Category: Chronicles

Online worksheets

Some sites I found very useful for teaching Aasim

Worksheets for Math, Science, Language -just about everything to keep a child interested and informed
http://www.tlsbooks.com/kidspagearchive.htm

A paid site but an excellent one to teach a child Hindi- see samples here
http://www.myhindi.com/sample/index.php

Worksheets For Math (some paid, some free)
http://themathworksheetsite.com
http://www.superkids.com/aweb/tools/math/
http://www.edhelper.com/math.htm

English grammar sites that are useful
http://www.english-zone.com/teach/1minilssn.html
http://www.rhlschool.com/english.htm

Foss.in/2005

Returned from Foss.in yesterday night thanks to the Indian Airlines flight that was delayed for more than an hour. Besides crappy food, I find the IA services deteriorating. Air hostess walk on the aisle, banging into a sleeping passengers and do not even apologise -that sucks!! I ultimately resolved not to fly the national carrier as far as possible.

Foss.in is our yearly sabbatical and I was very glad I spoke to Aasim’s teacher and he could accompany us to the event. Aasim found some talks he wanted to attend and he did attend them too. He loves the way Atul presents, so he attended and perhaps understood some bits from Atul’s talk ”The impact of FOSS on Everything “. He also attended the ”Quake3 Fun and More” talk and bugged Shree Kumar for the rest of the conference to know/see more of Quake. This year Aasim was 95% of the time on his own, managed to eat properly (so what if it was just pizza and coke) and have fun. He is keen to attend foss.in/2006.

Meeting friends is always on agenda at foss.in and this year that was mostly *the* agenda. It was very nice meeting *the linuxchix* Sulamita. She is doing an important job in the FOSS world which I always thought would never be needed – but to my surprise after talking with many (typical) men I realise that it is indeed needed. OF the BOFs I attended, I must mention the ”FOSS for School Kids“ BOF -got some very good pointers which I intend to implement at Aasim’s school – I have been trying his school to adopt FOSS at least for some of the tasks.

I wish I could spend more time with people I meet once a year. Hope to see you all in the next event and have more fun.

The day end entertainment on second day, Laya Taranga was exhilarating

Phenom and Phriends was great as I knew it would be. This year Aasim was headbanging (which was not really a surprise, the boy is developing a distinct taste for hard rock). If anyone has pictures of Aasim head banging to Phenom, I would like to see them. I am not a hard core hard rock fan, but since I enjoy music of any kind, I enjoy hard rock just as well. I however wish the concert was in open, outside the hall so that people could multitask – a lot of people were going the same evening or the next morning and saying goodbyes is just as important

What came as a very pleasant surprise was finding out that Kishore and Jyoti Bhargava are also keen bird watchers. So after the event, Saturday morning we managed to be up at 7 and went bird watching and despite a slight drizzle, we managed to spot a lot of birds (42 of them to be precise) at Hebbal Lake, Bangalore in just under 2 hours.

Here’s the Bird list

The new gen songs

The house seems to have heart beat of its own. Aasim woke up two hours back -played with bayblade for a while and since past 30 minutes he is blasting one song (Hero from Bionicle) over and over again!!! Agree the lyrics are good but I am somehow not the type to wake up to hard rock!!!

http://www.lego.com/eng/bionicle/musicvideomp3.aspx

Aasim!!

A few days back, while returning from school, Aasim told me there was a selection for school Choir that morning- I asked him weather he got selected to which he replied in negative and said “I did not want to get selected so I sang without rhythm without tune -like reciting a poem” -the song he was asked to sing was “Do, Re, Mi…..” the teacher who took the audition was one of his friend’s mother who knows Aasim can sing if/when he wants to but this boy refused to perform!!!

In another news, there was a Lego building competition on 5th November organised by Pyramid Mega stores -the results were announced yesterday and he was adjudged as second runner up in 8-12 age group for making a space shuttle which has landed on a space station with green ground -he qualified for the age group on that very day -on 5th November he turned 8.

explosions and entertainment value job applications

Back from Delhi having escaped the bombs by a few hours difference. I was happily roaming around 3.30 in Pahadganj area and returned home by 5 on 29th. 2nd time lucky having escaped the bombs planted around the town.
On 12th March 1993, I was going to receive Tarique at Dadar station when Bombay rocked with 13 explosions around the town. I was somwehere between Narmian point (IA Building and Worli) and had no idea as to what has happened till we reached the hotel.

Came back yesterday totally tired and unwell. Opened my inbox this morning to find this

Hello sir,

I have read the program of your MCSE 2003 and i am already MCP and now i am wanted to doing the MCSE pleas tell me how i can doing it and what is its Fess and how many month i can doing it.

My name is Shahid Amin Microsoft ceritifed professional