A Child’s Diary: Idhika Diwan’s Corona Lockdown Days

September 7, 2020

Back to play school area

After 7 months, we went to play in our school’s play area. It was renovated and painted beautifully. Yippee!!! I played with my old friend, who is not in my class now. We didn’t wear our mask while playing because the play area was near trees. Now I could reach the monkey bars very easily as I have become slightly taller.  There are 3 monkey bars and lots of slides. I enjoyed playing and now I and my younger brother will play there every evening before going home.

One day at school, there was heavy rain. It was our lunch time. Some of the students had no umbrellas. So I took some of my friends in my umbrella to go to our canteen for lunch. After lunch, I took my friends, stuck at the canteen, back to our building.  It took 5 rounds to bring everyone who were stuck at the canteen side to our building.

I made 3 new friends near my house. One of them is 12 years old girl and her twin brother and sister. All of them are older than me. My old house friend introduced me to them. I like them because they are kind and shared their toys on the first day. I shared freshly plucked chilies, from our kitchen garden, with them. They told me that they like spicy food, just like me. On Saturday, we played from afternoon until late evening. We played Freeze game. I didn’t get tired because we had a very good time in fresh air.

On Sunday, we went to National Science Museum “NSM”. The museum had lot of science experiments that we could do by ourselves. As soon as I entered the museum, I saw a Toyota Hybrid car. I saw this type of car for the first time. The first experiment we did was about bubbles in water. We had to put a small bubble inside a big bubble by pressing the handle. I was able to do it three times.

There were Speaking Dishes also. It was very fun because there were 2 of them at long distance. I and my younger brother could speak with each other like a telephone. On one of the floors, there was a humanoid robot. It was a lot like humans as it could do a lot of things like us. Like it could blink its eyes, and speak. We controlled the robots movements by a touchscreen. I could even change the eye ball shapes, skin colour of the humanoid. I changed the circular eye balls to hear shaped red coluored eye balls. It was exciting to control the robot.

After the robot, there was a machine in which I put my thumb on a sensor. It will calculate heart rate while letting me listen to my own heartbeat. I thought it was a recording of the heartbeat. It sounded like a heart shaped drum beating.

There was a section about cloning and Dolly the sheep. There was a touchscreen TV, with a mouse that displayed a game about the process of cloning. In the game, first, we took cells from the father sheep and the mother sheep. Then we mixed it on a dish and give it back to the mother sheep. After 154 days there was a lamb {Dolly}. I loved this process. I thought that if only few {mother and father} of endangered animals are left, then we can use cloning process to increase their number.

We also went to Natural History Museum. There were lots of dinosaurs and animal statues outside the museum. There was a fossil of Bryde’s whale outside the museum. It is special because this fossil was found in Thailand. Inside the museum, there was a real skull. I thought it was of T Rex. We went to room full of cages of frogs and snakes. I saw a snake, moving its head.

Later, it even opened its mouth and showed its tongue. I was not scared of it moving as it was inside a cage. I saw a camouflaged poisoned Dart frog. In one of the podcast called, Fact Detectives, I heard that these frogs can even drop elephants in its own tracks.  It was blue in colour and was hiding behind rock, grass and water.

There were many preserved animals like snakes, turtles, fish, lizards and even a baby deer. I was surprised to see how a baby deer could be preserved in a small single jar. It seemed like the deer is sleeping in the jar. I could see its eyes, nose and claws very clearly. I even saw African Bison horns. My dad told me that Bison could even pick and drop elephants with these horns.

After the entire day trip, my legs were hurting. I slept, for more than two hours, while going back to home. I want to visit these museums again.

Bye for now and keep reading.