Coins, Fishes and gold powders...

After reading Deepak's post on the coins people throw into water fountains and fish ponds, I had a theory!!

I do see the occasional quarter or nickel, other than the usual plethora of pennies. Incidentally I have a theory on why people throw pennies in the shopping mall fish ponds!

When we were in Waikiki a few years ago saw a mall with a fountain and lots of Coi fish. The bottom of the water was filled with pennies, international coins, but mostly coins which were a golden bronze color. The fish looked large and healthy.

Came home after that trip and got a fishtank! When the fish were sick, the PETCO dude gave me fish medicine. Guess what element the medicine contains ? Lots of COPPER!! So maybe the copper in the coins helps the fishes survive ??

This theory immediately made another connection in my head. My dad told me during my wedding that there is a reason why we wear a gold ring in our right had and eat on a silver plate. Apparently the gold rubs against the silver and we ingest trace amounts of gold and silver every day and these elements are good for us in trace amounts.

I knew that the film legend MGR was known to attribute his strength and complexion to "Thanga Baspam" and "Velli Baspam" (literally gold and silver powder) which he used to take as part of his diet. As a kid, I have taken these powders when I was really sick and the western doctors gave up on me. The local Siddha healers gave me these powders and a whole bunch of other concoctions which probably saved my life! But my dad's statement did raise some questions like :

1. If this is good, how come women dont wear the same ring and eat in the same plate ?
2. If this is good, then why wait till the wedding to give that gold ring and the silver plate ?
3. What about copper ? Is that why we drink water from copper vessels ?
4. What about lead ? Didn't we all drink rasam from our great grandma's "Eeya Chombu" which probably would have retarded us all with lead poisoning!? or maybe we need lead in small amounts too ?

Hopefully there are people out there who have answers to these questions, and who knows my theory for the pennies in the fish ponds may not be way off the mark!!

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When you assume ..

My high school physics teacher taught me :

When you "ass-u-me" you make an ass of you and me!

So, I did make an ass of me, when I assumed that textbooks in the USA would go through some kind of rigorous checking and proof reading before hitting the stands.

Worse, I assumed that teachers who give homework handouts, will check what they hand out, for quality!

As most of you have pointed out in response to my previous post, it does not sound right to write the letter "M" that way.

The reason I got all mad was that 5 of the 26 alphabets had an error in the way the strokes were mentioned!! Imagine how it would slow a kid down while taking notes in high school or college! I survived high school simply because I would write very fast and take extensive notes to go over at home. God forbid, Jr. ends up learning like me, and relies on notes, except she cannot write fast enough because 20% of the time she is going back and forth writing wrong strokes.. the nightmare!!

Here are some pictures from the homework sheet.

ACtually the option in the book (Phonics II - California syllabus ?) is worse!

Me rest case!

What ?

That sentence will be perfectly legitimate and taught in text books by the time Jr. hits middle school.

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Teaching it right, the first time..

Jr. is learning to write all the alphabets. It has been a work in progress for the last year!

I may have finally found the problem. Most of the books here which teach her how to write the letters just have wrong ways of writing the english alphabet.

As far as I know, when we write, we try to have as many strokes going from left to right because the language is read and written "left to right"!

Here is a simple question. What is the correct way to write capital M ?

I would choose the first way, and I do write like that.. Jr. is being asked to write the second way! Would'nt that just slow you down if you wrote letters back and forth ?

This is an official text book !! Or maybe I was just taught wrong ?

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