I am reminded of Neidermeyer from the movie Animal House.  “You are all WORTHLESS and WEAK, Now DROP and give me 20!”  That is my opinion of everyone else's April Fools jokes and pranks.  I mean really – food coloring in the milk?  Plastic wrap across a door?  Tape on the mouse?

How ordinary.  How banal.

Here is what I have done in the past, nothing so simple or impersonal. 

2012 – Green or Orange – you decide.

We were driving home from a dinner out (so almost the entire April 1st had passed) and the whole family was in the car.  I turn to Megan and Connor and tell them that we have decided to paint their rooms.  We, of course, being value shoppers (cheap) bought paint from Home Depot in their return-because-it-is-ugly pile and therefore have only green and orange to choose from.

I really delved into the colors and made Connor and Megan chose, who wants the puke green and who wants the bright orange.  They argued for a few minutes but were set after a bit.

My plan was to go home and get the painters plastic out and have them start laying the drop cloths down when we got home, but I was foiled at this point because Linda couldn’t keep a straight face.  Still it was a good effort on my part.

2011 – Bought my Porsche.

So I had been looking to buy an older Porsche for a long time (I have since bought one) but on this April 1st I went and got each of my family one by one.

First I woke up Connor and told him I had bought a Porsche but I had to park it around the corner so that Linda wouldn’t see it.  I convinced him to get up, go outside, run down around the corner of the block to take a look at my new Porsche.  Only after he had got all the way back did I tell him “April Fools”.

I then proceeded to convince Megan (although I didn’t make her run around the corner).  And then I convinced Linda that I’d bought one.  She was a good sport and said it was fine.  Woo Hoo!  So I had an added benefit of a dry run for actually buying one.

2010 – Name Switcheroo.

This one is my favorite (so far).

I woke the kids up and got them together and then in my most serious tone I told them that Linda and I had decided that we wanted to change their names.  For Megan we had a good back story, we had originally thought she was going to be a Katelyn until she was born and realized that she was a Megan, so I told her we were just going to switch her name back to Katelyn because it was our original choice and we liked it better.

Connor we decided to rename to Steve because we just liked it.

This April fools joke only lasted a few minutes because Megan started to cry and say she really didn’t want her name changed.  So…I really got them and after I said April Fools it was all ok.

2013 – Wait and see.

You will have to tune back in next week to see what I do…

UPDATE – 2013 – Spring Break School:

…So what I did was to write and then print off an “official” letter from their school informing them that Spring Break had been cancelled and all students would have to go to school for the week.  It was a well crafted letter invoking the federal sequestration and budget cuts.  I completely fooled them and made Megan cry again (success!).  Am I a good dad or merely evil.

Of course once Megan had recovered she immediately saw the power of the “official” letter from school and promptly took it with her to pull the same gag on all her friends.

Saturday 2/23

So the day starts out with three hours in the car for a drive to Agra the city in which the Taj resides.  The highway is exceedingly nice.

Upon arrival we swing through a run down dirt parking lot, all parking lots are run down and dirt, pavement ends at the side of the street, always.  Anyways we pick up our tour guide from the side of the road and the rupees are exchanged and we’re off to the Taj.

We get advice from him as we approach: ignore the hawkers, say no thank you to the photographers, watch your wallet. and away we go.

The Taj Mahal is a whole set of buildings.  There is an outer wall and courtyard where guards were stationed to prevent looting.  Which worked until the city was conquered and then the Persians just looted wholesale.

Here’s some pictures of the outer courtyard.

Inside the outer courtyard, looking at the main entrance to the inner courtyard where the Taj Mahal resides.

A better look at the inner courtyard entrance.

We headed into the Taj proper and All I can say is that it was as beautiful as everyone says.  I was reminded of some of the other great historical buildings I have seen, particularly the Blue Mosque and St. Peters in Rome. The weather was threatening rain all morning, but cleared up to be a very pretty day.

Her we got a glimpse of the Taj through the gateway from the inner entrance	And here is a clear view of the Taj.
I’ve got a hundred pictures but these are a few of the best.	Pretty yes?

So a few interesting things.  Apparently because we booked through this tour we booked the VIP entrance for the Taj, which meant we went to the front of the line all the time.  Pretty cool.  Where most of the crowd went right and had to wind around the whole building, we went left and walked right in.  I felt a bit guilty, but was also glad to get in so quickly.

The workmanship is unbelievable, all the marble is inlaid with precious stone flower patterns.  Of course being Muslim, there is no portraits or statues, I would say that is the one thing lacking.

The entrance.

Here is a closeup of the inlay work.

Inside there were no cameras allowed.  There are two tombs inside.  Her tomb, the one the building was built for is exactly in the center.  The Shah was buried 30 years later and his tomb is the only thing not symmetrical in the entire complex, his is off-center to the left as you enter.

So I got a tonne of photos, and could keep putting them up but I’ll leave you with this one.

Onwards.

Next was the Agra Fort.  Built by the Taj Mahal dude’s grandfather.  You can see one from the other.

Lot’s of pictures from there too, but I’ll leave you with a couple.

The entrance. 

And looking the other way at the entrance.  One thing to note that our guide told us, the gate was originally tall enough for the Shah to ride out of the entrance on top of an elephant and then when the British took over they shortened the outer gate by some 5 or 6 feet because, well, they didn’t ride elephants.

Cool castle.

The royal apartments had a complex system of heating and cooling that involved pipes in the wall circulating cold or hot water pumped through by elephant power.

Entrance to the Harem.  The ladies stayed up in the balconies.	Looking up in the balconies where the concubines were – 212 of them.
The royal apartments.	The Royal prison where the Taj Mahal guy was imprisoned for the last seven years of his life by his diabolical son.
Stables in the outer courtyard.  Notice they come in two sizes: small for horsies, big for Elephants.	Public receiving chamber.  The tomb in the middle of the courtyard is an English Lt. Governor. and friend of Agra.

Again, I got a slew of photos, but I think that captures it well enough for now.

We finished up after that and our driver took us home.

I’ll end with a brief video of our drive out of Agra.  Wild…

Later.

Friday 2/22:

One of our India co-workers here, Abhishek, offered to take us around Delhi this afternoon and we ended up going on a seven hour tour of the City. 

We started at a monument called Qutub Minar.  It is basically a watch tower for the early Moghul rulers of India.  On the same ground is the remains of the first mosque built in India.  The Indian government made it an historical landmark in 1948.

Below are the inscriptions on the side of the tower.  Notice the alternating corrugations.  First round then angular.

Well that was fun.

Then we headed off to the Delhi Hat.  Which is a safe, simulated, street bazar where tourists like us can feel comfortable shopping for genuine Indian trinkets.  It was pretty neat really.  Especially the parking experience.  No room, no problem.

I got my trinkets and we moved on.

Next we swung by the India Gate, kinda England’s stamp on the place.

Ok.  All the prelims are done.  Now we went to Old Delhi.  We caught the metro and headed there. It was pretty awesome.

Yeah...that was cool.

The first one shows the fancy maneuver our taxi driver takes when he exits our building. Instead of turning left and going with the ONE WAY traffic like he should, he takes a right and goes head on into traffic for a block to save us about 20 minutes of driving in the other direction to have to find a u-turn.

I’m not sure I agree with his cost benefit analysis

1. 15-20 minutes of extra time in traffic.

or

2. Break the law (traffic laws? I’m not sure those two words go together in India, although I assume that there actually is a law on the books for driving the wrong way, there is just no enforcement, none).  OH AND risk of death.

The next video is a simple 42 lane change that our taxi driver does every day getting us back to our hotel. This is an result of there being NO overpasses nor interchanges. All traffic change of direction must occur within the main traffic channel.

Well, during this whole process our driver has a bored detached look on his face.

Easy peasy.

Hello from Gurgaon!

We’ve been here a couple of days and I feel like I am starting to get over my Jet lag.  It has been a business trip intermixed with crazy taxi rides on either end of the day. 

The location for Expedia in Gurgaon is Cyber City.

I don’t know who designed the traffic pattern for getting in and out of Cyber city but it is ridiculous.  Here is a map of the two loctions, our hotel and Expedia.

1. Hotel Leela Kampinski in Gurgaon: Link - http://www.theleela.com/locations/gurgaon
2. Expedia location

Now to traffic experiences.

1. Upon our return to the Hotel there is only one entrance off the siding road and our taxi has to make a routine 42 Lane change maneuver.  In the good ol’ USA this would a) illegal and b) not contemplated by the driver.  Our taxi just heads the nose of the car in that direction and away it goes, trusting in everyone to flow around him…and it works.  There are of course cars doing the 42 lane change in the opposite direction at the same time.
2. Exiting Expedia the highway is right hand drive meaning left hand on the road.  This means that in front of the exit for the building there is NO left hand turn.  You have to proceed from 4 to 5 and then make a you-ee.
3. Turn around and head back.
4. But if you have a particularly brave/suicidal taxi cab driver he may exit the building AGIANST traffic for two blocks and then slide over onto the other side of the road.  This was our driver on Tuesday night.

Pretty Ducking Awesome. 

That’s all for now. 

Back to work.

14.5 hours later...yes 14.5 hours, we are in Dubai.

You know how good a flight it was? Well as I sat down I counted 4 infants and/or toddlers within four seats of me...can you say screaming kids for 7 of those hours. :)

Heh.

Get a Life. Buy my Porsche.

Great fun video made by this guy who just wanted to sell his Porsche 911 Targa.

Get a life. Buy my Porsche from hunkies on Vimeo.

The RSR going fast.