Art makes an entry

Decided to buy the kids some art material (Drawing/Painting paper), paints, color pencils (the whole thing was less than 10 bucks) and let them have some fun this week.




It has been a busy week with me going out of control trying to juggle work, sinus problems and the kids.

The materials were a good idea. As an added bonus we are now decorating the shelves in the garage with the kid's art work. Kind of their own showcase to show their friends and visitors how they are doing.







We never realized how good the little one was with a paint brush. As a rule of thumb two things have been banned inside the house for as long as we can remember

a. water/oil paints
b. china clay (playdough)

for fear of ruining the carpet or floor.

That ban has been lifted now. The kids will be allowed to paint from now on instead of just draw with crayons.

The parenting learning goes on..



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aaaawooooooooooo

It was a full moon yesterday. There were lots of clouds as well and the moon was throwing red hues through the clouds!

Thought it would make a good HDR subject and was really challenged.

1. you have to take the shot with a long exposure
2. if you are limited to a 90mm max zoom then the moon keeps moving.. and the clouds keep moving as well. it can be a problem if the moon keeps moving slightly and you have a 10 second exposure.
3. if you shorten the exposure it is all black

The HDR did not work. Just could not align everything. Did get one picture of the moon.




If you have a 200mm or higher zoom try it. You might have much better results.


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From one thread to another..

Ones commitment to learning may be directly measured by ones receding hairline and loss of hair density.

You live, you learn. You learn more, you live less?

There has been a lot of learning on the personal and professional front in the last year. At least that is the annual Avani-avittam report!

Granted the regular sandhyavandanam is restricted to twice a month, plus some days when I feel like it and it is done in the bathroom for the most part, but the avani-avittam thread changing is always done.

Reminds you of good things from the past, and somehow deep down tells you that as long as you keep the learning process alive, all will be well. This ceremony always brings about mixed feelings. It becomes a once a year atonement event, but one has to look past feeling bad for not doing rituals and prayers everyday and go with "work is worship" and "worship is just more worship"!

Vedic learning is not going to feed the kids and it is a given that the concepts have to be fit to context.

My only take on the "being a brahmin" part is somehow we were taught that "knowledge is power". It is very much possible that this is an over simplified myopic filtered view of the caste system scaling down to affect me as to who I am....and this is not the first time this is being said in this blog. At least that view has remained consistent over four plus years of blogging..

In my understanding of 7th grade history of India, we were taught that there were four classes of people who had different interpretations of power and their roles in the world. They were valued in society for their quest for

a. knowledge
b. power, control, territory
c. money and all things material
d. a daily paycheck

Roughly translated for today's urbanite, you would aspire to be CTO, CEO, CFO or a dude doing the actual execution of work... today you can beat the system and be anything you want to be, as long as you don't get stereotyped!

Considering my parents were not well to do and the only thing they pushed me to do was to get grades and their biggest achievement (prior to their getting me married to their top seed pick aka San) was performing our Upanayanam ceremony in a grand way, the choice was very clear. Study and you will get somewhere in life and be valued for something.

That has been sent into deep permanent memory somewhere. So this year the commitment to learning has been extended by another year.

As usual, some pictures..




The little one was slightly upset that there was no "bell ringing" involved in today's occasion, but was consoled once she saw the good eats.




It was just daddy doing prayers and everyone getting to eat vadai, paayasam and sweet poli.

The paayasam was very very yummy and this post ends on that note..and we go eat some more paayasam.



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HDR photography

Have been playing with a free HDR software called FDR Tools Basic. Still trying to get the hang of it.

The basic idea is to get bright and dark parts of an image to work at the same time while creating a three dimensional effect on the photograph by superimposing multiple shots with different exposure compensations into one picture.

Some good examples

a. from AP
b. from google images
c. still forms

The free software is not that easy to play with.. will post some images this friday.

tinkering.. tinkering.. still tinkering...


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A for Apple, B for boy, C for...

The little one came back from school. As usual she had a couple of sheets of her workbook exercises in her bag.

One of them had four pictures on each page and a row of three alphabets next to the pictures. She had to circle the starting alphabet for what was in the picture.

She had circled the 'c' for carrot etc. etc. and there was one mistake..

There was a picture of a bunch of potatos and she circled 'a' instead of the small 'p'.

Me : Why did you circle 'a' for this one?
LO : I circled 'a' for AALOO silly! but they said it was wrong.

the way she said "it was wrong", shaking her head from side to side was just amazing! Have seen kids who refuse to call a Tomato a "thakkali" at home, because it is not what their school teachers call it.

The little one is different.

A for aaloooo!

What can I say...


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The Pledge of Allegiance

"I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands: one Nation under God, indivisible, With Liberty and Justice for all."

this is the pledge that kids learn in school when they salute the US Flag.

Adults learn it either when their kids go to school here or when they study for the Citizenship test. In our case Jr. had already taught us the pledge and we were off to a good start on the Citizenship test knowing all about the Flag, the pledge, etc. etc. when she was still in pre-school.

The little one has been at school for four exact weeks (considering she missed the first few weeks because of the trip to India) and this week she was saying the pledge to herself while playing with stuffed animals.

She was trying to memorize it better! Initially we thought she was blabbering something but when we asked her to say it, she put her hand on her heart and did it..

except for one mistake..

she said ".......indivisible, With Little bit of Justice for all."

instead of Liberty and Justice for all.

Jr. pounced on her school teacher style and said "Liberty! Its Liberty! Not Litle bit!!!" and has now fixed the small techicality..

This whole episode had me in spilts.. maybe we do have only a "little bit of justice for all"?!

Is my sarcasm rubbing off on the little one, a tad too early?

We are now aligned with Liberty folks.





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Daddy I wanna go ....

Dadddy I wanna go .....

The sentence that is every parents nightmare at various locations and occasions, in the first four to five years of raising kids! After the kids can go to the restroom on their own, this is less of a problem, unless of course you have two girls and you have taken the kids on an outing and

1. there is no family restroom
2. your five year old will go only to the ladies room
3. you have to beg some strange woman outside the ladies room to help your daughter!

Sometimes you long for the days where you could change the diaper in the back of the van and keep on moving.

Here are my top five "I wanna go's" (No, nobody tagged me or anything! I just thought of writing about this..)

5. 2005 - Bombay - We are stuck in traffic on the way back from a short day trip. There is no way for the FIL to manouver the little Maruthi 800 out of the rapidly deteriorating traffic situation. A just potty trained Jr. declares it is time. Finally after 20 minutes on a ramp near "Baikula?" we make it to a restaurant.

4. 2006 - Cathay Pacific Flight - Somewhere close to Jakarta - A long line of passengers outside the restroom (probably the half cooked poori's were doing the job). Jr. is near tears, standing cross legged and after a point she cannot even stand. Daddy pleads and cajoles his way to the head of the queue to the restroom door only to find that all three people inside are taking forever! We almost have a disaster in our hands when what appears to be the door to heaven opens.... We go inside and in an instant Jr. declares "This potty is dirty. I cannot sit on it!".

Daddy is now near tears. How can cleaniness be a concern at that stage?! Then he realizes that she is a girl and probably takes after her mom for this type of stuff... So daddy props up the baby changing board, sits Jr. on top and proceeds to use his knowledge from the Ph.D. that he never got. The Doctor of Janitorology finally got the approval from a pensive Jr. who got down from her high horse and used the potty.

3. 2007 - Disneyland - a line of more than a 1000 people for one of the attractions! Jr. wants to go, and we are halfway into line. I carry her back, wading against all those people rushing past in the line only to find that the nearest restroom in the map is all the way on the other side of Frontierland! The horror of it is that the queue to the restroom is almost half the length of the queue to the attactions. Daddy makes the mistake of just taking Jr. to the mens restroom...He comes out deciding "No more daddy taking you to the restroom".

2. 2007 - Sidhi Vinayak - Bombay. We should have just been content watching the proceedings inside on the TV monitor outside and returned. MIL and grand MIL insisted that we get up close and personal with Lord Ganesha! It was a line through a metal rod maze, a security counter, and then into a mad crowd. Jr. of course was desperate as usual. This time I could not blame her because even I was desperate! We had been in that line for almost 2 hours. After that instance, have promised to never stand in a long line to meet any god, especially when no restrooms are around. These days we stand in line only to see cartoon characters!

1. 2006 - Blaine - US Canada Border crossing on a long weekend. We had gone to Seattle to spend time with my BIL. The plan was to go to Vancouver for a day. We did not anticipate that a gazillion other people would plan to cross into Canada the same day. The checkpost was backed up for at least 2-3 miles. The cars had come to a standstill. Some of the older kids were heading for the trees (we could see that).

Jr. was alien to the "potty behind the tree" concept. So a gruelling 30 minutes later, we found ourselves crawling past a restroom on the highway! Everyone was cursing themselves, turning their anger against the other adults and kids, all that drama inside a confined space. We probably enacted the automobile version of "Lord of the flies" in that hour. Now we have a policy of not being stuck near border crossings on long weekends!

Hope this serves as learning for other parents out there who have 3-5 year olds! It is a lot easier with the Little One because she can always join her sister. No more pleading strange women. No need to teach her anything either because she learns everything from her big sister. Thank god for little favors!

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The under age kid

History has a tendency to repeat itself, over and over and over again. I guess that is one reason why it is still taught to people, so they would learn from the past and move towards a better future.

This is also counteracted by the ability of human beings to forget things quickly and get on with life.. the same life that people got on with a few decades ago and by extrapolation a few centuries ago..

It is true that todays Cyclotrons are a lot more complicated that the proverbial "wheel" invented a long time ago, but have we really come that far in learning from history?

People still kill each other, go take things forcefully from others if they lack a certain resource (it used to be gum arabic, silk, spices, gold, diamonds, now it is oil!) and continue to ignore the past.

All that, was the cynic in me talking. This post is more about something happening in our life right now. Jr. who is a November child, just like her daddy, is having attention issues in school. She is an extremely smart and intelligent kid and is easily distracted, just like her daddy and she does tend to walk into the occasional wall, just like her grandma!

We had a meeting with her teacher who gave us a detailed report card for the Kindergardener and said "she has trouble following my instruction. She keeps looking at what the other kids are doing and cannot focus". She went on to explain how she is the youngest in her class and how it is going to pose problems for her because some of her classmates are 14 months older.

San promptly cut in and said "hubby here was in 2nd grade at Jr.'s age". Being the sincere daddy, I went on to explain to the teacher that I had the same problems. I never went to kindergarten and was directly thrown into first grade at age 4 and finished school at 16 and college at 20 and was in gradschool before I could legally drink in the US. I also told her that my social life wasnt exactly stellar because "having no moustache when graduating high school" was an issue, but I never had any problems with academics.

At this point, the teacher must have seen very clearly why Jr. is distracted (talking to her daddy for 5 minutes would explain that) and asked me "so do you have any suggestions to improve Jr.'s focus?".

Daddy said "Eureka! I know exactly what they did when I was in first and second grade". They moved me to the first row so all I saw was the teacher and the blackboard. Nothing to distract me.

The teacher said, well.. in the US, we used to do that only to kids who were troublemakers. In any case we do not have rows in the classroom till 3rd or 4th grade. We have them sit around circular desks in groups of 4 or 5 so they can learn the value of teamwork!

Where do you sit then, and where is the blackboard ? I asked.

Apparently there is no thing like a blackboard and the teacher moves around the classroom as she gives instructions to kids.

Hmm.. let's see here. You are trying to focus on a certain voice trying to give you an instruction and you have to execute on it. This might also involve looking at a piece of paper or an object that is in the teachers hand and you have to do something on your desk based on that. What would be easier. A fixed location for the teacher directly in front of the student or a moving teacher who could sometimes be talking from your right, left, or even behind you..

Bah!!!! I said and walked out.

Really love the teachers, their enthusiasm and their passion.. but I know myself and based on history and some genetic extrapolation, my kid, and there are no surprises on why she cannot focus. First we need to learn focus on stationary targets before we can focus on the moving targets!

Bah!!! Bah!!! Bah!!!

Now I am going to train Jr. Jason Bourne style on how to follow instructions from a moving daddy..


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Why two sets? (updated)

Jr. was having some fun with an english workbook she got as a gift. This is now our usual routine in the evenings.

Today she had to answer a question which was :

_______ went to swim.

the three choices were

Him
I
i

She figured out that Him was wrong as soon as she read that option.

Then she looked at me and asked me a very profound question.

"Daddy, why do we need two set of letters with all this uppercase and lowercase stuff? Why can't we have just all uppercase or all lowercase?"

I really do not have an answer for that one! Why? Why?

Now, I have a question for my parents!

Was I smart or lazy enough to ask that question when I was learning english? and if I did, were you proud of me?

Why do we need two sets of letters people? Answer me!


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Anon commenter... Just a thought!

THIS IS SHOUTING

THIS IS NOT SHOUTING


i rest my case

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now I have another question.. Does Tamizh have ! in the alphabet, punctuation.. I have to go and read about the history of punctuation marks. Tonight's homework..

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The little devil

What does it mean, when a married couple who have Tamizh and English as their default languages, are seen speaking in Hindi? This from a couple who were recently seen talking to each other in "Spell"!

If you do not know spell, here is an example.

Dad : Do I G-I-V-E her I-C-E C-R-E-A-M today ?
Mom : A L-I-T-T-L-E

or

Dad : have to G-O T-O O-F-F-I-C-E soon etc.

There are two reasons..

1. Jr. has now figured out the English language in its totality. She can speak, write and read! That means, she KNOWS spell. That also means she is privy to information that we try to keep from the little one when we talk in Spell and promptly goes and tells the little one. This makes it look like we are conspiring against baby and Jr. is her guardian angel!

2. The little one now understands Tamizh and English to a point where she can embarass us in public. Here is a conversation from our trip to the east coast over the last weekend:

Mom : enga pora ? (where are you going?)
Me : Bathroom (in hushed tone). Watch them for a few minutes.
When I come back towards the stroller...
Me : lets go
Little one : (with a big smile on her face on seeing me walk towards her)

Daddy? Pooh-pooh DONE ?

I have no idea how she heard or caught on to the fact that I was visiting the restroom. She announced the question, in a tone that would put the airport public address system to shame. Everyone in Terminals A through C would have looked up and thought "Good for you Daddy. But why tell everyone at the airport?", and continued on with their business.

Now the adults in the family only speak in Hindi.

We are also planning to enroll in Chinese classes starting next quarter at the local community college as a backup plan.


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When you assume ..

My high school physics teacher taught me :

When you "ass-u-me" you make an ass of you and me!

So, I did make an ass of me, when I assumed that textbooks in the USA would go through some kind of rigorous checking and proof reading before hitting the stands.

Worse, I assumed that teachers who give homework handouts, will check what they hand out, for quality!

As most of you have pointed out in response to my previous post, it does not sound right to write the letter "M" that way.

The reason I got all mad was that 5 of the 26 alphabets had an error in the way the strokes were mentioned!! Imagine how it would slow a kid down while taking notes in high school or college! I survived high school simply because I would write very fast and take extensive notes to go over at home. God forbid, Jr. ends up learning like me, and relies on notes, except she cannot write fast enough because 20% of the time she is going back and forth writing wrong strokes.. the nightmare!!

Here are some pictures from the homework sheet.



ACtually the option in the book (Phonics II - California syllabus ?) is worse!




Me rest case!

What ?

That sentence will be perfectly legitimate and taught in text books by the time Jr. hits middle school.


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