this more often than the emails I have been sending. The only issue would be that blog content is generic and politically correct, for it to be sitting on a blog.

Good to know that kids are doing fine. And good to know that you are managing some time to go for movies.

[snip]
Me and latha have lot of backlog for movies. Only this week, we have seen Vikramarkudu. That will give you an idea of our backlog ;-).

We still need to see bommarillu, but don’t have a slot in calendar for next 2-3 weeks.

Didn’t dare to go near to a theater playing KANK. :-). Most of the web reviews in the first 1-2 days was that the movie is excellent. Anybody who watched the movie said that the movie is a bakwaas.

Spurthi and Surya are busy with some class tests this week. Implies that Latha is also busy.

Well, thats all for now. Celebrate Vinayaka Chavithi. Will send some photos soon.

I really love the opening statement – I started writing lengthy blogs :-). 5+ years down the lane, the habit continued.

Bicycled Every Day of the Month

31 Oct
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Personal & Family

Ever since my student days, this October is probably the first month in which I bicycled every day, no exceptions. Interestingly, the first and last day of the month saw the least distance bicycled – about 2.5km each. Most days saw to the tune of 6km to 11km. There is one day with longest distance, about 16km.

I thought I missed the bus today, when I came back from work at 3.30am and slept till 6.30am. But in the evening, to get a few snags fixed, I took my bicycle out and spent some time roaming around the neighborhood. Once back home, I am checking my logs and found that fact that the month concluded on a very positive not from a physical activity standpoint.

Diwali Night – Part 2

28 Oct
Raju Alluri 0 Comment Entertainment, Personal & Family

We headed out from home in the afternoon on Diwali day and went to Kompally area to meet a few relatives. En route, me and Surya stopped by at our new home to burn a few crackers at the place. We reached the place of our get together by 5.30pm and kids played in the lawns for a while. Our cousins started trickling in by 6pm. We did a long fireworks session till about 10.15 pm and then headed to Palm Meadows community for a quick stopover at the Diwali Celebrations there.

In addition to the first set of pics, here are the pictures from the day.

 

 

Diwali2011-PM-Set02