My 11th Birthday

On Saturday, September 12, 2009, I turned 11.

I had been waiting for a week. My parents told me a few of the things that would happen.

Any way, first of, I got awesome gifts. I got the 5 books I wanted, which were: The Search for Truth, The Sea of Monsters, The Titans Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian. I also got the new WII Sports Resort. I also got a cell phone. It is a LG Neon.

My friend, Stephen, came at 10:00 A.M. My other friend, Ankith, came at 10:30. We played on the computer for some time. At 11:00, my other friend, Sanjana, came. We started talking. Later, a few other friends came. We ate some cake, which was delicious. Then we played a few games with lemons like the Lemon and Spoon Race and Lemon Basketball. Then we ate some pizza. Then we created our own ice cream. We got delicious Haagen Daz vanilla ice cream, strawberry syrup, cashew powder, and M&Ms. It was delicious. Afterwards, we watched the movie Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa.

In the evening, I had a birthday feast with my cousins, aunt, uncle, and family. After eating, I played WII Sports Resorts. I skydived from a plane, flew into a volcano, and fought hordes of swordsman.

Anyway, I had an awesome birthday. I hope my next birthday is just as good. I’ve been using my phone every day and I’ve been really happy.

My Mount Madonna Adventure

On September 7, 2009, my sister, mother, my grandmother, two cousins, my uncle, my aunt, and I went to the Mount Madonna Center. It is a kind of Indian resort/retreat. It has a temple, a picnic area, cabins, a yoga area, a cafe, and more! It was really new, too.

We left our house at 10:00 A.M. I don’t know when we arrived. I was kind of skeptical about mountains since we went up and down a horrible one called Mt. Hamilton sometime ago. We got mountain sickness, headaches, hunger pains, and more there. I just crossed my fingers and hoped Mt. Madonna was nothing like that. And it wasn’t. It was covered in beautiful greenery. It was much safer there, too. The turns were gentle as well. I knew right then that it was going to be a great day.

The first thing we did was go to the temple. It was new, clean, warm, and shady. It had huge shade-like thing at the top. The floor was a mixture of carpets, tiles, and rugs. They were all soft and warm. The mixture of all the different colors of the rugs and carpets was incredible! There were also little statues everywhere. I really liked it.

Stop # 2: The Anjaneya Cafe. It was a little, comfortable place. It was also near

some private picnic tables.

Moving on. The next place we went to was the picnic area. However, most of the tables were reservations only. However, I found two tables with no reservation required. I ate some chitraanna, madurvade, and potato chips and drank some pink lemonade. It was delicious.

Next, we had a photo spree at the picnic table. We took a picture of everyone climbing on tree stumps and moss and a lot of other things.

Finally, my father, sister, cousins, uncle, and me went on a 1 mile hike. We saw redwood trees and huge, fallen, moss covered logs and one of the less nice aspects of the hike: HORSE DUNG! It echoed all around and I made a few noises exploiting the echoes.

Finally, at 2:00 P.M. we went home. We took one of our cousins with us and my sister played with her on the way back.

We returned home, tired but happy, at 3:30 P.M.

Mt. Madonna was an AWESOME place. My family has even decided to stay there for a day in spring. Anyhow, I LOVED our trip picnic at Mt. Madonna. It was GREAT. I hope we go there more times.

Complete works of Sir. Arthur Conan Doyle - A report

For my book report, I read Sherlock Holmes: The Complete Novels and Stories, Volume 1 by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The publisher is Bantam Classics. It doesn’t seem to have a copyright date, or at least inside of the book, probably because Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who died over a century ago, never copyrighted the stories. It has 1,059 pages.

Sherlock Holmes is the main character of all the stories. He is very tall and has very keen powers of deduction and observation. It can even seem as if he can read minds because he can observe the expressions of a person. He uses these powers to solve various mysteries that would never been solved without his help. He actions show how he is felling at the time, though only his friends would be able to understand them. One example is that when a case is going badly, he is always running around, smokes incessantly, eats at strange hours, and does many other strange things. Holmes also has a brother who is 7 years older and named Mycroft who has even keener powers of observation and deduction.

The setting is between the late 1880s to the early 1900s in London, England.

This book has many different stories about Sherlock Holmes. It is divided into 4 parts. It starts with the story A Study in Scarlet, where Dr. Watson is introduced and meets Sherlock Holmes. They solve their first mystery together. It is a very strange mystery, because a rich man was killed, but nothing was stolen. The word RACHE was written above the body in blood. However, there was no injury on the body. A Sherlock Holmes point out that rache is German for revenge. However, Holmes solves the mystery. The next story is The Sign of Four. When this mystery is solved, Dr. Watson gets engaged to Holmes’ client.

The next division of the book is The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. Most of the stories in this division are mysteries that Holmes’ solved before he met Dr. Watson. Some of the mysteries are such as The Yellow Face and The “Gloria Scott”. The last story in this division is The Final Problem. In this one, Holmes’ appears to die, but takes the biggest crime lord in London, Professor Moriarty.

In The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Watson discovers that Holmes didn’t die, but was hiding from the late Professor Moriarty’s crime empire, which saw him hide after killing Moriarty. By the end of the first story in this division, Sherlock Holmes is safe from the gang because he captures the top member of the leftover group.

The last story in Volume 1 is The Adventure of the Second Stain, where Holmes averts an international crisis.

This book is like Agatha Christie’s books because both series are about strange mysteries and Christie’s characters Poirot and Miss Marple are like Holmes.
*Read page 781

I recommend this book highly to anyone who likes mysteries. On a scale of 1-5, I rate it a 6.

Return to California...

On August 11, 2009, at 2:00 (India) in the morning, my sister, grandmother, and I were in Banglore International Airport preparing to go back to California. We had arrived in India a month ago on July 5, 2009. We had a lot of fun in India, but now we had to go.

We were flying on Dragonair Airlines. Before we left, we had some issues with luggage weight. I was already tired when we got into the plane. The flight was delayed because of paperwork. I decided to sleep because it was taking so long. I slept for about 2 hours. I didn’t do much during the flight besides sleeping and having a light snack.

When we got to Hong Kong, it was lunchtime. My sister and I ate our brunch and we got ready to go to California. I also did a short Sandhyavandanam. After our luggage was searched, some complications were aroused that almost made us miss our flight. I’m not going to go into detail of the events because I don’t think any of us would want to be reminded of those grueling and terrifying 45 minutes. Luckily, we got to the plane in time.

This time we were flying on Cathay Pacific Airlines. Since I had already gotten a lot of sleep, I wasn’t tired at all. Anyway, for once, the plane left without delay. I watched some TV and a few movies during the 12-hour trip. My sister and I ate some pasta for our Lunner (like brunch, except a mix of lunch and dinner instead of breakfast and lunch). We also drank a lot of apple juice.

When we got to San Francisco International Airport, we were really happy because we would be able to see our parents again, who had left India 2 weeks earlier. It didn’t take long to go through customs because my sister and I are U.S. permanent residents and citizens. We picked up all our suitcases, and right when we went out, our parents came.
They told us they had just come. It was good to see them again. We went home, I did my Madhyanka, we ate lunch, our parents returned to work, and me, my grandmother, and my sister relaxed for the afternoon.

Today is August 17, 2009. We have been in California for 6 days. I have no jetlag, aside for the fact that I didn’t get a second of sleep on the first night back. I already miss India, but I’m having fun here. On the 20th my 4th cousin (my cousin’s, cousin’s, cousin’s, cousin) Vignesh is coming to visit from Dallas. I only remember him from when we visited his house last year. School is starting on the 24th.

I had a really great visit to India.