Serendipity and Learning

Many things around us, as adults, we often take for granted. Which is why questions like the one above from children, often leave us stumped for answers.  A bus steering is bigger than a car steering, and that is quite obvious. Why does it have to be so, nobody ever asked. And thankfully, on the internet, there are answers to such questions as well and we did get the answer. Do google the question and see what the answer is - the answer in itself is quite interesting. Which brings me to the point that as adults, we often take many things around us for granted. And since we take a lot of things for granted, there is no enquiry in that direction and thus no learning happens in that space.Where there is no enquiry, there can be no learning.  How does one keep oneself curious and asking questions and enquiring and learning, in an organization? And if you run training, how do you do that?

The Internet is a wonderful place. A few months back, we had successfully created paper airplane designs from the web. And then, I thought, surely, there must be good boat designs available. And thus it was that I stumbled onto the design of a putt putt boat . It was tempting to try and make it. The steamboat as a toy was available when I was a child, but not very easily. And despite searching high and low for it, I never managed to own one. So I went through the site and figured most of the things required, bar one, were easily available. The one that was not available - glue gun - was also procured after some investigations and some asking around. So far so good. We spent a few weeks collecting the requirements one by one - soft drink cans, straws, epoxy, cardboard, tape and so on. And then yesterday we embarked on this project. After a day of hard work, it worked beautifully. The joy of making things with ones own hands is amazing and the learning stays for a lifetime......