17 December, 2002.
I was 12 years old when I was allowed to help decorating the Christmas tree for the first time.
We put  the ornaments in the tree while my dad quickly went to the store to get Christmas lights.  It’s never a good idea to put those in the last, but that’s how it was.

Mum excitedly got the photo camera to take a picture when the tree would light up for the first time. (Yes, we still had one of those old school polaroid camera’s back then)

“Are you guys ready?” , dad asked as he was about to connect the plug.
Yeeeeeessss! We couldn’t wait.

3…. 2…. 1….
No Lights.

Mum was in panic.
“Why did you buy broken lights”. She was clearly annoyed.

“Oh crap”, I heard my dad mumble.
He, who had also studied electricity, knew was what going on.

I always followed him around the house when he tried to fix broken apparatus.
So this got me excited too! My very first troubleshooting exercise!

My dad was happy to teach me about the difference of resistors in series and parallel along with some other nerdy topics.

Years later when I was in Engineering school, I remembered this occasion.
I like to think that small incidents like these direct us to the path we are supposed to be on.
One day in life you might  think “The puzzle pieces actually fit”.