Saturday weather

It's a pleasant Saturday weather and the creeper in front of my home is just beautiful.

3 things that mattered most this summer

This summer, I guess three different things that rocked India this summer.

• One is the Chennai Super Kings (CSK) in the IPL matches.
• The other is Gold Price. 
• The third one is the Scorching Sun. 

What is common about all these three?

1. Very hot to handle
2. Went up and down
3. They were all over
4. We went mad (after them)
5. All three become part of every day life
6. We were sweating because of them
7. Because of them, we almost forgot to handle other issues
8. We set aside some time for them
9.  Sometimes unpredictable
10. You guessed, all are yellow!

Start Your Kid's Day In Style

As a dad, can you get that valuable 15 mins for your kids when she wakes up?

Start her day with a small, funny story and take her to brushing. While she brushes, introduce your innovative lines like "Ben Ten attacked all the germs powerfully" or "Chota Bheem brushed all his teeth very clean and became very strong".

Start Your Kid's Day In Style

Kids need that happy start and rest of the day they create happiness for themselves and others.
You as a dad, do that magic for your kid.

Diya's Wake Up Calendar

Diya is such a nice kid that she allows me to experiment good ideas with her. We needed a mechanism to make Diya wake up in the morning without we doing any circus. I came up with a Wake Up Chart with the following features: a) Its a matrix of  15 days and morning time slots. b) The time slots start from 6am, till 8 am and with a gap of 15 minutes. c) Each time slot is named "Superb", "Excellent", "Wow"  etc. Now, this is what happens.  Diya wakes up in the morning and rushes up to the chart to color code what time she woke up.  She asks "Daddy, what time I woke up?".  If I say 6.15 am, she responds "today is Excellent". For morning conversation starts like this for the past one month or so. Here in the attached images you can see her July and August charts. Diya tries to innovate with different colours and connecting the dots. For next month, I am planning to make more kid-friendly chart instead of a typical corporate like tabular chart. :-) Request the parents to try this Wake Up chart, if you like this idea.

Favorite Tamil Songs for All Generations

These are some old time Tamil favourites that mesmerized our grandparents continue to be favourites of this generation too.

How to deaddict from news media

Whether you admit it or not, news media has almost integral part of our everyday life. We start our day with the newspapers. We turn on the TV to check for live, breaking news. We again check Google News or the online editions to re-read the same. We again check in the evening, night, and before going to bed. We follow news media as though we want to track everything under sun. But when it comes to news, BAD NEWS sells.  All the bad news are in front pages and somewhere some corner some positive news is embedded. Most of the news that are supposed to be 'breaking news' are not really breaking.  For instance, TV channels show a politician leaving his home at 9.15 am and reaching Prime Minister's office at 9.23 am and both are broadcasted simultaneously with time stamps. Since you may not know who is the politician among the crowd, he is red-circled, zoomed, and animated.

A Chennai friend says he can never think of a day without Hindu and coffee. My sister says she is fed up of reading all the negative news and thinking of stopping the newspaper; but will continue to read online. Newspapers claim to be "green", nullify the same through its supplements. Are we not supposed to start our day on a positive note? Do we need to bury our heads into news which does not contribute to our day in any form but only negative? No, this thinking not to turn blind eyes towards all that is negative - corruption, murders abuses etc.  The point is we are getting over exposed. Here are some ideas; you may want to try one or all of them to deaddict from the news

• Stop reading the newspaper in the morning. You may want to read it in the evening.
• Stop reading the newspaper for once in a week.
• Stop reading the newspaper for every alternative day
• If you are commuting to work by bus, do not carry the newspaper.
• Stop being anxious expecting the newspaper boy.
• If you have news subscribed through RSS Feed, Email, or on your Home page - unsubscribe them.
• If you have time to watch TV news, switch off and use that time for something else.
• Unsubscribe news through SMS - its a big distraction

Any important news, you always will come to know through your known contacts.

Many spiritual practices encourage to disconnect from the news media.

Bottom line is - a news necessarily not bring in knowledge.

A Bird Song

A Bird Song, I wrote for Diya

One little bird
Flying in the sky
Came to my home
Like a spy

She makes noise
Asking for food
If I give her
She behaves good.

I always wait
Hand full of grains
She is not seen
Because of rains

Oh Little Bird,
You are very sweet!
Come back soon,
Sing and tweet!

Nedunchaalai: Next Movie by Director Krishna

Director Krishna made it big with his surya-jyothika starrer 'Sillunu Oru Kaadhal'.  Now he is on the game again with his next project Nedunchaalai.  I was very happy to see him on the Sun News with his team talking about the movie with a lot of pride and enthusiasm. This movie is based on the real incident the director saw on a highway. Having been his classmate in school, I am very proud of his accomplishment and wish him and his team the very best!

Know your history through History.com

Most of us have seen the History Channel in our cable channels and probably dismissed it in treating along with Discovery and National Geographic genre.

I came across History.com, the online edition of the channel and its a wonderful resource!

Especially, this day in history page lists and details what happened on this day on different years. Here is what I thought various ways to leverage this resource:

a) What Happened On Your Birthday:  Click on the link "What Happened on Your Birthday" and learn how 'special' you are!

b) Here is an idea to make others feel special. You may also want to use the Birthday feature to compile the list of events happened on somebody's birthday or anniversary. May be offline, we can create a personal greetings card / write a note highlighting these events.

c) Remembering somebody's birthday!  We can mentally link somebody's birthdate and the events, so that its easy to remember.

d) Talk to your children about these events on everyday basis.

e) Peek in advance for a week or a month and compile the list of events and look forward the date. Plan some activity based on that event in the weekends. For example, if you are a teacher, learn in advance what happened in August; every week talk about how Independence Day was declared, or  Anne Frank was captured or Death of Genghis Khan.

f) If you are like me, blog about the events!

History text books are so dry since our days and its time that we kindle and rekindle the interests in history through one such resource!

Please share your thoughts.

Spare some lung space in Bangalore

Everone knows how bad Bangalore is swelling with traffic, record breaking apartments, and several concrete buildings within the city. The only lungspace I know of is Lalbagh; but often there are often news that come and go that part of Lalbagh will be taken for expanding the roads.

Bannerghatta Road is known for its overflowing traffic and drainages always under construction. Of several junctions, GD Mara bus stop junction(Mandovi Motors) is a connector to different parts of the city.  Just behind the stop, there was a slum; which is now being eaten up a upcoming 7 star Taj Hotel.

Why dont the businessmen, corporators think before they would plan something of a big structure at a congested junction like GD Mara.

Its time to approve such projects only outside the city.

Tags: General

Fading bills

Fading bill

You bought items a couple of months back and also were issued bills.  You preserved it. You thought it you can use it as a reference some time in future.  Pull out any of your old bills, and like a magic you may probably see a blank paper.

The issue with thermal printing in several counters, petrol bunks, electronics purchase and all that we buy - they fade. I often wonder what is the point in taking our signature on the slip for credit card purchases; only our sign would remain and rest of the slip is just a faded one.

The very purpose of a bill is an acknowledgement that we purchased an item through a legal transaction.  Its the right of the consumer to have a valid bill throughout. A bill is supposed to be reproduced as a legal reference when in need.

But for the past few years, all the shops big and small issue bills whose content would fade soon.

I first spoken about this issue to the Croma electronics shop people two years back. Later they introduced a concept of emailing the receipt to our email at the time of billing.  This e-bill serve as an evidence.

I do not know who active is our consumer forums on this issue. But I thought a consumer this is what can be done -

a) Decide the bill is significant or not.

b) If the product is costly and the bill is significant, scan a copy of it and archive it.

c) If you own a PSC (Print, Scanner, Copier),  you may want to keep a xerox copy of it.

d) You may also want to maintain a register of transactions - Product Name, Bill No, Vendor Name, Location and Date.  (If this can be made in an excel, you can also analyze your expense trend.)

e) Where possible, see if you also can expect an ebill.



Any better thoughts, let us know.

Lettuce Bouquet

Bought by Dad;

Shot by GCoffee

It is a very common thing to share a flower bouquet on special occasions. In the bakeries and retail shops, we have seen cookies bouquets, and candy bouquets - probably we do not buy because it is expensive. May be when we visit  someone next time, its a good idea to make our own bouquets with home made sweets and a combination of small gifts, cookies and candies.



How about a lettuce bouquet?  I saw my dad got this from his morning walk and kept on the table and appeared to me like a bouquet.  Just by adding a heart shaped bouquet post it and a personal note can be a "healthy nutritious" gift. How often do we gift something to our neighbour?  Good idea?

Turn your laptop into an educational kit

Many of us do not have an IPad;  But I would like to assure, Google Chrome's appstore is something that will give you the IPad experience (of course, except for the touch screen).



Here I explain, how you can leverage Google Chrome's app store as an educational kit.



1. Install Google Chrome from this link.

https://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/browser/



2. Once you finish installing the Google Chrome browser,  visit this link https://chrome.google.com/webstore .  You may be asked to login with your Gmail account.  (See the tip mentioned below). You are taken to the Chrome Store.

3. Now goto any category and select your apps.  Since its for your kids, you may want to select Education category.  If you like an app, click the button, "Add to Chrome"

4. In order to access these apps, click on New Tab or Ctrl-T  and you will see a similar arrangement.

Step 2.  Chrome Store

You may want to take a note of the following tips:

• To have all these apps, you need to have Google Chrome.


• You may want to have an exclusive Gmail account for this purpose.  You can leave this Gmail account signed in, so that anybody in your home can use it.  (You can simultaneously use your personal Gmail account in other browsers like Firefox, IE.  Recently I installed Opera in my Netbook, its lightning fast!)








Step 4. Chrome Apps added by you



• As with any apps, please ensure appropriate parental control.

Happy Learning !

Random Conversations

From a random conversation today:

Chinese pug are called so as they are thought to origin in China 400 BC.  There are different types of Sadhus who assemble at Kumbhmela: Nagas, Urdhwavahurs, Parivajakas, Shirshasinse, Kalpvasis. The mounds constructed by termites can give clues for efficient building architecture (link). Hawa Mahal in Jaipur is painted with calcium oxide. Thomas Edison did not invent the bulb; the bulb existed already.

Life on Batteries

Yesterday was a unique day for me with the batteries going dead.



Car Battery: I gave a car pooling to two of my colleagues. After dropping them, looks like one of the doors were not closed properly. After 6-7 hours, I came down to start my car only to learn that the car battery was dead. I got a local support and got the car started with a message "Donot stop it at signals".  It did stop in two points and I was able to start. But I sure reached home safely. After switching off the engine and I just tested if it would start. It didnt. After several hours of research, I realize its time to replace the battery.



Intercom Battery:  As I reached the car parking, I noticed some repair work was going inside the electrical room. The security said the intercom

UPS had gone bad due to the recent power trip in our apartment transformer.



Laptop Battery:  The Laptop battery would not last for more especially in wireless mode. I was working in the evening at home with a "Do not disturb" status in the IM. The power turned villain. There was a load shedding in our area, especially on the eve of Diwali. At the brink of completing the work, the battery went down and the laptop shutdown.



Mobile Battery: Right from the beginning of the day, my mobile battery was inching down. I was worried that it may go zero anytime. Fortunately, the power came for me to recharge.





Mind-Body Battery:  It was a hectic day for me and I was tired physically and mentally. The crackers smoke also was causing tiredness. Beyond a point, I could not stay and went to sleep along with my kid. But still Diya wanted a Dora story. I had a very deep sleep that I woke up at 8 am for Diwali.



For sure, life is on batteries.

Welcome to GCoffee!

Welcome to GCoffee!

GCoffee will host news and views on various topics. Posted on early morning, its almost my coffee time. How about a cup of coffee with me?