English Memsab

This post is to capture some of the lighter moments of Poorvi, when she was trying to speak in English in her own way. This is not to ridicule or make fun of her good & bold attempts in English speaking, but just for some good laugh. I know, within few years from now, she will be correcting mistakes in my English & will have a much better vocabulary than I do for sure. Already she corrects the mistakes which is very common for us Kannadigas/South Indians (like M pronounced as "Yum" and not "em", X pronounced as "Yucks" rather than as "ex", "coast" pronounced as "coa-SH-t", "west" as "We-SH-t" and sometime almost sounding like "Wa-SH-te"). Poorvi is able to catch these mistakes & correct it. That's the good part.

But Poorvi's biggest challenge comes when she has to frame a sentence. About 6 months back, she had a small tussle with her friend in the apartment. She wanted to convey to him that "she will not go to his house and even he should not come to our home". She put it in her own sweet way - "You are not my house is come, I am not your house is come". Best part was that the other guy understood what Poorvi was saying and fighting went on for some more time.

Recently, Poorvi wanted to convey "Plan does not sound good". We tried a lot to correct her, but she insisted on saying - "Plan does not sound not good". Well, she is not a negative attitude person, but she wanted to emphasize that the message had as many (k)nots as possible to convey her dissent clearly. Matter of time, I am sure she will overcome these small hitches of English language soon.

Dramayana - Jai ho

Festival season has just begun in India. I feel, Aug-Sep-Oct quarter is a tough quarter for people trying to reduce weight :-) First of all, it is either raining or pretty cold to venture out much. Then the range of sweets & other dishes you get to eat during Ganesha-Navaratri-Deepavali season does little good to your body too. Anyway, this quarter is also a season of joy, celebrations, coming together with your family and friends. 

To celebrate Ganesha festival, there was a fun filled evening organized in our apartment as well. The program was themed around Ramayana. All important events of Ramayana were depicted through some modern dance sequences. 

Hilarious part of this dance sequence was - "Aaja meri gaadi main bait jaa" song sequence, where the so 

called "Rakshasas" come in modern scooter (kid's scooter), and trying to woo Sita to come with them for a ride :-) As usual Sita falls for this tactic & hitches a ride all the way to Lanka. Then, as usual Rama/Lakshmana have to go to Lanka to get Sita back right? So they do. There was a song sequence "Jai ho" from all the "monkeys" to boost the morale of team Rama to go to Lanka & win the war. Poorvi was one of the monkey in this dance sequence. This dance was done by kids of age around 3 to 5 years. They all had enthusiastically prepared for this big day from last couple of months, practicing Jai-ho dance day-in & day-out. The whole dance sequence came out really good & I was pleasantly surprised that these monkeys did carry themselves quite nice, with all those costumes.

Poorvi and gang are now practicing bollywood dance for next set of songs already. As Navaratri & Deepavali celebrations are also coming up, these kids will get more chance to show off their talents. Jai Ho.

New Life

Last couple of weeks have been busy for me. First of all, my old laptop decided to take its last breath & my N95 phone got critically ill. So, when you don't have your laptop with you & your phone does not work the way you want it to work, you will feel paralyzed. That's what happened with me & I ordered a new laptop in office & got myself a new phone. A complete new life for me, as Veena says :-)

I have a new HP 6930p Elitebook (see the pic). It took sometime for me to get used to it, install all my old softwares/applications. I must say, this is a very nice laptop, but my only crib is about just 160 GB hard disk :-( All was well, untill I installed Office-2007 on to this laptop. Sometimes I get that ever-famous blue screen, which is quite annoying. Anyway, this is much much better, faster & more importantly has a prolonged battery life than my old laptop.

Next step was getting a new phone. I was all the time waiting for Nokia 5530 to be available in India. It is good touch phone, toned down version of Nokia 5800. Nokia 5800 (refer to the pic above) was priced at 16.7K about 3 weeks back & 5530 was expected to be around 14K. But surprise surprise.. Last week 5800 prices were slashed by 3K & it was available for 13.7K. No looking back, no more waiting, just went & grabbed Nokia 5800 for 13.7K last weekend. Again, coming from traditional "keypad" phones, getting used to touch phone & exploring all the nice features took time. More challenge was to make these two new devices talk to each other seamlessly.

And in this new life, getting things right first time is difficult. For example, look at this blog. I am yet to find a way to position the images in right place using IE-7. I was happy with Safari on my old laptop & for some reason safari was not getting installed on this new laptop. I knew how re-positioning of images work within the blog editor. Somehow it is not working in IE7 :-(.

New life, new challenges. We shall overcome, someday.

A holiday - Why was it for?

Last Friday was declared as a holiday in Karnataka for all government offices, schools & colleges. Reason ? To mourn the sudden, sad demise of YSR, chief minister of Andhra Pradesh. There is a saying in Kannada - "ಎತ್ತಿಗೆ ಜ್ವರ ಬಂದರೆ ಎಮ್ಮೆಗೆ ಬರೆ ಹಾಕಿದರಂತೆ". It was a case something like that. Due respects to YSR & his achievements and indeed it was a very tragic incident. But, why a holiday in Karnataka?

Anyway, Poorvi did not complain. She asked me why was it a holiday on Friday. What can you tell to a 4 year old? I thought atleast this is the time for her to understand what is a city, what is a state, which is our state, which is our neighbouring state, who is our chief-minister, who was neighbouring state's chief minister etc. So, I started asking few basic questions like - "Which is our city, which is our state, which is our country" etc to Poorvi. With some guesses, she was able to answer them anyway :-) Now the big moment - "Who is the chief minister of Karnataka"? Well, Poorvi knows Yeddiyurappa. I thought she might answer this correctly or at the most say "Manmohan Singh", if she had some confusion. Poorvi thought for a moment and guessed - "Pratibha Patel"!!!! Wow, that was a complete googly for me. How did she know about Pratibha Patel, president of India? I did not probe much into it, but I clarified these confusions & then explained about YSR and his death in helicoptor crash. Poorvi said, she already knew about that news, she watched it in TV & I was not giving any new information to her. :-( Oh... I thought I was really far behind in getting the news updates than Poorvi.

Anyway, on Friday morning Poorvi was explaining about her new-found knowledge to one of her friend - " some man was travelling in some helicoptor. Somewhere it crashed and he died, so we have a holiday today". Very simple explanation isn't it? I was just wondering again - why was the holiday for.

The Great fancy dress

It was a fancy dress day for Poorvi in the school today. Last year, she was a "doctor". So, we wanted to dress her differently this year. The theme for today's fancy dress was "national leader". Hmm... without much of thinking, we decided to dress her up as Indira Gandhi :-) It is simple, isn't it. Wear a saree, hold a flag & tell few words like "Jai hind" or "Bolo Bharat Maatha Ki". Well, not exactly.

Poorvi was very uncomfortable in ready-to-wear-saree. Her stomach/back was visible & she did not quite like that. We tried our best to convince that it is common if one is wearing saree. Poorvi did not appreciate this logic & did not get convinced much. She was again crying in that lovely dress. Somehow, we have sent Poorvi in this attire, not sure if she is comfortable in the school & able to carry herself in saree. Hope everything is fine with her & her dress.

Few pics of Poorvi in saree, in the morning (some smiling, some crying and some crying-smiling pics).

The one stop sports shop - Decathlon

This place rocks. If you need any sports equipment (be it camping, archery or even surfing), you get them all here. This is not like any other shop that you have been to in Bangalore. Shop is quite huge that you can try cycling inside the shop itself, before you buy the cycle. If you want to try hockey/football, you can do it all there. Staff is courteous, they can even play a game of TT with you, if you want to test your racquet before purchasing. This is a place called "Decathlon" on Sarjapur road. It is a must visit place for all sports buffs.

But, all good things in life come with a condition too :-) This place is meant only for the retail merchants / business establishments. So, you need to have a membership card there. To get this card, you have to prove that you have some business (by showing your business receipts/accounts) :-(

In India, for every rule, there will also be equal and opposite workarounds to overcome the same. So, I have seen many normal janatha like me having the card and enjoying the benefit. All you need to do is to catch hold of a card holder in Decathlon, go along with them & shop to your heart's content. Some of the must-see-must-get items in this shop include "Golf Umbrella", Water bottles, variety of torches etc. Stuff yourself with enough cash on you before you enter this place, as they accept card payment only from their "members". More details in this page - http://www.decathlon.in/

Directions to reach Decathlon:

From Silkboard, go on HSR layout ring road -- Agara junction -- Sarjapur road -- cross Wipro corporate office -- Go past railway crossing -- Reach Decathlon (on to your right, 50 meters from railway crossing).