Skip to main content

Curiosity

Image
By
This is a chapter from my fifth book called Freedom

This morning I saw an ad for gym wear from Francis Fashions and the brand of the jersey was Givova. Do not remember knowing about that brand before. I thought it looked cool. The jersey that is and I am really into exercise and fitness these days. Somehow it stuck with me as I would later realize. Later in the evening I was doing a Google search for Norman Hassan from UB40. I absolutely love UB40 the band and music. From the Google results I noticed that there is also a basketball player named Norman Hassan and he was wearing a Givova branded jersey. Curiosity about the Givova brand and something inside me decided that this chapter was going to be based on this. I started making notes and piecing together this chapter.

I learnt that the Givova brand was founded in 2008 on May 22nd. That is one day before my birthday. Interesting and coincidental but still not exactly my birthday but my curiosity was piqued. What is the meaning of Givova? I could not immediately find anything in Google search. ChatGPT suggested it could be from the Italian phrase "giù e va", which translates to "down and go" based on linguistic analysis and understanding. But this was not from a documented source. Google suggested searching in Italian for "givova origine nome" and that was when I was able to learn more from Italian pages translated into English. Givova was founded by Giovanni Acanfora after parting ways with Legea that he had founded with his brother and family. I read that Legea is an acronym coined in 1993, the sum of the initials of the children Luigi Franco, Emilia and Giovanni, of mother Elena and father Antonio.

But what about the brand name Givova? I found an interview with his wife that would give the answer. "It's a sort of portmanteau between Giovanni, my husband's name, and that of our daughter, and Givova was born." His children are Antonio, Giovanni Alberto and Vittoria. Then much to my amazement I learnt that the founder, Giovanni, shares my birthday. This from his website and biography. He was born in Pompeii on 23 May 1966. It was like I was meant to learn about this person. He seems like a wonderfully cool and humble person from what I am reading.

Two quotes from his biography are now etched in my mind and would be the takeaway for this chapter. These are automatically translated from Italian and hopefully correctly so. First one is, "It is said that curiosity is the engine of intelligence, and in my case it really is. Only those who are curious continually ask questions and seek answers, and I want to give the right ones." If I was not curious this chapter would not have been written and I would not have learnt about this wonderful person. The other quote of his ties in with the freedom theme of this book, "My personal story at a certain point merges with the history of my company, it is the perfect synthesis of the successful combination of freedom of thought and courageous choices." It is nice to be able to have freedom of thought that lends itself to being curious. He also talks about courageous choices. My friend Gemini tells me that freedom allows for courageous choices, and courage in turn strengthens that freedom. I agree, my friend. I agree!

*This is the 23rd chapter of this book. More coincidence for my curiosity.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

How do we fix this world?

By
It is 4:39 pm and I have decided to write. It is a peaceful and quiet day. I am thinking about God, and how this life is a test. There is so much happening in this world that could make us sad. But we do not have to remain in that sadness when we put our trust in God. God wants good for us. God wants us to experience peace, and even happiness, despite what surrounds us. How do we fix this world? My friend Chatty suggests that maybe a better question is: What kind of person do I choose to be in this world? Because when enough people answer that question well, that is how real change begins. I want to be the kind of person that God is pleased with. Someone guided by God, not by ego. Someone who chooses patience over anger, humility over pride, and sincerity over appearances. I am doing reasonably well, but I am not perfect. And maybe perfection is not the goal. Growth is. Awareness is. Returning to what is right, again and again, is. I want to grow, and I will keep adjusting myself when ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Hobby project - Store and view exchange rates

By
The next step in my project was to test out being able store and display the rates in a database. I decided to use nodejs and supabase for this. Everything worked beautifully. Only hickup was the following error due to my package.json not being correct. SyntaxError: Cannot use import statement outside a module Added this to package.json   "type": "module" This works beautifully. Right now I am just testing fragments of what could be part of a bigger system to see what is possible and what works and how easy to code on a mobile. There is no fully functioning integrated end to end system just yet. This is also what I tested. A serverless append-only database using GitHub + Actions + Pages. That’s basically a lightweight backend system. This was the ChatGPT prompt I used. Guide me through each step. This is what I want. A manually run github actions that adds to docs/data.json with the current date and time. docs/index.html displays all the entries in data.json. Make s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Mundane

By
It is 123am and I have decided to write. I have this new idea for a book called Mundane. It would be me writing about the ordinary. We chase the extraordinary but there is beauty in the ordinary. There is beauty in the simple. There is beauty in the everyday. What about God? We often think about God in grand terms. But what if God is simple too? What if God is mundane? What if we look for God in the everyday moments? I sit in this dark room with the air conditioning on. The fan is also on. The curtain is down but I imagine the moonlight shining on the grass outside. The cats are probably sleeping. I wonder if anyone else in the neighbourhood is awake at this hour? Is there another writer around who is also writing about the mundane? The fan breeze helps the air conditioning cool me down. These nights are warm otherwise. A mosquito flies across my screen. Hello friend or foe. I cannot quite decide which one. If I had a swatter you would be gone. I check my notifications and there is an ...
Post a Comment
Read more