BAPS Swaminarayan Sansta Diwali Celebrations

BAPS Swaminarayan Sansta Diwali Celebrations, originally uploaded by Sandhya Kashyap.

A poem about Jesus

Now that Shriya has reached an age where she can understand the pains, pleasures and emotions of people very well, she was well moved when she heard the story of Jesus.  She came home after school and penned down this poem (rather song is what she calls it) …

Jesus Dying

Oh What pain it is to us cos Christ is dead
What shall we do without him?
How shall we live our lives without him?
Punish those people who killed him
We hope in future he will come back !

Monster-Chef India

I am a person who hates most reality shows. I love watching them so I can criticize them.  So, if you are the one who enjoys the ‘concept ‘, you don’t want to read anymore of my crap here.

My basic questions for any of these shows  – Is all the effort worth tearing your veins??? Losing your self esteem?? Feeling miserable getting rejected?

Anyways, the one show I am tearing my nerves with at this moment is our ‘Master Chef’. Quite evident this is another ‘loosely’ based adaptation of  “Hell’s Kitchen” hosted by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay, but nowhere close to it. Not that Hell’s Kitchen is a splendid programme- Master Chef’s high drama beats any bollywood  movie, but shockingly in reality, people having to do all sorts of stunts without their duplicates or injury cover!!

I am not sure if this is a cookery competition or a silly running race with AK announcing that the contestants have just 3 minutes to collect the vegetables arranged in a shelf in the same hall as the contestants are cooking and lo! attack !!! All contestants start running towards the shelves, jostling with each other, losing foothold, dropping the veggies, squashing them, cursing another for taking the vegetables that they wanted! WHY?? Can’t people start walking up towards the shelf only as and when they need the veggies or can’t they all be given time to collect them and the timer be set for only the cooking time?

Did you see one of those ladies who forgot something while cutting? Clad in a sari and high heeled shoes she starts running across the hall with a butcher knife in her hand. It takes just one trip,  and the knife could be straight into herself or that someone who came in her way!

Can’t AK or his accomplices keep their trap shut till the timer goes off? Why keep yelling the count down in a dramatic way? Stressed, one of the contestants cuts her finger and starts to bleed profusely! What if she had chopped her finger off completely? Don’t expect people to keep their cool when as a judge you can’t keep your mouth shut for 2 minutes.

To top this all, as the levels progress, the contestants are packed off to ‘Happy Da Dhaba’ out of the blue and asked to cook for 50 truck drivers screaming like hungry savages. These contestants who come from backgrounds such as teaching, banking, home-making must have hosted and cooked for small groups at home, although deliciously for they love cooking and hosting. How logical or safe is it to expect them to cook in a Dhaba with no training at all? Open fires, tandoors, huge vessels, boiling pots of water… absolutely nothing safe other than your own instincts. Are they really geared up to it? Who is responsible if something untoward happens? Money may not be the criteria, how about the suffering one has to endure in case of an accident?

Well understood, AK comes from a solid background of cooking – he worked  as a chef in Bangkok in his earlier career. Now, what is Aishwarya Rai Bachchan doing  in a cookery competition? Selling her cream so the media does an ‘action replay’ of cooking a delicious dessert?
So, what is the intent of such shows? Selling movie hot-dogs? TRP?? You can’t expect anything better out of business men craving for money.

But going back to the basics, what about these contestants? What are they trying to achieve (rather lose)? I wonder if you love cooking, isn’t there a better way to showcase your talent? Should you go through the humiliation of somebody stressing you all the time, get a junk output from you and then ‘judging’ you? Is it worth pumping up your  Blood Pressure anyway? I don’t understand what either party is trying to achieve. Blind competition and a number of sheep running in it!

Enough bitching about the hosts or contestants. With sadistic viewers like us, they can’t find a better bargain.

Double Standards

This is something that happened a few days ago on my daughter’s 6th birthday. We usually have a long list of people to invite since my daughter is quite popular among our friends and colleagues. So, we had about 26 people invited home for her birthday. The cake cutting had just got over and all the guests had been helping themselves in the lounge. My daughter shot inside the toilet and within seconds came out, stood in the middle of the lounge with her hands on her waist.   With that sort of a stormy entry she did and that too glittering in her red ball gown, now all eyes were on her. Even me and my husband looked puzzled for her face was all so serious. And there she went in a loud and clear voice: “Who is one who has not flushed the toilet?”  The entire crowd went silent for a few seconds for nobody had expected this! My husband hushed my daughter away inside and was trying to give her a piece of sense about politeness amidst all her “buts…”. Well, in the mean while I’m not sure how I managed the embarrassment.
Things were soon going back to normalcy when my hubby propped into the bathroom for some reason again and saw this note stuck beside the toilet: “Please remember to flush the toilet when you use it” !!! He was simply mad, he thought my daughter had lost all her manners. He was fuming when the guests had left and simply took her to task. But all she said was “Pappa, but you and mummy always tell me its bad manners to leave the toilet without flushing after using it”.  She’d assumed that this was a more polite way of doing things!
Well kids are kids, they have a simple heart that understands one rule, the straightforward one.  They do take time before they understand the different layers of so-called courtesy or the double-standard we adults follow.

Shriya’s First Acrostic Poem

My daughter, who has taken so much after her dad, is very good at playing with words. This time around, we received an entry form to an acrostic poetry competition from the Young Writers, UK. We explained what an acrostic is and encouraged her to write one.  This is what she wrote:

Sweetie Shriya

Sweetie Shriya will soon be six

Has a beautiful smile on her lips

Reading books and painting

Is what she enjoys most

You can visit her anytime

And she is a great host.

This one acrostic poem and her effort is an achievement to us parents. Children as they grow, often surprise us with their new talents and strengths and you find immense pleasure in their development.

A month later, we received a letter from the Young Writers. This was least expected because we had completely forgotten about it. We were so delighted to know that our little one’s work had been selected for publication based on creativity and imagination from amidst 43000 plus poems received from across UK and overseas.  This book will be published by August 2010 and a copy will be placed in British Library and many more libraries across UK.

As parents, what more can you expect?

Online Teaching Resources for Numeracy,Literacy,Science,history,physics,chemistry….

I have been using online teaching resources  to train my child on Numeracy and Literacy skills for quite some time now. I found them extremely useful ever since she has been to school.  Most of these websites are free to use public service which helps motivate your child to learn phonics, reading, numeracy, science and other skills. Most of the lessons here are designed in the form of games/entertainment which are highly interactive and a perfect choice for preschool, kindergarten, first grade, second grade and higher. I had been passing the links randomly to many parents who have been interested.  Since many have been asking me to list the URLs somewhere, I’m doing it here.  If you have more to add to this list, or if you feel some website is better than the other, please leave your comment here, so it is useful to somebody else. Please add only those sites which you have used and found really useful.

www.starfall.com – Really good to learn phonics and reading (I started off my child on this one first)
http://www.woodlands-junior.kent.sch.uk/interactive/ – For Literacy, Maths and Science
http://www.theschoolbell.com/contents.html
http://www.firstschoolyears.com/ – Contains free worksheets and flashcards for literacy, numeracy, maths, history, science, geography…
http://www.kenttrustweb.org.uk/kentict/kentict_subjects_index.cfm
http://school.discoveryeducation.com/homeworkhelp/homework_help_home.html
http://ictgames.co.uk/ – For numeracy and literacy
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/
http://www.timesspellingbee.co.uk/ - educational games to improve spelling skills
http://www.bgfl.org/bgfl/custom/resources_ftp/client_ftp/ks1/maths/two_more/index.htm (practices two more than)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbeebies/games/
http://phonicsplay.co.uk/Phase%205%20menu.htm – practices blending sounds in words
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/starship/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/bitesize/
www.bbc.co.uk/schools/bitesizeprimary/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/websites/4_11/
www.primarygames.com
www.funbrain.com
http://literactive.com/Home/index.asp
http://www.amblesideprimary.com/ambleweb/
www.hbschool.com
http://hbschool.com/activity/numberline1_5_04/
http://kids.aol.com/KOL/1/HomeworkHelp
http://pbskids.org/
http://puzzlemaker.discoveryeducation.com/
http://kids.nationalgeographic.com/kids
http://www.physics.org/
http://www.flag-game.com/
http://www.educationcity.com/uk/content/kids-games
http://friv.com/ ( over 250 online games, many are quite educational)
http://www.move-on.org.uk/testyourskills/choice.html (To test your numeracy and literacy skills)
http://www.freerice.com/ (Questions on different subjects, for each question answered correctly, 10 grains of rice will be donated through World Food Programme to end world hunger)
http://www.meddybemps.com/Trains/village.html - learning activity and games
http://childfun.com/ - where play and learning go hand in hand
http://teacherslove.blogs.sapo.pt/ - A teacher’s blogspot where crafts, games, books, worksheets, wordsearches and flashcards are produced

Exclusively for maths

http://math.pppst.com/counting.html - Learning to count
http://webmath.com/index2.html
http://www.counton.org/
http://www.coolmath4kids.com
http://www.coolmath-games.com/
http://www.multiplication.com
http://www.parentsintouch.co.uk/Maths-revision-papers  (Revision Papers)
http://www.revisionaid.co.uk/directory.php

For older kids, I recommend one of the best sites which covers a wide variety of subjects like Algebra, Arithmetic, chemistry, physics, astronomy, history, magnetism etc..

http://www.school-for-champions.com



Visa Debit Chargeback Scheme

 This is one of our most recent experiences and certainly the information here should come in handy to someone sailing in a similar boat.

We were to leave to Scotland in next 3 days with a friend’s family. It would be a 6 days long trip. Alongside the excitement, had enough of laundry and packing to do with children around. Although, as the old saying goes, less luggage more comfortable, we always have to have everything extra when it comes to kids.

While these activities were running at full pace, we received an email from the tour operator through whom we had booked the 3-day tour to highlands in Scotland. The email said that the company had liquidated and ceased trading 2 days back! They had written to us to say they were unable to supply the tour we ‘d purchased and so we were not to wait for the coach and also no accommodation booked through them would be valid anymore!! They had even suggested a different tour operator through which we could re-book the tours. And coming to our money which we had already paid out, the email read “If you booked your tour using a credit card then we would recommend that you contact your credit card provider for advice on a refund.
If you used a Visa debit card to pay for your tour then you should seek a refund from your card provider through the Visa Debit chargeback scheme”.

Yes, we had made an online payment for  £1445 through Visa Debit card . And now, what is this scheme through which we had to get our money back?  We hadn’t done any such transaction before. No phone calls to the tour operator were answered, the answering machine just read out the same content on email.  Next thing we did was ask the Google God. There we read hundreds of woes of similar tone. Was this some kind of a scam that we had got ourselves into? Delving a little deep, here and there found a few notes which said contacting and constant follow-up with your card provider (bank) will help but certainly is not an easy process. Although not too encouraging, we had to do what we had to. The next morning, we contacted our Bank and initially they said they weren’t liable to pay us since it’s like paying money in a shop after you bought some item after which it’s between you and the retailer!?!  That didn’t sound too good either! After a bit of thrust all they suggested was to contact the Debit Card department and that might help.

The next call obviously was to the Debit card department. Once we contacted them, it seemed a fairly simple process. They said they would dispatch a ‘Dispute Form’.

We had to fill in the details into the Dispute form and provide the following two proofs

1. Proof of purchase (either a copy of the retailer’s receipt or your bank statement containing the transaction)
2. Proof the company had gone into liquidation (letter/email letter from the company in question)

They assured us that the claim would be processed, verified and then if everything was fine, they would credit our account with the amount debited from the retailer’s bank account. There was another clause to it, once our account was credited, if the retailer disputed it, the amount will be debited back from our account. This could happen in cases where-in some people actually use a tour package, return back and claim that they never used the tour. The retailer might dispute such cases.

This process took us nearly 3 weeks, but was finally resolved very well with the amount being credited to our account.

In these 3 weeks, when I did the research, I understood that many people had difficulty making their claims with their card providers for n-number of reasons, so the following wee bit of details:

It’s common knowledge that consumers can claim from their credit card provider in the event of a problem with their purchase.

But less well known is an obscure Visa rule which covers the debit card too. Called ‘chargeback’, the process has been agreed-to by all banks issuing Visa debit cards. If you did not receive services or goods to the money you paid through your Visa Debit card, you can file a chargeback on your card within 120 days from the date of transaction and you are entitled to a complete refund. Also, please ensure you have some proof of the initiation of chargeback with your card issuer because there have been cases where-in the bank/card-issuer sat doing nothing and later claiming the 120 days of chargeback time being run-out.

Unfortunately, not all bank staff have been trained about the existence of Visa Chargeback Scheme.  So, if a Customer Service Representative denied the existence of such a scheme, INSIST to get your case escalated.

Here is a bit of information that might help people to do their homework.

Consumer Credit Act

The Consumer Credit Act 1974 paragraph 75 does allow for customers paying by credit card to be refunded on purchases over £100 and under £30,000.
Some banks will cover amounts less than a hundred pounds.

Visa debit cards

But any debit card that operates within the VISA scheme also carries cover. Visa says it has strong rules in place to protect cardholders, and you should contact the card issuer.

Visa Says:
“Visa has strong rules in place to protect cardholders, for example when a retailer fails to deliver something that’s already been paid for. The first point of call for cardholders is their card issuer who can explain the details.”

If you wish to understand a little more, see:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/4082599.stm  
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/working_lunch/6993656.stm
https://www.visa.co.uk/security/main.html
http://www.consumeractiongroup.co.uk/forum/general-consumer-issues/125992-via-debit-card-chargeback.html

There have been cases where the BBC’s working lunch team has helped settle individual’s claims. BBC’s working lunch team can be contacted at working.lunch@bbc.co.uk

 In case your case is still not heard, try contacting

Financial ombusman @ http://financial-ombudsman.org.uk/
Citizens advice @ http://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/
Consumer direct @ http://consumerdirect.gov.uk/
Which Legal Service? @ http://www.whichlegalservice.co.uk/

Beware Bangaloreans – Real Estate frauds prowling the city!!!

This is one of the most bitter experiences of life that I will never forget. For long I have wanted to share this with you all, so this might at least alert a few of you before you invest.  My small family moved back to Bangalore after 2 years stint abroad. We wanted to buy an apartment for ourselves in the North Bangalore. We did a lot of searching for months together, but nothing really suited my contemporary ideas, if it did it was too expensive.  

Then one of those days, I saw this advertisement from a builder in one of the leading newspapers.  This was a residential construction company which had already built quite a few apartments in Tirupathi, Chennai and Bangalore.  We visited the site and found that the area was well developed, completely occupied with houses and apartments around. The house patio door opened to a University Campus, which means a lot of greenery around, that won’t be cut! We immediately got in touch with the Marketing Manager, got the floor plan and talked the pricing, most of the things fell in place! The apartment had everything I wanted, very good quality wood for doors and windows, open kitchen concept, bedrooms and bathrooms aptly in place, all spread spaciously around 16.5 squares. Close by, was another apartment built by the same builder. We met the residents and they gave us very good feedback.  Besides, we had the option of taking loans from any nationalized bank.

But then, there was a small glitch. The Manager told us that this land where the apartment was being built was bought from 2 different people and then combined.  And one of those land owner’s sisters had filed a lawsuit on their brother for having sold the land without their consent as they had equal rights on it. But the Manager assured us, showed us the court papers, the family tree of the person who had sold the land which all stated that the case was in their favor. There was no Stay on the construction of the apartment and the court was fine with the construction proceedings.  The judgment was expected in the next few months, so it seemed logical for us to still move ahead with the plans.

I don’t have to elaborate how the builder floor apartments sell in the real estate market. Most of us who have either bought apartments or trying to buy one know how this works, the more in cash you pay, the more tailored the final pricing will be. We finally came to the agreement that the builder would decrease the final pricing only if we paid at least 15 lakhs in cash which of course we did. We got the relevant papers for having paid this cash. We decided to make the agreements only after the court judgment came through which was due in the next couple of months.

From here started our Saga. We waited months after months, but the court hearings were being postponed either because one of the parties was not present, or something else. In the meanwhile the construction kept proceeding, all the internal changes I had requested were being put in place. It reached the stage where the window frames were installed and plumbing work began too. It was 10 months since we had invested, and we still did not have an agreement in place!

This began worrying us and then came the court clearance!!! So, the impediment was gone!  But who knew what was actually in store for us ahead?  The great world Economic Recession had begun.  Banks became more and more conserved in releasing loans. RBI brought very strict rules. And to our utter shock, the paper with no-objection from BDA for the area was not satisfactory and the banks refused the loan.  As I had already mentioned the entire area was already occupied with many residents who had loans sanctioned. But why not now? The answer was simple ! Life is not so easy during Recession times. What was feasible a few months back was impossible now!

The builder immediately changed his color. He gave us the option of paying full money in cash and buy the apartment or withdraw.  The cost at which we had agreed to buy this flat and the price 11 months later had a whopping difference of Rs.1200/sft. That explains enough why the Builder wanted us to back out! We were mad at him for having got us in to this fix and he promised he would return our Principal amount and pay us an interest rate of 18% on it! This compensation was nothing to him for he could still sell his flat at a higher rate and make huge profits

So, we decided to back out. He asked us to return after 15 days to collect the cheque.  Promptly after 15 days, he cut a post dated cheque for 10 lakhs instead of 15 lakhs and said he would give us the rest of the money in the coming few days.

A couple of days later, at 7am in the morn’, I was in a hurry to get to my office transport and I receive this call ! The builder had called me to say I had to hold the cheque back for he had no money in his account !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
But I had already sent the cheque for encashment. And no surprises, it BOUNCED.

Pulling a lawsuit against builders only works to your disadvantage and at the pace our judicial system works, we never know when we see that money back again.  So we decided to take the non-offending route. I pursued calling every single day, morning and evening, doing rounds to their office.  But the answer was the same. “There is no money, when we get it, we will repay you back”. One word more, he would say, “you bring a customer who will buy that flat and I will give back your money”.  What a plight, for your own money, you beg, waste your time and to top it all, get those arrogant responses.

After 3 months of running around, I was finally able to squeeze 5 lakhs in cash. In the next 2 months after that, with much pleading, he gave another cheque for 5 lakhs. This time around, no surprises again, as expected the cheque bounced.  I can’t really explain how many tears have been shed, and how many prayers offered during these times for the money was hard earned. It seemed our prayers were certainly answered. After a month, he cleared the cheque which he had issued for 5 lakhs. It took me 6 months in all to get to this level ! Now, the next round of marathon to their office began for another 5 lakhs. Now his argument was that he had paid you quite a handful, and he won’t be able to give the rest soon. All I knew was that we weren’t the only ones in the soup, but we had to somehow get out of it.

One thing I have understood till date is that networking and building relationships with people certainly comes handy in times such as these. We were able to pressurize the builder only with the influence of the right people.  Although the final amount reached us in bits and pieces, we finally managed to get the Principal amount coughed out. We had no hopes or energy left to even ask the interest we rightly deserved and we just forgot about it.

Precious time, money in terms of interest, confidence was lost to a large extent because of this one incident. But every such incident teaches you something in life, isn’t it? 

Early Years Writing

My daughter Shriya (less than 6 yrs), was narrated by her teacher, the story of Louis Braille and how he came up with the Braille System for Blind people and later asked to write down whatever they heard.

The reason is to encourage the children to remember the sequence of events in a story and then build the story themselves, practice writing skills trying to spell out words, framing sentences. Her personal target was to use longer sentences and making her sentences more interesting to readers with the usage of different words.

Eight months back my daughter did not know much of English, just the alphabets and she couldn’t really spell out many words other than cat, bat, rat…

Shriya's Writing

And today, I am so proud she has been able to put this fantastic piece of writing. I am so pleased with the way she has tried to spell out Special as speshel, idea as idya and died as diyd. Although we know the spellings aren’t right, I am so happy she has done complete justice to phonics that has been taught to her in the last few months. Obviously English is such a tricky language which expects ‘cial’ to be pronounced as ‘shel’, ‘tion’ or ‘sion’ to be pronounced as ‘shun’ as in promotion or permission! Needless to say, a lot of credit goes to the teacher’s approach to teaching, evaluating, correcting and encouraging children to learn to this extent. 

Evaluation and comments

Something noticeable is that there are no red pen marks around wrong spellings. (I hated this most as a child when my teacher put round marks with a red pen around wrongly spelt words and spoilt all my effort. The pages in my book looked like walls filled with dirty graffiti!) I am so pleased with the way the teacher has put her comments across in a completely different page without actually interfering with the child’s writing. Her words seem so encouraging, concentrating more on what’s been done rightly rather than on the wrongs. Her suggestions are so subtle yet so clear.

Yet another thing I would like to emphasize again is the need to read books before learning to write, something I wrote about in one of my previous blogs. The Oxford reading books have gone a long way in helping the standard my daughter has achieved today.

Teaching literacy to primary school goers…Initially, why reading is more essential than writing?

I did all my studies in India and ever since, the way literacy – especially English is taught has changed to an enormous extent. I did not study English the phonic way like how children do now.  I find this approach a very effective way to learn the language.  But one thing still remains the same from the time I learnt, repetitive ‘writing’  from the day you start learning the language.  Children are asked to repeat the spellings of different words in their class and home work books and then go about writing small sentences repeatedly again. Other than this, every child is given a prescribed textbook which is used as a bible to learn. I see hassled mothers fighting their kids to get them to write and losing their patience while the teachers are trying every trick to get the child pick-up writing skills.

Language skills is a complex mixture of Spelling words correctly, Constructing grammatically correct sentences and as a main essence, a whole lot of creativity in conveying something while putting sentences together. During the first few years of school, writing should come as a gradual process lest the children end up in frustration with the nitty-gritty of the language itself.

I now volunteer in one of the schools in UK and I observed a different pattern of teaching language skills. Something very interesting is that there is no single prescribed textbook for English. They follow the Oxford Reading Tree. Oxford Reading tree is a construction of carefully designed reading materials written in the form of stories by well known authors. Oxford Reading Tree stories have been written using simple, natural sounding language that children can understand. ‘Key’ words are repeated throughout the picture storybooks so that children gradually increase the number of words they can recognize and read. These books are full of characters and situations which children recognize from their own experiences such as a wobbly tooth, losing a favorite toy, a messy room.  The illustrations are closely linked to the pictures so that children understand better. These stories stage by stage introduces the concept of full stop, comma, speech marks, exclamatory marks, question marks etc…

In the initial few years, stress is more on simply reading these stories rather than writing.  Oxford Reading Tree stories have been split into 12 stages such as stage1, stage 2…. which are the different branches of the tree. Each stage has a set of   6 to 8 books.  Also, other than the branches, you can find Sparrows which are meant for extra reading. So, instead of reading one particular textbook, a child is reading different books in a spectrum of stages.  As in any class, children vary in their aptitude, while one child might be in stage 5 another might have crossed stage 8.  There is no comparison, and each child is allowed to progress as per their aptitude and effort.

One thing I have consistently observed is that children love reading these books as they are in the form of stories and don’t get bored with them.  This kind of continuous reading helps them to spell out the words phonically, which in turn helps them learn spellings, memorize tricky words, they automatically learn sentence formation and more than anything, the story part of it nurtures the creativity and boosts confidence in handling books.  Children are given homework such as finding similar sounding words, all words that start with same letter as in their name from their reading book and then write them. All this is supplemented with cursive writing to improve handwriting.  Although, there are always tricky words in English, a child by the age of 5 to 6 years (UKG in India) is able to put small passages to express his/her ideas albeit with a few spelling mistakes, but an effort towards spelling words right.

Here is a sample writing from one such  5  ½  year old child :

When children have completed these key stages, they are asked to put a paragraph on a given topic and this paragraph is judged based on right spellings, handwriting, proper grammatical usage and above all, the creativity that has gone into putting the paragraph.  Since the children have gone through all these from the beginning, they are able to perform this naturally with ease and do not fear writing..

For further information on Oxford reading, digital reading and Tree tops (further reading program for 7 to 11 year olds) please refer to:  www.oxfordprimary.com

http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/bitesize/ is another great site for learning literacy and numeracy for kids.

I will be collating different URLs which help in literacy and numeracy. Any suggestions are most welcome.