Muskians - African Stark-kid

So guess what people, when India won its first cricket world cup in year 1983, the following year Elon Musk was first recognized by people for he did something applaud-able. The world first met him as a 12 year kid who published the source code of a Sci-Fi computer game he named “Blaster”.

 It was the year 1984 and for someone as young as 12 years, it was a commendable job to write code to develop computer game, and again it was Africa. So as known to many people Elon Musk was born and brought in Africa till in his late teen after which he shifted to Canada and then US.

 Musk since his childhood was involved in fantasies of science fiction stories, the space and tales of existence of other civilizations and many such fancy things, the fact seems obvious! But honestly as a child majority of us are fancied by these stories but as we grow up, get some serious other things to worry about, we forget this stuff, Elon seems to have not! And ever wondered where he developed this interest, the answer is comics and his everyday library visits. Elon Musk in his childhood was really what you call a reading bug. There is a record in his biography that says, Musk had almost finished reading all the books in local library of Pretoria and had irritated librarian for ordering more books. Elon used to be so engulfed in the world of books, you would find him reading most of the time and that is how he knew so many things that no-one knew, says his mother. His sister Tosca would often say, “If you have questions, ask the genius boy”, and this explains a lot.  

There is a very important entry in his biography about the sick “existential crisis” that hit Elon when he was 14. (For those who don’t know about “existential crisis” more than its meaning, I would suggest please Google it out, I feel it’s important for you to understand it depth.). So yes as the writer Ashlee says, when Elon was going through serious existential crisis he found the solution in one of this favorite book, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Galaxy” and since then the mission or the purpose of his life he coined into some big words that goes as follows:

“The only thing that makes sense to do is strive for greater collective enlightenment”

But growing up in Africa,  his biography tells how the childhood was violent and tensed for him, and why from very early age Elon dreamt to pack up shift to his lands of dreams, USA. But keeping aside some instances of him getting bullied in school by other students and odd behavior of his father, I could not find much reasons of calling his childhood “violent” and “tensed” in “Africa”. I mean his could even happen in US as well. Alright keeping my thoughts aside.. There is a fact that really needs to be accepted that Musk was not one of those fight back guys in school who would harshly respond when mocked by other kids. He didn’t make many friends as his other siblings and his mom was often worried about it as well. Quite for some lines, there is also the reference of how Elon mostly enjoyed his own company only, and even sometimes didn’t respond to others call. His mother never found out if that was intentional or was there a problem. 

More from his schooldays, Musk was really the kid who would argue about why he is forced to study something that doesn’t interest him. He was fine with his grades but always wanted to only study the subjects that he found worth; Physics and Computers were his favorites. At age of 10 he first saw a computer when he received one (with 5Kb memory and workbook of BASIC programming language), he stayed up for three days with no sleep and did the entire thing. 

But as Musk always dreamt of going to US, the book actually takes a deep dive into his ancestral roots in North America. The description is so thorough that it begins with life of his great grandfather! 

The writer there actually highlights more about his maternal side and very little or let’s says none is written about his father’s side of family. You will find out in the book how Elon’s maternal family whose roots were in America held the last name “Heldeman” a Swiss German name. Not much to write about them in the blog, I just derived that all of them were quite active people in their area of work. Somewhere somehow Elon’s great grandfather moved from US to Canada and then rest of the story focuses on Elon’s grandfather Joshua Noraman Haldeman who as per book is the real role model for Elon and his work inspired him quite a lot. And yes it was really worth the inspiration. Joshua and his wife “Wyn” were enthusiast flyers, and as they both loved adventures and wanted some thrilling job so they picked up flying.

They flew private planes in Canada and later shifted to Africa. Their stories of adventures and flights have been penned down in a book “The Flying Haldeman: Pity the Poor Private Pilot”. Owning a private plane and the couple being enthusiast flyer does say a lot about where all this love for flights and adventure got embedded in Elon’s genes. So the duo of Joshua and Wyn Haldeman are the parents of Elon’s mother Maye Musk, her twin sister Kaye..quite rhyming, and an elder brother Scott Haldeman who is known as one of the world’s top “Spinal pain expert”. He is Elon’s uncle. These three siblings were constant companions of Joshua and Wyn in their flying adventures which sometimes even turned out to be nearly dangerous. But I think Elon’s grandmother surely had some great stories to narrate to Elon.

Describing more about Maye musk, the author says that she was geeky kid who loved physics and mathematics. But as she grew up the young Maye looked very gorgeous, tall with ash-blond hair and she showed up in the modeling sector very early. Even today, if you peep into her Instagram, you will find out how active she is in modeling and has been featured in so many magazines and how gracefully she carries herself keeping up the pace with modern fashion styles. So Maye married Errol Musk, Elon’s father who was a Mechanical Electrical engineer. They had three kids, Elon the elder most, then Kimbal his brother and followed by Tosca, Elon’s sister. The siblings got along very well in the childhood it seems and still have maintained a great bonding. In fact with his cousins, Kaye’s children, Elon is as close as Kimbal and Tosca. These children of Kaye are the Rive brothers with whom Elon has started “SolarCity” project. You will read more about them in future blogs.

What prominently you will find in the book are the lines that get you a sneak peak of quite harsh nature of Elon’s father. I could not discover reasons correctly but Elon found his father quite strict, not a happy man and he even says, that his father only knows to make other’s life difficult. But during his parent’s divorce Elon chose to live with his dad and the reason was not to let him feel lonely. I thought that is contradictory, but anyways.

Elon was actually preying on for an opportunity that could land him in US, and when he was 17 some law changes made by Canadian government allowed him to take advantage of his mother’s Canadian citizenship and migrate to Canada. He didn’t waste any time and as soon as one could make, Elon was already in Canada.

Next thing waiting for Elon was, to work in farms..

More about it in the next blog. ;)