Subject Category > General Knowledge

Q. Read the passage carefully and choose the best answer to each question out of the four alternatives. It was a bittersweet moment for me when I found out that I had been selected for the Sakura Science Exchange programme, a Robotics and IoT workshop in Japan. A fully-funded opportunity of a lifetime. Fly off to Saitama without a care on the world, and all I had to do was put into practice what I love to do – computer science. The bitter part of the episode – that I would lose two weeks of IB education, an almost literal mountain to cover when I got back – was quickly forgotten when I envisioned myself programming robots in the country that gave us Anime and sushi! It was with the eagerness to have an extended vacation in an un-visited land, and the opportunity to learn more about a subject that I am passionate about, that I headed to the Kempegowda International Airport outside Bengaluru. Little did I know this would be the experience of a lifetime, more for the endearing values of the Japanese culture that made their mark on me than anything else. The first feature of Japanese society that called out to me was the Discipline. Walking into the Narita International Airport, used as I was to the noisy crowds back in India, I quite literally lost my breath to the sight that awaited me. Be it the security check or baggage claim, somehow there was a silence that felt right. Everyone went about their activities without any confusion. And, contrary to the bharatiya custom of lazy pot-bellied officials, every guard and all counter personnel did what they were supposed to do to ensure this flow was maintained. What was it that the writer did not like about his trip to Japan?

✔ That he would miss a fortnight worth of IB education