From the Mind of Manyu

Dec. 8 - I am about 40 days old today. This week I went and met my future play-mate who was born exactly 30 days after I was. Looking at this 5 day old baby, I was reminded of my own youth, when I was almost half as heavy, and used to sleep throughout the day. Happy memories...

I am presently able to make out the intonation in all languages - english, kannada, mandarin, swahili, etc. I can also decipher people's faces from individual body parts. In other words, if the features of a face - nose, eyes, eye brows, etc are scrambled, I can still figure out who the person is. You people cannot do this....

But I will soon lose this ability to follow different languages and will specialize in only those that I hear often - English, Kannada, and French. Also I will be better able to recognize small variations in faces and lose my ability to identify a face by its individual features. So when I am 3 months old I am almost like a computer that is pre-loaded with all kinds of programs, abilities and features, and with time, many of these programs will be erased from memory. But then I will become better at using the few programs that I will be left with.

So why then, if I am the most advanced and evolved piece of nature's technology....

... do I have this primitive user-interface? This is the face I make and the sound I make to communicate on every subject. Even Windows 95 has a much more advanced user interface.

Also did I mention that at 2 months I have the same ability to tell two human faces apart as I do telling two monkey faces apart. Over time though, given the exposure to only human faces I will only specialize at telling humans apart, while simultaneously losing my ability to tell monkeys apart. Making monkey faces at me, I understand, is my dad's way of preventing me from losing that ability.

What is that?

Noooo... not the monkey face again!

See what I mean?