Reliance on technology paid off!! Terrible phone connection and terrible roads – but we made it to my mom ‘s birthplace alright!! This is the house she was born in. I have a couple of hours of video of mom going from house to house like a small kid and reconnecting with her old friends!! One amazing thing – one look at faces she had not seen in 40 years, and she nailed their names immediately. And most of their siblings’ names too!! As thrilling as the whole experience was, she also had to deal with the painful part of hearing half of her old friends are no more…

New Year adventure: For the last few years my mom has been wistfully talking about the small village she was born in and her childhood friends. She has not been there for over 40 years. I have some vague recollection from the only visit i had ever made there. Last night brother and I decided to take her to visit her birthplace.
That was the easy part. Finding the place was a whole different ball game. Mom was not too helpful with her directions – “it is by a big canal”!!! And Google maps has nothing on a village called ” Upalati”.
Internet to the rescue!!! Wikimapia had some place called “Upalati” but all it had was latitude and longitude and a whole page of irrelevant ads. Unless all the folks in Upalati have suddenly started selling life insurance policies 🙂
Armed with that latitude, longitude, iPhone, google maps, car phone charger and a whole lot of reliance on technology, here we go!!

Surprise start to the New Year. Brother and I started the day with a 7K run. Dragged my sister and brother in law for the first 2K too! Not sure whether my dad was inspired or got terribly worried about us but when we came back found out that he had grabbed his new walking stick, left the bed he has been confined to after surgery and went downstairs for a few hundred feet walk. The security guy downstairs had to help him back in the last stretch but what the heck – I will take that anyday over he complaining about dragging my sister and brother in law for a run 🙂