A walk to my birthplace Day 5 (24 Km covered so far)

I set my new APP on iphone to calculate the exact distance of the route today. It’s a GPS based APP and gives you the route as well as distance you walk. Just to ensure that the APP works alright, I took a route measured accurately earlier and walked 6 Km. The APP turned out to be accurate – such a joy!

If you are wondering about what’s the big deal – there is a little background to it. I bought a simple pedometer when I started my walks and it turned out to be way off in measurements! It was frustrating and I then calculated some couple of routes using my vehicle’s digital odometer and stuck to those routes as I started a walk to my birthplace!

When I narrated the pedometer incident to my senior colleague in office, he was little puzzled – he asked me, ”Why would you buy a pedometer when you have a smartphone! Just download an APP – there must be plenty free APPs”. He then went on to explain me how this can be done even on Google maps which went way over my head! But I noted his suggestion to download the APP and it worked.

I always admire this gentleman – he is in his late fifties but he is fairly updated on technology. This is not only limited to IT or gadgets. He would take a trip of 600 Km just for one night to watch lunar eclipse, he also attends classical music concerts and understands the technology of music. I always wondered what keeps his interest alive in technology, science and knowledge in general. I got my answer a few months back when we traveled together to a place in coastal Maharashtra. On the way, we passed by my birthplace – Kolhapur. I generally took upon myself to talk about the place like an expert guide. I was talking about black soil and the sugarcane crop that defines the land. I have a gift of glib so I talked about the crops as if I have worked on those farms right from my childhood. All of a sudden this colleague of mine asked me – “How do they plant sugarcane?” It was a genuine curious question which I had no answer and it had never troubled me all these years!  While I was stumped searching for answer on sugarcane I instantly got an answer for the other question that always troubled me! I realized that this man keeps his interest in technology alive because he is gifted with a genuine curiosity about everything he comes across. He also does not mind asking knowledge seeking questions and you can see the joy when he gets a new piece of information! There lies the secret of his motivation! He could not have kept his interest alive only with extrinsic motivators like growth in the career!

I generally admire things, explore things and move on but the scientific curiosity never really bothers me. For me it’s a romance with the world as you move along. But my colleague is different – he is a true seeker of knowledge. Rather than trying to be judgmental about which type is better, I have figured a way out for myself.  I naturally make friendship with these knowledge seekers just like the opposite poles attract! Sometimes it is better to make friends with the chef than trying to master the recipe!