Part I-The Early Years

My journey through The Skool of Life began in April of 1978 in New Delhi, India where I was born. My parents are actually of South Indian decent, and there’s an ongoing joke in my family that I don’t like South Indian food because my parents mixed me up with some North Indian kid at the hospital. However, I bare an uncanny resemblance to my dad and we’ve been even mistaken for brothers.  So, I don’t think there was any mix up. My dad left to Australia to start his PhD and my mother and I joined him about three months later.

I spent the first part of my childhood in Australia and even attended my first year of kindergarten there. By the time my dad finished his PhD we we re off to Canada, and that would begin what seemed like a childhood comprised of constant globehopping.

By the time I was in the third grade, I had live in Australia, Canada, and Texas. Somewhere around junior high I picked up an interest in music and started playing the Tuba.It was here that I learned the amazing power of belief but it was not until I started this blog I realized that I had learned this lesson back in 7th grade.  After my first year of high school my parents decided to move yet again because my dad got a job as a professor in Riverside, California.

I think I went to about 8 different schools in 8 years because I had to go to a different school for every grade in Texas.  However, I continued the play the Tuba and went on to become principal tuba in the California All State Band for two years in a row. For most of high school I was very pessimistic. In fact once after returning from summer and reading the The Catcher in the Rye, some girl told me I reminded her of Holden Cauffield. I think it’s pretty funny, since I’m now running a personal development and self improvement blog. Needless to say, I more or less hated high school and couldn’t wait to get out of there. I got into the USC School of Music, but decided instead to pursue a degree in economics at UC-Berkeley. Part II