It had been a long time since i had been to sacramento - after arun-nandhini left sanjose my trips literally stopped. It was fun and atleast i had the satisfaction of doing something in my weeklong xmas vacation (although only weekend i spent in sacramento). I had requested prakasam-eswari permission to gate-crash ;-) into their party.

Arrived friday evening after getting stuck in 680/80 intersection (2 hr drive became 4 hrs). Ram-anu took me to a pooja at Dr.Kumar's place. A swamiji lectured on energy around us. I tried to fix the adobe printing problem on kumar's computer with no success (jeez even tech people cannot do stuff like this easily what will commoners do, still we've to go a longway in easy computing - but PCs will probably never be that simple in my lifetime - everybody blames msft for the current state of affairs). Stayed friday night at anu-ram's place, me and ram had a good chat till 2 a.m (while anu slept half-way thru the chat). next day went to prakasam's place for party. Saw prakasam-eswari and kids manu-darshana after long time. They were busy so i could chat with them only little. I wish i had stayed there - i should make another trip probably. Very glad to hear that prakasam is doing well and will probably become some bigshot soon :-). darshana and manu have grown. divya daughter of manohar was another sweet kid - fan of britney spears it seems. hmmm....

I'm seeing oviyaa (bala-anitha's daughter) after long time (more than a year) - she has grown, seemed very different from my recollection. Then went to see bala-anitha's home. It was very nice and huge house. They've 61" sony TV. The effects of watching movie were great. Met anitha's sister and brother in law (vanitha and thendral). Had a heartful chat with bala and anitha recollecting our memories on our families,college days and so on. Till 3 a.m in morning and i spoiled their sleep that day (they got to wake up at 7 for their kid oviyaa). This chat gives me so much pleasure i realise why humans are called social animals, more so in case of us indians i guess. I made a mental note to myself i should visit sacramento more often and recollected my previous so many trips with arun-nandhini filled with so much good time.

Sunday came back to anu's house with bala's family and we visited the ground ram-anu have bought in one of the high class neighbourhood (with neighbours like eddy-murphy, chris-webber). Its a small hill and their house is going to have their own winding road (driveway) ;-). I was telling them that i should not bring my wife (after my marriage - if at all i get married ofcourse ;-)) to sacramento. Because looking at all this people's house, talk about backyard projects etc etc, we would feel inadequate (buying similar house here in bayarea will be million or lot more).

Now to the interesting part - photos i took at prakasam's place.

The Great Dr. Prakasam
Dr. Eswari Prakasam
Kids Ooviyaa, Divya, Darshana
Kids Ooviyaa, Manu
Anitha and Bala
Ram and Anu
With ram and anu
With anitha, bala - Anitha making fun of me and bala and whether she ought to be in the picture
Me - darshana took this picture
Christmas tree - at prakasam's place