All part of a busy life..

Jr. gets the same advice from me for pretty much everything this year. Given Jr. is in Jr. year, it is by far the most critical from a college preparation stand point. 

First she decided to have the Arangetram this year. I told her not to do it but if she did, it better be good and it better not compromise school. 

Second, she decided to go for her driving permit in summer. I told her not to do it but if she did, it better be good and it better not compromise school. 

Third, she decided to take Marching band this year in school so she can do band and marching band to get PE credits.  I told her not to do it but if she did, it better be good and it better not compromise school.

She has a tendency to try multiple things, not do well on multiple things and point fingers at other activities.

The Arangetram is done and the fallout of that w.r.t. exams is still being felt in the house. She did do a good job of it.

She has stopped driving temporarily and will resume in a month. While she did drive me around, she was a good and careful driver. Thank god she doesn't have mom's driving gene.

The marching band is still going on and it is one big time sink. There is three hours plus of practice twice a week and a game almost every week where it is another 4-5 hours. She likes it and is happy doing it, but it might be the one thing that helps Jr. point fingers at for grade misses. 

In any case, I can only watch her dress up and do marching band and enjoy her enjoying it. On top of all the games and practice there was a high school marching band expo where all high schools had their bands display the routines. I got to see this from the front row. It was great to see all the kids put in so much effort into this. 

Jr.'s high school music teacher was hesitant at first when he got the marching band back again last year after a long gap, but this is definitely a plus. The kids seem to thoroughly enjoy it and this builds a team spirit among the kids and it teaches them co-ordination within the instruments coupled with co-ordination with other members while moving around. 

Have been watching them practice since summer and they have improved significantly as a group in just 3 months!

Here is Jr. in her marching band uniform..

and a video of the Monta Vista school marching band at the expo..

At this rate we don't know were all this is going. We know she is doing a bunch of things and she is happy doing them. 

Given I never went through any of this in high school and grew up in a different place in a different time, all this just makes me happy and scared simultaneously. 

Hope she uses what she learns here to some value in real life and more than anything, hope she does go to college and have a career that makes her happy.

Jazz time

Jr. performed with the Kennedy Middle School Jazz band at the Folsom Jazz festival. Unfortunately I missed it because of travel.

However, we got to see her perform at CMEA at San Mateo's Aragon high school last weekend. 

The kids were amazed by the sound quality in the auditorium. They also got to experience a "clinic" where prominent Jazz band teachers came and gave them detailed feedback on the performance and tips to improve.

We had a great time watching the kids perform so well and be so enthusiastic about learning!

These kids have come a long way in such a short time. It is great that their teacher and school push them and make them challenge themselves.

My phone ran out of memory. This video got cut off. Hopefully next time will have a full video..

Transported to another time

Over the last few months, there has been a lot of reconnecting with old high school friends. It is going to be 25 years since we all graduated from high school and a reunion is on the cards.

Thanks to social media and friend finders, we have managed to connect to a lot of folks using the "ghost to ghost" network...

I know at least a few friends of mine, who stood in line at the school library to get their hands on the one book they could take home every Wednesday, will get the "ghost to ghost" reference.. 

There is now a larger group on Whatsapp, which I could not understand. It is a single serial thread on text, where it is not easy to parse or figure out who is responding to whom. Facebook, which still falls short of my expectations on how things should be does a better job!

Everyone tells me though that for folks who are not used to getting unlimited texts for 10$ a month or 140MBps at a minimum, it is very convenient.  I have joined the group and am figuring out how to check 600+ texts over a 8 hour gap. Stating that my classmates seem to be "prolific texters" is an understatement. 

One our classmates happened to visit our middle school geography teacher, a person who was very special to a lot of kids in the class. Always nice but stern, she had a way to get us to learn, what we needed to learn and drilled it into our heads. She also had a way to confirm that we actually got it! It was not through tests and quizzes but by making us feel proud of displaying what we had learned, to the whole class.

If you got something that no one else got in the class on some special topic, she would award a small pencil to that kid. In "those days", we used to have only the standard 2B lead pencils made by two companies, Natraj and Flora. I might still have a sample of those two somewhere in my shoe box.

Natraj had alternate faces of the hexagonal sides painted red and black and flora was a white pencil with small pink or purple flowers on it. Our Georgaphy teacher was handing out a pencil with a really tiny lead that would pop out when you clicked it.

It was a technological marvel when seen by the eyes of 7th grade students. When I said this to my daughter she went "so you got a mechanical pencil.. big deal!" 

It was a bigger deal than anything she can imagine.

Me : has your teacher even given you anything for being outstanding?

Little one : No

Jr. : Yes she has. I got a free dinner certificate at "The Elephant Bar" restaurant last year. You guys did not even use it or take me there. 

Me : Okay, but why is that any different than my "mechanical pencil" ?

kids : Because mechanical pencils are what we use all the time. We don't use lead pencils.

Then I got their point. They did not "diss" the concept. They did not understand that this was a novelty in those days. 

Today I spent a good thirty minutes rummaging through my shoe box which should now be renamed as my memory box. Opening the shoe box can be a double edged sword. Sometimes it brings a rush of happy memories, but sometimes it is just sadness. Dead friends, relatives, people who have been lost over the years to distance and time, sometimes a tear or two at being able to find a pencil from middle school years!

You just don't throw things like that away! Another thing that the kids are learing from the shoe box concept. 

The pencil still had some lead in it and works. I clicked the pencil and closed my eyes and before knowing it, was in middle school sitting in my Geography class learning about European countries, one at a time, their food, people, culture, currencies, landmarks to visit with a little bit of history thrown in for good measure.

It might be just a "mechanical pencil", but what my kids don't know, is that it is also a time machine!