Thought Garage

Its Diwali now…, in fact whenever you want if you are in India. No restrictions. No need for special permissions. No proof of special occasions. Enjoy whenever you want.

Pictures taken from the first generation iPhone.

No Fun. No Physical activity. No extra-curricular activities. About a 17 hour busy schedule. Every day. For a second Grader? Its ridiculous, to say the least, that a typical day in the life of a “Second Grader” lasts 17 hours and is no different than a busy professional. Why in the world, a second grader has to work so hard ?

My brother’s son is a second grader, so I looked at his typical day but I suspect every other kid out there in India has a similar hectic schedule (may save a little on commute on residential schools, but compensated by 3 additional additional extra hours for better grades).

• Wake up at 6 AM
• Daily Chores + Breakfast + Get ready for school by 7.00AM
• Take School Bus at 7.00AM and reach by 9AM to school
• 9AM – 12AM School
• 12 to 1PM  Lunch Hour
• 1PM to 4PM School
• 4PM to 5.30PM Extra Study Hours for advancing (???????) Grades 
• 5.30PM to 7.30PM In the bus back home
• Chores and Dinner by 8.30PM
• Finish Home Work by 9.30PM
• May Go to bed at 9.30 PM ONLY if there is NO TV + Video Games. As you can guess, that’s simply not possible. So add at least another hour or so. Normally go to bed around 11PM.

Huh? Why in the world, a second grader has to study so hard ?

Thanks to ‘the way’ everything works in India and grandeur vision and strategies of us, the people and our leaders, this is that time of the year to reap some special benefits. Yes, I am talking about so called ‘scheduled’ power outages. Technically they are scheduled as we all know there must be outages, though the schedules change everyday and will be revealed only on the following day.

On 1st of March, we had a 14 hour power cut, first day of this year to mark the record. We thought we were quite well prepared this time, with installing an inverter and batteries enough to supply essentials for about 6 hours in a stretch. But, we were wrong. Power cuts are happening in such a haphazard frequency that these systems could barely charge and bailing out with crying beeps within a couple of hours.

We thought 14 hours will be our worst day and things would improve. But defying our naive optimism, we had a 17 hour power cut on 2nd of March. Now, we officially lost all hope that inverters could offer any help, if this continues. For today, our last minute preparations included firing a small diesel run generator. Hope, it will work out.

For those of you reading this blog from a place, where a power ‘outage’ is really news, note that my parents and all neighbors here are asking me to clarify that this is anything but normal at this time of the year and not at all a reason to be surprised or shocked.

This is the state of ‘power’ affairs in my place in Andhra, India, officially marked as a rural area. Though, most of us proudly say Agriculture as the backbone of India’s economy and praise farmers as their demi ‘food’ angels, they are the least tended to when it comes to distributing power, (most things for that matter).  They are not a sizeable market for most and considered next best to the poorest in terms purchasing power. Of course, no powerful politician or official lives in rural places anymore, so there is no reason to consider for a ‘fair’ distribution of anything if its not the time of elections.

And also its now official, that Industries in Andhra will be forced to take a one-day-a-week vacation as State run electricity boards will not be able to supply power for a full week. That also means, workers will be forced out of jobs for one day a week, obviously without pay.

By nature, most of us hate to fail and prefer a path of least resistance. So, we plan every thing. We plan to the deepest detail possible in order to avoid any uncertainty and surprises. And will try our best to stick to that plan.

There is nothing wrong having a plan. But too much of planning will kill your creativity, because planning is quite limiting in essence. Instead, have a high level plan, like a roadmap. And leave rest of the details to the moment to reveal your creativity.

Most cases, our ‘plans’ are created based on experiences of those who didn’t have one.  There is nothing wrong in learning from others.  But don’t dwell onto too many details upfront. Remember that ‘surprises’ are what makes a life worth living for. More over, your feelings and emotions will be genuine when you don’t have a plan.

On a related note, If you want to really know a person, sail with him/her to unchartered waters. Not only each of you get to know the other person, but you will find your true self. In fact that is the essence of going on a honeymoon to a totally new place.

So, if you really want to live a life of your own, plan less.

Microsoft’s Augmented Reality in Bing Maps (Windows Live Maps). Going beyond the street view. Crowd sourced Photographs, photographs through the timeline and augmenting real time video, awesome. And if you just look up in the sky, you can all constellations in that space at that time. Wonderful.