Kannada – English translation

            Received this picture and few other similar ones in my email recently. Although I am typing in English, but what happened to the Gokak chaLuvaLi? Or should we assume this is the fate of multi-lingual city (Bangalore) after such chaLuvaLis that made people not to learn English?

 

what do you think?

Mental Mathematics – Abacus

We took our daughter to Brain Child Institute for an assessment of whether she is ready for a math class at this time. Her kindergarten starts next fall which is 14 months away, so we were curious to introduce some math and reading to her at this time.

(image source: http://managemyemissions.com/images/abacus.jpg)

At the center, we visited a class room of 5 kids, they were probably 1st graders I think, and noticed a teacher keeping saying bunch of numbers for addition & subtraction viz., 3 + 5 + 2 – 3 + 1 + 6 + 2 – 8 + 7 , whats the answer? to my surprise, one of the kids, who was probably not distracted with our entry there, did answer it right. wow! How did he do it.

I noticed a strategy they used with their fingers, not necessarily abacus, but the I was told, they had started with abacus initially and now through imagination. I have never used abacus in my life, although i have seen one during my childhood, but my assumption was it was used to teach count the numbers for kindergarteners. well, that’s the limit of abacus usage I knew about until today when I noticed it at school and recently someone had mentioned about it. 

Have you used Abacus in school or to learn mathematics? to what extent?

To add on to this in my experience, Mental Mathematics, once learned the strategy, it is pretty cool.

Thinking about this and tutoring and classes for mental mathematics for basic operations like addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, although we see a lot of hype and promotions with organizations/institutions like Kumon, Brain Child, etc, however, L’ and I were thinking about it, and looking at the corner store retailer in Bangalore, the roadside vegetable and fruit stall vendor, where they would not have even gone to the primary schooling, and they perform these math perfect. here is the picture:

“A vendor with bunch of fruits and vegetables with a measuring weight at the front. There are 5 different people around the stall picking up things and having them weighed at random. PersonA gets egg plant, tomatoes, beans, – all are different quantity;  person B gets 5 different vegetables; and they all get ifferent items with different quantities. When each individual asks the shopkeeper for the amount they owe now, he gives the right answer for each individual, and mentally (no paper or computer or Retail Point of Sale machine involved – note he is selling on a roadside) he knows who picked what and how much. He computes the amount accordingly and gives the number.

amazing …

Vegetable Salad

cross posted from ootathindi blog…

Closed Credit Cards… feels lighter :)

hehe, I had a bunch of credit cards and not all of them were being used. Looks like as the economy got tighter, the credit card companies have started looking into each account in further details. I have at least about 6 credit cards including ones from Citi Financial, Chase bank.

Citi had actually kept sending me the upgrades from silver, to Platinum to Diamond and finally a Diamond Preferred card. However, this was one of the cards I had not used for couple of years now. Last October, I received a heads-up letter saying this was going to be closed by the end of the month and I could give them a call if I had any questions or if I needed to keep the card. Well, I didn’t take time to call them at the right time and I received another letter mid November saying the account was closed.  Well, one card less in my wallet now. It felt a little lighter 🙂

Last week, I received a letter from Chase, and this time around the letter was a bit improved or advanced. It said, due to no transactions in the past 2 years, the account WAS CLOSED. So, there was no chance to talk to them before it was closed, and it was assumed and closed by the credit bank itself.  It is another card less to carry in my wallet, and perhaps brings my wallet to a smaller size 🙂

The size of my wallet (used to be) – with all the available credit cards, debit cards, memberships cards, drivers license, a spare car key, etc…

 

and now i have switched to another smaller one just to keep 1 credit card, 2 debit cards, drivers license, fitness center card and a spare car key [I tend to leave the car keys inside and lock the car at times:) .]

 

No eggs in EggPlant?

“No Egg in Eggplant” –>  reminds me of my first experience ordering pizza at a pizza place in New Jersey. I was about a week in this country. We asked for a slice of vege pizza and here goes the conversation:

Me: a slice of vege pizza please
PizzaGal: toppings?
Me: what are the options?
PizzaGal: onions, tomatoes, egg plant, …
Me: no eggs please! No meat please!
PizzaGal: that’s right, no eggs, it’s a vegetable
Me: (confused) that’s alright  – no egg plant

It was quiet sometime later on when I learned about egg plant is indeed a vegetable 🙂

Trading on Beads…

Kids appear to learn the trading very early age. I remember the childhood days when we used to exchange little things like pencils, books and even the lunch / snacks that we used carry to school.

We recently noticed our little one taking her beads to school every day and they were not brought back. We didn’t realize for some time, although there is a restriction at the school that some kinds of toys are not supposed to be taken to the school (like soft toys), and when asked why she was taking out her beads from home, she says:
v: I gave my beads to a classmate “S”
I: hmm… great, but is there a reason why you wanted to give away your beads to her?
v: um… i give her my beads and she will give me the stars – (i thought stars are stickers)
I: so where are the stars?
v: not with me yet, she said she would bring it when i give her all my beads
I: hmm.. thats not good.

Thinking about it, there are 2 pieces to it:
1. it is appreciable that kids learn about trading, and economically/financially it is good cultivate that habit of give and take, so that keeps the transactions straight and no hassles. This reminds me of my own experience that I do, I am good at giving but at the same time not really so good at receiving end, even when it comes to trading if initiated by me. for instance, I ‘m willing to offer my help in all possible ways, but at the same time I am so hesitant to ask for help. I can go help our neighbors or friends or community help out, and when I need some help with either vehicle, or household projects, I am so hesitant to ask that help. If asked, I am sure they would all jump in to help me, but I don’t know how to ask, I would rather do it myself or pay some other business to do it for me. I wish I could learn the art of “asking for help”.

2. Is it too early for her to learn and understand the trading concepts now.  Is there a recommended age for kids brain to grasp the concept and go the right path? Or does it develop a mindset of always seeking something in return for a help provided? for a value provided? Is it good or not so good to have such expectations to get something in return? There are several questions come into my mind, and but should I impose these in her little brain?

Parenting is a great learning to apply various learning into practice. 🙂

Is it true – helping others is better than self analysis….

I hve noticed in several instances that some individuals are great in their Creativity while working with other individuals compared to brainstorming for themselves. Some are great coaching compared to doing things for themselves. I remember i had shared a similar thought once before.

so is this true creativity goes exponentially with pair programming or XP, and the quality and productivity increases as opposed to having the individuals left for themselves, specially while troubleshooting issues. Be it a software application or planning for a project.

what do you think?

if so, what are the ways one can learn to leverage his/her own brain for troubleshooting in a better way? I don’t think it is the experience, if that was the case, they would not be able to contribute high while helping / coaching others.

A bike finally arrived home…

It has been a project to buy a bicycle for our little one. Looks like we have postponed it several times for one or the other reason. She was so excited when it finally came to her hand at the store yesterday.

She has been saving her own money to buy this toy. The funds labeled “Cycle Fund” has been in collection for over a year or closely two, i think. Early on, we thought of introducing the concept of money to her, and introduced a little box named cycle fund, ever since she learned bits about money and has observed a lot at the grocery stores when we buy things there. The first thing she does after we step out of the pay counter at any stores, is to request for the bill/slip and count the number of items. She tries to read the numbers there, although she doesn’t know about decimal, but reads the numbers. These days, she appeared to have an understanding of lower and higher number i.e., 100 is greater than 10; 60s are greater than 40s etc. I am not sure if it is money conscious or the quantity, but often, she also comments, “why are buying so many things?” looking at the number of items in our shopping cart.

Back to her “cycle fund”, we started with a “dime-a-day” and started giving her a dime on a daily basis. There were days we had missed out, and made it up by giving 2 quarters in a way (yes though 20cents less there), but that kind of gave her an awareness of “not all coins look alike” – and there are other denominations associated to each coin type.

Anyways, the cycle fund trend has been discontinued for several months now, and I think we need to start again.

One of the reasons we pushed it out so far to buy one could be the winter months and didn’t pay attention until the spring / summer time. We went to several stores and she liked some of them, but we were actually looking for a relatively best fit size, hand brakes options, etc… Anyways, she tried one of these 16-inch bicycles and appeared very comfortable with. We went again 2 days ago, and picked one. She wasn’t although happy that it was going to be another 24 hours to actually pick it up upon having it assembling it at the store itself. We went back the following day, it was about ready, and she was eagerly waiting at the counter to see her brand new bike. There arrives, and before I see it, there she goes – jumped over the bike, and off to the exit door.

We went out for swimming this morning leaving her bike at home, and it was disappeared from the spot it was placed when we arrived back. For a split of a minute, her face turned red, eyes full of tears, lips just about to crack open to a loud cry for not seeing the bike at the spot. I then realized, my wife might have taken it inside to perform pooja (as we often do on a new vehicles/items), and indicated the little one to check inside waiting for a pooja. She was somewhat convinced (‘coz she has heard about this concept often) and went inside. Her face blossomed with a big wide smile and still tears-filled eyes and jumped over the bicycle.

It is interesting how emotional the kids get if they don’t see their favorite item even for a second. She tried it around our house later, and seemed to enjoy being a bike-owner.

July 4, Fireworks

We had been to a friend’s place on Saturday (4th) evening – met with couple of other families over dinner and walked down to watch the fireworks. It was a perfect spot to watch and was fairly closer compared to the other fireworks I had previously been to. Apparently, we are not allowed to light the fire crackers ourselves in our area, so was a good thing that the city organizes such events.

Here are some pictures captured during that 20 minutes of fireworks show…

I am yet to learn about night and light shots on our Canon ES camera, and I was not prepared to take good pictures for this event. It wasn’t enough time at that moment and I just turned to one of the pre-programmed options and clicked away a handful of pictures, and realized they weren’t really coming out the way I wanted.

 

bing, google the synonym of Search?

Interesting video on college humor site, on googl(search)ing with Bing.com 🙂

watch here http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1915736