September 6, 2009 by Soma.

Tallahassee Tamil Sangam Picnic

Sunday, September 06, 2009

Edward Ball Wakulla Springs State Park

Wakulla Springs, FL 32327

 With Manoharan family, Vasudevan family and our family organizing a Tamil Sangam Picnic at Wakulla Springs State Park, the turn-out was okay. Since we thought about it only a week ago,  it was the long Labor Day week-end, and a Sunday afternoon many people couldn’t make it.But those assembled set-up the picnic table in one of the covered canopy around Noon. The young ones immediately headed to the water at the Wakulla Springs itself. After swimming for about hour and half most of the people became hungry. We had our lunch.Then we started to play touch-football, volleyball, and finally the quint essential Indian sport, Cricket. Most of the kids participated in the games. Then it was to the waters again. The weather was in lower ninties and there were scatttered clouds but no rain. Finally around  5 PM we started to drive back home. It was a successful picnic.Photos from the picnic can be seen here:http://picasaweb.google.com/somabhanu/TTSPicnic2009#

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August 24, 2009 by Soma.

First day for Leon County Schools and Tallahassee Colleges

Monday, August 24, 2009

Tallahassee, FL

Today was one of the special days when all Leon County Schools (Elementary, Middle, and High) as well as FSU, FAMU, and TCC opened for classes for the Fall term. Usually the colleges open a week earlier than the schools but the simultaneous opening meant there were lot of students and parents on the road (in addition to the regular commuters) than most of the days.

This year’s streamlining of school bus schedule (one time for all High schools (7:30 AM), Middle schools (9:30 AM), and Elementary schools (8:30 AM) also contributed to higher density of vehicles on the road during the busy morning commute.

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July 11, 2009 by Soma.

STS-127 (Endeavour; Orbiter Vehicle 105 OV-105) Space Shuttle Lanuch PostponedSaturdary, July 11, 2009Cape Canaverel, FLWe were here at noon for the STS-127 Space Shuttle launch scheduled for 7:32 PM. But due to heavy thunder storms last night 7 lightnings struck the space shuttle’s launch pad’s vicinity. The NASA engineers and scientists decided to make sure everthing is OK before the shuttle was launched. So they postponed the launch by 24 hours. During that time they will check all the vital components to find out whether there are problems. If every thing works out fine, the shuttle will be launched on Sunday, July 12, 2009 at 7:12 PM.

Sunday, July 12, 2009.

The preparations began for the launch. We went on a tour of the Kennedy Space Center. We also saw a movie at the IMAX Center. It is a hot summer day with high humidity. After the movie was over, we settled down at the Visitor’s Complex and waited for the launch. The giant TV showed the minute-minute by activities and an astronaut answered questions from the audience. Around 6:30 PM they announced that there is a possibility that the launch could be jeopardized due to the gather stroms to the North and East of KSC.Then at around 7:01 PM (T minus 9 minutes) they scrubbed the launch since the strom clouds with possibility of lightning was within the allowable 20 mile radius. We were all disappointed but considering there were 7 astronauts and important scientific equipment inside the shuttle we understood and left town.

Monday, July 13, 2009.

The bad luck continued even after we had left town. Due to bad weather, this time from the South side of the launch pad the clouds gathered, it has been reported, that NASA controller’s have to postpone the launch for another day. Since they had tried three days in a row they will give a day’s rest for every one and attempt a launch on Wednesday, July 15, 2009.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009.

Finally, the shuttle took off today.

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June 27, 2009 by Soma.

Environmental Science Summer Camp Tour

Miami, Key Biscayne, and Orlando

Thursday, June 25 to Saturday, June 27, 2009

Tallahassee, FL 32307

The members of the 2009 Environmental Summer Science Camp from the FAMU’s Environmental Science Institute have so far completed their  tour of Everglades State Park and NOAA’s Southeast Fisheries Science Center located in Key Biscayne (near Miami) and are headed toward the city of Orlando in central Florida. They are expected to be back in town tonight.

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June 21, 2009 by Soma.

Father’s Day trip to Wakulla SpringsSunday, June 21, 2009; 12:00 to 3:30 PMWakulla Springs, Wakulla, FLToday VTS, PKB, and I went out to Wakulla Springs State Park to enjoy the Wakulla Springs. The park is about 21 miles from Tallahassee, FL and takes about 40 minutes to drive. We picked up some swim goggles for VTS and headed to the park. It was a really a hot day. The water level in the spring has also receded a bit.We arrived after paying the entrance fee of $4 (four US dollars) around 12:50 PM and headed to the spring. There the two of them swam for about 1 1/2 hours and by 2:30 PM they were ready to head home.I also needed to pick my car after repair. We arrived home by 3:30 PM and headed to the repair shop. We have plans for dinner  tonight.

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December 26, 2008 by Soma.

4th Anniversary of Indian Ocean Tsunami of 2004

Friday, December 26, 2008

In 2004 the seawater has come almost 1 kilometer inland (picture taken on 12/27/04 ~ 2 PM IST; almost  1day and 4 hours after the tsunami hit Vedaraniam)

This morning (in the United States, but it was four years ago the same time, in India) was just as cloudy and muggy here in Tallahassee as was in Vedaraniam on Sunday, December 26, 2004. Around 9:15 AM IST the skies went bit darker, house flies started to land in larger numbers (despite the fact it was middle of winter), the power went out suddenly (not a surprise) as we were having showers to get ready for our impending visit to Nattu Mada Mariamman Temple. Sweet pongal and regular lentil pongal were already prepared for the offering to the Godess.

All the siblings from our family had gathered on the day. We had abondanded the plan to visit to the beaches (What a God’s gift to our family!!) since during the previous weeks it had rained plenty and as Vedaraniam, Agasthiampalli, and Kodiakarai. And our soil swampy with lots of clay content made it unattractive for the kids and adults to the enjoy the beaches.

About 1/2 hour we heard in the TV News that there were some mild tremors in Chennai city. Just then we started to hear crowd noise on the streets and there was big commotion with people running on the streets shouting, “the sea is coming”, “the sea is coming (kadal varuthu, kadal varuthu). Thus started the day that will take several people in my town of Vedaraniam.I spent several minutes today thinking about how lucky we were and prayed for those who perished on that fateful day.

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November 5, 2008 by Soma.

Get a new used-car

Hyundai Sonata V6

Wednesday, Nov 5, 2008

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October 5, 2008 by Soma.

Gujarathi Samaj Hindu Temple

9100 Apalachee Parkway

Tallahassee, FL

We visited the newly finished Gujarathi Samaj Hindu Temple in Apalachee Parkway. We arrived there around 6:00 PM during the Dushera but couldn’t find people inside. So we decided to come some other time.

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August 24, 2008 by Soma.

IUCr 2008 Conference

21st Congress of the International Union of Crystallography

OICC, Osaka, Japan

Sunday, August 24, 2008

I picked-up my registration at the counter for the IUCr 2008 Conference at the Grand Cube Osaka (aka Osaka International Convention Center) and picked up my bag and headed straight to the mini symposium. I attended several mini symposium in the macromolecular section in the morning. I ran into couple of my former colleagues and spoke with them,  had coffee and late lunch with them.

In the afternoon session I attended two talks at the macromolecular section and two at the powder diffraction section. There were couple of more I wanted to attend but they were at the same time slot and so I had to miss them.

I also attended the Bruker-AXS Lunch-on session

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July 23, 2008 by Soma.

New Travel Log and Blog

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

Tallahassee, FL

I started to update the new sub-domain in our main website www.somasundaram.us. The sub-domain name, travels.somasundaram.us was registered a while ago but I started to add contents to it.

I had started another blog in Blogger mostly about our travels. I started to blog more here too. The name of the new blog is: t-somasundaram.blogspot.com

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