A Day, A Week, Hemant, A Year

If you’re interested in a nice character home built in 1928, and are looking for a nice quiet, rural lifestyle, this house may be for you. No, I don’t own a house by this description, but my parents do. They have decided to put their home in Wilkie up for sale in hopes of moving to Saskatoon. The house is listed privately right now and can be viewed here on saskhouses.com.

I have to admit that if the house does end up selling, I will miss my trips back to Wilkie. But I do welcome the idea of my parents moving to Saskatoon. The amount of cooking my mom sends back with me when visiting Wilkie is out of control. I can only imagine the limitless amounts of food I will get if we live in the same city.

Be sure to check out the listing here. You can also see more pictures of the house here.

This year I decided to take two weeks of vacation around the holiday season. It had been a while since I had done this so I was really looking forward to the time off. I didn’t really have any major plans during my holidays, hoping just to have some downtime with my family and friends.

This year my brother and his family decided to stay in Edmonton for Christmas while my sister and her family celebrated in Chicago. My parents decided they just wanted to stay at home in Wilkie, so I was content with just spending a quiet Christmas with them.

I made it back in time for the annual Wilkie Outlaws Rib & Wing Night (photos) at the Wilkie Civic Centre. I had heard a lot about this event and since I had never attended it, I figured I would check it out this year. It was really busy there, and I got to see a lot of people I hadn’t seen in some time, which was great. What wasn’t so great was that they ran out of wings before I got a chance to buy any. Luckily I was able to scam some off of a generous friend.

That was pretty much the only time I left my parents’ house. Well, that’s not completely true. I did head to the Co-op to buy some milk on Christmas Eve. Other than that I spent my time visiting, reading, surfing the net, watching TV, and napping. These few days seemed like the prime opportunity for me to do some needed catching up on sleep.

Christmas day we had the traditional turkey dinner which my mother prepared to perfection as usual. After filling up during the meal, I chowed down on all sorts of baked goods and other unhealthy delights. As good as it is coming back to Wilkie for a visit, I always leave feeling fatter.

• Xmas Day Photos (thumbnails)
• Xmas Day Photos (slideshow)

My “cousin” (not really, but may as well be) Seshni got married to Scott this past Saturday, so family from all corners of the globe congregated in Saskatoon. My sister Yavini and her family were still here visiting, and my brother Veyantiz and his family travelled in from Sherwood Park, Alberta.

The wedding was a traditional Hindu celebration, and my mother performed the ceremony. It’s not often you get to see a non-Christain wedding around here, so it was quite a nice experience. There was a big break between the ceremony and the reception so the time was spent catching up with all of the relatives. The reception was a great time since so many people didn’t duck out early. I was hoping to take a lot of pictures at the wedding, but it didn’t happen. Feel free to check out a few I did take below.

We all headed back to Wilkie on Sunday and my parents’ house became Grand Central Station. The house where five of us used to live was now filled with twelve (including five under the age of seven). Despite the chaos, it was a pleasure to finally see the cousins together. The two oldest, Janak and Chiara were inseparable, thowing comments back and forth at each other (eg. “You’re the greatest cousin ever,” while the three youngest (all under the age of three) were not quite as “diplomatic”.

With all the kids playing together, I was no longer treated like a “human jungle-gym” (well, not 100% of the time, anyway) which was a nice break for my limbs. We spent a lot of the time in the backyard, and took them out to the park a few times as well giving me a prime opportunity to fire off a bunch of shots.

• Seshni and Scott’s Wedding - Slideshow or Thumbnails
• Ruane Kids at the Park - Slideshow or Thumbnails
• Cousins Hanging Out - Slideshow or Thumbnails

Day two saw Chiara, Mira, and Liam get a little more comfortable with their new surroundings, so they started to get a little more brave with me. For some reason, Chiara likes to call me the “Muffin Man”, and as a reaction to my beard, Mira told me that I had a “silly face”.

Since it was still so hot, and the house was trapping the heat like a greenhouse, we spent a lot of time in the backyard. Mom and dad have been working their butts off in the yard this summer so it has been a prime space to photograph the kids. If you’re interestested in seeing more pictures of them, check them out here or here.

Today was an exciting day since my sister Yavini and her three kids were flying in from Chicago. It had been a while since I had seen my oldest niece Chiara, and I hadn’t even met her younger sister and brother - Mira and Liam. I met my parents at the airport since it was going to take two cars to transport everyone and all the baby gear back to Wilkie. While we were waiting in the airport we had a pleasant surprise when some of our relatives from Vancouver (who arrived in Saskatoon on Wednesday) decided to come greet everyone as well.

Since the kids had been couped up on the plane for four hours, we decided to go back to my place to grab a bite to eat and just chill, letting everyone regain their senses. For those of you who have never been to my place, it is far from “kid friendly”, plus I am a completely insane neat freak. As you can imagine the children flew through there like a hurricane, and my blood pressure probably shot up by about twenty points as we needed to rearrange my living room on the fly. Needless to say, it was all worth it to finally get a chance to spend some time with them.

After a couple hours we jumped in the cars and headed for Wilkie. Once we arrived we knew that the extreme heat coupled with no air conditioning at my parents’ place was going to be hard on the kids, so we went outside and ran through the sprinklers. They turned out not to be so brave since the water was “so cold”. I did however use the opportunity to spray my mother with the hose nice and good.

Since the four of them were up at 3:30 in the morning to get to the airport, they were all pretty tired so the evening was pretty low-key. After some delicious dinner, the lot of them hit the hay. I managed to fire off a few shots while the kids were outside, and you can check them out here or here. They’re pretty cute…..just like their uncle.

Once again I took part in the Farmers’ Days competitive co-ed volleyball tournament this past weekend in Wilkie. The tournament has been going on for about a decade and a half, and I’ve been competing in it for about the last ten years. It is definitely getting harder on my body as the years pass by. I remember being part of one of the youngest teams in the tournament. As the years went by, the older teams started to drop off. I never really thought about it until this year, and it suddenly dawned on me that all of the other teams were getting younger and younger. And all of a sudden, I was on one of those older teams. Geeze. Time sure flies by. Note: three of the ladies on our team were under 24 and helped keep the average age of our team WAY down.

Anyway, this was the first year that we didn’t have to scramble for team members. Our team was assembled early, and consisted of Jason “Mr. Fundamental” Fenrich, Travis “The Drunken Master” Weber, Cheryl “Little Engine” Fenrich, Domini “The Dominator” Zeigler, and “The Shepherd Connection” - Laura and Sarah Shepherd. Oh yeah, and there was me, Hemant “The Wall” Naidu. Our team name was The Toronto Raptors, in homage to the basketball team’s great play this season (can you guess who organized the team’s entry this year?). You can watch a video demonstrating some fundamental volleyball below.

As always, the schedule was fierce and without mercy. We played 6 matches (2 game total point) on Saturday. The top six teams were seeded for Sunday’s playoffs, based on their Saturday record. We were pretty sure we didn’t make the playoffs, and we (or at least I) were pretty content with that. I was extremely stiff and could barely walk. It really is not a good idea to play volleyball only once a year, especially in a competitive tournament. It hurts too much.

Not being in the playoffs would be somewhat of a relief because Farmers’ Days is also known for its great cabaret at the town civic centre. To everyone’s delight Wilkie’s legendary band, Danny and the Dusters, was playing. After dinner and getting cleaned up, our posse rolled into the hall with our regular swagger. It didn’t take long to run into the volleyball tournament organizer who was happy to inform us that we squeaked into the sixth and final spot of the playoffs. Gee. Great. Our game was at 10 am.

The dance was fun as usual, and Danny and the Dusters played their rendition of Authority Song to perfection, disappointing no one. I took it easy that night, considering I was pretty wiped from the days activities, plus I didn’t want to be a total puddle on the court in the morning. I was home and in bed by 3 am, but I do know that some members of our team were up until around 6 am.

I made sure I was at the gym nice and early to get stretched out, since I was still having trouble walking. The rest of my team showed up and once we started warming up, I loosened up pretty quickly. Our playoff game was against the tournament organizer’s team, and we were fairly evenly matched. The game was extremely close, but we ended up losing, and being eliminated from the tournament.

This ended up being our most successful run in the Farmers’ Days Volleyball Tournament. We usually are completely terrible, but this year we had a fairly decent team. Another good thing was that this year’s teams were somewhat evenly matched. There were two or three teams that were incredible (that’s what happens when you have Husky players on teams), but they knew when to take it easy.

So until next year’s tournament, take a moment to check out some pictures. I put my cameras in the trusty hands of Curtis and Nikki to take some action shots during some of our games. You can see them here.

It’s old news for those from the Wilkie area that the local golf course has finally taken the next step and replaced their wretched ‘oil sand’ greens (if you can honestly call them greens with a straight face) with actual real-life, grass greens. Even though the greens have been ‘live’ for the entire season, I was never able to get a round in at the Wilkie course when I was in town visiting my folks. Circumstances such as weather, mosquitoes, or being just plain busy kept me from experiencing Wilkie’s new found glory.

At the last minute this week, I decided I could use a good country getaway, so I headed back to visit my parent’s. I had three things on my agenda:

1) I had a few photographic ideas that I wanted to work through.

2) Get my fill of mother’s cooking.

3) Finally get a round of golf in.

I’m happy to say that I managed to get get through my entire checklist. When I woke up Sunday morning, the sun was shining and there was a slight wind. I decided to head out to the course and take advantage of the weather. I was on the course by 10:00, and it was already getting really hot.

I could see the first green off about 380 yards from the tee-box. There was a father and his young son not too far ahead of me, and they let me play through. I had a decent drive and then played a 6 iron to within a foot of the green. When I was up to the green, I could see how good of shape they were actually in. It seems that my friends were telling the truth. Like they said, the size was also decent. It was by no means, huge, but it was a good size. I could also see that there seemed to be a hefty amount of slope to it as well. After my chip on, I had a reasonable putt for par. I read the green and fired away. It seems I didn’t really it very well. I finished with a bogey.

The first hole pretty much sums up my entire round. I was playing extremely well - driving straight, and chipping well. I can honesly say that I didn’t ‘duff’ one shot. I was hitting the ball solidly. The planets must have been aligned, or something. Out of the nine holes, I was putting for par, or birdy on all but one - yet I still managed to only convert on one of them. Frankly, the greens ate me up. I guess my friends were telling the truth on this front as well. No word of a lie, these are the toughest greens I have every played. As soon as I finished my round, I wanted to get out there and play again - to see if I could redeem myself on the putting front - but there was some delicious lunch waiting for me at home.

Overall, I am really impressed with what Wilkie has done to their course. My golf buddies in Guelph always used me as a punch line of jokes in regards to my hometowns’ sand greens. But now I invite any of them to come out here and try their luck with them - they’re difficult, almost to the point of being ridiculous.

Note: I went out for my round with the intention of taking some quick snapshots, but when I went to take my first one, it seems I forgot to carry a memory card. Boo!

Since I don’t take possession of my new pad in Saskatoon until December, I will be staying with my parents in Wilkie, Saskatchewan for the time being. Even though I grew up in this small town of 1400 people, you tend to forget the way some things are here. Living in Saskatoon for eight years, and then Guelph for six, I got used to lots of things that come with living in a city. Here’s just a few examples of what I am talking about.

Despite having the best Chinese food in the western world, the service is a little questionable at a local restaurant. About a week ago my dad and I decided to order some stellar Ginger Beef from the aforementioned eatery, so I called in to place my order. After the phone rang about ten times, someone finally picked up. Expecting to get a standard greeting such as, “Thanks for calling, how can I help you?”, I instead got a, “What you want?” Taken by surprise, it took me a couple seconds to respond. I placed my order and the person on the other side hung up without saying anything. It was a little strange, but when I went to pick up the order, everything was right - and the ginger beef was in fact, stellar.

Yesterday I was feeling a little bored so I decided to go watch some high school 6 man football playoffs - yes 6 man football. Despite freezing my butt off for the entire game, I managed to stick around and watch my alma mater lose. I did manage to fire off a few good photos during the game, so it wasn’t a complete write-off. Following the game I headed to one of the grocery stores to pick up a few things (during my high school years I actually worked at this grocery store as a bag / delivery boy).

Since I was going to be buying a few things I grabbed a shopping cart. You know those little shopping carts they have for kids at the ‘big’ grocery stores to keep them occupied? Well, I kid you not, that is what these carts were like. Anyway, the first order of business was to grab a few things from the meat department. I’m usually accustomed to having a pretty good choice of stuff to choose from. Well, that wasn’t quite the case at my old place of employment. I needed a couple chicken breasts and a beef roast. Lucky I got there when I did because there was exactly one ‘bulk pack’ of ten breasts and one big-ass beef roast. I then headed over to the bakery section to grab some bulk whole wheat buns, but there were none left so I had to settle for hamburger buns. I guess I did manage to get everything I needed, but I’m not sure that I could shop here all the time. But what I was happy about was the Old Dutch Chips that are not available east of Manitoba. I did miss those.

I guess what I am trying to say is that I am looking forward to getting back to Saskatoon so I can do some real grocery shopping (but I will miss the Ginger Beef, and the comical service). This may seem sad, but I love shopping for groceries. It is not odd for me to head to the market when I’m bored - seriously.

After about a month, I finally start my new job in a couple of days. After living in Guelph, Ontario for almost six years and working in a huge insurance company’s I.T. department, I will transition into working for a small, fast-paced software development company in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Even though my title stays relatively the same (Senior Software Developer), I’m not too sure as to what my responsibilities will be in the new company.

When the job was offered to me, I was told that they wanted to, “bring me in to mould their young developers”. I’m not sure what to make of that statement, but I still consider myself to be young - I mean, I’m only thirty years old (but could pass for at least 23 - haha!). I guess they meant, “mould thier less experienced developers”. I guess that makes a little more sense, but it still makes me a little nervous. I suppose the VP who hired me knows what he is doing.

I was told to show up at the office at 9:00 am. Since I don’t get possession of my townhome until December 1st, I will be commuting from my parents’ place in Wilkie, Saskatchewan for the first month. This will consist of a 90 minute drive each way which I’m sure will start to lose its appeal after about a week. I guess knowing that I will be getting mother’s home cooking for a month will be good incentive. Plus if need be, I may split the week up slightly and stay a couple of days a week in Saskatoon. I know enough people there that this shouldn’t be a problem.

Well, since I’m going to be molding some young developers starting tomorrow, I better start reading up a bit on Microsoft’s .NET Framework for C#. This may not mean much to any non-techies out there, but since I have been a J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) guy my entire career, this is a little bit daunting. Ahh - once you know one programming language, they all look pretty much the same - right?