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Showing posts from 2005

Techstruck

The May 2nd issue of India Today has a full page ad, showing a blue, bent, battered notebook. The text said some reporter crashes on her way to meet zimbabwe, survives, returns to the wreckage to recover her notebook. Files her report successfully. I scooted rapidly to the bottom right corner of the page to see who made this unbreakable laptop. It turned out to be a BBC World Ad and on closer looks the notebook was just a notebook.

Phonics or Old Fashioned reading lessons?

My son knows his alphabets from the alphabet song and they teach him letters the old fashioned way i.e., without going into phonics, in his play school. This is throwing up some rather hilarious situations. He wants to know if B is for Ambi thatha (my dad, his grandpa). When I correct him he claims I am wrong because it is "AmBi" thatha. So I deceided to introduce him to the concept of phonics. I explained to him A makes the sound a like in Amma, Appa, Asimov (a robot in the news recently). He asked like Ambi thatha? Yes, like Ambi thatha. like Thulasi Paati? No, not thulasi paati, T is for thulasi paati. But thulasi paati is your mom, so it should be A for thulasi paati I was flabbergasted by this rather wackily logical argument ;)

Unbeatable wit at 3!

My 3 year old is always full of questions, what when , why how etc.... He also frequently, unintentionally (I Hope) sounds sarcastic, wise, ironic and of course funny by turn. Yestarday he had a enjoyable meal of pasta and soup. He wanted to know what dad would eat. I informed him I had packed the same meal in his lunch box, he would be eating pasta at work. He asked "Dad goes to office to work right? Why does he eat there?". I had placed a bowl of fresh milk in front of the altar for neivedyam. "If you put milk in a bowl, only a dog will drink it" he quipped after enquiring what I was doing and why. Sathish told him Gautham Gambir, the Indian opener is very sticky, hence the name "Gum"bir. We were matching a charlie chaplin act where the papasan chair sticks to Kamal Hassan's bum. "He has become Gautham Gambir" he quipped! It took me a couple of seconds to get it.