Events – Mistry family site

Torrey Pines Yoga Sunset 🌅

Jun 15, 2020Jun 15, 2020

So, after a very pleasant graduation party for Prinesh, he was able to get back to his video game playing. And we decided to join Karin & other youngsters at the sunset yoga at Torrey pines where Alina was providing the music…

The sun was a couple of hours from setting, paragliders were taking advantage of the breeze and floating around when we arrived. After a longish walk across to the yoga area overlooking the beach, quite a few hip & stylish folks were in the middle of their yoga session, with newcomers arriving, one complete with her baby goat following her.

I walked around the cliff edge taking photos of the phenomenal views and the paragliders (while tactfully concealing my drink 🍸). Times like this bring home to me why it’s so phenomenal living here, as the views were breathtaking.

I spotted a truck with a large lens on a tripod in the bed, and went to investigate. Turned out it was a couple of military guys operating the equipment. When I asked, they said they were looking out for unidentified aircraft in the area! So we joked a little bit about UFOs, and when I asked if I could take photographs of them, they declined, so I only have a picture of the lens they were using.

After the yoga there was music by Alina and it was fun catching up with a couple of folks that we knew.

Prinesh Graduates! 🎓👏🏼🎉 #Caltech2020

Jun 15, 2020Jun 16, 2020

So, just as with the other boys, four years have flashed by, and our youngest son is now a graduate of the California Institute of technology, CalTech!

We had ~40 joining the Zoom from CA, WA, NY, Toronto, London, France, Japan & Australia and a nice cheer and toast when Prinesh’s photo came up and name was announced. We also did a small quiz about him, and his brothers roasted him appropriately, Krishan from New York and Riki super early from Melbourne Australia ❤️❤️

See the summary here: https://youtu.be/P49-u1vJgmY

We didn’t know much about CalTech when he applied in 2016, beyond the name and historic reputation (https://www.timeshighereducation.com/student/best-universities/best-universities-world#survey-answer) but he now joins a select group of ~16,000 students who have graduated CalTech since it got its current name in 1920 (https://archives.caltech.edu/about/fastfacts.html)

As with every other graduate in 2020, the ceremony was held virtually, and poor Prinesh had to spend a whole morning not playing video games so he could Star in the Global zoom call that we organized for the ceremony.

A couple of weeks earlier, he received his cap and gown, and belatedly told us that he had to submit his graduation photo the next day. We had invited our friend Karin over, and decided to find a suitable location nearby and take photos during the “golden hour”. Thankfully, instead of trying to race up to La Jolla, we remembered the Balboa Park Rose 🌹 Garden should be looking pretty nice, and raced up there, with cap and gown and mask, to take lots of photographs as Prinesh blinked and squinted into the setting sun! Karin took some of the prize winning pictures, and Prinesh patiently post with us all in different settings, only looking slightly uncomfortable 😣

Rancho Santa Fe Orange picking and hike

May 25, 2020May 27, 2020

Our friend who runs the point Loma rotary club invited us to orange picking in Rancho Santa Fe for the local food banks. So we drove up to do a short hike first in horse country. The houses were beautiful and sprawling with ranches vineyards and citrus groves everywhere

The initial path of the wildflower walk was deceptively steep going up and then as steep going down into the canyon towards the stream, with beautiful views of all the way down and sounds of the flowing stream below

The path along the river was lovely, with some huge trees that had fallen over lifting their entire route system into the air.

The path climbed up and up the side of the canyon was lovely with lots of wildflowers and birds which twittered away.

Then through several horse ranches where we saw a lovely white horse with a unicorn platted forelock, and cute tiny donkeys

We drove by our friends Greg and Celines house and gave them one of my marmalades, and they gave us six eggs laid that morning! we also dropped a lime marmalade at Seth’s, and drove over to the church where the Rotarians were meeting.

We introduced ourselves and once Karin showed up, the group drove around the corner to the citrus grove which was part of a lovely estate. We thought we would exhaust the supply of oranges quickly, so picked a tree that was heavy with fruit. We filled up three crates, and had only done about 30% of what was on the tree! Hauling the oranges back to the tarp where we washed, dried and bagged them ended up taking a lot longer than the picking itself.

In all, our group of 8-10 probably picked 1500 oranges for the food banks, and we took some for ourselves also!

Then back home for a quick hair trim, soft boiled egg with buttered toasted and D saw Curran for her back. We invited her to stay for dinner and finally had my cornflour chapatis with the remains of the keema, lovely artichokes and my cheesecake/ key lime pie 🥧👍🏼❤️

Meeting the tuna boat…

May 13, 2020May 27, 2020

So, I heard the tuna boat was coming in on Wednesday and would be selling to the public early Thursday morning, and wanted to check it out.

So after waking D up early, we drove off into the marine foggy morning and swung around to check out the doc. Turns out a few people were already in the line by 7:15.

So we decided to mask up, hop into the line, and watch the bustling activity on the boat where they chopped up large tuna into pieces and wrappedthem up. Some people wheeled away whole fishes.

We ended up buying 5lbs and raced home to cut into manageable pieces, scoffing some as I cut into pieces! We gave a piece to our friends Lim and Joe, and proceeded to have dinner so Lana, followed by sashimi in the evening and next day.

Our actual 7th Anniversary…!

Mar 2, 2020Mar 2, 2020

So, another 4 years have zoomed by, and it was our actual 7th anniversary this weekend…on a Saturday, just like on 29/2/92…

We had a nice roof-top dinner at a friends on the Thu overlooking Balboa park, with great food and – although the sun had set – views of the city and planes coming in for landing… I made my hummus and the new recipe meatballs – turkey with pork, bread, stock, onion, masala & parmesan – which are coming out great, as well as butter-chicken which everyone loved.

Our friend Lynne had given us a bag of limes from her tree, so we made Lime Marmalade, lime pickles and a pineapple-lime chutney, and salted some cutup limes for another pickle. I’m on the lookout for wild fennel for a new infusion, and hit on the idea of using the iNaturist app to see where recent sightings have been but, so far, have only have old, dry plants…

Fri morning, we headed to Rachelles for lunch with the old ladies that D does her pastel art with – she’s their mascot, and probably the youngest person there (I was one of 2 guys…) Her house up by La Jolla is lovely & eclectic and has a hedge / wall of beautiful ficus trees all round. Then off to our favorite little walk off La Jolla Farms road, where the rabbit and hummingbirds didnt disappoint, and we took pics of D with her glamorous straight hair, posing with various backdrops, and then down to Blacks beach where lots of surfers were out (had to edit her hiking boots out of the pics!)

On Sat, I had laid out the new silver & copper rings I made in the lovely copper enamelled bowls for her to find in the morning, and she gave me a sumi-e painting of the many things we’ve done. She ended up pretty much ignoring the rings, and apparently chose to wear a crappy earlier version of the enameled initial earrings I’d made weeks ago…

We went to the fish market, which was packed, including some politician being filmed shaking hands with the locals… The catch looked great, but we were too chicken to try anything new or exotic… After her meltdown, I dropped her and went to my pottery, where my new pieces had all come out pretty well, and I trimmed the bottoms and also found the rounded vase from the most recent firing

On returning, she was still in a complaining mood, but had made lots of food, including prepping her biriyani… She didn’t know what we were going to be doing so, while helping, I coordinated the ‘surprise’ guests for the evening. Unfortunately the front desk wasn’t staffed well that day, so it made it difficult to arrange – I stashed a box with a bottle of wine, bottle of Rye, plates and forks on the 10th floor for our friends to set up the surprise. Thankfully, Steve and Lynne were game, and while Faisal and Karin came to the apt, the others managed to make their way in with me popping out under the guise of ‘looking for my Amazon delivery’… But, of course, D was too smart and suspected / expected something to be going on… Faisal was nudged into asking to ‘see the roof deck’ so we headed up with drinks.

D saw our guests as she walked around the outside of the building, and made knowing noises indicating she knew something was going on.. Thankfully, they were all very excited, so we took pics, grabbed everything and headed back down to the apt, to munch on D’s delicious samosas, eat hummus and Joe’s excellent rosy red lamb chops – he has been challenged to a ‘poke-off’ as he claimed his is the best…!

The gang liked my homemade gin & anise vodka, the red wine was a hit with Lisa & Steve & I polished off a good amount of the Rittenhouse 100 proof ‘bottled in bond’ Rye, which was excellent…Rajiv had made some delicious soup, and his little niece (?) had a nice time trying everything before he had to leave….

Needless to say, a fun time was had by all, and people were almost too stuffed to make a dent in the delicious biriyani… Lisa demonstrated her red-wine-cleaning-off-the-carpet technique and had lots of good notes to swap with Lynne on many subjects, including jewishness…!

Woke late and groggy the next cloudy day and headed off to the Del Dios Highlands walk.. It was beautful as usual, and the unrelenting steady steep slope had us huffing and puffing to the top. We spoke to our dear friend Ken near the top, eating into his time to check out the ladies at his yoga class. After a good look at the reservoir we headed back, marvelling at how mountain bikers could actually make it up *and* down the same slope we were having trouble walking…

Back to the apt, feeling lazy, had a quick nap and downloaded some movies for D to watch. While I plodded thru my Spanish homework D watched Parasite and announced it was very good…

So… we shall see what the next anniversary brings… Thanks if you managed to read this far! Leave a message…!

Party in White…

Feb 16, 2020Mar 4, 2020

We were happy to be invite to Karins 40th – felt quite odd as we haven’t been to any 40th’s for over years! The theme was White, so D was able to pull out several choices… I was not 🙁

So, on Valentines, after receiving all her beautiful new handmade earrings, D heads off to get JSJ done to her, and I head off to the local Goodwill, sorting thru hundreds of wrong sizes and colors…wishing Krishan or D were there to do the work… Eventually found a pair of light colored Lee pants that were about the right size, a few items for the kitchen including measuring cup and tea infuser, and made my way back past all the homeless folks hanging out by the metro… Dinner was delish artichokes and making the ‘Meyer-malade’ for us to share with Lynne who gave us the lemons

On Sat, I forgot there were no classes due to presidents day wkend, so we ended up trying the two types of McD chikn sandwiches then to the library talk on the origins of the french Baguette – from neolithic times to just after WWI – v interesting. D went off to treat a patient, and I hung around for the ‘Fear No Art’ show, which had some nice exhibits. Then off to try catch the last of the fish market, and was treated to the seals hanging around barking for chunks of tuna…

We got to Kouskous early so walked around block (and chatted to a nice ex-manhattan Brooks Bros guy running art store) and met Karin and early friends at the restaurant… Her ‘sistas’ from Florida had a cute baby with them, Viveca / Gordon & Faisal were there and a fun time was had by all, with a somewhat entertaining belly dance by a younger version of Arvind with tattoos, and tunes by Alina… Nice to see D get a bit of a dance lesson by one of the guys who was very good and put her thru her paces….! Then us old folks left relatively early to get to bed…!

She’s back…!❤️

Jan 26, 2020Jan 29, 2020

So, after our longest time apart ever, dear D has returned from the UK looking after my dear mother, who I’m glad to say is doing well, and managed to navigate the craziness of LAX and bypass Fri eve LA traffic by taking the train part way to where I picked her up so she was able to sleep till we got back to the apartment.

We had a lovely hike the next morning to Black‘s Beach, despite the unusual cloudy weather, followed by a great dim sum at Jasmine restaurant with the dragon dancers for Chinese New Year of the Rat  !

We dropped by Pure Project anniversary bash but it was too busy for us non-hipsters, and came back to the apartment, where Nathaniel and Jane came to visit and gives us some pure project beer in exchange for chicken biryani!

Off to Black‘s Beach again The next day, via the glider port, where the golf caused traffic delays. The beach was fantastic as always, even though cloudy, with lovely bird activity. Then back to The apartment via Beerfish (where I found a couple of beers i had been keen to try) and then to a talk on finding alien civilizations by the skeptical society, where D started nodding off….so we escaped!

Then off to the Gregorian chant at the church in North Park, which was reasonably interesting for first 15 minutes, but not like the hit record!

Strange evening of coincidences

Jan 12, 2020Jan 20, 2020

After A good morning in pottery class, where Pamela asked me to teach the old girls to make both flights, 10 through two nice around one,, decided to head to Art Gallery in barrio Logan.

Nice digitally altered photos, and lovely art by Irina as usual. Then to a newish gallery with some interesting art we had visited once’s before. Spoke to a couple of folks, who seemed to know the owner, and in talking further, met the professor who had taught some of the students who presented their art. Turns out she runs the place where our good friend Victor works! From Milan, we had a nice chat. When I thought I had bumped into her again, turns out it was a San Diego couple.

In briefly chatting to them, I find out that the guy is the twin of the new guy at my pottery class, from Chicago! And his wife knows The owners sister, so we had a couple of drinks at border X down the road, marveling in the odd coincidences of the evening!

Check out photos here

Welcome to 2020!

Jan 1, 2020Jan 20, 2020

Hoping for a better year for us all in 2020…❤️🙏🏼 Checkout last couple of days pics of our adventures…

On new years eve we drove up to Pasadena, saw the huge lines of volunteers waiting to decorate the floats, met with Bill & Mary, ate at the Doghaus, watched the parade route on Colorado get busy into the evening and then to bed, while P abandoned me and went off to meet friends…

Early start on New Years day as fleets of coaches whizzed down California Ave at 5am with police escorts… Drove as close to Orange Grove as possible, given all the guards and roadblocks… Then walked to the float lineup while still dark, and walked up towards TV Corner under the floodlights, as hundreds of people did final prep, Band members lined up shivering from the cold, and dawn broke in the east…

Raced back to a sleeping P, and left him to head up to Hill / Colorado in time to see the B2 bomber fly by at 8am… Lovely walking down Colorado as it got warmer, and saw the crowds packed deep, and the religious nuts preaching up and down with music and banners… Phone battery nearly died, but got back to car and then connected with Jules who had just landed from Sydney… Watched the parade, which was great, then went with P for Din Tai Fung in Glendale, dodging all the exiting traffic. The wait was 1.5hrs so found Shake Shack across the road, and got terrible service / wrong orders, but fun time.. Drove to Hollywood to meet Mark & boys, then dropped off P and drove back to SD, with a beautiful sunset on the right….listening to Pandora EDM and Gladwells new book Talking to Strangers (very good, as usual)… Long day… Happy New Year…

Happy new year 2020 from Pasadena!

Jan 1, 2020Jan 20, 2020

Hanging out in lovely Pasadena with Mr. P, and met with Allen‘s parents, Bill and Mary. Amazing to watch the transformation of Colorado street as 1 million people arrive from all over the US to watch the Rose Parade. Love the old cars and streets transformed into shaving foam and silly string plastered over passing cars later in the evening