Teddy kidnapped

Took this snap from an auto on a hot Thursday morning at Venkatnarayana Road signal.

Do you see what is heavily stuffed inside that sack?

It is nothing but a huge teddy waiting to be delivered to the customer... but the way he is been transported made it look different

Teddy screams... somebody help me!!!!

Englipeesh

I recently read an article from Outlook magazine about the way English is being taught in our country and also about the recent suicides that are committed by students who are not able to withstand the pressure of facing English exams in the academics.

From my experience, i have seen many tamil medium students who were my room mates and class mates struggle hard enough to score a pass mark in English, they have completed all their school education through tamil medium and finally when they land in colleges, they are forced to go through all the materials in English, It doesnt stop with getting a pass mark in subjects, it is about the fundamentalism of understanding the concepts and applying the same. It is about handling viva voce during practical exams, i have seen students who tell the externals "Sir can i explain it in Tamil?" and it continues to the final year project and also in the campus recruitment.

Even though they fight this battle of getting a engineering degree with a decent pass mark, they find it difficult in landing up to a job. And to a sad note, not all my tamil medium friends have been placed in a nice job today. it is only those who are able to speak fluent english got placed in MNC during placement and it is only those who are up in the ladder right now. Year after year this "English speaking curse" is still continuing.

The existing curriculum only stresses on marks and grades. For SSLC, all they care is MPC (Maths, Physics, Chemistry) but what bout English?
Engineering Degrees doesnt have any soft skills added in the curriculum, English is available only in the first year and after that it is only the core topics. There is no stress for humanities related study.
Management Degrees are also on the same page, there is no social responsibility in the degrees being offered.
One can easily complete thier Doctorate (Ph.D) with out the aid of English, but when it comes to Job right from star hotel waitor, store keeper, call center agent, executive manager every one needs ot be fluent in English?
How can people suddenly accustom to such a drastic change?

Spoken English and short term courses are definitely not going ot help and it is those set of people who make money out of your weakenss.

Some of the self help tips that I used to recommend to my fellow mates who were poor in communication

1. Read any section of the newspaper loudly. You dont have to memorise the meaning of the complex jargons, but when you speak english it must flow out freely without any hassles.
2. Read those sections loudly in front of the mirror. See yourself speaking out those sections clearly if you are hesitant to talk to someone in the hostel.
3. Watch English news and other movies and pay more attention to the way they pronounce the words. Try repeating any of those sentences again and again.
4. Try to write out the daily usage phrases in English and try speaking it out loudly and in due course enhance the list of phrases that you have.
5. Last but important point, self confidence is the key, if you think you are lower than anyone just because you dont know this foriegn language, forget about that. It is totally wrong conception. You are no way inferior to anyone and you have your own capabilities and strengths.
6. Volunteer yourself for more project presentations and other activities and learn it as a language rather seeing at a source of income.

Some more key points from the article which stresses the importance of this language. (For those who dont have access to read Outlook online)

According to Uma K. Raman, head, Skills Enhancement, HCL BPO, her company rejects 92-93 per cent of applicants for poor English. Sandhya Chitale, director, Nasscom's Educational Initiative, puts the rejection rate for non-engineering graduates applying to the IT and IT-enabled sector, both in "voice" and "non-voice" roles, at 82-83 per cent, for lack of soft skills, including written and oral English.

"The curricula only emphasise reading and writing, not listening and speaking. You can't get a sentence out of a student who is asked to talk about himself," says Chitale bluntly. Raman declares written English even worse than spoken. "There is a myth that Indians are good at grammar," he says, "but they are only good at learning concepts - what is a noun, what is an adjective - not at applying them."

English writing abilities of school students is poor, even in the country's top schools. A 2006 survey (conducted jointly by Wipro Applying Thought in Schools andthe organisation Educational Initiatives) among Class 4-8 students in 134 top English medium schools in the five metros found that 80 per cent of students even in Class 8 make mistakes in comprehension, grammar and syntax

Quickfixes, say the experts, invariably result in large numbers of people moving around with templates of sentences in their heads, a superficial, limited language acquisition, similar to the way tourist guides speak different languages. Sometimes it works, at other times it causes huge anxiety. Vijaya Subramaniam, deputy principal of the Sardar Patel Vidyalaya, and a regular user of Delhi's Metro, marvels at how a few catchy sentences and phrases, incorporating words such as "cool", "dude" and "awesome", enables commuting college students with shaky English to belong to the group.

Meeting the country's large-scale demand for job-oriented learning of English without moving towards "fixed phrase parroting" is a big challenge, says Prabhu. Motivated advice from the language-teaching industry doesn't help, he warns, because it fosters the false belief that you can acquire a language quickly. "Language learning," Prabhu stresses, "is an organic process - you can't grow a plant in three days instead of three years." Nair says, in the same vein, "Language is not a prosthetic limb, you can't attach it, you have to grow it."

Valpaarai

Its been a long time since posted anything on the footloose, last weekend was too good and also has enough information to be posted on this post now about my last weekend getaway.

Valpaarai is one of the less explored hill station in tamilnadu... like anyother hill stations, valpaarai has its own mystique view of hills covered with mists, tea estates, meadows, valley and waterfalls and something which cannot be missed is the monkeys that welcome us on the way up and also the ones that bid farewell on the way down.

Valpaarai never ceased to impress me. It is full of tea estates and has a similar panaromic view of munnar.... but less crowded and quickly accessible from coimbatore. Yes it is close to 105 km drive from coimbatore and one can reach within 3.5 hours to the desired place.

Okay here is the list of some places that we visited in this trip.

On the way to valpaarai you will find this aaliyar dam and its park.... if there are little kids and if you are packing lunch from home, this is sure nice place for a pitstop.

after you start from the aliyar park, the next stop point would be the 9th hairpin bend (Lome's View). You can view the entire strech of water being reserved at the aliyaar water resorvoir

And then there is a place called attakatty which is on the way to valpaarai. this place looks like a normal office builiding but you can actually walk inside the bunglaow to see teh view point. This is totally different view of the valley and something you must not miss.

After all these nice view points, we finally reached the kavarkal tea estate. its a nice cozy(not real cozy but still :P) 3 bedroom bunglaow furnished to accomodate people along with a crew who cooked dinner, breakfast and lunch there...

It was getting dark and misty by the time we reached the place and we couldnt get a nice hold of how the estate actually looks like, but when we came out of the rooms in the morning this is what we could see... :D

there is lot of home vegetation in the estate, this is where we got all our vegetables for hte food... there is cabbage, carrot, radish, cauliflower, beetroot, beans, potatoes, tomatoes.. all kind of plans... and lot of jasmine plants...(now i know why they saw valpaarai is rich in flora and fauna)

Just imagine sipping tea right in front of this gardern early in the morning and deciding on what to cook for that day :)

beans plants

cauliflower and carrot plants

Next day morning.... after breakfast we went to the famous balaji temple and since photography is strictly prohibitted there, i couldnt post any photos of that place and from there we decided to goto another place called nallamudi poonjolai, this is an awesome place and must be seen by all folks who travel to valpaarai.

Nalla mudi poonjolai view point

an attempt to capture the place in a wide angle, by taking three shots and merging them in paint
adhi murugan temple at nallamudi poonjolai.
we just wanted to have a day out there nothing specific to visit as in a tourist agenda.... so the stay out there at the bunglaow really mattered rather than adding tourist spots to our trip.

Pullu mudu (Grass Meadow) this is a must see place again (strictly for adventurists) as the roads are rough and crawling with leeches and also Indragandhi wildlife sancturary - need permissions from forest office to visit this places. I will definitely visit again to this place.

Time to Go: Dont go during summer (May to June) Best time would be October to March

Where to stay: You get lot of estate bungalows to stay for. They typically charge Rs 7500 for a 3 bedroom cozy bunglaow but you need to negotiate on the money as much as you can before you stay there. There are also estates available at Rs 5ooo. And you get a tented house for 3000 in Indra gandhi wildlife sanctuary where activities like trekking, tusk ride, forest walk and food are included. When you go to valpaarai try staying in the tea estate bunglaows rather than stayin in hotels. Estates always give you a different and unique experience to be in.

What to wear: Ofcourse it is a hill station and has got a cooler climate, make sure to take your woolen clothing with you and if you are planning to trek, you know what you need to carry.