It is a boy.

Yes, it is. Chula and Mieja have named him Harry, thanks to all the Harry Potter stories I tell them. In fact I am surprised they didn’t want to call him Hagrid, because Hagrid is their true love.

Okay more about Harry. He is red. He is a beta. He swims in his gallon tank with blue stones and a fake plant. He eats his own fish food flakes. Oh I forgot, Harry is temporary.  He is the school pet and we are taking care of him during winter break.

This Harry fella seems to be an extremely lazy character. He is A.L.W.A.Y.S sleeping. I mean the dope doesn’t even eat the pinch of fish food flakes we give him every couple of days. I say it is laziness purely from the  boy factor. If I put a fish couch in that fish bowl, he would happily roll in it. But R begs to differ. He says Harry is ‘dull’ because Harry is constipated. Yes, you all heard me right. ‘Beta can become constipated from dried fish flakes and must be fed freeze dried blood worms’ says Google-baba. So R is pushing for freeze dried blood worms. Oh, boy R is getting a little too attached to Harry. May be he thinks Harry being a boy and all will some how restore the estrogen <-> testosterone balance in the house.

R has taken up the duty of feeding and cleaning Harry. Today morning while cleaning the tank, R says, “I don’t want to dump the dirty water from the tank in to the toilet. If Harry falls in to the toilet, we have to get him before he swims away and it might be tough.” I had to set him right by telling him that if Harry falls in to the toilet, we flush him down and get a new red beta from PETCO and name him Harry and if there are plans of diving in to the toilet there is no ‘WE’ involved.

Chula and Mieja thought that Harry would come swimming to the glass wall of the fish tank and kiss their finger tips from the other side of the fish tank. Now they are getting a grasp of reality. They look at the tank, prod it, tap it and exclaim, “Oh, Harry you are still alive??! Were you sleeping?” and get on with their lives.

So folks, put your hands together for Harry Belldrin Tomas (hm-hm, hm-hm, hm-hm, that is what the girls have christened him) and I am hoping Harry does not die on me, not when I am “taking care” of him.

PS: So……. how many of you fell for the ‘New addition’ post title?

I am the proud owner of an iPhone. The process of acquiring the device itself will fill a post, but this post is not about that. It is about how the iPhone is doing what exactly I wanted it for.

It has crashed five times in the small two month time window I have owned it. In fact this is the second iPhone in two months. I had to return the first one and get a replacement because the first one simply died and didn’t want to wake up. As fate would have it, I had it in my pocket and was lying on the floor with partial weight on the phone for a good five minutes. I thought that I had crushed the phone to death and had nightmares of Apple voiding the warranty. But the Apple genius(?!) assured me that it was not me but the phone. But, crashing and giving me heart attacks, that is not I wanted the iPhone for.

Of course I must mention that as a cell phone, the voice quality sucks. I always think that the person calling me is underwater or travelling through an unending tunnel. It has dropped calls or sometimes it would directly go to voicemail and the voice mail notification would come a good three hours later. The tops was the time I was standing in our school lobby talking to our receptionist holding the phone in my hand. My colleague calls me from our playground, she was a good 10 feet away but we were within each others eyesight, to ask me to get something from the classroom before I joined her in the playground and I did not get that call. So she had to yell loudly, ‘Hey, you with the phone that does not work. Get X from the class.’ That sure did the trick. (That said, my colleague also owns an iPhone and she swears that she prioritises her pay check as rent, iPhone, kids, food.) But, to loose calls and be out of reach while owning a sophisticated 3G piece of technology, that is not I wanted the iPhone for.

I do my homework on the phone while my class kids are napping, I save my drafts and email it to myself and make the corrections while at home. I take pictures of my Chula and Mieja (also small video clips) and send them immediately to extended family, which is greatly appreciated. During extremely dry class lectures, I whip the phone out and secretly browse the Internet, thaks to open wireless connectivity in educational institutions. I also do the physically-present-but-mentally-disappearing routine while some one is boring me to death. I get the phone out to check something and when people have shifted focus, I slowly walk a couple of feet away. Voila escape from the harrowing situation! Me being an direction challenged person, the step by step driving directions and telling me exactly where I am is extremely convenient. Definitely pluses and yes some anti social behaviors, but yet these are not what I wanted the iPhone for.

I am checking email and my blog stats all the time. I go in a non stop loop-> yahoo -> nothing -> gmail ->nothing -> blog stats, who is on -> nobody -> yahoo and so on. But the problem is I neither get that many emails nor blog hits a day. So it is kind of a bummer. But giving me the realization that I am not that popular, that is not what I wanted the iPhone for.

I teach Tamil in a language school on Sunday mornings. It is Aug – June school, once a week on Sundays for 90 minutes. It starts at preschool level and goes all the way up to high school level. It is a well run outfit and has ties with the school district and the high school students get foreign language credits for the Tamil classes they take with this organization. I teach first grade and my class has six children between the ages 9 – 12. The first class the only word I heard was B.O.R.I.N.G. It was boring to read, it was boring to write, it was boring to make conversation, it was boring to open the book. Mere existence was sooooo B.O.R.I.N.G for these kids. Of course come class three, all but one were totally in to it, they were eagerly participating doing home work and playing along. Yes all but one 🙂 I repeatedly got the answer from the said child that the parents did not get my email updates and hence the child was unable to perform the quota of homework. Initially I would note down the mom’s email ID again and come back home to check for typos and by the time the next Sunday comes it was still, “But my mom did NOT get it”. After the iPhone, I heard the story about the mother not receiving email, I asked child to write down email ID on a paper, I whip my iPhone out and check the email and ask child to explain what ever is going on. The said child’s jaw dropped, not because of being caught red handed but because of the iPhone 🙂 Ahhh my coolness coefficient, it just sky rocketed in seconds! That is exactly what I wanted an iPhone for and it is working :)))

PS:
Said child still does not do home work. “I lost my hand writing note book” is the recent excuse.

The Apple genius swears that the new software on my iPhone WILL take care of the call dropping and battery problems. At the end of the s/w upgrade, I lost my data yet again. But I am skeptical about the improvements I was promised.

I live in constant fear of dropping the phone or spilling water on it.

I wear clothes without pockets to force myself to leave my iPhone in my purse in order to cure myself of the iPhone addiction.

My right index finger is slowly becoming a hook, thanks to typing papers on the iPhone.

I have promised myself that I will not touch that iPhone other than to check directions while I am driving.

But COOL, that I am baby!

Technorati Tags: iPhone, iPhone problems, Tamil class, dealing with pre-teens

…I would be Ron. Wanting to be something, but having no clue as to what the what is, waiting for something to happen instead of making it happen, dreaming of becoming famous without putting in the required hard work, always behind some one stronger, procrastinating under the pretext of waiting for inspiration, can catch a ball only by luck, buckling under pressure, rarely achieving and reliving the few rare achievements to eternity, putting action before thought.

If want to be like someone in Harry Potter, I would like to be Luna Lovegood. For her unfailing optimism, ability to find the truth no matter how jaded it is, telling the right thing to the right person at the right time (well…. except for the curmple-horned-snorkack bit), loving her dear ones, being totally secure about who she is.

Now, if you are going to think “What in the world is going on with her?”, I am just being my worst critic. Not feeling disillusioned or dispirited. Other than serious Harry Potter withdrawal symptoms, mental health well with in desired spectrum folks 🙂

If you feel up to it, indulge me folks.
Take it up as a tag.
Include the HP logo in your post.
Write about whom you currently identify with in Harry Potter.
Write about who you would like to be.

Technorati Tags: Harry Potter, Harry Potter characters

Say….. if a certain person in the blog-o-sphere goes A.W.O.L, then decides to show her face back again, how does this certain person make a come back?

(a) Give an elaborate explanation starting with why she disappeared and what has happened in the past one year. This, of course, is based on the self-centered assumption that the universe revolves around her and people would want to know.

(b) Just start posting as if nothing happened. The presumption is that the blog world is like a pond and ripples come and go. That is the way of life.

(c) May be she must strictly adhere to reading blogs since there is no accountability. Make a slow entrance.

(d) Can she really do this? Once fall term starts, will she be able to parent/work/study and also have time to reflect on it? Oh forget it. Just live life. Why even bother recording it? Do not read any blogs. Ignorance is bliss.

💡

Folks, for a long time I wanted my own domain.
www.utbtkids.com (Powered by wordpress OF COURSE. Nothing else for me. No thank you.)

For one reason, it would give me lots of flexibility in terms of space, style, kinds of files I upload and share.

So suggest me cool, FREE(yes, important criteria) WP themes. I have been looking at stuff till my eyes have begged me to stop and came up with absolutely nothing.

My specs are:

I plan to move by the end of April – beginning of May.

You all know what this means right?! I will be putting up advertisements to break even with the cost of domain name and hosting.