Jasmine reads my blog diligently. But not because she needs
to read it but i suspect its just that she had it in her feedly link and it
shows up there. She has hardly ever said anything about anything that I have
ever written. She is a quiet spectator to the blog. So yesterday i was
pleasantly surprised when she out of the blue remarked – you haven't written in
a long time. Yup, I told her. My mind hasn't been clear.
You know having the best intentions aren't enough. I had the
best intentions that as i join the new place i would write everyday. It would
be a great experience trying to articulate and note down all my experiences as
i see them for the first time in 11 years. A
new company, a new environment, a new culture. I would be excited and
all fired up about cataloguing all my experiences. But i guess, nothing of the
sort happened. First, this place sucks by giving a keyboard. I am so used to a
key board that i find it pretty irritating to write on the laptop key board
directly. Bah.
That is one hell of a bad excuse for a blog that is
dedicated to my daughter. But then if my wife asks me for something, how can i
not give her, so in fact of the matter that i hate typing long on the laptop,
here i am writing this post. Of course there is enough of stuff to talk
about...
Last month was a revelation as far as Jispa’s studies are
concerned and we have decided to focus on studies every Saturday. This way
there is no pressure to study just before the exams and it leaves me free to
explain stuff in my own way. This time, I dont know what I was teaching but i
ended up listening to the Great Hargesia Goat Bubble along with her. This a
great radio play that explains how asset bubbles are formed and how markets
react to them, create them and then how they eventually go bust. All using the
story of goats. Its a 40 min play which i sat through with Jispa, explaining to
her while pausing it where it got a bit technical. Jispa and I really enjoyed
this one. Then we moved onto History and math and other stuff. History is even more
fun. Indian history is simply understood by reading the official school book.
Its enough history to understand a lot of what you read around you. Right now
its about Babur and the advent of the Mughal kingdom in India. After Babur,
Sher Shah packed Humayun off and ruled Delhi till as Jispa told me – he shot
himself while cleaning a rifle. This last bit is possibly apocryphal. But the
poor guy supposedly would have never let the Mughal rule take hold until he
died early. He is the same guy who laid the foundations of an ably administered
kingdom which the Mughals used.
So that is awesome fun. I am going to keep reading her
textbooks and other related stuff and enjoy all about growing up with the pains
of exams.
I think another thing i must make her do is simply google or
read at least the main wikipedia page of
any character she encounters in her history book, or the main wiki page of
anything she studies. It just might give her another angle to what she is
studying.
Chemistry is another thing i am rediscovering. I was always
reasonably good at it. So now, only a few videos later, i can explain largely
most of the stuff to her. In fact the videos are so good that i don't even
require to explain stuff to her. She and me just watch the videos together and
then we are done.
This weekend I took sometime off to give an interview over a
con call. I apologised as the call took an hour long. After that i apologised to
Jispa saying ‘sorry, interview for a new job’. She was wondering that I just
got a new job.
I told her that right now I am in high demand and that this
is something I have to do at this point of time.
I told her that the single most important quality that i
have that got me here is – now this set me thinking – I wanted to say something
that completely summarises my life so far and leave something simple and
interesting. I said – the single biggest quality that got me here was ‘constant
curiosity’ . that came out nice, considering i thought about it for about 2 seconds.
That is true. I have been curious about everything and that has led me to
constantly try to learn and experiment and improve. “ah” she said “so you are
like Pandora”.
Sigh – my entire life being brought down to Pandora. What
else are daughters meant for?
