Programming an Escape Room

As kids, most of us would have liked to create and play fun games with our friends and siblings. Nethra seems to love doing that. :)

She loves creating treasure hunts for family and neighborhood kids. On our birthdays, she makes it a point to create treasure hunts for the birthday kid. This is one such escape room Nethra created for Naina's 5th birthday. 

Naina's 5th birthday treasure hunt (select presentation mode)

Nethra doesn't take up computer programming classes. But, I loved how she was able to create her own concepts to make an efficient treasure hunt program. 

For example, rather than creating "wrong answer" slide for every puzzle slide, she created one and pointed at it every time Naina clicked on a wrong answer. She realized Naina might accidentally goto the next slide without answering the puzzle. She added a buffer slide that instructs Naina to click up. It reminded me of my childhood as I learnt to program in C/C++. I used to write games and be excited to let my siblings try it out.

Here is the video of Naina playing the escape room:

You are it!

B'days in school was fun...

Birthday's during school days are so much fun. What excited me the most about that day was, while everyone else would be wearing the same white and blue uniforms, I get to go in a newly purchased "colour dress". I usually made it a point to go early that day. As folks entered the class, they would exclaim "its your b'day??" after a simple "it's-really-not-all-that-hard-you-know?" kinda nod from me, they would go "HAPPY Birthday!!!". For someone who otherwise goes unnoticed in the class, the sudden attention is something to crave for. The anticipation and wait for the day would in fact start a month and half before.

Its nearly impossible to go through that kind off anticipation during adulthood. At least that's what I thought until this week.

About a month back, when a friend of mine offered to get me a CSK jersey, I was reluctant(I am not really jersey person). I love following the game. You wouldn't see me all pumped up during the game, but I put in enough emotion into the game to feel elated/depressed at the end of it. Being married to someone who simply adores CSK, I relented saying "Can you please get us a jersey?". He very kindly obliged.

Today happens to be a BIG day. CSK played MI and I decided to celebrate the day by wearing my bright yellow CSK jersey to work. It was AWESOME! I made a lot of heads turn and heard a lot of "wow!". For the first time, after a long time, I felt I was going to my school on my birthday. And, believe it or not, I have been looking forward to this day since the start of this week.