Viswanathan K's Thoughts

When I started reading Calvin and Hobbes , I was always struck by the range of topics Bill Watterson could cover. On the topic of how kids view their parents, this line by Calvin says it all, across space and time:   “I am related to people I cannot relate to.” As I’ve grown older, I can still appreciate and enjoy how Calvin views the world, but I increasingly find that my 8 yo daughter too can relate to Calvin. Like the time she read this strip: So how do I know she could relate to the strip? Like all kids, she has the subtlety of a sledgehammer. She turned to me and said, “I feel the same way about you”. And then added the final nail to the coffin: “It’s almost as if Calvin is my brother.” Ouch! The shoe is now on the other foot, and I don’t like it one bit.

I remember reading somewhere that Facebook may not last more than one generation. That may be hard to imagine today, and no, it wasn’t based on the nothing-lasts-forever reasoning. Instead, it said teenagers don’t wants to have any contact with their parents, and so they’d never come onto Facebook, a site inhabited by people their parents’ age (shudder). Ergo, each new generation would have a new social media site, one that didn’t have parents on it! The other mega social media outlet, WhatsApp, is the way for parents of kids in the same class to interact with each other. As a kid, I remember how one struggled to get notes for days one missed at school. Even if you had a kid from the same class in the neighbourhood, you still had to hope that the other kid took notes. But now, thanks to WhatsApp groups, that’s not a problem: Ask and ye shall received photos of the notes taken by any other kid in class. I thought that was the only purpose of these class WhatsApp groups. Turns...

My parents were considering buying a second desktop for themselves. Second as in “addition to”, not as in “replacement of”. Why? For two reasons (this is just my opinion; I could be totally wrong): 1)       The existing desktop is getting old and might conk out sooner rather than later; 2)       One device ain’t enough for two people! My father was considering a laptop as an option. That is when my wife told me to suggest the tablet option to them. I did; and initially, they were wary of how easy or difficult typing without a (physical) keyboard might be. They then Googled to learn that they could plug in a physical keyboard to a tablet. I was amused by how my dad knew about iPad and Android as the only two options (I guess he learnt about Android from the book I lent him and, surprisingly, one he actually read: Dogfight: How Apple and Google Went to War and Started a Revolution ). I pushed them hard to buy the iPad rather th...