Floating Rocks

Last week, I read about igneous rocks along with Vidush from his Class 5 Science text book. While I remember reading about different types of rocks - sedimentary, igneous and metamorphic, limited examples of these types is what I could recall.

The current textbook had new rocks as examples of igneous rocks for example that I learnt about.
One was Obsidian that I encountered couple of days before in Terry Pratchet's Eric.
The more interesting was Pumice which was stated as the only rock that floats on water ! The description and accompanying pictured showed that it has a lots of small holes that leads to this surprising property. Quite an interesting property for a rock - guess sinks like a stone does not apply to Pumices.

For some reason, my mind immediately linked Pumice to Ramayana. Specifically to the Ram setu - the stone bridge across the ocean to reach Lanka that was built by the Vanar sena.
As the story goes, the monkeys wrote Sri Ram on rocks and threw them on water and lo and behold they did not sink !

While this is often shown as yet another example of the greatness of Lord Rama, could it be possible that, if this epic actually played out as believed by millions of Hindus, then the rocks were actually Pumice ?

Thought this was an interesting question. Some geological and archaeological research would be required to see if there was any volcanic activity in the southern parts of India in that era that could have made this possible.

S(l)o(w)Dexo

I have been wondering about the curse of modern retail. Had written a couple of pages in my diary few years ago.

Some of the experiences make me really long for the direct, personal and efficient purchases in messy, noisy bazaars.

The new modern clean, air-conditioned, neatly organized shelves in modern retail stores, loud music and big brands and offers staring in your face at every corner and wall distract you from your main shopping list.

The biggest frustration by far has been the check-out line.
While one can deal with indifferent staff, bored, often new and untrained check-out counter personnel, the payment process contributes most to the frustration.
Plain old cash was the only to transact in the bazaar.

With the plethora of options including credit and debit cards, innumerable mobile wallets paying sometimes more time than actual buying.

The worst offender here is paying by Sodexho coupons. I now call them "Perks for Jerks".  I would not join a company offering these coupons as perks. In fact I want to propose an official ban on these paper coupons.

If we measure the payment time of coupons versus other modes, I am sure coupons would be 3-10 times slower than cash payment.

The painful process starts with the customer waiting for the total bill amount to be told by the cashier. Then the mental math of breaking down the amount into different denomination coupons. After that the counting of the coupons and mental addition. In case of interruption, start over.
Once the coupons are counted and handed over, the number and amount are communicated to the cashier. The second round of counting starts with the cashier doing the mental math and entering the details on the system. Sometimes there is an error in counting and the whole process is to to be repeated. After all this mental gymnastics and finessing with fingers, there may be balance that has to be paid by other means.

Folks standing next in line should get a tax credit instead of those purchasing these coupons to save tax.

So here is a small tip. Next time you are in a queue at a retail store, ask the person in front of you on how they plan to pay for the goods.

If they waive a bunch of coupons, get out of the current counter and look for a different line.