Kiker Market Day

I wasn’t aware of this till Avni came to 2nd grade, market day at Kiker Elementary is 1 day in December when all 2nd graders put their entrepreneurship skills to test by making things and selling them. Ok, they don’t make/sell individually but in groups of 4. Parents and school provide the supplies, kids do the work under the guidance of the teacher and parent volunteer and they get to decide the price. Who are the customers? kids, parents of kids and teachers in the school are the customers for the market day. All proceeds will go to charity, not exactly sure who and how they pick the charities to support.

Considering all the kids in grade 2 are between the ages of 7-8, I wasn’t really sure as to what to expect from this big group but I was amazed at the talent that was showcased during market day. The entire cafeteria was filled with items for sale and by the time I entered at around 15mins after the sale started some of the kids had already put out sold out signs. There were fire breathing dragons, toy cars, book marks, Christmas ornaments, stress balls, Mancala games and so on.

All items were priced $1-$3, come to think of it I don’t remember seeing anything for greater than $3. Best part, kids got to decide the prices and they got to decide when they want to drop the price and so on.

Last I heard from Avni's class teacher, the second graders made an overall profit of $3100. If one thinks in terms dollars/sqft in 1 hour it is unbelievable. 

I am very happy to report all the things that Avni's class made were all sold out before the end of the market day. It definitely was a good combination or in engineering terms a resonance of kids talents and teachers encouragement. Great job Comets. 

My only gripe, why not do this for all the grades? why only second graders? :) 

ps: sorry I can’t post pictures due to privacy reasons :) 

Girl scout market place

Took Avni the other day to her second Girl Scout market place. Last year we went as buyers only and this year around we went in as sellers/buyers. For those who do not know, the market place is where the different troops of Girl Scouts put together items like arts/crafts/snacks for sale as a group to raise money for charity. Needless to say both the shoppers and the shop owners are all kids from Girl Scouts. I really do not know the max age limit of troops participating. The total event is about an hour to hour and fifteen minutes. 

The market place things like Chex mix snacks, Christmas tree ornaments, candies, simple games and one troop was selling marble necklaces. The interesting ones like the Tic Tac Toe and ornaments were on the expensive side with prices at $3 per item. While the simple ones like snacks were for $1. Needless to say the older kids had made more complex ones while the younger ones went for easy ones.

If you have ever heard Dave Ramsey on either radio or on podcasts you definitely would have heard him say “adults devise a plan and follow and children do what feels good. I could relate to what that meant watching the kids shopping with limited budget and going from stall to stall to see if they can buy the item sold or rather if they had the money to afford the same. Needless to say kids who started with inexpensive items at the start had more money to spare vs the other way round.  

About half way through the event some of the stalls started dropping prices to make the sale happen and some started giving buy one get one offers. One example I have is of the Tic Tac Toe game which started off at $3 per item eventually dropped to $2 per and with fifteen minutes to go went to $1 per item. Even at that price they still had a lot of items to be sold. Avni felt that it was not fair, for she had bought the game at $3 and if only she had waited she could have gotten the game for $1. and $2 to spare. I wonder if this is what we in the real world call bargain buy? But she corrected herself and said the kids have put in a lot of efforts to make the game and $3 is the fair price.

This begged the question, would they have been at an advantage to start off selling at $2? (Instead of starting at $3?). Even though I was apprehensive at the start but upon closer examination, I feel for the creative work and the effort involved the item probably would have sold on Etsy for $4 a piece. The market place they were aiming for is a limited window, limited audience and with very limited budget. Tic Tac Toe was just one example another one was the candy cane chocolate sledge which also was having similar effect.

Maybe that's the lesson for them? For Avni, I told her next time around it may be worth while to wait for sometime before making a buy :).

 

Wild Wild West – Netflix documentary

Back in 2003/early 2004, I remember arguing vehemently with my friend that “Bhagwan” Rajneesh wasn’t truly enlightened and was more half baked :). I was just too stubborn with my arguments and my friend had to agree with me just to end the argument. Come 2018 the documentary Wild Wild West on Netflix totally proved to me that I was right.

The documentary is a 6 part series starts from Poona ashram through Oregon experiment and ends with the death of Rajneesh. It is a great effort with capturing the story from a lot of perspectives including the followers, adversaries, interviews from those time and era, video clips from news casts in those days and so on. 

Overall I would say a well balanced view of the whole episode, worth a watch. It is disturbing at some levels specially if you are of spiritual oneself is an understatement.

Here are my n things

• Rajneesh (lets call him Mr. R for simplicity) didn’t leave India but was literally smuggled out of India in secret, no one knew where he went and all his visa applications were done in secret and flight also arranged in secret
• On the flight to USA, they celebrated with champagne, as a spiritual person I thought he would be aware that alcohol affects ones subconscious self 
• While his top aide Sheila was running the show in the Oregon Ranch by trying to rig elections, poisoning salad bars, plotting assassinations and so on, as her “guru” how come Mr. R wasn’t aware?
• His aide Sheila keeps repeating, I protected Mr. R while I was in charge of his safety, would an enlightened master really need protection and from what and who?
• Mr. R secluded himself in the ranch for almost 4 years and didn’t give a single public discourse during that time, Funny part that was the immigration case against him that he didn't do what he said he would be doing, giving discourses.. As a true master were you not interested in the growth of your disciples?
• Mr. R behaves as president or absentee CEO of a company who has the plausible deniability when all hell breaks loose and blame it on the underlings in this case Sheila. 
• Mr. R has fascination for finer things and the fascination doesn’t end till he owns it, the Rolls Royce, diamond watch and the list goes on. I am not saying he should not honor his devotees offerings but can he put forth a demand? I am not making this up it is one of the episodes “at one point the Hollywood people started showing up at the ashram and started showing Mr. R the different magazines with expensive things, Sheila had limited access to these for if Mr. R sees them he would want to have them”
• Towards the end when Sheila leaves the ranch after a series of failed experiments, Mr. R acts like a child who lost his favorite toy or as a scorned lover who is not able to handle the breakup gracefully. It is truly unbecoming of a spiritual master, to an extent one can argue he had a meltdown. Really, can a guru have a meltdown?
• In the end, when the law starts closing in on Mr. R, he does the same thing he did in India tries to fly away but USA is not India and they arrest him on his way out. I make fun of Saddam Hussein for hiding in a hole, our man as hiding behind the aircraft seat when they came to arrest him. Are you so afraid of death Mr. R?
• Mr. R while fighting the case in the court apparently said “if they fight fairly then I am willing to go to supreme court but I don’t think they will and (something about body can’t handle)”, wonderful I like that, if that were the case then why did you flee in your own personal aircraft?
• His death apparently was a case of slow-poisoning and no its not the American Government but his own network and himself are responsible     

I never had a great opinion of Mr. R and this documentary didn’t help the case in anyway. At a higher level, it was, as rightly pointed out was an experiment, that didn’t play out well. It was an experiment on how far one can push the envelope in the name of constitutional rights, an experiment on what happens when one only thinks of rights and forgets all about responsibilities, an experiment on what happens when you let the mind/ego dominate the entire process and not listen to the inner guidance.   

Always good to dust off an old book

For a while now I have transitioned to Kindle books and the my new fad is to switch to audio books (I am holding myself from doing that). Of course most books I have bought off late (in last 6-8 years) are non fiction related to finance, self improvement and the usual works. But I am proud to say I have a collection of paper back and hard bound books in my own small library. Considering the amount of time I spend these days in reading any book either kindle e-books or otherwise they have been eating dust :).

Anyways, I have become an avid listener to Dave Ramsey podcasts and he has been strongly advocating people to read a non fiction book for at the least 15 minutes a day. Come to think of it, it is a great habit and my father-in-law had recommended the same to me a decade ago and I had followed the advice for a while, as with everything in life fell off the band wagon.

With Facebook turned off, Twitter non existent and NPR given a boot, it appeared I had more time in hand and decided to pickup the reading habit again. This time around instead of picking up the ipad-mini and launching the kindle app I went down to my mini library and picked up a non-fiction book.  I had bought this one more than a decade ago and never turned more than 10 pages of the same. For the first couple of days, I literally had to drag myself to keep the book in hand for 15-20 minutes before bed time but in the last week or so I got into the groove and love reading this book.

The one wonderful unintended consequence of my new reading habit is it has caught Avni’s attention and she wants to know what is her dad reading? mind you I have had the ipad for almost 3-4 years and have read few books through kindle app on my ipad but it has rarely spiked her interest. I am guessing a combination of her age and her own reading habits that she has been questioning me constantly about what I am reading? and wants me to explain to her what I am reading? Indeed I am not successful yet at that. 

Anyways, moral of the story is "kindle, audible and other apps are good but sometimes a good old fashioned hardbound book is a great investment too".  

Movie review Padmavat

I really wanted to watch the movie in the theater but somehow missed the boat and finally caught up to it on Amazon Prime. If I can summarize the movie in one sentence “it is plain stupid” or as I told my relatives in Kannada “ಪೆದ್ದು  ಪೆದ್ದಾಗಿ  ಮಾಡಿದಾರೆ ”.

After watching the movie Sri Sri Ravishankar gave a green light, I would have told Mr. SLB to go back to the drawing board and make it a bit more realistic. Half way through the movie I lost interest, which I rarely do in a period drama.

Here are my top N things that I couldn’t comprehend in my logical brain

• The king of Chittor is in present day Lanka to get pearls and went for hunting, why was he alone where were his body guards? the same goes for the princess.
• When Ala-uddin lays siege on Chittor first time, why didn’t he come with siege equipment?, he had an insider to help and didn’t that insider give him tips on the kind of fortress he will be attacking?
• Fine he didn’t bring first time, but the siege was for frigging 6 long months and no one thought of getting them or building them?
• Rajputs knew in and out of Ala-uddin and Malik Kafur but they didn’t know who the traitor helping him and they all act surprised when they see him.
• When the Rajaguru was thrown out of kingdom why wasn’t there anyone following him, essentially where was the intelligence network
• The king goes to meet Aladdin in his almost burned out camp, so why were the body guards not surrounding the camp but were standing 200 feet away on one side?
• Besides why did the king go without his sword?, Ala-uddin didn’t put that condition to him.
• The last battle is beyond saving, the king no longer is the king but a lover fighting to save glory of his beloved.
• The contrast they have tried to show between Padmavati and the other wife of the king seems to be drawn from Ekta Kapoor’s serials.
• Escape from the prison in Delhi is totally laughable.

There are a few more but not worth my time. In the end, if you haven’t seen it, don’t waste your time. If you have, my sympathies for you.

ಆರ್ಥ ಅಥವಾ ಅನುವಾದ (Understand or Translate)

To put a disclaimer at the very beginning, this line of thinking did not come to me till recent past. Also, this blog post is more exploratory than any conclusion I may have reached.

Growing up in India with language of instruction being English, we all were by default bi-lingual. When it came to academics parents and teachers always told us don’t just learn things by-heart or mug-up but understand and read it. That’s a great idea and wonderful concept but what did they really mean?. 

So, what does it mean to understand some concept? at the time when I was studying if I can explain what I am reading in Kannada (my mother tongue) then I have understood. But that only meant translating doesn’t it?.

I remember reading a quote from Dr. Richard Feynman that “if you cannot explain to the person sitting next to you in a bar as to what you do for living, then you do not know what you are doing for living”. That’s wonderful, if I can claim I understood it, I would say “I should be able to explain to a random person with no background in my field as to what I do for a living” .

Another school of thought that came from my daughters school is from her school Principal, her quote “I want my students to explain what they are doing and why they are doing it in their own words, if that is done then the teachers work is done”. This is wonderful too.    

One can argue that concept of understanding differs from subject to subject, for example mathematics at the basic level of addition, subtractions and multiplications is all about repetition and more repetition at higher level with fractions and all one can get some chance of explaining what they are trying to accomplish. Social studies in my extensive thought, one can only learn by by-heart for the level of understanding of the implications of whatever we study will change as we grow older, so at a young age by-heart so that when you get older you can recall and amuse yourself or deepen your understanding. 

Science is probably the only one which one can even make an attempt to understand and digest what we read and/or studied. One can understand the studied concept by setting up simple experiments, may be at home or collectively at school. 

In the end it boils down to, how would you know someone has understood what they have claimed to have studied :).

Tendencies of the mind - II

Back in the days, more than a decade ago when I did my very first Art of Living program, and then repeated multiple times, we were taught quite a few good behavioral aspects aka knowledge points, One of them appears to be circling in my mind for the last few weeks (if not months); It is the knowledge point about "Tendencies of the mind", one important tendency of the mind is to cling to the negative, other important tendency is to either completely in the past or in the future and never in the moment. I am sure the course taught a few more things.

That said, one other thing I realized is the tendency to categorize and label anything and everything (including itself). To elaborate, growing up in India and specially in south of India there were always few tensions between people, one had to do with  language (Kannada vs Tamil) and other with geographic location of your specific city in the Indian subcontinent (north vs south). As some one rightly put it, I became an Indian only after I left India. Living in America for almost 2 decades now, I have realized this place is no different, there are tensions between people but may be for slightly different reasons.

This made me think further and I realized, the human mind cannot and will not rest until it has categorized anything and everything around it. In the early days of civilization it wanted to categorize based on the color of skin, type of attire and then as civilization grew and expanded came  the division on occupation and with trade came the division based on location and later with the more industrial world and “intellectual” world, it became about the belief system (philosopher, intellectual, poet, activist, pacifist, communist, liberal, conservative and so on) then when the mind became even more evolved it started categorizing further and refining it even more, “fiscally conservative’', “religiously conservative”, “animal rights activist”, “women’s rights activist”, “right leaning”, “left leaning”, “extreme right wing”, “extreme left wing” and so on. Needless to say in between some where came the rich vs poor and my other favorite one “religion and culture” (I believe they exist together). I am sure I have missed a few categories and the timeline may not be perfect, but I am hoping the reader got the idea. 

It is fascinating to see the evolution of the human mind, to some extent one can argue that as a collective, human mind is evolving towards finer and finer divisions only to realize nothing exists in the end :). It’s all hollow and empty.  

ps: the game mind plays when combined with Ego is even more fascinating. I will leave it there :)