breathe easy kid

Yesterday Jispa wanted to talk to us regarding her education and the colleges she wanted to take admission in after finishing her 12^th here. As parents this has been a reasonably tough ordeal. Understanding which colleges are good and which ones are not so.  Which subjects she wants to take up and which subject she wants to graduate in.

This is obviously so new for us. The expenses are tremendous and could potentially destroy the family budget and a few years ago, I had no clue how I would ever be able to even afford something like this. We thought a lot about it, and I have had such swinging opinions on this. When the discussion first came up, I was clear. There would be an ROI attached to this. I would give / rather loan her the money and then she would have to return it back to her mom in some way over the years.

I was clear at the time. going abroad was no small thing. It was meant to be a big investment. I would only allow it if it was the big universities that I could name. I would only allow US. It would only be if she is take up a STEM stream or a medicine or something in which she would be able to rise and make a mark for herself and such. I wasn’t going to spend that money on small education.

Over these years we have grown much smarter about the process and the whole big decision. So when yesterday she asked us that she needs to speak to us, we were much prepared. Jasmine and I have had so many conversations on this. It helped us clear our minds and take a bit of a relaxed approach. Having a sensible conversation with her school counsellor helped as did taking to sensible people who have done the same before.

Yesterday while talking to her we laid out the rules. Number 1 – go study but study what you want to and what you feel most passionate about. If sports science is right now your passion, then sports science is what you should do. Go and study sports science. Don’t bother about your job, your pay, your prospects. Follow the love of your life. If today I had to live my life again, I would have studied History and Anthropology. I would have never done commerce and accounting. Whatst he worst that would happen? You will come back to India. You are better than 99.9% Indians and I cant vouch for that. You will do well for sure. Suppose you come here, you can work with lots of aspiring atheletes and work with them and take them to the next level. Sure the monies wont be that great and that you will have to live with your parents for a bit but who says that you would not be successful. Once Jasmine’s uncle gave me a piece of advice that I did not pay heed to but I now agree. Naukari – no kari. It means  - job – never do.

He said that he ate bananas for lunch but he refused to take up a job. He set up his own business. I think if I would have set up my own business, I surely would have been successful in whatever I would have done over a period of time. I could have been successful as a 22 year old starting off or a 30 year old or a 40 year old. I am betting that I will be a successful 50 year old man as well when I start. Right now, I have ideas buzzing but I am not pushing for them as I can’t afford it.

As a businessperson when I was young, I couldn’t fail and that meant I could not start. That’s why I started working on a job and a corporate career. For you, you don’t have that silly thing holding you back. You can start slow, do what you love. You don’t have to be independent. DO whatever you love and if you are smart you will be successful. It may take time, but you will get there soon enough. If its what you love you won’t bother.

What’s the worst that can happen. You come back to India and you do an MBA. You follow my footsteps and get a job in India. That’s also not so bad. You can start your life this way. Who cares. You just might have to stay in my house longer than you care for. That’s it. So when you are choosing your college – take the subject you want and see if they offer it. Go to the UK, Canada, US or Australia but please do what you want and try for the best school that will offer you that specialisation. After that – you hate your subject – change it. But please study what you want to and not what you have to. I don’t need your money. I need you to be happy.

That was quite a speech. Its amazing how my attitudes changed. I just want her to study well in the field that she chooses. I think that if you do that, you will enjoy the rest of your life. I was lucky I found marketing in my life later. I think I was good at this and I kind of love what I do. Its fun.

These days I am in charge of a sales team directly and I am trying to get them to run. Trying to understand the complexities and giving them the ammunition to attack. Its going to be fun.

This is when work doesn’t feel like work. It feels more fun. That keeps me going. I can take more shit around the work and the people that come with it. Because its fun and you can escape all that by working on more fun things to be done while working. That’s what I love.

Coming to which I came across a term called email apnea. It seems that people stop breathing or have shallow breaths when answering emails or texts. That’s right. This is a scientific thing. “Salzberg talked about email apnea (or screen apnea), a finding by Linda Stone, a writer, researcher, and former executive at Apple and Microsoft . Stone noticed that a majority of people (possibly eighty percent) unconsciously hold their breath, or breathe shallowly, when responding to email or texting.”

“…that holding one’s breath contributes to stress-related diseases and disturbs the body’s balance of oxygen, carbon dioxide, and nitric oxide, which help keep the immune system strong, fight infection, and mediate inflammation. It can affect our well-being and our ability to work effectively. Shallow breathing can also trigger a sympathetic nervous system “fight or flight” response. If we stay in this state of emergency breathing and hyperarousal for extended periods of time, it can not only impact sleep, memory, and learning, but also exacerbate anxiety and depression.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-art-now/201411/email-apnea

This is serious. I see this in myself. I have to try and control this. This also happens while TEXTING. I think we need to breathe a lot more while working. I need to breathe while thinking, talking and working in general. Luckily I have this condition that any stress reflects in my lower back and it starts acting up. I have learnt to immediately start breathing and it goes away. Remember to breathe.

After the chat with Jispa, I was so happy and proud of what Jasmine and I had become as parents. We could finally allow Jispa’s wings to pop out unfettered. It was just beautiful. I could say what I could because we have had so many conversations on this. Quite bedside conversations on what on earth would we do? How we would go about this?

Only by having innumerable conversations, our heads turned from the transnational nature of what we were thinking to the more core learning nature of her education. Study for study sake. Because  you love the subject you should study more of it. That simple. The joy of learning.

This has helped us breathe more. And will help us breathe in easy in the future.

old dad in new home

Big dream done. We shifted to our new home on the 21^st of the April. Yes I am recording this date in this blog for historical purposes. The big dream was not merely shifting to this home but also sitting on a desk that I call my own and switching the computer on and writing my blog here. That is my big dream. I always wanted a bedroom with a small study table inside and a place to put my books and stationery, including pens and note books, etc. this is a place that I can retire to. Both Jasmine and me, old wrinkly and retired. Jispa is old enough to get her room, but she is old enough to not enjoy it too much.

I expect her to run out in a couple of years and possibly study elsewhere and this room of hers will be vacant. I don’t what we empty nesters would do then. But then that is a story for later. No point thinking too much about things that may or may not happen. As for now, I am enjoying the larger rooms and the space and the TV and gadgets in the kitchen; and my desk. That desk is very personal and important to me for some reason. It’s a tiny space that’s mine in the house. I love it and I seem to get possessive about it.

My little girl has also grown. Now she bullies us and we have to use extreme authority to get things done. I recognize that the only reason that she listens to us is because she wants to and because she has to. It’s going to get quite tough from now on for us. In such a scenario she will listen purely because we exert moral authority (or guilt). This become interesting for us as parents. This is becoming difficult for us as parents.

Moral authority is a bit of chimera and ephemeral at the same time. I think you can get a bit of these tokens which are very difficult to replenish. You cannot just start using it and expect them to work. You have to work on them and even when you use these tokens you have to be very clear about them. Like recently, I had to use complete total power when I banned the use of the cell phone in Jispa’s room. The cell phone cannot go inside the room. Full stop. This is a big one. She has been spending too much time in the room on her cell phone. A room by itself is black hole within which nothing escapes. The cell phone is equivalent of the gravitational force that makes the black hole so powerful. I am thinking of calling Jispa’s room ‘the singularity’.

So it was incumbent on me as the dad to enforce this discipline. I don’t like and it’s quite against my core beliefs in some way. You need exposure to technology and at 16 you can’t enforce too much. But then there was another core belief being compromised. That of keeping the family together and stopping what was essentially bad for her. It was the one thing that was eating into her reading time. Reading time is the one thing that has gotten me where I am today and I did not want to compromise that for her. Of late she has begun to read a lot less and that is disturbing as far as I am concerned. Possibly it’s because the books that she needs to read are very different from the ones I had and possibly she needs different people suggesting different set of books to her. Possibly she needs different interests. Poor thing right now has only pone perspective – mine and that I would admit is severely limiting. I try to get her to read a diverse set of books, but finally they are my diverse set of books. One big thing missing from my set is good fiction.

I want to restart my reading. One of the few things I have started is keeping my phone to charge away from the bedside table. It’s now on my study table. So no browsing and then sleeping. Second I want to stop taking it inside the loo. I have kept a book there to read instead. And I have bought books and am keeping them within arm’s length everywhere. I need to read more and this has to get kick started. I am also trying to get the laptop over the week end and catch up on the various tabs that I have left open during the week to finish my reading.

Right now it’s a bit of a bummer. With work being very hectic and the home setting up taking so time, one of the things that I haven’t found time for is myself. I need to find this time and give it to myself. Last week was so bad that I found myself popping in a few paracetamols and trying to get through the week. It’s a good thing that I had a holiday today. Nice relaxed no agenda day, trying to sleep in, do some basic house work and get some valuable rest.

So it’s a tough thing being a dad. All I can say is that I have learnt over the long run on how to be more effective than what I was earlier. I keep wondering how much my teen will test me. So far I must admit, it’s been fairly ok. She has her mood swings when she can get very annoying and difficult but on the whole she has been quite a breeze.

Right now while I was writing this blog, I had to use some of my brownie moral points to get her to study math. When we first told her, she was like ‘you promised you wouldn’t interfere with my studies’. Yes we won’t, but it’s also important for us to interject into your life when you are going wrong. Not studying is going wrong. So practicing math is also important for you in what you seek to do in your life. But yes – I can’t complain nor can I scold her, nor can I force. I can only use moral brownie points and I used a few of them right now. She must study math. It’s important for her life. But then how can we really push. Whatever works for now works.

eating hats

Choose your words very carefully. You will have to eat them soon enough. But that should not stop you from still saying what you have to.

Over the years it’s amazing how words I have been forced to eat of my own. It’s not a lesson in keeping your trap shut. On the contrary just because I had an opinion and that I opened my mouth about it made me realize after many years that I was wrong. After continuing to open my mouth on a lot of issues pertaining or completely outside my realm I realized that I know jack!

You can’t really live life without having an opinion. We may or may not express it but we will definitely have it and it reflects in our actions. Jasmine and I are different in a way that she never expresses her opinion and I would always volunteer it. But that does not mean she doesn’t have an opinion. In many cases she may have an opinion and a very strong opinion. Her actions will speak louder than the words coming out. But opinion is definitely there.

Now when Jispa was born I so happy it was a girl. One of the reasons was that at least there won’t be a pressure to study. India was shining and there were many field opening out that were not directly related to studying too hard. You need have been the best of the best to make your mark. I reasoned (openely I may add) that while the girl is the same as the boy child, the society puts too much pressure on the boy child to make his mark. While the girl child can get away with whatever she chooses to do, hence the pressure to perform in class is less. While it still may be true that the society treats the boys separately, it is not true that I would ease the pressure on studying on the girl child.

As a parent I realize that Jispa has it in her to perform. She can and must do her best in studies. With her grueling swimming schedule she must make time at every available moment to study hard. From Tuesdays her tests start and we have started teaching her and pushing her to study. Earlier my stand was that keep me off the study thing. I am not going to help her study, after all these are all stupid things and don’t really test understanding.  But there are many flaws. If Jispa must have the freedom to choose then she needs to study now. And it’s impossible for Jasmine to take this burden alone. Its way too tiring and mentally exhausting. So I must pick up the studies as well. My weekend is equally ruined and not to mention, this results in strained relations with my daughter as well.

I try and teach her stuff but I am so dam bloody depressed after all this. One I have to make her study. To do that I have to shout at her. At one point while studying Hindi I whacked her with the book (not so hard though). I forget she is not a boy. It was a whack that boys don’t care too shit about. I also gave her a slap. Again not so hard. But then Jispa protested… no it’s not done. You shouldn’t be slapping me. Mom makes me study and if I don’t understand she repeats and explains again. There, I was the bad guy. I know I mustn’t raise my hand but I really don’t know how else to get her to concentrate. I never slap her or scold her on her grades. That’s a n outcome not the act. While studying, it’s so goddam frustrating. But as soon as she told me, I understood. I protested that it wasn’t hard and it’s almost playful. But she refused to accept it. So then I said sorry and I told her that no more whacks, but you need to start concentrating. It worked for then. But it still was tough on both of us. At start I don’t know Hindi well enough to teach a fifth grader. Then she writes some random stuff in her books from which I have to take up.

I should be slapping her. I shouldn’t be. Even if it’s a light one. It’s not done. My only come back is that I listen to protests and immediately make up.

The fact is that I am ill-suited to making kids study. I can make them dream, I can make them think, I can inspire, but I can’t make then study. That is one thing I can’t do, not in the current system. But I see no option for a lot of study pressure we put on Jispa. She also realizes it, she also wants to push the bar and top, but then it’s up to us parents to bear the cross. And of course eat our own words.

The more I see of life the more I realize the value of hyper-specialisation. The world belongs to specialists. Specialists who take on specific fields and are the domain experts in them. They are the ones who will inherit the earth. Standard average joes will find themselves good work but will never be able to break the ceilings. In good times and bad, it’s the hyper specialists who are constantly up on the curve and adapting to new and new changes in technology are the ones who will be in demand. The key point here is constant adaptation. A hyper specialist carries a curse. Whatever she knows will be common knowledge soon and could be obsolete sooner. So she needs to go deeper and deeper and constantly stay relevant. So I hope to push her to study and I surely hope I don’t push her to choose a field. I wish she chooses a field of her own liking and I am not forced to eat my hat then.

I have eaten too many of my own hats to the point of indigestion. I don’t want to do that. The trick is not to wear less hats but to wear more edible hats – you understand the point?

travel right

It’s pretty crazy. I haven’t been able to blog for quite some time. Sometimes I feel I am not just up to it. What do I write? My ‘profoundipity’ is at ebb and I am going through a physically demanding schedule. Mostly I think it’s just a matter of habit. Just when you break it, it’s difficult to get back. I guess if I start writing every day and force myself, it will be back. I will find something interesting to talk and something interesting to write about. Once I do find something interesting to write I hopefully will find it interesting to analyse and bring some seriousness to the issue… or whatever. It also doesn’t help that my blackberry is really really old and withered. I can’t even click any photos with it. Sometimes the photos used to help when everything failed. The best time for my blog when I wrote almost every day was during eth recession when there was precious little to do otherwise at office. With the markets right behaving badly, I guess these time might just make a comeback. But till then its time to push myself and write.
There I just thought of something. Last week I was doing research in Indore and Bhopal. I happened to catch up with a student a few weeks back on SMS and he happened to be in Indore. He is working as a sales manager there and has picked up an apartment where he stays alone. This was invitation enough. So I scheduled my trip accordingly and spent a couple of nights at his place. It was pretty cool to catch up with a student thus. His was a basic accommodation with him sleeping in the hall and he gave me a place in the bedroom. Nothing fancy, just a bed, a mattress, a blanket, a pillow and a fan. What more would I need? In the morning and evening to have bath, we would spend around 30 minutes getting the water hot. We would heat water on the stove and pour it into the bucket. To speeden things a bit we would heat some water in the electric kettle as well. Half to three fourth of a bucket was pretty good. Mix that with some cold water and you have enough for a bath. The biggest bug bear of travelling is having to be alone. I have stayed in five stars and in basic guesthouses but it’s always tough to stay alone for extended periods of time. Even if office colleagues are travelling with you, you sometimes yearn for some friends or family. So while Ronnie was pretty apologetic about the staying conditions, I had no complaints. Absolutely none. I was staying at my students place. What more joy could I ask for? My student was happy to have me over. We talked about life, a little guidance, a little career – some intelligent conversations about sales – done. I loved every moment of it.
We even went to the sarafa bazzar in Indore in the evening. Here the main street shops close to give way to the street food. Here sandwich stalls, pani puri stalls and every other local stall pops up, trying to sell you gastronomical delights. Nothing great to write about. If it is not hyped to you then you are not likely to be disappointed. One of the things recession taught me was to use every chance one gets to travel as an opportunity to soak in the local sights and tastes. I was normally very circumspect when it came to trying local cuisine. But now I have changed to go about and live and enjoy the tourist life. Eat the local food at the local street vendors. See what the romans do. So at one stall we asked the guy what else we could eat. We told him that we were not from here; hence he must guide us as to what the specialty was. Thus illuminated we ate the “corn kis” and the “fried kund”. Both were disasters but at least now I know that they are disasters. If I dint try them I would have never known. The good part of Indore is probably the poha that you get everywhere for breakfast. Compared to Gujarat where everything is fried, this breakfast comes as a delight. But eating it for three days in a row was a little too much. So now I have a story for Indore as well. Nice.
I was asking my host, Ronnie, on how much does he do the local thing. Does he roam out ion Sundays and holidays. Does he soak in the sights and sounds? Does he try to play with the locals, does he experiment with his food. How much of his territory besides the official stuff, does he know. I think I probably shamed him, by telling him some nuances about Indore that I picked up on the trip. I had been to the local mandi where farmers got their grain to be sold to the local dealer. Here the trading would be through the middle men who came in with plastic bags of the produce as samples. Here the trader would first inspect the plastic bag and would get an idea about the quality. Then they would shake hands and cover it with a cloth. In the absence of a cloth they would cover their hands under the kurta (long loose shirt) they were wearing. This is the deal making. A short fast series of finger touching would happen where they would decide on the price. This way they would reach agreement on the price in secret without the need for opening their mouth and disclosing the transaction in the mandi in front of everybody. So feverish trading would happen in relative silence. The only talk would be loose talk and casual conversation. It was an interesting immersive experience. I had seen these handshakes many years before but this was the first time I had seen these in full action on what was essentially a trading floor. High speed trading with no conversation.
So Ronnie is now suitably inspired to try new stuff within his territory. Good for him. What’s the point of being cooped up in your room whole day? Go out, walk a bit, eat a bit, get ill, get sunstroke. Anything goes. Sunstroke? Yup. In Delhi I lead my colleagues to Humayun’s tomb at noon only to find the three of us completely knocked out by sunstroke after the visit. I love the place and can go there again and again. Every time I get to see a new perspective. They have also improved the place and near the entrance is some sort of a display which explains some of the importance and the architecture of the place. The next time I am in Delhi on the must see list is – Safdarjung’s tomb which was the inspiration for Humayun’s tomb which in turn inspired the Taj Mahal. You can’t fully appreciate the Taj unless you see this in sequence. Also a must see will be the sound and light show at the red fort in the evening. I remember seeing it as a kid and I remember loving it and recollecting it for years to come. I can’t wait for Jispa to start learning Mughal history. I want to take her to all these places where she will see firsthand what she studies in her text books.
I have this plan of showing her the forts and the palaces of Rajasthan and Delhi over the weekends as she studies them. That is my dream of teaching her History. So that she gets a perspective from a guide, from Amar Chitra Katha, from visiting the place, museums and from the search on the internet. Perhaps a few documentaries downloaded might also help. I hated the dates that they made us learn in history. I never understood the importance of History and architecture and forts or anything. The way it was taught to us was boring, one sided and irritating. I want to teach her the exciting way. I hope I would be able to do so. I really hope. At least she will get a better perspective and she will be able to understand it better. At least she will not consider it the drab I thought it was. And hopefully she might be inspired to graduate in anything but the commerce and accounting ended up doing. Easily one of the most boring courses ever conceived. Debit and credit. Yuck. Ya ya… I do realize that smart alecs end up doing creative cooking up of accounts and seem to exercise their right brain in the field as well. But those rapists are the one that caused the recession! Too much creativity at the wrong place.

dream a little dream

My method of teaching Jispa to combat nightmares is giving me nightmares. As I have earlier blogged, all I do is change the channel. Basically I can change my dreams at will. If the nightmare is getting to me I invent an interesting way to get off it. So when Jispa was first having nightmares I told her that you can simply change it.
So now she thinks about solving her nightmares. Yesterday night after a long time she came and woke me up in the middle of the night. “Dad” pat pat pat.. She had to get me to wake up. “Dad, I need to solve this bad dream”. Oh ok. It was a chase kind of sequence. A ha. I was lucky that’s the easy one. If someone is chasing you and you want to get away, all you have to do is think up some real easy thing – like a rope can appear from anywhere taking you out, or you can cross some river which they cant or something. It’s pretty simple. Some one can give you a magic potion that can turn them into something more benign. The chase ones are pretty cool. It all depends on the settings. Are you watching a sci-fi or an urban setting or a fantasy? There is always a lovely creative way out.
Jispa interestingly sees it or has interpreted it as ‘solving’ the bad dream. She looks for a solution to the dream. I am not sure if like me she can merely put the solution on the dream itself seamlessly. I think she has break it to solve it and bang its gone.
The tough ones for me are the abstract dreams, which give you the scare like nightmares. They … I don’t know… I think they kind of keep the heart rate up and tense your brain a bit. But all you dream is patterns, these repeating patterns create some kind of tension. It’s something I have had since I was a kid. Now I rarely dream them. I normally get them when I am unwell. So on some nights, probably after Chinese food dinners or something similar, when I get them, I tend to like them. I keep dreaming them. It’s like paying money to watch a horror film. More like a thriller movie. It keeps you on the edge. It’s kind of weird. These dreams I can’t will to happen but when they do I seize the moment. What I find funny is that as I write this blog I realise that I do all this in my sleep.
My wife finds all this pretty funny. She knows I am nuts in any case. This is one more proof. Both my sister and I can change dream channels. And my brother claims that he gets no dreams at all. What a weird family.
A ha… one dream I cannot change is being ill prepared for an exam. That one requires me to get up and remind my self that I need give those exams any more. I need to be semi awake and get my reassurance from my memory. Schooling has me permanently scarred. I don’t know how much else it gave me.
Yesterday I was speaking to a good friend. She was teaching her child to write while she was talking to me. The child was just a little under four. She was getting him to do home work. What shit? Home work for a 4 year old. that too on writing numbers. She was going nuts. I kept telling in the entire conversation to back off. She was like ‘the school is putting too much pressure. He needs to do this home work. It was to be submitted tomorrow. You don’t know. Tomorrow if he fails every one will ask me. And on and on.’ Poor thing. I know her. She is not like that as a person. It’s the school that made her so. It is the school which is putting the pressure on the mother to bring out the kali in her. At the end I left the argument with a simple advice. Do what you want to do and what you believe in. Please do not let the school do what you think you must not. You choose and try and keep the school out of your sphere of influence. That’s all. The penny sunk. She said yes. Wow. My day was made.
I try my best to think of my values, my thought process, and my beliefs. I try not to let the school, the peer and the others get in the way. Sure I am open to stimuli, but then that’s that… stimuli. It is easier said than done. You struggle all the time. You don’t know most of the time why you have acted. I try and keep centred when I am in trouble or in conflict while parenting. It is bloody difficult. But I know I must. I have to. I don’t want to give someone nightmares. No way.

the joke's on me

Some website I was reading has a link to a paper titled ‘The Attributes and Attribute-Consequences of Great College Teachers’. You can read the paper here.

But the short abstract of the same is as below:

"In personal interviews and questionnaires, students describe great college teachers as those who are dynamic lecturers, clear communicators, and make sincere efforts to relay their concern for students and student learning. Driving these preferences is students' desire to commit to class, improve class focus, and learn the material."

It sounds very right and I whole heartedly agree to this. It seems quite close to what I believe in. Its puts the teacher and the student together in a combined mission.

The only thing was I did not really understand the Dynamic lecturer part. What exactly does that entail? Reading further I got this laundry list of attributes that describe ‘A DYNAMIC LECTURER’. I miss the tone when I write this stuff. Imagine King Julian from Madagascar saying – a dynamic lecturer… did you get it? google King Julian, youtube him. Especially the dialogues in part 2.

Forget it… just read the attributes here for a dynamic lecturer (that tone again)


Gives an interesting and entertaining presentation
Provides good examples in class (1)
Provides good examples in class, real life and timely (2)
Lectures are relevant and interesting (5)
Make the class interesting by doing something other than lecturing all the time (6)
Fun; Descriptive; explaining why they are doing things in class; motivating the subject matter (7)
Witty / funny (8)
Tries to keep students entertained during lectures (10)
Relate to students, give personal examples of themselves (11)
Goes in depth to explain things in their lecture (11)
Relate the class material to stuff you're familiar with (13)
Have a dynamic presentation style; not monotone (13)
Entertaining, keep the students attention (14)
Apply the information to things that students are familiar with (14)
Entertaining, funny (15)
Entertaining, not monotone; keep students' attention (16)
Enthusiasm; presenting their information with a good personality and sense of humor (17)
Ability to lead and control the class (19)
Sense of humor; entertaining (19)
Funny, light-hearted personality (21)
Interaction with the class / Entertaining (23)
Give interesting presentations; activities, personal stories, etc (27)
Not monotone in their presentation (27)
Entertaining; tell jokes and stories (29)
Keeps the lecture relevant and appropriate (31)
Good flow in their lecture; don't jump around (32)
Keep the attention of the class; funny; entertaining (33)
Sociable; talk about other things besides material; relate subject to students (33)
Good personality; entertaining enough to keep students attention (35)
Keep the class's attention; entertaining (37)
Have voice fluctuation, not monotone (39)
Humorous (39)
Keep the mood light; not serious all the time (42)
Sense of humor; connects with their students (44)

If you read carefully, actually even if you read not so carefully, you will relaise that – the students don’t need a professor, they need a FU&*$NG joker. No wonder I seem to be doing decently well with the students.

While on the topic of jokers, I couldnt but help humming this really old song. What you have been exposed to in your early impressionable years is what stays with you till much later. complete irrefutable proof as below.

sikhau

Oh man. This is soo stressful. We are trying to make Jispa study her hindi. To teach first standard hindi we require Jasmine and me together. With jasmine teaching her the basic stuff that even I find difficult to understand. In the book there are words that have two alphabets. I don’t know the meaning of so many of them. Some of them even jasmine does not know the meaning. We were wondering what on earth they are. Words such as kharal, thanak, khag, phalak etc.
So while Jasmine is teaching Jispa, I am on the internet logging into a shabkosh. Hehe. A hindi into english dictionary. Man this shit is really tough. I would have never known these meanings. And instantly as I teach them, I forget them as they come. Some of them like dapat, even the online shabdkhosh does not have. यह शब्द (दपत) अभी हमारे डाटाबेस मे नही है.
On some words I thought I knew the meaning but Jasmine had to correct me. At some time I have decided I will merely let her learn this shit by rote. I have no clue on helping her. I might have failed her first standard hindi test. so now I am merely just taking her hindi reading. If she asks me for any meaning I am going to smash her to the ground.

healthy mind healthy body (what fart nah!)

I would like to put a premium of fitness. Waking up at 5.55 am getting to work, finishing it, getting to the club by 8 for a game of squash and then reaching home by 9.30 pm to dinner and bad, is not easy. Sometimes one wants to just let it be and relax, reach home early read a bit doze off. But I want to push the body. It must remain fit if it has to last. I hate putting on weight. I like to be lean at all times. Right now I am quite at ease at what I weigh. At 68 I am nearly ten kilos more than what I was at college. I was pretty skinny then and reaching the other end of the spectrum is not my goal. I tell Jasmine many times that if I ever get fat, shoot me. The key to staying there is eating right and exercising right. Squash is bloody tiring. Especially with a player who is purposely hitting you shots that you can reach. The rallies can go on forever. I hate unforced errors and if neither is going for the kill then the physical drain is way too much. I can’t play the game everyday. One day game must be followed by another day of rest. It’s way too much physically demanding. And then we try swim on weekends. The most exciting new exercise for me is holding the board outstretched in my hands and using only leg power to propel. It’s more difficult than I thought and it’s awesome exercise for my knees. It has considerably strengthened them. They pain much less after squash these days, almost negligible.
Jispa has been learning Hindi and she has been using every opportunity to polish her skills. Here is the milk booth near the bus stop which she uses as her reading board every morning. For the record her most boring subject for now is math followed by any subject that has to have her do some writing. With these preferences, she is at present quite the antipode of what I was. I hated Hindi and could do math for hours...