Today’s Hot Topic: School Science Project

Come summer and the Indian school system has a way of making its presence felt. During the holidays the student given a task to prepare a science project. This is a yearly ritual since not many teachers like students being free (Their Motto: We hate you). I am not intending to say that science projects are always a “PAIN” but it can help you in many ways. For example, it will teach each parents the Newton’s third law “Every action has an equal and opposite reaction”. Since you shouted at your son, he shall remain silent till the holiday ends and then on the night before school reopening (when you have just entered the pajamas) shout “I HAVE A SCIENCE PROJECT TO BE DONE AND I NEED TO GO TO THE MALL”.

Basically any project can be classified as a science project, but this time around you son is sure to give you guideline details as to how to present them. The last minute running around in your pajamas for a project is a ritual that is most important part of any summer project. The project has to be delivered in a thick card board paper with proper calligraphic titles and all items bonded to the chart with proper adhesive etc. If any of these items are not used then the school authorities will out-rightly reject the science discovery which you have made. This may be one of the main reasons why many top Indian scientists have failed to win a Nobel Prize in Science. (They forgot the thick card board as a base, I guess)

Once you have returned home at the stroke of midnight like Cinderella (with one leg of the pajamas missing) and start to unfold the card board base you are all set. Set to think of some innovative and creative project – kindly allow 6 hours for your brain to rack up an award winning entry like the “Origin of Earth” which is instantly rejected by the panel consisting of your wife, son, the milk man and 700 cockroaches. After much deliberation you come to a conclusion that the prize winning entry would have to be clearly imaginative and original. So you can immediately drop out of the race, forget winning.

What you need is a project which can be done in 30 minutes with materials found in your unwashed kitchen and untidy bedroom. Ideally the women of the house would like to execute the project without any property damage (i.e. Your Life) which is why she volunteers to do the whole stuff. Based on advices from elders and past experience I am refraining myself from explaining the popular projects and previous year winning entries since it may require certain amount of plumbing and nuclear activities.

Irrespective of the topic you choose, the project has to be dived into 3 parts: (1) The Objective, (2) Some thing which goes after the objective and (3) The Conclusion (which should be nothing but the objective). If we fail to follow this policy the project shall be rejected. Perhaps this is why all government proposals get a quick nod, no one cares for item (2).

With not much of luck (I am certain) you are still glaring at the ceiling and looking for a topic such as “Waves”, “Gravity”, “Light”, “Cellular Phones” etc. The gravity is a good one considering that you can take pictures of you holding your baby down and then take another snap of the baby falling and then another snap of you picking up the baby. This proves that there is a lot of gravity around you.

The only problem with this experiment is that you don’t realize the actual gravity of the situation in hand. All you want to do is to come up with some idea which can be done in 10 minutes. So you are back to square one at “Our Solar System” which takes 10 minutes to prepare. Out of these ten minutes, 9 minutes are devoted to searching for plastic balls of various sizes and rubber bands to string them in order.

Anyway you made it for this year and this whole routine shall occur exactly the same time next year, until then you may not have any problems with Science. The only problem you now have a deal is that your son is not going to get a good grade. For good grades you need good projects and for good projects you need good amount of time to think. So think about it.

Note: I am off early from office; have to go to the mall for buying things for my son’s pre-kg project named “Prehistoric Farm Animals”.

Obsession with Home Improvement

My wife always finds some reason or excuse to go to the Departmental store. Like for instance if I didn’t wash my car or if we needed to patch the ceiling, she will immediately put her slippers on and call out “Let’s go shopping”. I guess from so many male readers reading this line that I am not in a minority group.

I hate sarcasm and more than that hate the 3 most used sarcastic words in English “You do it”. You must be wondering why even a third rated super market in your locality is always crowded, well it’s because we males are afraid of those 3 words. Men hate to do anything themselves except getting lost in the car or watching cricket on TV. So the “Y” chromosomes in this planet have adapted to dislike the concept of sharing house-hold work with our wives.

What really baffles me is why all these supermarkets are carrying a big section for home & kitchen appliances, vegetable stalls when every 9 out of 10 families prefer to eat out. I presume that the shop owners are obsessed for success since even if we prefer to eat out, they tap the female instinct to shop unnecessarily. I have never seen my wife return empty handed from a super market, even if she doesn’t like anything in there she may buy a new fair of silver ware when we hardly eat at our residence.

The supermarket folks are very intelligent; even if we are not willing to cook inside our kitchen they come out with products to mordernise or remodel our kitchens. The only best thing I like about this idea is that every time when we either remodel or mordernise the kitchen, we make sure that we dump those 23 million cockroaches and 43 million lizards out of the kitchen. Perhaps my wife buys those cheeses, breads and cement concretes which stay for inside the freezer (roughly for 43 years) for the roaches to feed their colonies.

Another interesting fact is that these home improvement shops and restaurants are always full of guys who are instructed by their wives to modernize their kitchen or shop unnecessary grocery items. Even at 10:30PM when the store wants to close you will see many guys leaping and diving to enter before the shutters go down. If you don’t believe me, then try to get a vantage parking place at 10:30PM in a super market. After these call centers, I assume the next thing which is 24/7 is the super markets sales counter.

The recent trend is really disturbing, families go out buy houses than rent them so that they can go and shop for home improvements, furnishings, kitchen accessories. Not long ago, my friends used to say “Why waste your money on renting a place when for the same you can buy one. Thus you create equity out of it.” Now, seeing the queue in front of these home improvement shops and super markets, I guess my friends are creating equities for these SHOPS.

On a trip one day to the home improvement shop, I had to visit the restroom. The rest rooms in these shops are always located in the next available planet or 2 miles from the entrance. I walked right through the shop which had sections like plumbing, nuts ’n’ bolts, PVC pipes, bathroom accessories, marbles, tiles, clay, soil and hardware clothes etc. Upon reaching the rest room I find that I can not enter it. It baffles me if so many guys are out there buying these accessories and building a home but can’t flush a single toilet. Perhaps the only solution which I can think of for this problem is that we out-source this work too.

My Son's Driving Turns Me Neurotic

My sons learning to drive and he is really terrific. He is just 4 years old.

Well every parent would love to see their kids learn to drive as long as the vehicle which they drive is manufactured by Fisher-Price and moves in pace with a mega serial. One thing which is safe is that the Fisher-Price set comes with toy Fisher-Price people who are unlikely to swear when you are driving rashly.

Technically from the perspective of a parent, there is no difference between 4 and 18 year except that when is 4 you have more control over him while he is driving his Fisher-Price manufactured Ferrari. Recently when I looked into my driving license I found that according to the law, whenever your child reaches 18 he is allowed to apply for a license and drive an actual car on the actual road with an actual speed of 60 KMS. This puts a big shrill down my bone marrows since I keep seeing him drive, on a daily basis, between the bed room and the kitchen.

According to the law, when my son is 18 he shall be allowed to drive a vehicle with a restriction that he be accompanied by another person (preferably over 40) who has a valid driving license and is not Salman Khan. [I rather let my son drive on the road and kill people than drive on the foot path.] So I request the government to make this restriction a bit stricter by saying that he can drive along with a co-driver, 2 Supreme Court judges, my mother-in-law and a child surgeon.

This is not to hint that my son drives badly but the actual people on the road are worse. My son today follows all laws which are prescribed in the driving learner’s manual and I am afraid. He drives at correct speed; shows hand signals, slows down while turning and honks at my wife while crossing the kitchen etc. My worry is what if my son starts to believe in the manual and tries to replicate this in the real world?

Motorists in Madras believe in some sort of a black magic curse would fall upon you if you follow the driving code and display speeds ranging from Formula 1 to Concorde even while trying to park in a busy shopping mall. If this is not a deterrent to you then I wonder how all these drivers receive calls on their cell phone only when they drive, perhaps their wives are calling them to give instructions on how to come back home. “Swerve left and hit the auto out of the road; turn immediately to the right, 2nd flat is our house, B-A-N-G … The Green one is a garbage lorry you hit, I am wearing a RED dress”.

Veteran Chennai drivers like me precisely know who to go about this system. For instance it is OK to park in the middle of the road; to rush after the Red signal has come. It’s OK to go through the RED as long as you can remember when it was YELLOW. Never to follow an auto-rickshaw because following his wheel makes your head spin. How is my son going to learn all these tricks?

What worries me a lot is that, he may want to drive one day (guessing from his passion for speed in his current Ferrari). My urgent requirement is that there be some kind of a summer camp between school holidays where in they teach you these tiny driving tips which will save many parents from becoming neurotic patients while watching their kids drive. I hope some event managers are reading this piece and start thinking in those directions while I stop typing since my son is approaching me in his Bulldozer @ 250 MPH

Note: Fisher-Price Bulldozer manual says it’s advisable to drive to a maximum of 10 MPH only.

Further Note: The bulldozer is driven by trained child drivers below the age of 4. Never try this at your home.

News As The TV Covers Them

Not long ago the average TV viewing people had very high regards for media journalist who are covering useless news but today this regard has gone way high. Basically I would like to say “It’s rotting”. When I say “it’s” it is referring to the news content and when I say “rotting” is it based on the shockingly new development within the TV channels in covering the top headline of stories that are happening around you and me.

Let me dissect what would happen if hypothetically a news item such as “dead frog found in school canteen” arrives and how would this story be blown out of proportion by these media giants in search for lousy TRP ratings. Let us assume that the story was that a school watchman had ordered a combo meal and noticed that the “Paneer” was chewier than it ought to be. So he spit it out and found it was a piece of a frog. More frighteningly, the head was missing and the watchman was violently trying to vomit food that he had since he was 14.

Before the channel crew members and other innocent bystanders could arrive, the school canteen manager has a tug-of-war and finally takes control over the frog and refused to surrender it. If you knew anything about Indian media journalist, then you would know what happened next, namely, crew members materialized from no-where. Then a group of experts in frog and frog related diseases appear, now it becomes a real head lines for the day and the viewers could be left with frightening visuals of the dead frog, a vomiting watchman and 5 experts wrestling between them. There has to be one lone outsider fanatically shouting slogans like “Stop cruelty to frogs, eat lizards instead”.

With this as a backdrop, the news channels will then form a short documentary featuring interviews with those related to the incident such as the watchman’s second wife, a tea shop owner next to the canteen, the canteen manager’s son-in-law and the school principal. Each of them gives their 10 cents worth of wisdom when the nation is facing economic crises and slowdowns. In-between these documentaries they will show clippings which zoom-in and zoom-out of the actual plate which had the dead frog. Some channels will use latest graphics to recreate the frog in the plate.

In the mean time, the journalist would think and come up with interesting angles from the legal point of view, animal rights and carbon footprint analysis. A PIL would be filed with lawyers stating to the canteen manager that “the frog is vital to the case and that they are to maintain custody of the frog to insure it’s not lost, or damaged or consumed till the case ends”. In reply to this the advocates for the canteen manager would reply “At present we can’t reveal the exact location of the frog but wish to convey that it is being tested by a reputed multinational laboratory at an undisclosed place.”

As soon as we viewers loose interest in this news line item, the channels start their next round of attack. They create a nation wide SMS poll consisting of 32 people well trained to keep sending SMS. They are highly skilled in choosing different options using latest scientific methodology involving “Inky Pinky Ponky” and “Shaat Bhoot Three”. News with charts stating the same numbers in 1000 different ways will be repeatedly aired. They would create headline stories like “Did you Frogget your lunch today”, “A frog in the box”. These stories will be followed by discussion panels answering burning questions related to this incidence like “Are today’s frog suitable for meals?”, “Is the canteens safe for lizards?”, “Face the Nation: Frogs or Onions, which is cheap?”.

By this time the frog issue would have reached to such a height that the parliament would be rocked. The opposition parties would start to blame the ruling party and stall proceedings for 3 days. They would then bring out facts that in-fact the canteen manager was linked with the ruling party and was employed using false certificate for his caste. This would bring the anti-reservationists into the picture and the whole of the media would be having a ball of a time.

Why forget the stock markets, all the restaurants and hotel stocks would have nosed dived and market research analysts would be talking about this deviation. In my opinion anybody who has a nice suit/coat and knows few jargons such as “correction”, “market fundamentals”, “global cues” would be hired by these channels as a market research expert.

While all this is going on, the poor watchman who had tasted the frog and the canteen manager who served the frog would have been pushed to oblivion. Both of them, not to be shocked, would have in their short time of fame enrolled into some opposition political parties and would be campaigning for the next general election. I wouldn’t be shocked if the canteen manager was elected to the health minister portfolio.

This whole drama ends when another headline story is created namely a 14 yr old student wanting to elope with his math teacher. Anyway this ends my point of view on today’s responsible journalists who try to bring news as they occur without distortion. Perhaps I have a different perception of what they show nevertheless I can’t stop watching them on a daily basis for entertainment.

Time For Pre-KG Admission

We are moving inside our own house every 4 minutes and I got to blame this on my son. He is only 42 months old but somehow seems to have got something in him to be always in the news just like our Indian cricket team. This time around we are lurking like a cat in the house due to the fact that we have to get admission for him in a school.

When I was a “YOUTH’ (not long ago, this is to keep me happy) schools were mainly to make sure parents get some time off and the children have some past time. In today’s fast moving world, school is the ONLY thing which a family thinks right from the moment they hear that the wife is pregnant. Even as I am typing these words, some couple would be thinking of which play-school to put their kid in. It has gone to such an extent that many couples like their friends to present school bags, Tiffin boxes, geometry box for their baby shower so that they are well prepared for sending their kid to pre-school.

The process starts with the selection of the school. This involves more calculations than what was encountered by Einstein while solving the theory of relativity. The major criterion is the school being located in the same solar system of ours. Then the issue is about the affordability comes into picture. For all practical purpose consider any school as non-affordable. The reason for this is the schools thrive on your competency to teach your kids. There are 2 methods of filtering the schools of your choice. First method is to look at your neighbour and follow them or the second method which is highly scientific and works all the time – “Inky Pinky Ponky” as a filter.

The second item in the list of things to do is to procure an application form. Usually the forms are given on a day and time which is never suitable for any of the parents. Getting an application form is a real big ordeal compared to buying a nuclear missile from the US Defence Ministry. Parents have to employ 2 people for 3 months to go and stand in-front of the school to be first in line. For many parents who can’t afford people go personally and camp before the school thereby letting their houses for rent. As we read this line I am sure many house owners are contemplating of leasing their homes and pitching a tent before lucrative schools and then think of marriage and kids.

The next item on the list is to find a suitable mode of transportation. As far as I know it’s the same mini-van in which the driver, through very precise calculations, fits as much of human flesh possible inside the van and where ever there is space he will carefully fold the small children and stuff the gap. In the rear end of the van he will mount all the school bags which will weigh roughly 23 metric tonnes. It is truly an engineering marvel on how this van travels through the roads with its wheels hardly in contact with the surface. The driver’s mood often reflects that he is trying to keeps his bladders from breaking while driving the vehicle. In one sense it is really nice that the children don’t feel the drive to school but for other observers outside the van it is horrible.

Even though the above tasks look heavy, the heaviest is yet to come. Getting the child to a ready state is a big struggle for the parents. Firstly to wake the kid up is such a Herculean task that it saps 60% of your energy. We have to put him in the bathroom while he is half awake and brush him up. While the man brushes the kid, the woman undresses him for the bath. Like trying to catch a crocodile in swamp, the woman returns to the room with the kid tied around her shoulders to dress him up. Invariably the guy always gets the dress combination wrong but yet the lady will assign this task to the guy on daily basis. Perhaps both of them went to Harvard Business School for education and the school didn’t teach them this.

Once the kid is dressed up, he looks exactly like Buzz Aldrin just before his launch. Only thing was that Buzz didn’t have to take this Tiffin box and water bottles. Apart from this, in case you kid spills (eventually he will you moron) food we have a bib tied to his collar. While doing all this, the kid shall remain in his sleep like Newton’s First law and shall be forced to wake up only in the evening for watching TV.

The school bag is an issue which I have to touch upon. The actual weight allowed as per law maybe around 450 gms but in reality it is the same weight as the Rock of Gibraltar. They have to take note books which are classified as actual class note, scrap note, rough for the scrap note, rough for no reason, home work notes, promissory note, text books, Britannica encyclopaedia, Income tax law books etc on a daily basis. The heavier the bag the more studious the kid is, this is an unwritten rule according to the educationalists. The second part is the course for these kinder garden kids which includes integral calculus, financial management, foreign law and if time permits some nursery rhymes and good manners. No wonder my kid keeps failing just like me.

On the whole for those couples thinking for a kid and those expecting couples beware of our education system. While the lady is entering the labour ward, you husbands kindly pitch a tent next to the school compound. Don’t cry that I never warned you – I am on duty from tonight near the school grounds.

Note: take the pizza delivery numbers with you & if possible the hospital number for emergency.

15 Early signs of Company Lay-offs

The Top 15 Events that tell you that your company is going to down-size drastically

15. CEO frequently overheard mumbling, “Inky-Pinky-Ponky.”

14. Your workday consists of coming in at 10, thinking up where to lunch with your coworkers and then leaving at 5.

13. Windows XP shutdown screen reads, “It’s Now Safe to Start Looking for Another Job.”

12. Company recreation room is access controlled now.

11. Sudden proliferation of IIT engineers as interns.

10. Your boss keeps asking you “Do you like your present assignment?”

9. Company president now driving a Hyundai Santro myself.

8. Annual company holiday bash moved from Sheraton banquet room to abandoned company guest house.

7. You are allowed to take only 4 print-outs per day (Back-to-Back).

6. Guard at front desk nervously smiles at you whenever you pass by.

5. Giant yard sale of used laptops/desktops in front of corporate headquarters.

4. Babes in the HR suddenly start flirting with dorky technical managers.

3. Employee Discount for your company’s products are discontinued with immediate effect.

2. Company dental plan now is applicable only to select management employees.

and

1. Sign Your Company Is Planning A Layoff …
President begins weekly meetings, “Good morning, you ignorant developers and testers.”

Chandramukhi – II: Erandaam Pagudhi

I am at last really happy that I am the first man to have the scripts for the sequel to the block buster Chandramukhi. I am calling it Chandramukhi-II: Erandaam Pagudhi which for the legal records will show as I am the first to write a sequel.

I am daringly proud of this script which was penned without sleeping or eating except for 2 dinner buffets and 35 minutes in total. I feel like it is really a very heavy work. Guess what would have been for the original scripter writers who had taken twice the amount just to plagiarize the Malayalam script.

As you may know, the original movie titled “Chandramukhi” garnered a record 96 awards including: The best motion picture which was screened for 700 weeks without a single viewer, best makeup artist to make the hero look viewable, best motion picture lasting longer than the Bofor’s case, best supporting role for displaying total lunacy on screen, best movie with copied scripts. The one thing which is very clear from this movie is that if the hero was really a doctor as claimed in real life, he would be hanging upside down in his clinic held by his patients.

The phenomenal success of “Chandramukhi: I - the original” as served as a rebuttal to all the critics in the cinema world that one can make blockbuster movies with copied scripts. Hence, I am saying with full confidence that the script writers are the most talented men in history including Shakespeare, Darwin, Edison and all the four Beatles combined. Why I am saying this is that the script writers will pay me a hefty amount for the sequel.

(The movie opens with a bullock cart moving at high speed and lot of thumping sounds in the background. The hero is sleeping with hay on his face)

Savarana: Whew, I am 50 and still can fight 8 fellows 20 years younger than me.
Senthil: I thought you were in Himalayas, how come you are here?
Savarana: The director said he can’t do an entry scene for me in the Himalayas, so had to come down.

Senthil: How did you manage the cold wave there?
Savarana: Fortunately, they had put 50 coats of whiteners through which the cold could not penetrate. By the way who is this?
Ganga: I am ganga remember you saved my life the last time …
Savarana: But ganga was played by Jothika
Ganga: She didn’t want to do another movie with you in the same mental costume. So they looked for a younger female and chose me, I am baby Sandhya.

(The scene shifts to the haunted house)
Murugesan: Do we really need to go inside this house?
Saravana: We have no other option, the eerie sound-track has already began
Murugesan: I hear some spooky sound, do you hear the same?
Savarana: Don’t be silly; what is the chance that they are going to make the same movie plot again?
(There is a loud cluttering sound, the computer animations start with a 50 feet snake and a Stegosaurus coming straight at Savaranan)

(The scene shifts to the family house, all of them are curious as to who the villain is? Saravanan tries to help them)
Villian: Out of my way, I am not prepared to fight another loosing battle with him.
Saravana: No, you have a signed contract and better fight with me else I have to do a duet song shot in Iran with this girl who is twice younger than me.
Villian: For that reason I agree.
Fight goes on and eventually Saravanan (an acclaimed psychiatrist) wins the battle hands down.

The scene shifts to the D-Day, the festival in which Chandramukhi plans to elope with her lover and killing the king Vettiyar.
Saravana: Look through this pin hole and you will understand how bad Ganga dances.
Prahu: (After looking through the window slit) Yenna Kodumai edhu Saravanan
Saravana: Now as per plan let’s spilt and meet at the centre hall after 5 minutes
Senthil: Why 5 minutes? Do you have some kind of a plan?
Saravana: No, That’s how long the climax song runs.

Audience: (Running out of the show)
Director: Why are all of them running?
Audience 1: It’s the song “RA RA” again
Director: Why?? you don’t like it?
Audience 1: Yeah I like it but the music director comes at the end and says “Repeat a” and the song starts again. Once is too many for this song.

They keep a dummy corpse of the king and Ganga avenges her thirst and all are happy. I don’t want to dissect the plot on how Saravanan arrives at the conclusions, for that you have to wait for the release of this movie on the silver screen