My name’s Ish Rashad. Long-term friends and family call me Rashad, recently Ish has been convenient. It’s a long story for another time. Both names work.
This has been a big month… June 6th was the fortieth anniversary of my coming across from India to Melbourne. June 16th was the twelfth anniversary of my stroke. And June 7th was the day TN came roaring back into my life. Detailed in this post.
I won’t spend too much time here talking about myself. Me and my world will hopefully crystallise as this blog unfolds. For now I’ll summarise by picking bits from my many capsule bios in Twitter, Google+ and so on.
I am in my 68th year, a January-born Capricorn. (Easy!…Sometimes it’s nice to take a break from science, ok?). Interestingly, I’ve been getting a lot of practice recently at describing me because my central job/pastime/enjoyment for the past 18 months has been ferrying people around Melbourne in my Uber-chariot. And they are amused – and intrigued – by this waffly old Indian guy who describes himself as the quintessential geek with a love of a great many things outside of science and technology: art, books, movies, Aussie rules football… and music…music…music. My oft-voiced maxim that “Music Fixes Everything” gets a lot of airplay in my Uber – and a lot of agreement. It is a large part of my solitary life. You’ll see it weave its thread through these pages. Always happens.
I live in Vermont, a leafy Melbourne suburb 18 km east of the city (downtown) with my four daughters: One human (Nae), one canine (Jazzy) and two feline (Smokey & Kiara). And the two smiling at the camera in this picture are my pain-armour, my Light-carriers….okay, Smokey too – and at 19 she’s allowed to be out of it 😉
A note on work-life: Spent thirty-eight years in IT, working for IBM. Lost my job a couple of years ago, started volunteering with Vision Australia, our prime organisation to provide services to the vision-impaired. Started driving Uber to fit around the volunteering (which gives balance to my life). In fact, the TN reared its head on a night when I was driving Uber. And I realized that drunks and racists aside, driving Uber is a very compatible job with this affliction of mine. As you’ll see in my timeline, the pain’s not red-lining much at all yet. And the flexibility of driving Uber works perfectly for me. For now.
Later?… that’ll probably be different. But baby steps, right?
Not Only When I Laugh... 