The Golu Saga

After Diwali, Navarathri is my favorite festival.(Though off late my enthu for both have mitigated owing to various mundane reasons).Both were( and I guess still are ) highly entertaining festivals and digresses from other routine south indian festivals which primarily involves pooja and eating in some flavour or the other.
Diwali is of course fun with crackers ( I like calling Deepavali as Diwali)..


But Navarathri is really unique in many ways.It fetches around 10 days holidays for school kids giving a big breathing space.Golu being an integral part of south indian Dusherra gives a beautiful opputunity for creativity,fun and family get togethers.My happy memories related to the golu itself is because of the awesome time I used to have till a couple of years back.All teachers from school who are also mom's friends go on a Golu visiting spree.Of course I used join them.It was a great fun time for us( teacher's kids).We hired a cab and Finished the Nangalallur area first followed by madipakkam and T.Nagar .Almost every teacher had a special gift for the kids and something unique to eat.Then we were all made to sing too.Some people make "Theme" golus though of course we never managed to come up with any theme at our place.Some golus have fancy lightings.One guy near our home in Bang displayed all this mini projects(like the moving ship , and some sound sensors etc) in their Golu !!!
Then their is an aunty near by who displays some of her very beautiful paitings and Kolam in water in her golu.

Not that I study everyday .. But somehow for the past 4 years I invariabily end up studying on the saraswathi pooja day !!! Some how this post seems like a fifth std kids essay on "My fav festival" .. and here are the pics of our Golu ...

Arbit Stuff

In a serious attempt to shrug off a chunk of laziness which had amassed me for the past some time(say a few months ;-) I am planning to write some regular posts. It may be a little redundant also.Here are a medley of things I want to tell about.

1.Apart from people at home what I miss most abt home when I am not at home ( ie Occationally when I am in hostel ) are the Pickles or the (oorgas) . It took me less than a month to realize that nothing actually comes close to home food . ( Something which I failed to acknowledge for the past 21 years !!!! ).Somehow I dont think anyone will ever get fed up of the home made tayir sadam.The primary savor of tayir sadam is the contrast between its blandness and that of the side dish.I always prefer a pickle or vatha kozhambu to anything else.So I miss all the tokku and togayal and the mavadu and the mavadu jalam.Of course I do have all these during the weekends.

2.Then comes my new theory on procrastination.If you always postpone things and previous trends seriously suggest that you have never managed to not procrastinate then its better not to attempt to start the work early.Anyways by parkinson's law work will expand and you may never do it on time cos you have a serious tendency to postpone half done work( like me !!!).After all why have the guilt feeling of starting early and finish late ??
I was wondering about my tendency to postpone things to the last second sometime.Like getting up early in the morning just to waste away the evening ( in the pretense of having high concentration early morning ).And then keeping stuff to read in the bus despite having time at home..And so on...

Thats it i guess :-D

Another post on education

With a "Teacher Amma " at home we often have heated discussions about education, the schooling system and especially its impact on kids, the country, the globe , the milky way and so on...
Pararelly what my Sanskrit teacher once told us in class also dawned on me...She said that No teacher "teaches" anything to a student .. It is already within the kid and she simply taps it out of him..Viewing teaching in this new limelight I can now visualize the refinement involved in the profession.Education itself is simply a realization process within the student's mind and the teacher is a catalyst to aid the completion of this beautiful process...With four courses in theoretical computer science I am tending to be a mathematician, so I will pick up examples of teaching maths.
My ground rule now is
1.The teacher/guide should not give the solution to any problem in the beginning.ie No method should be written on the board directly.

2.The teacher should break the problem and maybe give an example of the expected results and not immediately go ahead and give the solution.Maybe you have a Newton sitting in your class..Give him enough motivation to rediscover calculus.

3.The full pleasure of education can be enjoyed when it self becomes a realization process.Reinventing the wheel is fun.In the process failing is fun.Retry is superb.And finally when the solution is presented the student understands the idea , the mind behind the solution and also appreciate the great thoughts..

If not calculus atleast some basic tricks..For instance dont tell him that if the sum of the digits of a number is divisible by 3 then the number is also divisible by 3.Help him discover it own his own..Give examples...Remodel it into a simple linear equation problem .And finally see the answer boiling out..

With this kind of realization process comes a new level of maturity.The maturity to appreciate great interpretation.After presenting a new algorithm to us in class which was better than the previous idea my prof remarks "Ah Ha!".
When I get a chance to teach..After I present someone's great ideaI want ppl to "realize" on their own..And then say an "Ah ha!" and not an "Ayyo!" .And I guess the Gurukula system is the best form of schooling.No doubt.

When Dunston Checked in ...

Long long ago ... Not so long ago just one week long back..On a hot humid afternoon I decided to take one of my usual short nap before the four O clock class..After landing here in hostel a great chunck of time is spent on going home, coming back and deciding when to go home and when to be back and where to eat or sleep and so on...And the hostel room has given me complete freedom for my lethargic ultra extended sleeping habbits.Its almost become like an illegal license to sleep in the afternoons ( Mind You .. Not naps ... But "sleep").And Damn that guy who came up with the idea of "snooze" and "Recurrent Alarms" in cell phones.It never works .. atleast i never wake up...The art of Snoozing alarm from 4.00 to 6.30 am and then switching it off at 6.00 and finally waking up at 7.00 ..
Anyways .. So I was there sleeping.. As usual left the window open..Cos it gets too stuffy otherwise.But it was a disturbed sleep and suddenly I hear some paper crushing noise.I obviously abandon the noise subconsciously.Then more noise.On the window pane was a monkey..With my spectacles in some hand and the case in the other.It had managed to sit on the window pane..Open my zipped bag kept on a table alongside the window..pull out papers and spectacles ..
Obviously I got scared of it .. And did one of my dramatic , super noisely , screeching "yell"...Now it got scared obviously.And left everything else but got away with the spectacles and the case...

For my infrequent usage of glasses ... I had spent quite a fortune on it...Some anti glare plastic lens which some guy had marketed well to my dad..My dad felt that my profession involved using the computers primarily (ie chatting) it is advicable to use those high funda lens..Now in the monkey's hands.. Korangu kaila Poo malai madiri..

Now it was a run downstairs ..To hunt for my specs and find if it is one piece at all..I find a friend and both of us walk behind the hostel ...Into the bushes under the area just below my room to find a big monkey gang..We decided to come back with someone more experianced.Called the "akka" who generally sits in the hostel lobby and this time we walked over well equiped with a stick..To find my glass and the case strewn away ..But undamaged and unscratched... Thank God..



But there are still some misteries unsolved..Like the
mystery of vanishing "Good Day" packets ..
Mystery of vanishing "port wine Choc" But the wrapper thrown around..
Mystery of vanishing "face wash tubes"....