Teen parenting chronicles #2 - Please beer with me

I think I accidentally found a way to safely dissuade children from trying beer or alcohol when they are too young or in college.

I sometimes stock that 0% alcohol malt beers (original flavour) at home as a non-sweet alternative to those sugary soft drinks/carton juices.

On a hot day, after an outing or playing, I opened a can for myself. Naturally, the boys were super-curious and I gladly offered them a gulp, saying it's awesome and smooth-tasting. You should have seen their faces when they took the first sip and are horrified by the bitter-sour yellow fluid and yelled out 

"How can anybody drink this stuff!?!? Yuck!!" and refuse to have a second sip despite more of my 'Sharing is Caring' offers.

This shock treatment should (hopefully) last for a decade's worth of abstinence!

Teen parenting chronicles #1 - Homely vacation

Teenage parenting chronicles:

We were doing a last minute trip planning to Singapore- when my eldest son (aged 13) had some sobering questions- 

He:What's the point of going to a nice place like Singapore. Anyway we have to return back to here..?!

Me: I understand how you feel, what should we do?

He: I don't know, you can choose whatever..

Me: Sure, next time we can plan to visit really gruelling, uncomfortable, nasty place, so that you will feel great to return back to Chennai.

Co-passengers in a small world (2)

After alighting the train, I boarded the city local bus to the area where I stayed in a hotel. It was past 9pm and the bus was moderately crowded, almost all seats were occupied. I got to sit in the middle seat of last row which was quite elevated and I could everybody in the front of the bus.

The bus started and there were still a few standing passengers. These buses tend to accelerate and brake hard, and it's a usually a challenge for standing folks to stay rooted. Just when the bus moved into Outer Ring Road, I saw a small girl of about 8 or 9 years sit down in the step in the middle of the bus that separated the elevated seats in the back.

Soon enough, I saw a man in his late-thirties, dressed in smart casuals who was seated close to her two rows behind, feel uncomfortable about this situation. She could easily topple over if there was a hard braking near a bus-stop or get disturbed from her perch by passengers getting down. He looked around if there were any empty seats for the girl, but could not locate any. He then stood up with his bag and offered his seat to the girl and his mother. They seemed to be from a different part of the country and didn't understand him and didn't take the offer from this stranger.

All this happened, while nobody else in the bus seemed to bother about this situation, but were busy watching the IPL match of the day or their favourite distraction in their smartphones. But this kind man would not give up, could not rest easy looking at the small girl on the floor step. He looked around to see if there was any other way he could help and I caught his attention from the back seat of the bus and pointed at an empty seat near me, that he missed noticing. He quickly took his backpack, got up, gestured to the girl and her mother to take his seat, ensured they occupy it and then walked to the seat near me and sat down.

A few minutes later, we saw the girl safely sitting on a her mother's lap in that seat, and I just turned to this man and casually remarked -

"Two people are now sitting because of you giving up your seat".

 

That's it! He was touched to hear that acknowledgement of a simple everyday act of kindness and gave me a warm handshake and said politely "I got up too late, waited too long, Sir!" reflecting his helpless indecision for a few minutes.

We got introduced to each other, he seemed to be the typical south-indian IT professional working in Bangalore. 

He was in a senior position in a startup company and was also telecommuting for work and had arrived in the same Vande Bharat as mine from Vellore, that's where his family resides. We even found out that one of his uncles was also an ex-colleague of mine, whom I remembered to be another genial person. This conversation lasted about 10 minutes before he had to get down at his stop.

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What was the image of person you could visualise when you read the above narration? I had not given any details about him, except for his approximate age or profession. I would not be surprised if it was something like this. 

(Image from Meta AI with prompt :

South Indian male working in IT industry in his late thirties)

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My co-passenger was Azhar, from Ambur town, Vellore district, who actually looked something like this.

(Image from Meta AI with updated prompt)

Now if you read the incident described above again, you may see other hidden facets and the story unfolding slightly differently in your mind!

It's a small world, and we are all co-passengers. 

Co-passengers in a small world (1)

I wanted to write about a couple of incidents that happened during the same day during my weekly travel from Chennai to Bangalore. 

I had boarded the 5pm Vande Bharat at Chennai Central about 5 minutes to departure. On reaching my window seat, I found a very young gentleman of about 7 years in the aisle seat. He was travelling with his mom and baby brother (1.5 years) who were seated on the row beyond the walkway. He was very cool and wasn’t too interested in my offers to help when they were serving hot water to go with the premix tea. I was a bit surprised when he said he liked Masala tea, and when I dug a little more, he revealed that he never gets tea at home, so he liked whatever he got on the train!

The next 4 hours or so, I could see the constant activities of this family, with the mother juggling the interests and energies of her two children. She asked to swap my seat with hers, so that all 3 of them could fit into 2 seats and it may be easier to manage. The youngest decided to go for a walk and the brother accompanied him and the mother had to go behind them all the time. 

I tried to read a book, but the bustling activity in my row was hard to ignore. As a father of 3 sons, the ‘ants in the pants’ nature of those young boys was very familiar to me and their little adventures and conversations were just delightful. Their mother was quite resourceful and had planned ahead, with paper and colouring pens and kept them engaged. 

She was so busy with just managing their activities, that I didn’t get introduced to her or learnt anything about her life or career, though I easily learnt the boys names and they were called a few dozen times during the journey. I usually get introduced to those co-passengers who are willing to look beyond their smartphones and happy to converse and learn quite a bit about their background or industry or field of study, but this time I didn’t bother asking.

Since she was travelling alone with them and a few pieces of luggage and a large suitcase, I offered to help when the train were to stop in KRPuram for 5 minutes. Her husband had been waiting for them at the station and I just waived ‘bye’ after arranging the luggage in the platform and walked off without any further ado, just remembering the antics of those boys.

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Three days later, during lunch break in my office, I happened to see the same lady walking down the stairs. She recognised me too and on enquiring, we realised that both of us work for the same company, in a site with about 1000 employees! It was a remarkable coincidence that we met on the train and just didn’t manage to exchange the industry or company name in a few hours of limited interaction. It’s a small world indeed!

Man's best friend in his pocket

It's a journey in itself, how the tech world innovated and human society evolved to hold on to it's favourite gadget - the smartphone. I had to put it down somewhere and look at how the usecases changed over time, with my own phase in life.

It's also the story of how the pinnacle of Electronics and Communication Engineering (specifically VLSI design, Wireless networking, RF systems, Embedded systems and tons of algorithms) evolved in the past two decades or more.

2002 - The grad school student 

Nokia 6510

All I needed was a budget phone to stay in touch with my family and yet give me company in the long nights spent in the lab, with a killer application - an inbuilt FM radio!

Nothing like listening to "A good night's music" of classical orchestra in Symphony 92.4 FM while working on design projects!

2005 - Young newly minted chip design engineer

Nokia 6230i

I could not live without music but didn't want to overspend buying Ipods, so what could go wrong with a phone with polyphonic ringtones and MP3 player, 512MB storage and being able to set any song as a ringtone!!? (Margazhippoove...!) 

Well, it had a camera too but it was just a gimmick since I was into SLR photography then, the image quality was a joke.

This also set the thought to never buy an overpriced Apple product for the same functionality, and have stuck to that so far.

2007 - Young professional with many passions and interests 

Nokia N51 - all that steel finish and Symbian OS made for a classy sleek business phone, just barely able to browse the internet and check email, but ticking all other boxes.

2009 - Lead engineer and newly married, more professional 

Nokia N63 - Completely missed the Android/IOs revolution and still stuck with Nokia symbian OS. There really something nice with those clicky qwerty keyboard, that I still miss.

Dear Nokia, why didn't you move to Android back then? (but took a circuitous route through Windows and finally come to Android via HMD global)

2011 - Staff engineer, full-on tech nerd

Motorola Atrix - a truly revolutionary gadget that was well ahead of it's times. My first android smartphone that could double up as a media device or even (under)power a laptop with a docking mechanism. A smartphone/smartTV/WebOSlaptop rolled into one. Atleast that's what the marketing promised! Kudos to the engineers in Motorola for even conceiving such a 'convergence product' back then!

2013 - Needed a classy powerful smartphone, no gimmicks

HTC One - easily one of the most good looking phone released that year, easy to use, easy to love. And that matt silver finish back..nice dual speakers. Smooth handling, first Snapdragon 800 series chip and decent camera. Almost an Android iPhone!

2016 - Needed a digital detox break from smartphones 

Nokia Asha 206 - lovely little dumbphone, which is a great thing to have once in a while. I remember reading a lot of oxymoronic reviews on 'which is the best dumb phone?' and found there is actually a strong market for such low-tech basic devices, which keep you connected without taking over your life.

2017 - Back to gadget-freakiness but this time with Lego style modularity 

Moto Z Play with Moto Mods that just stuck on to the back

I eventually bought the JBL speaker and pico projector mods which provided amazing swappable functionality. I really really hoped this trend would catch on and the mods would remain compatoble with newer Moto phones. But again Moto proved to be too ahead of their times. And this had a super efficient Snapdragon 625 which effortlessly lasted for 2 or 3 days of battery life! I was never a gamer, so this experience with midranger phone was a pleasant experience without burning the pocket.

2019 - Gotta have the flagship with the SoC I worked on -

Google Pixel 4XL with the powerful Snapdragon 855 processor. We first saw a Neural Processing Unit thrown into it and could not wait for the AI goodies to come. And boy it impressed with its camera capability and the first time I conceded that smartphone cameras have indeed arrived. But this wonderful device on paper gave so many reliability issues, I got disillusioned with flagship phones. Battery issues, connector issues, display issues, no fingerprint sensor but just face unlock feature that became useless with Covid masks. I loved the camera and almost hated the phone!

2024 - A sensible midranger will do for a telecommuting middle-manager! Why burn cash?

Moto G84 - with a nearly 3 year old Snapdragon 695, but with 5G and stock Android. If we wait for 2 to 3 years, flagship tech gets trickled down to midranger phones and you can get very competent devices at 1/3 the price with great specs on paper. All was well, till I discovered that the camera didn't come close to the old Pixel and have started to miss it a lot for candid and travel photography. But again a battery life champion which needs charging once in 2 or 3 days, unimaginable in flagships. I don't have to panic if I forgot to charge it overnight, it just runs for one more day, uncomplainingly! And for heaven's sake, it has a 3.5mm audio jack to attend calls and listen to music and podcasts all day long with wired headphones that never runs out of battery... !

What more can we expect in the years to come?

What innovation is round the corner?

When will our love for this gadget be superceded by the next great innovation?