Thursday, December 22, 2011

A taste of hollywood

You have not experienced Los Angeles until you have had a taste of Hollywood.  We had our first taste of it over the last couple of weeks for the first time after our return to LA.

First, was a performance of Iris produced by Cirque Du Soleil at the absolutely awesome Kodak theater in Hollywood.  The company spent $40,000,000 just to redo the stage for this performance.  The show had the usual combination of amazing visuals, great characters and music created by 100 orchestral musicians.  It was a breath-taking show produced in true Hollywood style.  It was nice to be back in Hollywood and the kids got a real kick out of seeing the stars of their favorite celebrities.  The Mann Chinese is as magnificent as ever.


A few days later, we went to see Steven Spielberg's first animated movie - The Adventures of Tintin.  The motion capture animation in 3D was totally realistic and the characters really come alive.  This was quite a treat for Mona and me who grew up reading Tintin comics but Aanish and Ayaana loved it too.

Sunday, December 11, 2011

A living tree comes home this holiday

Mona and Ayaana working on the tree
It's December and the holiday season is upon us.  This is our favorite time of the year and it is great to be back home in Los Angeles this year for the holidays.  It is a perfect time for meeting friends and family, entertaining and be entertained.  The house looks festive as all the holiday decorations come out.  Ayaana has her holiday scene setup on top of her piano and gift stockings are hanging on a mantle.

Some months ago (while we were still in Bangalore), I read about this company, The Living Christmas,  that provides live christmas trees.  I tracked them down and turns out that they are local.  So we decided to get a live tree this year.  The tree comes home in a pot with it's roots intact.  At the end of the season, the tree is picked up and replanted instead of drying up and going waste.  If we choose to, we can adopt the tree and we would get the same tree each year.  I thought it was a brilliant concept.