Just going through some changes.
Still Here
October 19th, 2012Bed Time Story (continued from 02/08/2011)
May 27th, 2012Night 7
Which computer did we use to write this story at the beginning? It doesn’t matter. I don’t want this in the story, it’s so annoying. Let’s see where the rice is coming from!
If you want to write everything we say, write “I wrote this”.
Rice is essential for a nice lion heart dish. On Planet-Go-to-Bed there’s no rice, as rice grows in fields flooded with water and the only water on that planet can be found in very deep wells full of cows. So, rice has to be imported from Planet Earth. When little children don’t want to go to bed, their parents, who are, of course, much younger, point to the sky and say: “Look, there’s a handful of grains of rice somebody from Earth planted in the Heavens, find you own grain and go to sleep!”
But Faruno was studying at school what people eat on Planet Earth and he found out that only two billions of them actually eat rice. Some others eat prawns, pork and chicken nuggets, but some don’t eat at all.
Today Faruno learned about pizza. This is a very important traditional dish on Earth, as it can make people there sick or healthy, depending on their diet. If you have too much pizza on Earth, you may develop cavities in your teeth. cavities are little caves, where savage germs have parties and their music gets so loud, that it reaches your brain and you start singing as well. The most likely song you’ll sing is called “Ouch!” and it goes like this: “I have no idea, my brain is empty, my tooth is hurting, ouch, ouch, ouch!”
What do we do if we have cavities? We take them to a creative doctor, called the dentist chef. He makes more pizzas, but they are so tiny, they can fill your cavities very easily. The smaller they are, the more expensive they get. A large pizza with mozzarella, salami and zucchini, as seen on TV, can fill the cavities of a whole school, but if you are really rich, you can get a microscopic vegetarian pizza with pineapple and nothing else and this will cure only one tooth, very small, with a cavity so tiny a germ can not even fit in it.
Faruno asked his teacher whether you can get rice pizzas on Planet Earth but the bell rang and when it rings we all have to really go to bed.
A Short Tale of Fathers and Sons
March 16th, 2012When my father came home in those days of old, I was not terrified, but I was utterly aware and I would make sure that none of my friends could call me out for a game of football in the parking lot. Nor could I call them, as their fathers would also be at home by then and it would be disrespectful even to think of disobeying the orders they never actually gave.
My seven year old son goes to bed with my laptop computer and watches videos or plays games until he drops down fast asleep. My father used to punish me for reading classics with a torch under my bed cover when I was seventeen.
I am certainly not adapted to this brave new world and all my struggle is just a mockery of how I should be: father and son, all in one, as software comes embedded in the new hardware these days. I have no ‘firmware’. I teach my son how to skip a stone on the fine surface of his reality. In a different era I would teach him how to carry a pocket knife when camping. How do you teach your kid not to be politically correct? Why do you still have those kids if you can not teach them your own values, your long-line inheritance?
Never mind.
To Be or Not to Be a Kiwi Dad in Emergency Situations
December 9th, 2011Sometimes I wonder whether I did well when I decided to move to New Zealand. Occasionally I get a hint. Today I went to get my kid from school and, as he was coming from the indoor swimming pool with all his wet stuff tucked randomly in his backpack, a bright red box fell on the footpath. It was a pocket-size waterproof electronic device which combines radio (including two SW bands), LED torch and USB laptop/cellphone charger, a battery-free dual-powered (dynamo and solar) compact emergency unit. Initially, my Romanian-educated instincts made me believe that my son pinched it somehow and I was ready to take it to the ‘lost and found property’ area, then I realized that every single kiddo had one of them. The NZ Red Cross gave every single school-aged child in Christchurch this survival item in the wake of the terrible earthquake we had earlier this year. Yet sometimes I doubt I’ve made a good decision by coming to this country – in the end of the day I didn’t get a bright red solar radio to listen to my cricket when I have my beer pretending that I’m out fishing, boating or camping. This is age discrimination and I should complain to the authorities!
This is no advert, I really like it!
Oh, it seems that the Americans get a fake version of this device. Watch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_10KXcTGV4g
only if you have nothing better to do. Mine (my son gifted it to me: ‘you can have it, Dad’) has better features!