Friday, November 21, 2014

Raising Kids and Quality Time

The idea to this post can be attributed to one of the discussion that I had with this colleague of mine.  It was just a casual discussion that I had with him on having the kids and raising them.  Incidentally while talking about my daughter, he asked if I would like to have another kid or may be few more.  My answer was straight forward may be another one to make it "Hum 2 Humare 2 (we two and our two)".

As i made my point, he looked quizzingly as if asking "Why only 2 or if I had any logic behind restricting myself to raise 2 kids?" As I sensed that I happened to elaborate on the reasons for my decision that can be well defined as - 

  1. I would want to provide quality time to my kids as they grow up.  just think of it this way - you have 24 hours in a day, you work for say 10 hrs, showers and getting ready take another 1 hour, Food etc take another 1 hour and you sleep for say 8 hours.  Now you are left with only 4 hours to spend with your kids.  So more the number of kids that you have, more is the division of these 4 hours of you by the number of kids.  This directly relates to Student to teacher ratio in a school.  If you would want to admit your kid in a school with better student to teacher ratio, then you should also ensure that you start from your home with good and quality time allocation to your kids.  Every kid needs your time and attention...plus you can't forget your wife who would also need her "ME TIME"
  2. I would like to do justification to each of my kid with respect to education and upbringing. These are directly related to the economies of scale where I would want to have more spend ability per kid rather than having too many kids and trying to balance my expenditure between them and still fighting to survive and meet their basic expenditures.  That mean with the limited income that one would have there is a need to do justice to ownself by helping oneself with limited commitments and liabilities.
  3. I would want to provide them their own space and their own independence by reducing the unrequired crowd at home. More the number of kids, more chaotic it could be and no one would get own time and space.  So the limit...
Though there had been another pointer by him that in US more kids mean more rebate in the income tax, but to counter that, the question that comes in - "How much do you save per kid from your income tax?" At the end, expenses for a kid are always more than what Income Tax rebate that you get. There has to be a proper balance between the money you can save v/s the expenditure that you would have towards the upbringing of the kid.

He seems to have bought my points and stated I do this article to have a wider debate on pros and cons of having too few or too many kids....


Sunday, November 9, 2014

Interstellar - Movie Review

Interstellar is a very intelligent science fiction that connects the dots between Gravity, Time, Astro-Science, Physics et al and weaves a pretty good concept for saving the mankind in future when the pollution and Nitrogen levels would reach unbearable levels. 

The whole set of sequences in individual capacity have been very neatly done, but the director and the editor failed to keep the movie tight between these sequences. 

The movie opens with a very farm like location owned by an agriculture enthusiast who has been a fighter pilot and an engineer and progresses on with him finding this ultra secret Area 59 sort location of Nasa and then him getting selected to lead a mission to find another habitat for human kind.  But I felt that the director spent a bit too long a time to build the base that made movie a bit too slow in the first hour.

Post that a lot of plot and continuity was lost in the discussions that were stretched a bit too long than required and at times the characters breaking out due to emotional stress. I felt this was being a bit too much.  

Another aspect that I felt should have been taken care of a bit more carefully was the aging of characters on earth and the aging of characters on the space mission.  As from the way I understood, it would take them 14 months for touching the orbit of Saturn from where they get on to the far side of the galaxy / universe, and spending 1 hour on a planet that side would be around 7 years back on earth (relativity and time equation). But I failed to understand how Cooper's age went of to touch 124 while returning to earth and then how come his daughters' age went off way high that she was under medical supervision.  It was a bit too far fetched point that I have not been able to weave.  Per my calculation, the total time that passed from the time the mission started to the time when these guys were returning would have been anything around 50 years or so, meaning Cooper should have been close to 90 or maximum 100 and his daughter should have been at the max be in her 60s.  

Overall a movie that has a very good story and script, but the Director and the editor failed to impress with their work.

Friday, November 7, 2014

Corruption - The Root Cause

Have often wondered what could be the root cause of the evil of Corruption?  The answer that often came to my mind relates to someone's work getting stuck and then the person tries to get work done by hook or crook and when even that doesn't work, they try to pay off the obstacle..buy convenience.

But yesterday, my whole thought process was literally taken up for a ride by what I saw in a movie "Bombay Talkies".  I was astonished at the way it changed my whole set of thoughts.  In the scene that I am referring, this small kid was trying to tell her father to pay up for her School Tour that would involve visit to historical locations et al. The father tried to evade the demand in various ways, but what he finally did made me feel sad about the state of affairs.  The father gets a gift for his daughter stating "this is for you as you would not be going to the History tour with your class." Literally he was trying to pay off her missing the important tour.  He offered her a Bribe?

Suddenly the whole fact on how the roots of corruption get so deep in our culture and society seem to have getting clear to me.  Though I had seen this "Paying off for not being able to meet child's demand", but had never thought in the directions that it can be one of those critical root causes of prevailing corruption practices.

I would rather prefer being straight forward to the child and tell him / her that I can't fulfill a request as I am not equipped to do so.  It would be better for handling reasonable / unreasonable demands as slowly they would understand something that can be addressed and something they need to live with. But paying off for one's ability is directly or indirectly equivalent to offering a Bribe....
__________________