Party wear

We went to a company party. We were supposed to dress "business casual".. so while dad got the entire family all dressed up based on the "business" word, the rest of the folk at the party were focussed on the "casual"!

Dad did move a few eyes when he walked in wearing his tuxedo. It was quite a feat, trying to fit into an outfit after six years. Came home and had stomach cramps. After all, you cannot hold your tummy in pants a full two inches smaller than your current waist size, that too for two full hours. By the time we put on seat belts in the van on our way back, the pant buttons were off!

We did have a great photo shoot though!

My darlings were thrilled to dress up as usual!!

The tux episode has sparked a renewed interest to actually do some physical exercise, eat more salad and less ghee fried jeera rice, buttered up tortillas, etc. and basically fit into that tux without the extra effort by end of this year!

Hmmm... only time will tell!

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Pound wise, is the penny foolish?

It has been a tough week!

Jr. came home from school with an assignment where the teacher had a simple comment, "barely meets standard". The assignment was on counting coins!

Considering that she can do upto adding 8+ a number less than 10, it would be surprising if she could count money. The thing that annoyed me was that in spite of spending an hour with her, it was not easy to teach because there are some fundamental problems with counting money, as seen in the eyes of a kindergardener!

There are also some fundamental problems with seeing money the way it is, in the eyes of a metallurgist!

Here is part primer, part facts, part frustration on what I call "Monetary economics"!

First a quick photo tour of the coins in one shot and some related facts the kids are supposed to remember! (this is on top of the counting).

Pictured in front and back are the most common penny, nickel, dime and quarter. The pictures are those of :
Lincoln / Lincoln Memorial
Jefferson / Monticello
Roosevelt / Wreath
Washington / The Bald Eagle

That said, the coins in the USA are not exactly easy to grasp. Why?

We don't call them 1 cent, 5 cents, 10 cents and 25 cents. We have to call them penny, nickel, dime and quarter respectively. That is one additional layer of memorization that has to be registered. Mentally they have to convert dime to ten before doing a transation. Any guy worth his computational salt will tell you that it is inefficiency built into the counting process.

Next, the coins do not go from smallest to biggest in size (or biggest to smallest like in other countries where the higher denomiations are made of more precious metal and end up smaller coins)! The Nickel sticks out like a, well sore nickel!

Third, the color and lustre of the coins does not show any gradual change from copper to silvery metal. The nickel is dull. The quarter is equally dull considering its composition is the same as the nickel but somehow the finishing leaves it slightly more shiny! The penny is in a world of its own.

As a kid, it would be difficult if the monetary value did not follow the sequence in nomenclature, size, weight, color or texture!

That left me puzzled. That did not make any sense. One would assume(if you have an undergraduate degree in Metallurgy), that the monetary value of a coin is in some way related to the metal content! That said, daddy faded into the background earlier this afternoon and Metallurgist took over. After going through the web for various facts and fact checking, I present to you the table below:

Have not found any table as a quick reference guide yet on my web surfing, so who knows this compilation might actually find some use!

Now for some facts. The US Mint kept changing metallic compositions of the various coins because as metal prices fluctuated, the cost of making certain coins was significantly more than the value of a coin!

If you look at the old compositions of coins at todays metal prices it looks like the quarter will be worth $2.9 and a dime worth $1.15 and the penny would be worth 2 cents! Understandably zinc got subsituted for copper and the silver is all gone from today's currency. Still by todays standard, the metal value of these coins is not a 1:5:10:25 but a 1:11:4:10. Again, it is the nickel that sticks out and it is the root cause of all counting mistakes made by Jr.!

The penny makes sense today having a metal value of 0.6 cents (sure there is manufacturing cost, which would be hard to keep at 0.4 cents in the future, unless the manufacturing eventually moves to China. A thought which has been considered by economists!).

Pound wise, it is the Nickel that does not make sense!

Hopefully, will be able to teach Jr. to count money...

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Movie Sequences

It is common these days to see Indian movies blatantly copy foreign movies with a small twist in the end. For some reason, the entire scene by scene lifting of another movie has reduced drastically in the last year.

The new trend is to just recreate segments of hit western or south east asian movies. Segments as in, a series of stunt sequences, family situations, drama situations etc. Needless to say, if they never gave any credit to the original after copying an entire movie, they are not going to give any credit for copying segments.

The funny thing is the arguments between me and the Mrs. on these sequences. Somehow she manages to forget the original sequence and is amazed by the creativity of the Director or actor or cinematographer! That gets to me more than the director. It is easier for me to show relation to the original when the source of the sequences is another Indian movie.

For example, the movie we watched recently can be expressed with the equation:

Thotaa = Thotti Jaya + Fanaa - Chimpu

where Chimpu is the fudge factor, or in movie terms the sludge factor!

Here is another sequence:

Hero is cornered on a high rise building
He is standing on the parapet wall on the top floor looking down
The old and wise cop is puffing and panting but nevertheless has a gun pointed at the hero
Cop delivers a dialogue about how the entire building is surrounded and it is "surrender" or "death by falling"!
Hero lets cop count
Just as cop counts one hero spots a train in a distance. (the tracks are not even close to the building, but what the hell!)
When the cop counts three, there is a .5 second pause and the hero falls, arms out
Then we see the rope he is holding
He swings a distance of around half a mile and precisely lands on the top of the train.
The hero looks back and smiles
The old cop who looks like he needs eye glasses rated +5.5 in the right eye and +6.5 in the left, gives a wry smile and identifies the hero's face from the train top a mile away..

Familiar??? Lets see what you think the original is!

Here is another one.

Boy comes to girls parents house to be introduced.
Boy has just lost his job before joining girl on the trip
He needs money
The prospective father in law figures out that he has money troubles
So they have a race (running, go-cart, whatever) and if the boy wins the girls dad will loan him the money, if not the boy should leave the girl alone and walk away!
In the same movie girl stops talking to boy because he hid his "losing the job" part from her. Eventually boy helps girls dad join girls mom (they are fighting as well) and the parents help girl join boy! The director of the Tamizh copy is even supposed to have attributed the sequence to a wrong original! If you are a movie trivia buff name the original, copy and the wrong original mentioned in the media..

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