Tag: Aasim

Aasim turned 9

Aasim turned nine today. This year the party was a day prior, on a Saturday evening and most of his classmates and friends managed to come. The kids had a blast, and on finding out that their last year’s class teacher and a friend of ours, Indrani Bagchi, was going to attend the party, they were ecstatic. Indrani no longer works as a teacher in Aasim’s school but the reception she got on reaching was overwhelming to say the least. She was a very popular teacher and loved the kids immensely, the kids loved her back just as much.
The party lasted for 5 hours and left all of us tired.

The day today was spent on the construction site and in Aasim’s words, “the place is heaven”. Later in the day while both of us watched an extremely well made movie (Yun hota to kya hota) Aasim played with his friend and evening was spent eating some mouthwatering Kebabs at Redz.

Leisure

While discussing poetry with Aasim today, I recalled and told him my all time favourite, Leisure, by W H Davies.

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?

No time to stand beneath the boughs,
And stare as long as sheep and cows:

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass:

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars, like skies at night:

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance:

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began?

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

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

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.

Bagla Mating

Aasim: “Mama I saw two Baglas (pond herons) mating today”
I: “How do you know they were mating?”
Aasim: “I know I have seen it on Nat Geo”
He then went on to describe – they mate for a very little time -few seconds and then they scream.

And we thought he does not know these things!!! Boy is growing up real fast.

Aasim’s poem on planets

Aasim’s Summer Holidays started from yesterday and as expected, the first day of staying home he got throughly bored -here’s a creative result of his boredom- he told me to write down (as he can’t write himself) a poem he made on planets

Mercury is the hottest planet
Venus is molten and very hot too
Earth is the third and we just live there
Mars has storms and no body can live there
Jupiter is medium temperature
Saturn is very little far from the sun
Uranus is cold planet and so is Neptune
Pluto is coldest planet and nobody can live there because they will freeze
Sedna is a very small planet
and Quaoar is a planetoid

P.S Aasim is 6.5 yrs old .

Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself – Khalil Gibran

A while ago, I was watching news on TV with Aasim

Aasim: Mom, when will the war get over?
Me: I dont know, Son.
Aasim: I know, it will get over when the US gets defeated
Me: The US might not get defeated, Son.
Aasim: Why?
Me: Because their army is big
Aasim: Then why doesnt India help Iraq? – If US wins the war on Iraq it will take all the petrol there and then come to India and attack us.

This is what a child of 5 thinks. Aasim is very aware of things happening around the world and I am sure, so are other 5 year olds today.. …

Quack!! Quake III

Sat on Aasims machine today – started playing Quake III JLT only to find both the boys telling me over my shoulders what to do… “Mamma, that’s not the way to play, look up look up look up, shoot shoot kill him KILL HIM”
“sweetheart, look straight, press the trigger, run straight…. ”
I could sit there for barely 5 minutes before Aasim took over and started playing at a much higher level (hurt me plenty) and in the supposedly a much more difficult arena (in the longest yard) than i was… My boy plays the game real well and says mom you *have* to learn !! (just like i was telling him 15 minutes back you *have* to learn maths)
His father is mighty pleased i must say.. 🙂

Kids talk – this generation

Before we left for our walk we had a small conversation:
Me: Aasim Shut the windows
Aasim: Windows is Shut
Me: NO, windows are not shut, Please shut the windows before we leave
Aasim (a bit emphatically): Windows is shut, I even switched off the monitor.

And i wanted him to shut the windows in his room….