Friday, September 7, 2018

Crossing Oceans, plateaus, rivers to meet my dreams

It was 1994, the year when all my trials and tribulations while choosing a career path came to rest and my journey into the arts began fully unravelling.

source: awesomejelly.com
I was a computer science tutor at my family owned training centre from the late 80s when I started dabbling with PCs and teaching programs such as BASIC, FORTRAN, PASCAL, and applications such as WordStar, WORDPERFECT etc. Although we have come a long way since then, the grounding I acquired from teaching these programs and meandering around limitations in that kind of computer life would make my career life more meaningful and easy to manoeuvre more than a decade from then.

I land this interview at an animation studio that just gets recognized for a few top commercials in my country. And voila like magic I get accepted into a job I least expected. As an animator! I was overjoyed because I was that ardent fan of Disney animation. Struggling to get any and every information I could gather about Disney even during those days when there was no internet. I remember during my sophomore years as a Math student to get ready to be job-worthy, my independent mind had another alternative route to a job-worthy field I was trying unofficially by not spending my parents' money to reach this passion. Because from where I come from, our societies have a tradition where the parent funds for the child's education from the first grade to university unlike the USA or Europe where the child is left to fend for itself after school through student loans or a job to fund their own education. Such societies as mine hence have their children come back to their home nests to return the favor back to their parents to take care of them in thick or thin. There is a good side and challenging side to this just as there is a challenging side to the way western societies too have a positive and negative side.

With this said, let me get back to 1994 when I took up my role as a young animator and dashed away to a progressive, commercial capital in my country. In this city, much like New York city, I get to learn my trade better working night and day. Today, 24 years later as times have changed with everyone having access to technologies I still have no regrets about how far it has taken me and how it has led me to be part of other evolving transitional cities and to have an opportunity to see the world's people. Now it is time to transport my learnings to the roots so that this global way of life makes more meaning for many of us.

Digital Portrait Painting of Senator John McCain (1936-2018)