Florida notes part 1: let me take a selfie

Hi guys, greetings from South Jacksonville, Florida. I am currently stuck on the boat that we rented through AirBNB on a rainy day because of a terrible mix up this morning which I will talk more about another time. This has given me some time to reflect on my experiences in the USA so far (well, Florida, to be precise) and I am going to share some of those observations with you. I have heard good and bad things about Florida over the years and since I had to be here for a few days of work at NASA (yes that's right - freaking NASA no less), I am going to do a series of short pieces about interesting things I have learnt on this trip. Here's a nice photo of me from St Augustine beach to kick us off. I nearly sprained my ankle in Puerto Rico doing a backflip on the beach so I decided to stick to one-armed handstands instead for my beach photos instead.

On St Augustine beach, FL

I am currently involved in yet another start up - this young company has already won an award by NASA who held a global competition earlier this year and this British team came in first in one of the categories. I had already been involved in another start up earlier this year so I thought the chance to work with such brilliant minds is not something that I should pass up easily. What truly impressed me was the fact that the concept behind the award winning design came from a young woman of just 23 years old. Good grief, when I was 23 years old, I was still a student at university with no idea what to do - her engineering partner is just 20 years old and has yet to graduate. The third person in their team is an older guy who is 49 and he is the one who has worked decades in the industry - he would know how to bring brilliant concepts to fruition and bring them from drawing board to the market. I am just at the moment a 'marketing consultant' who has been roped in for my language skills and marketing expertise as they are eyeing some international markets. At 40, I feel decidedly old in their company but still I am rather excited about working with them on this.

Of course, those of you who have read my blog will realize that I am quite full of myself and that I come across as someone who has a massive ego. That is probably true on most days, but let me tell you - I was served a big slice of humble pie at NASA. You see, one of the most exciting winning teams came all the way from Kiev in Ukraine and naturally, I got talking to them in a mish-mash of Ukrainian, Russian and English - heck, what do I know about space engineering? I was just pleased that I could speak to them in another language other than English. I then found out that the concept behind their winning project came from a 12 year old girl - now she was there and was quite shy. At first I thought, ah someone in your family has won an award and you've tagged along for a holiday in Florida. But she was the brains behind the project, she came up with the idea and the older engineers in her team provided the know-how to develop it to the point where it was able to win an international design competition hosted by NASA. Good grief. What the hell was I doing as a 12 year old? I was but a geeky kid doing my PSLE, that Ukrainian girl just blew my mind. I also note that she is younger than my nephew and wonder if it is time to put more pressure on him to achieve more with his life now that he is already a teenager.

Here's a rocket selfie for you from KSC

So that's why I ended up in Florida in September, when it is extremely hot, sticky and wet - hardly a nice time to visit but at least we got to spend a couple of days at various events organized by NASA for the winners of this competition. We were in the Cape Canaveral area for various networking event, exploring the Kennedy Space Centre as well as viewing the launch of the OSIRIX-Rex  - well once again, I was a fish out of water. Imagine being surrounded by thousands of space geeks simultaneously having an orgasm the moment the rocket launched and there I was thinking, gee I thought it would be a lot louder than this? Mind you, as VIP guests we were already at the closest safe viewing point at Banana Creek but I chose to keep my mouth shut as everyone around me was going crazy with excitement. I guess it would be like going to a T-ara concert when you are not a T-ara fan at all and you couldn't quite understand why everyone around you is going nuts. I did make a video of it, so look out for it on my vlog soon.

We had 4-day passes for the Kennedy Space Centre (KSC), so we could take our time to explore it at our leisure. What puzzled me though was the fact that many parents brought surprisingly young children to the KSC and we're talking 5 to 8 year olds. They are simply not young enough to understand what space travel is or have any understanding of what NASA is all about. I know KSC is meant to be educational, but anyone who knows anything about educating young children will know the importance of age-appropriate material - giving them something way too complex, something beyond their understanding is just a total waste of time. However, even for the teenagers who were old enough to understand the exhibits at KSC, I got the feeling that it was still casting pearls at swines. Let me give you an example: I had to wait for a colleague who needed the toilet, so I observed how this American teenager spend about five minutes trying to take the perfect selfie in front of a rocket. Duh. But how do these teenagers of today develop such a mentality? I see loads of parents happy to take pictures of their children standing in front of rockets and I'm like, they should be learning here at the KSC, rather than spending so much time posing for photos. Don't get me wrong, I did take some pictures at KSC, but I swear some visitors spent the majority of their time taking selfies rather than learning anything at all about NASA.

I wanted to go up to these people and say, "hey, you're surrounded by some of the most amazing feats of human kind, this technology enabled man to go to the moon and you're more interested in yourself than NASA? You're a freaking nobody, you're boring, you're dull as ditch water - the science here is so interesting in contrast. You should do yourself a favour and stop taking selfies, start learning about these astronauts who have achieved so much and maybe, just maybe, you will learn a thing or two from your visit to KSC you self-absorbed, ignorant spoilt brat. Today should have been all about NASA, all about OSIRIS-Rex, all about the greatest achievements of mankind - yet you are trying to make it all about you? Do you know that somewhere on KSC at the moment, there is a 12 year old Ukrainian girl whose concepts were worthy of an international NASA award? She competed against graduates, adults, engineers and beat them. Now if you were as brilliant as this 12 year old girl, then go ahead and take photos of yourself - but you're not. What have you achieved that makes you so interesting that anyone may want to even spent a moment looking at that selfie you're about to upload to social media? Nothing. There's absolutely nothing interesting about you because you've achieved so little in your life. So put that phone away and start learning you stupid, ignorant pleb."

Visiting KSC and meeting people who work at NASA as well as the other award winners was a humbling experience for me, extremely so. It made me realize, okay maybe I am pretty good at what I do but there are so many people who are so much more brilliant than me. It would be rare to find another tourist attraction in the world so focussed on celebrating the most brilliant minds in our world. Yet I am shocked by the immaturity of so many of the people visiting KSC in the way they were so self-centric and self-absorbed. What would it take to send them a message that they are woefully inadequate when compared to some of the engineers and scientists who made space travel possible? What would it take to make them compare themselves to that 12 year old Ukrainian girl who is undoubtedly going to grow up to become one of the most brilliant scientists of the next generation? I found my experience humbling and it makes me appreciate how very valuable this opportunity I have really is, to work with people so much more intelligent than me. But don't get me wrong, this is not me looking down on people who are just average, this is me being amazed at just how oblivious they are about their lack of achievements. If you can't feel humbled in a place like KSC, then you don't know what humility is.

I am humbled and outraged at the same time.

Okay that's it from me for now. I have about 48 hours left in America. I will write more after I get back home. So what do you think? There is clearly a delicate balance about nurturing young people, encouraging them and building their self-confidence and turning them into egotistic self-absorbed selfish monsters who are totally oblivious of how pathetic they are compared to the rest of the human race. How do we get this balance right? Is my response justified or am I once again being too harsh? Leave a comment below and let's talk about it. Many thanks for reading.