Friday Twin Post- The Talk at Oakridge and The Sunday Haul

The Talk at Oakridge

After the presentation at New Delhi to a group of the country’s top meteorological big shots and others earlier in the month, I give another presentation to an entirely different bunch of little people last week. I gave a talk on natural calamities to students of sixth standard at Oakridge International School last Thursday. It was an entirely different experience for me since so far no audience at my talks or presentation had been 10-11 year old school kids.

Normally I have a standard power point presentation that I use at my talks at various places. But since this audience was different I had to modify it accordingly. Usually disaster management is a dry subject and a vast one at that. I had only forty five minutes to finish my talk so I thought it would be better if I told the kids about a natural calamity that is as dramatic as it is devastating. I chose to tell them about cyclones.

The forty five minutes flew by. The kids were so enthusiastic and asked so many questions I found it a bit difficult to answer all of them. There were about twenty five kids and out of them a few were more enthusiastic than the others and kept up a barrage of questions. I felt happy that I had told them something that I knew and I hope they also learnt something from my talk. It was a wonderful experience.

The Sunday Haul

Since I had barred myself from going to Abids on Sunday I stopped at Chikkadpally while returning home from some errand. I found Shashi Deshpande’s ‘That Long Silence’ that I got for thirty five rupees. It had a nice cover and was in good condition. Though I had bought ‘The Binding Vine’ a couple of months ago I haven’t found the time to read it. Someday soon I plan to read these two books since I have not read anything by Shashi Deshpande so far.