Love Film

One fine day, as we were walking past Blockbuster, Anirud asked me to rent the movie 'Shrek'. I said to him that we can get that movie through Lovefilm (an online movie rental service we have subscribed to) and asked him to remind about that when we get home. I expected him to forget about it and rightly so, he didn't bother about Shrek for some time. Few hours later, Anirud went near the laptop that was not only left unlocked, but also had an Internet Explorer window open. He moved the mouse to the address bar and typed some character in random (it happened to be 'L'), pressed the down arrow and hit 'Enter'. To his joy, the website that loaded in front of him was lovefilm.com.

From that point, he started to take control. With the combination of mouse clicks and scroll buttons, he navigated around the site, reached the page where the teaser for 'Shrek' was displayed and just stopped short of reserving / ordering the movie. Leaving aside the initial excitement after he landed on the said website, not for a moment he hesitated while navigating around. Such was his confidence that it appeared that he knew everything about the process like the back of his palm.

Lovefilm.com is a harmless site. At best or worst, he could only reserve a movie. But this is a gentle reminder for us to 'sign out' properly from all the sites, especially the ones like Amazon, which has got features like 'single click ordering'.

Dialogue

(Apologies to those who can't read Thamizh.)

அப்பா: நீ ரொம்ப ஸ்வீட்டா?

அநிருத்: இல்ல, காரம். நான் தான் மிக்ஸர்.. :-))

Small Business Laptop

When we were discussing about the best place to buy our laptop, Anirud turned around and said, "Appa, Small business laptop vaangi paaru. Adhu nanna irukkum" (Dad, get a Small Business Laptop from Dell. That will be good). I vividly remember the day - several weeks ago, when I was telling my wife about the Small Business Laptop available from Dell and Anirud's focus was on his new toy. Seems that he grabbed that bit of info and used it at the right time. Though he doesn't know the meaning of 'business', we were pleasantly shocked at the way he put all of that together at the appropriate time.

Useless

One day Anirud was asking like 'appa, Tesco poy useless vaangalaama?' ('Shall we buy USELESS from Tesco?'). We were utterly confused on what he was talking about that it took a while to figure it out.

Few minutes before this, upon seeing Anirud playing with an used up plastic item, his mom asked me what that was, to which I replied, 'Oh, that is useless. Let him play with it'. He caught on to the word and thought that it is the name of the item.

Scooter

We have got a scooter for Anirud. Scooter is a small two-wheeled vehicle operated by foot and not the one that is commonly referred to in India. The one he has got is a slightly advanced version - that it has got only 2 wheels and at times Anirud finds it a bit difficult to balance. On the otherhand, the scooters owned by few other children in the neighbourhood have an extra wheel in the front for balance. As per Murphy's law, Anirud likes their scooter and the other kids like his'. The next step in this direction will be a 14" bike, which we have planned to get him by Spring 2009.

Whipsnade Zoo

Anirud was taken to Whipsnade Zoo and he enjoyed every bit of his time there. Even when we were few miles to the zoo, he could hardly contain his excitement and was like 'Idhu daan Zoo-aa? Zoo vandhaacha?' (Is that the zoo? have we arrived there?). Apart from seeing the animals that included Lion, Bear, Giraffe, Wolf, Chimpanzee, Rhino, Hippo, Cheetah etc in close quarters, he got to go on a zoo safari in a small steam train. As a fan of trains, he was looking forward to that ever since he heard the hoot of the engine upon entering the zoo. He was visibly pleased when he threw carrots at the bear although one of the bears got hit by the carrot thrown by him. He enjoyed watching the birds and sometimes egged me on to photograph them. An eagle was looking away in its cage and it was cute when he said 'Hey Eagle, look at me, look at me please'. Anirud's only disappointment was that the Asian Tiger never showed up near the viewing enclosure.

Big Boy - Small Boy

Anirud has got a theory that when small becomes big, big will become small. Going by that logic, when he grows up to be a big boy, we (his mom and I) will become small girl/boy, as the case may be. Based on the above theory, his questions are like 'Which school will you be attending when you become a little boy?', 'What kind of toys would you play with?' etc.

Flowers and Wedding

Perhaps taking cue from the movies, Anirud has somehow started relating flowers with wedding. On the other day, as we were walking past the aisle containing flowers at Tesco, he went on like "Appa, inga flowers paaru. Kalyanam section vandhuduthu" (Look at the flowers.. We have come to the wedding section). :)