Remembering my favorite teacher - Sister Edel Mary

• She was my class teacher in ninth grade


• She is a beautiful woman with happy soul.


• She had a beautiful smile like Mona Lisa’s. It’s so hard to interpret her mood because she  gave that Mona Lisa smile even when we behaved badly.


• She taught History.


• She introduced me to Anil Kapoor


• She covered her History book with Anil Kapoor’s posters (I guess from magazine or news paper). She is Anil Kapoor’s fan so I became his fan too.


•  She was a welcome change in our school dominated by unfriendly nuns (mostly Tamil nuns from rural background who tortured happy carefree kids imposing "nun" like rules). I always felt she never belonged there.


• She asked us to learn typing and short hand so it will come handy during our college years. I followed her advice faithfully and passed my typing lower grade mid of  11^th grade year. I attempted my typing higher grade exam after 4 months  but failed. I didn’t practice well due to my half-yearly exams. I was the only one 15-year-old kid, taking the higher grade typing exam in that huge exam hall .I was the youngest student in my institute and hence my teacher’s pet.  I also took short hand –lower grade lessons but discontinued it, when I came to 12^th grade due to tight academic schedule. I had decent knowledge of short hand to take notes .Now  I don't remember anything  .


• She was very entertaining.  I never saw her as a nun but as domesticated women who loved children. She was happy around kids and eager to mentor us in her own undemanding ways. She really influenced my mothering style.


• I watched " Fraggle Rock" for the first time during my ninth grade. She made us watch “Fraggle Rock” once a week during her class hour. That was my first introduction to 3-D animated cartoons . I used to create 3-D model of comic book character(s) out of china clay (aka modeling clay) complete with cardboard castles/building during summer time. Fraggle Rock based projects dominated the summer that year.


• During my college years I forced myself to believe that Sister Edel became a nun because of a broken love affair : ).  She was a vibrant woman who gave up everything in life for the sake of God.


• She died at a younger age (during 1990’s) due health complications arising after a van accident driven by a careless and stupid driver . Even during my schooling years he used to scare the hell out us bye driving the van at high-speed inside our school campus.

 I tried to remember Sister Edel Mary as often as I can , but today I remembered her specially ,when I sang my son’s favorite Anil Kapoor’s dance number “Tak dina din tak dina din .., bom bom bom Bombay mere hai” . 

She was my ideal teacher and no wonder I always wanted to become a pre-KG teacher. I still do.

Return of Seamstress - Part 2

I started sewing home essentials like curtains , table runner , holiday decoration etc. I 'd sewn beautiful dresses for girls as gifts. Then last few years when CB was working for MS in Seattle while I worked for Intel in portland my sewing hobby came to complete halt due to other priorities in life.  I used my machine for mending or to do some patch up work .

My sewing got a kick start thanks to NR. This little kuttan doesn't like wearning the hat  (like the ones from the hospital). Though he was just two weeks old he always removed his cap from his head. I used to wonder how ? Then I caught the culprit in action. He will turn his head left to right and after twenty plus turns the cap will come out of his head : ).  Then and there we knew that we have naughty and mischievous guy in our hands. My sister who came to US when NR was six weeks old could not believe this. My sister and niece used to wait to watch this and enjoy the sweet trick by this little fellow.

NR suffered from congestion and needed a hat to keep him warm as new born  and during summer when we had our A/C on at nights. Since it was summer I was not able to buy the winter hats like this so ended up sewing one for NR. 

Last christmas , I wanted to start the tradition of giving some hand made gifts to NR friend Sherry (My best friend's son who is 8 months older than NR).  I managed to sew 3 ponchos during the second week of Dec 2008 .  The sewing part took 45  minutes to an hour and cutting may be 15 -20 minutes. I purchased dresses for two sets of girls and boys during Nov but everything had to wait because of this project. Though I finished the project on time, due to snow storms, I was not able to send them on time for christmas.

I packed everything and our good friend took time to send them to my friends on my behalf.  Hope they enjoyed this personal gift.

PS : This draft was written in Jan 2009 : )

Oxford English Dictionary

I treasure my first OED . We used to carry our own copy of  OED to  english classes in middle school.  OED opened a new world for me. 

I started playing this made up game during my sixth grade. I would open my dictionary and find a random word and try to use it in a sentence. This entertained me a lot specially during my bed time.

Even today when I open the Reader's Digest magazine, I'll check the word power section first then move on to other topics.

I need to start my sixth grade word game to enhance my english since bulleted emails and cryptic technical writing  took over my art of good writing.  The Engrish in GUI, nightmare help guide(s) and " God save me from this alien " kind of emails from colleagues have had big impact on me. For example, waiter/waitress in US restaurants never understood my request of  " I want water without ice".  I no longer use sentence , just words to get my request "Water - No ice".  I am afraid I've become one of them. I have no patience to edit what I write these days.

If you are wondering Why is she writing /thinking about Oxford English Dictionary ? Here is why ? Somebody has listed this collectors edition of Oxford English Dictionary as item to buy when they win lottery. Hee hee I have the same wish too ; ).

Return of Seamstress - Part 1

 emm cinematic headlines right ? I am hibernating due to snow storms and it makes me more creative word wise ; ).

For starters my mother doesn't sew. She doesn't even know how to sew a button or she never bothered to learn how to sew a button. How she got that done - By her daughters. We were handy daughter (as in handyman) who did everything for our mom which includes sewing buttons .   She is not a domestic diva. She devoted herself to two C's - Career and cooking. I have never seen her feel lazy to cook even when friends or relatives come in the wee hours. She can cook for whole clan . But she was/is not interested in housekeeping, sewing , drawing . She is voracious reader . She used to read fictions as if the world is going to end tomorrow.  Give her a JHC novel (James Hardley Chase) she will forget the whole world.

As kids we picked all the good traits that my mother never possessed. Me and my elder sister were good at home decorating, painting /drawing . Then my elder sister learnt to sew using the antique sewing machine we had in our house when she was in middle school.  I have a vague memory of seeing my father use that machine when I was a kid .  My sister use to sew  my mother's saree(her fav ones)  into long flowy skirts. Long skirts were in fashion those days . We got the cool fashion tips/trends thanks to our anglo Indian neighbour(s). My sister strictly made dresses only for her though I longed for those cute skirts. Still I never wanted to learn sewing.

During my high school/college years I learnt little bit of crochet , made an afghan and stopped there.  For the second year valentines day I made handmade woollen scarf for CB. We ordered custome made wood frame with nails for making that scarf. Hope it is still there in my parents house.  Even at that point, I never developed interest in sewing .

Coming to US and seeing beautiful fabrics in the stores kindled my interest in sewing. Circa 1998 when we lived in Kansas I became friends with tamil friend - Aunty M.  We both enrolled in a sewing class offered at the county extension center.The class required us to bring a sewing machine, desired pattern and required materials.    I really liked the concept of trying to sew a dress in the first class as opposed to "learning to sew petticoats" as the first step. If you enroll for sewing class in India, you have to start from  sewing petticoats . Just this reason kept me away from the sewing classes in India.

I bought the machine , a blouse pattern ,fabric and notions.I was the only student in the class who had no prior knowledge about sewing or sewing machine . I never even know how to thread a machine. During first session, the instructor taught me the basics of sewing machine and asked me to practise "straight stitch" before the next class .  I practised the straight stitch for few times and wanted to check out the pattern. I opened the pattern envelope only to find a "Industrial engineering blue print " kind of drawings. I realised my sewing hobby is going to end pretty soon because the pattern was quite complex to understand at a first glance just like my "Wave Mechanics" class during my UG and my debugger projects at work.

In the second class she taught us to cut the pattern according to our size. It wasn't difficult at all and it was easy to decrypt the pattern.  We learnt to cut fabric using the pattern .  She gave me an idea about joining the pattern to get the final product.  She said we will be finishing the pattern in the next class.  Aunty M knew sewing and she has been sewing stuff for her kids but she never used pattern till that point.

I came home and jumped into project with full vigor. Finished the entire blouse within an hour. Finishing touches like sewing button, hand hemming took another 30 -60 minutes. Guess who was the only person who had finished product on hand for the third class?  - "moi" . Novice students got lot of help from the instructor to finish the product. I sat there helping M aunty to finish the project since we both bought the same pattern. That's the beginning of  my sewing hobby. Thus the seamstress was born.

The best thing about sewing in US is that , you get all sorts of pattern for all sorts of things . The patterns comes with full instruction and it is relatively easy to sew.  My strongest skill is reverse engineering. You give me dress, I can completely take dress out  and make pattern out of it and sew a new dress . At the same time, I am not good at free hand stitching (Indian way of cutting fabrics using free hand method) and I don't miss it.

Few months after attending the sewing class, we moved to Idaho .  I decided not to pursue work in US during our initial years in US due to visa reasons. We might have to live separately for the sake of  job and I was against it then and now. We keep "Money" away in our family decisions. I had quite a lot of time at hand. I sew around 8 -10 dresses for my 4 year old niece as gifts during my trip back home. Hand made gifts gives  extra "I care about you" effect  over store bought gifts .  My sister and my dad were quite surprised to see a sewing machine challenged girl turn into a good dress maker.