Some commercials

Some commericals make lasting impressions. Its sometimes the emotions and at other times the concept. These are my favourites from the latest ones aired.

Tata Indicom for the emotions

Airtel - Despite the celebrity, the emotions play their role here

Saint Juice - Forget the logic, the visuals are superb.

Preparation for SBI exam - Part 2

So much for thinking Science questions were difficult to attempt.
Who invented the elevator - We see Otis written outside the lifts that we use day in and day out, bit difficult for someone who cannot see it.
Who invented pneumatic tyres - We see ads for Dunlop tyres on TV, easy for us to remember. Hm.. not so easy for others

Next came Economics:
2003-04 what was inflation rate? what percentage of land is covered by forest area? 9th five year plan what was the total outlay.. blah blah blah ...
Came to one question, What was the per-capita income of Punjab in the year... and he promptly said 325. I was stunned as it was the correct answer.
"Mohan - how did u answer that, did you know the number or was it a guess?"
"Ah, that was just a guess" he said and both of us burst out laughing :D

Then came the terror of all terrors quantitative reasoning. Question 1) 786 * 64 / 48 = ?
Time for the expert, my mom - to take over.
It took about 5 minutes to get the braille board set. Another 2 to figure out how this equation was to be written. Then was the hardest part, how to solve!
Class seven was the last time that Mohan had studied mathematics. So we had to go back to the basics. Took examples of 2*15/10. Considered multiplication tables, discussed the concept of cancelling common multiples in the numerator and denominator to finally solve the problem.
This week, after work everyday, Mohan will spend revising tables. More mathematics next weekend.
He is such a bright candidate, I want him to do well. Lets see.

Preparation for SBI exam

No, I'm not preparing for the exam, but am helping someone.
Time period - 3 weeks until the exam
To be covered - A 400+ page book with multiple choice questions in topics including Indian politics, Science, Mathematics, Verbal English, Geography, Computers.
Agreement - Due to the time constraint and the vastness of the topics, we (Mohan and I) have agreed to skip all topics that involve anything diagrammatic or require visuals (You will know why soon).

Mohan, currently works in Medical Transcription in one of the local hospitals. Being visually impaired does not deter him from dreaming big. He would like to take the bank exam and hopefully do well. A clerical post at the bank would get him a permanent posting ensuring job security and income flow.

We covered 100 questions in Indian Constitution and 60 questions in Science today.
Of the former 100, I barely knew the answer for about 15 (such a shame) while Mohan got almost 75% right - good for him :D this is why we breezed through this section.
When we switched to Science, I realized how difficult it was for him to grasp the difference between mesosphere/stratosphere/ionosphere or even between electron/proton/neutron - not the concepts but who discovered them. At least here, I guess I was more familiar with the terms. So we spent some time going over the questions, then revised the answers for previously discussed questions and finally chose questions at random from everything that we had gone over. This is the reason for the lesser number of questions covered.

Another thing I realized was, in order to answer, one must first understand the question. I had to explain what words like impeach, encompass and envisage.
In the science section I tried to help him relate answers to questions by explaining concepts of vitamins/sources, tides/gravitation and scientist names with their inventions.

I learnt today that the president gets a salary of Rs.1.5 lakhs per month and the governors of the state Rs. 1.1 lakhs per month per the recent pay revisions (legal salary on paper - I mean)
I also learnt that Streptomycin was discovered by Walkman (the only walkman I knew until now was the Sony kind)
We had discussions on declaration of President's rule in certain states and the dissolution of assemblies, trying to find a rationale/reasoning for it all. In cases where we couldn't, we just took the book answer to be the truth as is. (so much for civics)

We've just scraped through the surface of these 2 topics.... there's long way to go!