Jack-o'-lanterns

Today's interactive Google doodle for Halloween. Akshay would have loved it, especially the skeleton at the door and the blue one eyed octopus. As a child he never liked soft toys but preferred the spooky stuff. Suchit had a small skeleton key chain that glows in the dark and Akshay would love playing with it.

Egyptian Hieratic script

This is Akshay's date of birth using Egyptian numbers - 25 March 2001. Ancient Egyptians used this interesting numbering system. Symbols were simply repeated to represent a value. Two single strokes make 2 and five strokes are 5. The pacman plant like symbol is for 1000, and two of these make 2000. Add one to that and you get 2001.

This numeral system uses the Hieratic script.

Akshay had visited Egypt and worked on a pyramids project for school.

Dinotopia

Kotasaurus Yamanpalliensis

On his last visit to Hyderabad in July 2011, we took Akshay to the Birla Science Museum. He was thrilled to see the dinosaureum and enjoyed the other interactive exhibits.

In the picture above is the restructured body of the Kotasaurus at the museum. They  lived nearly 208 to 188 million years ago ( in the early Jurassic period)  in and around central and south India. This dinosaur was a herbivore, nearly 30 feet long. Its remains were found in India in 1988.

Below is the front elevation of the science museum

Intergalactic hunters and evil aliens

As an eight year old Akshay identified himself with Ben 10,  the solo superhero who vanquished intergalactic bounty hunters and evil aliens. He had a good collection Ben 10 games and would sketch the logo in his free time.

Funny pictures, fond memories

When it came to emails for Akshay, it was strictly fun and fun only. I would send these funny pictures to Akshay and he would love them. I remember what he said on a visit to Hyderabad, "Have you got some more of those funny pictures, you have so many of them. I want them." Posted here are a few that Akshay loved. This is to mark his ninth month.

Touch down on Mars

Curiosity has been sending curious pictures from Bradbury Landing on Mars. These are being interpreted in even more curious ways by scientists. Akshay would have found this amusing. One of his dreams was to be an astronomer and strangely enough he had written a poem on Mars a year back. He would use Arial Black for his poems and use Word art for the title and his name at the bottom.

Mars 

Mars is such a rocky planet.

If there were aliens on Mars

I would make friends with them

and claim Mars for Canada.

Americans will come and see

that Canada has already claimed

Mars.

On the way home

Eight months have passed. On the way back from school one day Akshay took some pictures of the Bahrain skyline.