
One of the restaurants we go to, Banana Leaf in Milpitas has this appetizer called Roti Prata. I love it.
We make this at home with Malaysian Frozen Roti and Maggi sauce + ghee. This works out almost as good as the one from Banana Leaf.
I am writing this blog because I want to become a better writer. I also want to enjoy writing by sharing all the fun stuff I do.
A Different Kind of Hero
GUMPEI YOKOI
My hero is Gumpei Yokoi (1941-1997) who invented GameBoy in 1989. Gumpei Yokoi grew up in
Gumpei realized that kids did not want big, expensive, complex toys that drained the batteries three hours after opening the gifts on Christmas morning. His formula for success was:
Small Size + Low cost + Long Battery Life + Ease of Use + Games that are difficult to stay away from = Mega $$$$$$
The GameBoy has 100 million units sold and is the world’s best-selling video game system. It is the oldest still being used game system (fifteen years).
What is a GameBoy? A GameBoy is a thing that you can carry everywhere. The GameBoy has many different games. These are removable GameBoy cartridges. My favorites are Pokemon and Super Mario Brothers 3.
I play with the GameBoy Advance SP. Every game has many levels and I have lots of fun in beating the levels. GameBoy is my single most favorite toy. I enjoy helping others in beating levels also. When I play the games, I concentrate and sometimes feel that I am inside the game. I feel very happy when I beat the level and my heart starts beating rapidly sometimes. My GameBoy helps me make friends with other GameBoy playing kids, especially at sleepovers. At sleepovers it is a lot of fun because we play with our GameBoys all night long. Sometimes when I get up at 2AM, I feel like playing GameBoy instead of going back to sleep, and going further to the next level in the game.
The GameBoy has given me lots of thrilling moments. The next invention could be a GameBoy with an umbrella to help you play in the rain. When I grow up, I want to invent a toy for kids that will bring fun to millions of kids worldwide. I want to invent the Game Pyramid, which is basically a projection headset. You put on the headsets and a pyramid will get projected in front of you, and you can use your fingers to play.
I am sure many 3rd grader kids around the world will thank Gumpei Yokoi for inventing such a fantastic toy for us. He has done a lot to make kids like me happy. He is definitely my special hero!
HOW I celebrate my holidays?
Our holiday celebrations is a fusion celebration with Indian and American festivitity.
It start with the Indian festival Dassara, usually in early October. We celebrate the triumph of good over evil by dancing a traditional Indian dance called the Dandia, which is dancing with short sticks with the Garba music. After Dassara, we celebrate Halloweeen, which is really fun, as kids get to go trick-or-treating and get lots of candy. We get to wear our favorite costume and put scary stuff around the house, carve the pumpkins. Soon after, we celebrate Thanksgiving with a vegetarian feast with family and friends. This is a formal sitdown lunch.
But before Thanksgiving, we celebrate Diwali, which is the Indian festival of lights. My dad decorates the outside of the house with lights. Our neighbors used to wonder why we have the house lit up, but now they all know. In fact one of them already knew about Diwali and he was not Indian. My cousin comes over to my house and we celebrate by lighting up July 4th fireworks. That is really fun. We also light up lamps on the day of Diwali and put all around the house. We also worship the God of Wisdom and Wealth (Ganesh Laksmi), We wear new clothes and then after the pooja we get to eat sweets and a traditional Diwali dinner. This dinner is special, as we continue a tradition of eating a few things that has been done in our family for generations.
This is all building up to my favorite holiday, which is Christmas. We have been listening to Christmas songs in the van and my dad tells us stories from previous Christmases and we get really excited about December 25th. We start looking forward to Christmas as soon as Diwali ends. We go to watch the Nutcracker sometimes. I was scared the first time as a three year old. We start turning on our diwali lights around first week of December and it makes me feel very happy to see the lights on every night. We bake the cookies and put some milk for Santa. I usually try to stay awake to see Santa bring up gifts, though I do get to see where he is on the internet. By the time he is on the East Coast, I am already sleepy. Next day, we get up to usually see many boxes of presents from Santa waiting for us. My cousin comes over and we rip the gifts and also exchange gifts. My aunts and uncles from all over send me gifts and I am not allowed to open them.
Do you have a favorite meal? I do! My favorite appetizer is garlic bread. The best main course is potatoes stuffed in Indian bread. The dessert I love is cookie dough. All together, they make a mouth watering meal that I enjoy.
My number one appetizer is garlic bread. I like it because it is crunchy and crispy. Even though you have to toast it for some time, it is worth it. It is not too hot or too cold, but just right. When it is crispy and crunchy I like it a little better, but it should not be too crispy. I usually sprinkle some red pepper to spice it up. All in all, my favorite appetizer is garlic bread.
Of all the food in the world, my favorite dinner is potatoes stuffed in Indian bread. I already liked potatoes and Indian bread. So I thought it might not be bad to try potatoes stuffed in Indian bread. When I tasted it, I thought it was delicious. It was warm and fresh in taste. It was mildly spicy. I like it better with side dishes like yogurt or pickles. Potatoes stuffed in Indian bread may be my favorite dinner for a long time.
My favorite dessert is definitely cookie dough. I like the dough more than the chocolate chips because I do not like chocolate much. It is delicious because the dough is so soft and chewy. I love soft and chewy cookies too. One day I tried cookie dough and it was so delicious that I wanted a lot more of it. From that day onwards, my favorite dessert has become cookie dough.
In conclusion, these foods make up my favorite meal. I like garlic bread as the best appetizer. Potato stuffed in Indian bread is my absolute favorite main entrée. And my most preferred dessert is cookie dough.
“Courage” and “Fear”
Courage, to me, means that you are brave. It means you’re not afraid to do an amazing thing. Somebody might care about someone a lot. They might have the courage to save that person’s life even if they would be in great danger. Matt was courageous in the book, The Sign of the Beaver. He wasn’t afraid to go to the bees just to get honey. He had the courage and wasn’t fearful of getting stung by the bees.
To me, fear means to be afraid of something. You don’t have the courage to do the thing you fear because you will be too frightened. In the book, The Sign of the Beaver, Matt feared a few things. When Attean took Matt into the forest, he was afraid. Matt had never seen Attean’s dog before he saw him in the forest. Matt thought Attean was trying to do something to him. Also, when Matt first met Attean, Matt didn’t know who he was. He feared Attean, but later Attean turned out to be his friend.
Fear and courage are very similar. If you fear something you should have the courage to do it to overcome your fear. I do think you have to experience fear to have courage. You have to know that you are fearful of something. Then you can go about having the courage to do it. If you remain fearful, you may loose out on trying new things. You have to overcome your fear to have the courage to get past your fear.
MY DISNEY CRUISE
BOOM! My mom and Dad banged at my bedroom door one morning. I was sleeping and it really woke me up.
“We are going to go on a Disney Cruise and the ship we are going on is humongous,” my Dad added. “It is going to have a lot of fun games.” “Also, we will have our very own room to stay in”, my Mom said. I was so amazed.
After two weeks we flew out from
I was very surprised when I saw how big the cruise ship was. It was the length of three
My brother and I had an autograph book for all the Disney characters to sign in. One time I saw a whole room full of Disney characters. My Dad said “Rishub, go stand for a picture.” So, I got a picture with a lot of the characters. I got the autograph of almost every Disney character.
There was a kids club where the kids could stay with some staff while the parents did other activities. The kids club had lots of fun activities to do. We made arts and crafts. We also played board games. There was a Spider-Man game and I liked it a lot. My brother who was only three years old was a bit anxious, but since there were so many fun activities going on in the kids club, he would soon forget and start having a good time. I was the champion of computer games in the kids club. Little kids would walk up to me and say, “Rishub, can you please show me how to score points in this game”? I would then say, “Sure”. I actually felt good when I got a chance to show off my skills with some of the games. But, I didn’t tell them that I had played these games many times at home, as I pretended to be the expert.
Finally, at the end of the trip, when my parents said “Time to go, Rishub”, I was very unhappy. But I knew we couldn’t be there forever. My Dad was somewhat bored and said “We are never coming here again!” I was not very happy after he said that. I knew it was a hard thing for them to book and take the time off to get there. But I ignored it. I knew we would probably return again someday.
The Haunted House by Rishub
Once upon a time, on Halloween night some kids were trick-or-treating. They went around their neighbor-hood. Once that was done, they wanted to do more trick-or-treating. So they went to the next neighbor-hood.
As it happens, one of the houses in that neighbor-hood was a haunted house. There was a password to get inside this haunted house. But the kids did not know it. They tried out a lot of passwords until they got the password right. The password was O-S-T-A. They were excited.
The kids opened the gate and went inside this house. They found an ugly, scary witch in the house. They were scared. The witch did not give them any candy. So they said “Do you have any candy for us? “.
The witch replied “NO, BUT I AM GOING TO PUT A SPELL ON YOUR PARENTS TO TURN THEM INTO GHOSTS”.
The kids were scared and wanted to run all the way back home as fast as they could. But before they could run out of the door, lots of monsters trapped them inside. The kids did karate on the monsters and once again tried to run back home. The monsters chased them, but the kids punched them again. Finally, the kids got home and they found that their parents were turned into ghosts.
So they ran back to the haunted house and sneaked behind the witch and found her spell book. They now found out how the witch turned everybody into ghosts. The third chapter, “How to reverse the ghost spell”, talked about how to reverse the spell and get people back to normal.
The kids did the spell on the whole world and everybody was back to normal. The kids saved the day!
Then the kids looked into the spell book and they found out how to make the witch die. They did the magic spell and the witch died.
The kids wanted to have a party now. Since they loved trick-or-treating, they decided to trick-or-treat around the whole world. When they got back home, they never knew that they had trick-or-treated for the whole week. Somehow, the parents did not know they were gone for that long. The kids were tired when they got back home, so they fell asleep for a whole year and missed everything, like their birthday, their school, including the next Halloween. To top that, their parents even ate their birthday cake.
After the kids woke up, they went on their rocket ship to Uranus. They got the super-power juice and drank it and wished that Halloween was every day.
THE END
Passage to India 1991 W El Camino Real Mountain View, CA 94040 |