Hollow(een)

After a long and tiring day of work, I returned home one evening. I needed a beverage to refresh. As I poured orange juice into a glass, I heard a knock on my door. My brain was saying, "Oh no, who is it now, I'm tired and not in the mood to entertain any guests." I put the juice bottle down and went to the door. 

I open the door and I see a kid (8-10 years old) with an uncertain look. In a low voice, the kid said "Trick or Treat". My slow brain had to take a few seconds to process it. "Is it really Halloween today?" I looked at my phone and it was indeed October 31st. I was not in any mood for tricks (not that I had any tricks in my arsenal). So I asked the kid to wait for a minute and I went in to fetch treats (candy). 

I searched the usual places in my kitchen, only to realize that I did not have any candy at all. What do I do now? I had to improvise. I went and apologized to the kid and asked if an energy bar would be acceptable. Hearing what I said, the smile on the kid's face vanished and a confused and "Really?" expression came out. The kid then, in the same low voice, slowly said yes. I brought a couple of energy bars and dropped in the kid's bag and wished a happy Halloween. The kid stared at me for a few seconds with a blank expression and then walked towards the next home.

Farm Study

You grow up hearing farmers saying to their children, "study well otherwise you will stay in the village and do agriculture". This implies that agriculture doesn't need education and they are mutually exclusive. I can see their view point that getting a college degree will help get you a good paying job and have steady income. But what I don't agree is considering farming a menial job. Sure, unless you are farming a big land, there is not much income. But if a person can earn a basic living and can look after his or her family, isn't that enough?

I think parents should stop considering their kids' basic education as an investment. Basic education will help even if their children end up staying in the village and farming their land.

In recent years, I've been reading about some people who are going back to their villages and starting the farming using the education they received and it makes me happy. Having basic science education helps the farmers take on new technologies and try non-traditional methods in farming.

Global Family

I have never felt too attached to a nationality or a citizenship because it's not in your control. It depends on where you were born and sometimes on your parents' choice. I always believed that we would get to a time when there won't be any nations and citizenships and everyone is an "Earthizen". But I must admit it felt a little weird when my sibling had accepted another country's citizenship. Our relationship won't change and we won't consider each other foreign all of a sudden but it feels odd that we will carry different passports now. It's probably because we all tend to carry some inherent identity. I now know how some people in future generations would feel when their relatives or friends would take a different planetary membership.

Humans will always cross the current frontiers and create new ones. :)

Elephant's back

One lazy Sunday evening my three year old niece and I were goofing around when she suddenly climbs on my back, stands and announces (with a tone you would think she may have scaled the Everest) loudly: "Look at me. I'm the Baahubali (pronounced in her cute accent) standing on the elephant!".

Like like!

I overheard a mom speaking with her teenage daughter and son at the driver's license office: ".....uncle Jack came like the other day and was like, can you drive me to the airport, I was like, I'm not sure and he was like, I can ask Ben and I was like, you can try that and then he like drove off. I was like not sure what to do and called your father and he was like, it is ok Ben should be able to help, and I was like it's ok.........".

I'm certainly not a good English speaker but it was a little funny to hear that conversation. I was trying to count how many likes she was using. It also reminded me of the school/college days where we used to count how many times a certain word was used by some teachers/professors repeatedly in their lectures.

I wonder if it's the "Like" on Facebook that influenced the word "like" being used as a filler word in the conversations these days.

What's your filler word or a word that you use repeatedly in your conversations? I think I use "weird" quite a bit to describe things. :)

Olymp(eth)ics

One a fine summer Monday, I went to office hoping to get a bunch of things crossed out on my list of things to do. I got through emails and started with a couple of things by the lunch time. I opened the lunch box on my desk (yeah, I don't take lunch breaks) and as I tried to chew a mouthful (when you're hungry, you tend to shove the food through) I suddenly remembered that the summer Olympics had just started over the weekend. I quickly searched for the online live link and started watching it with the window sized to a half of the second screen I use. I continued to do my work with constant distraction of watching the Olympic events. I sometimes even stopped my work completely to catch some important moments of the sports. I was not able to get things done as much as I was hoping to.

This happened on three or four days of the two weeks that the Olympics were held with different levels of distraction. A few days later, I started to wonder if what I did was unethical. I did not miss any deadlines nor my work was impacted too much by watching the sporting event during the work hours, but I have to admit it was certainly a distraction.

What do you think? Would watching news or even listening to music online at your work be wrong?