Author: Prashanth Udupa
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Is “love” a scalar or vector?
When Chandrayaan-2 launched, my wife Nandini and son Advay (8yo) watched the launch live stream together. Emotions ran high as it took off. Nandini used that moment as an opportunity to explain about launch vehicles. To explain the difference between a rover, lander, and orbiter. Advay was clearly smitten by all that tech. On Sunday…
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Carpentry & Flute aid Advay in learning the Keyboard
Advay (my 8-year-old) has a friend in our gated community who is in his second year of engineering. When he was at home for his semester break, Advay would visit him often and watch him play the keyboard. In roughly a week’s time, Advay would come home and share with excitement about this new tune…
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Have you considered typing in a form?
My friend Murali Krishna loaned us his old typewriter. Advay loves to play with it, to type stories using it and in general explore different kinds of writing. One afternoon he decided to fill out a form using the typewriter. His answers are quite accurate. Whats interesting is that he read long sentences on the…
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Letting questions linger without answers
As a child, whenever I got myself to stick around for long in the vicinity of this phenomenon called “question”, it was always followed by something called “answer”. Q&A – Questions and Answers. They never existed in isolation. It was scary to just be with a question. If there was a question that I no…
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Nurturing the habit of reading
One key skill that every self-directed learner must nurture is the ability to read books of interest. I am not saying that reading is a skill that is more important than other skills like making friends, playing, etc. I am saying that reading is a critical skill that one must pick up as a self-directed…
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Multiplication tables
The word “multiplication tables” brings back memories of only one thing from my childhood – “mugging”. As a child I simply had to learn multiplication tables. I couldn’t ask for a reason why. My parents would explain to me the benefits of learning tables by-heart. They would even give me sufficient time to learn it.…
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The MBP Reborn
About two weeks ago my MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Early 2013) decided to call it quits. I was writing an email. The display went blank. I connected an external monitor; nothing. I tried to cold reboot; nothing. Nothing I did could reboot it.
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Carpentry season
Advay, my 8 year old, has developed a liking for carpentry off late. His first tryst with carpentry was two years ago when he was frequently visiting Aarohi. Since then he would take up carpentry projects every once a while. One of my close friends, Murali Krishna, has recently renovated his house and dedicated half…
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What is the meaning of meaning?
Advay (my 8 year old) asks me: “Appa, what is the meaning of meaning?” Having read a lot of philosophy, this question appealed to the philosopher in me. I paused for a while, pondered over the question and tried to grasp the depth of such a question. After spending a while in deep thought I…
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No freedom, only responsibility
The words freedom and responsibility mean different things to different people. When someone says “Sam is free to do xyz“, it could either mean “Sam can choose to do xyz, if he ‘wants’” OR “Sam is not ‘banned’ from doing xyz, so he can potentially do it” OR “Sam can try out xyz ‘for size’…
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Pulling ideas and experiences together to make something new
This is a story of how Advay (my 7 year old) pulled together random experiences from scrubbing coconut shells, to dismantling an old washing machine, to discovering a motor to making an electric coconut scrubber.
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Advay learns to flute
Our family has a lot of music enthusiasts. My sister-in-law (my older brother’s wife) is a trained vocal artist. Their oldest son (Avyay) has taken training in Mrudanga and Advay has sat around him during his practice sessions several times. My cousin brother, Sujith, plays the Guitar. Another one of my cousins, Suhas, plays drums.
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What is “correct spelling”?
Advay (my 7 year old) has developed a fascination for the written form this year. It started with the need to read his favourite story books and then with the need to capture his expression in words. He was doing a good job expressing his ideas & thoughts through drawings. For instance: after he came…
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Advay’s visit to “Open Day at IISc”
Nandini recently found out about “Open Day at IISc”. She was excited to go with Advay (my 7 year old) for that event. On Saturday they both got on the Metro and reached the IISc campus. Through the journey, Nandini explained to Advay what Open Day was and the opportunity that would be available to…
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Anxiety about unlimited freedom
Tight rope walking is scary because there are no rails to hold on to while walking on the tight rope. So, it causes an obvious anxiety about walking on the rope. Anxiety stems from the fact that, without support, one might fall off to the left OR to the right OR forward OR backward OR…