Father Agnel, Noida – Quick Notes

For our Kid’s admission, we applied for Father Agnel as well. I visited the school couple of times and one of my friend’s son studies there. Here’s some info about the school which I learned during this time and which might help fellow parents.

Location – Sector 62. Its on the road which connects Labour Chowk to NH24. The other way is to find Fortis hospital in Sector 62 and then go West from Fortis, its right at the end.

Father Agnel is located very well for residents of Sector-62 which has a large no of apartments, Indirapuram which is just on the other side of N24 and Sector 55,56,57,58.


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Father Agnel is a convent school and they have other schools in Delhi and elsewhere. Its a convent format but its a CBSE board. The one in Noida where we applied, seemed to have decent infrastructure, with clean small lawn in front, a moderately big play-ground in the back and not-so-large main school building.

What really impressed me was the new auditorium which can really give a run for the money to some of the bigger schools. I could see some more development happening which is a very good sign for folks who have more years to spend here.

The staff was very polite and methodical. They didn’t take any money for the form and when we submitted it, we were charged Rs 100 (Thats what I remember, but it was definitely not more than 150).

Our first interaction was on Oct 14th. They were very organized and all the parents were requested to wait in the auditorium. It was a little warm inside but this was much better arrangement then what we saw in Somerville, Cambridge, Vishwa-Bharti etc. All the information regarding results were very clearly projected on the big screen which was also sort of very good, not very common in most of the interactions we had.

The results would be out on Oct 23, but since we got another school, we couldn’t wait for these results. I was very impressed overall with the school.

A Victime of CERN – Big Bang Experiment

I have heard about CERN before. So when I read news about CERN trying to re-enact ‘Big Bang’, I read that as another science project. Later I came to know that is a 10 Billion USD project and there are many countries who are supporting it, including India. We supposedly have close to 30 scientists there.

I knew about CERN not because I have a deep interest in big-bang and the making of universe, you would never find me discussing this over lunch-table or in airplane aisles but I knew about it since my bro-in-law (or half brother) has been to this place. He was at Geneva for some office work for few months and he accidentally discovered this place. This place is near Geneva and I can bet that all those hazaar honeymoon couples who change their flights at Geneva on the way to Interlaken or Zurich, have not heard about this place.

Apparently they have build the deepest/largest tunnel in the world where they would do these experiments. It is essentially a atom smasher mixer-grinder where protons would travel at a lot higher speed from different direction and would collide, making the big bang. There are dig-cams (weighing more than a ton) which would take millions of snap-shot when this happens.

So far so good.

All was well today morning. I prepared tea, my daughter was cheerful (she had very high fever the other day, tonsillitis) before my wife found out few missed calls. Our maid has called and missed us. She called back and found to her horror that we would be do our chores by ourselves, maid has learned that today’s the world is going to be finished and so she was not sure whether she should spend those precious hours with us or with her family. No prizes for guessing that she chose later.

I am now in office and would get into a tele-call a moment from now. We are going to discuss whether we are on track for releasing our s/w or not. I hope someone mentions about this ‘Big Bang’ thing and I can crib more, after all no one likes to clean utensils before coming to office.

Better Channel Navigation in TVs

Out here in India we used to have just one TV channel, when we were growing. TV Remote was something which we have seen when we got old. I remember that when we bought our first Color TV in 1987 (A Bush model), we chose to buy the one without remote since we thought that it doesn’t make sense to pay Rs 1000 just for a remote.

Then came the satellite revolution, around 1991 odd, and suddenly 100s of channel were visible. When I read a report in Time magazine in 1991-1992, I didn’t believe it. My college library used to get 100s of magazine and I thought that this is not about India. After some weeks I was seen working with local cable guy to fix things, apparently a couple who has just moved in a close-by apartment has agreed to pay 200 or whatever for this satellite connection. When we first watched MTv we were as good as dead. We could not believe it.

The result of all this ensured that TV Remote became a standard fitment. Now you could flip channels. Then about 2 odd years back, we got DTH (Direct to Home) where in you get a set-top box and the beauty of this system was that there is no cable-wallah in between, the signal reception is good and you can access TV Guide.

So if you are on “Tata Sky” or “Dish TV’ or recently launched ‘Big TV’, you can find out much more about the running and future TV programs. Life is simpler, better and more richer now.

So in this life, while browsing or surfing channels, I thought of something. In Tata Sky, there is a way through which you can find out ‘whats playing’ on next channel and you can browse the list, without actually changing the channel. So if Star, Sony and Zee are configured one after the other then while watching Star, you just press some keys and you can see a text information of whats playing on Sony. At this point you can either chose to change to Sony or go to next Channel.

What occurred to me that whether it wont be killing, if I can also see a small video preview of next channel. This small preview would help me further since I can figure out whether they are playing any ads or not. Sometime these small previews could actually help me to find out the details of the ‘content’ rather then reading it. Especially if I am familiar with that particular program. A small preview is enough for you to register whether the program is “Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Challenge 2009” or “Big Boss” or “The Great India Laughter Challenge”. Over time it may happen that you only video previews since those are much more easier to register.

PIP (Picture in picture) is already a solved problem. This is just another good use case of using PIP technology. TV makers ??? Can you do it.

Olympic Gold, What next ?

Abhinav Bindra finally did this for India, a country of over a billion people. What a tremendous feat. First for India since we haven’t had a Gold by an Individual performer so far. When Hockey gold medals stopped, we stopped getting any. Though there was this occasional tennis or a weight-lifting one.

Now, when we have got one the big question is that what next ? So while I was brooding on this topic, I got an idea and over last two days I have spoken about it to few people and everyone agreed. And I thought that I would rather share it here, may be it really make sense.

The idea is that we should start to focus on ONLY skill based games. In other words, we should not be spending money on Athletics or Soccer or any of those high stamina, physical power games. Rather spend time and money on Archery, Chess (I think its not part of Olympics as yet), Shooting, Badminton, Table Tennis etc and dont do 100/200/400 m races, swimming, boxing etc. If we have to choose athletics then may be get trained for Marathons and not 100 m sprints.

The logic is that probably our body is not built for those sports. Even our hockey was more skill and less power. Ramesh Krishnan who did some wonders was mostly on touch-play rather them power-play like Pete Sampras. May be the kind of climate we are in, the kind of food we eat, may be the kind of philosophy we all grow with is not suited for these sports. We are a tolerant lot and probably you need a much aggressive guy to make that 100 m sprint, which as a society we are lacking.

Just an idea. If you like it then comment. May be its the golden idea we have been waiting for 🙂