Unskilled skills

All have such skills. I have my share of them. Consider cricket, for example, I don’t know anything about the different ways in which fielders can be positioned or the names given to different strokes and the amusingly peculiar names that anyone can ever think of for the bowling action and/or end of bowlers, like, the Municipality end, the Hillrock end and there are so many other names more interesting than these which, unfortunately, I don’t remember now as always. And, I always get confused about the on-side and the off-side of the field - left and right. So, I find peace in restricting myself to just watching the game and enjoying the runs made or the wickets knocked off, and that too only when India plays.

Now, should I say that the same applies to my academics? Not my specialization areas though. Probably, in things like programming where I am expected to show my programming skills, no matter how unskilled they are. This reminds me of a small incident that happened when I was in my second year of engineering. There was this C-Skill contest that was held as part of our college fest. One of my friends, who is too good to believe in programming, took part in it, and asked me to team up with her as the requirement was teams of two each. The only thing that I could think of as the best policy for that moment was escapism. I immediately registered my name for the quiz contest. Though, my GK and geography skills are also poor, I found the quiz better than C. I always keep wondering about this unskilled skill of mine. My logical, analytical and reasoning abilities are reasonably good then why do I falter when it comes to programming aptitude. All these involve the same input- logic, simple logic. I hope I would be able to solve this mystery someday.

I like watching soccer on the television, but I don’t know even the basic rules of the game and not even the names of the countries which play soccer except for Brazil and a couple of others, but ask me for a game of football and I will be too excited to refuse. It’s just the fun in kicking the ball into the net. Same is with basketball. It feels good to possess unskilled skills which can teach you or amuse you sometimes. There are so many other things like these. Sometimes, it is better to be a dilettante.