There should be an App for that!

Okay, it has been a rant here that the kids are more interested in watching hours of Tamil Variety TV programs or nail polish videos on Youtube. 

Wile checking the history recently, had found that the two of them had watched more than 7 hours worth of Nail Polish videos on youtube in just one week! 

So when all other attempts to steer them to subjects like Geography and science during the hours after they just make it back from school had failed... there was only one thing left to do!

Find Geography quiz and science quiz apps on the iPad and play with them. It has been a very successful program, if one can call it that! The Geography rehabilitation program.. 

Today I watched with pride as Jr. correctly identified the Capital of Azerbaijan as Baku and the little one said Brunei's capital is Bandar Seri Begawan... Life has its little moments! They are able to identify capitals and flags reasonably well. 

Next step, they have to actually be able to point to them on the world map. That is a work in progress. 

All this app business gave me an idea, given there is no App for making them eat a quick breakfast. 

We should have an App that shows them a mish mash of nail polish videos, my little pony, good luck charlie, an occasional geo quiz question, and every 90 seconds those should be interrupted by a video of daddy saying "take another vai (mouthful)!" or "another spoon" or "chew and swallow" or "why is the throat not moving!" .. the App should let me pre record 3 or 4 such 10 second videos which the kids have to hit with a snooze type button (or we could rename it the "I ate" button. 

That app alone has the potential to improve the quality of our life 347.5%! 

Sometimes I wish my day job was to write apps.. would at least write some for my kids. Unless there are some crash courses for old engineers whose last programming exercise was with Fortran 77 or C++ in the late nineties. 

Let me know if there is a weekend course for app writing in the local area or online.. 

The evidence is damning..

Tonight the bedtime quiz started with me playing songs from my Youtube favorites and asking the kids to guess the singer. Not the song or raaga.. just the singer! They got 2/10  on videos they helped favorite.. That was disappointing. 

Then Jr. suggested instead of videos, I just show them images of the singers and they guess who the singer is... so I played along.

Showed them old photos of GNB, MLV, MS, etc. and they guessed better... 4/10! again on pictures they had seen before..

Then on a hunch, I showed them pictures of movie stars.. Tamil, Hindi movie stars.. They guessed everyone from Rajni, Kamal, Sridevi down to Vivek, Vadivelu and Sivakarthikeyan! they even guessed Shahrukh, Amitabh and Aishwarya!

So there is nothing wrong with their memory or their willingness to remember things.. the what to remember is being molded by all the TV watching they do with mom in the evening. 

So the solution to my problem is to make mommy watch educational videos with kids and maybe spend time on Khan Academy. No wonder they don't like to spend time with me when I show them "cool stuff".. I am competing with the entertainment juggernauts of Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood!

When the time comes..

A few days ago, was going through a horrible time with the nose bleeds and all the other symptoms that come with an allergy attack. Thanks to all the cotton type stuff floating around in the air, a bee that decided to sting my leg and the temperature fluctuations in general. 

It was impossible to sleep with all the pain and I definitely did not want to go and get yet another prescription for Amoxycilin 500 and go through a cycle of switching sinus problems to stomach problems which is usually followed by a week long diet of only rice and yogurt to bring back the good bacteria in my stomach. Normally would go do Yoga just when the nose starts getting blocked and things would get back on track.

This time it was past that point and had to suffer through it. With all that pain, was trying the many tricks to just get to sleep. First it was patting myself on the back just like my mother used to do when same thing used to happen as a kid. That didn't work. 

Then suddenly out of the blue, was reminded of a song that my father used to play on a Philips Gramaphone record player to put me to sleep.. did a search on youtube and found one instance of the exact same song by M.S. Subbulakshmi and voila, was dozing off. What a divine voice! Even for someone who did not understand the words as a kid, the imploring voice always used to put me to sleep and calm me down!

Have been listening to this song a few times in the last week just reminiscing about the sound of that player and the needle moving slowly towards the center of the black disk in the glow of the night light when we were little kids. 

I am soo going to go buy a turntable and see if my dad still has those records in the attic and play them for Jr. and the little one!

Yesterday there was a weird dream. I am in bed dying. For some strange reason, everyone is around me and they know I have very little time, but there is a struggle and I am having difficulty letting go.. Then my sister, Jr. and the little one all sing this song in chorus and I let go and die. It was one of those dreams that actually made me sweat and sit up in bed! Funny thing was that I am older but all of them look the way they do today!

It was  a dream.. so whatever! Played that song for the kids today and said "if someday I am lying on my death bed, please sing this song for me and will leave this planet a happy man!" The kids got all pissed off for my mentioning death beds and said "we will never ever sing this song". 

Now I have my work cut out for me..