We're studying Hindi. Central to my previous language studies have been flash cards -- home-made flash cards made from 3x5 index cards. Flash cards appear to be a known concept, but "index cards" has heads scratching.
So we've been trying to find "index cards", or something similar, for weeks.
We've tried to find plain old index cards. Nada. Well, what about card stock that we could cut up into smaller cards. Still draws a blank. Given India's obsession with business cards (aka "visiting cards"), we thought maybe blank ones would be available -- but not that we can find.
Next I tried amazon.in (yes, Amazon has an Indian subsidiary). One hit on "index cards": Moleskine sells 20 3x5 cards for Rs 589 (about $10 !!!). "Cardstock", "business cards", and "visiting cards" were a total no-go. A Google search came across a few other Americans searching for index cards in India with no success.
A search for "office supplies mumbai" led me to Office Yes (which in its lower-case URL comes across as OfficEyes rather than OfficeYes), "India's Largest Supplier of Office Supplies". Index cards and cardstock are still an unknown quantity, but they do have blank business cards. After spending some time getting together an order, I discovered at check-out, that I have to be a business to order from this site -- and I have to provide tax info to prove that I am a legitimate business. Nothing is easy in India!
Finally, Lon's secretary has been able to convince the printer who supplies business cards to Ruby Macons to sell us some blank ones. But of course, we have to look at sizes and paper styles first. That adds a few more days, especially because this week had a holiday.
The result arrived today.
The cards are about 4 x 5 inches. (I have no ruler at the moment -- but I'll have one by the end of the week when our sea shipment of household goods finally arrives.) They're the size of printed invitations -- perfect for flash cards.
And as for having to be very specific about size, color, paper texture, and so forth, these cards are hardly uniform:
But that doesn't matter for our purpose!
So how, you may ask, do Indians make flash cards? The most frequent answer is that they cut up cardboard boxes, and glue plain paper on both sides to make a card. To me, that seems to use more resources than index cards would!
Actually, just finding school supplies can be a challenge. You don't go down to Walmart or Target and pick up a cart load of notebook paper, pencils, crayons, etc. I found some notebooks and pencils at "Big Bazaar", a department and food store that seems to be modeled on Walmart. But the good stuff -- pens, scissors, calculators -- are kept under lock and key, and the choices are very limited. I bought a notebook with blank lined pages to use as a journal. The cover has a picture of the Tower of London superimposed on a map of South America. Rather strange. It's called a "culture notebook" and it's made in China -- of course.
I guess when a main concern is onions tripling in price in the last month, school supplies are further down the list of priorities.
So we've been trying to find "index cards", or something similar, for weeks.
We've tried to find plain old index cards. Nada. Well, what about card stock that we could cut up into smaller cards. Still draws a blank. Given India's obsession with business cards (aka "visiting cards"), we thought maybe blank ones would be available -- but not that we can find.
Next I tried amazon.in (yes, Amazon has an Indian subsidiary). One hit on "index cards": Moleskine sells 20 3x5 cards for Rs 589 (about $10 !!!). "Cardstock", "business cards", and "visiting cards" were a total no-go. A Google search came across a few other Americans searching for index cards in India with no success.
A search for "office supplies mumbai" led me to Office Yes (which in its lower-case URL comes across as OfficEyes rather than OfficeYes), "India's Largest Supplier of Office Supplies". Index cards and cardstock are still an unknown quantity, but they do have blank business cards. After spending some time getting together an order, I discovered at check-out, that I have to be a business to order from this site -- and I have to provide tax info to prove that I am a legitimate business. Nothing is easy in India!
Finally, Lon's secretary has been able to convince the printer who supplies business cards to Ruby Macons to sell us some blank ones. But of course, we have to look at sizes and paper styles first. That adds a few more days, especially because this week had a holiday.
The result arrived today.
The cards are about 4 x 5 inches. (I have no ruler at the moment -- but I'll have one by the end of the week when our sea shipment of household goods finally arrives.) They're the size of printed invitations -- perfect for flash cards.
And as for having to be very specific about size, color, paper texture, and so forth, these cards are hardly uniform:
 |
| Note the significant variation in color! |
So how, you may ask, do Indians make flash cards? The most frequent answer is that they cut up cardboard boxes, and glue plain paper on both sides to make a card. To me, that seems to use more resources than index cards would!
Actually, just finding school supplies can be a challenge. You don't go down to Walmart or Target and pick up a cart load of notebook paper, pencils, crayons, etc. I found some notebooks and pencils at "Big Bazaar", a department and food store that seems to be modeled on Walmart. But the good stuff -- pens, scissors, calculators -- are kept under lock and key, and the choices are very limited. I bought a notebook with blank lined pages to use as a journal. The cover has a picture of the Tower of London superimposed on a map of South America. Rather strange. It's called a "culture notebook" and it's made in China -- of course.
I guess when a main concern is onions tripling in price in the last month, school supplies are further down the list of priorities.
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