Of This and That

They say that just by knowing it all you cannot be a good teacher. Teaching requires specific skill set and good teachers are those who constantly innovate and keep modernizing their styles. There are two styles in particular at my kid's school that I find particularly amusing. 1. Who says you should only teach in English? You could teach in Hindi, Sanskrit etc, but obviously if you are teaching languages. Surprisingly, however an English teacher for my kid, teaches in Marathi :-) 2. All unit tests for my kid actually start with oral exam and then later written papers. Oral exam, I guess is to figure out speaking abilities, body language, expression etc for the students, which is good. But they have at least one oral exam which is actually a written test :-). The teacher reads out the questions and the students all write answers and give the paper to her. What a novel way to take oral exam!!!!

Watched this film this weekend and my personal experience has been so so. Didn't find it as chilling as general comments out there seem to suggest. Maybe watching it at home didn't had the theatrical effects and also with my kid walking by every now and then, we kept the audio to low and possibly lost on some screams in the movie. Also found some confusion about 2007 or 2009 release, but it seems the movie is the same. It was made in 2007 but got a world wide release only towards late 2009 and has been filmed with multiple different endings. The film has a style of having shot from home video camera and that possibly scared some, but I found that to actually play against the movie. To me it seemed like some home video prank and hence I wasn't ever really engrossed in the movie. Also the shaking and lack of steady audio level, probably put me off. All said and done, it is definitely worth watching once.

This one dates back many years... I and few friends were out having dinner. Along with us was Mhow, our friend with great talent towards singing and guitaring. As we were enjoying the dinner, a person walks towards us and addresses Mhow Person: "Hi, Mhow the bard !" Mhow: "Hi!" Person: "How are you doing?" Mhow: "Am good. How about you?" Person: "Am good. How are things?" Mhow: "Good. You tell me?" Person: "All is well... blah blah.." Mhow: "blah.. blah.." This cross talk went on for some more time, and the person and Mhow behaved as if they were long lost friends. Me and others on the table were silent observers with a mild smile on our face. Finally the conversation came to an end Person: "Bye Mhow. See you again soon" Mhow: "Bye, take care" At this time Mhow turns to me and says "Who was he?"

As i was digging into my mail archives, I happened upon this truely amazing accident report dated almost a decade back. I feel sad for the bricklayer, but am sure you also won't be able to stop laughing as you read this :-).

This is one question that keeps nagging parents. Do I teach me kid to share or not to share? Obviously, sharing is good, but there are equally obvious situations when you can't share, like during exams. The other day my kid came back from her school and quizzed us this aspect. The situation she encountered was something like this: She had her unit tests going on and having finished her test paper, she handed it over to the teacher. The teacher had said that the students who had done their papers, could do what ever they liked without disturbing. Knowing very well that post the school, she will have an oral exam from her mother about the paper, she decided to pen down some of the answers in her rough copy. Another student thought to make better of this and tried to steal some glances from what she was writing and being the good student that she was, she gave him a stern look and covered her copy. The teacher noticed some activity and came over to check out. My kid explained the matt...

These are probably the most abused two words, at least in the software industry. It is like a binding legal rule, that any new language/technology you learn, you have to write a program that displays "Hello World!" when run. Needless to say that with my so many years in this industry, i can't but help use the same two words, so ingrained in me now, to put as title of my first blog here. I have also seen a few people with an extra dose of imagination using another set of two words - "goodbye world" and I hope to use them only when i run into a roadblock and am not able to figure out what to write about next. Anyway, the purpose of this is to just announce myself and i will soon start sharing some interesting anecdotes from my life. So hang on there !!