Halt Travel Have Baby (Part 1)

Its been a crazy couple of months. I don't quite know where the time went except that it was largely at the office working. With my wife and baby back in KL and me in Bombay, I have had much time to focus on work and also had the much needed time to get a grip on my overwhelming workload and have a sense of control once again.

Having said that, coming home to an empty house with no wife to greet you and no baby laughter in the hall seems like a meaningless existence. It reminds me a little of how I was when I was single. Lots of time to do all the things I want but unable to derive any pleasure or joy out of it simply because you know your heart isn't there.

While I am thankful for the quiet time I had to get my self in order, I am glad that I am back with my wife and daughter for now. For now when I am with them, I do give them my attention. My mind is not away thinking of how will I be able to handle tomorrow and it is focused more on the here and now. I am thankful for my time away from them not just for the space I needed to get a grip of my life, but more for the opportunity it gave me to appreciate just how much my wife and daughter mean to me.

A child does teach you much about your self and a wife helps remind you on what is truly important in life. I am blessed to have both of them.

-pshasi

Have Baby Halt Travel ... If You Can (Part 2)

Part 2 involves the comfortable, quiet and stress-free trip I took flying from Heathrow to KL. I am not ashamed to admit that I enjoyed it. The reprieve from the responsibility of being a father for 3 weeks came as a grace from my wonderful wife whom I take for granted all too often.

While work had spiked up and had consumed much of my free time, I did have a chance to catch up with close friends and family. The simple pleasure of watching a movie was blissful as it was a pleasure my wife and I had not experienced for some time.

The time away from family was also extremely useful as it provided me with some much needed "MY" time which I had used to start organizing my life both personally and professionally, so as not to feel overwhelmed when dealing with the realities of life and family.

I am unashamed to say how much I enjoyed my own personal time (although I did feel guilty every now and then since my wife was busy looking after our wonderful darling) is because,firstly, it did not lessen my love for my wife and family and secondly, it provided me with the necessary time I needed to get a handle on things once again, so that when I do spend time with my family, I am far more in the "NOW" than ever before.

For that, I have to thank my wife, my daughter and David Allen, the developer of the "Getting Things Done" system. More on that later.

Now that my wife and daughter are back with me, I am so happy to be able to spend time with them. I am truly blessed (although maybe undeservingly so) to have a wife and daughter who loves me very much. Next travel will be next week ... once again, of to KL.

-shasi

Have Baby Halt Travel ... If You Can (Part 1)

Traveling with a baby may not cost much for the infant but it sure puts massive constraints on your flight flexibility thereby increasing the likelihood of your own traveling cost. This becomes more of a challenge if the mother expresses milk too.

If this is the case with your family, please plan well in advance and travel off peak or you might just find yourself arguing with everyone around you, especially your travel agent on ticket availability.

So, after much flight changes and arguments with my travel agent, I finally managed to get the specific flight tickets we needed for our holiday trip to UK. Of course, this is after I did the travel booking myself via the internet myself.

It will be nice to travel to UK and hopefully catch up of my old friends there. Luckily (touch-wood), our darling daughter is usually very easy to manage while traveling. I shudder to think how we will manage if she is cranky on flights. Lets see how the trip goes.

-shasi

My Favourite Mac Links

My favourite  5 Mac app links (in no particular order).

1. Scrivener for who fancy writing books or manuscripts
2. Journler for those wanting to keep a digital journal
2. Delicious Library 2 for keeping track of your book collection
3. iSkysoft iMedia Converter for converting media formats
4. Get Tube for converting YouTube type files (Freeware/Donation)
5. Mind Node for those searching for a freeware mind-mapping tool

Hope you enjoy these apps too. Please note that not all of them are freewares.

-pshasi

What A Day

What a day it has been at work today. Waking up at 4am after not really having much sleep the night before and then having to work the full day only to return at 11.30pm can be quite taxing on the body. Strangely enough, the spirit is nourished when one feels that something substantial had materialized from a long hard day of work.

To top it off, nothing beats coming back to a loving wife and a soundly asleep child.

-pshasi

Confessions of a Mac-aholic

I guess tonight is a night of posting blogs as I have decided to once again revamp my blog to consolidate all my various ramblings into a single blog instead of trying to keeping them separate.

Over this past one year, I have to admit, I never thought I would shift so radically from being a PC user to a Mac lover. While I do admit, MS Office PC is still the best for work related number crunching activities and there are significantly more PC based computer games on the market, PCs no longer do justice for what I enjoy doing on the personal front which is mainly managing my photo collection.

Apart from iTunes, iPhotos, iWorks, Front Row and Dashboard, the various other beautiful GUI interfaced Mac based softwares such Delicious Library, Scriverner, Journler and Berokyo makes me love my Mac to bits. A perfect example of this is the use of the iSight as a Barcode Scanner to automatically catalog your books by linking it to Amazon.

So, I guess I have to confess that I am a Mac-aholic, prowling the internet in search of more beautiful Mac based softwares that symbolizes the seamless GUI interface that the Mac is famous for.

Finding A Feeding Solution

Aleeshya has recently stopping drinking milk for the most part which has gotten both of us a little worried. A drop from 21oz to under 6oz of milk has resulted in us being both anxious on her weight gain (since she has always been a little on the smaller side) and by proxy of that her long term development. This coupled with her throwing up much of her food has also put us both on edge.

I have always been concerned whether we had been overfeeding her and my wife has been concerned whether we have been underfeeding her. Amazing how parents can have such deferring views over the same facts.... but then again, we are only human.

Thankfully, my wife's persistence to find a solution had resulted in us realizing that she is no longer comfortable with the baby bottle teat she had been previously using. A smaller size teat has clearly helped significantly although gone are the days that she is taking 18+oz of milk a day.

We have finally come to a compromise that we shall try to space out her feeds a little more and settle for her taking about 10oz to 12oz a day with the condition that we will also be seeking the pediatricians advice on what to do if she doesn't put on any weight. I had worked on my mac to come up with a simple excel sheet to plan a more spread out meal plan and also to track how she is managing on her meal intakes.

Let us hope and pray that Aleeshya continues to develop her mischievous little self and the reduced milk intake is a natural part of her growth.

I am off to Bangalore tomorrow on work. So until the next time.

-pshasi

Prologue for the Book

It has been 6 months of looking after Aleeshya and all I know is that I am exhausted, my work quality has started to deteriorate and my wife is at the brink of passing out from fatigue and our wonderful little girl is still a handful. Am I doing something wrong here or do other fathers also go through this? So, off I went to a major bookstore near my workplace in search for a book on a father’s experience in juggling work, spouse and child. There I am at the parenting section, 5 shelves full of books on parenting - 6 rows per shelf and a about 40 books per row. “Excellent. There is bound to be something here”, I say to myself. Alas, of the 1,200 books on parenting, there were only 3 books relevant to fatherhood experiences. Hence, I bought all 3 and also set myself on track to putting down my personal experiences in the hope that other fathers like me might not feel so alone, frustrated and guilty during this irreplaceable period of their life.

The book is not meant to be a guide on raising children. It is a book on the myriad experiences of a new dad and the jumble of emotions he feels as he plods through the first six months of his daughters life. It is hoped that by sharing his experiences, other new dads who have no clue of what to do need not feel guilty for their feelings of frustration. Any facts described in the book is either from personal experiences or secondary information from friends and family.

Should I Or Shouldn't I

Husband: Recently, I have been thinking about writing a book.

Wife: So, what do I know about writing a book?

Husband: Absolutely nothing.

Wife: What will you write about then?

Husband: About our experiences raising baby girl ... but a little skewed towards what fathers go through.

Wife: You sure someone wants to read about that?

Husband: I don't know. I know I would. However, no one seems to have written much about it. So, should I?

- What do you think? -

p.s. The conversation transpired completely in the author's mind and is in no way a reflection of his loving albeit somewhat exhausted wife.

Shopping Advice

We are back in Malaysia for various reasons. Am so loving it and can't wait for my sentence in Mumbai to be over. Needless to say, one of the first two things I could think of upon arrival was nasi lemak and shopping. However, being a recent first time parent, shopping revolved around getting stuff for our daughter. So we decided to visit Baby Land in PJ in search for some baby food since we have just started Aleeshya on solids.

There we were getting baby food as I passed a couple (of soon to be parents) getting advice from the shop assistant on the Phillips Avent Breast Pump. Of course, me being me, I just couldn't help myself but stop and give my two bit worth of advice on it. After all, I felt obligated to say something after all the problems we had with it, especially after the manufacturer refused to honour the warranty citing mishandling of the equipment on our part. Nonetheless, I think I was fair to Phillips as I suggested to the couple that they should have someone teach them how to use the pump properly lest they end up having the same issues with both the pump and the manufacturer as we did.

We had recommended that they should rent the Madella Lactina from Mamalink if they wanted to have a dependable breast pump machine. The would be mother was so excited that she immediately called them up and made an appointment to visit them that very day itself. While we never did bother to know who they were, we felt truly happy that we had helped reduce the stress and anxiety of that couple. After all, expressing milk is extremely stressful, filled with a roller coaster ride of emotions for the mother and for the father too as he finds ways to be emotionally supportive to his wife.

A Working Getaway

It has been one crazy week. The Delhi trip went well - work wise, although my baby had stopped feeding well. It had been a crisis on both fronts and juggling it had been stressful and draining at the same time. As if that wasn't bad enough, the fog in Delhi seemed to have conspired to ruin everything I hold dear in my life. Thankfully all went well enough, thanks to an understanding boss, a helpful colleague and an accommodating wife.

Chennai went much better and I must admit it is a much nicer place than Bombay, for me at least. The roads are better and we are not so anxious about taking our little darling around the city. Before you know it, the craziness of the whole trip is over and so is the little break I had after that.

Now we are back home and I am dreading the drudgery of Bombay life, the city that is so in your face that anyone would feel claustrophobic and desensitised over time. Glad it is only a year left to go. Both mother and daughter have fallen asleep. Thankfully, mummy is far more efficient than daddy, since she had been on her feet getting everything sorted out without a moments rest.

I definitely have to spend much more time at home at least in the evenings and hence will need to figure out how best to reschedule my working life.

Well thats all for now. Next working trip is Goa.

-pshasi

A New Year, A New Beginning

It is the 5th of January 2010. It is amazing how the decade has passed and how much life has changed. In 2000, I was alone and depressed for reasons only my closest family and friends know why. In 2010, I am married to a wonderful woman and am also blessed with a darling of a daughter.

The new year has brought across the shores of Malaysia, for we (Vasantha, Aleeshya and I) have finally moved to Mumbai. As I look from the dining table over to the hall where Aleeshya is fast asleep, I cannot help be grateful to God for the miracle that we call children. Aleeshya is a bundle of joy to us and no matter how exhausted we are, her innocent smile never seizes to energise us in our care for her. Aleeshya is slowly starting to stir, so I best end this entry for now.

Until next time, laters all.

-pshasi