Month 105,104

I'm writing after august and most of September. The challenges at work continue. I had thought I have established some good credentials, but the goal post moved and where it moved, I could not get to in time. So, I've failed. My first failure. And it's going to cost me. They will bring another guy on top of me to manage things. Cool...

It's tough to accept demotion. I'm struggling to come to terms with it. Spoke to my wife. She seems okay with it. There are 2 possible ways to respond. Accept and continue. Try spend as much time as possible in the region. Get my family here. Make money and stop bothering about career. The other is to start another journey. Just like my site, find another hobby, another hillock to climb. Stay away from family for 3 years, improve resume as much as I can and then return to India. 

The first one is too humiliating. But it gives me money and a chance to stay on here. The second means 3 years of separation with my family and the hope that I can find something in India in 3 years. 

Kids can surprise!

D is my best daughter....

Growl!!! I'm your only daughter. 

That's how the conversation goes in my house. In most ways my daughter is middle of the road kind. She goes to school. Has very few friends. Gets a few B's and an occasional C. Her achievements are few and far between. This upsets her only when one of her friends wins something. But generally she is unperturbed, unflappable. 

We have accepted this. Though we keep trying to get her interested in things, keep prodding her to learn new stuff, she shrugs it all off. 

Yesterday however we were in for a pleasant surprise. No, she did not win anything. Nor did she score perfect marks in her report card. What she did was to operate the printer all by herself. Now that's something even my wife doesn't / can't do. It so happened that she wanted a printout of a form she wanted to fill out. The paper tray of canon mx860 is at the bottom. Also you sometimes struggle to keep it aligned. The fact that she could negotiate all that and take a printout surprised me no end. The same day she also fixed the clock. It's actually a digital photo album. We use it as a clock as we can see the time even in the dark. Now it's 3 yrs old and it has serious challenges. The buttons are all stuck  and it takes some amount of skill and great patience to set it once it's switched off and back on. My wife stays away from it. It's too irksome for her to set it.

That my D could do these things on the same day it most intriguing. What actually happen that day was that a friend of hers won some competition and she was a little upset that she could not. 

But for both of us parents, it revealed a side of hers that we had never seen before. The fact that she has resolve and will was new to us. 

She is my best daughter. Love her the most. Miss her the most. 

52:30 10K

ADNEC is a big place. When a colleague told me about a 10K run in Sep, I flatly refused. Too hot I said. But then, it's in ADNEC he said. So what, I quipped. It's covered and airconditioned he explained. I registered. 

When I reached there in the morning, I was all groggy. I had a fitful sleep yesterday. In fact I was so dazed I wore my bib upside down till someone casually pointed out. 

The arena is huge. Quite spacious. There was a small crowd of runners. Perhaps about 100. Mostly white. NO Desis! I believe UAE is 50% or more desi, and yet no one to represent the race(pun). 

But even with such a massive structure, We went back and forth in a serpentine manner 4-5 times to clock the distance. It's 2km per lap. 

And I did well. Best 10K I've ever clocked. 52:30. I just need to stay the course. Hope I do.